INTENSITY²
Politics, Mature and taboo => Political Pundits => Topic started by: RageBeoulve on September 26, 2013, 09:27:47 AM
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They're getting so bad, that even John stewart has time to make fun of it.
http://www.upworthy.com/hard-working-monsanto-lawyers-need-your-help-standing-up-to-american-farmers?c=ufb1 (http://www.upworthy.com/hard-working-monsanto-lawyers-need-your-help-standing-up-to-american-farmers?c=ufb1)
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Money in politics, man. That's what this is. If they can corrupt the legislative process, how hard is it to corrupt the judicial process?
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That percentage is scary to me. A single company now owns over 90% of agricultural yields, but farmers still have to work their own property as slaves? Thats insane, man.
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Monsanto should own nothing. The farmers should be independent.
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Monsanto should own nothing. The farmers should be independent.
Especially since they have put generations of back breaking work into farming that land and getting it to yield. Monsato just came along and infected their crops with their stupid GMO seeds which apparently have only been modified to be weed killer resistant! What a coincidence btw, that before they started these activities, they snuck in laws that would make this behavior acceptable.
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Oh snap.
In its short-term government-funding bill, the US Senate will propose an end to a budget provision that protects genetically-modified seeds from litigation despite possible health risks.
Called “The Monsanto Protection Act” by opponents, the budget rider shields biotech behemoths like Monsanto, Cargill and others from the threat of lawsuits and bars federal courts from intervening to force an end to the sale of a GMO (genetically-modified organism) even if the genetically-engineered product causes damaging health effects.
The US House of Representatives approved a three-month extension to the rider in their own short-term FY14 Continuing Resolution spending bill, which was approved last week by the lower chamber.
The Senate version of the legislation will make clear the provision expires on Sept. 30, the end of the current fiscal year.
“That provision will be gone,” Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) told Politico.
Full article: http://rt.com/usa/monsanto-protection-senate-budget-303/ (http://rt.com/usa/monsanto-protection-senate-budget-303/)
Does this mean that the Monsanto mafia can no longer own all our food and the products farmers worked so hard over generations to raise? I dunno. Hey lion, help me out.
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That percentage is scary to me. A single company now owns over 90% of agricultural yields, but farmers still have to work their own property as slaves? Thats insane, man.
Microsoft has a similar market share in terms of computers. Despite the loud and obnoxious "free-market" movement, capitalism seems to have no problem with extreme market consolidation. Where is the freedom in a market controlled by a single bureaucracy? Is it free because that bureaucracy is separate from a democratic state and is not accountable to voters?
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Mm. The problem is, Monsanto has conned their way into owning people's agricultural yields. Meaning these people are "allowed" to farm land which their families have worked for generations, and Monsanto claims a large chunk of the profits just "because".
Sound familiar? Kind of like Plantations? And slave owners?
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Mm. The problem is, Monsanto has conned their way into owning people's agricultural yields. Meaning these people are "allowed" to farm land which their families have worked for generations, and Monsanto claims a large chunk of the profits just "because".
Sound familiar? Kind of like Plantations? And slave owners?
That's kind of how capitalism works. You had a similar situation with coal miners in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century. Workers were intentionally underpaid, and paid in certificates that could only be redeemed at the company store. What's worse, the goods at the company store were marked up specifically so that the workers would go into debt to the company. Nowadays, corporations lobby hard to keep the minimum wage below subsistence, and instruct their workers in how to gain public assistance. But this is not farmers.
In particular, farmers are being dispossessed by means of gene patents. The patent entitles Monsanto to charge a "licensing fee" to anyone who raises seeds with the patented gene, including plants that have been fertilized by wind-blown pollen. According to Food Inc. they've also been putting seed washers out of business using the same methods; you can't use Monsanto seed that came from a plant you grew without paying the license fee again. Seed washers therefore violate the patent just by existing in a community where Monsanto has fields. Monsanto also writes contracts that keep farmers locked into Monsanto patronage.
It actually has more in common with the "debt slavery" of coal miners I mentioned above than racial chattel, but both are much more similar to chattel than they are to the warm and fuzzy "invisible hand" of competition that we've been raised to believe in.
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almighty
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spot on....again!
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Mm. The problem is, Monsanto has conned their way into owning people's agricultural yields. Meaning these people are "allowed" to farm land which their families have worked for generations, and Monsanto claims a large chunk of the profits just "because".
Sound familiar? Kind of like Plantations? And slave owners?
That's kind of how capitalism works. You had a similar situation with coal miners in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century. Workers were intentionally underpaid, and paid in certificates that could only be redeemed at the company store. What's worse, the goods at the company store were marked up specifically so that the workers would go into debt to the company. Nowadays, corporations lobby hard to keep the minimum wage below subsistence, and instruct their workers in how to gain public assistance. But this is not farmers.
In particular, farmers are being dispossessed by means of gene patents. The patent entitles Monsanto to charge a "licensing fee" to anyone who raises seeds with the patented gene, including plants that have been fertilized by wind-blown pollen. According to Food Inc. they've also been putting seed washers out of business using the same methods; you can't use Monsanto seed that came from a plant you grew without paying the license fee again. Seed washers therefore violate the patent just by existing in a community where Monsanto has fields. Monsanto also writes contracts that keep farmers locked into Monsanto patronage.
It actually has more in common with the "debt slavery" of coal miners I mentioned above than racial chattel, but both are much more similar to chattel than they are to the warm and fuzzy "invisible hand" of competition that we've been raised to believe in.
I thought that capitalist was basically the free enterprise of companies in competition with each other. This is a wonderful idea, because opposing factions constantly generate new content.
What monsanto does is infect the market with itself with government support, and eliminate all competition. I thought that was like.. the opposite of capitalism.
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Mm. The problem is, Monsanto has conned their way into owning people's agricultural yields. Meaning these people are "allowed" to farm land which their families have worked for generations, and Monsanto claims a large chunk of the profits just "because".
Sound familiar? Kind of like Plantations? And slave owners?
That's kind of how capitalism works. You had a similar situation with coal miners in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century. Workers were intentionally underpaid, and paid in certificates that could only be redeemed at the company store. What's worse, the goods at the company store were marked up specifically so that the workers would go into debt to the company. Nowadays, corporations lobby hard to keep the minimum wage below subsistence, and instruct their workers in how to gain public assistance. But this is not farmers.
In particular, farmers are being dispossessed by means of gene patents. The patent entitles Monsanto to charge a "licensing fee" to anyone who raises seeds with the patented gene, including plants that have been fertilized by wind-blown pollen. According to Food Inc. they've also been putting seed washers out of business using the same methods; you can't use Monsanto seed that came from a plant you grew without paying the license fee again. Seed washers therefore violate the patent just by existing in a community where Monsanto has fields. Monsanto also writes contracts that keep farmers locked into Monsanto patronage.
It actually has more in common with the "debt slavery" of coal miners I mentioned above than racial chattel, but both are much more similar to chattel than they are to the warm and fuzzy "invisible hand" of competition that we've been raised to believe in.
I thought that capitalist was basically the free enterprise of companies in competition with each other. This is a wonderful idea, because opposing factions constantly generate new content.
What monsanto does is infect the market with itself with government support, and eliminate all competition. I thought that was like.. the opposite of capitalism.
That's the dogma it uses to justify itself. But that's not what it puts into practice.
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Well its not like we're putting a puzzle together, choosing predistinguished pieces with "capitalism", "communism", etc written on them. The idea is just fine. The problem is that we've been playing with our genitals too long to notice our nice model has been populated by a bunch of criminals and psychopaths.
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Well its not like we're putting a puzzle together, choosing predistinguished pieces with "capitalism", "communism", etc written on them. The idea is just fine. The problem is that we've been playing with our genitals too long to notice our nice model has been populated by a bunch of criminals and psychopaths.
Corporate bureaucrats don't play with their own genitals. They get other people to do it.
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Well its not like we're putting a puzzle together, choosing predistinguished pieces with "capitalism", "communism", etc written on them. The idea is just fine. The problem is that we've been playing with our genitals too long to notice our nice model has been populated by a bunch of criminals and psychopaths.
Corporate bureaucrats don't play with their own genitals. They get other people to do it.
I'm talking about us. The people. The citizens. We have not been paying attention for shit.
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As long as our corn chips and super-sized sodas are cheap, we don't really care where they come from.
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That's something we can agree on. Pisses me off.
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Monsanto's glyphosate-resistant crop strains are not even active, until the farmer makes a further purchase of an activation product.
And then there is their practice of selling 'terminator' strains of seeds to third world farmers, who would traditionally have kept back seed from their last harvests to plant come the next year so they can remain self sufficient. The terminator strains on the other hand are genetically modified to produce infertile seed, forcing farmers to buy more Monsanto seed the next year.
There can BE no other reason for this other than to enforce a continued enslavement to them, why else would such infertile races of seed be a valid product? Other, than perhaps, scientific experiments involving entirely new genetic modifications etc. when one wishes to be absolutely certain that an unknown quantity cannot then spread and infect other surrounding ecosystems. Then, yes, but for bulk food production this is not acceptable.