Criticize the moneymen who want GMO labeling: you get silence
by Jon Rappoport
November 13, 2013
That’s what I’ve been doing for quite some time (archive here). And that’s what I get. Silence. Apparently they don’t want to argue for their position.
What is their position? Run ballot initiatives saying: “You have a right to know what’s in your food.” Period. End of story.
But don’t attack Monsanto in ads. Don’t say Roundup is poison and causes serious illness. Don’t say Monsanto genes inserted in food crops are unhealthy. Don’t say US growing fields are being overrun and destroyed by superweeds as a result of their immunity to Roundup.
Don’t say Monsanto is treating farmers like slaves. Don’t say Monsanto has been buying up food-seed companies to form a stranglehold on the food supply.
Don’t attack Monsanto in ads.
Don’t show a farmer in an ad who is outraged at Monsanto.
Don’t inflame the voting public.
Do these money men want to win? Do they? Do they have the stomach for a fight?
Because of their money, they set the agenda. They tell their field workers what to tell the public and what not to tell the public, during the ballot campaigns.
Who are these money men? Gary Hirshberg (Stonyfield Organic), Grant Lundberg (Lundberg Family Farms), David Bronner (Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps). Joe Mercola (mercola.com). There may be others.
Why won’t they debate their campaign strategy in public? Why won’t they name the advisers they’ve been consulting? Why won’t they engage with their own workers and seriously discuss, on a level field, their approach to campaigning for GMO labeling?
Are they so sure “you have a right to know what’s in your food” is the single winning message? Why is it a winner? It’s now lost twice, in CA and WA.
Privately, do they realize they’ve been on the wrong track? Do they think they’d suffer embarrassment if they came out and admitted it?
Are they afraid to go after Monsanto directly because they believe their own businesses would suffer the consequences? If so, tell us. Open up. We can help. A large group of vocal and outraged supporters could help forestall those consequences. That would be a hell of a fight…and the public would see, up close and personal, corporate and government criminals trying to silence good men.
Are the leaders of these Yes on 522 and 37 campaigns simply men with grossly limited imaginations? Men who can’t see how waging a different kind of ballot campaign is better?
Do they think they’ve really figured out the only winning strategy?
Are they that blind?
It appears that, among the pro-labeling community, there is a kind of cooperative ruling junta. They bankroll the show. They have support from certain activist leaders. There is no internal conflict. They control the terms of the game. They don’t engage in serious conversations with people who have views different from their own.
They keep saying, “We’re making progress, we’re making headway, we’re waking people up, victories lie ahead of us, hang in there.”
What if they’re wrong? What if their strategy is fatally flawed? It would hardly be the first time a movement with high ideals went off the rails.
Why should we think their one-trick “right to know” campaigns are the best we can do?
Are they, when push comes to shove, just saying, “We have the gold so we make the rules”?
Are they elitists who’ve decided they know what’s best and everybody else has to go along?
Are they saying, “You wouldn’t understand. We’ve consulted with the best minds. We know things you wouldn’t know. So leave us alone. We’ll tell you what to do.”
Are these men so flush with their own financial success they think the market is going to put Monsanto out of business? Do they think the rising tide of people who buy non-GMO and organic will overcome the millions and millions of consumers who eat whatever is put in front of them? Is that their best shot?
Or is that just a self-serving delusion?
Maybe they should spend a few days in McDonald’s and Burger King and Safeway and Vons and Ralphs.
I’ve been around the block a few times. I was there in meetings, during the Health Freedom movement of the early 1990s, when the FDA was making one of its moves against nutritional supplements.
Millions of enraged citizens wrote letters to the government. The supplement companies who were bankrolling the movement wanted to get a better law protecting their businesses passed by Congress.
I said in those meetings, “There are those of us who have the goods on the FDA. We can rip them from stem to stern. They’re a criminal agency. We can put them back on their heels playing defense for the next decade. Let’s go after them now.”
No, no, I was told, that’s not the strategy. The strategy is to get a good law passed. So a law was passed in 1994. The FDA hasn’t stopped attacking supplements. It’s found back-door ways to harass the industry.
I see that pattern repeating now. Get pro-labeling initiatives passed. Then all will be well. Then people will wake up and shun GMO food and Monsanto will lose.
We’ve had two initiatives, and Monsanto, by hook or by crook, has won. (And consider that “crook,” otherwise known as vote fraud, is possible.)
Are the pro-labeling money men reconsidering their strategy? If so, it’s out of view. High-level meetings and all that. Not open to the public. Not open to the voters. Not open to those of us who see a different way.
Monsanto is evil. That’s a given. That’s a fact that can be argued with tremendous impact. That can carry a whole lot of freight.
But these money men don’t want to carry it.
There are some in the pro-labeling movement who are so relentlessly New Age and childishly “positive,” they’re terrified of “going negative.” They think The Universe will punish them for it. They’ll tell you that “negative” ads would turn off voters.
But the history of politics doesn’t say that. Negative ads work if they’re done right.
The truth is, there’s a sound barrier out there, and it has to be broken if Monsanto is going to be stopped from taking over 95% of US farm land with its heinous GMOs forever.
To break the barrier, attack the criminal. There is nothing negative about that, unless you believe “everybody being nice” will stop a psychopath from continuing his path of destruction.
As I’ve written in past articles, Monsanto can deal with GMO labeling if they have to. They don’t want food in the US to be labeled “GMO,” but if it happens, they can handle it. They can spend millions convincing consumers that GMO and non-GMO are equivalent.
Here’s what Monsanto really doesn’t want: a) individual counties enacting an outright ban against growing GMO crops and b) ads that directly and effectively attack them, Monsanto, as criminals and liars and destroyers.
The vote count on Prop 522 is tightening in the last stretch (see also @secstatewa). It would take an overwhelming Yes on the remaining votes to win. So assuming 522 goes down by one or two percentage points, the leaders of the Yes movement are going to say, “We lost by a whisker, going up against the food companies with their millions of dollars. Take heart, our message is getting through, we’re not quitting, we’re going to mount new campaigns.”
And in those new campaigns, the message will be the same: “You have a right to know what’s in your food,” and that’s all. That’s it.
No direct and sustained attacks against Monsanto.
Imagine TV ads like this:
“Do you have any idea how many tons of toxic pesticide Monsanto ships out of the US every day to farmers in developing nations?…”
“Remember Agent Orange, the terrible chemical used in Vietnam, that caused huger numbers of birth defects? Guess who manufactured it…”
“Do you know who told Monsanto to stop being a toxic chemical company because it was destroying its reputation and public image? Mitt Romney, that’s who…”
“Look at these hands. I’m a farmer. I grow food on my land. My family has been on that land for 150 years. Monsanto has ruined all that…”
“There’s a company called Monsanto. Do you know how many food-seed companies they’ve bought up in the last 20 years? Do you know why?…”
“Here’s a new child who’s come into this world with new life. Look at her. Do you want her eating Monsanto’s poisonous chemicals? Do you want her eating dangerous genes Monsanto puts in her corn?…”
And on and on. And then say: “Monsanto puts genes in your food. They say it isn’t a problem. Don’t believe them…Here’s why…”
“Monsanto makes a chemical called Roundup. It’s on your food. You eat it. Here’s what Roundup does…”
Is this so hard to figure out? Is this so hard to see? What’s the problem?
Monsanto and other big-time food/biotech companies pour millions of dollars into defeating these ballot initiatives—and the leaders of the Yes movements are just going to whine about it and do nothing to go after them directly? Wow.
Here’s the bottom line. Even if some GMO-labeling initiatives win in several states, the real battle is about which foods consumers are going to buy over the long term. GMO or non-GMO. The result is going to be a mixed bag. It’s going be a mixed economy.
And in that environment, Monsanto is going to win.
Do you understand?
We’re going to end up coexisting with Monsanto, and the genes they put in food crops are going to keep drifting into non-GMO and organic food crops. Their chemicals are going to keep poisoning people.
Monsanto is exposed on the level of all their crimes, all the harm they do, all the lies they tell. Their flank is wide open. That’s where the opportunity exists. That’s where justice is. That’s where the public can be aroused to see the truth.
In a sane society with a sane government and a sane court system, Monsanto would have been put out of business a long time ago. But that’s not the world we’re living in.
So the public attack has to be against Monsanto as a criminal corporation.
Then let the chips fall where they may. Monsanto wants to sue? Beautiful. Perfect. Bring on the depositions. Bring on the evidence.
The government wants to protect Monsanto? Beautiful. Expose the government as a shill and a police force for a huge corporation.
End the pussyfooting.
Break the trance.
Jon Rappoport
The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at NoMoreFakeNews.com.
Much common sense in this article, thank you. It seems like the leaders of these initiatives are indeed a “loyal” or “constructive” opposition. Halfway measures can make sense, but their proponents ought to properly explain how they fit in a larger plan with a definite solution to the problem.
For instance, a point could be made that teaching the public an analytical demonstration of Monsanto’s evil essence is very difficult and therefore the initial teaching should just be a baby step. Activists could evaluate the point, honestly argue about it, and adjudicate it.
I’ll add that many anti-Monsanto leaders appear to be at best inexcusably ignorant, at worst inexcusably hypocritical, on the essential topic of the twin towers’ criminal controlled demolition. Discerning activists would do their cause a big favor by limiting their trust in such leaders.
Love,
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Jon called it right, of course. The initiative in my state of Washington went down in flames. Why would people care about a label and ‘the right to know’ when they aren’t informed as to why GMOs are dangerous to their health, to agriculture, and to the environment ? What they could understand is the meme that labeling ‘will raise food costs and add red tape’. Millions in campaign ad spots insured that message got through. – – – Other states such as Oregon are using the same ‘Right to Know’ LOSER strategy for upcoming initiative campaigns. We need to call the strategy for what it is, the LOSER strategy. (I actually read comments on the WA labeling website after the results came in that said ‘We are winning ! More people have heard about GMOs now.” How deluded is that ?) GMOs are poison & should be banned. Hit as many places where you can post comments as possible including Infowars, health food websites,anywhere you can think of. Link to Jon’s articles and write your own thoughts. Take a grass roots, ground level approach to inform people face-to-face and with emails to those you know. Talk to them, link to supporting videos. Get creative. Take the so-called campaign ‘leadership’ out of the picture if they won’t push an effective messaged (and don’t take their word for it that they are on the same page as you are). They are either fools, wimps, or co-opted.
If they aren’t speaking of the inherent dangers of GMOs/FrankenFoods, they are gatekeepers.
They must be replaced.
I would suggest this is the core of the problem: polarity confusion. There is one, just one argument in the matter: do we have a RIGHT to a label or not? This of course is not true, but to hear people talk this as the final battle on the way to food freedom.
Those who want labeling are forcing themselves into the polarity box created by Monsanto. Monsanto LOVES the idea of labeling, they created it in order to force anyone who opposed them into the “labeling as a solution” polarity. Monsanto now wins the war because the health conscious elite are busy hand wringing over the polarity fight handed to them by Mosanto. They are fighting a skirmish that Monsanto created long before it all got started, they simply picked their own fight, one they knew they’d win because even if they loose they win. Labeling is a non issue, as were a GMO label law win in a state it would take the supreme court to make it law – the food is interstate commerce, and the core issue is copyright protection which is decidedly not a state issue!
The argument they fear is this: are humans comfortable being experimented on in mass? Can all people, everyday joe’s see the tests done on the human gene sequences that may have been done in conjunction with the work done on corn? And the big one, if Monsanto’s patented gene sequences can be found in humans or animals can those who did the work be personally accountable.
I hate to sound ignorant, but are ALL GMO foods sprayed with Roundup? Are there any genetically modified foods that aren’t poisoned (tomatoes that grow in the desert?)? If not, then our entire society is so brain dead that our owners are right: We deserve to be killed off.
RoundUp® is only part of the problem. The “Roundup Ready” plants (GMO plants) are by themselves bad for you. They take a bacteria, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), and insert it into the DNA of plants as a replacement for the genes that are susceptible to pesticides like RoundUp®. GMO’s affect the plants, the animals that eat the plants, the soil, the insects, and us. This is a highly abbreviated explanation, but it is essentially the theory. So, all GMO foods are inherently poisoned from the start. With or without RoundUp®.
“We deserve to be killed off.” I think that sometimes, but we’re not all brain dead. More people are waking up. And those who would “own” us are so not qualified for that title. They only got there because they are conniving and deceitful. That is why those of us who are awake must make it a daily practice to try to wake up some of the dead, sleeping, TRANCED, society.
It’s because they’ll make more money on their
“organic” brands if people can clearly see the
difference between GMO and non-GMO by
this very fact stated on the label. The way it is
now, the vast majority of people have no clue that
what they’re about to buy has GMOs in them,
i.e., they have no clue that GMOs are “bad.”
If they saw a label that stated that there were
indeed GMOs in the product they were about
to buy, they would question what the hell GMOs
were. They would naturally assume that (maybe)
GMOs are BAD! (even though they had no idea
how bad they were; they would just not want to
buy a food product that was “bad!”) So . . . they
would WANT to buy the non-GMO product.
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thedoctor – excellent points. The people jump into the intellectual ‘box’ of labeling as ‘the answer’. They also jump into the ‘voting as answer’ box. Our side is at great disadvantage with both of these approaches. The other side has millions for ad campaigns and democracy is compromised by electronic voting machines with no paper trail. The KEY is educating people at the intellectual and emotional levels that GMO is poison. If the poison pushers sue . . . great. Let them try suing thousands of individuals speaking their mind to friends & family. Let the publicity surrounding the trials inform even more people out there. If enough people know and feel the Truth, the weight of that will generate appropriate action. That action cannot take place without the KEY . . . which is educating everyone that GMO is poison.
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What about the farmers? Why are they so concurring? They can’t all be ignorant and self serving, can they? If they are aware of the threat, why don’t they do something like the farmers in Hungary who burned their crops to the ground rather than comply with Monsanto? I realize the economic dilemma, but what’s more important? Life or death?
To your list of possible TV ads in this very comprehensive article, I would add… We are the MAJOR purveyors of GMO food in the world. The rest of the world wants nothing to do with GMO’s. Why is that?
The answer is because most people in the US are victims of mind control (Operation Mockingbird) and prisoners of the Matrix. Unfortunately, this may include some of the money men and the farmers. But, yeah, I just don’t see how they are all so goddam complying and PC. Don’t they see the wheels within wheels being turned?
Burn that shit to the ground, farmers. Do it now.
The large corporate ag-biz interests targeted farmers in Washington state. There were phone solicitations to attend large phone conferences where they presented the ‘rising cost/more red tape’ message.Most full time, production type farming happens on the more conservative eastern, rural side of the state. The west side is where the largest cities are and they are liberal politically. They are viewed as ‘leftist’ and ‘radical environmentalist’ by many farmers. – – – When it all comes down to it the facts about the dangers of GMOs to their health, to their farms, and to the environment didn’t get out there to farmers. They see a lot of advertising from GMO producers.that says what their doing is of no harm and beneficial to them. – – – They grew and sold non GMO crops in the past and made a living doing so. Most farms would greatly benefit from planting non GMO. There will have to be a much stronger message if you want to get through to large production farmers. If they were shown it would reduce the chances of their wives or daughters getting breast cancer, of course they would change what they’re doing now.
The strategy used in the Washington state campaign was a LOSER.
For almost eighty years the CWB (Canadian Wheat Board ) was a monopsony, not a monopoly there is a difference.
Monopsony mo•nop•so•ny -the market condition that exists when there is one buyer.
The CWB took Canadian wheat to the world market. One desk sold wheat for tens of thousands of farmers. This system worked and made Canadian wheat a demanded product. A hallmark of eighty years of hybridization and cultivation of seed to meet standards set by Bakers, pasta makers, flour producers, the list goes on. Growing methods enabled wheat products high in protein, starch a superior durum quality.
In the CWB system a farmer could be advanced upwards of $400,000, depending on the acreage, as seed and fertilizer money in the spring to plant a crop. Also pesticide, herbicide and fuels for machinery and general operating costs till a harvest. The first 100,000 was interest free, money advanced had to be paid back at the end of a year based on wheat delivered. This system kept wheat price stable. And farmers growing excellent wheat crops.
August 1, 2012 the CWB (Canadian Wheat Board) monopsony, not monopoly ended. Amid criticism and a legitimate farmer vote of over 66,000 in favor of keeping the wheat board alive, Canadian Agricultural minister Jerry Ritz vetoed the farmers appeal to keep the CWB operating, and ended the Board for good. Ritz wished to end the CWB the year before, but Cargill Inc a privately owned American Corporation asked him to forestall the closure for one year while they restructured the corporation for administering farmer financing. Ritz obliged Cargill, the fix was in. Now it will cost the farmer more to grow a crop, with Cargill making money lending money, debt drives the market now. Farmers are becoming corporations, some of the bigger ones around here are 70,000 acres and he leases all the land, employs a hundred guys.
This places farmers in positions were they cannot gamble, cannot take chances with things like seed and fertilizer, nature, weather and crop insurance etc. They cannot take their time to grow good food. Everything is accounted for…so the farmer is forced to grow a guaranteed crop. Profit margins are tighter, one slip, or miscalculation can put a farmer into bankruptcy. And that is what drives a GMO crop. GMO’s are purported to be superior, guaranteed, all round better crops. They are not; farmers have been brainwashed into believing this. People around here think Round-up is so safe you can drink it, they apply it with a paint roller around their trees in the front yard. Someone actually said that to me when I asked him not to use it around the sidewalks in front of my home…”Hey…this stuff is so safe you can drink it.” I asked him to wait while I went inside my house and got a glass for him.
I have spoken to farmers about GMO’s, there are a lot that wish to go back to growing conventionally crops or to grow purely organic; on an average it would take 4-7 years to clean their land. Some give up on this process, as bankruptcy threatens, 4-7 years is a long time without an income. Farmers surrounding an organic grower hate him, as they cannot spray pesticides, herbicides around organic crops. Organic crops can be contaminated without a farmer even knowing it has happened, bringing a fall harvest crashing down around them. It can be a real nightmare.
In one famous news story in Saskatchewan, Monsanto took a farmer to court and tried to sue him because GMO canola drifted into his field. They try to sue him on patent infringement.
http://workingtv.com/percyschmeiser.html
In India where BT cotton, a GMO which is the dominant in the market it causes 4,000 farmer suicides a year. The reason for those suicides is debt, endless debt.
Suicide mortality and pesticide use among Canadian farmers… https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9750943
http://healthandwelfare.idaho.gov/Portals/0/Families/Suicide%20Prevention/Suicide_and_farmers.pdf
So simple burning the crop is not an answer. It is not that easy. GMO’s are an addiction.
Corporations like Monsanto, Cargill, Bayer Crop science and Dow have the strangle hold on the market, the seed, fertilizer, herbicides, pesticides and the farmer. Wall Street suites have a stranglehold on the grain market… now that you can buy weather. A hailstorm in Saskatchewan can be simply arranged.
Monsanto wants to dominate world food. What are we going to do about it!
Every time you eat GMO corn, soy, canola & vegetable fats you are eating RoundUp and poisoning the bacteria in your gut. 75% of your immune system is determined by the balance of bacteria in your gut.
Autoimmune diseases and inflammation are growing in direct proportion to the amount of RoundUp in the food supply.
I know having people read much less understand Dr Seneff’s research is hard but that is what it says in a nutshell.
http://people.csail.mit.edu/seneff/
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I agree wholeheartedly with everything you said regarding Monsanto. I find it disturbing to know that I unknowingly raised my 3 children in the 90’s/2000’s, on probably GMO food.
Not now, for the past 5 years, our family has gone organic & certified nonGMO, & only purchase food with those labels. But now to read what you said about it infecting organic & nonGMO certified farms is absolutely awful. I can only hope that people start waking up.