Eric Zuesse

On June 27th, I reported Hillary Clinton’s having privately told GMO industry lobbyists, on 25 June 2014, that the federal government should subsidize GMO firms in order to enable them to buy “insurance against risk,” and that without such federal subsidies, “this [insurance] is going to be an increasing challenge” for the industry to afford. I also reported that, in an interview she did immediately afterward with the GMO industry’s lobbying organization’s (the Biotechnology Industry Organization’s, or BIO’s) head, she compared the opponents of GMOs to the opponents of action in response to global warming; she said, in effect, that both environmental groups are ignoramuses who don’t know what scientists are saying about both the ’safety’ of GMOs and the dangers of global warming.

At the time when I wrote this news report (it was still news, even a year after the speech was given), the 15 June 2016 article in FORTUNE magazine, “Can Monsanto Save the Planet?” hadn’t yet come to my attention, but it importantly supplements the news that I had just reported, and so I now supplement the article I previously wrote on this. The FORTUNE article argued that Monsanto is the world’s champion of environmentalism, by enabling the planet to provide food to an expanding population even as the planet will be getting hotter and hotter. It said that Monsanto, and other GMO firms, are the only hope for a planet that’s burning up. The FORTUNE article also assumed, as did Hillary Clinton’s presentation to GMO lobbyists and to their chief, the equal validity of the 97% of global warming scientists who believe that human-caused global warming is real, and of the GMO-corporate-funded bio-‘scientists’ who allege that GMOs have been proven to be safe long-term for human consumption and for the environment.

As regards the claim that the GMO-corporate funded ‘research’ proving GMOs to be safe is valid, there are many independently funded studies that have found GMOs not to be safe, and also not to be environmentally friendly. Funding of independent research on the question is sparse, but I tracked down the claimed main source of the funding of that meta-study (study of studies), and found it to be the Isvara Foundation, which seems to me likely to be independent of the GMO producers. Here is a summary of what that meta-study found: It found, for example, that, "A review that is claimed by pro-GMO lobbyists to show that 1,700 studies show GM foods are safe, in fact shows nothing of the sort. Instead many of the 1,700 studies cited show evidence of risk. The review also excludes or glosses over important scientific controversies over GMO safety issues. (p. 102),” and, "A review purportedly showing that GM foods are safe on the basis of long-term animal studies in fact shows evidence of risk and uses unscientific double standards to reach a conclusion that is not justified by the data. (p. 161).”

There is no comparison between the actual scientific consensus that global warming is real and man-made, and the phony ‘scientific’ ‘consensus’ that GMOs are safe. (And there’s more on that, and more.) Hillary Clinton, and the lobbyists know this, they can’t be so stupid as not to know, but they are paid to lie about it. The industry pays both them and their politicians (such as Clinton) to do this. (And Clinton wants to go even farther and have taxpayers help to fund the GMO firms, thus to subsidize those firms’ stockholders.)

Is it merely by coincidence that the puff-piece for the GMO industry (in the person of its main corporation, Monsanto) in FORTUNE magazine, and the secret statements that Hillary Clinton made at one of her $225,000+ speeches to (and interviews with) lobbying organizations, are almost carbon copies of each other?

You’ll have to decide that for yourself. But other voters won’t even be able to, because they read the standard ’news’ media, which hide such facts. (For example, the 27 June news report I did was rejected by virtually all newsmedia.) So, please pass along to other voters this news report, which is the third report that I’ve done about the only one of Hillary Clinton’s 91 speeches to lobbying organizations and to international corporations, which managed to have leaked out from behind her embargo against making public any of her corporate-funded speeches, for which she has received in total more than $21 million paid to her own account, not including any additional payments to her political campaign. Voters might think that Ms. Clinton ‘believes’ one way about an issue, when in fact she has actually been bought to impose as the future U.S. President the exact opposite. Her record shows: in public office, she does what her backers want, not what her voters might prefer. Ever since at least 1993, when she did what the HMO industry bought the Clintons to do in drawing up their healthcare plan (which plan the health insurers opposed strongly and successfully defeated), Hillary and Bill have both been on the take, being liberals or even ‘progressives’, who believe that their actual constituency is their paymasters — not their voters. They are similar to Barack Obama in this regard, no different — and no different from George W. Bush, and his father. (As regards Trump, he has no record at all in public office, so we can’t yet really know.)

And that’s why she continues to hide the transcripts and videos of her 91 corporate-paid speeches. But fortunately, the one speech she made to the GMO-producers, slipped away from her total control.

And the article in FORTUNE provides some evidence that the propaganda-campaign for the GMO industry is coordinated by their lobbying organization, the BIO, so that both one of their politicians, and one of their magazines, are singing the same song, even if different lyrics from it.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010 , and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.nomic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.ity..Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created ChristianityS: The Event that Created Christianity.