November 14, 2013
The sub-title of this article is borrowed from a sentence a friend wrote to me:
Let’s vote to label something that is destroying the biology of the Earth.
Under a tweet with the title of my recent article, “Criticize the moneyman who support GMO labeling: you get Silence,” there is a tweet from Dr. Bronner, who I presume is David Bronner.
He has been a major funder of the Prop 37 and Prop 522 labeling campaigns in CA and WA. He is pro-labeling.
The Bronner reply tweet reads: “We’ve been very careful to listen to local campaigners on campaign tactics.”
We’ve been very careful to listen to local campaigners on campaign tactics. @jonrappoport @mercola @Gary_Hirshberg @Yeson522—
Dr. Bronner’s Soaps (@DrBronner) November 14, 2013
Based on limited information, I would question that. But my article was really about something else. It was about the overall message these campaigns have pushed at voters: “You have a right to know what’s in your food.”
It’s been the single message in ads, from start to (losing) finish for both Prop 522 and 37.
It has drowned out all other messages from the pro-labeling camp.
And it’s a disaster. Big-time.
You have a right to know because…? The campaigns don’t answer that question for voters. They don’t put that answer out in flaming letters and spoken words and images.
One might think the reason for the gross omission has something to do with treating voters gently “on the level at which they can perceive the issue.”
But behind that unworkable strategy, there is fear. Fear of going up against Monsanto and Dow and Syngenta and other food-tech giants who are responsible for inserting genes in food crops and drenching growing fields with toxic chemicals.
These giants don’t need big shields to ward off blows in the labeling campaigns, because no blows are coming at them. They only have to deflect the droning “you have a right to know.”
Ultimately, the question isn’t about winning or losing the labeling initiatives on ballots. It’s about waking people up to the corporations who are monopolizing and poisoning the food supply.
In other words, Monsanto wins in the long run, unless the public outcry is so great it becomes an unstoppable wave.
And in that crucial regard, “you have a right to know” doesn’t cut it. It doesn’t come close.
As I’ve written before, American consumers will not buy so much non-GMO food it pushes Monsanto to the wall. Unless…the truth about Monsanto’s crimes becomes a sword.
Why is it so hard to understand this?
Because so many people want things to be easy and clean and nice and neat.
Wanting it, however, does not make it so.
On the level at which these labeling initiatives are carried out, the mythic theme is: we can build a better model (while leaving the criminal in place to decay away to dust). Then we sweep up the ashes and go on our merry way.
Would that it were so.
This is, however, a piece of mind control. It saturates the minds of people who “just want things to be fair” and “fairly decided.”
Even those who admit the voters “need to be educated about the harm GMOs and herbicides do” aren’t on the right track. They’re too soft. This isn’t a classroom in which the teacher draws diagrams on the blackboard.
This isn’t merely an adult education class.
This is showing people, up close, in their faces, what chemical warfare is like, when the agent is Monsanto’s Roundup. Evil. This is farmers, actual humans, coerced by Monsanto and driven to the wall. Evil. This is the death of small farming. Evil. This is big fat superweeds taking over farm land, so farmers have to spray even more dangerous chemicals like Paraquat on their fields. Evil. This is Monsanto buying up seed companies and taking over the food supply. Evil. This is Monsanto liars lying to the public about food safety. Evil. This is the US government, the FDA, the USDA, the White House, the President(s) running the game exactly as Monsanto wants them to. Evil. This is shooting untested and unpredictable genes into food. This is making people sick. This is punishing scientists who expose Monsanto. Evil.
All this is the substance of a real political campaign, which has the actual goal of putting Monsanto on the run as the towering wave overtakes them.
And that is the goal, because that is the only way to stop GMO food and horrific chemicals.
Consumer choice as the answer is like Rule by the Proletariat as an answer. In the Marxian fairy tale, the State eventually withers away, magically, and utopia is what’s left. In the consumer choice model, enough food buyers choose non-GMO and Monsanto withers away.
Believing this is a preposterous article of faith.
Monsanto is quite happy to go into the ring and contest that faith with its own propaganda machine, for the next 50 years.
Again, why is this so hard to understand?
Because in a core waking trance, the leaders and money men, with their allies and field workers, in the campaign to label GMOs, are soothing themselves with a fantasy about what works in the arena of politics.
They like their fantasy. They want to hold on to it. They are comforted by it. It sings a song to them. So it must be true.
But it isn’t.
Winning labeling campaigns, losing them, it’s all the same…the battle is lost, unless we name the evil and attack it and reveal it for all to see and keep on attacking it.
If you lived in a neighborhood where one family dumped corrosive clouds of poison on their lawn every few days, would you tell your other neighbors to choose organic lemon juice to kill weeds and leave it at that?
Would you smile and wipe your hands of the whole problem and go on your way, believing the issue would resolve itself?
Would you say, “Soon, no stores will sell that corrosive poison because so many people are buying lemons”?
That’s my reply to David Bronner and the other major money men who fund GMO labeling. I would be interested in reading their full responses.
As always, I hope they actually read what I write and reply to it, rather than to some straw man.
For example, if they write, “Well, we almost won in WA and CA with our strategy”, then they haven’t read me; nor have they read the tea leaves correctly.
@DrBronner it was close. I bet the next state that takes it on wins, especially after people hear how big food broke rules w donations—
Denise Minge (@deniseminge) November 14, 2013
They’re sipping a cup of organic tea, whistling past a graveyard in the dead of night.
Jon Rappoport
The author of two explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED and EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com
Tags: false opposition, Farm Wars, farmwars, food safety, genetic engineering, GMO, gmo ban, jon rappoport, labeling
I think I understand now what you are saying, pm. However, the current system we are working under is so corrupt that a complete purge is necessary before any meaningful legislation can be passed, and the criminals do have might on their side. What we have, and can work with, are local areas. At this point, anything that is currently placed in the system will ultimately be corrupted by it until the purge takes place and all unconstitutional laws negated.
All I’m saying is that without government we cannot enforce laws against powerful mulinationals and banks. Do you think the people can fight these wealthy oligarchs and their private armies? That this is not happening only suggests that these interests should be purged from government — not that government should be abolished. Anarchy favors the plutocrats. It’s why they cause wars and economic turmoil.
How is wanting to reform and reclaim our government via grassroots activism contradictory? Better government, not bigger more centralized and tyrannical, is the goal.
pm – Not cynical, just realistic. Nothing of importance will happen from the top down. They already openly defy laws, and make up new stuff as they go to cover their tracks. This is reality, and despair has nothing to do with it. Labeling laws are a joke, and anyone familiar with the laws realizes this. They are created to hide, not reveal, and what little they do reveal is minimal. You are contradicting yourself when you say that a grassroots effort is needed, then say that we need the government to take control. Which is it?
Barb
I’m not so cynical to believe that their power is so absolute that they could afford to openly defy laws without detriment to their almighty profits. Regardless, there are still many things we can do if enough people mobilize on a grassroots level and all of them are better than more deregulation (of Big Agra/banks/wallstreet) or despair.
pm – If government is controlled by financial oligarchs, and it is, why on earth would you think that the government would force the owners of Big Agra, which is also owned and controlled by these very same financial oligarchs, to honestly disclose the ingredients of their products?
If government doesn’t legally force Big Agra to disclose the ingredients of their products, it will never happen. Private corps will always lie to protect their profits. And and unchecked profit motive distorts incentives to detriment of the public good. Libertarians live in a dreamworld invented by the financial oligarchs that control government.
I don’t agree that all is lost, squodgy. There is more to this life than the system we were indoctrination into. It’s time to withdraw from that system and build something different. Something that brings community back into neighborhoods. A bartering system trading goods and services will be necessary, as well as good, clean local food. This is what has to happen, IMO. This is my vision ;)
The labelling campaign is just that to Monsatan, Dow, Syngenital, DuPont, Bayer et al.
They love it, and as long as we keep bleating for it they are happy.
The expense of beating the labelling campaign is allowable against profits, which continue unabated thanks to their disinfo machine.
If, one day, they lose a campaign, the worst that could happen is that they are forced to put a “peanut” rider at the bottom of a pack, bottle, box, and by then Joe Moron probably won’t be able to read anyway.
Until the corrupt politicians and DEA administrators realise that honesty in insisting on independently audited long term tests on animals is the only way forward for both sides, all is lost.
All is lost.
Maybe they aren’t being more aggressive and blunt because they afraid of being bombarded with law suits, however frivolous and unfounded, that will in the short run shut down their efforts and in the long run bankrupt them. This tactic was used against Dr. Burzinski;his practice was shut down and was forced into bankruptcy by an onslaught of frivolous law suits — despite winning them all. Fortunately, through much persecution and hardship, his story is beginning to see a happy ending.
Its hard to blame others for wanting to avoid this path if they perceive and easier one. It’s even harder to criticize someone for not risking their entire livelihood and fortune, though it’s the right thing to do. And those are the stakes here for the real players on the front lines.