Tidbits - Reader Response & Announcements
September 29, 2012

- Re: GMO Opponents Are the Climate Skeptics of
  the Left (Dr. Juanita Rice, Dave Ecklein, dr.lapin,
  Robert Meola, David Schwartzman, Guardian)

  - Re: They Vilified Us. We Won - Quebec
  Students Hail Thei Victories (Laurel MacDowell)

  - Re: Culture of Concessions Has Gutted Organized
  Labour (Roger Toussaint)

  - Re: Media Bits & Bytes - Bursting Bubble Edition -
  Hanoi Web Crackdown Hits Blogs; Foreign Firms
  Fret (T. M. Scruggs)

  - Re: This Presidential Race Should Never
  Have Been This Close (Donna Carter)

  - Re: Hundreds of New York Times Staffers
  Deplore Greed of Times'Owners (Don Watson,
  Kathleen Kelleher )

  - Re: American Public Opposes War with Iran
  (Michael Munk)

======

- Re: GMO Opponents Are the Climate
Skeptics of the Left

Talk about red herrings!!! So a French scientific
study has been debunked. That doesn't change two
overriding facts about GMO crops that no pretend-
like-this-is-Luddite-hysteria screed can debate, and
certainly should not have been ignored by anyone
serious about a balanced picture, which Kloor must
not be.

GMO crops, for one thing, actually do "pollute" other
crops. And Monsanto and Friends have satellite
surveillance to spot the 'genetic tag' of their crops in
other people's fields. Never mind that the other
farmer didn't PLANT their seeds by theft. The other
farmer saved seed. Hmmm. In the New World
Order, it's forbidden that we should save seed. So
seeds, the very origin of plant life, are now being
patented and owned. This whole issue of ownership
of the mechanics of life is very much a life and
death issue for biodiversity.

Second, the fact that plants are now "round-up
ready@" (let that @sign stand for a possible
trademark copyright brand- ownership phrase)
means that herbicides can be and are sprayed
directly on huge sections of land. The war against
"weeds" has become a denudation of the earth:
trees along rivers, elderberries, wild plum,
milkweed, sunflower, mulberries, ash, oaks...all of
"God's garden" if you will--the food source for
millions of our fellow beings--is wantonly destroyed.
And it's the real "weeds" that evolve immunity, while
native grasses, reeds, cattails disappear from the
roadside ditches; wildflowers --forget it!

Like the BP CEO, Kloor equates herbicide
devastation to "the never-ending battle between
humans and pests. " PESTS. Then there's the
devastation of the bees and the butterflies. And I
beg to differ about the burdensome struggle that
these poor Corporations have to endure to get
"licensed." Radiation-- remember the people who
painted "radiating" numbers on watches. Thomas
Edison's assistant lost both arms gradually from his
work with radiation. Thalidomide. DDT.
Fukushima.

Yes, the principle of wary changes to our chemical
environment is a good one. Check out, however, the
"fast-track" approval of a dozen brand-new GMO
crops this fall.

There's no reason to red-bait people who think we
have tipped more than one climate-change domino
in the last twenty-five years. Tell the people around
the Fukushima plant that scientists have
determined nuclear energy is safe! And that the rest
of us, less sanguine about rushing ahead with new
technologies, are just old fuddy-duddies. Except
now we're LEFTIST fuddy-duddies.

I'm disgusted that Portside put this out.

Dr. Juanita Rice

===

Finally, something sensible against all those anti-
GMO exaggerations emanating from the elitist anti-
science "left". Those of us in the real world would
face severe food shortages without GMO.

Thanks for forwarding this one.

Dave Ecklein Rumney NH

===

Study linking GM maize to cancer must be taken
seriously by regulators

Guardian (UK)
September 29, 2012

Trial suggesting a GM maize strain causes cancer
has attracted a torrent of abuse, but it cannot be
swept under the carpet

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/sep/28/study-gm-maize-cancer?INTCMP=SRCH

===

Folks might want to look at some of the articles that
have been published in the blogosphere about Keith
Kloor before they accept without reservations the
opinions and "analysis" below. Just to take one
example, consider climate activist Joe Romm's
criticisms of Kloor at <
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2009/11/01/204856/keith-kloor-trash-journalist/>,
to get an idea of
Kloor's "journalism."

dr.lapin

===

Such B.S. GMO opponents are opposed to GMOs for
many good reasons. Even besides the French study,
there is no evidence saying that GMOs are not
harmless. But they are immoral because Monsanto
contaminates non-GMO crops when the wind blows
and claims ownership of crops not theirs based on
the contamination and produces sterile seeds and is
greedily depriving populations around the world of
natural seeds and organic seeds and forcing farmers
to but their sterile seed so they can never grow their
own crops again without paying Monsanto. GMO is
food is criminal on more than one level.

Robert Meola

===

Keith Kloor, the author of this disinformation piece,
is clever by lumping GMO opponents with climate
skeptics of the left. However, the latter are a very
rare species indeed, with the passing of Alexander
Cockburn, who deserves our gratitude for his
immense contributions, but not on the issue of
global warming. I am on the ecosocialist left, a
research scientist focusing on energy issues and the
growing threat of catastrophic climate change. I am
a signer of the Open Letter from World Scientists to
All Governments Concerning Genetically Modified
Organisms (GMOs) (posted at
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/list.php). I would bet that
very few of these 828 scientists from 84 different
countries deny that global warming is real and is
driven mainly by fossil fuel consumption, the now
universal consensus of climate scientists active in
the IPCC. GMO development is driven by profit
hungry transnational corporations. Kloor is their
propagandist in his piece. Urban organic gardening
and agroecology are the real alternative to industrial
agriculture, not GMO crops. A cutting edge paper
demonstrating the huge potential of organic
agriculture is Badgley et al., 2007. Can organic
agriculture feed the world? Renewable Agriculture
and Food Systems 22: 86-108. Agroecology is a
work in progress drawing from the wisdom of pre-
industrial peasant agriculture and the cutting edge
sciences of ecology and molecular biology. This is
the advanced agriculture, not GMO with its serious
social, ecological, health and nutritional threats,
now increasingly documented in peer-reviewed
literature. Kloor cites Pamela Ronald who claims:
"There is broad scientific consensus that genetically
engineered crops currently on the market are safe to
eat. After 14 years of cultivation and a cumulative
total of 2 billion acres planted, no adverse health or
environmental effects have resulted from
commercialization of genetically engineered crops."
Au contraire. For documentation on the health and
environmental risks of GMO crops/food go to:

http://earthopensource.org/index.php/news/60-why-genetically-engineered-food-is-dangerous-new-report-by-genetic-engineers,

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_11361.cfm,

http://www.responsibletechnology.org/posts/?tag=gmo-health-risks,

http://frankenfoodfiles.wordpress.com/health-risks/,

http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/science_and_impacts/impacts_genetic_engineering/

David Schwartzman, PhD
Washington DC

======

- Re: They Vilified Us. We Won. (Quebec Students
Hail Their Victories)

This was a great victory. As I watched the throngs in
Quebec communities come out into the streets and
start banging their pots, I thought of women in the
French Revolution who did the same. Did they know
this or was it instinctual? Whatever, it worked and
good for them.

Laurel MacDowell

==========

- Re: Culture of Concessions has Gutted Organized
Labour

From Roger Toussaint, former president of TWU,
Local 100 in NYC 2001-2009

Other aspects of this "culture of concessions" which
needs to be considered include that, beyond the
increased inequality it produced in the general
workforce, the divisiveness it created in terms of
two tier wages and benefits seriously undermined
the very fabric of solidarity inside the house and
accelerated the retraining of workers' thinking
towards narrowed self interests.

The current notion of the labor movement being
about the "middle class" vs the majority of working
people outside of that income bracket is a result.
The chickens have come home to roost. If we didn't
represent that majority, why should they represent
us now, in our moment of crisis and elimination.

==========

- Re: Media Bits & Bytes - Bursting Bubble Edition -
Hanoi Web Crackdown Hits Blogs; Foreign Firms
Fret

Any reports about Vietnam not sourced from the
Wall Street Journal?

T. M. Scruggs

==========

- Re: This Presidential Race Should Never Have
Been This Close

I like the anger of this article however, there is an
element and vocabulary of a male chauvinist which
doesn't do justice to half of the population,

Donna Carter

==========

- Re: Hundreds of New York Times Staffers Deplore
Greed of Times' Owners

Hello. My father, Morris Watson, while working for
the Associated Press in 1933, began signing up
workers in the American Newspaper Guild. The AP
fired him but he was rehired through the US
Supreme Court and the Wagner Act.in 1937. My
Father is long dead but would be with you today.

Best,

Don Watson

===

Stand Strong! Follow the model of the teachers ...
both in Madison and in Chicago. They actually do
need the workers ... to make their bucks ... and we
all know it.

DON'T BACK DOWN!

Denver Classroom Teachers
Kathleen Kelleher

==========

- Re: American Public Opposes War with Iran

Hayden continues his apologetics for Obama by
focusing on AIPAC and the "Israel First"
congressional cabal. He ignores Obama's own
warmongering on a more substantive level. Every
Senate liberal just voted for an aggressive anti-Iran
resolution. O controls the IAEA bureaucracy under
Yukiya Amano, a citizen of Japan, a country with a
military treaty with the US and which allows a
massive US military presence on its territory. Since
Amano succeeded a more independent director
general, the IAEA has become the source for most of
the accusations against Iranian nukes, faithfully
stenographed by US media led by the NY Times. It's
obvious O fears an Israeli attack before the election
but he's the one who took single payer health care
"off the table" but put on that table a military attack
on Iran.

Tom admits that it's "more likely that a war will be
launched against Iran at some future point" and
then urges us to work for the election of a president
who can either stop it (by-- unlikely- cutting off US
military and economic subsidies to Israel) or launch
it.

Michael Munk

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