The World According to Monsanto - A documentary that Americans won't ever see

[WildspitzE]

Re: The World According to Monsanto - A documentary that Americans won't ever see

Yes, this is an interesting bit of history. I love how just the right actors are to be found right in the middle of the worst events. No sooner are they done there they move on to do more "good". Haliburton comes to mind also.:mad::mad::mad:

In watching the video -- the video talks about how Monsanto employees get influential jobs within the FDA, and then certain things get approved.

Hmm.. sounds familiar, just a different branch of government.

[SamAdams]

Re: The World According to Monsanto - A documentary that Americans won't ever see.

Further questions:

Some day libertarians will wake up and realize what has been done over the past 30 years under cover of libertarian ideology. All political systems need checks and balances with strong GOVERNMENT to provide balance to a strong PRIVATE SECTOR. Otherwise, this is what you get: regulators owned by the private sector – puss in your milk, airplanes with faulty wiring, and asset inflations that ruin our economy.

As a libertarian-minded person, but definitely not a know-it-all, I am confused by your call to we libertarian-types. I am angered by the problems within these markets. And yes, there has been a "cover" of libertarian ideology in many places within US government, but no government regulation body should ever be considered sound under a libertarian ideology. Libertarianism puts competition above all else and government regulators put a monopoly on what is right and wrong. In many cases it is precisely because these regulators exist that these companies can get away with this crap. I encourage you to listen to Dr. Mary Ruwart's recent talk on the evils within the pharmaceutical industry, part 1:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HSYK399QbM

[rogermexico]

Re: The World According to Monsanto - A documentary that Americans won't ever see.

Further questions:

• During the housing bubble, where was the Fed and other regulators while Twenty One Flavors of Mortgage Fraud - Howard Lax were perpetrated and documented, among other places, at Appraiserspetition.com signed by 10,000 petitioners begging for regulation of their industry?
• During the 1990s tech stock bubble, where was the SEC while securities fraud was rampant?
• Where is the SEC today to investigate the Bear Stearns Buy-Out... 100% Fraud?
• Where was the FAA when airplanes were allowed to fly with known safety hazards?
• Where was the FDA while bisphenol A in plastics poisoned our children?

Health problems linked to chemical in plastic products

April 16, 2008

A chemical widely used in plastic products may be linked to health problems, including breast cancer and early puberty, according to a report Tuesday by the federal National Toxicology Program.

People can be exposed to the chemical, bisphenol A, in their diets from food and beverage containers, including baby bottles. It is found in the urine of 93% of children younger than 6, said the agency's report.

The agency said that animal studies provide only limited evidence of bisphenol's risks but that the possible effects on humans "cannot be dismissed."

The Food and Drug Administration in November said there is "no reason at this time to ban or otherwise restrict" use of the chemical. Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., called Tuesday on the FDA to reconsider, saying the new report's findings "fly in the face of the FDA's determination."

As system of government and private enterprise that evolved since the 1930s to provide checks and balances has since the 1980s been dismantled in the name of libertarian "free market ideology." The result was a license to steal, poison, and murder; steal in the case of sales of misrepresented financial products, poison in the case of dangerous chemicals in plastics, murder by allowing dangerous food products to by sold to children.

Some day libertarians will wake up and realize what has been done over the past 30 years under cover of libertarian ideology. All political systems need checks and balances with strong GOVERNMENT to provide balance to a strong PRIVATE SECTOR. Otherwise, this is what you get: regulators owned by the private sector – puss in your milk, airplanes with faulty wiring, and asset inflations that ruin our economy.

Yes, this post shows suggests itulip is as much in the "not enough government" camp as I suspected.

Firstly, no matter how unrestrained the private sector, no 30 year bubble with asset inflation could have existed without fraudulent fractional reserve lending and government granted monopoly on money creation via the third central bank of the United States.

I guess when the PC economy is finally freed of government (Federal reserve) created bubbles caused by artificial manipulation of the money supply and interest rates, what it needs is more government, with massive regulations and huge increases in taxation and new subsidies, all directed by omniscent government geniuses who can foresee every contingency, including food safety, which roads to build where, and which technologies are key to our energy future.

As a physician with a scientific background, I am 100% confident that more people have been harmed or killed by 100% legal FDA approved pharmaceuticals than all the "possibly harmful" chemical byproducts that terrify the scientifically illiterate on a daily basis. (Saccharine, Red Dye #3, Radon.. etc, etc,) "May cause", "cannot be ruled out" blah.. blah.. blah. Think carefully. Is the harm of the FDA that they don't keep dangerous things off the market, or is it that the imprimatuer of the almightly government is taken as holy writ and people have no incentive to be skeptical and cautious about every single substance they place into their bodies. Think carefully, would our entire banking system be insolvent now if FDIC insurance and implicit government guarantees did not exist? If banks could actually be susceptible to runs without government rescue how careful would they have to be with your money in order to get your business? How much would they lend to people with no means to pay? How much would they inflate the money supply?

High carbohydrate consumption is causing the western epidemic of obesity, diabetes,cancer (including breast cancer) and Alzheimer's disease. Early puberty is mediated via high insulin levels in pre-teens from high carbohydrate consumption, not BPA.

Is there a connection with government here? Absolutely. Read Gary Taubes excellent book Good Calories, Bad Calories for a description of how the federal government via the USDA and other of its organs has been inadvertently engineering a health holocaust since George McGovern and a group of congressional interns in the 1970s decided we should eat less meat and fat and more pasta and grains. My back of the envelope calculation after reading Taubes' book is that our government and the American College of Cardiology have killed more than Pol Pot. The fact that they had good intentions is absolutely no excuse. Libertarians tend to believe that it is the concentration of power itself that is evil, not the label or the "ideology".

The hysteria over bisphenol a reminds me of those antinuclear rallies where the protesters are all smoking cigarettes. Hmm.. Fred's avatar is smoking a cigarette - a perfectly legal product which kills several hundred thousand americans a year! Biblical metaphors of ocular specks and logs come to mind.

I am rather sick of all the libertarian-bashing that goes on around here. Libertarians (At least the Austrian or Rothbardian kind) are not advocates of corporate fascism and regulatory capture, and saying our ideas are responsible every time there is a bad marketplace result, because we in principle have little faith in regulation is illogical and essentially unfalsifiable. How can you prove there is no unseen harm with the couterfactual post-hoc regulations you propose? You have no idea what the hidden effects on innovation and human health and wealth would be. This is just the broken window fallacy writ large.

Every time some private actor - usually a huge corporation colluding with government through regulatory capture does evil, the retrospective cure is that there should have been more government to prevent the now obvious disaster.

For Christ's sake, corporate fascism is not libertarianism and the cure is most definitely not Stalinism, with overweening regulation and the arrogance of central planning. The idea that we just haven't had the right people with the right halos running the show is a repulsive, arrogant leftist fantasy.

The marketplace of commerce and the marketplace of ideas are not perfect. There is no perfection. But more government is not better than imperfect markets.

Governments kill more than they save. The only good government is less government

[WildspitzE]

Re: The World According to Monsanto - A documentary that Americans won't ever see.

For Christ's sake, corporate fascism is not libertarianism and the cure is most definitely not Stalinism, with overweening regulation and the arrogance of central planning. The idea that we just haven't had the right people with the right halos running the show is a repulsive, arrogant leftist fantasy.

-- kudos --

[Scot]

Re: The World According to Monsanto - A documentary that Americans won't ever see

‘Superweed’ explosion threatens Monsanto heartlands

“Superweeds” are plaguing high-tech Monsanto crops in southern US states, driving farmers to use more herbicides, return to conventional crops or even abandon their farms.

http://www.france24.com/en/20090418-...ified-US-crops

That story reads like propaganda.

But hey -- they're bashing a big evil corporation, so a little deception and manipulation of the public is okay. It's for a good cause, right?

[Digidiver]

Re: The World According to Monsanto - A documentary that Americans won't ever see

Are you serious? You must work for Monsanto to post such a comment.

[medved]

Re: The World According to Monsanto - A documentary that Americans won't ever see.

For Christ's sake, corporate fascism is not libertarianism and the cure is most definitely not Stalinism, with overweening regulation and the arrogance of central planning. The idea that we just haven't had the right people with the right halos running the show is a repulsive, arrogant leftist fantasy.

-- kudos --

[Slimprofits]

Re: The World According to Monsanto - A documentary that Americans won't ever see.

September 5 – Bloomberg (Jack Kaskey): “There’s ‘mounting evidence’ that Monsanto Co. corn that’s genetically modified to control insects is losing its effectiveness in the Midwest, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said. The EPA commented in response to questions about a scientific study last month that found western corn rootworms on two Illinois farms had developed resistance to insecticide produced by Monsanto’s corn. Rootworms affect corn’s ability to draw water and nutrients from the soil and were responsible for about $1 billion a year in damages and pesticide bills until seeds with built-in insecticide were developed a decade ago.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-0...en-by-epa.html