NEWS: Thank You, Monsanto!

CULTURE: Thank You, Monsanto!

The Kansas town of Greensburg, recently leveled by a tornado, has been touched by the angel of Monsanto. The "agricultural company" (read: evil corporation) that "applies innovation and technology to help farmers around the world be successful...while also reducing agriculture's impact on our environment" (read: patents, monopolizes and manipulates seeds to disable and devastate farmers around the world, while producing genetically modified foods that destroy crops and ravage the environment), has contributed $50,000 to the Greensburg Future Fund to help rebuild the
community.

The people of Greensburg must be so deeply grateful. This generous donation will help them to rebuild "the many community institutions such as schools, health services, and libraries" that were destroyed by the twister. But will $50,000 really be enough to restore the community once the damaging effects of Monsanto's Genetically Modified Soy, rBGH dairy products, and Genetic Pollution are made evident?

I feel for the traumatized people of Greensburg, where an estimated 95% of homes are gone, but if they're smart, they'll take that tainted $50K and donate it to an organization fighting Monsanto's agricultural reign of terror.

Yeah, Monsanto sucks. How much PR can they buy for $50k?

In other news, the disaster in Kansas will prove to be yet another windfall for government outsourcing under BushCo.

Source.

What a cynical fucking article. 50 Grand is 50 Grand. If my community was destroyed by a tornado the very last thing I would be concerned with is whether or not an Ag company contributing to disaster relief practiced their business in a manner not acceptable to Greentards.

Regardless of what happens to Monsanto, or what Monsanto is responsible for, isn't a 50k check still a 50k check?

I don't understand what you are arguing here. Are you saying that Monsanto actually caused the tornado or something? Because I really don't see how a charitable donation here relates at all to the fact that they are otherwise an Evil CorporationTM. If anything, isn't the fact that they are trying to do some good (even if, yes, they might benefit from some good PR) laudable considering their otherwise shady practices?

And by the way, to end by suggesting that the victims of a terrible natural disaster should GIVE AWAY their money to some lobby group is offensive.

Uh oh, sounds like they better bring back the Goofy Gopher Revue!

-TM

$50,000 is not all that much in the big picture. "Big Picture"....hold that thought...we'll get back to that.

$50,000 to a large corporation like Monsanto is roughly equivalent to that quarter you gave the bum at the bus station. Taken at face value, it seemed like a nice gesture...but is it really going to do anything?

What's likely...is that it's a PR move to show that they really aren't evil incarnate. "Look...we gave some people some money"

Getting back to the "Big Picture"...The effects of the practices of Monsanto are pretty substantial. They're not somebody you want to get into bed with. They stuff they're doing isn't small...and it isn't being exagerrated by "greentards". Monsanto is hurting the environment on a global scale...and gleefully making money in the process.

It's not like protesting a coffee shop that doesn't use 100% organic, free-trade coffee that is only hand-picked by indigenous people...who are provided with full healthcare, education incentives & retirement benefits...at the higest market wage.

It's not a pet-issue that radically leftist green wackos are nitpicking....this is serious stuff with far-reaching consequences.

It may not seem like much to you...but a failure to fight practices like theirs dilligently is how creepy shit ends up in our food...it's how sub-standard building materials end up in our houses & workplaces...and it's how McMansions take the place of green fields.

Starguitar, you've said it. This article is ridiculous.

Cash, yes, all of that sucks. But right now a small town is desperate and needs anything they can get--and $50,000 means a lot more to them than it does to Monsanto. Too bad they can't fit into the big picture.

So....if Enron decides to give $50k to charity...their donation overshadows their wrongdoings?

Offensive to whom? What is offensive about that? Perhaps it's not a great idea.....but what, exactly, is offensive?

1) It doesn't overshadow anything, and what Monsanto does deserves to be heard and fought. But this time they did do a good thing, that I'm sure a lot of people in Kansas are thankful for.

2) Offensive to whom? Perhaps to people who are more concerned with helping people in crisis than they are about getting on a soapbox? The soapbox can take a rest for five minutes while these people dust themselves off.

EDIT: Oh, and one more thing. If I were in charge of the the Organic Consumers Association, the first thing I'd do is encourage the people of Greensburg to take what Robin Hood gave them. Then I'd take a bunch of my colleagues onto the next plane to Greensburg to embark on a massive education campaign about what Monsanto does the rest of the time.

I don't know about you, but if I were homeless in a farm town I wouldn't be thinking this when someone is donating money to give me a new home, and I don't blame a single person in Greensburg if he or she, at present, doesn't see it the way you do, either.

The fact that Monsanto has done and is doing some extremely fucked up shit doesn't meant that a bunch of homeless folks in a destroyed farm town would be "smarter" to take that donated $50,000 and give it away. Maybe one of the "organization[s] fighting Monsanto's reign of terror" ought to give the people of Greensburg $50,000 so that they won't have to take that money from Monsanto in the first place. As I've gathered, much of Greensburg probably isn't in a position in which refusing that money makes any sort of sense whatsoever, and were I a Greensburg resident, the argument here that I ought to find the highest horse around, climb up on it, and throw that money back in the face of its giver would be just a tad impractical, especially considering that $50,000 in the coffers of OrganicConsumers.org is going to affect Monsanto precisely not at all.

Not at all, but I bet that charity could sure use that $50,000 and in my opinion they wouldn't be at all in the wrong if they took it.

Precisely.

well whaddya know... a pack of wholly evil motherfuckers did a good deed to get a bit of good press as a distraction and it worked.

It sure didn't work here. We're all discussing the evils of Monsanto in some detail. So if it was indeed a PR stunt, then it backfired on SG, and likely elsewhere too.

I never give quarters to bums.

I'm not sure where anyone is saying that Monsanto shouldn't have given the money, or that the town should return it.

It's pretty simple: Monsanto offers the money as a publicity stunt, and people are just saying, "Thanks for the dough, but you're still shits." As long as the spotlight is on them, why not call them out on their practices?

Exactly.

How much school or house can you build for $50,000?

How much will it cost to replace a single schoolbus? A single tractor?

This excellent point is getting lost in the fray. $50k ain't shit. (And no, I do not have $50k to donate to Greensburg.) Monsanto did not do some kind of awesome good deed.

What will $50k build? One house, even?

Fight for justice--make charity obsolete. Monsanto is just unjust.

It's not a lot in the long run, but it's sure better than nothing, whether it came from Monsanto or anyone. The bottom line for me is that if someone can actually look the people of Greensburg in the eye and rip that check out of their hands, politely explaining to them that that's what's best, then, well, that person has more balls than me.

source

A $50,000 donation by a company that makes over $7 Billion annually is absurd. Yes...it's better than NOTHING...in the sense that...it's better than dropping rat poison on them from the sky...or pooping on the debris pile that used to be their home.

It's a PR move...and a lame one.

This article is ridiculous. I don't see SG printing any cheques of ANY amount and sending it on to Greensburg.

I'm hella scared that after every natural disaster from this point on, we're going to experience the "Katrina approach" to rescue and aid, aka militarization and neglect, complete with Blackwater mercenaries.

On Saturday May 19, five member and volunteers affiliated with Kansas Mutual Aid(KMA), a Lawrence-based class struggle anarchist collective, made the trek to Greensburg to help in relief efforts in the tornado ravaged city. A week earlier, four KMA members had traveled to Greensburg on a fact finding mission to assess the situation there. What KMA members found was a militarized, entirely destroyed city where relief efforts were moving tragically slow.

They were approached by the Olathe Police, Kansas Bureau of Investigation, and FEMA, who told them, "You're being ordered to leave and not return. This is not negotiable, not appealable. You can't change it. If you return you'll be arrested on site. And believe me, you don't want to push that right now. This system is pretty messed up, and you wouldn't be issued bail. You'd disappear in the system."

The area is a police state, to be certain. Relief workers were banned from Greensburg because of their political beliefs and work against oppression and tyrannical state control.

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2007/05/359704.shtml