The best-laid schemes of mice and men, as Robbie
Burns said, gang aft agley. I had meant
to devote this post to the meeting of the Cambridge University Alumni
Association (Hawaii Chapter) for UH law professor David Callies’ talk on “GMOs: where and how to regulate: home
rule and state preemption”. Unfortunately a pitiful half-dozen alums, some with spouses (including
y.t. and ditto) was all we could muster, and the talk itself, though it was
okay, didn’t say much that anyone who’d been following recent events in
Hawaii didn’t already know. There was at
least one interesting thing I learned, but that can wait till I take up the
whole legal issue in some later post.
What happened was, I felt that before I wrote on it
I should have a look at the primary literature.
So I slogged my way through some of this, especially Federal Judge Barry
Kurren’s decision on the Kauai initiative, and found that it was by no means
the bought-and-paid-for Monsantoite slam-dunk of anti-GMOer’s imaginations
(including, to be honest, my own). It’s
by no means impossible that a conscientious judge, doing what judges are
supposed to do, could not have decided the case otherwise. Indeed, Kurren found for Kauai on all of the
legal issues but one. But that one was
fatal, and shows why we have to get state legislation up and running a.s.a.p.
Then serendipity struck again. In the course of my searching I stumbled on a hot-from-the-press vitriolic
attack on the Vandana Shiva Home-Rule Tour by Jon Entine, which if you really want to you can read
here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-entine/ecowarrior-vandana-shiva-_b_6528032.html. Why Huffington Post, which is supposedly
liberal, allows stuff like this is a mystery to me, and if you’re a HuffPo reader
I suggest you write Arianna and give her an earful (remember those days when
Letters to the Editor were a big deal?).
Accompanying Entine’s article was a comment by one Nichols TW,
responding to an earlier comment: “I was wondering if you have any
peer-reviewed scientific literature that supports your view of GMOs harming the
ecosystem, or glyphosate (RoundUp) threatening to ‘kill everything on land and
in our ocean’?”
This is too good a chance to miss, I thought, and
responded as follows:
“To
Nichols TW. Looking for peer-reviewed scientific literature? Why don't you check out “Genetically engineered
crops, glyphosate and the deterioration of health in the United States of
America” by Nancy L. Swanson, Andre Leu, Jon Abrahamson and Bradley Wallet,
that appeared in the Journal of Organic Systems, 9(2), 2014 (you can read it at
http://www.organic-systems.org/journal/92/JOS_Volume-9_Number-2_Nov_2014-Swanson-et-al.pdf).
Let's see what you and all the other Montsantophiles have to say about THIS!”
And then I thought: isn’t it maybe time to start the
first Takedown?
What is a Takedown?
It’s an answer to the Monsantoites’ favorite tactic, the Pile-On. Remember, I discussed Pile-Ons in “Mission
Statement”. A Takedown is when someone
(so far only me, but let’s hope it catches on) picks on a Monsantophile flack
and points out all the half-truths and flat-out lies
that his writings contain..
I was already familiar with Entine, because he blogs on something called
the Genetic Literacy Project—not to worship GMOs is genetic illiteracy,
according to Jon. So I thought, why not
start this particular ball rolling?
Since he’d headlined his piece ‘"Eco-Warrior"
Vandana Shiva, at $40,000 a Speech, Rejoins Hawaii Anti-GMO Crusade, But Truth
Is the Victim’, I wrote:
“To Jon
Entine. Where do you get the $40,000-per-gig claim for Shiva? I happened
to attend one of the functions you were talking about, so I know that
approximately 400 people attended the talk at @15 a head. Also there was a
cocktail reception attended by certainly, max, 100 people (probably less) at
$30 a head. Do the math. I get a gross of around $9,000, from which you have to
subtract the cost of the food and drink, the rent of the theater, and any
incidental expenses CFS incurred in sponsoring the thing. If she got more than
5K I'd be surprised. Where do you think the remaining 35K came from? Btw, if "polls show a majority of Maui farmers and
residents oppose the effort to shut down the seed nurseries and research
labs" [YES, HE ACTUALLY HAD THE BALDFACED AUDACITY TO CLAIM THIS, DB], then pray tell us how come GMO firms spent millions of dollars
to stop them voting the other way, AND FAILED?”
And seconds after I’d posted, I remembered something else, and posted again:
“Sorry,
folks, one more point. Jon Entine talks about 'demands for what the prime
organizer--Washington, DC-based Center for Food Safety (CFS)--calls "home
rule."' I'm sorry, the issue the tour was not about what CFS calls
"home rule" but what EVERYONE calls "home rule". Just
Google it, and you will see inter much alia the Wikipedia definition,
"Home rule is the power of a constituent part (administrative division) of
a state to exercise such of the state's powers of governance within its own
administrative area that have been decentralized to it by the central
government"--in this case the right of counties in Hawaii to legislate
against certain aspects of GMOs, which of course (though you wouldn't know it
from Entine) was the whole theme of the tour. This is the kind of sloppy
writing that helps discredit the pro-GMO side.”
I did all this yesterday. Today when I got up I went straight to the
HuffPo piece and to my disappointment found that Entine hadn’t risen to my
bait. Well, I’ll keep up the pressure. Something’s gotta give.