Censored 2014 (20 page)

The revolving door between Monsanto and the USDA—alluded to in the introduction of this news cluster—may be partly to blame. Thus, for example, Michael Taylor, the FDA's deputy commissioner for foods previously served as the vice president for public policy at Monsanto; Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, whom Monsanto employed as a corporate lawyer in the 1970s, recently ruled in favor of Monsanto in a case pitting the corporation against a soybean farmer from Indiana; and Obama's chief agricultural negotiator in the Office of the US Trade Representative, Islam Siddiqui, previously worked as the vice president of CropLife America, a lobbying group that represents pesticide and genetic engineering companies, including Monsanto, Dow Chemical, and DuPont.
⁴⁶

The more the public learns about the potential hazards of GMOs, the stronger the opposition gets. The US may wish to follow the lead of other nations that have taken robust stands against GMO production. Peru placed a ten-year moratorium on GMO seeds, which otherwise threaten that country's diverse, abundant crops.
⁴⁷
As Jonathan
Benson reported, “This embargo will help perpetuate the native biodiversity practices that have sustained Peruvians since the days when the Incan Empire reigned supreme.”
⁴⁸

Bans and boycotts are nonviolent forms of resistance to GMOs. When we put our money where our mouths are, change can happen. In Europe, Monsanto has halted the lobbying of GMO plants due to low demand from local farmers.
⁴⁹
It is simply supply and demand. If we don't buy it, they'll stop making it.

CONCLUSION

The natural world sustains us. In pursuing technological advances, we often do great damage to our planet's natural processes. Technology can be wonderful, but we must use it with care and remember our duty to protect and preserve the planet that ultimately sustains us. Perhaps a return to what was once valued will be our salvation; the Suquamish leader Seattle (1780–1866) continues to remind us: “The Earth does not belong to us. We belong to the Earth.”

SUSAN RAHMAN, MA
, is a sociology instructor at Santa Rosa Junior College and the College of Marin. Her areas of interest include Palestinian self-determination, issues of privilege and inequality, and media literacy. Her current work focuses on the role of self-reflection in social transformation. She lives in Sebastopol, California, with her partner Carlos, daughter Jordan, and dogs, Rosie and Cody.

LILIANA VALDEZ-MADERA
was the student researcher for
Censored
story #24, “Alabama Farmers Look to Replace Migrants with Prisoners,” in
Censored 2013,
and for
Censored
story #20, “Israel Counted Minimum Calorie Needs in Gaza Blockade,” in this volume. She recently graduated from Santa Rosa Junior College and will transfer to Dominican University of California this fall. A psychology major and aspiring poet, she plans to continue her involvement with Project Censored.

Notes

^1.
See, for example, Jeremy Bloom, “Monsanto Employees in the Halls of Government,” Red, Green, and Blue, February 9, 2011,
http://redgreenandblue.org/2011/02/09/monsanto-employees-in-the-halls-of-government/
, and a supporting graphic,
http://ciredgreenandblueorg.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/files/2012/02/monsanto-employees-government-revolving-door.jpg
.

^2.
“The world hasn't ended, but the world as we know it has—even if we don't quite know it yet,” Bill McKibben,
Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet
(New York: Henry Holt 2010), 2.

^3.
See the Censored News Cluster, “Iceland, the Power of Peaceful Revolution, and the Commons,” in this volume.

^4.
See, for example, Devra Davis, “Cicadas and Cell Phones,”
Huffington Post,
April 30, 2013,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/devra-davis-phd/cell-phones-cancer_b_3157171.html
.

^5.
For example, “No Evidence Linking Cell Phone Use to Risk of Brain Tumors,” US Food and Drug Administration, May 17, 2010,
http://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm212273.htm
.

^6.
James F. Tracy, “Looming Health Crisis: Wireless Technology and the Toxification of America,” Global Research, July 8, 2012,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31816
.

^7.
“Fracking Can be Undertaken Safely if Best Practice and Regulations are in Force,” Royal Academy of Engineering, June 29, 2012,
http://www.raeng.org.uk/news/releases/shownews.htm?NewsID=771
.

^8.
Elizabeth Royte, “Fracking Our Food Supply,”
Nation,
December 17, 2012,
http://www.the-nation.com/article/171504/fracking-our-food-supply
.

^9.
Michelle Bamberger and Robert E. Oswald, “Impacts of Gas Drilling on Human and Animal Health,”
New Solutions
22, no. 1 (January 2012),
http://www.psehealthyenergy.org/Impacts_of_Gas_Drilling_on_Human_and_Animal_Health
. Cited Royte, “Fracking Our Food Supply.”

^10.
Christa Marshall, “Can Fracking and Carbon Sequestration Coexist?,”
Scientific American,
March 16, 2012,
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=can-fracking-and-carbon-sequestration-co-exist
.

^11.
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, “Why Food Riots Are Likely to Become the New Normal,”
Guardian,
March 6, 2013,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/food-riots-new-normal
.

^12.
Ibid.

^13.
Ibid.

^14.
“3 Killed in Haiti Amid Food Riots, Clashes,”
Los Angeles Times,
April 5, 2008,
http://articles. latimes.com/2008/apr/05/world/fg-hait15
.

^15.
“Food Cost Threatens Rebound in China,”
New York Times,
March 11, 2013,
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/12/business/global/food-costs-threaten-rebound-in-china.html?ref=foodprices
.

^16.
Richard Anderson, “Food Price Crisis: What Crisis?” BBC News, October 15, 2012,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19715504
.

^17.
“Food Facts: Your Scraps Add Up,” Natural Resources Defense Council, March 2013,
http://www.nrdc.org/living/eatingwell/files/foodwaste_2pgr.pdf
; “USDA and EPA Launch U.S. Food Waste Challenge,” United States Department of Agriculture, June 4, 2013,
http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome?contentid=2013/06/0112.xml
.

^18.
Anderson, “Food Price Crisis.”

^19.
Dive!,
directed by Jeremy Seifert (2009; self-released),
http://www.divethefilm.com
.

^20.
Colin Todhunter, “Embracing Sustainability: Forsaking Meat and Chemical Agriculture,” Global Research, September 18, 2012,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/embracing-sustainability-forsaking-meat-and-chemical-agriculture/5305093
.

^21.
Ibid.

^22.
Ibid.

^23.
See also,
Censored
story #2, “Oceans in Peril,” in
Censored 2013: Dispatchesfrom the Media Revolution,
Mickey Huff and Andy Lee Roth with Project Censored (New York: Seven Stories, 2012), 87–89.

^24.
“Rising Ocean Acid Levels Are ‘The Biggest Threat to Coral Reefs,'”
Guardian,
July 9, 2012,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jul/09/acid-threat-coral-reef
.

^25.
Ibid.

^26.
Ibid.

^27.
Ibid.

^28.
Suzanne Goldenberg, “Report Warns of Global Food Insecurity as Climate Change Destroys Fisheries,”
Guardian,
September 24, 2012,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/sep/24/food-climate-change-fisheries
.

^29.
Matthew Huelsenbeck,
Ocean-Based Food Security Threatened in a High CO
₂
World,
report, Oceana, September 2012,
http://oceana.org/sites/default/files/reports/Ocean-Based_Food_ Security_Threatened_in_a_High_CO
₂
_World.pdf
; cited in Goldenberg, “Report Warns.”

^30.
Richard Anderson, “Food Price Crisis: What Crisis?” BBC News, October 15, 2012,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19715504
.

^31.
Ibid.

^32.
James A. Foley, “Humanity's Access to Fresh Water in Peril, Conference of 500 Water Scientists Says,” Nature World News, May 25, 2013,
http://www.natureworldnews.com/ar-ticles/2110/20130525/humanitys-access-fresh-water-peril-conference-500-wateer-scientits-s.htm
.

^33.
Jason Overdorf, “India: Gutting of India's Cotton Farmers,” GlobalPost, October 8, 2012,
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/america-the-gutted/india-cotton-farmers-monsanto-suicides
; Belen Fernandez, “Dirty White Gold,” Al Jazeera, December 8, 2012,
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/12/20121257593528550i.html
.

^34.
Overdorf, “India.”

^35.
Ibid.; Fernandez, “Dirty White Gold.”

^36.
Vandana Shiva, “From Seeds of Suicide to Seeds of Hope: Why Are Indian Farmers Committing Suicide and How Can We Stop This Tragedy?,”
Huffington Post,
April 28, 2009,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vandana-shiva/from-seeds-of-suicide-to_b_192419.html
; quoted in Fernandez, “Dirty White Gold.”

^37.
Overdorf, “India.”

^38.
Fernandez, “Dirty White Gold.”

^39.
Bitter Seeds,
directed by Micha X. Peled, 60 min.,
http://www.itvs.org/films/bitter-seeds
.

^40.
A study by the Rural Advancement Fund International (RAFI) compared the number of varieties of different commercial crops known to the US Department of Agriculture in 1903 to the number of varieties of these crops for which seeds existed in the National Seed Storage Laboratory (NSSL) in 1983. Considering about seventy-five different vegetables together, the RAFI study found that approximately 97 percent of the varieties on the 1903 lists are now extinct. See Cary Fowler and Pat Mooney,
Shattering: Food Politics and the Loss of Genetic Diversity
(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1990), 63.

^41.
For example, James Corbett and Anthony Gucciardi, “GMO Foods: Science, PR, and Public Backlash,” Global Research TV, October 29, 2012,
http://tv.globalresearch.ca/2012/10/gmo-foods-science-pr-and-public-backlash
.

^42.
Ronnie Cummins and Katherine Paul, “Did Monsanto Win Prop 37? Round One in the Food Fight of Our Lives,”
AlterNet,
November 9, 2012,
http://www.alternet.org/food/did-monsanto-win-prop-37-round-one-food-fight-our-lives
.

^43.
On GM health risks, see
Censored
story “Dangers of Genetically Modified Food Confirmed,
Censored 2007,
ed. Peter Phillips and Project Censored (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2006), 72–74; on industry and government efforts to avoid regulation and open markets, respectively, see
Censored
story #20, “US Agencies Trying to Outlaw GMO Food Labeling,”
Censored 2012,
ed. Mickey Huff and Project Censored (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2011), 95–96, and
Censored
story #21, “Forcing a World Market for GMOs,”
Censored 2005,
ed. Peter Phillips and Project Censored (New York: Seven Stories, 2004), 101–104.

^44.
Cassandra Anderson and Anthony Gucciardi, “Widespread GMO Contamination: Did Monsanto Plant GMOs Before USDA Approval?” Global Research, May 4, 2012,
http://www.global-research.ca/widespread-gmo-contamination-did-monsanto-plant-gmos-before-usda-approval
/.

^45.
Ibid.

^46.
Bloom, “Monsanto Employees in the Halls of Government”; Janie Boschma, “Monsanto: Big Guy on the Block When it Comes to Friends in Washington,” Open Secrets, February 19, 2013,
http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2013/02/monsanto.html
; “USDA Watch: Which Side is
Obama On?,” Organic Consumers Association, no date,
http://www.organicconsumers.org/usda_watch.com
.

^47.
Annie Murphy, “Peru Says No to GMO,”
Christian Science Monitor,
April 25, 2013,
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2013/0425/Peru-says-no-to-GMO
.

^48.
Jonathan Benson, “Peru Bans All GMOs,” Natural News, May 8, 2013,
http://www.natural-news.com/040245_GMO_ban_Peru_Monsanto.html#ixzz2SiRUtjON
.

^49.
“Monsanto Set to Halt GMO Push in Europe,” RT, May 31, 2013,
http://rt.com/news/monsan-to-stop-lobbying-eu-084/
.

Andy Lee Roth

Censored #9

Icelanders Vote to Include Commons in Their Constitution

Jessica Conrad, “Icelanders Vote to Include the Commons in Their Constitution,”
Commons Magazine,
November 2012,
http://onthecommons.org/magazine/icelanders-vote-include-commons-their-constitution
.

Thorvaldur Gylfason, “Iceland: Direct Democracy in Action,”
Open Democracy,
November 12, 2012,
http://www.opendemocracy.net/thorvaldur-gylfason/iceland-direct-democracy-in-action
.

Student Researcher:
Pedro Martin Del Campo (Sonoma State University)

Faculty Evaluator:
Andy Lee Roth (Sonoma State University)

Censored #17

The Creative Commons Celebrates Ten Years of Sharing and Cultural Creation

Paul M. Davis, “Creative Commons Celebrates 10 Years of Opening Culture,”
Shareable,
December 7, 2012,
http://www.shareable.net/blog/creative-commons-celebrates-10-years-of-opening-culture
.

Jason Hibbets, “Celebrating 10 Years of Creative Commons,”
opensource.com
, November 29, 2012,
http://opensource.com/law/12/11/celebrating-ten-years-creative-commons
.

Timothy Vollmer, “Pallante's Push for U.S. Copyright Reform,” Creative Commons News, March 20, 2013,
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/37576
.

Student Researcher:
Nicholas Lanoil (San Francisco State University)

Faculty Evaluator:
Kenn Burrows (San Francisco State University)

Censored #19

The Power of Peaceful Revolution in Iceland

Alex Pietrowski, “Iceland's Hordur Torfason—How to Beat the Banksters,”
Waking Times,
December 11, 2012,
http://www.wakingtimes.com/2012/12/11/icelands-hordur-torfason-how-to-beat-the-banksters
.

Student Researcher:
Pedro Martin Del Campo (Sonoma State University)

Faculty Evaluator:
Ed Beebout (Sonoma State University)

RELATED VALIDATED INDEPENDENT NEWS STORIES

Iceland's Modern Media Initiative Supports WikiLeaks Alternative

Lowana Veal, “Alternative to Wikileaks Arises in Iceland,” Inter Press Service, September 24, 2012,
http://www.ipsnews.net/2012/09/alternative-to-wikileaks-arises-in-iceland
.

Student Researcher:
Rory Scotland (Sonoma State University)

Faculty Evaluator:
Peter Chamberlin (Sonoma State University)

Iceland Refuses to Aid FBI in WikiLeaks Investigation

“FBI Agents Flew to Iceland to Investigate WikiLeaks,”
Democracy Now!,
February 1, 2013,
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/2/1/headlines/report_fbi_agents_flew_to_iceland_to_investi-gate_wikileaks
.

“Iceland Denies Aid to FBI in WikiLeaks Investigation,” RT, February 2, 2013,
http://rt.com/news/iceland-fbi-wikileaks-investigation-292
.

Trisha Marczak, “Iceland Gives FBI the Boot,” MPN (Mint Press News), February 4, 2013,
http://www.mintpress.net/iceland-gives-fbi-the-boot
.

“Eight FBI Agents Conduct Interrogation in Iceland in Relation to Ongoing U.S. Investigation of WikiLeaks,” WikiLeaks, February 7, 2013,
https://wikileaks.org/Eight-FBI-agents-conduct.html
.

Student Researcher:
Ariel Garcia (College of Marin)

Faculty Evaluator:
Susan Rahman (College of Marin)

Norway's Economic Success: Managing Petroleum Wealth

Bruce Campbell, “Norway Imposes 78% Tax On All Gas and Oil Companies,”
Monitor,
Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives, November 1, 2012,
http://pdc-connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/84309448/norway-imposes-taxes-78-all-oil-gas-companies
.

Student Researcher:
Paige Fischer (Sonoma State University)

Faculty Evaluator:
Andy Deseran (Sonoma State University)

The revolutionary question becomes: Where do decisions that affect society as a whole get made? For this is where power resides. It is time we opened the doors of that house to everyone.

—Cindy Milstein
¹

OPENING THE DOORS

What conditions must hold for citizens to respond directly to systemic fiscal misconduct? In a globalized culture that increasingly deifies individual self-interest and capitalist markets, how to demonstrate that the choice between community and self-interest is a false one?

In 2012–13, the people of Iceland
(Censored
stories #9 and #19) and the tenth anniversary of the Creative Commons
(Censored
story #17) provided constructive answers to these crucial questions. At the
complex intersection of political order and economic power, Iceland and the Creative Commons movement exemplify the transformative potentials of greater inclusivity in politics and popular resistance to economic hegemony.

Icelandic Reverb: Popular Constitution-Making and the Commons

The positive reverberations from Iceland's 2008 “kitchenware” revolution continued in 2012–2013, despite the dampening effects of limited corporate news coverage and setbacks in the nation's April 2013 parliamentary elections.

Triggered by unregulated banks “borrowing more than their country's gross domestic product from international wholesale money markets,”
²
Iceland's 2008 economic collapse inflicted terrible damage on foreign creditors and local residents alike. At the time, the
Economist
declared Iceland's banking collapse “the biggest, relative to the size of an economy, that any country has ever suffered.”
³
In response, Iceland's populist, peaceful “kitchenware” revolution led to nationalization of the country's main bank, resignation of implicated government officials, and the dissolving of the ruling government.
⁴
In the elections of January 2009, “Icelanders leaned left,” electing a coalition of social democrats and “red-greens,” which subsequently “put the country's house in order.”
⁵
Perhaps more importantly, about 200 high-level executives and bankers responsible for the economic crisis were arrested and charged with crimes; in a few notable cases, they were sentenced to jail.
⁶
In less than objective style, the
New York Times
reported on Iceland's “fervent prosecution” but “meager returns” in holding the banksters criminally accountable for the nation's economic collapse.
⁷

In March 2010, 93 percent of Iceland's electorate voted to deny payment of the 3.5 billion euro debt (approximately US $5.4 billion) that Iceland's bankers had saddled on Iceland.
⁸
Iceland's voters rejected debt repayment a second time in April 2011.
⁹
And in January 2013, the court of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) ruled that Iceland was justified in refusing to “compensate Britain for the state expense of bailing out depositors in Icesave,” when the bank, which had offered high-interest-bearing online
accounts, failed and lacked sufficient funds to compensate all its overseas depositors.
¹⁰

Iceland's October 2012 affirmation of the nation's natural resources as a commons reflects the peoples' rejection of the global trend to privatize profits while socializing risks. In the 2012 referendum, 67 percent of the electorate expressed support for the constitutional draft, and 83 percent voted to protect natural resources not already privately owned as national property.
¹¹
Analyzing the vote, Jessica Conrad of On the Commons observed, “It is clear that citizens are beginning to recognize the value of what they share together over the perceived wealth created by the market economy.”
¹²
After the October vote, Iceland's Prime Minister Johanna SigurcSardottir said, “The people have put the parliament on probation.”
¹³

The constitutional bill that led to the referendum was the product of genuine participatory democracy. A national assembly of 950 citizens, drawn at random from the national registry, drafted the initial resolutions, which a twenty-five-member Constitutional Council, elected by the nation and appointed by the Parliament, converted into a coherent draft constitution.
¹⁴
Its preamble established the core values that framed the document: “We, the people of Iceland, wish to create a just society where everyone has a seat at the same table.”
¹⁵
An analysis by the Comparative Constitutions Project found that Iceland's draft constitution is “one of the most inclusive in history,” measured by the degree to which it includes citizens in decision-making, notably through its provisions for referenda and initiatives.
¹⁶

Thorvaldur Gylfason, a professor of economics at the University of Iceland, and one of the citizens who sought a position as a member of the Constitutional Council, described his election campaign in terms that would be startling to US citizens, by now used to mul-tiyear, multi-million dollar campaigns for any election or important ballot proposition:

Just because Gylfason's campaign was low-key does not mean that the stakes Constitutional Council members fought for were inconsequential. As he noted, the political opposition in Parliament fought the referendum “tooth and nail,” resorting to “filibustering in an attempt to derail the promised referendum, an action that ultimately failed.”
¹⁸
Instead, the understated campaign, involving direct participation by the nation's citizens, suggests a viable alternative to the big money, lobby-driven electoral campaigns to which the US electorate has become all too habituated.

The revised constitution affirmed by Iceland's electorate in October 2012 does not specifically require Parliament to adopt it. To go into effect, Parliament must approve the public's constitutional proposals.
¹⁹
The results of the April 2013 parliamentary elections make this less likely.

In April 2013, Iceland's center-right parties returned to parliamentary power in what the BBC reported as “a dramatic comeback for parties widely blamed for Iceland's economic meltdown in 2008.”
²⁰
The Social Democrats who came to power after the 2008 crisis mustered just a 13 percent share of the parliamentary vote, perhaps due to a backlash against programs deemed too austere and painful by the electorate, ac-cording to the BBC report. However, Iceland's electorate is by no means unanimous in supporting this reversal, as indicated by the gain of three parliamentary seats by Iceland's Pirate Party, which was founded partly to promote reform of the country's copyright and open content laws.
²¹

As Gylfason indicated, the most recent parliamentary elections probably matter less, since the outgoing Parliament not only refused to bring the new constitution to a vote but also established more stringent standards for future constitutional changes, including the requirements of two-thirds of Parliament plus 40 percent of the popular vote, meaning that at least 80 percent voter turnout would be necessary for any constitutional reform to be accepted in Parliament's next session.
²²

Gylfason pragmatically observed, “We are back to square one as intended by the enemies of the new constitution” and concluded that there is “faint hope” that the new Parliament will “respect the will of the people.”
²³
Despite the resurgent old guard of political elites, experts observing from outside Iceland affirmed that its constitution-making process has been “tremendously innovative and participatory,” putting it “at the cutting edge of ensuring public participation in ongoing governance.”
²⁴

The corporate media reported the April 2013 election that resulted in the swing back to the center-right, but altogether ignored the earlier constitutional referendum.
²⁵
Despite a constitution that is one of the most inclusive in history, a May 2013
Washington Post
story identified Iceland as one of “12 countries where the government regulates what you can name your child.”
²⁶
More often, Iceland features in cor-porate media as an exotic vacation destination or the source of uncon-ventional artists like Bjork.

The corporate media is ignoring the real story—as Joel Bleifuss, editor of
In These Times,
observed: the Icelandic experience “demonstrates that an engaged and radicalized populace can challenge the orthodoxies of the technocrats—and avoid the false choice between the ballot box and the street protest by making savvy use of both.”
²⁷

Iceland's Modern Media Initiative, Whistleblowing Protection, and Resistance to FBI Encroachment

Iceland is not only a global leader because of its direct, participatory constitution-making. Of equal note, spurred by the public, Iceland's government has created cutting-edge legislation to protect and strengthen modern freedom of expression.
²⁸
As a result, the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative (IMMI) promises to establish Iceland at the global forefront of societies championing robust media freedoms, including new information technologies.
²⁹
Indeed, as
Censored 2014
went to press, the
Guardian
was reporting that Edward Snowden, the whistleblower behind the biggest security leak in the US National Security Administration's history, considered Iceland his best hope for asylum.
³⁰