GM crop escapes into the American wild

Transgenic canola found growing freely in North Dakota.

Natasha Gilbert

A genetically modified (GM) crop has been found thriving in the wild for the first time in the United States. Transgenic canola is growing freely in parts of North Dakota, researchers told the Ecological Society of America conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, today. The scientists behind the discovery say this highlights a lack of proper monitoring and control of GM crops in the United States.

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Monsanto: The world's poster child for corporate manipulation and deceit

By Jeffrey Smith

(NaturalNews) At a biotech industry conference in January 1999, a representative from Arthur Anderson, LLP explained how they had helped Monsanto design their strategic plan. First, his team asked Monsanto executives what their ideal future looked like in 15 to 20 years. The executives described a world with 100 percent of all commercial seeds genetically modified and patented. Anderson consultants then worked backwards from that goal, and developed the strategy and tactics to achieve it. They presented Monsanto with the steps and procedures needed to obtain a place of industry dominance in a world in which natural seeds were virtually extinct.

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Why Is the Obama Administration Parroting Monsanto Talking Points?

AlterNet / By Jill Richardson

Something's very wrong when the chief scientist at the USDA says we'll have to start farming parks, forests and golf courses if we don't switch to biotech.

When key government officials start touting the need for biotechnology there's reason to be concerned. Roger Beachy, the Chief Scientist of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), recently told Smartplanet.com that biotechnology is needed to maximize food production and reduce the use of agrochemicals. "With a greater number of people," he said, "we're going to have to have more crop per acre. If we don't, we'll have to expand [agriculture] to our parks, forests, and golf courses." And at first it might seem strange to hear a top government official parroting talking points from Monsanto's Corporate Responsibility page ... until you read his resume, that is. His last job before joining the USDA was as founding president of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, a non-profit research institute co-founded by Monsanto and the Danforth Foundation.

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Fracking With Food: How the Natural Gas Industry Poisons Cows and Crops

AlterNet / By Byard Duncan

Natural gas drilling operations have mucked up food from Colorado to Pennsylvania. So why is no one paying attention?

On the morning of May 5, 2010, nobody could say for sure how much fluid had leaked from the 650,000-gallon disposal pit near a natural gas drill pad in Shippen Township, Penn. -- not the employees on site; not the farmers who own the property; not the DEP rep who came to investigate.

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How Junk Food Giant PepsiCo Is Buying Up High-Ranking Experts to Look Like a Leader in Health and Nutrition

AlterNet / By Michele Simon

Pepsi's strategy: Create a research environment so scientists and public health experts don't feel out of place at the corporate HQ of sugar, salt and fat.

Last month PepsiCo set off a firestorm among angry bloggers when the company attempted to buy its way onto the popular ScienceBlogs (run by Seed Media Group) with its own offering called Food Frontiers. Apparently, the actual scientists didn't appreciate having their space invaded by PR flaks. One blogger put it succinctly, "I don't care how many PhD scientists they hire, PepsiCo is a corporation, not a research institute, for crissakes!" Within two days, ScienceBlogs apologized and pulled PepsiCo's plug, but not before some disgusted bloggers quit altogether. (Food Frontiers continues to live on PepsiCo's corporate Web site.)

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In Support of Imprisoned Wikileaks Whistleblower Pvt. Bradley Manning

AlterNet / By Ray McGovern

Ray McGovern at Quantico rally in support of Manning -- "We are here to say thank you and to tell Bradley Manning, loud and clear, 'You are not alone. You are not alone.'"

These brief remarks published below were given by Ray McGovern at the rally for Bradley Manning on Sunday, August 8 in Quantico, where he is imprisoned.  The rally was sponsored by Code Pink, Veterans for Peace, and The Courage to Resist. CNN and other media covered the event. After the Marines initially denied permission for the rally, Quantico Mayor Iris Tharp overruled them, and issued a permit.

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The Google-Verizon Deal May Forever Change the Internet As We Know It

Free Press / By Josh Silver

A deal between Verizon and Google to allow some content to download faster for pay, marks the beginning of the end of the Internet as we know it.

Editor's note: Sign AlterNet's Change.org petition urging Google to "not be evil" and stop their plans to undermine Net Neutrality.

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MONSANTO DESIGNED THE FOOD SAFETY BILLS - S 510 is waiting in the Senate

S 510 would turn control over all food in the US to the WTO.  It includes highly deceptive means of stopping anyone in the country from producing food.  One example:

It would allow the government, under Maritime Law, to define the introduction of any food into commerce (even direct sales between individuals) as smuggling into “the United States.”

  Since under that law, the US is a corporate entity and not a location, “entry of food into the US” covers food produced anywhere within the land mass of this country and “entering into” it by virtue of being produced. 

What groups are demanding a stop to the bill?

Rosa Delauro, whose husband works for Monsanto, introduced the first of the big food safety bills, HR 875.  Any part of it can be merged with S 510 at any time.  

The civil penalties section of HR 875 is jaw dropping.  It allows the Administrator - expected to be Michael Taylor, Monsanto VP, already Food Safety Czar at the FDA - to use unlimited "remedies" (nothing is excluded), with no Congressional oversight and without judicial review over the validity and appropriateness of his orders.  The food safety bills cover anyone in the country who "holds" food so Monsanto would in essence be running a corporate court in which they could do anything they wished - even invalid and inappropriate - to any person in America.  Monsanto would have police power over the entire country.

That one small section entails the end of the rule of law in the US. 

John Robbins: The Dark Side of Vitaminwater

Now here's something you wouldn't expect. Coca-Cola is being sued by a non-profit public interest group, on the grounds that the company's vitaminwater products make unwarranted health claims. No surprise there. But how do you think the company is defending itself?

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Shocking Negligence: Gas Companies Drilling in Pennsylvania Have Committed Nearly 1,500 Environmental Violations in Just Two Years

Since 2008, Pennsylvanians whose property sits atop the gas-rich Marcellus Shale formation have suffered through enough environmental problems to clutter an encyclopedia: A is for arsenic, found in soil at concentrations of 2,600 times what's recommended. M is for methane -- enough to blow up a concrete well. X is for the toxin xylene. Et cetera. Sometimes troubles like these occur naturally. But more and more often, they have become the M.O. of an increasingly reckless natural gas industry -- one that's been exempt from nearly a dozen important environmental laws since 2005.

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