Re: Food for thought

**Tom Alexander t*@growingedge.com**

On Jan 31, 2006, at 7:27 AM, Duane Campbell" <dcamp@chilitech.net>  
wrote:

As Jonathin Swift said, "You cannot reason a person out of a position  
he did
not reason himself into in the first place." The danger of terminator  
seed
is clear only to those who accept myopia as the norm. I notice in the
several messages on the subject that the responses are extremely  
vague with
no specifics given, but that seems sufficient for those who already  
want to
believe. I am not concerned about terminator seed, but nothing  
frightens me
more than people who cannot imagine any opinion but their own.

Duane,

I am glad you have so much trust in the regulators in the Dept. of Ag  
and in the EPA to have the public's best interest in the various  
research on "terminator technology" along with everything else the  
multi-national corporations put on the market.

You obviously believe that the revolving door of people who used to  
work for Monsanto and other corporations and who now work in those  
regulatory agencies (and vice versa) would never put the almighty  
dollar in front of the public's best interest even though numerous  
regulatory decisions show otherwise. In some instances, the  
regulators have gone from corporation, to regulator, back to the  
corporation. In other instances, it is vice versa. One hand washes  
the other is the norm.

You believe that pollen that pollutes an organic grower's crop is the  
organic grower's problem not the other way around. The Canadian  
Supreme Court also sides with you when they decided in Monsanto's  
favor in a case where Monsanto's Round Up Ready canola pollen  
polluted an organic farmer's canola crop; Monsanto physically  
trespassed on the organic farmer's land to get some samples for  
evidence, and then to add insult to injury, the organic farmer was  
ordered to pay Monsanto royalities for the resulting Round up Ready  
seed crop. This is a great example of how twisted the legal system is.

Our corporate multi-national culture really doesn't give two bits (I  
want to use another word that rhymes with bits) for the public's  
interest. The almighty dollar is all that matters. Dealing with the  
world's food crop is not like technology in other segments of  
society. If the corporations make a crappy computer they fix it with  
a new model. Terminator technology, once out of the bottle, is not  
like a crappy computer.

I will always remember my first GWA symposium in St. Louis in 1991 or  
1992, when we went to Monsanto's billion dollar research facility.  
Once inside this fortress, guarded like it was the NSA (we all had to  
give our social security numbers for a security clearance--you know  
how many terrorists there are in the GWA!) we were allowed to walk  
around inside the facility, peeking inside the various growth  
chambers where they were working on the  Round Up Ready crops. Before  
the tour, they served ice cream that was made with some type of  
chemical where the ice cream didn't melt (it was still sitting there  
after the hour long tour looking perfectly like a scoop of ice cream)  
and some kool-aid type drink with an obvious chemical taste. The joke  
going around the tour was the chemicals in the ice cream and kool-aid  
drink would make us write up all the Monsanto propaganda in a  
positive light. It seems you are still drinking the kool-aid and  
tasting the ice cream. Basing your belief that Terminator Technology  
is safe on revolving door corporate research is what shows myopia as  
the norm. You trust the corporations, we don't.

As Pat Meadows quoted Mussolini in her signature, corporatism is the  
new neo-con fascism. This is just a part of it.

We are bombarded with over 3,000 corporate advertisements and  
propaganda a day. They seem to have done their job.

Tom Alexander
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