Trofim Lysenko was a Soviet fraud whose bogus science led to the deaths of millions. How can a fraud lead to the death of millions? When the fraud has state backing. Lysenko worked in agricultural sciences, and his work is one of those events in history where people stand back and wonder "how could that have happened?' Well it happens when the power of the state is lent to an idea or person. This point is missed in the Wikipedia entry on Lysenko, which rather praises him.
Lysenko's theories were extended into China, which led to a most horrible famine. The Wall Street Journal has an article on a Chinese author who writes of this.
It may seem outrageous to compare Lysenko with Monsanto, since Monsanto actually increases yield and lowers the cost of food, such as it is, to consumers. But Lysenko had some successes too. That is not the area of clear and present danger. Like Lysenkoism, Monsanto is heavily subsidized in research, finance and distribution; alternatives to its products face state-backed violence if they manifest. For example, Monsanto grain fed dairy cows provide milk that is suspicious, while at the same time the law makes raw milk from grass fed beef both illegal and imagined, by school book control, dangerous. Amish get jailed for selling it.
The US Supreme Court recently wrote a Monsanto-specific ruling which makes FrankenFoods the model of agriculture for the land. Few people understand that all foods are redesigned in some way by hybridization, something quite benign. Monsanto effects genetic engineering, something quite uncertain. The game is to genetically engineer say a vegetable whose DNA survives the chemical make-up of the extremely noxious Monsanto product Round-up pesticide. Not only are you obliged to use the Monsanto grain to yield enough to make enough margin to sell your corn to ADM, you must use Monsanto pesticides to make it all work. The list of privations from this strategy is amazing for so narrow a field of endeavor.
Here is where the Supreme Court made Monsanto master: even small farm veggie growers must meet pre-planting to "pin" crops. Farmers get together and agree as to what will be planted where for wind patterns and bees being what they are, it is very possible for the pollen from one kind of carrot to cross onto another, and the crop yield that season be at variance from what was planted. Well, when Monsanto DNA shows up in your carrots, you are a criminal for what the winds and bees wrought.
Gregor Mendel explained the benign hybridization and Lysenko took it way too far: if you chill seeds at the beginning of a season, they will grow in cold climes. And all subsequent seeds will do so as well. Never mind that the chilled seeds benefit did not happen. Stalin backed Lysenko, millions died. Then in China too.
Banking gets into the act by lending at low enough subsidized levels to small farmers to assure at some point they will make a calculation error and lose their farms. Monsanto wins the land for its product eventually.
We are being set up with Monsanto. There is no science one way or another regarding the dangers of frankenfoods. so far it does not look good, but there is plenty to be studied. The anti-gmo crowd looks to the state to be the arbiter of what is allowed or not allowed, the referee on what science will be funded. What they are missing is Monsanto and the State are one, unto the Supreme Court. Even if science were to prove Monsanto products were perfectly benign, the state backed preferences and resultant domination of Monsanto crowds out competition and gives a tiny group around Monsanto the power to direct USA's food, like the Communist parties had, to the starvation of millions. The problem ain't the genetic engineering, bogus or not. It is the power concentrated in too few hands. The problem wasn't Lysenko-ism, the problem was no one could get away from it.
And there is more: criticism of ag products is trending toward criminalization. Oprah got nailed for criticizing hamburger, but she could afford to beat the beef growers.
Am I saying that Monsanto is organized around an evil plot to starve millions? No, I am saying like the communist parties, capitalists are quite capable of concentrating so much power in so few hands that mass starvation can result for lack of alternatives, should this tiny cabal make an error, like Stalin's and Mao's crew did. I am saying that government satraps can and do target political opponents with what tools they have at hand: today the IRS, tomorrow the food supply. In fact, congress recently gave the FDA and USDA new powers to positively secure the food supply chain. It will be up to clerks to decide what is good or not. And dissent will be met with IRS selectivity, and the concomitant deniability. We'll see more public servants pleading the fifth.
Congress will not overturn the Supreme Court ruling. Science will no longer matter in the debate, one way or another. No one needs to act, because the activists who are anti-gmo look to the government, which is captured by Monsanto, to solve the problem. Literally, no one needs to act, Monsanto already has won for their critics will not withdraw their consent to be governed.
Our job now is to keep the family farm alive by patronizing its products. And chew your food.
Update: Goodness gracious! How far China has come since the great famine. They recently destroyed two shipments of GMO corn from USA for lack of safety clearance.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
Lysenko's theories were extended into China, which led to a most horrible famine. The Wall Street Journal has an article on a Chinese author who writes of this.
So it was in 1958 as Mao initiated his Great Leap Forward, demanding huge increases in grain and steel production. Peasants were forced to work intolerable hours to meet impossible grain quotas, often employing disastrous agricultural methods inspired by the quack Soviet agronomist Trofim Lysenko. The grain that was produced was shipped to the cities, and even exported abroad, with no allowances made to feed the peasants adequately. Starving peasants were prevented from fleeing their districts to find food. Cannibalism, including parents eating their own children, became commonplace.Monsanto is USA's Lysenko experiment.
It may seem outrageous to compare Lysenko with Monsanto, since Monsanto actually increases yield and lowers the cost of food, such as it is, to consumers. But Lysenko had some successes too. That is not the area of clear and present danger. Like Lysenkoism, Monsanto is heavily subsidized in research, finance and distribution; alternatives to its products face state-backed violence if they manifest. For example, Monsanto grain fed dairy cows provide milk that is suspicious, while at the same time the law makes raw milk from grass fed beef both illegal and imagined, by school book control, dangerous. Amish get jailed for selling it.
The US Supreme Court recently wrote a Monsanto-specific ruling which makes FrankenFoods the model of agriculture for the land. Few people understand that all foods are redesigned in some way by hybridization, something quite benign. Monsanto effects genetic engineering, something quite uncertain. The game is to genetically engineer say a vegetable whose DNA survives the chemical make-up of the extremely noxious Monsanto product Round-up pesticide. Not only are you obliged to use the Monsanto grain to yield enough to make enough margin to sell your corn to ADM, you must use Monsanto pesticides to make it all work. The list of privations from this strategy is amazing for so narrow a field of endeavor.
Here is where the Supreme Court made Monsanto master: even small farm veggie growers must meet pre-planting to "pin" crops. Farmers get together and agree as to what will be planted where for wind patterns and bees being what they are, it is very possible for the pollen from one kind of carrot to cross onto another, and the crop yield that season be at variance from what was planted. Well, when Monsanto DNA shows up in your carrots, you are a criminal for what the winds and bees wrought.
Gregor Mendel explained the benign hybridization and Lysenko took it way too far: if you chill seeds at the beginning of a season, they will grow in cold climes. And all subsequent seeds will do so as well. Never mind that the chilled seeds benefit did not happen. Stalin backed Lysenko, millions died. Then in China too.
Banking gets into the act by lending at low enough subsidized levels to small farmers to assure at some point they will make a calculation error and lose their farms. Monsanto wins the land for its product eventually.
We are being set up with Monsanto. There is no science one way or another regarding the dangers of frankenfoods. so far it does not look good, but there is plenty to be studied. The anti-gmo crowd looks to the state to be the arbiter of what is allowed or not allowed, the referee on what science will be funded. What they are missing is Monsanto and the State are one, unto the Supreme Court. Even if science were to prove Monsanto products were perfectly benign, the state backed preferences and resultant domination of Monsanto crowds out competition and gives a tiny group around Monsanto the power to direct USA's food, like the Communist parties had, to the starvation of millions. The problem ain't the genetic engineering, bogus or not. It is the power concentrated in too few hands. The problem wasn't Lysenko-ism, the problem was no one could get away from it.
And there is more: criticism of ag products is trending toward criminalization. Oprah got nailed for criticizing hamburger, but she could afford to beat the beef growers.
Am I saying that Monsanto is organized around an evil plot to starve millions? No, I am saying like the communist parties, capitalists are quite capable of concentrating so much power in so few hands that mass starvation can result for lack of alternatives, should this tiny cabal make an error, like Stalin's and Mao's crew did. I am saying that government satraps can and do target political opponents with what tools they have at hand: today the IRS, tomorrow the food supply. In fact, congress recently gave the FDA and USDA new powers to positively secure the food supply chain. It will be up to clerks to decide what is good or not. And dissent will be met with IRS selectivity, and the concomitant deniability. We'll see more public servants pleading the fifth.
Congress will not overturn the Supreme Court ruling. Science will no longer matter in the debate, one way or another. No one needs to act, because the activists who are anti-gmo look to the government, which is captured by Monsanto, to solve the problem. Literally, no one needs to act, Monsanto already has won for their critics will not withdraw their consent to be governed.
Our job now is to keep the family farm alive by patronizing its products. And chew your food.
Update: Goodness gracious! How far China has come since the great famine. They recently destroyed two shipments of GMO corn from USA for lack of safety clearance.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
1 comments:
i had proof of the toxicity of monsantos produce 30 years ago, experiments done in europe & severely suppressed with researchers prosecuted, monsanto airplane seeding sensitive areas with their destructive seeds and buying all the seed companies they can and destroying others by planting their crops near uncontaminated producers (see Adaptive seeds, Sweet Home OR and Fedco seeds Waterville ME etc) sooo please save organic non-hybrid seed, vacuum packed in your deep freezer so when they destroy our food and everything else we can start over (also learn about how nutitious and tasty our wonderful 'weeds' are!)
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