Tidbits, Reader Responses - September 30, 2012

* Re: GMO Opponents Are the Climate Skeptics of the Left
  - Still More Reader Responses (Chris Lowe, Peggy Fry,
  Laurel MacDowell, Bob Whitney, Gordon Fitch) 
  
* Re: The Better Bargain: Transaction Tax, Not Austerity
  (James A. Lucas)
  
* Re: REWIND - A Week of Quotes & Cartoons   (R. Pauli)

==========

* Re: GMO Opponents Are the Climate Skeptics of the Left
- Still More Reader Responses

It is a shame that Portside chose to circulate this
tendentious, one-sided, pro-corporate industrial
agriculture piece.

Start with the headline.  Climate change skeptics are on
the side of large corporate interests who benefit from
ecological destruction and argue for deregulation.  Who
occupies the similar position in the GMO debates?
People like Keith Kloor.  Climate skeptics, pro-
corporate and anti- regulation. GMO skeptics, anti-
corporate and pro-regulation. Not the same.

Then there is the prestidigitation, bait-and-switch
character of the argument.  This operates at two levels,
that of the French study, and the question of what the
GMO debate is about, which goes far beyond the possible
health harms caused by the genetic modifications in
consumed foods.

The French study addressed two topics:  possible health
harms caused by the genetically modified plant material,
and possible health harms caused by consuming Roundup
that makes its way onto and into food.  Kloor addresses
only the first question.  Even if the French study is as
slanted as he says, it points to need for further
research on how protecting plants from being killed by
pesticides by genetic modification may lead to more
pesticides entering the food chain.  Kloor is
intellectually dishonest in not acknowledging that
issue.

That issue points to two larger social ecological issues
related to GMO crops:  the promotion of ecologically and
public health destructive industrial monoculture in
agriculture, and regulatory capture and politicized
defundiing of the regulatory agencies (FDA, USDA and
EPA) charged with protecting the public health and the
ecology in our food system, by oligarchical and
oligopolistic corporate interests.

Even when the genetic modifications involved resemble
those made by older selective breeding methods, many of
those methods have been hugely destructive to plant
diversity in themselves (read _Tomatoland_ for one good
recent example, similar literature exists for maize,
bananas and apples). Speeding up that process is not
progressive.  Moreover, the old and new genetic
modifications are tied to high inputs of herbicides,
insecticides and fertilizers, many of which also involve
processes that add to the greenhouse gas burden. The
herbicides and insecticides in turn affect flora and
fauna far beyond their industrial agriculture intended
targets, and enter into animal and human food chains.
Significant GMO technology is directed to expanding the
use of pesticides.

The purported scientific consensus is questionable.
Kloor points to the anti-GMO intellectual commitments of
the authors of the French study.  It's a fair point.  He
does not raise the question of the economic interests
behind pro- GMO scientific activity, which include both
direct funding from the GMO producing corporations, the
skewing of federal agricultural research priorities and
definitions to industrial agriculture that shapes
academic research, and the corporatization of even
public universities toward an orientation toward
corporate theories of intellectual property.  Plus
research in general is woefully underfunded.

Those problems are compounded by an attitude that says
"no evidence means no risk."  This is legitimate over
time, if the right questions are asked and actual
research on them is conducted.  But in a situation where
some questions are put off the table, and no research is
done simply because it is not funded in other cases, and
policy directives to evaluation committees mandate the
assumption of no risk despite the manifestly inadequate
level of research, the claim of scientific consensus is
spurious.  There is bureaucratic-industrial consensus.

Then there is the matter of the ethics of authoritarian
science.  One of the reasons science is in the parlous
state that it is, in terms of the breadth of cultural
acceptance being less than it should be, is that far too
many scientists adopt an authoritarian and paternalistic
attitude toward the public.  A proper scientific
attitude looks to sharing best current knowledge and
educating the public about it.  But it also acknowledges
that best current knowledge changes, and sometimes has
been spectacularly and destructively wrong, as in the
case of the scientistic racism that was the "consensus
science" of the Western world from the 1870s to the
1940s.  Other cases much closer to GMO issues include
the failures to recognize the processes that would lead
to resistance to anti-biotics and pesticides in medicine
and agriculture, and the continuing regulatory inability
to cope with those issues in the face of corporate
interests, and the erroneous imposition of Western
agricultural "science" in African ecologies with very
different characteristics, causing ecological
devastation.

Real science is humble.  Scientism is arrogant,
authoritarian and patronizing, like Kloor's article.
Scientism is self-defeating, as it only creates
distrust. It is the enemy of true science and of the
goal of creating a scientifically literate and engaged
public.

As the example of scientistic racism shows directly, and
the other examples show in terms of their implication
with class-based economic systems and colonialism and
neo- colonialism, many of the issues around the
application of scientific knowledge are not scientific
issues.  They are ethical and social and political and
policy issues. Scientists are not necessarily experts in
those areas. Often they are quite deficient in thinking
about them.

Finally, there is the issue of consumer choice and
informed consent, particularly when it comes to choices
of what one ingests, but also how one acts as a consumer
within the economic system.  Generally speaking the left
has supported food labeling.  Health science may tell me
that eating many of the food additives that are required
on labels probably won't hurt me.  It does not tell me
about the tens of thousands of chemicals that have been
created and not studied for health consequences.  It
does not tell me about the ecological consequences of
the production of those chemicals or the synthesis of
foods out of them in combination with plant and animal
products.  My own experience tells me that many of those
foods are of low quality and in combination with my
sedentary lifeways probably are bad for my health.

Preferring not to eat them may be irrational.  Food
preferences are irrational.  De gustibus non est
disputandum.  I have the right to be irrational, and I
have the right to know what I am choosing to eat or not
to eat. If that creates a marketing problem for Monsanto
and the maize farmers, good.  They need to deal with it,
and so do the genetic scientists.

Are people who prefer to pay more to eat organic food
irrational?  Or are they seeking to find ways to act
collectively to promote ecologically sustainable food
systems?  Is the pesticide and fertilizer based
industrial monoculture food system that Kloor and
Monsanto promote really rational?  I say its preferences
should not dictate my freedom to know what I'm eating
and to choose according to my own lights.  That's not a
scientific issue.  It's an ethical and political one.

Chris Lowe

===

I would hope that you post an opposing scientific view
of the matter of gmo's. There are many studies out there
funded by groups such as Monsanto such as the "Stanford
Study" - that are very powerful in making these points -
all for the sake of agri-business profits.

Peggy Fry

===

I am wary of any journalist who dubbs any activists as
"lefties" as it implies a measure of contempt.
Historically it was the environmentalists, first in
Europe and later in North America who made the public
aware of issues surrounding GMOs. I hope Kloor is right
that GMOS are perfectly safe, but it remains to be seen.
They will have an environmental impact (as yet
undetermined) if their numbers increase and they are not
regulated.

The other issues that the environmentalists raised about
GMOs was that they were controlled and patented by huge
multinational corporations who wanted to make money from
them; these corporations opposed labeling products so
that consumers did not know what they were eating.
Presumably consumers should have a choice of whether to
ingest GMOs or eat non-GMO food or organic food. In
Europe GMOs are either banned or on food labels. In
North America we do as the corporations say so they are
increasing and are not labeled.

But Kloor is right when he says private money is
contributing to media messages, which are often biased
and the public does not know and is not informed about
who is funding what. The most recent example of that
bias was a message that got a lot of media play which
said that organic food was not more nutritious than
other food. Who said it was? What people who are pro-
organic food say is that organic food does not contain
pesticides and herbicides and is not genetically
modified and is often produced by small producers rather
than large companies. And if you prefer that then you
might want to eat organic food or indeed grow it
yourself. Now as this is my preference, it might make me
a "leftie" but presumably that is also my choice.

Laurel MacDowell

===

That Keith Kloor article defending GMO crops doesn't
have much substance in it.  I don't know for sure about
GMO one way or another, but the reasons he cited to
discredit the anti-GMO movement didn't inspire much
confidence--which makes me wonder: did Portside check
this one out carefully enough?

I've been pretty happy with Portside's selections in the
month or so I've been enrolled, but this one gives me
pause.

Would U.S. corporations like Monsanto conduct a giant
experiment on us in order to increase their profits?
The answer is an unequivocal "YES," you bet they world.

Have the proper research studies been done so we can be
sure this GM food is safe?  I don't hear any of that
being argued here, and conducting such an experiment on
an enormous population without our knowledge or consent
can't possibly be justified--even if our existing
evidence of the dangers is weak.

And this article doesn't even convince me that the
evidence is weak, or that the benefits outweigh the
risks, as Kloor claims.  This guy's obviously a
rhetorician, but is he a "journalist" as he claims, or
just skillful propagandist?

And why didn't Portside catch this?

Bob Whitney

===

We're going to trust capitalists to play with the
genetics of our food without supervision or regulation?
Why?

Gordon Fitch

==========

* Re: The Better Bargain: Transaction Tax, Not Austerity

Spending on the military is a relatively poor source of
job creation. According to a 2011 study by Pollin and
Garrett-Peltier  $1 billion spent on the military will
generate about 11,200 jobs.  By contrast spending  the
same amount of money on the  green economy will produce:

      15,100 jobs for household consumption, or 16,800
      jobs for the green economy, or 17,200 jobs for
      health care, or 26,700 jobs for education.

James A. Lucas

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* Re: The Better Bargain: Transaction Tax, Not Austerity

Ellison's bill would raise up to $350 billion through a
small tax on stock, bond, derivative and currency
trading.

Charles Ostman

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* Re: REWIND - A Week of Quotes & Cartoons

Great piece.   Continuing in that vitally important
theme, You might want to view Greg Palast talk about
"Billionaires and Ballot Bandits" How about stealing 22
million votes before the election even begins?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hUbeCtee4k&feature=g-
hist

Talk by investigative journalist Greg Palast author of
"Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election
in 9 Easy Steps" given September 27, 2012 at Town Hall
Seattle in Seattle, WA.

R. Pauli

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