“Don Huber, professor emeritus of plant pathology at Purdue University, believes that glyphosate may be even more toxic than DDT. “Future historians may look back on our time and write about us … how willing we were to sacrifice our children and jeopardize future generations based on false promises and flawed science just to benefit the bottom line of commercial enterprise.”
One of the largest & most egregious scandals, crimes, & threats to human welfare of our times – pesticides, herbicides & specifically glyphosate/”Round-Up Ready”, the most ubiquitous of them all. An ongoing biohazard of the most enormous proportions, sustained & expanded by government institutions & protective infrastructure ostensibly serving the purpose of public safety that has been adopted, tergiversated & reprogrammed to solicit the offender, nurtured by its billion-dollar turnover. In the US, the, surprise! surprise!, – leading offender in dangerous & health-regressive chemical & food adulteration & degradation (chemicals, steroids, food standards, genetic tampering, antibiotics, animal welfare conditions, public contamination, hygiene thresholds, barely tangible regulatory framework, penalties for proven violations, ingredient disclosure etcetera), lobbying is no longer really necessary as the takeover is complete & the entity that was once regulated has now stormed the castle in entirety & totally commandeered the quarters that once monitored & contained it. In the US, the industry now effectively ‘self regulates’, i.e. no regulation at all.
Carey Gillam performs an excellent & urgent update into this quite emergency in this penetrating & sweepingly informative book. the capture, corruption & malpractice of this perilous & poisonous industry requires intense secrecy, reliant on the extensive, deep-rooted & far-reaching deployment of omission, redaction, invisibility, truancy & evasion. Having as little scrutiny, questioning & exposure beside heavily doctored & thoroughly glossed industry generated advertising & PR disinformation remains a bedrock of the industries strategies for continuity & expansion. This entails powerful affiliates such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (a goliath of GMO zealotry, largely unannounced & incognito) sponsoring publications such as the Guardian newspaper, thus granting back-channel muting & expulsion leverage over unwanted reportage on related topics, contention & fallout. As a result, getting decent (if any) coverage on pesticide, agro-chemicals & GM contamination or abuse, & the multiple crimes of associated multinationals from any of the mainstream outlets becomes practically impossible & non-existent beside the odd article that seem to be printed with less & less frequency &/or prominence. This of course is all very deliberate & a wider indication of the immense corruption & stifling of reporting that is occurring, even in publications that flaunt a commitment to informative investigation & accountability (the Guardian’s chronic compromise aside, the Independent has also long been a pro GM paper, so all impartiality is forgone in favor of industry snuggles & tacit connivance). Its in this extremely debilitated & incapacitated environment that Whitewash & the like become ever more essential to understanding what is happening & what has already transpired (without doubt one of the greatest crimes of the 20th century that has gone all but entirely unpunished with the culprits well & truly entrenched into the power mechanism & calling the shots). Along with Marie Monique Robin’s still incendiary The World According to Monsanto documentary, Gillam gives us a more up to date account & concentrates far less on GM & more on glyphosate & the colossal corruption, suppression & destruction of the regulating bodies & apparatus that allegedly superintend them.
“They have a long history of egregious behavior.” Harrignton said about Monsanto. “They operate with no regard for the potential harm that may result from their actions – profit is their sole objective. Monsanto is the quintessential example of a corporation that exists exclusively to maximize materialistic self-interest, regardless of the consequences to society.”- John Harrington
Terrible, terrible, god-awful stuff. Beyond the exponential damage, poisoning & affliction meted, the attitudes, tactics & psychology of the companies (Monsanto, now owned by Germany’s Bayer, especially) is beyond belief. The routine falsification of data & trials, persecution of scientists, farmers & journalists (some of which gets into more mafia like territory), bribing of institutions & individuals, lawsuits & legal intimidation. They also constantly exploit the “trade secret” canard & refuse to disclose or cooperate with investigations or freedom of information request citing “commercially sensitive information” (despite the fact you are eating, breathing & residing in this shit without consent). Unfavorable conclusions or test results are simply dismissed as “junk science” with no repercussions. There are a lot of sick, dying & dead Americans in this book, the surviving ones speaking bitterly about their personal pollution & possible lost loved ones at the spraying-end of these insane & abhorrent chemical monsters. The withering torrent of reproductive disorders, birth defects, neurodegenerative disorders, developmental problems, hormonal system impairment, neuropathy, endocrine disruption, nervous & immune system impairment, DNA and chromosomal damage, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, cognitive development problems, hypothyroidism, & sea of chronic disease & litany of cancers is a continual atrocity. & every single one of them is in ascension. Speaking of birth deformities, the recent spate of them in France & the exposure of the local authorities cover-up has prompted renewed scrutiny of the pesticide bane. It is this ongoing event (tied in with the wave of successful prosecutions against Monsanto/Bayer in the US for causing cancer) that is allowing this smothered & hushed epidemic to get a bit more media coverage in publications that would normally be quiet on this ‘controlled & contained’ criminality.
“The United States allows among the highest levels of glyphosate residues, which critics say underscores the level of influence Monsanto has with regulators. They point to 2013, when Monsanto asked for, and received EPA approval to allow even higher tolerance levels than were already allowed on many foods. Thousands of public comments opposing the move were filed with the agency, but the EPA backed Monsanto’s position and responded to critics insisting that glyphosate safety was proven, exposures through food and water were low, and worries about ties to disease such as cancer were unfounded. ‘EPA has concluded that glyphosate does not pose a cancer risk to humans. Therefore, a dietary assessment for the purpose of assessing cancer risk is unnecessary.’”
It is, truly indicative on just how fucked-up a world we inhabit that something as insanely, unacceptably abominable as this can actually be going on & with such strength & authority. permeation, bio-accumulation, human/soil/plant retention, hereditary contamination & exposure during gestation & infancy – we are only starting to understand, how bad, it is going to get (all of which will only increase under the continued mass dissemination of this toxic substance). Carey Gillam, just like her heavyweight peerStephanie Soechtig demonstrated in The Devil We Know, details the exposed inside records of Monsanto fully acknowledging the internal test results empirical indications of highly hazardous certification decades ago. It never stopped them. & ridiculously, unbelievably, with this information essentially being in the public realm, these indescribably evil shits are actually allowed to continue? We need a war. Not overseas. Not against each other, but against these unspeakable entities that just mass murder, kill-off, contaminate, poison, sicken & blight our lives & the planet in general with their mad, Inhuman, anti-life bio-terrorism.
Should you be in the UK, you will also be strenuously advised to be vigilante & pay close attention to this incredibly dangerous vulnerability, particularly in the startlingly exposed scenario of a ‘no deal’ Brexit under the monumental criminal insanity, ineffable societal vandalism, incomparable corruption, limitless corporate extremism & fanatic free-market flog-off of Tory misrule & mega treason. Johnson & his subhuman coconspirators will drench the isle in glyphosate subsidized by the public purse.
“U.S. taxpayers have been footing the bill for overseas lobbying of the products developed by Monsanto and other seed and agro-chemical makers. There are hundreds of diplomatic cables between the U.S. state department and embassies in more than one hundred countries that show State Department officials as active promoters of GMO”
Carey Gillam-2017-Island Press-251 pages
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/08/france-doctors-fail-solve-mystery-babies-missing-limbs