Tag Archives: Monsanto

Bayer and Monsanto: A Match Made in Hell

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08 Übersicht Buna + Montan

The I.G. Farben/Bayer complex near Auschwitz, where enslaved Jews worked on products including the nerve gas used to execute them. (Wikipedia Photo)

What could be a more fitting ceremony for our entertainment during these last days of the industrial age than the joining in unholy patrimony of two of the most evil corporations in the history of humankind? And what could be more symptomatic of the state of knowledge during our present Twilight of the Mind than the fact that the nature of their evil is not only not mentioned in the reporting of their union, but is relatively difficult to discover even if you Google it. I refer of course to the announced intention of Bayer, the aspirin company, to buy Monsanto, the Roundup company.

Monsanto’s crimes are familiar, especially to those who have been hanging around these pages. See, for example;

Bayer has been far more successful in sanitizing its record, which is far longer and far worse. It was a founding member of the German chemical giant I.G. Farben, not in 1925 as Wikipedia and other sources say in some places, but in 1893. The significance of that laundering of the historical record will soon become apparent. Continue reading →

Corn Growers Suffer Quintuple Whammy

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Drought-stressed corn, maybe also toxic, bug-bit and weed-plagued, in Kentucky last week. (Photo by CraneStation/Flickr)

The failure of industrial agriculture is on display everywhere in America’s “breadbasket” — now we should probably call it the ethanol basket,  or the high-fructose-corn-syrup basket — and the consequences are already spreading around the world. You thought it was just a drought? It would be bad enough of that’s all it was, but it is much, much more. The count so far: Continue reading →

The United States of Monsanto

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It is no longer enough for the seed and chemical company Monsanto to use its rivers of cash to own and operate the United States Congress (in the language of corporations, there is no word for “enough”); it is now using the US Department of State as its global sales force. The objective, apparently, is to replace every plant grown for food on the planet with a genetically mutilated plant sold by Monsanto. With the help of the United States government, the project is well along.
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Monsanto: More Crimes Against Humanity

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Monsanto’s declining reputation worldwide is reflected in this French street art of an imagined member of “Monsanto Youth.” (Photo by Thierry Erhmann/Flickr)

When we come to our senses and begin to mete out capital punishment to corporations, Monsanto will surely be the first to mount the scaffold (see Capital Punishment for Corporations: Time to Start). Just in the past week, there emerged two new examples of its abuse of the planet, two new indications of the catastrophe it is bringing down on all our heads. The general public, which could reasonably be expected to be at Monsanto’s gates with pitchforks and torches, yawned and went back to reality-TV reruns.

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Zombie Weeds Attack: Desperate Farmers Resort to Hoes

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No, the weeds didn’t kill the truck, but they are making the point that they will be there after the truck is gone. Zombie weeds, on the other hand, are making a much more aggressive point. (Photo by Dave 7/Flickr)

Farmers across the Midwest and South — those whose crops are not under water or blowing away in a hot, dry wind — are besieged by an enemy straight out of a stupid horror movie: an army of undead weeds that cannot be killed by chemicals. It’s as if you shot the heart out of an attacking enemy soldier and he just kept on coming. Cotton producers in the South have deployed armies with hoes to chop down weeds with stems up to four inches in diameter that shrug off the best herbicides that money can buy. Continue reading →

Heading for the Last Roundup

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Dumping chemicals on genetically mutilated plants, once the leading edge of industrial agriculture, may soon be its last ditch..

Of all the destructive scams perpetrated by industrial agriculture. none has been more profitable, or more destructive, than the massive Roundup round-robin perpetrated by Monsanto for 40 years. Now the scam appears to be falling apart. This is a story with the global reach of the housing bubble, all the inventive greed of the sub-prime mortgage stampede, and the tender mercies toward fellow humans of a Bernie Madoff, that now appears to be heading toward a Wall-Street-style meltdown. Continue reading →