Posted on

Glyphosate ECI — Democracy Stolen

The organizers of the Glyphosate European Citizens’ Initiative issued a press release today claiming victory. Here’s a snapshot of the campaign page for future reference.

Activist Organizations as Proxies

This is a battle of Monsanto and Bayer against small farmers, plain and simple.  The patents on glyphosate have long since expired, and the sale of the product doesn’t result in high corporate profits any more.  Bayer is in the process of acquiring Monsanto, and wants to sell farmers new solutions for controlling weeds, that are more expensive and patented.  This is a similar situation as the banning of old TVs and light bulbs.

Glyphosate is an emotional issue.  Many activists have been against it for a long time now, and in general against all use of pesticides.  Glyphosate is particularly emotional for many of us, because we have come into contact with it through other gardeners, farmers and it’s even been used by local governments in urban areas.  It’s a horrendous health and environmental issue, but for better or worse, it’s also a critical tool for many farmers.

There’s been very little direct news from Bayer of Monsanto on this issue.  We hear things like ‘analysts say this ECI will cost Bayer millions of euros in Europe alone’ — but no confirmation from Bayer on this.  Neither Bayer nor Monsanto seem the least bit opposed to this campaign.  They are just sitting back and watching everything unfold.

Instead of involving themselves directly on the issue, these big companies are using a combination of fake activist organizations, together with other paid or tricked organizations, to promote their message and pretend this is some sort of activist issue.

There is no democratic control of this campaign, no way for participants to voice their opinions and influence the outcome.  I believe many of the people and organizations that gave their name and reputations in support of this measure, are aghast at how this has become a vicious attack on Europe’s farmers, small and large, but have no real way to voice that opinion.

Unrealistic Amounts of Money

There was a time, as recently as 5-10 years ago, when some of these health and environmental organizations were credible.  In particular, here in The Netherlands, for many people giving significant amounts of money to charitable organizations was an important part of their life.  Some of these organizations became obscenely wealthy as a result.  These days are gone, and people today realize if you give money to an environmental organization, your money is dwarfed by large corporate or philanthropist contributions, and as an individual donor you have no possibility of influencing them.  In the end, your contribution often doesn’t support the kinds of causes you think it should.

On the other hand, corporations and the wealthiest individuals have become particularly adept at using these organizations for their own purposes.

To put things in perspective, one of the most important seed initiatives right now, the Open Source Seed Initiative, after several years of fund raising, mentioned recently on their web page they had raised on the order of tens of thousands of dollars.  This isn’t really enough to hire a single person for an entire year.  The glyphosate ECI on the other hand is clearly involving millions of euros, and tens, hundreds or even thousands of people, many of whom are very skilled and highly paid lobbyists.

No Evidence of Real Signatures Being Collected

Signatures on a petition are understandably low on the radar in terms of considering forgeries.   At the same time, they are very susceptible to being manipulated with large amounts of money.  You can for example pay a student minimum wage to collect signatures from their friends, but you can also pay thousands of students to do the same thing.  You can also collect signatures at workplaces, under the watchful eye of their employers.

If you spend a lot of money this way, it can be visible, and people can ask questions about where the money is coming from.  If you copy signatures from an earlier ECI, probably no one would notice.  The same thing is true if you happened to have a list of people’s personal data, for example dates of birth and address, and forged the signatures as a sort of identity theft.  Who would notice this, and who would investigate?

What I can say with respect to this blog is that it is visible in Google, shared on Facebook and very visible to anyone researching this ECI.  Of the million plus people who signed it, only a few hundred were interested enough to research it on the Internet, and have ended up on this blog.

There’s no convincing publicly available evidence that any real persons have signed this initiative of their own free will.

Fake News, Fake Blogs and an Orchestrated Campaign

The Internet is swimming in fake and inconsequential news articles and blog posts on glyphosate right now.  Very few of them are real news outlets, and certainly very few big name papers or news sites.

They all repeat the same stories over and over, just slightly rewritten from site to site.  There’s no real debate, and very few offering different opinions or the perspective of farmers.

There have been very few announcements of events or promotional activities.  No real compelling news has emerged during this campaign.  The signatures have just appeared out of nowhere, without any reason or explanation.  In addition, the signatures appeared just in time, as the organizers planned, right at the end of June.

Fake Science with Changing Rules

The debate over science is almost laughable.  First all science has to be published articles, but most patent holders can block studies on their own products.  At the same time, loads of unpublished studies and unsupported facts emerge from anonymous sources, and they are supposed to be considered by the Commission.

The EU is supposed to only use ‘real’ science, but all of the science available is funded by industry.

The ECI itself even includes language that could possibly force all future science to be paid for and approved by the pesticide manufactures themselves.

It’s all just a catch-22 and all the arguments and debates are looping back on themselves.

Farming Crisis

There is and has been for a long time now, a farming crisis in Europe.  In the Netherlands, a tiny country of 17 million people, 10,000 farms are for sale now.  Many farmers report their children are not interested in becoming farmers themselves, or taking over the family business.  Not enough young people have the interest or financial means to start farming.  There is land grabbing which is driving the price of the most desirable land sharply up, while farming communities are reeling from the collapse of the family farming economy and the unprecedented numbers of farms on the market.

Banning glyphosate is all that’s needed to drive many more farmers into bankruptcy.

This is a very serious situation.

No Compromise

The organizations behind the glyphosate ECI are relentless in where they stand.  No compromises.  Glyphosate must be banned.  No sympathy for farmers.

The Real Solution

The real solution is extending the glyphosate license for 15 years, like the farmers are asking for, then highly regulate glyphosate.  It should only be available to farmers, and it should not be used in public spaces or near people’s homes.  Appropriate safety measures should be taken to avoid accidental contamination and contact with farm workers.

Genuine effort should be taken to encourage farmers to stop using glyphosate or any other pesticide, through education and incentives, rather than an absolute ban.

Consumers should have more information about what their food has been treated with, and have more opportunity to buy it from trustworthy sources.

Failing Europe

If the Commission accepts this ECI, and the arguements given for banning glyphosate, they are ignoring all their critics of an undemocratic Europe that ignores the wishes of the people.

Posted on

What is Fake News?

Fake news can take many forms.  In broad terms, fake news is a lie someone publishes in order to influence public opinion.  For the purposes of this blog, fake news is usually one or more corporations or super-wealthy persons, who are trying to promote a product or industry.  The basic form this fake news takes is often very predictable, and fundamentally hasn’t changed in decades.

Fake news often originates from corporate lobby efforts.  The largest lobby groups in the world now, in order of size, are the food industry, the tobacco lobby and the oil industry.  Of course there are many others.  Nearly all fake news come from these groups, sometimes more than one of them combined, and you can often recognize fake news by associating it with these groups.

Fake news rarely comes directly from one of the above mentioned groups, but rather a seemingly unrelated organization.  For example, health and environmental organizations are frequently used to spread the fake news message.  These are often well known or generally trusted organizations, who put their names behind the message.  These organizations often have names or stated goals, that have nothing to do with what they really do.

Fake news is almost always a one-way message.  It often seemingly appears out of nowhere, and there’s no way to discuss or influence the message.  For example, a TV ad is just presented, and there is no direct way to respond.  Another example would be a public rally or meeting, without any real advanced warning on the material to be discussed, and no way to give your opinion.

Fake news often attacks a particular product or groups of products, that compete with a commercial product belonging to the source of the fake news.  This is often some cheap alternative they wish to have removed from the market.  An example of this would be standard light bulbs or square TVs, which compete with newer and more expensive alternatives.

The message also is often presented together with cited and published scientific research.  The reason is to intimidate the average person, who won’t have access to the means of generating such research on their own.

There is often a really emotional side to fake news, with very strong imagery.  It sometimes has nothing to do with the topic at hand, but is just intended to shock you.

Fake news often doesn’t come out of the blue, but rather there has been some ongoing effort to make the topic familiar with other activities.

Your Brain on Drugs

This American TV ad from the 1980’s is a very good example of many of the points I made above.  At the time, the Tobacco Lobby was the most powerful lobby force in the US, and it was later confirmed the sponsoring organization Partnership for a Drug Free America accepted money from tobacco companies.

The strategy tobacco companies take, then and now, is to make all alternative products as unavailable as possible.  For example, they were behind prohibition in the US, where the sale of alcohol was banned.

After prohibition, they established a sort of partnership with the alcohol industry.   This resulted in drinking and smoking ages, smoking always the same or lower than alcohol and little or no enforcement.   The goal here was to see young people first become addicted to tobacco, then reinforce this addiction with an addiction to alcohol.

So in this video you have an organization, Partnership for a Drug Free America, who’s name doesn’t have anything to do with what they actually promote.  Their real goal is to get young people addicted to cigarettes.  As an organization, they gained trust through ties with right-wing conservative Christian groups, who were very influential at the time, especially with parents of young children.

So if you were a parent at the time, were afraid your children might be using drugs, and tempted to give this organization money.  What you would actually be supporting was efforts to get your children to start smoking.

At the end of this video, “Any questions?”, is an example of the one-way nature of the message.  There is no way to talk back to or influence this message or organization.  They have one goal, to promote tobacco.  Their message is tobacco is okay, and everything else is drugs.

What Can You Do?

If you are a supporter or a part of an organization that promotes fake news, you can talk back and make others aware.  You can post about it on the Internet, social media or just tell others.  The more the truth about fake news gets out, the less effective it is.

If you’re an activist, and an organization you support publishes fake news, you should be very suspicious of anything else they ever tell you.  People sometimes make mistakes, but organizations generally don’t, and publishing fake news is an indication they are careless or being influenced.

Most large and wealthy organizations are not what they seem to be.  The world’s wealthy 1% often exert their power and control over us through these organizations and fake news.  You are often better off participating in a smaller organization that is more democratic in their way of thinking and working.  Any organization that doesn’t care about what you think, isn’t worth paying attention to.

Other Example of Fake News

Once you find a fake news story, one of the best ways of finding others is to look for something related.  For example the BBC is full of fake news, and it’s one of my favorite places to look.

If one environmental organization has a fake news campaign, look at the other organizations that are also promoting the same thing, and look at some of their other messages.

There are currently campaigns trying to phase out diesel engines, because they are old technology, and promote newer more expensive electric vehicle technologies.  Gasoline/benzine/petrol is also a more profitable fuel for the oil industry than diesel.

The food industry is trying to get people to pay attention to ingredients in food, rather than the quality of food itself.  This helps them promote their processed foods.  They are also trying to phase out common and cheap ingredients, like salt and sugar, in order to promote more profitable alternatives.

This blog has a Fake News category, with other examples of fake news.

Posted on

The BBC and their Fake News Problem

I’m probably one of those people Donald Trump referred to recently as ‘Obama’s People’.  I don’t work for Obama, am not any sort of henchman, don’t know him personally, don’t have anything to do with him except I broadly supported his term in office, and certainly don’t like anything about Trump.

I don’t know what the BBC was thinking when, referring to this comment by Trump, they proudly proclaimed in a headline “…Trump Blames Obama for Protests and Security Leaks“.  In fact Trump was blaming ‘Obama’s People’, and probably not Obama himself or his henchmen.  Is this a mistake?  The BBC’s lack of understanding of Americanisms?  Fake news?

In the context of the BBC recently being excluded from a presidential news conference, this almost looks like an attack on Trump.  The idea of excluding the BBC or any major news organization in this way is unconscionable, but this headline makes the BBC look very clumsy, even like they are trying to fabricate news.

Over the last month or so, the BBC has launched an attack on fake news.  This is not only on it’s headline news service, but for example visiting classrooms and talking with children about things like an old newspaper article proclaiming the arrival of UFOs.  The BBC has not only themselves declared something of a war on fake news, they’ve taken it upon themselves to define what exactly fake news is.  Their overriding message is trust major news outlets like the BBC, and trust peer reviewed scientific research.  Be suspicious of everything else!

As a blogger, I really find all of this, and all of it’s inherent contradictions, completely unacceptable.  For all intents and purposes, there are no independent scientists in the world any more.  All peer reviewed scientific research has sponsorship, and someone is paying for a particular focus and specific outcomes.  If a study doesn’t have a desired outcome, it can be discarded, modified or ignored.

For a few years now, the BBC accepts ’embedded advertising’.  In plain and simple terms, this means the BBC accepts payment to write specific items, even what some of us might call ‘fake news’.  These are stories no ad blocker can save you from, and usually there’s no disclaimer to warn you.  Just like banner advertising, these fake news items are mixed in with real items, to make it as hard as possible for readers to tell the difference.

In many ways this has been a major aspect of this blog, not creating fake news, but rather spotting it in main stream press, and identifying it.  One of the main sources of fake news is the food industry, and the BBC has always been one of my favorite places to look for it.

It’s always been a focus of mine, to avoid posting any information I thought was wrong or misleading.  Bloggers are sometimes euphemistically referred to as pajama journalists, sometimes in a derogatory way, like we are unprofessional people you can’t trust.  I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t have the resources or commitment professional journalists have.  At the same time, I think, as a whole, you are less likely to find fake news on blogs than you are on major news sites.  You need to of course make use of webs of trust, and pick and choose your blogs carefully.

An interesting thing has also been happening.  Since I started blogging, the public has on it’s own become more aware of fake news.  Almost so much so, there’s less reason for me to be so active.

So let’s consider a recent article on the BBC, Swedish mum’s battle against sugar goes viral.  First, the reason this was supposedly viral was a few thousand likes on Facebook, not really viral in my opinion.  Secondly, the core reason why this mother seemed to be against sugar, was in connection with her child’s behavior.  The BBC was very quick to point out that no scientific and peer reviewed connection has been made between children’s behavior and sugar.  The BBC then went on to make a number of claims themselves, some sort of vaguely citing research, and others making their own assertions.

I think for most people like me, ordinary sugar is a normal part of our diet.  It is a minimally refined product, mostly coming pretty directly from sugar cane or sugar beet.  It is a hunger suppressant, can help people eat less and avoid weight gain.  It’s been around for a long time, longer in fact than many diseases like diabetes and obesity have been major health concerns.

On the other hand, many of us find reason to be suspicious of newer formulated sugars like those found in processed foods, or sugar substitutes like aspartame.  Many of these have a different effect on hunger, some seemingly stimulate hunger and cause us to gain weight.  The introduction of some of these on the market, notably aspartame and high fructose corn syrup, seem to coincide with the obesity and diabetes epidemics we have now.  Many of us also do not feel scientific research on these products have been taken seriously, often being incomplete or ignored.

There also seem to be strong commercial issues behind this topic.  Sugar has been around a long time now, and is no longer covered by patents.  It’s not commercially interesting any more.  The food industry would like to sell us more profitable alternatives.

Is there some reason the BBC is suddenly so concerned with our health?  Could it be the BBC is generating their own news?  Was the BBC paid to write articles like this?  Is this fake news?

I think the BBC needs to get it’s act together, and address it’s own contradictions.

Posted on

Glyphosate: Celebrating 43 Years of Failure

Glyphosate is the active ingredient in the well known herbicide RoundUp.  First used in 1974, it’s now been on the market 43 years, and has become the world’s most widely used herbicide.  It’s pollution is widespread; it pollutes land, surface and groundwater, and our food.  One test showed detectable levels in 1 out of every 2 people tested.

Glyphosate is a ‘probable carcinogen’, and associated with a long list of other health and reproductive problems.

It’s used by farmers, gardeners, cities and municipalities and others all over the world.  Huge numbers of people come in physical contact with it every day.  People use it in their own gardens, but also spray it other places.  I’ve been through RoundUp wars in my community gardens, where gardeners sprayed it in each others gardens, and heard of many similar stories with home gardeners.

Most people I know who use it are completely unaware of the dangers, and don’t think anything of endangering others.  Certainly local governments are rarely concerned about using it in public spaces.

We’ve now had 43 years of complete failure.  Governments have failed us by approving it’s use, and not properly regulating it.  Farmers and corporations have failed us, by putting profit and greed before our health.  NGOs and environmental organizations have failed us, by failing to speak out loudly and effectively against a flawed and failing system of industrial agriculture and it’s poisons.  There are no winners and no victories, only complete failure.

End of Life

Now we’ve finally reached glyphosate’s useful end of life.  All relevant patents have expired, and there’s no way for the world’s wealthiest 1% to make grotesque profits from it’s use any more.  It’s available in cheap generic formulations.  There are super weeds in many areas that are resistant to it.  In addition there are many newer, more effective, herbicides in the research pipeline.  It’s time to send it the way of the standard light bulb, and ban it, so everyone who currently uses it is forced onto more expensive and possibly more dangerous alternatives.

Want to help out?  If you live in Europe, there’s a European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) calling for glyphosate to be banned.  With your signature, you can help make the world’s wealthy wealthier and help increase corporate profits.

In Europe the funding of organizations is always a secret, and the only way you can follow the trail of money is by taking notice of an organizations activities and partners.  Many of the organizations putting their names forward on this initiative are the same ones that have failed us in the past, and are known to accept money from the food industry.

The Real Solution

The real solution is a complete reform of the food industry, grassroots driven, top to bottom.  We need to address those profit mechanisms that have polluted the world with RoundUp.  We need a complete rethink of the way our food is grown, and how it’s paid for.