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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] The Monstrous Monsanto Universe
  • Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2008 12:32:10 -0600


http://www.lemonde.fr/opinions/article/2008/03/12/l-univers-monstrueux-de-monsanto-par-dominique-dhombres_1022016_3232.html

The Monstrous Monsanto Universe
By Dominique Dhombres
Le Monde

Wednesday 12 March 2008

The charge sheet is horrifying, inexorable and convincing. The
multinational firm Monsanto, which sells 90 percent of genetically modified
organisms (GMO), massively lies to many people and even the whole planet with
great success - the power that money and the - apparently unlimited - support
of the United States government bestows. You already know all that if you
watched Marie-Monique Robin's extraordinary documentary, "Le Monde selon
Monsanto" ["The World According to Monsanto"], March 11 on the Arte channel.

The case is conducted as a personal investigation, and the director has
herself filmed as she plays her computer keys to research, most often through
Google, the information accessible to everyone, as long as one is willing to
try to separate the wheat from the chaff in the mass of available documents.
And there's an abundance of chaff, given how the company has proliferated
effective advertising (intended for farmers in every country and in every
language) and dubious scientific studies over the years. "On its Internet
site, Monsanto presents itself as an agricultural company the mission of
which is to help small farmers produce healthier food, while reducing
agriculture's impact on the environment," the director explains. Neither
assertion is true. Some of these foodstuffs are dangerous and their effect on
nature is catastrophic in the long term. Founded in 1901 in Saint Louis
(Missouri), the firm is a dangerous recidivist. It began as an industrial
company manufacturing chemical products.

It has, notably, concocted impressive quantities of dioxin, the
hyper-concentrated poison contained in the Agent Orange American airplanes
dispersed over forests to destroy vegetation during the Vietnam War. Its
consequences are still being felt today, with the births of deformed children
and after-effects on a goodly number of American war veterans exposed to this
frightening product. Is that nightmare in the process of resuming under a new
form right under our eyes? There's this hormone injected into milk cows to
increase their yield that invariably transforms them into Frankenstein
animals.

We are now very familiar with - because José Bové has so often
"prematurely" reaped it - the surprising corn that yields a bigger ear than
the others. At the moment, no one knows whether it also has death-dealing
properties. But we are certain that it is in the process of eliminating,
little by little, all other corn species, even from the plant's original
birthplace, Mexico.

Obviously, we should have liked to have Monsanto's response to these
accusations. The firm declined that offer. That's too bad.




  • [Livingontheland] The Monstrous Monsanto Universe, Tradingpost, 03/14/2008

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