My point.
Monsanto
- Thread starter Bodhi Dharma Zen
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Just a few posts up, I linked to a Wall Street Journal article discussing that. Here's the link again:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324423904578523471376080526.html
The Central Scrutinizer
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Again demonstrating the importance of posting links to legitimate news organizations. When I saw "Occupy Monsanto", I had no interest in clicking it.
It will be interesting to see where the wheat in Oregon came from. It's possible, perhaps, that further testing will show it wasn't Monsanto's experimental wheat. One very real possibility is that an anti-GMO "activist" somehow got a hold of a sample and planted it. These people are known to lie and commit crimes to further their paranoid nonsense, so I wouldn't put anything past them.
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Manopolus
Metaphorical Anomaly
Unfortunately, I'm not a WSJ subscriber, and as such cannot read the actual article.
It will be especially interesting to see the matter thoroughly investigated by some entity other than Monsanto itself.
I get the distinct impression that testing has already established the specific strain.
Manopolus
Metaphorical Anomaly
Unfortunately, many of our "trusted" news organizations are owned by very rich people who may very well be friendly with Monsanto due to the fact that they get a lot of advertising dollars from them.
The established press has a tendency to do that sort of thing.
That said, I have no idea whether GMO's are a threat or not. Monsanto isn't exactly transparent in its own research, and there really aren't any trustworthy sources whatsoever on the subject in this day and age. The corruption of pretty much all sources of news is pretty evident in these times. The press has fundamentally been turned over to the power of the almighty dollar to the exclusion of all else.
Of course, that isn't so much something that's changed as it is something that has become more apparent.
My brother is a trucker that occasionally hauls product for Monsanto, and he's pretty much on their side, but I really don't know what to believe from all the crap flying around. I assume some of it might be pertinent and some of it not, as is always the case with "hot" issues of any given time. I'm certainly not a luddite, but I do sort of object to the idea of owning a patent to any life form of any kind... which sort of puts me at odds with the whole GMO circumstance.
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The story is available from a wide range of sources. Here it is from WAPO and Reuters:
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/..._1_wheat-crop-modified-wheat-engineered-wheat
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/31/us-wheat-korea-idUSBRE94U0KW20130531
Manopolus
Metaphorical Anomaly
Ah, thanks.
The worst part about it is that wheat isn't a product that particularly benefits from herbicides, anyway. Since it's basically a grass, it pretty much strangles a lot of the "weed" types of plants that generally tend to grow well only on fairly exposed ground. Since winter wheat is planted in the fall, it is one of the first things that comes up in the spring, and tends to take care of any "weeds" by the sheer density of its growth.
I have no idea what the thought process was behind a "round up ready" wheat strain was to begin with... wheat needs no herbicide whatsoever, and I would think there would be no benefit to it.
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The Central Scrutinizer
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Conspiracy theories subforum is thataway ========>
Manopolus
Metaphorical Anomaly
Knowing the power of economic influence does not constitute a conspiracy. Bias doesn't even require the knowledge of the person that owns it.
I've been around advertising and journalism types enough to know how much the press is influenced by its advertisers. You dare to accuse me of being a conspiracy theorist while theorizing that there was a conspiracy to plant GMO wheat in a field to frame Monsanto by activists?
Who's claiming a conspiracy, here? I'm not saying there might not be one, but I'm not the one that suggested anything of the sort. This seems like a bit of a double standard, no?
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The Central Scrutinizer
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This...
....is a pretty long way away from "bias".
Well, we know two things about the hard core anti-GMO nutwads - 1) They regularly lie about Monsanto and GMO's and 2) They have, in the past, vandalized fields growing experimental GMO crops. So, like I said, I wouldn't put it past them.
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Manopolus
Metaphorical Anomaly
Well, OK, I might have exaggerated a little bit... I wasn't suggesting that anyone was making up their own facts in the mainstream press so much that they may occasionally be misreporting or underreporting certain matters that are sensitive to their advertisers. If you thought I was saying anything else, you've misunderstood me -- perhaps due to a bit of an overstatement.
Unfortunately, the end results seen in the actual news stories that we get are often not particularly separable from what could result from an actual conspiracy -- particularly with the way that news is passed around from one outlet to another.
My source for this question came through a political group on FB that I don't particularly trust for news either, but I didn't discount that there was probably some sort of a basis for the story in the first place.
...and apparently there was, no?
If you think I'm stupid enough to take in the opinions of whatever my source may be along with the facts, than I think you may be badly misleading yourself. I'm not that easily manipulated. Note that my first post in this thread was a question seeking more information, not a statement of either fact or opinion.
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The Central Scrutinizer
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Yes, there was a "basis" for the story - reality. The USDA, Monsanto and others are investigating.
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
... But only for an actual conspiracy that just happened to need exactly the actual news stories that we get.
If you have no evidence for an actual conspiracy, that leads to a reasonable expectation of what kind of news it would produce, then there's no way of knowing whether actual the news meets that expectation.
Given the choice between
"this could be real news"
and
"this could be news produced by a hypothetical conspiracy with no known properties except that it just happens to produce exactly the actual news--coincidentally and conveniently supporting my suspicion of a conspiracy"
I'll choose the former over the latter all day, every day. Because the latter is a textbook conspiracy theory.
Manopolus
Metaphorical Anomaly
I am not a conspiracy theorist. However, I contend that there is no actual way to know the difference between propaganda/advertising tactics and "actual news" if those involved are quite careful not to show their hand, particularly with multiple interests involved.
I also know that quite often local newspapers and TV stations often run "stories" about a business (or sometimes even a charity) that has just happened to have chosen to advertise with them recently. It's sort of an "I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine" sort of a concept.
...but it's not so much a conspiracy as the way the economic side of news outlets work. I'm not sure how much this influences the news at the more national level, but I do know it is there locally from actual experience.
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The Central Scrutinizer
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Additionally, one could never believe any news source, anywhere, ever. Because you would never know if it was the "real" news or part of a cover up.
Manopolus
Metaphorical Anomaly
One shouldn't "believe" any news source, anywhere, ever. We can assume it comes from facts, but I don't take it as a given that they've always got their facts right or that they haven't been influenced by their sources and/or advertisers.
That is not saying that there's a conspiracy, however. Nor is it saying that I don't regard most current events going around in the news (and even the releases of activist groups) as having come from a factual source.
I am merely recognizing that news is often influenced by things that we may not be aware of... and that sometimes we even ignore the obvious if we're told a good story that unfortunately doesn't turn out to be accurate.
For one thing, I was pretty sure that all the nonsense about Iraq having "weapons of mass destruction" was pretty much nothing more than propaganda during the build up to the Gulf War. I turned out to be right. News outlets and our government were pretty insistent that it was a real threat, however. I didn't need supernatural powers or conspiracy theories to come to that conclusion. I merely had to be attentive. Fear mongering rarely portrays an accurate view of reality, and this was certainly an example of such.
I suppose this also applies somewhat to the anti-Monsanto groups, but that doesn't mean that Monsanto is saintly. I do believe that they did create agent orange and declare it safe, among other things.
...or did the activists make that up as well? I rather doubt it.
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The Central Scrutinizer
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I'm pretty sure Monsanto never declared Agent Orange to be "safe". It was a very powerful herbicide.
And you do understand that Monsanto of 2013 <> Monsanto of 1970, right?
Manopolus
Metaphorical Anomaly
They declared it safe enough to use in places that there were soldiers present, didn't they? -- or did the government just assert that all on its own?
Different people, yes. However, I would tend to maintain that companies do sort of retain a "personality" or culture of sorts all their own, even as the people in them change. I don't think it's unfair to take a "once bitten, twice shy" approach to the question at all, particularly in a day and age that "corporations are people".
When you start messing with people's food supply in a way that has, as yet, shown no notable benefit to anyone other than those trying to take over the entire food market (a.k.a. Monsanto) and refuse the request that you label your product so that people might have a choice (as well as having a successful government lobby to prevent such a thing), it sort of pushes my alarm buttons. I don't have any information that GMO foods are not safe, but I do have information that Monsanto is essentially showing all the signs of someone trying to pretty much corner the market on life, itself. They're right up there with the Nestle folks trying to corner the market on water worldwide on the list of people I don't trust and likely never will.
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The Central Scrutinizer
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I don't know. Maybe you have a link?
Ummm....no. It's not the same company.