I admire Bono, and not just because he’s a good musician. I also respect the social activism that is grounded in his Christian faith.
The Dread Performer Kimberlin has taken to bad mouthing Bono over at the jtmp dot org website. (I read it so you don’t have to—even though my doing so probably doubles their legitimate web traffic.) You see, Bono wants to help feed the hungry in Africa, and he’s willing to partner with companies such as Monsanto in the process. Monsanto, of course, must be evil because they are a purveyor of GMO seeds. Bono, Brett would have us believe, is “selling out.”
Brett Kimberlin and his organizations oppose “Frankenfoods.” They would prefer to have upwards of a half-million children die each year from vitamin A deficiency rather than have golden rice available in poor countries. They would rather Africans starve than let them plant insect- or blight-resistance corn.
OTOH, poor Asian and African kids aren’t likely to hit a donate button on a JTMP or Velvet Revolution dot US webpage, whereas there may be a few anti-science moonbats who still donate.
Follow the money.
Follow the money. Brett Kimberlin does business as the JTMP. It has an office in Cabin John Maryland. That office is provided to Brett Kimberlin by an heiress to the General Mills fortune. The General Mills company, AFAIK, uses American market wheat, which has been modified by companies such as Monsanto to do, among other things, synthesize its own pesticides to ward off insects. Such wheat is consider “Frankenfood” by its critics.
With such obvious ties to the big food corporations one has to ask exactly whose interests Brett Kimberlin is following? The cynic would note that the best way to control the opposition is to lead it. And, what better way for a “leader” of the anti-GMF movement to discredit it than to launch a suicidal attack against a leftist icon whose humanitarian efforts have even earned him the respect and admiration of those on the right? Maybe, those with strong ties to General Mills ought to be supporting his work.
Another example of the rank hypocrisy of Brett Kimberlin is his recent conviction on June 10th of this year for “allow[ing] materials to spill on PV.” He claims to be a leading activists who opposes fracking for reasons including claims that it contaminates ground water, yet he is unlawfully spilling materials into his own neighborhood! Apparently, he things environmental regulations ought to be for the other people.
My understanding was that the corn was modified to be resistant to Monsanto’s Round-Up brand of glyphosate.
I saw where they are working on a genetically modified variation of one of the staple foods like rice or wheat that increases the yield by about 30%. It had something to do with making the photosynthesis process more efficient IIRC… perhaps by expanding the range of wavelengths which initiate it. There is no noble motive for denying people such advances.
Margaret Atwood had an interesting novel where she explored a future world in which biological engineering had progressed in a similar fashion to what has occurred with mechanical and electrical engineering. I think the title was Oryx and Crake. Of course it all ended badly. It has to in a novel. “They all lived long lives and died fat and happy from having plentiful and nutritious food” doesn’t really make for good fiction. But it certainly makes the best reality.
I just wish food companies wouldn’t pander to the hysterics by advertising that their products are non-GMO. The companies who improve their products should be the ones doing the bragging. I sometimes tell my wife if I ever find a food product touting it is made with GMO’s I will buy it just to show support no matter whether it is something I normally eat or not.
This “GMO” scare is so ignorant as to be laughable – if it were not causing the deaths of millions a year from nutritional deficiencies and malnutrition solely due to the spread of the nonsense. It’s even worse than the vaccine scare-mongering, since some people do have bad reactions to vaccines so there is indeed a risk. No one has yet demonstrated any actual risk from GMO crops.
The fact is everything you eat is “genetically modified,” and always has been. Plant genes can be modified naturally by cross-pollination and natural selection without any direction, and are every day. Humans have been modifying them intentionally for centuries. For everyone from Mendel to Luther Burbank, it was a slow and tedious process of trial, observation, and error to isolate and cross-breed positive traits into plants, or breed out weak ones. Each cycle would take a whole growing season at least.
But there is no end difference in a plant that got its improved gene profile through years of experimentation in the field or greenhouse and those discovered and altered by scientific means. Our technological advances have changed the ways plants are planted, nurtured, grown, harvested, processed, transported, stored, delivered, cooked, and served. The idea that the lab technician is some tainting the results and the horticulturist doing it the “pure” way is ridiculous – the genes in the beans don’t know where they came from.
It’s modern superstition, and those who promote it are charlatans. Hmmm.
Forget the poor starving children. Without genetically modified food, most of the FIRST WORLD (i.e., you and me) would be fighting each other for food. These idiots forget that without finding what grows more and then breeding them together to make more and more and more food we would ALL BE STARVING!!! What idiots. They need to disappear from the earth so their idiocy doesn’t infect other people not willing to do their own thinking.
Reblogged this on A Conservative Christian Man.
Just another example of what a hypocritical hack Brett is …
Excellentely said. Thank you.
There are good reasons to be careful with GMO systems, and Monsanto’s behavior has been poor in the past in regards to their seeds.
That being said, though, ‘careful’ does not mean ‘never use it at all’. And it makes me extremely bitter how few people know who Norman Borlaug was, and why he’d be a candidate for sainthood had he been Catholic.
FWIW, you don’t have to be a Catholic, but the requisite miracles are easier to get checked off if you have significant associations with the Church
Heh. Only God can create a saint. The only saint that Jesus made, as recorded in the Gospels, is Saint Dismas, the ‘good thief’ who Jesus told “you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43) No other saint had been proclaimed as such by Jesus Himself.
I wonder how many in the anti-GMO faction realize that pharmaceutical companies make monoclonal antibodies using GMOs? Without monoclonal antibodies, many more cancer patients would die sooner and many more patients suffering from autoimmune diseases would suffer more.