May 29, 2013

May 29, 2013. There’s a war going on for control of the world’s food supply. And one side took to the streets on Saturday to show their strength in the face of numerous recent defeats. 700 demonstrators came out in Chicago, 800 in Orlando, and an eye-popping 6,000 marched in Portland. In cities across the globe, regular people came out by the millions to demand an end to the corruption of the world’s food by corporations like Monsanto.

On one side are chemical giants like Monsanto Corp, paid government officials, and for-profit media outlets. On the other side of the fight are parents, farmers, nutritionists, environmentalists, independent media outlets, and the millions of outraged protesters who demonstrated in hundreds of cities around the world Saturday.

How the March against Monsanto will change the world

That was the title of the pre-march post on the website March-Against-Monsanto.com. ‘The March Against Monsanto was started by a handful of millennials with a passion for change, a passion that we all have within us,’ Nick Bernabe, one of the march’s organizers wrote, ‘Many people make the mistake of looking for someone to make change for them when the real change in this world comes from within.’

Showing just how successful the worldwide protest has been, Bernabe detailed the event’s wildly popular support leading up to the multi-country, multi-city marches. ‘The March Against Monsanto has grown beyond my wildest dreams; a few months ago it was just an idea,’ he explained a few days before the global protest, ‘It has grown into a full blown movement and the people that started it wouldn’t be able to stop if they wanted.’

Tami Canal, another of the original March Against Monsanto organizers, was quoted by news outlets around the globe describing how unbelievably successful the march was. Canal is the individual who launched the event’s Facebook page back in February. “If I had gotten 3,000 people to join me, I would have considered that a success,” she told reporters. When asked about the future of the anti-Monsanto and anti-GMO movement, Canal replied, “We will continue until Monsanto complies with consumer demand. They are poisoning our children, poisoning our planet. If we don’t act, who’s going to?”

Not since the 2001 build-up to the US invasion of Iraq have so many regular people come together in so many cities and so many countries around the world to protest. But that will give readers some indication of the power, reach and devastation one single multi-national corporation has had on mankind – Monsanto.

Genetically Modified Organisms

The GMO products that occupy every American dinner plate today, technically, can’t even be called ‘food’. They’re literally genetically modified organisms – GMO’s. When corporate laboratories change the genetic DNA of corn, soybeans, salmon, etc., they’re changing the food into not just bigger or brighter food, but something else completely, something that’s no longer ‘food’.

For comparison sake, the genetic changes scientists make to create GMO products are the equivalent of changing human DNA just enough to turn a man into a monkey. And while it would be impossible to pass off a monkey as a human, companies like Monsanto are successfully convincing the world that their untested, lab-created, food-like products are actually food.

After flooding US government officials with tens of millions of dollars in ‘donations’, Washington bureaucrats have been more than receptive to the endeavor of converting America’s food supply into a giant, laboratory-created GMO diet. As far back as 1992, with little or no testing for safety or long-term effects, the FDA officially ruled that there is absolutely no difference between real food and Monsanto’s GMO food-like creations.

In just one example of the horrors of GMO products, GMO corn has all but completely replaced actual corn in America’s marketplace. And since GMO crops are altered to have dominant genes, the GMO pollen and seeds automatically overwhelm all natural, native species of the same plants. Spreading from farm to farm and country to country, real corn has been all but wiped from the Earth. Only Mexico, the historic birthplace of corn, still retains dozens of natural corn varieties. But their days are numbered as well.

Defeat after defeat after defeat

Even with so much popular support, and dozens of polls showing widespread consumer appeal, the effort to force corporations to label GMO products as such has met with one defeat after another. When California voters went to the polls to vote on a ballot initiative forcing the labeling of GMO products last year, the measure enjoyed widespread and overwhelming support. But after a multi-million dollar advertising campaign by Monsanto in the days leading up to the election, the GMO labeling initiative was defeated 51 to 49 percent.

Two months ago, American voters and consumers were outraged to learn that Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) had secretly slipped a widely-despised piece of legislation called the Monsanto Protection Act into an emergency spending Bill. Attempting to avoid a government shutdown, Congress and President Obama passed a temporary funding law that, unknown to most Congressmen who voted for it, contained a law that protects Monsanto from any civil or criminal prosecution over the dangerous effects of its GMO products. Even worse, it prohibits the US government from ever stopping the sale of GMO products, even if it’s proven that the genetically altered creations are dangerous or deadly.

Read the Whiteout Press article, ‘Full Text of the just-passed Monsanto Protection Act’ for further details.

And it was only last week that the US Senate overwhelmingly rejected an Amendment that would allow states to force the labeling of GMO products within their individual borders. Regardless of the Senate measure, states such as California, Illinois and others are moving forward with their own state laws requiring labels on GMO foods sold in their respective states.

Support alternative media

One section of the March-Against-Monsanto.com website that brought a smile to the face of us here at Whiteout Press is titled, ‘Support Alternative Media’. As recent surveys have proven, for the first time in generations a majority of the American people no longer trust the corporate-owned media corporations to tell the truth, or bring them their news. Instead, they’re seeking out alternative outlets and independent news organizations like Whiteout Press.

‘Remember seeing the warnings about the dangers of the ‘Monsanto Protection Act’ on MSNBC and FOX News before it became a law? Me neither,’ the event’s website details, ‘That’s because there was no warning from the mainstream media; in fact very few have even covered it to this day.’

The site goes on to instruct, ‘This is why supporting and finding alternative news sources is so important: Do you want to find out about harmful legislation before it’s passed while we still have time to mobilize and try to stop them, or do you want to find out about it on TV when it’s too late? Find and support independent journalists.’

March organizers know they’re in the fight of their lives against corporate behemoths like Monsanto. The former manufacturer of chemical weapons like Agent Orange, Monsanto has proven for over a century that it can’t be stopped, especially not by average citizens. Still, millions of grassroots activists, parents, and ordinary people are determined to try. “Monsanto is not going away without a fight,” event co-organizer Nick Bernabe admits, “They’ve been around for over 100 years and deeply entrenched in the political establishment of both parties.”

Related Whiteout Press Articles:

Full Text of the just-passed Monsanto Protection Act

Mitt Romney and Monsanto, 35 Years of mutual help

Obama, Monsanto and Farm Bill pushing for GMO Foods

One of the more memorable buttons from Saturday’s March Against Monsanto.