Billions Against Bayer?

[image: Organic Consumers Organization]

What happens when you marry a drug company with a pesticide company?

We’re about to find out.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) this week approved the $66-billion acquisition of Monsanto by Germany-based Bayer—so much for making America great again.

The big shots at Monsanto and Bayer spewed the usual nonsense about how all they care about is helping farmers and feeding the world. But Mark Connelly, an agriculture analyst at the brokerage and investment group CLSA Americas, told Business Insider:

“Let’s just cut to the chase: These companies want to make more money, they want to raise prices. No company in this industry needs these deals in order to innovate.”

What does the mega-merger mean for consumers? Fortune, which is not exactly anti-big deals, wrote:

. . . consumers could see prices go up not only on agricultural products, but also on the umpteen products that hide corn and soybean inputs such as gas. The Bayer-Monsanto deal is big enough on its own to create cause for concern. It’s even more worrying in the wake of the ChemChina-Syngenta takeover and Dow Chemical’s merger with DuPont.

If things get bad enough for conventional commodity crop growers, with Trump’s trade wars and now this merger, will we see more farmers transition to organic regenerative agriculture?

Read OCA’s press release

Read ‘The $66 billion Bayer-Monsanto merger just got a major green light — but farmers are terrified’

The post Billions Against Bayer? appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.

Billions Against Bayer?

[image: Organic Consumers Organization]

What happens when you marry a drug company with a pesticide company?

We’re about to find out.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) this week approved the $66-billion acquisition of Monsanto by Germany-based Bayer—so much for making America great again.

The big shots at Monsanto and Bayer spewed the usual nonsense about how all they care about is helping farmers and feeding the world. But Mark Connelly, an agriculture analyst at the brokerage and investment group CLSA Americas, told Business Insider:

“Let’s just cut to the chase: These companies want to make more money, they want to raise prices. No company in this industry needs these deals in order to innovate.”

What does the mega-merger mean for consumers? Fortune, which is not exactly anti-big deals, wrote:

. . . consumers could see prices go up not only on agricultural products, but also on the umpteen products that hide corn and soybean inputs such as gas. The Bayer-Monsanto deal is big enough on its own to create cause for concern. It’s even more worrying in the wake of the ChemChina-Syngenta takeover and Dow Chemical’s merger with DuPont.

If things get bad enough for conventional commodity crop growers, with Trump’s trade wars and now this merger, will we see more farmers transition to organic regenerative agriculture?

Read OCA’s press release

Read ‘The $66 billion Bayer-Monsanto merger just got a major green light — but farmers are terrified’

The post Billions Against Bayer? appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.

GMO Awareness

The battle to take back our food and farming system from Monsanto was never going to be easy—or quickly won.

That said, consumer awareness—and consumer demand—is chipping away at Monsanto’s GMO empire.

In this interview with Dr. Joe Mercola, for Mercola.com’s “GMO Awareness Week,” OCA’s Ronnie Cummins outlines some of the ways we are winning, and how OCA plans to keep up the pressure on Big Biotech, including:

• Providing funding to the U.S. Right to Know organization (USRTK) which, while independent from OCA, has done a masterful job of creating media coverage about the dangers of Roundup residues and pesticides in general.


• Educating consumers about the fact that GMOs are really just delivery systems for pesticides (i.e., their primary cause for being is to increase pesticide sales), and that the only way to avoid dangerous pesticide residues and GMOs is to buy organic food, both when shopping for your daily groceries and when eating out.


• Ramping up independent lab testing of nonorganic products claiming to be “all-natural,” “natural,” “eco-friendly,” “free-range,” “grass fed,” and so on. “There’s a huge fraud going on in the marketplace,” Cummins explains.

With glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller, now being detected in the urine of 70-80 percent of Americans and 90 percent of water samples, anyone concerned about their long-term health can’t afford to ignore the potential impact of using poisons to grow our food.

Watch the interview with Ronnie Cummins

The post GMO Awareness appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.

Study: Monsanto’s Roundup Damages Gut Microbiome

We’re only beginning to learn the importance of healthy gut bacteria to our overall health—and the relationship between healthy soil and the human microbiome.

Now a new study shows that Monsanto’s Roundup® weedkiller, which we already know damages healthy soil microbial activity, also damages the gut microbiome of rats.

The study, published by Prof Gilles-Eric Séralini at the University of Caen, France, raises new alarms about glyphosate, the most widely used herbicide in the world despite mountains of research pointing to the weedkiller’s damaging impacts on human and environmental health.

According to an article published this month by Mercola.com, 70 to 80 percent of your immune function resides within your gastrointestinal tract, or “gut.” Poor gut health is associated with autism, behavioral disorders, diabetes, gene expression and obesity.

If, as this recent article in the Atlantic claims, “The microbial community in the ground is as important as the one in our guts,” then the new Séralini study doesn’t bode well for us humans—especially if we keep dousing the world’s soils with glyphosate, and consuming glyphosate-contaminated foods.

Read ‘Roundup Causes Major Changes in Gut Microbiome of Rats’

Read the full study

The post Study: Monsanto’s Roundup Damages Gut Microbiome appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.

Study: Monsanto’s Roundup Damages Gut Microbiome

We’re only beginning to learn the importance of healthy gut bacteria to our overall health—and the relationship between healthy soil and the human microbiome.

Now a new study shows that Monsanto’s Roundup® weedkiller, which we already know damages healthy soil microbial activity, also damages the gut microbiome of rats.

The study, published by Prof Gilles-Eric Séralini at the University of Caen, France, raises new alarms about glyphosate, the most widely used herbicide in the world despite mountains of research pointing to the weedkiller’s damaging impacts on human and environmental health.

According to an article published this month by Mercola.com, 70 to 80 percent of your immune function resides within your gastrointestinal tract, or “gut.” Poor gut health is associated with autism, behavioral disorders, diabetes, gene expression and obesity.

If, as this recent article in the Atlantic claims, “The microbial community in the ground is as important as the one in our guts,” then the new Séralini study doesn’t bode well for us humans—especially if we keep dousing the world’s soils with glyphosate, and consuming glyphosate-contaminated foods.

Read ‘Roundup Causes Major Changes in Gut Microbiome of Rats’

Read the full study

The post Study: Monsanto’s Roundup Damages Gut Microbiome appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.

Safety of Monsanto/Dow’s Newly Approved Frankenfood (RNAi Corn) Called Into Question

Another study confirms what activists and scientists alike have been warning: the next generation of RNA interference GM foods may seriously compromise the genetic integrity of our species. 

A new study titled, “Detection of dietetically absorbed maize-derived microRNAs in pigs,” adds fuel to the fire of the growing controversy surrounding the EPA’s recent and conspiculously underreported approval of Monsanto/Dow’s RNA interference (RNAi) corn — a new type of genetically modified organism comprised of a multitude of genetically engineered traits (and therefore potential health risks) destined to make it to people’s dinner tables by the end of this decade.

The Biotech/Chemical industry’s new RNAi corn was quietly rubber stamped by the EPA on June 15th of this year under the premature, and likely patently false assumption that the RNA interference molecules in the maize can not directly affect the gene expression of those animals or humans who eat it.

The ongoing controversy relates to a fundamental difference of opinion on the age old aphorism: ’you are what you eat.’ The GMO side answers NO, rejecting the idea. To them, food isn’t imbued with any unique, biologically meaningful properties beyond the fact that it is a source of energy (calories) and bodily building-blocks (biochemicals such as carbs, fats and proteins, and a few key minerals and vitamins). Therefore, they contend that GMO food is substantially equivalent to conventional food, and therefore carries with it no additional safety concerns. Ironically, their marketing and lobbying efforts say otherwise: they claim their newly created genetically modified organisms are so exceptionally unique that they warrant receiving the patents they need to maintain market exclusivity. Essentially they want to have their Roundup-ready cake and eat it too.

The other side — what should be called the the pro-Real Science, and pro-Safety side — not only says YES to the concept that we are what we eat, but also understands intimately that food is a source of biologically/genetically indispensable information (like the software to our bodies’ hardware), and that our co-evolutionary fates are, and always have been bound in intextricable co-dependency. Therefore when we tinker with its genetic/epigenetic properties we are tinkering with the genetic/epigenetic core of our species.

And so, this highly charged controversy has found itself playing out — at times looking like a full scale battle — within scientific journals. The key issue hinges on whether or not small interfering molecules known as microRNAs found in traditionally consumed foods such as corn are capable of inhibiting and/or altering gene expression in the animals and humans who consume them. Preliminary human research published in Nature from 2012 by Zhang et al revealed that, indeed, food RNAs can survive digestion intact and affect the expression of physiologically important gene targets within the human body. Since then, a barrage of opposing research has emerged. One side, finding that RNA interference molecules like miRNA are prime emissaries of the cross-kingdom relationship between plants and animals, and the other — mostly funded by the very corporations who benefit from the conclusion — that these are biologically inactive nucleic acids, with neither benefit or risk.

Monsanto’s own research from 2009 shows that there are potentially hundreds of overlaps between these RNA interference molecules as found in common food and feed staples such as corn and soybean and mammalian genes. The implication is that these foods can significantly affect the expression of dozens of gene pathways essential for the the health of animals. Whereas Monsanto researchers concluded, counterintuitively, that since these (non-GMO) foods have formed the basis for the human diet for hundreds if not thousands of  years, presumably with no observed deleterious side effects, that the GMO form of them must be safe as well — not unlike their debunked argument for “substantial equivalency” between conventional  foods and their older generation transgenic GMOs, which have received FDA/EPA approval due to the same, highly suspect logic.

View the entire study pdf here.

Regardless, the key question is still whether RNA interference molecules can and do survive mammalian digestion and affect gene expression. The latest study adds to an increasingly robust body of science that has concluded the answer is a likely YES. Here is the full study abstract:

“MicroRNAs are a class of small RNAs that are important in post-transcriptional gene regulation in animals and plants. These single-stranded molecules are widely distributed in organisms and influence fundamental biological processes. Interestingly, recent studies have reported that diet-derived plant miRNAs could regulate mammalian gene expression, and these studies have broadened our view of cross-kingdom communication. In the present study, we evaluated miRNA levels in cooked maize-containing chow diets, and found that plant miRNAs were resistant to the harsh cooking conditions to a certain extent. After feeding fresh maize to pigs (7 days), maize-derived RNAs could be detected in porcine tissues and serum, and the authenticity of these plant miRNAs were confirmed by using oxidization reactions. Furthermore, in vivo and in vitro experiments demonstrated that dietary maize miRNAs could cross the gastrointestinal tract and enter the porcine bloodstream. In the porcine cells, we found that plant miRNAs were very likely to specifically target their endogenous porcine mRNAs and influence gene expression in a fashion similar to that of mammalian miRNAs. Our results indicate that maize-derived miRNAs can cross the gastrointestinal tract and present in pigs, and these exogenous miRNAs have the potential to regulate mammalian gene expression.” 

More specifically, the researchers identified 18 distinct maize miRNAs in intensely cooked maize containing diets (e.g. high temperature and pressure, and apparent starch dextrinization and protein denaturation), albeit at concentration levels that were 1/30 that found in fresh maize. Next they assessed the survival of these so-called exogenous miRNAs in pigs by measuring the relative expression levels of 18 maize miRNAs in the blood and solid tissues of three adult female pigs who were given fresh maize feed and water ad libitum for 7 days, by polymerase chain reaction technology.  The researchers found 16 of the 18 maize miRNAs in detectable quantities in the blood and solid tissue of the animals. Interestingly, the researchers also discovered that all 5 tested maize miRNAs in porcine serum packaged in porcine exosomes, which they hypothesized enabled them to escape being broken down by enzymes within cellular compartments called nucleases (which break down nucleic acids like RNAs), enabling them to go from the gut to the bloodstream for systemic tissue distribution. As we have reported previously, exosomes are potentially universal epigenetic messengers within biological systems, used to transfer genetic/epigenetic information between individuals (inter-individual), and between species (inter-species), and ultimately across the entire biosphere of the planet, in what amounts to real time information transfer (versus the glacial pace of single nucleotide changes associated with classical protein-coding genetics).

Finally, in order to confirm the possibility that maize miRNAs are able to regulate target porcine messenger RNAs (mRNAs), and therefore inhibit/alter gene expression, the researchers performed in silico analysis of the porcine target genes for the microRNA zma-miR164a-5p, which they stated, “exhibited a relatively high level in porcine blood and tissues.” Their results suggested that “dietetically absorbed maize miRNAs are very likely to specifically target endogenous porcine miRNAs and influence gene expression in a fashion similar to mammalian miRNAs.” [bold emphasis added]

The research presented here has certain limitations. For instance, while a match and interference relationship between maize miRNA and porcine mRNA can be made, the degree to which the interference is significant depends largely on copy number. And so, the number of copies of zma-miR164a-5p, or any other biologically significant plant miRNA, will depend on a wide range of factors, namely, the concentration of that miRNA in the food being eaten, the quantity of that food, the microbiome and digestive condition of the host, etc.

That said, the identification of a cross-kingdom effect where ingested plant miRNA can survive digestion, accumulate in physiologically significant quantities in the host body, and interact with mammalian gene or messenger RNA targets is a vastly important finding by itself. Especially, when one considers that Monsanto/Dow’s new genetically altered RNAi corn may contain hundreds of novel new type of RNA which may target hundreds of different mammalian genetic elements. Until this is known (if it is even possible to be known in its vast complexity), the precautionary principle requires that these ‘foods’ not be released into the food chain because the unintended, adverse effects may far outweigh the purported benefits to the exposed populations.

To learn more about this topic, read my report here:

The GMO Agenda Takes a Menacing Leap Forward with EPA’s Silent Approval of Monsanto/Dow’s RNAi Corn

© January 10, 2017 GreenMedInfo LLC. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of GreenMedInfo LLC. Want to learn more from GreenMedInfo? Sign up for the newsletter here http://www.greenmedinfo.com/greenmed/newsletter.

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How Monsanto Captured the EPA (and Twisted Science) to Keep Glyphosate on the Market

[image: inthesetimes.com | JEAN-LUC BONIFAY]

By VALERIE BROWN & ELIZABETH GROSSMAN, In These Times | 

Since 1973, Monsanto has cited dubious science, like tests on the uteri of male mice, and the EPA has let much of it slide.

In April 2014, a small grassroots group called Moms Across America announced that it had tested 10 breast milk samples for glyphosate, and found the chemical in three of them. Glyphosate is the world’s most widely used herbicide and the primary ingredient of Roundup. Although the levels of glyphosate found by Moms Across America were below the safety limits the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has set for drinking water and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has set for food, the results caused a stir on social media.

The Moms Across America testing was not part of any formal scientific study, but Monsanto—the owner of the Roundup trademark and the premier glyphosate manufacturer—jumped to defend its most profitable pesticide based on a new study that found no glyphosate in breast milk. But this research, purported to be “independent,” was actually backed by the corporation itself.

“Anybody who finds out about this is not going to trust a chemical company over a mom, even if [that mom] is a stranger,” says Moms Across America founder Zen Honeycutt. “A mother’s only special interest is the well-being of her family and her community.” Honeycutt says she has been sharply criticized for the breast milk project because it was not a formal scientific study. But she says her intention was “to find out whether or not glyphosate was getting in our breast milk, and if it was, to have further scientific studies conducted and therefore to provoke a movement so that policies would be changed.”

Everyone is exposed to glyphosate: Residues of the herbicide are found in both fresh and processed foods, and in drinking water nationwide. More and more research suggests that glyphosate exposure can lead to numerous health issues, ranging from non-Hodgkin lymphoma and kidney damage to disruption of gut bacteria and improper hormone functioning.

The Moms Across America episode fits a pattern that has emerged since 1974, when the EPA first registered glyphosate for use: When questions have been raised about the chemical’s safety, Monsanto has ensured that the answers serve its financial interests, rather than scientific accuracy and transparency. Our two-year investigation found incontrovertible evidence that Monsanto has exerted deep influence over EPA decisions since glyphosate first came on the market—via Roundup—more than 40 years ago.

We have closely examined the publicly available archive of EPA documents from the earliest days of the agency’s consideration of glyphosate. Significant portions of the relevant documents have either been partially redacted or omitted entirely. But this archived material reveals that EPA staff scientists, who found much of the data submitted by Monsanto unacceptable, did place great weight upon a 1983 mouse study that showed glyphosate was carcinogenic.

READ FULL ARTICLE

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New bill would allow farmers to sue Monsanto if GMO crops invade their property

Farmer’s in Oregon could finally get a win in their fight against companies like Monsanto. House Bill 2739 is under consideration and, if passed, it would allow farmers and landowners to sue biotech patent holders like Monsanto for essentially trespassing on their property.

The House Bill 2739 summary states that it “Allows cause of action against patent holder for genetically engineered organism present on land without permission of owner or lawful occupant.” Defenders of the bill believe it is a step in the right direction to remedy problems caused by GMOs. Sandra Bishop of the Our Family Farms Coalition, which supports HB 2739, spoke to the East Oregonian website saying, “This is not a wild legal grab. We will not be compensated for our angst. We will only be compensated for provable legal damages.”

Contamination from GMOs can cause farmers to have dramatic economic losses. They run the risk of being rejected by export markets that have banned genetically modified organisms. GMO chemicals can also lead to highly resistant weeds and insects that are nearly impossible for farmers to eradicate, and are too time-consuming for them to manage. Farmers who own organic crops could be subjected to losing their organic certification if their produce becomes contaminated, which would diminish the premium earned on their product. As more markets are looking to carry non-GMO produce, farmers have the opportunity to meet that need and typically get paid a higher price for their product. But the difficulty in preventing contamination is a constant threat that they face. (RELATED: Get more news like this at GMO.news.)

For years Monsanto has bullied farmers when their GMO seeds ended up on the farmers’ land. While contamination can occur many different ways, by no fault of their own, farmers have been sued when unauthorized GMO crops show up in their fields. The companies that own the seed patents typically win these cases, leaving farmers with few options. This bill, if passed, would give power back to landowners who want to continue to have GMO-free farms.

Plaintiffs who decide to sue these companies could receive up to three times the amount of damages caused by the GMOs that harmed their land under the guidelines of HB 2739. Proponents of the bill find this solution to be fair because it now forces Monsanto, and companies like them, to take responsibility since they are the ones who profit from GMO patents. If they believe it will affect their bottom line, they may be more inclined to regulate the contamination. Supporters also note that finding the culprits will be fairly simple by using the genetic tests established when patents are approved.

There are some opponents to the bill of course, including farmers that depend on GMO seeds. They argue that pollination among similar crops go far beyond GMOs. Critics have also tried guilt-tripping supporters, making claims that the passing of this bill could result in seed companies refusing to introduce new innovative products in Oregon. According to the East Oregonian, Scott Dahlman, policy director of the Oregonians for Food and Shelter agribusiness group, stated that if companies face the threat of additional lawsuits, “they will reconsider whether they sell things here.”

This is not the only bill being brought forth in Oregon this year regarding GMO seed patent holders. House Bill 2469, if passed, would allow local governments to restrict their usage altogether.

Via Natural News

---

Featured Image: Quinn Dombrowski/Flickr

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Glyphosate: Persistently Toxic

For decades, Monsanto has claimed that the glyphosate in its Roundup herbicide breaks down so quickly that we shouldn’t worry about the chemical’s impact on soils. Independent scientists (i.e., scientists not funded by the chemical industry) have disagreed.

Now, a new study by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre and two Dutch laboratories confirms:

Contrary to manufacturers’ claims, glyphosate persists in soils, not only affecting soil fertility and crop quality, but also posing risks to human and environmental health.

According to the study, 45 percent of Europe’s topsoil contains glyphosate residues. The study was conducted in six crop systems in 11 EU member states on soils in different geographical and climatic conditions.

According to 2015 figures, 440 million acres of farmland are planted in GMO crops, worldwide.

Given that the quality and health of soil is directly related to the quality of our own health, isn’t it time to get glyphosate out of our soils?

Full study here

Learn more

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Dying to Eat

For all Monsanto’s bluster about “feeding the world,” the truth is this: Globally, 3.9 billion people are either hungry or malnuourished, according to ETC Group.

Now, a new global study (billed as the most comprehensive of its kind) says poor diet, which often leads to obesity, kills one in five people.

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which coordinated the study, said:

One of the most alarming risks in the GBD is excess body weight. The rate of illness related to people being too heavy is rising quickly, and the disease burden can be found in all sociodemographic levels. High body mass index (BMI) is the fourth largest contributor to the loss of healthy life, after high blood pressure, smoking, and high blood sugar.

Who’s to blame for the foods that are killing us? Big Food, mostly.

The New York Times recently reported on the rise of obesity in Ghana, which not coincidentally corresponded to the rising presence in U.S. companies like Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC):

But KFC’s expansion here comes as obesity and related health have been surging. Public health officials see fried chicken, French fries and pizza as spurring and intensifying a global obesity epidemic that has hit hard in Ghana – one of 73 countries where obesity has at least doubled since 1980. Obesity rates have surged more than 650% since 1980 from less than 2% of population to 13.6 percent.

According to the Times, KFC, owned by Louisville, Ky.-owned YUM!, has about 850 outlets throughout sub-Saharan Africa: to Angola, Tanzania, Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Ghana and beyond.

Read ‘Poor Diet Kills One in Five of Us

Read ‘The Global Burden of Disease’

h/t: Organic Consumers Association

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Betrayal! The Pervasive & Defining Crime Of Our Age

Let me apologize in advance for what may be an upsetting piece of writing for some of you. If you"re in a state of shock or exhaustion from recent events, perhaps you should skip this one.

I don"t offer this analysis in order to further distress anyone -- but until you understand what is happening and how that influences your psychological state, you"ll remain the emotional equivalent of a rag doll shaken to-and-fro by events.

Such understanding may not bring you to a place of calm acceptance. But it will set you free.

Betrayal

The recent acts of violence in the US, especially the horrific mass shooting in Las Vegas, are not arising out of a vacuum. Nor are the Brexit vote, the election of Trump, or the recent Catalonian vote for secession, random unconnected acts.

These -- and future similarly disruptive events sure to come -- are all arising out of the fact that we all have been betrayed.

For the purposes of this article, let"s define betrayal as:

the sense of being harmed by the intentional actions of a trusted person or institution. The emotional impacts of betrayal may include shock, a sense of loss, grief, damaged self-esteem, humiliation, self-doubt, shame, and anger.

We"re betrayed every time our trust is violated, in small ways or large. An example of a small betrayal might be hiding a frivolous purchase from your partner when you"ve both agreed to stick to a shared budget. A larger betrayal would be infidelity.

But betrayals aren"t limited to relationships between individuals. They can be perpetrated across groups, even nations. Like the enormous betrayal of trust committed when the US sent its military into Iraq on the basis of falsified ‘intelligence".

No matter the perpetrator, size and scope of a betrayal, the parties involved are only able to heal the damage done if there"s an open and honest dialog where the betrayer admits to their violations and atones openly and honestly. As discussed in much more detail in our excellent podcast with an experienced cognitive therapist, the betrayer must fully atone for their actions, face all consequences, and openly answer every question posed to them by the aggrieved.

If none of that happens, then then the animosity festers and is never ‘gotten over.’ Time does not heal that wound. It only offers a swampy breeding ground for a swarm of resentments.

In other words, if you find yourself increasingly distressed or angry (as I am) about the rampant violations of public trust in today"s world, it’s because you"re paying attention. It means you"re not crazy; you"re normal.

Betrayal Of The Public Trust

In the US, politicians deservedly enjoy a very low approval rating. Their words so rarely match their actions that it’s a too rare delight to find someone of character and conscience in DC.

Instead, we regularly see dirt bags like this:

This congressman is why people hate politics

Oct 4, 2017

Washington (CNN)

Pennsylvania Rep. Tim Murphy has had one hell of a last month.

In early September, the Republican House member admitted to an extramarital affair with a "personal friend"following the unsealing of divorce records that showed he had been involved in a relationship with Shannon Edwards, a forensic psychologist.

It got much, much worse on Tuesday when the Post-Gazette reported on a text message exchange between Edwards and Murphy in which she alleges he urged her to have an abortion.

Murphy"s personal foibles are not the point here. What is the point is that he is someone who has been an outspoken critic of abortion rights in his public life even while apparently being much more willing to consider it when it impacts him personally.

Murphy was a co-sponsor of legislation --passed in the House on Tuesday night-- that would make it illegal for women to abort a baby after the 20-week mark.

He has a perfect 100% score with National Right to Life, having voted with the organization on five key pieces of legislation, including the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortions Act." As my former Washington Post colleague Aaron Blake expertly documents, Murphy was also touting his anti-abortion stance even as he was reportedly urging his mistress to seek an abortion.

(Source)

A sordid tale indeed. The essence of which is a powerful politician saying one thing but doing another. He loudly espoused strong family values and a staunch right-to-life voting record -- all while conducting an extra-marital affair and pressuring his mistress to get an abortion.

For the constituents who believed in this man, his deeds offer a profound betrayal. 

Tim Murphy represents the credo that the politicians in The Swamp live by: Do as we say, not as we do.

There are so many examples of prominent politicians and religious leaders saying one thing but doing nearly the exact opposite that one hardly knows how to begin listing them all. 

Heck, even "America"s Dad", Bill Cosby, has turned out to be a serial rapist.

All these betrayals have led to a rule I now live by: The more someone proclaims a strong moral position, the more I suspect them of secretly doing the opposite.

It’s time to refuse to put up with this any longer.

Institutionally Betrayed

But the scope of our victimization goes far beyond that conducted by individuals. The very institutions, both public and private, that we rely on are often fleecing us more than serving us.

The betrayals of the Catholic Church in covering up thousands of sexual assaults and tens of thousands of child victims are absolutely devastating.

Pharmaceutical companies quietly fund opposition to medical marijuana ballot initiatives because the data shows that the use of safe and effective marijuana seriously cuts into the extremely profitable sales of highly addictive and deadly opiates.

Car insurance companies rob their most loyal customers by slowly ratcheting up premiums in a scheme called “price optimization” in the industry. (This happened to me because I had not taken the time to shop around recently. I was horrified when I did. I wasn’t as badly screwed as some customers who paying up to 800% more than they should, but it still hurt.)

Of course hospitals with their captive hostage billing rackets are among the worst of the worst. So are private for-profit prisons, indecipherable 48-page phone bills, and Monsanto ghost writing “research” to obscure the probable cancer causing nature of Round Up while certain EPA staffers looked the other way.

In short, it’s difficult to have any sort of optimism about any large US corporations at this point. All of them are busy betraying us in ways large and small, every day, ranging from being evasive about the degree to which they snoop into our private affairs, to the ways in which they limit our access to the free flow of information by altering the results of popular online search algorithms.

In such an environment of pervasive betrayal, it’s difficult to maintain any sense of trust.

It turns out the best strategy is to trust nobody. Especially not a corporation with a large enough staff to segment their actions into enough ‘silos of deniability’, where no one person feels directly culpable for placing profits over people. “Hey Bill, as an exercise, why don’t you run an analysis that shows how many customers we might lose if we steadily increase their insurance rates, and then I’ll run it by legal and accounting…”

It’s time to refuse to put up with this any longer.

Sovereign Betrayal

The behavior of nations is no better on this front.

For example, in response to the highly-democratic Catalan referendum for independence, the EU bureaucracy has been busy betraying any commitments it had to protecting and advancing democracy. The EU Commission First Vice President said this:

STRASBOURG —The Spanish government’s “proportionate use of force” in Catalonia was necessary to uphold the rule of law, the European Commission declared on Wednesday.

As the European Parliament opened a debate on the Catalonia crisis, Commission First Vice President Frans Timmermans sided unequivocally with the Madrid government.

“None of us want to see violence in our societies,” Timmermans went on. “However it is a duty for any government to uphold the law, and this sometimes does require the proportionate use of force.”

(Source)

"Proportionate use of force?"

Wow. That"s an amazing perversion of language. Most of you have seen the pictures of peaceful people being ruthlessly clubbed by Spanish police -- simply because they exercised their right to vote. Here"s a graphic video of a woman"s fingers being methodically and cruelly broken as she lay on her back barely resisting (only watch it if you have a strong stomach).

Police broke my fingers one by one and touched my breasts

A woman dragged out of a polling station in Barcelona by police broke down in tears today as she claimed they had broken her fingers "one by one" and sexually assaulted her while they laughed.

Marta Torrecillas was filmed being violently removed from a school in the city"s upmarket Eixample area as Catalonia voted for independence yesterday.

The clip, captured at Paul Claris School, showed her being manhandled as she tried to walk past officers in full body armour on a day when footage of police brutality sparked outrage around the world.

Her dress was forced up around her thighs - leaving her exposed and humiliated - as she was dragged down towards the exit.She later claimed officers had touched her breasts and broken her fingers "deliberately, one by one".

(Source)

Her crime? Thinking she had the right to peacefully cast a vote. For that she was brutally assaulted, as were hundreds of other people. To which the EU VP merely said “it is a duty of any government to uphold the law.” 

Remember, it was the EU that voted to sanction and then bomb Libya because of concerns that Qaddafi was persecuting civilians (despite virtually no evidence this was the case) .

When your own government protects other people (as a pretext for violent regime change) but persecutes you, it is nothing short of a massive betrayal. Remember, anger, resentment, and humiliation are extremely difficult to ‘get over.’

It’s time to refuse to put up with this any longer.

Betrayal By The Elites

Here in October 2017, the stock and bond markets are in melt-up mode. This is a gigantic theft -- a deliberate transfer of wealth to those who already hold financial assets. The 1% is getting richer and richer while everybody without an already-significant pile of financial assets to their name languishes.

The central banks know exactly what they are doing and why. Stoking a massive boom in financial assets is benefiting their member banks, the ruling classes, the industry titans who fete them at swanky events like Davos, and the rich members of Congress.

Of course, this unfair wealth transfer is a massive betrayal of everybody who needs to save their hard-earned income for the future.

The central banks have vastly reduced the purchasing power of newly-earned money, making assets twice (or more) as expensive as they were just five years ago.  Anyone looking to buy a home, invest in a stock, or purchase a car, clearly can see this.

That’s inflation in every sense of the word. Inflation destroys wealth; it doesn"t grow it.

Here are a few simple questions to frame things.

• Would you rather receive 2% on a ten-year bond or 6%?


• Would you rather get 1 share of a given stock or 2 for the same amount of money?


• Would you rather get a dividend yield of 1.5% or 3%?

Obviously, you’d rather get more than less in every case. You’d take two instead of one for the same money whenever you could.

But the Federal Reserve has decided, using deeply flawed reasoning and no historical perspective, that simply jamming up the value of financial assets for those who already hold them is the best course of action.

Are you one of those who needs to save up for retirement? Tough luck. The Fed has decided you"re the loser in this story. You"ve been betrayed.

It’s time to refuse to put up with this any longer.

Generational Betrayal

One of the very worst forms of betrayal is that levied against an entire generation.

Today, we"re saddling young people with poor job prospects, high student debts, impossibly expensive housing stock, and a crumbling national infrastructure. All while asking them to shoulder the costs of the older generations underfunded entitlement and pension programs.

The statement to young people is clear: “We don’t care about you. We only care about us.”

It"s reprehensible. But that’s what massive betrayals are.

To just focus on housing in the US (and let’s be clear, housing is just as bad a situation in London, Stockholm, and a hundred other cities across the globe), the Federal Reserve has made higher home prices a specific policy goal. Its truly idiotic theory was that higher home prices make people feel richer, and that such people will borrow against the equity in their homes to spend more.

The reason this is idiotic is that a house that costs twice as much isn’t twice as valuable. As the market price goes up, the square footage and amenities remain exactly the same. The only real difference is that your property taxes and insurance costs have climbed, too. So in actuality,  it"s an even larger money drain than before.

Because assets generate cash flow and liabilities consume cash flow, it’s best to think of your primary residence as a liability and not an asset. But few people do that during a housing bubble like the one we"re in now. Just remember that all gains are speculative -- they only matter if you"re able to sell the house and invest the profits elsewhere. Otherwise, your "gains" can easily evaporate with the next market downturn.

The charts below show the astronomical prices homebuyer are faced with today. Here"s the national price index, which has propelled above it"s previous bubble high (remember: the bubble the triggered the Great Financial Crisis?):

(Source)

The view from a regional level often looks even more grim. Here"s what homebuyers in Dallas are experiencing:

Ouch!

Sorry next generation, the boomers driving the Federal Reserve"s policy have decided that you are expendable pawns. To protect their advantage, the older generation has decided to eat its young.

In other words, you’ve been betrayed.

It’s time to refuse to put up with this any longer.

*  *  *

In Part 2: Fighting Back -- A Call To Action, we detail the agency that we as individuals have in this story, to throw off the shackles of our victimhood and secure a prosperous future as protected as possible from the clutches of the betrayers. The betrayals will only come more fast and furious from here. This is expected. Dying systems with failing narratives are always messy and become increasingly desperate in their actions. Start taking steps to seize your future freedom now. Click here to read the report (free executive summary, enrollment required for full access)

Over 3 Million Acres Damaged by ‘Chemical Arson’ as Plants Wither and Die From Chemical Burns (VIDEO)

 

The lawsuits against chemical technology giant Monsanto are multiplying fast these days. Not only is there a class-action lawsuit¹claiming the company’s best-selling herbicide Roundup caused Non-Hodgkin lymphoma in hundreds of plaintiffs^2,3 — the outcome of which might influence Bayer’s decision to acquire Monsanto or back out of the deal — farmers are also ganging together to sue Monsanto over crop damage caused by its latest dicamba-containing herbicide.

As feared by many critics, any crop that is not genetically engineered (GE) to be resistant to dicamba is severely damaged by even small amounts of the herbicide — be it food crops, gardens or trees; even other GE crops resistant to herbicides other than dicamba will shrivel and die in its presence. Monsanto promised the XtendiMax with VaporGrip formula is engineered to be less volatile and prone to drift, but real-life effects suggest otherwise.

Dicamba Is an Indiscriminate Plant Killer

In July, the Minnesota Department of Agriculture reported investigating two dozen complaints involving dicamba damage caused by drift.⁴ As of late September, 368 complaints had been filed in Illinois,⁵ and Iowa had received 258 reports — a “record number” — by early September.⁶

Farmers in Arkansas are reporting the same problem. In October 2016, a soybean farmer named Mike Wallace was shot to death in a dispute over dicamba damage caused by drift from a neighboring farm growing dicamba-resistant soy. The damage is so extensive, a number of states, including Arkansas, Missouri and Mississippi, imposed temporary bans on the use of dicamba-containing pesticides this past summer.⁷ As reported by Star Tribune:⁸

“Losses blamed on accidental chemical damage could climb into the tens of millions of dollars, if not higher, and may have a ripple effect on other products that rely on soybeans, including chicken. The number of complaints ‘far exceeds anything we’ve ever seen,’ Arkansas Plant Board Director Terry Walker recently told lawmakers.”

More Than 3 Million Acres Damaged by Next-Gen Herbicide

According to The New York Times, 25 million acres of dicamba-resistant soybeans and cotton were planted this year, and Monsanto has its sights set on expanding that to 40 million acres in 2018. Hailed as “the answer” to growing glyphosate resistance⁹ (thanks to its excessive use on Roundup Ready, i.e., glyphosate-resistant crops), dicamba-resistant plants have quickly turned into a nightmare for those who plant them, and their neighbors:¹⁰

“’I’m a fan of Monsanto. I’ve bought a lot of their products,’ said Brad Williams, a Missouri farmer. ‘I can’t wrap my mind around the fact that there would be some kind of evil nefarious plot to put a defective product out there intentionally.’

Yet he has been dismayed both by damage to his soybean crops, which were within a wide area of farmland harmed by dicamba, and by the impact even to trees on his property. Leaves, he said, were ‘so deformed you couldn’t even really identify the differences between them.’”

So far, more than 3 million acres have been damaged by dicamba.¹¹ Speaking with Ohio Valley Resource,¹² Kentucky soybean farmer Jacob Goodman compares dicamba drift to “chemical arson” — a reference to the fact that affected plants will curl and shrivel from the chemical burns. He also notes that drift from neighboring farms growing dicamba-resistant crops is making it exceptionally difficult for non-dicamba farms to plan their production.

“Not only can we not tell the amount of crop that we can get at the end of the year, but we can’t price the market ahead in advance and make contracts because we don’t want to over-book and not be able to deliver this fall, because we have to pay the difference.”

Arkansas farmer Kenneth Qualls told The New York Times, “’It’s really divided the farming community … Some of these people who got victimized by this product are probably going to go out of business because of it. They’ll have to put up their equipment for auction, and the people bidding on it will be the ones who put them out of business.”

Dicamba Makers May Face Largest Chemical Liability Lawsuit Ever

On September 10, 2017, Morgan & Morgan filed a class-action lawsuit¹³ against Monsanto, BASF and DuPont, the three largest manufacturers of dicamba-based herbicide formulations in the U.S.

The complaint alleges dicamba “is highly volatile and can travel considerable distances and cause injuries to plants several miles away,” and that dicamba makers “deceptively marketed their latest dicamba formulations as ‘low-volatility’ herbicides that would not be as prone to off-target movement.” In a statement, Morgan & Morgan attorney Rene Rocha said:

“This has been a major issue for American agriculture. Farmers across the country relied upon the defendants’ assurances that these new formulations of dicamba could be used safely and without harm to others. That simply isn’t true, and as a result thousands of farmers are staring down lean harvests and uncertain futures.”

The fact that dicamba is extremely potent and volatile (referring to its ability to turn into a gas) does not come as a surprise. The chemical has not been permitted to be used during growing season for this very reason. Older dicamba herbicides were only allowed to be used to kill weeds prior to planting — it could not be used on growing crops because it will kill everything.

Chemical Maker Forbid Independent Volatility Testing

Monsanto’s weed killer, XtendiMax with VaporGrip Technology^14,15 — which goes along with its Roundup Ready Xtend cotton and soybeans — is made with “chemical technology” said to make the dicamba less prone to vaporization and drift. However, the real-world effects clearly indicate there are serious flaws.

What’s more, Monsanto appears to have willfully prevented key testing of the herbicide. Normally, when a new pesticide is developed, the company will commission tests that are then shared with regulators. Samples of the chemical are also shared with universities for analysis and testing. Together, regulators and researchers then assess the product’s safety and effectiveness.

In this case, Monsanto actually forbid university researchers to test XtendiMax with VaporGrip for its vaporization and drift potential (volatility testing),^16,17 despite that being a crucial feature of the new herbicide. Monsanto has defended its decision to prevent testing calling it “unnecessary” because the company believes it to be “less volatile than a previous dicamba formula that researchers found could be used safely.”¹⁸

However, summary notes from an Arkansas legislature’s joint budget committee meeting suggest there might have been a different incentive to prevent testing. Notes from the meeting state that Monsanto employee Boyd Carey “is on record on August 8 stating that the University of Arkansas nor any other university was given the opportunity to test VaporGrip in fear that the results may jeopardize the federal label.”

Dicamba Formulation Is Nearly Impossible to Apply Safely

According to Monsanto’s chief technology officer Robert Fraley, XtendiMax with VaporGrip “will not move off target and damage anyone” as long as it’s applied according to label instructions. Mind you, those instructions are nine pages long, and include strict limitations on when and how you can apply it. For example, proper application requires the farmer to spray while wind speeds are between 3 and 10 miles per hour.

The reason for the bottom wind speed is that when air is very still, it can signal a temperature inversion,¹⁹ which acts much like a lid. Pollutants are easily trapped below the inversion, where they can build up. But since wind speeds vary from one hour to the next on any given day, proper application becomes nearly impossible. Some university scientists have also noted that even if you manage to comply with these stringent application rules, the volatility of dicamba may still be an issue.

According to Aaron Hager, associate professor of crop sciences at the University of Illinois,²⁰ soy is so sensitive to dicamba, all you need to destroy 1 acre of soybeans is an amount equal to the spray when you open a can of Coke! In light of that, it’s hard to see how farmers growing dicamba-resistant crops could possibly avoid damaging other farms, not to mention other plant life and nearby trees.

Indeed, according to extension weed specialist Larry Steckel, many farmers complain they “can’t keep dicamba in the field” no matter how hard they try to follow the application rules.²¹ He also notes that temperature inversions “occur most days in Tennessee during June and July,” which makes it next to impossible to avoid off-target damage.

According to Ohio Valley Resource, there also appears to be a correlation between dicamba damage and areas located by rivers and in floodplains. Ohio farmer Jacob Goodman suspects “It’s something about the chemistry and the temperature inversions that happen in river bottoms that is causing this chemical to freely roam.”

Dicamba Maker Blames Farmer Ineptitude

Not surprisingly, Monsanto blames damage resulting from XtendiMax on farmer misapplication. Monsanto’s vice president for global strategy told The New York Times,²² “New technologies take some time to learn. Thus far, what we’ve seen in the field, the vast majority, more than three-quarters of them, has been due to not following the label.”

The question is, can the instructions actually be followed in real life? According to Bob Hartzler, an agronomy professor and weed specialist at Iowa State University, “The restriction on these labels is unlike anything that’s ever been seen before.”²³ The class-action lawsuit filed by Morgan & Morgan claims the label instructions are “unrealistic,” and that the restrictions on wind speed disallow timely application of the weed killer.

As noted by a Missouri farmer, “You have to be a meteorologist to get it exactly right.”²⁴ While some farmers admit to having difficulty following the label instructions, due to their complexity,²⁵ other farmers rebuke Monsanto’s attempts to shift blame. As Arkansas farmer Qualls said, “We may be rural hicks, but we’re not stupid. We know how to apply chemicals. They are going to blame it on the farmer to reduce their liability.”

What’s more, because dicamba-resistant GE crops allow the chemical to be applied much later in the growing season, when temperatures and humidity levels are higher, it’s far more susceptible to volatility, meaning it turns into a gas. As a gas, it can no longer be controlled and spreads wherever the wind blows.

While Monsanto claims XtendiMax is 90 percent less volatile than old versions,²⁶ without rigorous volatility testing, one has to question the accuracy of such claims. As noted by The New York Times, “While Monsanto and BASF modified the new versions of the herbicide they are selling, they have not entirely solved the problem. So much dicamba is being used that even a small percentage of drift can cause widespread damage.”

Bizarre Conflict of Interest Claims Emerge

A task force is now recommending the Arkansas State Plant Board ban use of all dicamba formulations on crops after April 15 in the 2018 growing season. Monsanto challenged the ban in September, claiming the decision was “tainted by the involvement” of University of Arkansas weed scientists Ford Baldwin and Jason Norsworthy.

According to Monsanto, the scientists’ ties to Bayer and its competing weed technology makes them less than objective in their critique of dicamba.²⁷ The irony of the accusation has not gone unnoticed. As noted by The New York Times,²⁸ “Considering that Bayer is acquiring Monsanto, it was an awkward step,” adding that “Bayer called the men ‘pre-eminent weed scientists.’” It remains to be seen if Monsanto’s accusations will backfire, rendering their position even more tenuous.

September 9, Mark Cochran, vice president of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, issued a statement defending the university’s scientists.²⁹ According to Cochran, Monsanto’s petition to the Arkansas Plant Board is “an attack on the whole profession, scientists whose careful work is meant to be of benefit to everyone.” As a result of the allegations, Cochran vowed “to publish all data relevant to our dicamba work over the last few years.”

Farmers Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place

The problem many farmers now face is whether to hop on the bandwagon and start growing dicamba-resistant crops just to avoid having their harvest destroyed by other growers — thus rewarding Monsanto for its ill-conceived product and poor conduct. According to previous estimates, the approval of dicamba-resistant cotton and soy is expected to increase dicamba sales from less than 1 million pounds to more than 25 million pounds annually.³⁰

If growers start switching to dicamba-resistant seed just to protect themselves from drift damage, that number might go even higher. As noted by Missouri farmer Michael Kemp,³¹ “If you don’t buy Xtend [seeds], you’re going to be hurt. You’re going to have to buy their product because their chemical is drifting around.”

This, truly, would be a worst-case scenario, possibly endangering our environment as a whole. It would also pose extreme financial risks to farmers. If dicamba-resistant soybeans start monopolizing the market, makers will be able to charge whatever price they see fit for the seeds and chemicals.

Naturally, such a monopoly would also pose serious health risks to consumers, whose food choices would become more limited. Dicamba has been linked to a number of health risks, including Non-Hodgkin lymphoma,³² developmental and reproductive problems.

How to Reduce Your Exposure to Toxic Pesticides

There’s no doubt the dicamba problem needs to be addressed, and fast. Farmers will not be able to survive several seasons’ worth of crop destruction. I also worry about its impact on our environment at large. What if it starts to destroy forests and protected lands? There’s also no doubt in my mind that dicamba-resistant GE crops might cause serious health problems when consumed, and since the U.S. does not label GE foods, this really raises the stakes for those who are unaware of these issues.

What we need is more regenerative agriculture, and the most effective way for you to support that is by buying locally grown organic or biodynamic foods. If you live in the U.S., the following organizations can help you locate farm-fresh foods:

American Grassfed Association The goal of the American Grassfed Association is to promote the grass fed industry through government relations, research, concept marketing and public education. Their website also allows you to search for AGA approved producers certified according to strict standards that include being raised on a diet of 100 percent forage; raised on pasture and never confined to a feedlot; never treated with antibiotics or hormones; born and raised on American family farms.

EatWild.com EatWild.com provides lists of farmers known to produce raw dairy products as well as grass fed beef and other farm-fresh produce (although not all are certified organic). Here you can also find information about local farmers markets, as well as local stores and restaurants that sell grass fed products.

Weston A. Price Foundation Weston A. Price has local chapters in most states, and many of them are connected with buying clubs in which you can easily purchase organic foods, including grass fed raw dairy products like milk and butter.

Grassfed Exchange The Grassfed Exchange has a listing of producers selling organic and grass fed meats across the U.S.

Local Harvest This website will help you find farmers markets, family farms and other sources of sustainably grown food in your area where you can buy produce, grass fed meats and many other goodies.

Farmers Markets A national listing of farmers markets.

Eat Well Guide: Wholesome Food from Healthy Animals The Eat Well Guide is a free online directory of sustainably raised meat, poultry, dairy and eggs from farms, stores, restaurants, inns, hotels and online outlets in the United States and Canada.

Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA) CISA is dedicated to sustaining agriculture and promoting the products of small farms.

FoodRoutes The FoodRoutes “Find Good Food” map can help you connect with local farmers to find the freshest, tastiest food possible. On their interactive map, you can find a listing for local farmers, CSAs and markets near you.

The Cornucopia Institute The Cornucopia Institute maintains web-based tools rating all certified organic brands of eggs, dairy products and other commodities, based on their ethical sourcing and authentic farming practices separating CAFO “organic” production from authentic organic practices.

RealMilk.com If you’re still unsure of where to find raw milk, check out Raw-Milk-Facts.com and RealMilk.com. They can tell you what the status is for legality in your state, and provide a listing of raw dairy farms in your area. The Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund33 also provides a state-by-state review of raw milk laws.34 California residents can also find raw milk retailers using the store locator available at www.OrganicPastures.com.