“Alejandra Cruz, who is defending her family’s home from eviction, closes her bank account in full Aztec dancer regalia at Wells Fargo as part of a mass day of action against the banks!”
![chemicalfreelife:
GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOOD: Universities as Shills for Monsanto
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We are grateful to Tom Philpott, Mother Jones, Food & Water Watch and Mike Adams for disseminating this information and revealing to the public what insiders like us have known for many years—that Monsanto and other Big Ag (as well as Big Pharma) corporations have been in bed with major universities, their faculty (and subsequently the scientific journal publication systems) for many years now.
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Big Ag, Monsanto take over research universities and turn them into pro-industry propaganda machines
(NaturalNews) Back in the old days before food and agricultural corporations consolidated into the behemoths we know them as today, agricultural institutions of higher learning were dedicated to conducting unbiased research into cutting-edge food production and crop systems that benefited society as a whole. But today, these former “land-grant” universities have largely mutated into pro-industry, propaganda machines funded and controlled by corporate agro-giants like Monsanto that steer research efforts in favor of genetically-modified (GMOs) and chemical-based crop systems.In a scathing indictment of this sinister, and rapidly growing, form of agricultural fascism, Tom Philpott from Mother Jones dissects a recent Food & Water Watch (FWW) report in which it is openly disclosed that corporate agriculture and the pharmaceutical industry have basically bought out agricultural research education as we know it. Colleges and universities that once received the bulk of their research funding from the federal government now receive it from Monsanto, DuPont, and others, and their research efforts reflect this.
Colleges that began as cultivators of ‘open-source’ agriculture are now incubators of patented, corporate agriculture
Institutions of higher learning such as the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UofI) for instance, or Iowa State University (ISU) were originally founded as land-grant colleges, which means the federal government helped fund their building on federal land for the purpose of researching and teaching agriculture, science, and engineering for public benefit. But today, many of these land-grant colleges have essentially been taken over by private interests with little concern for anything other than their own profits.“The idea of the land grants was to generate agricultural research, funded by the federal government, that benefited society as a whole. And that’s pretty much how things went for the first century,” writes Philpott. “But then, starting in the 1980s, the federal government started to level off its investment in ag research […] That’s when food and agribusiness companies, which were then in the process of consolidating into the vast global enterprises we know today, began to funnel huge amounts of cash into land grants.”But even the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which used to more closely represent the interests of the people, has become nothing more than a tool for promoting industry interests rather than public interests. So whether the funding comes from the USDA or directly from private industry, it is essentially all now going towards the promotion of GMOs and chemical-crop systems — little, if any, is used to develop improvements in non-GMO, organic, and sustainable agriculture systems.Mother Jones commenter Linda Ferris said it best when she wrote, “The ‘sell out’ by colleges and universities is no surprise for readers who have lived in communities around any one of the systems mentioned in the article […] This (agricultural schools) is Monsanto’s new incubator of technology and propaganda — a factory of making money on the cheap by controlling these institutions and using their students to do their research and work.”
.Be sure to read the entire Mother Jones piece for a more comprehensive understanding of how private corporations are brainwashing the next generation of farmers into embracing corporate agricultural systems:http://www.motherjones.com
_____Sources for this article include:http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/reports/public-research-private-gain/http://www.salon.com/2012/05/14/monsantos_college_strangehold/
Image-commondreams.org](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4djkbshcD1r7yhvfo1_500.jpg)
GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOOD: Universities as Shills for Monsanto
.
We are grateful to Tom Philpott, Mother Jones, Food & Water Watch and Mike Adams for disseminating this information and revealing to the public what insiders like us have known for many years—that Monsanto and other Big Ag (as well as Big Pharma) corporations have been in bed with major universities, their faculty (and subsequently the scientific journal publication systems) for many years now.
__________
Big Ag, Monsanto take over research universities and turn them into pro-industry propaganda machines
(NaturalNews) Back in the old days before food and agricultural corporations consolidated into the behemoths we know them as today, agricultural institutions of higher learning were dedicated to conducting unbiased research into cutting-edge food production and crop systems that benefited society as a whole. But today, these former “land-grant” universities have largely mutated into pro-industry, propaganda machines funded and controlled by corporate agro-giants like Monsanto that steer research efforts in favor of genetically-modified (GMOs) and chemical-based crop systems.
In a scathing indictment of this sinister, and rapidly growing, form of agricultural fascism, Tom Philpott from Mother Jones dissects a recent Food & Water Watch (FWW) report in which it is openly disclosed that corporate agriculture and the pharmaceutical industry have basically bought out agricultural research education as we know it. Colleges and universities that once received the bulk of their research funding from the federal government now receive it from Monsanto, DuPont, and others, and their research efforts reflect this.Colleges that began as cultivators of ‘open-source’ agriculture are now incubators of patented, corporate agriculture
Institutions of higher learning such as the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UofI) for instance, or Iowa State University (ISU) were originally founded as land-grant colleges, which means the federal government helped fund their building on federal land for the purpose of researching and teaching agriculture, science, and engineering for public benefit. But today, many of these land-grant colleges have essentially been taken over by private interests with little concern for anything other than their own profits.
“The idea of the land grants was to generate agricultural research, funded by the federal government, that benefited society as a whole. And that’s pretty much how things went for the first century,” writes Philpott. “But then, starting in the 1980s, the federal government started to level off its investment in ag research […] That’s when food and agribusiness companies, which were then in the process of consolidating into the vast global enterprises we know today, began to funnel huge amounts of cash into land grants.”
But even the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which used to more closely represent the interests of the people, has become nothing more than a tool for promoting industry interests rather than public interests. So whether the funding comes from the USDA or directly from private industry, it is essentially all now going towards the promotion of GMOs and chemical-crop systems — little, if any, is used to develop improvements in non-GMO, organic, and sustainable agriculture systems.
Mother Jones commenter Linda Ferris said it best when she wrote, “The ‘sell out’ by colleges and universities is no surprise for readers who have lived in communities around any one of the systems mentioned in the article […] This (agricultural schools) is Monsanto’s new incubator of technology and propaganda — a factory of making money on the cheap by controlling these institutions and using their students to do their research and work.”.
Be sure to read the entire Mother Jones piece for a more comprehensive understanding of how private corporations are brainwashing the next generation of farmers into embracing corporate agricultural systems:
http://www.motherjones.com_____
Sources for this article include:
http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/reports/public-research-private-gain/
http://www.salon.com/2012/05/14/monsantos_college_strangehold/Image-commondreams.org
Aversive Racism and Police Violence. A cartoon by the sometimes controversial Kirk Anderson highlights the circular thinking that can lie behind race-based prejudice and violence. KIRK ANDERSON.
This keeps happening over, and over, and over.
Göttin der Dummheit: Two Women
I am a woman.
I am a woman.I am a woman born of a woman whose man owned a factory.
I am a woman born of a woman whose man labored in a factory.I am a woman whose man wore silk suits, who constantly watched…
(Source: regrettoinform.org)
Precious Knowledge Airs Tonight on PBS
Precious Knowledge portrays the one of the final years of the highly successful but controversial Mexican American Studies Program at Tucson High School.
The program was a national model of educational success — 93 percent of its enrolled students graduating from high school and 85 percent going on to attend college, bucking a statewide trend that saw only 48 percent of Latino students graduating at all. The program taught Mexican and American history, as well as Central and South American literature and culture.
But the political tide shifted in Arizona in the 2000s. The state passed extremely controversial immigration laws, which some civil libertarians equated to racial profiling. Legislative sessions in the state became heated and rife with recriminations. And when lawmakers turned their attention to Tucson High’s ethnic studies program, it became a lightning rod in the public conversation about race. Opponents of the program launched a campaign to convince the public that ethnic studies teach everything from communism to terrorism to “reverse racism.”
Read more about the film at PBS
Via Critical Race Theorist
one of the most beautiful and honest collaborative pieces of artwork i have ever seen that sends such a serious yet beautiful message
so beautiful
Because we have banished the gods of our ancestors, our children cannot pray.
– Maya Angelou (via erikangstrom)(Source: aphoticoccurrences)
Via Here be dragons.About me
Altruistic, leftist, Brown and Xican@. A developing educator and writer and aspiring public intellectual. Born and raised in La bahía, California, my spirit is Xikan@. I am comfortable and take pride in all my brownness.
I want to continue to develop as an educator and I am on my way to Phoenix, Arizona to become a teacher.
My favorite film right now is A Better Life (I recommend it), but I really want to see Mosquita y Mari.
“Being a leftist is a calling, not a career; it’s a vocation, not a profession. It means you are concerned about structural violence, you are concerned about exploitation at the work place, you are concerned about institutionalized contempt against gay brothers and lesbian sisters, hatred against peoples of color, and the subordination of women. It means that you are willing to fight against, and to try to understand the sources of social misery at the structural and institutional levels, as well as at the existential and personal levels. That’s what it means to be a leftist; that’s why we choose to be certain kinds of human beings.”
- Cornel West
