> Ah, the Clintons . . . true champions of environmentalists, poor
> people, and average blue collar folk everywhere. How long will the
> gullible lefties keep voting against their own interests?
>
> http://tinyurl.com/48u8p5
>
> "Letter to Hillary about Monsanto connections (02.03.08)
> Posted on April 13, 2008 by dandelionsalad
>
> Dandelion Salad
>
> by Linn Cohen-Cole
> Speaking Truth to Power
> Sunday, 03 February 2008
>
> Original post: An Open Letter To Hillary Clinton From A Wellesley
> College Alumna
>
> Submitted by a Truth To Power Subscriber From Yahoo News Groups
>
> [This letter was written by a woman who has clearly done her homework,
> and confirms that no sane human being in good conscience can cast a
> vote for Hillary Clinton--CB]
>
> Dear Hillary,
>
> By polling logic, I should be your supporter - Democrat, older woman,
> white, liberal. I was even in a dorm with you in college. I have
> pulled for you for years. But something this past summer fundamentally
> changed my responsibility to my children and grandchildren. In the
> time I have left in my life to protect them and others, I need to
> speak out.
>
> I saw a News Hour piece on Maharastra, India, about farmers committing
> suicide. Monsanto, a US agricultural giant, hired Bollywood actors for
> ads telling illiterate farmers they could get rich (by their
> standards) from big yields with Monsanto’s Bt (genetically engineered)
> cotton seeds. The expensive seeds needed expensive fertilizer and
> pesticides (Monsanto, again) and irrigation. There is no irrigation
> there. Crops failed. Farmers had larger debt than they’d ever
> experienced.
>
> And farmers couldn’t collect seeds from their own fields to try again
> (true since time immemorial). Monsanto “patents” their DNA-altered
> seeds as “intellectual property.” They have a $10 million budget and a
> staff of 75 devoted solely to prosecuting farmers.
> http://www.grist.org/comments/food/2008/01/17./). Since the late 1990s
> (about when industrial agriculture took hold in India),166,000 Indian
> farmers have committed suicide and 8 million have left the land.
>
> Farmers in Europe, Asia, Africa, Indonesia,South America, Central
> America and here, have protested Monsanto and genetic engineering for
> years.
>
> What does this have to do with you?
>
> You have connections to Monsanto through the Rose Law Firm where you
> worked and through Bill who hired Monsanto people for central food-
> related roles. Your Orwellian-named “Rural Americans for Hillary” was
> planned with Troutman Sanders, Monsanto’s lobbyists.
>
> Genetic engineering and industrialized food and animal production all
> come together at the Rose Law Firm, which represents the world’s
> largest GE corporation (Monsanto), GE’s most controversial project
> (DP&L’s - now Monsanto’s - terminator genes), the world’s largest meat
> producer (Tyson), the world’s largest retailer and a dominant food
> retailer (Walmart).
>
> The inbred-ness of Rose’s legal representation of corporations which
> own controlling interests in other corporations there and of corporate
> boards sharing members who are also shareholders of each other’s
> corporations there, is so thorough that it is hard to capture. Jon
> Jacoby, senior executive of the Stephens Group - one of the largest
> institutional shareholders of Tyson Foods, Walmart, DP&L -is also
> Chairman of the Board of DP&L and arranged the Wal-Mart deal. Jackson
> Stephens’ Stephens Group staked Sam Walton and financed Tyson Foods.
> Monsanto bought DP&L. All represented at Rose.
>
> You didn’t just work there, you made friends. That shows in the flow
> of favors then and since. You were invited onto Walmart’s board, you
> were helped by a Tyson executive to make commodity trades (3 days
> before Bill became governor), netting you $100,000, Jackson Stephens
> strongly backed Bill for Governor, and then for President (donating
> $100,000).
>
> Food and friends, in Clinton terms:
>
> Bill’s appointed friend Mike Espy, Secretary of Agriculture, who
> immediately significantly weakened federal chicken waste and
> contamination standards, opening the door to major expansion of
> Tyson’s chicken factory farms. Espy resigned, indicted for accepting
> bribes, illegal contributions, money laundering, illegal dispersal of
> USDA subsidies, …. Tyson Foods was the largest corporate offender.
>
> But what Bill did for Monsanto “genetic engineering” goes beyond
> inadequate concepts of giving corporate friends influence: He
> unleashed genetic engineering into the world. And then he helped close
> off people’s escape from it.
>
> Genetic engineering is many orders of magnitude different from
> “normal” (even polluting) business in its potential biologic
> ramifications. The warning myth of Pandora’a Box - letting
> irretrievable things rush out into nature - has become real. The
> harrowing change to the world from nuclear fission and fusion is the
> closest parallel.
>
> What did Bill do?
>
> 1. Bill’s put Monsanto people in at the FDA, as US Agricultural Trade
> Representatives, on International Biotechnology Consultive Forums, and
> more … (http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/72600-03.htm) or
> http://www.monitor.net/monitor/904b/monsantofda.html or
> http://www.mindfully.org/GE/Revolving-Door.htm
>
> 2. Bill’s FDA gave Monsanto permission to market rBGH (a GE bovine
> growth hormone), the first genetically engineered product let loose on
> us (or did tomatoes with fish DNA get there first?).
>
> 3. Despite reports of bovine illness and death, Bill’s FDA did not
> recall it or put warnings on it. Even “a very angry, very vocal
> nationwide consumer base” had no impact.”
>
> 4. Bill’s FDA wouldn’t even label rBGH as “present” in milk.
>
> 5. When dairy farmers tried to label their own milk rBGH-free so the
> public could choose, Bill’s USDA threatened all dairies that their
> products could be confiscated from stores. Michael Taylor, USFDA
> Deputy Commissioner, was formerly Monsanto’s counsel.
>
> 6. How were consumers to protect their family, given Bill’s FDA
> enforced public blindness, except to buy only organic? But Bill’s FDA
> tried to close off that last escape, proposing to include in “organic”
> standards, “the dirty three” a : genetic engineering of plants and
> animals, use of irradiation in food processing and use of municipal
> sewage sludge as a fertilizer. (My emphasis.) The FDA backed down.
>
> Had this gone through, Monsanto could have finally labeled rBGH milk …
> as “organic.” And animal waste from factory farms, a pollution
> nightmare for Tyson and others, could have been sold as fertilizer.
>
> USDA head Dan Glickman: “This is probably the largest public response
> to an [Agriculture Department] rule in modern history.” In fact the
> response was 20 times greater than anything ever before proposed by
> the USDA.
>
> Personally, I resent years of effort to protect my children and now
> grandchildren, from that crap.
>
> Politically, Bill sided against small farmers and against the public’s
> right to know, and with Monsanto.
>
> A snap shot of our food:
>
> Oils: Sheep died in India after feeding on Bt cotton fields. We feed
> our children Bt cotton, as cottonseed oil in peanut butter and
> cookies.
>
> Grains: 49%% of US corn acreage was planted in Bt corn in 2007. A
> French study proved Monsanto’s GMO corn causes kidney and liver
> toxicity.
>
> Soft drinks and candy have highly concentrated Bt corn, in the form of
> high fructose Bt corn syrup. The US food system depends most on two
> crops, soy (90%% GMO, 90%% of traits owned by Monsanto) and corn, the
> largest crop (60%% GMO, nearly 100%% Monsanto traits). “[E]ssentially
> our entire food supply is genetically modified, to the benefit of one
> company.” The Grocery Manufacturers of America in 2000 estimated that
> 70 percent of US food contains GM traits.
>
> Meat: Steroids bulk up athletes. Monsanto steroids bulk up animals -
> more weight, more profit. We feed our children steroids in meats. Is
> this why our children are fattening, like Hansel and Gretel?
>
> Poultry: Bill’s USDA weakened chicken waste and contamination
> standards and attempted to allow sewage sludge as fertilize crops. I
> will say more about disease from industrialized poultry farms waste,
> at the end of this letter.
>
> Milk: Over 30 scientific publications have shown increased levels of
> IGF-1 in milk with rBGH increases risks of breast cancer by up to
> seven-fold, also increasing colon and prostate cancers risks. Canada,
> 29 European nations, Norway, Switzerland, Japan, New Zealand,
> Australia, and South Africa ban U.S. rBGH dairy products. Bill’s USFDA
> put no restrictions, no warning labels (not allowing labels at all).
> (My emphasis.)
>
> American children eat that food and drink that milk, Hillary.
> Coincidentally, American children are increasingly fat and sick.
>
> Here, Bill ignored pleas for labeling. Abroad, Bill ignored intense
> international objections over the same issue - unlabeled US food
> exports - badly straining trading relations. Monsanto’s “good ole
> boy,” he betrayed American families at the deepest levels conceivable
> - their family’s health and their democratic right to know. He
> betrayed our rural life and American family farmers - backing
> corporation deceit and control, over honesty and clean farming.
>
> But, Hillary, it is one thing to not label a regular ole food product
> to sell it, and quite another to sell a suspected-dangerous food
> product (rBGH), but Bill’s administration didn’t label (or stop) a
> well-known, terrifying threat - Mad Cow Disease.
>
> Bill’s FDA’s August, 1997 regulation permitted “known TSE-positive
> [Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy] material to be used in pet
> food, pig, chicken and fish feed,” only requiring the label to read
> “Do not feed to cattle and other ruminants” in the US.
>
> Monsanto added to the problem. “There is evidence that rbST use
> [Monsanto's GE bovine growth hormone] reduces the useful lifespan of a
> dairy cow. … Given that the incubation period for BSE is at least
> three to five years and perhaps longer, rbST-treated cows could harbor
> “hidden” BSE. That is, they might be infected but still asymptomatic
> when sent to slaughter.” (My emphasis.) http://www.consumersunion.org/food/bgh-codex.htm
>
> Bill let TSE into our entire food chain. And who owned the feed and
> slaughter and genetic engineering corporations which benefited?
>
> Please, tell me, Hillary, what he could possibly have gotten in
> friendship or favors, that could ever justify his exposing millions of
> people to this?
>
> With genetic engineering itself, Bill did something to the whole
> world, which tried to object. Words are inadequate to express how
> astoundingly immoral, beyond human bounds and conceit and power, that
> was.
>
> “Even for the biggest “winners,” it is like winning at poker on the
> Titanic.” Jerry Mander: Facing the Rising Tide
>
> He had no right.
>
> Do you hear that?
>
> Bill had sex from Monica Lewinsky. That’s “dinky immoral.” That’s
> chicken feed immoral - excuse the Tyson pun, excuse the TSE-laced pun.
> Bill let genetic engineering lose on NATURE itself.
>
> “Our way of life is likely to be more fundamentally transformed in the
> next several decades than in the previous one thousand years…Tens of
> thousands of novel transgenic bacteria, viruses, plants and animals
> could be released into the Earth’s ecosystems…Some of those releases,
> however, could wreak havoc with the planet’s biospheres.” Jeremy
> Rifkin, Biotech Century
>
> Bill did this to us, like it was some nothing and he, some big dumb
> ass Southern boy, just smiling and getting in good with the Big Boys,
> thinking about as much about the consequences of something this
> immense and about us human beings out here, as he thought about you,
> when he was unfaithful with Monica. Just one big fool getting off on
> the power and used to getting away with things.
>
> Terminator genes, developed by DP&L, a Rose Firm client, prevent seeds
> from “working” after only one season. Farmers “must” repurchase
> (patents and suing not certain enough control, it seems). Those
> “killing” genes pose the apocalyptic risk of breaking out into nature.
> Natural seeds could fail, too. Nature could fail.
>
> Far-fetched?
>
> GMO fields are already contaminating normal species Berkeley Professor
> of Microbiology, Ignacio Chapela, wrote an open letter, warning the
> Mexican government about just this breaking out phenomenon happening
> in maize
>
> And it has already happened with weeds - pesticide resistant GMO seeds
> break lose and weeds become pesticide-resistant Superweeds.
>
> But Bill’s USDA spokesman, Willard Phelps said the USDA wanted the
> technology to be `widely licensed and made expeditiously available to
> many seed companies.’
>
> “Genetic Engineering is often justified as a human technology, one
> that feeds more people with better food. Nothing could be further from
> the truth. With very few exceptions, the whole point of genetic
> engineering is to increase sales of chemicals and bio-engineered
> products to dependent farmers.” David Ehrenfield: Professor of
> Biology, Rutgers University
>
> Hillary, one third of the world’s bee colonies have collapsed. Gone.
> Farmers in India are killing themselves. Farmers and bees. Since
> organic farmers in India are fine and organic farmers report no colony
> collapse, what does these farming catastrophes say about “industrial
> agriculture”?
>
> Mad Cow Disease is another direct result of industrial agriculture.
> And now ……. transnational poultry factories are implicated as the
> source of bird flu. … Small scale poultry farms and wild birds seem
> not to be the problem [just as small farmers are not the issue in Mad
> Cow Disease], and yet “initiatives are multiplying to ban outdoor
> poultry, squeeze out small producers and restock farms with
> genetically modified chickens. … http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2006/2006-02-27-01.asp
>
> “Of the few outbreaks that did occur in [Laos], more than 90%% broke
> out in commercial poultry operations, not free-ranging flocks.”
>
> Monsanto (and others) is currently working with the USDA to force
> small farmers to tag every animal with a global tracking device (NAIS
> - National Animal Identification System). Allegedly related to food
> safety, Monsanto and others would be creating a vast corporate digital
> library on every move of small farmers’s livestock.
>
> But small farmers do not create the contaminated environments, do not
> supply the feed, do not grind up diseased animals into feed (how Mad
> Cow began) and then sell it. In fact, their farming methods, free
> range and small scale, are significantly healthier and safer for
> animals and food than the massive concentration of animals by
> corporate industrial agriculture.
>
> Monsanto is also aggressively pushing for state laws to limit farmers’
> right to choose what to plant and the public’s right exclude GE plants
> from their communities.
>
> Cattle bloated by steroids, lapse and loss of 10,000 year old normal
> seeds, immense pollution from factory farms, deadly-disease-ridden
> feed, world-wide bee colony collapse, poisoned soil and depleted water
> supplies, Superweeds, lawsuits against farmers, loss of family farms,
> and … India farmers killing themselves in what may be the largest mass
> suicide in recorded human history (on average … one farmers’ suicide
> every 30 minutes since 2002 - The Hindu 1.30.08) - that is industrial
> agriculture.
>
> Monsanto and Tyson are two of the largest industrial agricultural
> corporations in the world. Industrial agriculture is represented by
> your Rose Law Firm.
>
> Your claim to care about food safety is terrifying double-speak given
> what Bill did and who you take donations from. Your idea of a
> Department of Food Safety would centralize control of food - in whose
> corporate connected hands? You talk tough about labeling food - ah,
> but “foreign” food - a sleight of hand tricking a public desperate for
> safe US food. You talk about food safety but Bill degraded food in
> every imaginable way and prevented minimally sane labeling.
>
> I am a person before I am a woman. Your gender means nothing. It is a
> media distraction. Your policies on health and food and women and
> children, are meaningless in the face of connections that have
> threatened those groups profoundly, connections you have never
> denounced.
>
> Monsanto uses child labor in India, primarily very young girls,
> exposing them to a lethal pesticide 13-14 hours a day, for pennies in
> pay. But you take donations from their lobbyists. You say you care
> about black people but as the poorest people in this country, they are
> least able to buy organic and are forced to eat the contaminated foods
> Bill let into our food system. The National Black Farmers Association
> has a boycott out on all Monsanto products.
>
> Do you eat organic?
>
> So, who are you with, hapless black consumers and black farmers, or
> Monsanto? Mothers left to give their children rBGH milk, or Monsanto?
> Women exposed to 7 times greater risk of breast cancer, or Monsanto?
> Desperate farmers in India and young children forced into child labor
> in cottonseed factories there, or Monsanto? Animals suffering from
> lives in filthy cages and disgusting feedlots, shot up with steroids
> and hormones and antibiotics, or Monsanto? Our children who eat candy
> with high fructose Bt corn syrup associated with kidney and liver
> toxicity, or Monsanto? Edwards was right about your corporate
> connections. I just didn’t understand until I saw that PBS show and
> read about Monsanto, how personally affected my children and
> grandchildren, and all people
> around the world, have been.
>
> I will not vote for you. I will vote for someone who will commit
> themselves to work on behalf of small farmers and real food and decent
> treatment of animals and to end this industrialized agricultural
> nightmare that is taking us off a cliff.
>
> Linn Cohen-Cole
> Atlanta
>
> Disclaimer. I am not a scientist. I have read for months on this
> subject, and am including only a tiny portion of the horrifying things
> I have learned. I am expressing my opinion as a person and may be
> wrong. Perhaps things are swell out there and rBGH is fabulous and TSE-
> laced feed is great, and genetic engineering is the best thing since
> manna. But I am scared for my family and I have not only a right to
> say so but an obligation to do so. I am angry that Monsanto was
> allowed the influence it had and has done the things it definitely
> seems to have. I am disgusted by industrialization of every tender and
> beautiful part of our world and hope, for all our children’s sake, we
> are not too late to pull back.
>
> see
>
> William Clinton & Monsanto – a Team for Mutual Profit
>
> Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear
>
> Bill Moyers Journal: Hunger in America + Exposé Farm Subsidies + Soup
> Kitchen
>
> Suicide by Soda: The Dangers of Aspartame By William Mac (+ videos)
>
> The World According to Monsanto - A documentary that Americans won’t
> ever see (full video)
>
> GMO
>
> Monsanto"