Want to Stop GMOs? Stop Callling Them "GMOs", and Call Them What They Are

by Jor-El

There it is in the headlines: Governor Brown signs AB 2470 - CA Seed Law Bans Local Gov't from Adopting or Enforcing Ordinances to Regulate Seeds or Crops - i.e., NO GMO BAN IN CALIFORNIA

It's true. Monsanto has a new best buddy & bff in the governor's mansion. Meanwhile, county after county in California either ignores or pushes back against citizens who want to institute moratoriums or ordinances banning the planting of genetically damaged crops, in hopes of beating the new Jan. 1 deadline instituted by AB 2470.

Frankly, I'm tired of having the grass roots pure food movement be regarded as a bunch of irrelevant losers - especially when there is a Democratic super-majority warming the seats in Sacramento.

But on the other hand, we have allowed that to happen time after time, without learning from failure after failure. Let's get a clue. We aren't doing this right.

For starters, we use the industry's language in talking about their tampered seeds. We call them GMO, as if in the minds of voters that is a bad thing. Their seeds are Genetically Damaged - they admit this themselves, in explaining the methods they use, which are far from precise. They rip open and damage the chromosome, then implant the gene they want, then leave it there along with the injury. "Engineering" implies a precision placement, an improved function. This isn't engineering, it's just damage. At best, the "M" in GMO stands for "Manipulation".

Do you dumpster dive? No? Then why eat something that is damaged goods? Who wants to eat food whose genetic manipulation is solely to allow it to live under a cascading shower of Roundup and 2-4d? Food that is guaranteed to be saturated with contaminants?

We need to catch on to something: The American public is not a science class, it is a herd of sheep. Information & entertainment involving the current top stars get thousands of times more Twitter tweets and YouTube hits than anything else. Is that bad? Are we better than the people who want to ogle at the stars? It's just what is, and we'd better get on that bandwagon. A lot of ocelots and panthers were spared from hunting after a group of models and Hollywood stars hit the red carpet wearing fakes, and making statements about the poor endangered cats. Where are our spokesmodels? Where is our Susan Sarandon, our Leonardo de Caprio to warn about genetic damage & contamination, the scourge of Roundup?

We have a perfect additional bandwagon effect just waiting for us to use: Europe, the land of health care, solar energy, really good transit and employee benefits, also bans genetically damaged crops. Just another reason why we're behind Europe in doing the right things for the environment, and why we need to come to our senses. Buy European food, and it will be undamaged. We need to have people from Europe also be our spokespeople, about the reasons why life is better without the danger of Roundup-saturated, stomach-damaging food.

Until we stop being assuming the American public is a bunch of climate and genetics scientists, stop buying into the vocabulary of Monsanto, and start doing things that will shake and rattle the public, we will continue to be branded as losers, and we will be getting what we deserve. Unfortunately, millions of ignorant innocents will be unwittingly eating something they don't deserve.

If You're a Bank, the Police State Has Your Back. If Not, Put Your Hands Behind Your Back.

All of this, just to evict a 63-year old disabled woman from her home. What's worse than a police state? What's worse than the corrupt banks? It's their grotesque, hybrid offspring: the police state doing the bidding of a corrupt bank.

Crop Scientists Say Biotechnology Seed Companies Are Thwarting Research

-- New York Times   by Andrew Pollack - Feb. 20, 2009

You might ask, how is an article from 3 years ago still factual and what difference does it make now?

Because ShiftShapers contacted some GMO safety whistleblowers connected with the University of California who had done the research, and still today decline to talk. 

Because these truthtellers have been taken to the woodshed by Monsanto and its surrogate bullies at the UC, and don't want to talk about it any more.

Because the University of California still insists that genetically modified (GMO) crop seeds are the safe, sane salvation of the world's food supply and by the way, UC biotech students' career aspirations. All this, while in the back room where the GMO safety research is being done, the UC threatens with legal action any researcher who attempts to reveal the true negative results of their findings.

Still not convinced? Check out this one, published Oct. 2, 2012. 

Seralini and Science: an Open Letter

This letter appeared in the periodical Independent Science News:

"A new paper by the French group of Gilles-Eric Seralini describes harmful effects on rats fed diets containing genetically modified maize (GMO corn, variety NK603), with and without the herbicide Roundup, as well as Roundup alone...

"The Seralini publication, and resultant media attention, raise the profile of fundamental challenges faced by science in a world increasingly dominated by corporate influence. These challenges are important for all of science but are rarely discussed in scientific venues.

"History of Attacks on Risk-finding Studies. Seralini and colleagues are just the latest in a series of researchers whose findings have triggered orchestrated campaigns of harassment.

"Examples from just the last few years include Ignacio Chapela, a then untenured Assistant Professor at Berkeley, whose paper on GM contamination of maize in Mexico sparked an intensive internet-based campaign to discredit him. This campaign was reportedly masterminded by the Bivings Group, a public relations firm specializing in viral marketing – and frequently hired by Monsanto.

"The distinguished career of biochemist Arpad Pusztai, came to an effective end when he attempted to report his contradictory findings on GM potatoes. Everything from a gag order, forced retirement, seizure of data, and harassment by the British Royal Society were used to forestall his continued research. Even threats of physical violence have been used, most recently against Andres Carrasco, Professor of Molecular Embryology at the University of Buenos Aires, whose research identified health risks from glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup.

"Regulator Culpability. In our view a large part of the ultimate fault for this controversy lies with regulators.

"Regulators, such as EFSA (the European Food Safety Authority) in Europe and the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) and FDA (Food and Drug Administration) in the US, have enshrined protocols with little or no potential to detect adverse consequences of GMOs.

"GMOs are required to undergo few experiments, few endpoints are examined, and tests are solely conducted by the applicant or their agents.  Moreover, current regulatory protocols are simplistic and assumptions-based (RSC, 2001), which by design, will miss most gene expression changes..."
 
The letter is signed by more than 60 scientists, connected with different universities world wide, including Neil J. Carman PhD, representing the Sierra Club. (To read in detail the supporting information and footnotes, please use the link provided above.)

Living in a world of fantasy success and boogey-man fear? Welcome to the world of Inverted Totalitarianism. Chris Hedges explains.

VP Nominee's Dance of Veils Hits Thin Ice As David Sirota Asks "Who Is Paul Ryan?"

 “A society without the means to detect lies and theft soon squanders its liberty and freedom.”― Chris Hedges

War is Peace. Selfishness is a virtue. Only the wealthy know what is good for the rest of us. Democracy is tyranny, if we let the poor take part in it. Charity is an evil weakness. The wealthy deserve everything, including our tax money; the rest of us can live off the crumbs they leave along the road to the next Wall Street crash.

A cynical take on life? A stark political landscape? Welcome to world view of Ayn Rand. It is also the enthusiastically held world view of Paul Ryan, chosen this week as the Republican party's vice-presidential nominee for 2012.

Ryan has gone pubic on video many times promoting the ideas of Rand, 20th century author of Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and The Virtue of Selfishness. Her rather lengthy books pit self-made characters against the forces of Collectivism. The rich do everything for the poor, and the poor have no gratitude. Government poverty programs not only are a problem, they are the enemies of liberty. You get the picture.

Flash forward to 2012, and Ryan the VP candidate now has to bring forth a "regular guy" image and and deny his real plan to take our elders' Social Security and Medicare and throw it down on the Wall Street gambling table. Get ready for lots of veils to be thrown over us.

Several well-researched reports have come out during the past week about Paul Ryan's strange ideology and radical actions in Congress. Enjoy as David Sirota pulls a veil from Paul Ryan's "I'm For the Little Guy" song & dance.

Understand here, that ShiftShapers takes very little interest in the daily, ugly, money-engorged horse race of 2-party campaign politics in the U.S. Candidates on both sides have broken promises. Some get in office and make so many concessions to their opponents that we may as well have voted for their opponents and been done with it.

What concerns us and interests us is the work of pulling apart our denial of the disasters we are creating, and tearing away the veils put over us by people who would have us create even new ones. 

We aren't dealing any more with old-time corruption- being hoodwinked by snakes in the grass, working in cahoots. We've got people picking our pockets while leaving us - and much of the world - sick, broke, hungry, and one suspicious look away from pepper spray or prison.

Posted by: Jor-El

Riot Police Arrest Protesters Outside Disneyland
Something is happening in Anaheim - Why the Media Blackout?


 “The corporations that profit from permanent war need us to be afraid. Fear stops us from objecting to government spending on a bloated military. Fear means we will not ask unpleasant questions of those in power. Fear permits the government to operate in secret. Fear means we are willing to give up our rights and liberties for promises of security. The imposition of fear ensures that the corporations that wrecked the country cannot be challenged. Fear keeps us penned in like livestock.”
― Chris Hedges, The Death of the Liberal Class

The New LAW Enforcement Execution Style

Here's an everyday scene in the 'hood: Police in Anaheim see a young man running away from them, and shoot him in the hip. He goes down. Had this been 20 years ago, an ambulance would have been called and that would have been the end of the story, other than making up some excuses for discharging a weapon on a fleeing suspect. 

Here's what things have come to, in the United States of today: Police shoot the young man, he goes down, then they come up from behind and finish the job by putting a bullet in the back of his head. 

No ambulance is called. For a brief eternity, witnesses in the neighborhood shout pleas to the officers to call an ambulance. More neighbors gather, astonished by the scene. 

Police do make a call, but it is for the riot squad and a SWAT team. The neighbors, including children, are subjected to a barrage of rubber bullets and the attacks of a police dog. 

Later, on the news, the report is all about how the police "stood off an unruly crowd."

Welcome to the new century. Or, as the narrator in this video says, welcome to the New World Order.

Events are still unfolding in Anaheim, but this is by far not the only community to experience execution-style police shootings. 

Try googling on "police shoot unarmed man in head", and you will see dozens of incidents across the country. Only in one of those incidents - the BART shooting of Oscar Grant - is an officer charged with anything more than an improper procedure.

Some questions are waiting to be asked, like why the executions? 

Are all those officers lone gunmen, or are they performing hit-man duty?

Just askin'...

“Violence is a disease, a disease that corrupts all who use it regardless of the cause.”
― Chris Hedges

- Posted by: Jor-El