So far, the most definitive documentary on the cancerous, democracy-raping agribusiness death-cult Monsanto, a company with a history of the most extraordinary miasma & wrong-doing. Where does one even start? So much ill, extreme back-door skulduggery, legislative stripping, purging & prosecution of scientists, suppression, falsification, pay-outs, hush-ups, gagging orders & non-disclosure agreements, mass poisonings, civil law suits, corporate capture & massively surreptitious, dirty & deleterious dealings of sprawling dimensions.
Before continuing, forget this review! You need this information! – seek out the feature, & watch it for yourself!
This documentary is old (released in 2008), but it’s devastating & astonishingly accurate on the events that gravitated towards it’s completion. Monsanto were notoriously secretive, wanting to be in everything you ate but without your knowledge or consent. Le Monde blows the doors off the frames & charges through the clandestine quarters in remarkable detail, exposing the companies enormously flagrant history & behind the scenes contamination by key-witnesses & victims. It’s been expertly constructed by French investigative journalist Marie-Monique Robin. The data covered, events detailed & astonishing accounts and footage are staggering.
Again, I don’t need to regurgitate in written form the rolling litany of shockingly sordid insidious dirt that this particularly foul super-offender has been pouring-out over the decades… WATCH THE FILM & observe for yourselves first hand. There’s a huge amount of information here, but it’s all beautifully explained & uncovered within the films parameters in a formidably factually-rigorous manner that leaves no room for dispute.
It’s not simply about gene editing in food & plants, or herbicides & chemicals (Monsanto was an industrial chemical company way before it lurched into food and agriculture) – this brilliant & landmark documentary shows exactly how a multi-national performs an absolute corporate coup (this particular coup being one of the most spectacular of the 20th century), penetrating the core of political power (Washington) through infiltration, lobbying, revolving-door ingress & the elimination of regulatory/scientific objectors & safeguards. Once implanted, it begins (as facilitating FDA “biotechnology coordinator” James Maryanski reveals in an incredibly awkward but candid piece of interview footage) to dispel, neuter, abscise and re-write the entire code of conduct, – essentially self-regulating i.e. – NO regulation. Monsanto totally took over the FDA & remodeled or relinquished all rules regarding the consumption of GM food. Marie has done us an extraordinary service & gathered immensely important dissenting voices form regulatory, scientific, legal & activist parties. There accounts are highly damning (if not extremely so). Many are people of eminence who were fully accredited & working directly with the government as advisors with years of professional employment, research & consultation. They were ignored! &, in far more sinister cases, threatened, gagged, fired & blacklisted. Among those interviewed is Arpad Pusztai from the appallingly notorious ‘Pusztai affair’ case. Pusztai was a celebrated protein scientist with 36 years of service at the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland. He was abruptly fired in 1998 after announcing negative results in tests of GM potatoes on rats! It just gets worse, as Marie confirms with her direct coverage here. As James Maryanski astoundingly admits right on camera, these were ‘political decisions’, not ones based on safety, due process or scientific research from leading professionals in the field. Law, leadership & fundamental protections were completely & utterly bypassed (if not killed-off) in favour of free-market expansion on the sly without the publics consultation or consent. Crimes-against-humanity!
Early in the picture, the full extent of murderous corporate psychopathy is indubitably displayed. Marie travels to Anniston in Alabama, where for years, a Monsanto chemical plant disposed, dumped & buried PCB’s & other highly hazardous chemicals amongst the unknowing local community. The short of it is, it caused many’ many deaths, massive cell dysfunction, some of the highest (if not the highest) rates of cancer in the US along with a horrific cocktail of PCB related diseases resulting in major fatalities. Monsanto suppressed, denied & lied, but after leaked ‘confidential’ documents & tests proved their guilt (“we cant afford to lose one dollar of business”) & the entire community brought a civil lawsuit against the company in 2001, they were forced to concede & pay reparations/blood money of $700 million. Out-and-out murderous.
This documentary shows you, just how nasty these shits are. How serious a problem corporate capture is & how vulnerable political institutions & bodies tasked with the publics protection are to hyper predatory corporate takeover (in the U$, it’s already over!), how bad GM food is for consumption & how the scientific community were ruthlessly attacked & largely silenced by the company/industry for their refusal to lie & redact on the industries behalf. It’s absolutely off the scales & the hard footage from key players who tried to protect the public during this period is absolute gold & hard evidence of the gigantic crimes & conspiracy committed. It also demonstrates so graphically how monumental controversies/crimes are buried & silenced – then built-on! One can only shiver as to what these malefic freaks have been doing for the last 10 years in a safety stripped market? The American people were $old like trafficked slaves.
Monsanto was recently purchased by Bayer, a German mega conglomerate of chemicals & pharmaceuticals. That’s really’ really bad news, & the question is – did Bayer buy Monsanto or did Monsanto buy into Bayer? For years, Monsanto, along with the likes of Syngenta & DuPont have been trying to force their GM poison into Europe et-al, despite massive resistance & outright rejection. Increasingly tyrannical & devious methods are being attempted, most ridiculously with TTIP & CETA (the Trans Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership & the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement). Now that a European multinational, with all it’s internal lobbying (aka ‘commercial corruption’) power technically is Monsanto, how will this folly accept the repeated rape attempts of the GM despots?
Watch closely (better still, lynch) chronic corruptocrat Liam Fox, the doubly disgraced (largest over-claim in the 2009 MP’s expenses scandal, resignation in 2011 over ‘inappropriate access’ to his government department), yet unfathomably still active (thanks to cohort Theresa May), Tory trade secretary, who, unbelievably is a member of the peerless ultra extremist right-wing corruption syndicate the American Legislative Exchange Council (despite being a British MP). His goal, using a hard Brexit scenario, is to shunt the UK into an abuse deal with the U$, shredding all regulation & allowing GM food (& everything else Amerikkka’s uniquely lax/piss-poor market/legal conditions allow) to find entry. – a conflict of interests? ‘take back control’? What constitutes treason? What constitutes conspiracy?
We all owe a debt to Marie-Monique Robin.
Arte Video/France Video 2010