1. “GMO Scandal: The Long Term Effects of Genetically Modified Food on Humans
Scientific Tests Must Be Approved by Industry First
An editorial in the respected American scientific monthly magazine, Scientific American, August 2009 reveals the shocking and alarming reality behind the proliferation of GMO products throughout the food chain of the planet since 1994. There are no independent scientific studies published in any reputed scientific journal in the world for one simple reason. It is impossible to independently verify that GMO crops such as Monsanto Roundup Ready Soybeans or MON8110 GMO maize perform as the company claims, or that, as the company also claims, that they have no harmful side effects because the GMO companies forbid such tests!
That’s right. As a precondition to buy seeds, either to plant for crops or to use in research study, Monsanto and the gene giant companies must first sign an End User Agreement with the company. For the past decade, the period when the greatest proliferation of GMO seeds in agriculture has taken place, Monsanto, Pioneer (DuPont) and Syngenta require anyone buying their GMO seeds to sign an agreement that explicitly forbids that the seeds be used for any independent research. Scientists are prohibited from testing a seed to explore under what conditions it flourishes or even fails. They cannot compare any characteristics of the GMO seed with any other GMO or non-GMO seeds from another company. Most alarming, they are prohibited from examining whether the genetically modified crops lead to unintended side-effects either in the environment or in animals or humans.
The only research which is permitted to be published in reputable scientific peer-reviewed journals are studies which have been pre-approved by Monsanto and the other industry GMO firms.”
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14570
2. “Practicalities v. principles: the prime Beltway affliction
Garden-variety political questions — what should be the highest tax rate? what kind of health care policy should the government adopt? to what extent should the government regulate private industry? — are ones intended to be driven by “the practical considerations policymakers must contend with.” But questions about our basic liberties and core premises of our government — presidential adherence to the law, providing due process before sticking people in cages, spying on Americans only with probable cause search warrants, treating all citizens including high political officials equally under the law — are supposed to be immune from such “practical” and ephemeral influences. Those principles, by definition, prevail in undiluted form regardless of public opinion and regardless of the ”practical” needs of political officials. That should not be controversial; that is the central republican premise for how our political system was designed.
But the mentality reflected by Massing’s view — there are no “principles”; everything must give way to “practical considerations” of Washington officials — is precisely what has become so rampant and is what accounts for most of the lawlessness and corruption in our political class. Instead of “the President shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” we have: “Presidents should try to obey the law except when they decree there are good reasons to violate it.” Instead of ”in America the law is king,” we have: “we can only apply the law when it won’t undermine bipartisanship.” Instead of ”treaties shall be the supreme Law of the Land,” we have: “we can’t have torture prosecutions because they’ll distract from health care.” To “no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause” and “No person shall be . . . deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” we have added: ”unless there are Terrorists who want to harm us, in which case we spy without warrants and imprison people for life without charges.”
The standard Beltway mindset doesn’t recognize principles or the validity of Constitutional guarantees. People who believe in those things — who takes them seriously and think they should be applied independent of “practicalities” – are naive extremists and ideologues. But just read what those Constitutional provisions say: it’s not possible to believe in them without being what Joe Klein derisively called a “civil liberties extremist.” Constitutional guarantees and principles are, by their nature, extremist and absolute.
Relatedly, the Beltway mindset also don’t recognize political controversies where only one side — not two — is right or is speaking factually. There are many political disputes where there are two or more reasonable sides and where solutions can legitimately be shaped by political compromise and “practical considerations” — by putting Arlen Specter and Susan Collins in a room with Ben Nelson and Olympia Snowe and arbitrarily dividing everything in the middle in order to attract bipartisan and “centrist” support. But not all political questions are supposed to be resolved by that sort of randomly compromising horse-trading. Yet the Washington mindset doesn’t recognize any other type of political question; they think that all political matters, including ones grounded in Constitutional guarantees and the rule of law, must be subjected to that process of dilution.
…
Dispensing with core Constitutional principles in the name of “practical considerations” — and treating ludicrous, bad faith claims with respect — creates a facade of reasonableness. But there’s nothing reasonable about it. It’s intellectually barren and, worse, is the prime enabler for why our political leaders stray so far and so frequently from those principles. It’s why they break the law with impunity and know they can. The Bill of Rights and the rule of law aren’t like modifications to the tax code or compromises over the stimulus package. They’re in a fundamentally different category. The failure to recognize that category is a defining attribute of the Beltway sickness and is a prime reason why Washington so frequently degrades and destroys whatever it touches.”
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/
