From Rachel Carson to Monsanto: The Silence of Spring
Colin Todhunter
Former Monsanto Chairman and CEO Hugh Grant is currently in the news. He is trying to avoid appearing in court to be questioned by lawyers on behalf of a cancer patient in the case of Allan Shelton v Monsanto.
Shelton has non-Hodgkin lymphoma and is one of the 100,000-plus people in the US claiming in lawsuits that exposure to Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer and its other brands containing the chemical glyphosate caused their cancer.
According to investigative journalist Carey Gillam, Shelton’s lawyers have argued that Grant was an active participant and decision maker in the company’s Roundup business and should be made to testify at the trial.
But Grant says in the court filings that the effort to put him on the stand in front of a jury is “wholly unnecessary and serves only to harass and burden” him.
His lawyers state that Grant does not have “any expertise in the studies and tests that have been done related to Roundup generally, including those related to Roundup safety”.
Gillam notes that the court filings state that Grant’s testimony “would be of little value” because he is not a toxicologist, an epidemiologist, or a regulatory expert and “did not work in the areas of toxicology or epidemiology while employed by Monsanto”.
Bayer acquired Monsanto in 2018 and Grant received an estimated $77 million post-sale payoff. Bloomberg reported in 2017 that Monsanto had increased Grant’s salary to $19.5 million for that fiscal year.
Even by 2009, Roundup-related products, which include genetically modified seeds developed to withstand glyphosate-based applications, represented about half of Monsanto’s gross margin. It is reasonable to say that Roundup was integral to Monsanto’s business model and Grant’s enormous income and final payoff.
But the cancer lawsuits in the US are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the damage done by glyphosate-based products and many other biocides.
Silent killer
June 2022 marks 60 years since the publication of Rachel Carson’s iconic book Silent Spring. It was published just two years before her death at age 56.
Carson documented the adverse impacts on the environment of the indiscriminate use of pesticides, which she said were ‘biocides’, killing much more than the pests that were targeted. Silent Spring also described some of the deleterious effects of these chemicals on human health.
She accused the agrochemical industry of spreading disinformation and public officials of accepting the industry’s marketing claims without question. An accusation that is still very much relevant today.
Silent Spring was a landmark book, inspiring many scientists and campaigners over the years to carry on the work of Carson, flagging up the effects of agrochemicals and the role of the industry in distorting the narrative surrounding its proprietary chemicals and its influence on policymaking.
In 2012, the American Chemical Society designated Silent Spring a National Historic Chemical Landmark because of its importance for the modern environmental movement.
For her efforts, Carson had to endure vicious, baseless smears and attacks on her personal life, integrity, scientific credentials and political affiliations. Tactics that the agrochemicals sector and its supporters have used ever since to try to shut down prominent scientists and campaigners who challenge industry claims, practices and products.
Although Carson was not calling for a ban on all pesticides, at the time Monsanto hit back by publishing 5,000 copies of ‘The Desolate Year’ which projected a world of famine and disease if pesticides were to be banned.
A message the sector continues to churn out even as evidence stacks up against the deleterious impacts of its practices and products and the increasing body of research which indicates the world could feed itself by shifting to agroecological/organic practices (see the online article Living in Epoch-Defining Times: Food, Agriculture and the New World Order, January 2022).
The title of Carson’s book was a metaphor, warning of a bleak future for the natural environment. So all these years later, what has become of humanity’s ‘silent spring’?
In 2017, research conducted in Germany showed the abundance of flying insects had plunged by three-quarters over the past 25 years. The research data was gathered in nature reserves across Germany and has implications for all landscapes dominated by agriculture as it seems likely that the widespread use of pesticides is an important factor.
Prof Dave Goulson of Sussex University in the UK was part of the team behind the study and said that vast tracts of land are becoming inhospitable to most forms of life: if we lose the insects then everything is going to collapse.
Flying insects are vital because they pollinate flowers and many, not least bees, are important for pollinating key food crops. Most fruit crops are insect-pollinated and insects also provide food for lots of animals, including birds, bats, some mammals, fish, reptiles and amphibians.
Flies, beetles and wasps are also predators and important decomposers, breaking down dead plants and animals. And insects form the base of thousands of food chains; their disappearance is a principal reason Britain’s farmland birds have more than halved in number since 1970.
Is this one aspect of the silence Carson warned of – that joyous season of renewal and awakening void of birdsong (and much else)? Truly a silent spring.
The 2016 State of Nature Report found that one in 10 UK wildlife species is threatened with extinction, with numbers of certain creatures having plummeted by two thirds since 1970. The study showed the abundance of flying insects had plunged by three-quarters over a 25-year period.
Campaigner Dr Rosemary Mason has written to public officials on numerous occasions noting that agrochemicals, especially Monsanto’s glyphosate-based Roundup, have devastated the natural environment and have also led to spiralling rates of illness and disease.
She indicates how the widespread use on agricultural crops of neonicotinoid insecticides and the herbicide glyphosate, both of which cause immune suppression, make species vulnerable to emerging infectious pathogens, driving large-scale wildlife extinctions, including essential pollinators.
Providing evidence to show how human disease patterns correlate remarkably well with the rate of glyphosate usage on corn, soy and wheat crops, which has increased due to ‘Roundup Ready’ seeds, Mason argues that over-reliance on chemicals in agriculture is causing irreparable harm to all beings on the planet.
In 2015, writer Carol Van Strum said the US Environmental Protection Agency has been routinely lying about the safety of pesticides since it took over pesticide registrations in 1970.
She has described how faked data and fraudulent tests led to many highly toxic agrochemicals reaching the market and they still remain in use, regardless of the devastating impacts on wildlife and human health.
The research from Germany mentioned above followed a warning by a chief scientific adviser to the UK government, Prof Ian Boyd, who claimed that regulators around the world have falsely assumed that it is safe to use pesticides at industrial scales across landscapes and the “effects of dosing whole landscapes with chemicals have been largely ignored.”
Prior to that particular warning, there was a report delivered to the UN Human Rights Council saying that pesticides have catastrophic impacts on the environment, human health and society as a whole.
Authored by Hilal Elver, the then special rapporteur on the right to food, and Baskut Tuncak, who was at the time special rapporteur on toxics, the report states:
Chronic exposure to pesticides has been linked to cancer, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, hormone disruption, developmental disorders and sterility.”
Elver says that the power of the corporations over governments and the scientific community is extremely important: if you want to deal with pesticides, you have to deal with the companies which deny the damage inflicted by their chemicals as they continue to aggressively market their products
While these corporations falsely claim their products are essential for feeding a burgeoning global population, they also mouth platitudes about choice and democracy, while curtailing both as they infiltrate and subvert regulatory agencies and government machinery.
Whether it is the well-documented harm to the environment or tales of illness and disease in Latin America and elsewhere, the devastating impacts of chemical-intensive agriculture which the agribusiness-agritech corporations rollout is clear to see.
Corporate criminals
Post-1945 the nutritional value of what we eat has been depleted due to reliance on a narrower range of crops, the side-lining of traditional seeds which produced nutrient-dense plants and modern ‘cost-effective’ food-processing methods that strip out vital micronutrients and insert a cocktail of chemical additives.
Fuelling these trends has been a network of interests, including the Rockefeller Foundation and its acolytes in the US government, giant agribusiness conglomerates like Cargill, the financial-industrial complex and its globalisation agenda (which effectively further undermined localised, indigenous food systems) and the giant food corporations and the influential groups they fund, such as the International Life Sciences Institute.
Included here in this network is the agrochemical-agritech sector which promotes its proprietary chemicals and (genetically-engineered) seeds through a well-developed complex of scientists, politicians, journalists, lobbyists, PR companies and front groups.
Consider what Carey Gillam says:
US Roundup litigation began in 2015 after the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen. Internal Monsanto documents dating back decades show that the company was aware of scientific research linking its weed killer to cancer but instead of warning consumers, the company worked to suppress the information and manipulate scientific literature.”
Over the years, Monsanto mounted a deceitful defence of its health- and environment-damaging Roundup and its genetically engineered crops and orchestrated toxic smear campaigns against anyone – scientist or campaigner – who threatened its interests.
In 2016, Rosemary Mason wrote an open letter to European Chemicals Agency Executive Director Geert Dancet: Open Letter to the ECHA about Scientific Fraud and Ecocide. More of an in-depth report than a letter, it can be accessed on the academia.edu site.
In it, she explained how current EU legislation was originally set up to protect the pesticides industry and Monsanto and other agrochemical corporations helped the EU design the regulatory systems for their own products.
She also drew Dancet’s attention to the journal Critical Reviews in Toxicology and how, in 2016 Volume 46, Monsanto commissioned five reviews published in a supplement to the journal. Monsanto also funded them. Mason argues the aim was to cast serious doubts about the adverse effects of glyphosate by using junk science. Straight out of the Big Tobacco playbook.
Mason told Dancet:
CEO Hugh Grant and the US EPA knew that glyphosate caused all of these problems. The corporation concealed the carcinogenic effects of PCBs on humans and animals for seven years. They have no plans to protect you and your families from the tsunami of sickness that is affecting us all in the UK and the US.”
Meanwhile, on the US Right to Know site, the article Roundup Cancer Cases – Key Documents and Analysis sets out just why more than 100,000 cancer sufferers are attempting to hold Monsanto to account in US courts.
In a just (and sane) world, CEOs would be held personally responsible for the products they peddle and earn millions from. But no doubt they would do their utmost to dodge culpability.
After all, they were ‘just doing their job’ – and they would not want to feel harassed or burdened, would they?
Colin Todhunter specialises in development, food and agriculture and is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization in Montreal. You can read his “mini e-book”, Food, Dependency and Dispossession: Cultivating Resistance, here.The author receives no payment from any media outlet or organisation for his writing and relies on the generosity of readers. If you appreciated this article, please consider sending a few coins his way: [email protected]
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We should never have let our food supply fall into the hands of these criminals.Diet and health are intrinsically linked .They make money poisoning, both us and the planet. They make yet more money selling toxic pharmaceuticals to treat the chronic results of consuming their diabolical foods. Glyphosphate is now everywhere, in the water we drink and the air that we breath.So let’s now add in a little mRNA….
Why do we even have these Agencies?? EPA and the FDA. I sure would like to know what they do for their salaries. What humanity has done to this world in the name of progress is shameful.
Jobs for ‘the boys’ bluebird. I am reminded of the disturbing facts about Aspartame many years ago, when Rumsfeld “executed some of the worst decisions in American foreign policy and got a medal for it. I have been reading up on this strange chapter in the history of Donald Rumsfeld and have learned two things. One, the chemical additive aspartame is potentially a cancer and brain tumor-causing substance that has no place in our food. And two, the reasons and means by which Rumsfeld helped get it approved are nefarious at best, criminal at worst. And by the way, that medal that Rumsfeld got back in 2004 was the Presidential Medal of FREEDOM. Evidently, “Freedom” means the right to use your powerful friends in Washington to approve your company’s dangerous substance for human consumption and make a fat bonus on the way out the door. So how did aspartame become… Read more »
“Climate change” is such a deliberate distraction from the real problems: deforestation, resource depletion and air, water and soil pollution. From the 1970s to the 1990s, the environmental movement was gaining real traction and so the focus was quite deliberately shifted to GHG and the 2 degree target. Focusing on the most abstract and high level targets which are nothing more than mathematical models, removes attention from evaluating companies based on what they actually do and what harm they are causing through their immediate operations.
I guess all govern-mental employees and farmers failed fourth grade English and are completely illiterate. There are thousands of studies relating the realities of environmental damage from ANY use of petrochemical POISONS on soil and insects.
Need information? > > >
Stephanie Seneff
Stephanie Seneff’s Home Page (mit.edu)
Duh…
Another Clot Shot Casualty
Former Australian cricketer Ryan Campbell suffers heart attack at London playground (msn.com)
Our ability to produce our own food and the amount of inhabintants on this small island have always caused me concern. The ‘Canary in the Goldmine’ event for me was WW2 and the struggle to feed ourselves even with outside help. I sit open mouthed as vaste swathes of land are unused, but are kept viable for shooting season, and sit gobsmacked at how we’ve killed the fertility of our soils. Right up there in mans stupidity, and something which came to my attention as child, was an event in Canda in 1989. A carona ejection from the Sun caused a electrical failure in the Canadian grid. Here we sit, ever more dependant of electricity for our daily lives and not a single move has been made to address the situation. When it happens (and it will), what do people think is going to happen to the nuclear power stations,… Read more »
Nuclear power stations are immune to CME’s, you would be very thankful to have NPP’s if a disaster happened to the electrical grid so it can be restored as quickly as possible. Wind & Solar plants however would be decimated by CME’s and numerous other natural or manmade disasters. And fossil/biomass plants are very dependent on a vast supply network which is very vulnerable under natural or manmade disasters. If you want a resilient grid you want MORE NPPs not less. The fallacy that NPPs can’t be cooled after a grid power outage are being spread by Fear Porn artists.
Yeah, fear porn artists and the actual real life disasters that have occured at nuclear power plants after grid power outages. You make it seem like nuclear power is for and of the little guy, fighting against hoardes of well organised and funded deep green environmentalists, when really it’s military legacy technology with military level secrecy surrounding it but plagued by the usual nepotism and mishandling of events and funds that go hand in hand with private companies when they are wholly reliant on state subsidies to survive and profit. And we still have no clue as to what to do with the waste.
Bull. What “real life disaster” is that? Fukushima could have been averted with grid power but that was only because the idiots had their generators in the basement and an inadequate Tsunami wall. And didn’t bother keeping diesel pumps on hand which they couldn’t get due to the tsunami infrastructure damage. The more modern reactors further down the coast withstood a larger tsunami no problem. Now all Japanese reactors have diesel pumps (multiple fire trucks), backup diesels & fuel supplies above Tsunami height, large fresh water supplies(pools) and other improvements, like passive isotope filtering and hydrogen recombiners. It’s pretty simple-minded, no rocket science needed. And more modern GenIV & SMR designs are passive cooled, no pumps needed. And most countries with commercial nuclear power have no and never had any military nuclear program. Connecting military use of nuclear to commercial energy is no different than connecting oil, gas & coal… Read more »
+1
The green equivalent of masks, they want them as a constant visible remider to be afraid and self-hating: https://dumptheguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/19/scientists-urge-government-to-relax-englands-onshore-windfarm-rules “Scientists say” they could meet a gazillion times the energy demands of any area you care to mention… Well, visit the link provided and one finds ” if all of Europe’s capacity for onshore wind farms was realised, the installed nameplate capacity would 52.5 TW – equivalent to 1 MW for every 16 European citizens.” Even taking that claim at face value, there’s that weasel word “capacity” i.e. how much energy could be produced in optimal conditions… which seldom exist. As usual, there’s no quotation of the amount of energy actually produced. How much steel would be required to make these wind farms? Is this steel going to be grown on organic farms? How many rare earth minerals will be required by the magnets that generate the electricity? Doesn’t the wind… Read more »
Very true but it’s much worse than that. The problem with wind & solar is because they are intermittent & seasonal they require a mirroring fossil/biomass/nuclear/hydro energy source that supplies almost 100% of grid demand during the wind/solar lulls, which often occur when grid demand is highest, i.e. large stable high pressure cell in the winter. So the best wind & solar can do is theoretically replace some fuel when they are operating. But fuel cost is only about 1/10th the electricity price you pay. Most of the rest is grid costs. So to have that meager fuel savings you essentially have to have two parallel grids operational at all times. To add misery to madness induced cycling and economic inefficiencies in the buffering fossil/nuclear generators mean in reality negligible fuel is actually saved by the wind & solar. Even if the Wind Turbines or Solar Panels were free they… Read more »
As fertiliser and fuel is now being cut off to what’s left of smaller farmers and means of getting produce to point of sale also looks in jeopardy, I suspect we have far more to worry about soon…the concerted effort to reduce the world population looks to be advance well…perhaps this will actually help the birds and insects…so all is not lost.
Scientists release video of invading ‘virus’. Multiple “shots” and “booster shots” ineffective…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYFr3UyVpRA
Researchers explain the reason for Nudge Unit’s Fear Campaign effectiveness.
And it’s what many suspected…
Hello les online: I think “Forbidden Planet” was meant as a warning. I saw the film shortly after its release, and never forgot the message. The human ID is a twisted bastard and needs to be checked at every turn. Look at the organized filth most people find acceptable
Too bad most people don’t even know what the ID is…
Graphene and the Immune System
Graphene Oxide Interactions with Innate Immune Cells… – YouTube
On Foreign Policy: No More Interventionism, Let’s Rebuild America A single AGM anti-radiation missile costs $6.14 million. Think about that for a minute, that is enough money to purchase roughly 200 tiny homes. We could eliminate homelessness in America if we were as determined to eradicate poverty as we are to bomb and occupy countries throughout the world. We have enough problems in America, we should focus our attention on our crumbling infrastructure, tending to the record number of homeless people teeming in towns and a mind-boggling wealth gap that has turned the American dream into a waking nightmare for the working class, middle class and small businesses. Consider this horrific yet avoidable fact, every 72 minutes, a veteran commits suicide in America. This is a direct result of our government’s infatuation with wars of choice. We send our bravest overseas to be broken by wars only to neglect them when they return… Read more »
Will Russia Dump the WHO ? – Edward Slavsquat.
The Pandemic Treaty “A direct threat to our national sovereignty.”
https://edwardslavsquat.substack.com/p/will-russia-dump-the-who
ivm is a scam
If people won’t wake up and stop this we will have serious consequences not too far into the future.
We’re in the midst of the serious consequences..
It’s too late for that. The indoctrination and cognitive dissonance of the masses are too strong. I’m afraid for the future. Very afraid. We’ve been conditioned since birth so most of us will blindly follow and are doing so. Educated friends of mine have swallowed the bait hook line and sinker.
Brilliant article. Thanks Colin.
(1) Everyone should listen to Vandana Shiva’s interview on The Defender podcast with RFK Jr. about the future of food. It is terrifying (though not a grim listen because “Bobby” and Vandana have such a nice, funny, back and forth)
(2) The usually hopeless city council in my city recently voted to stop spraying for mosquitos in summer. What was shocking was the public outrage. But they don’t LIKE mosquitos!!!!! Boy were the council members going to be sorry when people’s picnics are ruined and they vote them out of office. etc. etc. etc. Big Agrochem is an evil beast but it’s not always up against the little guy. My neighbor uses roundup on his lawn just to keep it immaculate in summer. He’s not a farmer being leaned on by Monsanto. People have strange priorities.
It’s mass brainwashing. He watches tv and sees a hundred thousand images of a manicured lawn, sees his neighbor mowing the lawn, and watched his dad mowing the lawn. He is now mimicking what has been shown to him as imagery of “success”. People are so dumb, obedient and unimaginative. I hope the boosters kick in soon.
Not only that, but the very things people try so desperately to get rid of in their lawns are the very things that are beneficial – and would especially be so should food become scarce.
Only grazing animals can properly process grasses; whereas many weeds are edible and digestible to humans. Dandelions, to mention just one. They’re beautiful flowers and could sustain someone for quite a while; but no, they must go so that lawns can assume that nice artificial look.
All that when these fools could simply go out and by astro-turf. Not fuss, no muss.
I wish I could post a pic of my “lawn”, full of stinging bees and a source of very tasty salads BTW
I watch these corrupt news channels I listen to what’s going on.90% of the population in the west have gone insane because of these insane news and Tv shows.They want destabilised peoples to go to Africa?They are sending missiles to prolong the war?Its absolutely insane and if I was God I’d drop a asteroid on all the government’s in the west because this is insane.Convid ,Ukraine ,Fuel prices,Food prices?!?Something has to give.
Sometimes stand back and take a good look at how insane these people have corrupted the world 😬
Hello Annie: If I were God, I’d be embarrassed of my moral ineptitude and intellectual incompetence.
FYI: The link to Monsanto’s rebuttal to Silent Spring. I have never seen it till today. Interesting that it was done the way it was. Not very professional. Also interesting that none of my professors in my college brought it up. As an environmental biology major, we heard all about Rachel and the devastating effects of DDT but nothing about Monsanto’s effort to defend itself. Not that I am taking sides. I fully believe that herbicides have a place. Just like some drugs are needed from Big Pharma. We need to keep our distance from extremism.
https://ia803407.us.archive.org/24/items/monsanto-magazine-1962-the-desolate-year/monsanto-magazine-1962-the-desolate-year_text.pdf
Also no mention of the millions of African children who died of malaria because DDT was banned.
Polio has been linked to the use (over-use?) of DDT after the second world war.
https://rodneydodson000.medium.com/what-you-didnt-know-about-polio-26d20cba98e5
Ah yes, when all other arguments fail, call in the African children to shill for something from big Ag.
It’s been known for a very long time (by the Africans) that hydroxychloroquine is the ideal treatment for Malaria – even better than DDT!
So when all other arguments fail, call in the birds to shill for something from big PHARMA. Hydroxychloroquine is so effective that 1 million people die of malaria every year. We have known how to prevent malaria for over 100 years. Anyone interested can read about the building of the Panama Canal and the measures taken to prevent malaria. The bottom line is that Rachel Carson and her followers chose birds over people – certainly not a choice any real leftist, from Fidel Castro to the leaders of the Soviet Union would make.
If turned into a script for a movie, the movie would truly compete with “Contagion” for Shock & Awe value. Jason Bourne would be ideal to play the lead character, The Scientist, who battles Organised Skepticism so that The Truth triumphs.
When Carson’s book came out, in September ’62 (i was a high school sophomore), it was roundly condemned by most of the “scientists” of the day. “Follow the science.” 😀 Follow the $.
I started high school in 70. Pollution was rampant. Temperature inversions were not uncommon in the 60s when the the conditions were right. Caustic eye watering cough inducing blue haze would hang in the air for days at a time. The EPA was created in 70. The high school biology teacher was offering up Silent Spring as supplementary reading after summarizing it’s contents in a lecture. He wasn’t fooled by the propaganda and made sure we would not be either. 27 years before my dad joined the navy. Everyone who could, enlisted for the war. DDT dusting was standard to kill body lice, he told us. In the 60s Mosquito Abatement fogged the neighborhoods regularly with some kind of adulticide (presumably DDT). It was always done as the sun was setting. We stayed outside and played as the fogging truck drove by. By morning dead insects of all kinds were… Read more »
The poisoning of the land is not the fault of the manufacturers. Assholes in suits are not the same flavor as the assholes who apply the poisons to agricultural soils… Farmers don’t give a shit about the environment. Obviously… There have been thousands of studies detailing the destruction of soils and Natural habitat as a result of modern agricultural “habits”. Let’s blame the Devil, or perhaps some other invisible enemy. > The Reshaping of Global Agriculture: The WEF Agenda Behind India’s Modi Government’s “Farm Reform” By F. William Engdahl Global Research, February 16, 2021 Excerpt: “The central role of the Gates-Rockefeller AGRA in the UN 2021 Food Systems Summit, the major role of the WEF in the world “food systems” reset, and the pressures in recent months on the Modi government to implement the same corporate agenda in India as in Africa, are all no accident. It sets the… Read more »
I beg to differ about farmers. Got to know a few personally in college and at work. One of my bosses grew up on a farm. Another associate was a farm advisor in a nearby county. They care about their land. It is the corporate farmer that does not care. Number one goal is to keep the soil in place for a family farmer. Drainage was and is the second problem. They need to remove the tiles and fill the drainage ditches and focus on what is left that can still be farmed. The abuse of chemicals would be third. Crop selection would be next. Simple things like growing what the land is best suited for and not growing crops to make alcohol for our cars. Corporate farms are responsible for driving up crop production and driving down grain prices. Family farmers are forced to increase yields through artificial means… Read more »
Hello Hemlockfen: No need to apologize. Most of what you say about traditional family farms is true. I live in a large agricultural area and have taken note of the hundreds of family farms that were driven into the ground by the incorporation of local banking into large bank conglomerates. This trend began in the late 1950’s.
Lending policies of local orientated banks was soon swapped into a completely mercenary approach. Many farms went bankrupt and now contain abandon out buildings and fallow land. The State sits on land titles in order to cook the books on State bond valuations… Local Co-op farming is dead…
It’s a disgrace and there is no turning back until corporate based agricultural systems are revoked.
Horseshit. I grew up in Wisconsin on and near farms. The farmers around us dumped all their waste, oil, old equipment and garbage in the nearest ravine from the 1800’s to the 1960’s. They poured waste oil, gas and herbicide on the ground to avoid the least bit of hassle. The only thing that saved their bacon was an abundance of space and paucity of population and chemicals. They didn’t plow along the contour and all of the soil ended up in the streams. They tore up the prairie and the first bad drought created the dustbowl. People are greedy slobs, and corporations are mechanized greedy slobs. If this world population behaved like the relatively free people of 1950 we’d be awash in filth and pollution of all sorts, and starving to death. What will come will come.
Don’t disagree. But then they paid the price and learned. The key word is some. I have seen the ravines filled with trash adjacent to the local rivers with easy access from roads. I would bet that much if not most of that trash is dumped by fly dumpers at night. People who live in the towns, that is. Young unscrupulous haul away guys who save cash that way. But not entirely. The farmers used the woods too. Some people are just plain slobs not matter where they live. I drove a garbage truck as summer job. One of my routes was through a farm community which skirted the developments. Proud people with pretty farms. Neat and clean. Well kept. Centennial Farm signs posted out front. A few slobs hear and there. There was an idiot with 5 acres of tires piled 20 feet high. He later sold the tires… Read more »
Sweeping generalizations, eh …
Wisconsin? That’s in the US of As, right? Why would your farmers be any different from the rest of you?
Of course they don’t give a shit about the earth. Of course they’re greedy slobs hoping to slob off the nearest greedy slob above them.
Damn it, Habit … it’s not farmers, it’s the US of As.
Luckily, there are many places in this enormous, generous biosphere where farmers have cherished their land for generations.
‘Course, as you greedy slobs get your claws deeper and deeper in to the land you have yet to destroy and insert your model of “happiness”, all of it will become as you say.
Thanks for all the exceptional decades you folk have gifted humanity.
Who is generalizing?
Most of those greedy Americans with no respect for their land immigrated from Europe. My great grandfather farmed in Chicago before it was developed.
Come on. Have another drink. I am going to start myself pretty soon.
It is true: Farmers don’t give a shit. I just asked the farmer who was planting his gmo corn and spraying about alternatives and he went ballistic. I also caught him harvesting some of our timber without permission and skimping on application of manure. Most farmers are just thinking about 10 minutes from now. Not the old Norwegian farmer who milked his own cows on the other side of our farm. But he’s long dead.
I drive by farms that are still in production, and wonder why the asshole that owns it needs 1000 acers of soybeans and 500 cattle to feed a family of four… It’s all bullshit, and those who live in cities love the flavor…
Ummmm…..college tuition, tractor payments, car payments, fuel, clothing, Ummmmmmm.
My young next door neighbor thinks we should divide the land up and give everyone a piece.
Are you implying that we do that?
Yes. There are vacant and non-productive lands all over the planet. Governments and militaries own and control hundreds of thousands of hectors. These lands should be confiscated and subdivided into 20-acre parcels and granted to worthy civilians as unencumbered properties for their usage as private homesteads. The only stipulations would be that these homesteads could not be subdivided or sold as commercial investments, in perpetuity… Also, these new owners must intelligently maintain and utilize the property for their private use. Land used as a for-profit venture is plainly criminal and stupid. The species needs a huge reset. Crowding people into cities of cracker box apartments and “flats” is a cruel and insane process. The notion that food is a commodity rather than a necessity, is also an insanity. None of what I suggest will ever come to pass, as civilians have become engorged zombies – living in zombie hell holes.… Read more »
Sounds like you are hoping……. What are you hoping for? I drift that way too sometimes (then I make myself a drink and come back to reality). More often when I was younger. It won’t work. You know it won’t. Pie-in-the-sky. It did during early post glaciation. It won’t any more. The sky is not falling. The emperor has no clothes. We cannot stop climate change. Just because you can does not mean you should.
I repeat this often. Just not much lately.
Heh, heh… I tried positive thinking, but I knew it wouldn’t work…
Cheers!
this ‘farmer’ works for the bank
You guys worry too much!
Don’t you know that we’ve millions of experts with PhD’s and their aspiring slaves (also wanting a PhD!) working on new tech and making SCIENCE (as I type) in order to create a wonderful and awesome Future for us all?!
We just need to relax, keep slaving as we’ve been till today, from time to time to a little useless street protest, sign a petition, vote for the same scoundrels and terrorist is this lovely fraud called “representative democracy”… and in the end all will be fine.
Oh, well that’s all right then! … 🙂
Of course it is!
The only changes that happened in the last 60 years were the only the Chemical/Pharma Complex wanted to do. And they only did those changes because it would reduce cost or/and boost profits. None of the changes they’ve made were done because they “cared about uman health”.
Just look at the history of Bayer and Pfizer…
For us it’s always alright. Our slavery daily existence leaves no room for engaging in CHANGING big sub-systems.
We are intentionally being poisoned by chemically laced air, franken food, poisoned water, toxic “treatments,” “medicine,” and “life saving vaccines.” And the masses think that “THEY” (The Hierarchy Enslaving You)/ this illegitimate “government”/ cares about the masses and wants to share “THEIR” “life saving” and “safe” concoctions for us to “protect” us from one another as if we are born “infectious, biological weapons.” We are being sickened, weakened, and led to our demise by WAR CHEMICALS and NOT by the LIE/SCAM/HOAX of “germ theory.” When you realize and INNERstand this massively dangerous LIE, everything makes sense. When the body becomes too toxic, cells will conspire to cleanse themselves by manufacturing specific non-living solvents know as viruses, which break down and disassemble those substances into particles to be expelled out through the skin, mucus, and bowels. Never, ever do we need more POISON to treat our poisoned body. No pharm product is helpful… Read more »
It’s not diabolical… It’s just the Secular Ruling Families & Billionaires doing what they consider its BEST for them.
We (the herds of MMS/3i’s) are clearly happy with the way things are.
It’s diabolical and all by design. Culling and disabling people via the use of poison and electromagnetic frequency by tricking people to consent to it is not benevolent.
While I’m on-board about pesticides in general and glyphosate in particular I am starting to find the focus on this at the expense of other sources of toxicity more than a bit fishy. Electromagnetic poisoning seems particularly ignored despite the evidence of its enormous harm: 1) Birds – British urban house sparrow populations fell 75% 1994-2002 when mobile telephones were rolled out. Five years later that had increased to 90% and was repeated in cities across Europe. Greek researchers Magras and Xenos exposed quail eggs to radiation from radio transmitters – 3/4s of the embryos died. Exposure to other types of microwave radiation was also highly damaging. Canadian researchers in the 1960s found while feathered birds showed acute distress near microwave radiation, plucked birds were unaffected. It seems feathers may act as aerials. There is also widespread evidence too voluminous to mention that migatory birds are increasingly disorientated by our… Read more »
+10 points. The measured silence of the telecom owned media, will soon be followed by the silence of every life form on the planet. Humans have become electromagnetic idiots.
Underated comment! Everyone needs to read Robert O. Becker’s books (cross currents and the body electric) to really understand what is being done to us all. Terrifying and enraging.
Agreed the abuse is not restricted to one area, it is also worth remembering the limitations of what we know and indeed what is even knowable. The challenges are not made any easier by the deliberate suppression of inconvenient evidence. The Control of Oil. The Energy/Exchange Cartel. (Who Shot JR?)Agrochemicals are a huge subsidiary of the oil business as is Big Pharma. EMFs are more within the purview of the military-industrial complex, and is a seperate front in the same war.. democracy is finished’. By ‘democracy’, of course, he meant private capitalism. The Lion and the Unicorn , George Orwell , With one mans dystopia being another’s Utopia, I was struck by the absurdity of all of this earlier reflecting on what Orwell says in The Lion and Unicorn, that the reason English armies do not goosestep is that the common Englishman would simply laugh at the spectacle. Ridicule and… Read more »
Well put and on point, Having invested 24yrs in an attempt at very small scale (approx 1 hectare) susbsistence farming in south west uk it is becoming increasingly obvious that very little “thrives” as it once did. In 1998 in the non-urban uk mobiles were still in the most analog, “cloning” (no doubt part of the con) soon saw “digital” mobiles in everyday use. I have moved once in the 24yrs, where i live now sits under the “shadow” of a nearby telephone mast, that said my ground does not have hardly any signal, either mobile phone or mobile internet. Slow insidious changes often go unnoticed, the number of songbirds and carrion, insects and to a lesser degree slugs and snails is perhaps 30% of what it once was, there has been an intensity over the last, say 4yrs, no doubt increase of “g” combined with the die off. My… Read more »
+1
Human civilization simply lacks the backbone to name names and prosecute the half-wits who think their latest ‘good idea for company profits’ bears no obligation to protect life outside their bubble of ignorance. Nobody dares to stop them. They are a pernicious, parasitic fashion, based on the narcissistic idea that “If I don’t live my life as if greed was a good thing, then somebody else will step into my shoes and do it for me.” Pfizer, Monstanto, Bayer, Bill and Melinda, Schwab, Fauci, Ferguson, Johnson and the rest – these are only the scary headline names, helping us to avoid the crucial issue of “HOW DO WE STOP THIS?” Sitting there reading those headlines is doing nothing to prevent things getting twice as bad tomorrow. Where are the people who are serious about putting an end to our serial poisoners? A little anecdote: In the lead-up to the 2008… Read more »
It’s staggering that new chemicals are considered safe until proven dangerous – and then the testing on them is conducted by the companies that manufacture them.
They’d like the same to apply to pharmaceuticals which was one part of the convid agenda.
The FUN part is that testing a chemical by itself means very little… The FUN stuff happens when 2 different chemicals interact with each other and the result is a new toxic chem.
And for this type of interactions there are even less studies than for the single chem alone!
So we’re on a good path… At least we’re good at inventing new chems. We invent the ones that cause us cancer and then we invent chem to “treat” us from those!
Full circle of intoxication! This is what Intelligence looks like…
Also testing is just statistical data on the entire range of test subjects. It tells you little about the effect on each single animal/person.
Pfizer, Monstanto, Bayer, Bill and Melinda, Schwab, Fauci, Ferguson, Johnson and the rest – these are only the scary headline names, helping us to avoid the crucial issue of “HOW DO WE STOP THIS?”
I’ve been saying this since the early start of OPERATION COVIDIUS (even before but that’s another thing!) the only way to stop this is by engaging in Jedburgh’s actions!
If one executes one…
Understandably, one isn’t looking forward to such a scenario.
Primarily because the French Revolution taught us that what follows isn’t particularly edifying either…
Still, one’s decisions have consequences, and Fauci might as well learn that, like any of the other humanoids I have named.
It is, however, beyond my remit to control what happens to them… I don’t know who has that power today – if anyone – since I can’t think of a single establishment institution which has not been infiltrated and turned to crap.
Perhaps, as someone said here recently, we’re really doomed…
Fauci in a trial… Did you hit your head?!
You gotta help me out here.
I’m not going to fly over there and just shoot him.
Trial is the only positive outcome I could conceive of in my wildest dreams, but I am certainly not the tiniest bit more optimistic than you are about the likelihood of that happening… 🙁
Perhaps you should have borne out the part about the “bore it out” children. Otherwise you might ruffle a few feathers of those who maintain You Can’t Have Too Many People.
Good point. It just struck me as typically blunt and humorous of an Icelander to suggest physically carting prominent criminal politicians out of their homes and offices… I like it. Of course the appalling hardships and tragedies of Icelanders in their historic context are nothing to laugh about. There’s even a folk song about ‘bearing out’, which is quite spine-chilling… Until the technique of harnessing thermal springs was mastered, pretty well nobody got rich here, and a person’s wealth was measured in sheep. In fact even now we have a situation where the word, “fé” (related to ‘fee’) is used both for money and for sheep… But things have changed: Now some families have founded little dynasties, own large tracts of land, and act like J.R. in “Dallas”, doing whatever the hell they like. That’s why the banking crash hit Iceland so badly. As in other places, corrupt free-market capitalism… Read more »
And then there’s the added irony that many of the “weeds” these chemicals are used to destroy are as valuable as, if not more valuable than, the foods agribusiness is attempting to grow.
Weeds grow so prolifically because they’re native to the soil, as opposed to the often imported crops agribusiness finds so profitable. Food crops that are native to the local environment generally require no added protection from the growers.
We humans do seem to have a propensity for vicious circles, don’t we?
Can you please add the bit at the end of the article that you have not included?
Do the admins read these comments???
Deutsche Bank were the lucky recipients of billions in sub-prime mortgage debt after the US banks realised they were holding a time bomb, it looks like the Germans (Bayer) are the recipient of another liability time bomb courtesy of the US Corporate fascist state, this is how joined up government works.
It is only since it was sold to Bayer that the real attacks in the media and massive legal victories started against Monsanto. It’s just another looting of Bayer, a European giant to be robbed by the US corporate fascist state. BP, VW, RBS……etc.
Bayer, also known as IG Farben. Pardon me if I don’t shed too many tears.
and what did IG Farben do orthus?
Produced chlorine gas as a weapon in WW1?
My thoughts exactly.