Dr. Bronner replies to Rappoport article on GMO labeling strategy

by Jon Rappoport

November 15, 2013

www.nomorefakenews.com

The sub-title of this article is borrowed from a sentence a friend wrote to me:

Let’s vote to label something that is destroying the biology of the Earth.

Under a tweet with the title of my recent article, “Criticize the moneyman who support GMO labeling: you get Silence,” there is a tweet from Dr. Bronner, who I presume is David Bronner.

He has been a major funder of the Prop 37 and Prop 522 labeling campaigns in CA and WA. He is pro-labeling.

The Bronner reply tweet reads: “We’ve been very careful to listen to local campaigners on campaign tactics.”

Based on limited information, I would question that. But my article was really about something else. It was about the overall message these campaigns have pushed at voters: “You have a right to know what’s in your food.”

It’s been the single message in ads, from start to (losing) finish for both Prop 522 and 37.

It has drowned out all other messages from the pro-labeling camp.

And it’s a disaster. Big-time.

You have a right to know because…? The campaigns don’t answer that question for voters. They don’t put that answer out in flaming letters and spoken words and images.

One might think the reason for the gross omission has something to do with treating voters gently “on the level at which they can perceive the issue.”

But behind that unworkable strategy, there is fear. Fear of going up against Monsanto and Dow and Syngenta and other food-tech giants who are responsible for inserting genes in food crops and drenching growing fields with toxic chemicals.

These giants don’t need big shields to ward off blows in the labeling campaigns, because no blows are coming at them. They only have to deflect the droning “you have a right to know.”

Ultimately, the question isn’t about winning or losing the labeling initiatives on ballots. It’s about waking people up to the corporations who are monopolizing and poisoning the food supply.

In other words, Monsanto wins in the long run, unless the public outcry is so great it becomes an unstoppable wave.

And in that crucial regard, “you have a right to know” doesn’t cut it. It doesn’t come close.

As I’ve written before, American consumers will not buy so much non-GMO food it pushes Monsanto to the wall. Unless…the truth about Monsanto’s crimes becomes a sword.

Why is it so hard to understand this?

Because so many people want things to be easy and clean and nice and neat.

Wanting it, however, does not make it so.

On the level at which these labeling initiatives are carried out, the mythic theme is: we can build a better model (while leaving the criminal in place to decay away to dust). Then we sweep up the ashes and go on our merry way.

Would that it were so.

This is, however, a piece of mind control. It saturates the minds of people who “just want things to be fair” and “fairly decided.”

Even those who admit the voters “need to be educated about the harm GMOs and herbicides do” aren’t on the right track. They’re too soft. This isn’t a classroom in which the teacher draws diagrams on the blackboard.

This isn’t merely an adult education class.

This is showing people, up close, in their faces, what chemical warfare is like, when the agent is Monsanto’s Roundup. Evil. This is farmers, actual humans, coerced by Monsanto and driven to the wall. Evil. This is the death of small farming. Evil. This is big fat superweeds taking over farm land, so farmers have to spray even more dangerous chemicals like Paraquat on their fields. Evil. This is Monsanto buying up seed companies and taking over the food supply. Evil. This is Monsanto liars lying to the public about food safety. Evil. This is the US government, the FDA, the USDA, the White House, the President(s) running the game exactly as Monsanto wants them to. Evil. This is shooting untested and unpredictable genes into food. This is making people sick. This is punishing scientists who expose Monsanto. Evil.

All this is the substance of a real political campaign, which has the actual goal of putting Monsanto on the run as the towering wave overtakes them.

And that is the goal, because that is the only way to stop GMO food and horrific chemicals.

Consumer choice as the answer is like Rule by the Proletariat as an answer. In the Marxian fairy tale, the State eventually withers away, magically, and utopia is what’s left. In the consumer choice model, enough food buyers choose non-GMO and Monsanto withers away.

Believing this is a preposterous article of faith.

Monsanto is quite happy to go into the ring and contest that faith with its own propaganda machine, for the next 50 years.

Again, why is this so hard to understand?

Because in a core waking trance, the leaders and money men, with their allies and field workers, in the campaign to label GMOs, are soothing themselves with a fantasy about what works in the arena of politics.

They like their fantasy. They want to hold on to it. They are comforted by it. It sings a song to them. So it must be true.

But it isn’t.

Winning labeling campaigns, losing them, it’s all the same…the battle is lost, unless we name the evil and attack it and reveal it for all to see and keep on attacking it.

If you lived in a neighborhood where one family dumped corrosive clouds of poison on their lawn every few days, would you tell your other neighbors to choose organic lemon juice to kill weeds and leave it at that?

Would you smile and wipe your hands of the whole problem and go on your way, believing the issue would resolve itself?

Would you say, “Soon, no stores will sell that corrosive poison because so many people are buying lemons”?

That’s my reply to David Bronner and the other major money men who fund GMO labeling. I would be interested in reading their full responses.

As always, I hope they actually read what I write and reply to it, rather than to some straw man.

For example, if they write, “Well, we almost won in WA and CA with our strategy”, then they haven’t read me; nor have they read the tea leaves correctly.

http://vote.wa.gov/results/current/State-Measures-Initiative-to-the-Legislature-522-Concerns-labeling-of-genetically-engineered-foods.html

They’re sipping a cup of organic tea, whistling past a graveyard in the dead of night.

Jon Rappoport

The author of two explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED and EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29^th District of California. 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 www.nomorefakenews.com

Criticize the moneymen who want GMO labeling: you get silence

by Jon Rappoport

November 13, 2013

www.nomorefakenews.com

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 29^th 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.

Why GMO labeling really failed in Washington State: stop whining

by Jon Rappoport

November 12, 2013

www.nomorefakenews.com

Here’s a question for you. During the campaign for Prop 37 in California, and the campaign for Prop 522 in the state of Washington, the ballot measures to label GMO food, did you see political ads like this:

“Hello. My name is… I’m a researcher with a long track record. I study what’s in your food. I know that Monsanto, the company that puts genes in your food and sells a toxic herbicide called Roundup, which is also in your food, wants Prop 522 to fail. They don’t want you to know what’s in your food. I’m willing to debate Monsanto anytime, anywhere. Their GMOs and their Roundup are toxic, unhealthy. Vote Yes on 522, so you don’t have to eat Monsanto.”

No, you didn’t see an ad like that.

So why did Prop 522 go down to defeat?

What’s that? Oh, it was those big bad food corporations that donated $22 million to shoot it down. That’s why. I mean, who could have seen that coming? What a shock. Who could have predicted it? Whine, whine, complain, complain.

What did Yes on 522 leaders think was going to happen? Did they think the bad guys were going to reach into their wallets and pull out a few thousand bucks and leave it at that?

And on Democracy Now, David Bronner, who donated the most $$ to Yes on 522, intimated the big-money effort to defeat 522 “was the Republicans.” Wow. That’s the answer?

Obama is the number-one political supporter of GMO food in America. I’ve run it down in previous articles. Appointments of Monsanto people to key posts in government. Opening the door to a parade of GMO crops during his term as President.

I’ve quoted the communication director of Yes on 522, Elizabeth Larter (twitter), saying the WA labeling campaign was only about people having the right to know what’s in their food, not about good GMOs or bad GMOs. How weak. How very, very weak. How false.

Following on the heels of Prop 37’s defeat in California, which was “a right to know” wimpoid effort, I was told it would be different in Washington State. Yes on 522 would really go after Monsanto full-bore. The gloves would come off.

Didn’t happen. Wasn’t ever in the cards.

“Oh, but you see, the right to know what’s in your food is just part of a much bigger strategy. For voters (who are stupid and don’t have a clue they’re eating poison), you go soft: you tell them ‘you have a right to know.’ It’s all about waking up the sleeping masses (a little bit). Educating them (a tiny bit).

“Meanwhile, on the activist front, it’s attack attack Monsanto 24/7.”

And this double-barreled brilliance will bring us into port. In the end, we’ll win and Monsanto will go down to crushing defeat.

Really?

Spend all the money you have on the labeling initiatives (with two losses now in the books), and then, on a shoestring, get those millions of angry Americans out in the streets against Monsanto and DuPont and Syngenta. I see. Right.

What’s happening is this: huge numbers of Americans are being lulled to sleep by the labeling initiatives. “Yeah, it’s great, people can vote for labeling and that’ll solve the problem. It’s wonderful. The system works. I’ll vote when it comes my time. Meanwhile, zzzzz, I think I’ll take a nap.”

Let me run down the underlying factors here. Start with this: when things have been going against you for too long, when the bad guys (Monsanto) have overrun the field and taken it for their own, when they hold political and economic power, when they’re the insiders, do you say, “Well, we can’t fight them directly and win, we can’t go for the throat and publicize their crimes, we have to soft-pedal it, we have to tread lightly, we have to coexist with them, it’s too late to try to rip away all their victories and territory, we have to go through a different door”?

Is that what you say? Is that what you do?

Analogy: “Look, the government has taken away so many of our freedoms, we can’t just demand all that freedom back, no, we have to start small and easy, we have to ask for the right to label ourselves free and win back the right to cross the street—because it’s too late.”

No. When it’s too late, you go all the way. Now. You show everyone the crimes of the oppressor, for starters. Up front. Immediately.

“You’re eating poison and we can prove it.” Lead with that. Don’t be shy. Don’t tap dance.

Reveal the threat.

Why do you think millions of young people took to the streets to protest the Vietnam War? Because they saw the threat to themselves. They knew they could get drafted. They knew they could get sent to the jungle to get their asses shot off.

Reveal the threat. Right up front. Right away. Lead with that. “You’re eating poison.” Don’t hide behind “right to know what’s in your food.”

“Oh but you see, our polls show voters want a softer message. Polls show and our experts tell us we have to go easy.”

Have you been hiding under a rock? Have you missed seeing thousands of political campaign ads? The negative ads that actually work?

“Oh but you see, we did tell people during the 522 campaign that GMOs aren’t healthy. We did do that.”

Yeah, a few of you did that, way down the line after you broadcast the main theme, which was “right to know what’s in your food.”

“Oh but you see, Americans are in such a deep hypnotic state these days, we have to go soft.”

Really? When people are down in the subterranean caverns of Nod, you’re going to tap them lightly on the shoulder and tell them they have a right to know something? Where did you get that PR gem from?

“Oh but you see, those of us in the trenches working so hard to get these ballot initiatives passed, so we can have labeling…don’t be hard on us. We’re trying. Don’t be nasty…”

I know you’re working yourselves to the bone. I’m talking about your leaders, the ones who are setting the agenda and bankrolling the whole thing. They’re the ones. They’re making all the mistakes. They’re leading with the wrong message. They’re willing to coexist with Monsanto. They’re directing you to say over and over again, “You have a right to know what’s in your food.” Instead of: “Monsanto is poisoning people.”

David Bronner, in that Democracy Now interview, also said the big bioetch-ag companies are afraid of the “right to know what’s in your food” message. Really? It’s been a loser for anti-GMO forces twice now, in CA and WA.

“Oh but you see, we came close in CA, we only lost by a little, and in WA the vote count is showing we’re creeping up closer there, too. And one of these days, we’re going to win one, we’ll win a ballot initiative, and then other states will follow suit and the dominoes will fall in our favor.”

A loss is a loss. And what makes you think you’ll provoke a domino effect before Monsanto achieves a fait accompli and just about all farmland in the US is blanketed with GMO crops and drifting Monsanto genes?

A real campaign against Monsanto is about relentlessly showing people the threat to their health. Putting that front and center. Every day. Overwhelming the mainstream media. Attacking Monsanto head-on.

Polls in New Hampshire show that 90% of voters want GMO labeling. So last week, a legislative committee voted against a GMO labeling bill, and it recommended the full legislature kill it. Does that tell you something?

The fix is in. It’s in on so many levels.

The self-appointed leaders in the Yes on Prop 37 and 522 labeling initiatives have been playing the wrong tune. They’ve been using a feather to knock over a giant.

To all those who have been working for them, who have been laboring for months, for years, to get GMO labeling, and to those who may work for them up the road, I say—demand to meet with them; refuse to work for them unless you get that meeting where everybody has to lay his cards on the table. Demand to know why “you have a right to know what’s in your food” is the leading message and the only out-front message. Make them explain themselves and don’t settle for easy answers. Make them explain why they won’t go after Monsanto with real power in these campaigns, why they won’t nail Monsanto to the wall.

“Oh but you see, we couldn’t do that. You want us to actually meet with the health-food CEOs who are bankrolling the ballot initiatives and question them, question their strategy, raise serious doubts, air it all out, before we work for them? I’ve never heard of anything like that. That wouldn’t be…nice.”

Exactly, and as we all know, Nice is what this whole thing is about, isn’t it? Nice is God. Nice is, well, so nice.

Is it working?

Or do you need political ads like this: “Monsanto. Remember Agent Orange, the poison sprayed all over Vietnam that caused widespread cancer? Monsanto made it. They’re the same people who say you don’t need to know they injected genes in your food. You don’t need to know that Roundup, their toxic herbicide, is in the food you eat every day. You don’t need to know. Do you buy that?…”

“Oh, but your see, we can’t run ads like that. We could get sued by Monsanto.”

Really? Your 1^st Amendment right is trumped by Monsanto, a corporation? If so, let them bring a suit. Run an ad that says, “Monsanto is now suing us for false statements. Bring it on! We’re happy to go into court and prove that GMO food and Roundup have dangerous health effects on you, the people who eat their food. When’s the court date? We’ll be there with our experts. Vote Yes on 522!”

What’s that? Television stations wouldn’t let you run attack ads against Monsanto? Then sue the stations for abridgment of your 1st Amendment rights. And run hundreds of ads on the Web, on sites that residents of WA look at: “Guess what? We’re Yes on 522 and television stations in WA won’t run our ads. They’re scared of Monsanto. They’re shutting down our right to free speech. What are they hiding? These stations don’t want you to know there’s something bad and unhealthy in your food. They don’t want you to have the right to know what’s in your food…”

That’s where “right to know” comes in. That’s how you use it. That’s how you attack. That’s how you go balls to the wall.

Unless your leaders don’t have what it takes for that fight. Talking about David Bronner (Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps), Gary Hirshberg (Stonyfield Organic), Grant Lundberg (Lundberg Family Farms), Joe Mercola (mercola.com), Joe Sandler (attorney, adviser to moveon.org and former counsel for the Democratic National Committee).

Jon Rappoport

The author of two explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED and EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29^th District of California. 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 www.nomorefakenews.com

How to play into Monsanto’s hands: label GMOs

by Jon Rappoport

October 15, 2013

www.nomorefakenews.com

People are easy to manipulate. When presented with a problem and the apparent solution, they will choose the solution because it’s in front of their faces.

Worse yet, if the solution has a little momentum, if it is backed by a bit of cash, if “the good people” favor it, it will seem like the only choice.

“This is what we have. We have to support it. We can’t turn back.”

Spoken like a true believer, and a true loser.

People look for the easy way out. They look for an answer that involves the least amount of unpleasant conflict.

“See? Just vote for GMO labeling. If we win, that’s it. No muss, no fuss. Cast your ballot. Brilliant.”

Or how about this: “Look. Monsanto is pouring millions into defeating GMO labeling. That shows how scared they are. We’re on the right track.”

Wrong.

Of course Monsanto would like to defeat labeling, but at a deeper level they’re sucking the opposition into the game they, Monsanto, want. Monsanto can deal with GMO labeling. They can spend millions more convincing the consumer that GMO food is good food, if labeling comes to pass.

For Monsanto, labeling is the lesser of evils. The real dangers for them are 1) a ban on growing GMO crops, and 2) a million people on the streets and on college campuses revolting against the worst corporation in the world.

For Monsanto, labeling is a limited hangout. It’s, “Well, maybe labeling is a good thing if all you people want it. Sure, why not? We’ll support you, if you insist. But we still maintain there is nothing wrong with genetically modified food.”

Labeling is, in fact, very good for Monsanto if it keeps people distracted from the dangers I just mentioned. It’s a cover. It’s a dead-end, because while states try to pass labeling initiatives, the gene drift is sending Monsanto GMOs into plants from California to Maine. Fait accompli. The land of the nation is blanketed with GMOs.

Labeling is a misdirection. It sucks up people, time, money, and energy into the “officially certified” response to Monsanto.

It takes the weakness of the anti-GMO movement and uses it. That weakness is superficiality, the desire for the easy answer, the nice answer, the answer that requires no outrage, the consumerist answer:

“People have a right to know what’s in their food.”

When has there ever been a true revolution based on the consumer?

The thought of it is absurd.

When the labeling initiative in California, Prop 37, went down to defeat, I predicted that the next state campaign up for grabs, in Washington, would follow the same disastrous game plan:

“Tell people they have a right to know what’s in their food, and tell them nothing else.”

No, no, I was assured—Washington will be different. Voters will be shown all the horrors of GMOs. They’ll know why they need labeling.

That was just a pipe dream.

Washington is a replica of California.

I firmly believe the labeling movement has been infiltrated at the highest levels. The businessmen who are funding the initiatives have given in to their own weakness and shortsighted view of what moves people, and they have been steered by advisors and PR experts, who are the infiltrators:

“You need a one-idea slogan. Just one idea. Keep it simple. Keep it nice. You’re speaking to consumers. Just tell them they have a right to know what kind of food they’re buying. That’s your only chance of winning.”

The businessmen understand that kind of talk. They run companies. They devise ways of expanding their customer base.

When it comes to what works politically, they’re morons.

And they have no stomach for a real battle.

But they gain allies, because it appears (falsely) that these ballot initiatives are the only game in town.

Monsanto wants it that way.

Monsanto wants a landscape in which voting for ballot measures seems to be the only choice anti-GMO people can make.

Monsanto wants a landscape in which it appears these labeling initiatives rose up spontaneously out of the earth by popular acclaim.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

A small group of men with money made that decision in concert. They knew their money would talk. And it did.

These men are content to coexist with Monsanto. They have already surrendered.

On January 27, 2011, Ronnie Cummins, the head of the Organic Consumer’s Association, quoted a Whole Foods email:

“The policy set for GE [GMO] alfalfa will most likely guide policies for other GE crops as well. True coexistence is a must.” – Whole Foods Market, Jan. 21, 2011

Cummins then wrote:

“In the wake of a 12-year battle to keep Monsanto’s Genetically Engineered (GE) crops from contaminating the nation’s 25,000 organic farms and ranches, America’s organic consumers and producers are facing betrayal. A self-appointed cabal of the Organic Elite, spearheaded by Whole Foods Market, Organic Valley, and Stonyfield Farms, has decided it’s time to surrender to Monsanto. Top executives from these companies have publicly admitted that they no longer oppose the mass commercialization of GE crops, such as Monsanto’s controversial Roundup Ready alfalfa, and are prepared to sit down and cut a deal for ‘coexistence’ with Monsanto and USDA biotech cheerleader Tom Vilsack.”

Who are the major funders of the labeling ballot measures? The CEOs of Stonyfield, Lundberg, Whole Foods, and Dr. Bronner’s.

Joe Mercola, too. I would like to hear him talk about his original decision to fund these ballot initiatives, what his thinking was, and how deeply he explored the concept of political action—what works and what doesn’t—back there at the beginning, when the die was cast on how Americans would oppose Monsanto.

In case anybody cares to think about it, we are not, first and foremost, consumers.

What moves people to great action is not shopping.

How are real political movements born?

Did the men who gathered to write and sign the Declaration of Independence say, “You have a right to know?”

YOU HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW?

That’s the slogan of these ballot measures.

“We’re not saying GMOs are good or bad. That’s not up to us. We’re gutless. But wouldn’t you agree you have a right to know whether you’re eating them?”

Speaking dumb because you believe people are dumb is a failed operation.

It can work during, say, a Presidential election, when the electorate is already hypnotized into believing they must choose between two criminal poseurs.

But in launching and sustaining a long-term political and social goal, it’s a loser from the get-go.

It doesn’t galvanize people. It doesn’t inspire people.

It might stir the folks who shop at Whole Foods, but I can tell you America isn’t going to change its mind about Monsanto based on “moms” who walk into those stores with yoga mats rolled up under their arms, trying to stave off emotional and spiritual collapse because their bodies are starting to blimp out.

“Yes, Mr. Franklin. I’ll sign the Declaration. My waistline is developing a ripple.”

Jon Rappoport

The author of two explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED and EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29^th District of California. 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 www.nomorefakenews.com