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Monsanto

The Central Scrutinizer said:
Ummm....no. It's not the same company.
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Is something like this what you're talking about?

From Monsanto's wiki page:

Through a series of transactions, the Monsanto that existed from 1901 to 2000 and the current Monsanto are legally two distinct corporations. Although they share the same name and corporate headquarters, many of the same executives and other employees, and responsibility for liabilities arising out of activities in the industrial chemical business, the agricultural chemicals business is the only segment carried forward from the pre-1997 Monsanto Company to the current Monsanto Company. This was accomplished beginning in the 1980s:
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Despite not "legally" being the same company (whatever that means), they have the same freaking headquarters and are run my the same freaking people. Don't ever send me chasing after garbage like this again, if you please. It's quite obviously completely irrelevant and has only to do with corporate money games.
 
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Manopolus said:
Is something like this what you're talking about?

From Monsanto's wiki page:



Despite not "legally" being the same company (whatever that means), they have the same freaking headquarters and are run my the same freaking people. Don't ever send me chasing after garbage like this again, if you please.
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...the agricultural chemicals business is the only segment carried forward from the pre-1997 Monsanto Company to the current Monsanto Company.
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A new Monsanto Company, based on the previous agricultural division of Pharmacia, is incorporated as a stand-alone subsidiary of the pharmaceutical company. (Pharmacia itself eventually becomes a subsidiary of Pfizer, in 2003).
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They have nothing to do with chemicals.
 
The Central Scrutinizer said:
They have nothing to do with chemicals.
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Oh, and I suppose that genetic engineering has nothing to do with chemicals, either? How about the herbacides they are genetically engineering plants to resist... that has nothing to do with chemicals?

Seriously.

It seems like nothing but a semantic trick to me. The bottom line is I couldn't give a crap less about how they want to identify themselves... it doesn't give them a clean slate.
 
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Manopolus said:
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.
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But this contention is as meaningless as it is useless. Of course there's no way to tell the difference between actual news and a conspiracy that leaves no evidence. But so what? The possibility of any conspiracy is no better than the possibility of no conspiracy.

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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Yes, exactly: You know it has happened because you have evidence that it has happened.

Anyway, what would you have us do? Does your suspicion make any testable predictions? Does it recommend any course of action we should take?
 
Manopolus said:
Oh, and I suppose that genetic engineering has nothing to do with chemicals, either? How about the herbacides they are genetically engineering plants to resist... that has nothing to do with chemicals?

Seriously.

It seems like nothing but a semantic trick to me. The bottom line is I couldn't give a crap less about how they want to identify themselves... it doesn't give them a clean slate.
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It just needed to be pointed out. When I encounter anti-GMO nutwads on Facebook and elsewhere, a favorite tactic of theirs is to make the connection to Agent Orange. I like to inform them that there is no connection. It's a form of public humiliation. :)
 
The thing about Agent Orange was that it was supposed to be used as a herbicide in dilutions. The US Government used it in high concentrations through saturation spraying to destroy the green cover. Why is there not the same amount of vitriol against arms manufacturers who supplied the US army during the Vietnam war and then when the weapons were used to kill innocent civilians?
 
Susheel said:
...And cross checking with various other media non-media sources. People do do that you know.
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Occasionally. Probably not as often as we should.

...and the way that media sources borrow from each other, that's not necessarily a sure-fire way to learn the truth by any means.
 
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Manopolus said:
Occasionally. Probably not as often as we should.
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Speak for yourself. In this age of digitized information this is not a valid excuse. I have had a life long career (coming on 20 years now) in publishing and before that as a researcher. Inability to do proper research was not an excuse even when we did not have the internet to fall back on. Sitting around through dusty libraries, sifting through bibliographies and references to ensure that the author of a text book got his facts straight has made crosschecking facts second nature. Now with a multitude of media choices, people have paradoxically become lazier in doing research and mistakes rhetoric for fact.

And one also tempers what one has read with common sense garnered through experience.
 
Manopolus said:
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?
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Wiki states " Internal memoranda revealed that Monsanto (a manufacturer of 2,4,5-T) had informed the U.S. government in 1952 that its 2,4,5-T was contaminated." [with TCDD, a massively toxic dioxin]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Orange#cite_note-18.
 
Susheel said:
Speak for yourself. In this age of digitized information this is not a valid excuse. I have had a life long career (coming on 20 years now) in publishing and before that as a researcher. Inability to do proper research was not an excuse even when we did not have the internet to fall back on. Sitting around through dusty libraries, sifting through bibliographies and references to ensure that the author of a text book got his facts straight has made crosschecking facts second nature. Now with a multitude of media choices, people have paradoxically become lazier in doing research and mistakes rhetoric for fact.

And one also tempers what one has read with common sense garnered through experience.
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I think that at this point we are arguing over vague matters of degree with neither of us adequately defining our position, so I'd say there's no point to continuing this side issue at this point.

The original point was that the mainstream press isn't exactly impeccable, in response to when Scrut suggested that my source wasn't even worthy of following a link. Personally, I'd say that no source is impeccable, and that all sources potentially have some fragment of the truth, even when that fragment is covered in BS.

Again, it all comes down to matters of degree. I don't trust questionable sources more than the mainstream, but I probably trust the mainstream itself a little less than most. To adequately describe the degree is impossible. It is equally impossible for me to fully describe the criteria by which I judge such things, since I haven't developed a specific paradigm for such. I mostly go by intuition, and am careful not to "believe" things that I don't actually have any knowledge of... my "beliefs" always stand on uncertain ground in most things, as does my trust.
 
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Manopolus said:
The original point was that the mainstream press isn't exactly impeccable, when Scrut suggested that my source wasn't even worthy of following a link. Personally, I'd say that no source is impeccable, and that all sources potentially have some fragment of the truth, even when that fragment is covered in BS.
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But if you can obtain that same fragment of truth from a source that isn't covered in BS (or at least not obviously covered in BS), isn't that worth a little extra effort? I mean, especially if you're going to be pitching it to people in this particular online community?
 
Dymanic said:
But if you can obtain that same fragment of truth from a source that isn't covered in BS (or at least not obviously covered in BS), isn't that worth a little extra effort? I mean, especially if you're going to be pitching it to people in this particular online community?
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If you take the trouble to actually read my initial post in this thread, it was asking about what degree of truth there was in the matter. I wasn't arguing for the source's viewpoint. I figured somebody here might already know something about it. It appears I was right about that.

Admittedly, I came into this thread without reading everything that came before, just like you apparently did. It had already been mentioned. After more than 2-3 pages, that tends to happen.

Then I was boxed into an argument that I really didn't intend to make... that happens sometimes, too. That's a hazard of seeing both sides of the equation and having a largely unformed opinion. I'm not so much trying to make an argument as to refute those thrown at me.
 
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Manopolus said:
Admittedly, I came into this thread without reading everything that came before, just like you apparently did. It had already been mentioned.
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Japan's suspending of US wheat imports due to the rouge GE strain in Oregon? Considering that it was breaking news when I posted it, I was sure I had the scoop on that. Where had it already been posted?

Then I was boxed into an argument that I really didn't intend to make... that happens sometimes, too.
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You did kind of stumble into the middle of an already ongoing exchange.
 
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Dymanic said:
Japan's suspending of US wheat imports due to the rouge GE strain in Oregon? Considering that it was breaking news when I posted it, I was sure I had the scoop on that. Where had it already been posted?

You did kind of stumble into the middle of an already ongoing exchange.
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Yeah... I read the first part of the thread, identified it with something I'd seen elsewhere, and posted before reading anything recent. I meant that it was already being discussed before I popped in, not that you weren't the first. I was guessing that you didn't quite read my initial post by your assertion... I could be wrong, maybe you (and others) just read more into it than what was there.

I came in completely out of context with recent postings, if that helps. I'm sorry if that was confusing, but a thread gets a bit too long to read the entire thing before entering the discussion after about 3 pages by the way I do things.
 
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Manopolus said:
Yeah... I read the first part of the thread, identified it with something I'd seen elsewhere, and posted before reading anything recent. I meant that it was already being discussed before I popped in, not that you weren't the first. I was guessing that you didn't quite read my initial post by your assertion... I could be wrong, maybe you (and others) just read more into it than what was there.

I came in completely out of context with recent postings, if that helps.
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You've got me so mixed up now, I'm not sure what I did or didn't read. The whole thing is just a blur. Think I'll go back to bed now.
 
Oh, and my apologies for my earlier lack of recognition Dynamic (hence, the suggestion of "coming in without prior knowledge"). I haven't quite got all the participants identified yet. I should probably read a bit more of what went on before I got here, and perhaps pay a little more attention.

I get tunnel vision sometimes...

Unfortunately, it appears that my confusion may be contagious.

:D
 
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