The Monsanto Presidency

From: Activist Post

US/Corporate America’s president, Barack Obama, has a wide resume. He holds Wall St. interests dear to his heart, as shown by his nomination of Penny Pritzker, the Hilton millionaire, for Commerce Secretary, Jack Lew of Citigroup for Secretary or the Treasury… Need we say more? Then there is the oil, coal and nuclear connected Ernie Moniz as Energy Secretary.

And then there is Monsanto.

According to this article, ”

“After his victory in the 2008 election, Obama filled key posts with Monsanto people, in federal agencies that wield tremendous force in food issues, the USDA and the FDA:

At the USDA, as the director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Roger Beachy, former director of the Monsanto Danforth Center.

As deputy commissioner of the FDA, the new food-safety-issues czar, the infamous Michael Taylor, former vice-president for public policy for Monsanto. Taylor had been instrumental in getting approval for Monsanto’s genetically engineered bovine growth hormone.

As commissioner of the USDA, Iowa governor, Tom Vilsack. Vilsack had set up a national group, the Governors’ Biotechnology Partnership, and had been given a Governor of the Year Award by the Biotechnology Industry Organization, whose members include Monsanto.

As the new Agriculture Trade Representative, who would push GMOs for export, Islam Siddiqui, a former Monsanto lobbyist.

As the new counsel for the USDA, Ramona Romero, who had been corporate counsel for another biotech giant, DuPont.

As the new head of the USAID, Rajiv Shah, who had previously worked in key positions for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a major funder of GMO agriculture research.”

According to the same article, two of Obama’s biggest backers – Bill Gates and George Soros – bought 1.4 million shares of Monsanto in 2010.

This issue is directly related to the recently passed “Monsanto Protection Act”, which shields Monsanto (and other GMO producers) from lawsuits based on health effects of their gmo products. (The act, itself, shows how confident they are in the safety of these products.)

Obama’s protection of the criminal Monsanto is also leading to increased world tensions. According to this article, there have been diplomatic clashes between the Obama administration and that of Russia’s Putin over exactly this issue. In particular, this concerns the collapse of the world’s honey bee population. It is widely thought that this collapse is at least partly due to the use of a type of pesticide called neonicotinoids. These pesticides are chemically similar to nicotine, and were first introduced because they were not shown to be harmful to mammals. However, their effect on insects, birds and fish is a different matter.

Every day adds credibility to the claim of Bruce Dixon of the Black Agenda Report that Obama is not the “lesser evil”, he is the “more effective evil.”

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That's not "change we can believe in."