Pew's parallel universe

The Washington Times ^ | January 6, 2005 | Henry I. Miller

[neverdem]

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The Washington Times
www.washingtontimes.com

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Pew's parallel universe

By Henry I. Miller
Published January 6, 2005

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The "new biotechnology," or gene-splicing, applied to agriculture and food production is here to stay. More than 80 percent of processed foods on supermarket shelves soft drinks, preserves, mayonnaise, salad dressings include ingredients from gene-spliced plants, and Americans have safely consumed more than a trillion servings of these foods.

    But opposition continues to genetically improving plants by use of these precise and predictable techniques, largely due to a drumbeat of misrepresentations by antibiotechnology activists.

    Some of these radicals, like Greenpeace, make no secret they intend to stop at nothing to eliminate gene-splicing from agriculture, while other groups claim not to oppose gene-splicing but only to want it "properly" regulated. They are subtler, and therefore more insidious.

    Reports by the lavishly funded Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology, for example, receive extensive media and government attention, largely because Pew touts itself as the thoughtful, disinterested middle ground in the biotechnology debates. But Pew's PR machine saying that doesn't make it so.

    Contrary to their claims to be neutral, honest brokers on biotechnology, Pew's workshops, conferences and publications consistently show a pervasive pro-regulation bias and try to create a presumption of genuine controversy where none exists. (Activists understand overregulation is a subtly effective tool to inhibit innovation and slow diffusion of even a superior technology they dislike.) Pew's most recent surveys offer excellent examples.

    Pew's 2003 report, "Public Sentiment About Genetically Modified Food," was a typically disingenuous pastiche of truisms, half-truths and sleight-of-hand.

[neverdem]

ping

[FierceDraka]

Damn Luddites. They seem to have this foolishly romantic idea that if we could turn back the clock and rid ourselves of our technology, we would all be holding hands while dancing naked in the meadows with flowers in our hair.

Idiots. Willful blindness and denial of historical fact doesn't make it so.

We developed our technology in the first place because life without it, for most people, was indeed brutish, nasty, and short.

Plagues, pestilence, and poverty and infant mortality rates that would make modern advocates for the poor die from shock. Water contaminated with filth. Death from infection caused by easlily treated maladies like toothaches. Mass famines caused by crop failures.

And these self-important, narcissistic a$$holes from Greenpeace, Pew, and Friends of the Earth want to undo all that in the name of their ideologies. And they call themselves "progressives"?

What they advocate is actually mass murder (bordering on holocaust) by depriving nutritious foods and advanced medicines from those who need it most.

Oh yeah, and one more thing. Our ancient practices of agriculture and horticulture involve genetic manipulation, except it is more commonly known as selective breeding.

/end rant

[farmfriend]

Rights, farms, environment ping.
Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this list.
I don't get offended if you want to be removed.

[Einigkeit_Recht_Freiheit]

I know people at the Pew Charitabe Trust and in the Foundation world in general.

People in the rest of the Foundation world are scared of Pew. They stay of their way. It is very strange.

[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!!

[muir_redwoods]

Ping for later

[Carry_Okie]

Damn Luddites.

Pew's interests aren't about Luddism, they're about money.

[Carry_Okie]

People in the rest of the Foundation world are scared of Pew. They stay of their way. It is very strange.

Once you know how it works, it makes perfect sense.

Pew is all about using their foundation money to deny access to resources (particularly renewables) by which to force markets into purchasing substitute goods, virtually all of which involve the use of more energy.

Pew is SUNOCO. The tax-exempt "charitable" foundations of major stockholders in oil and gas companies are the biggest and most active donors to environmental "causes."

Consider salmon in the Pacific Northwest, where Pew is the principal lead. Salmon are not endangered, indeed they are enjoying record runs. What is Pew shoveling money at green groups to destroy? Hydroelectric dams. What is the alternative to hydro? Natural gas, because you can bet that clever use of air quality regulations will preclude coal.

Genetic modification of crop plants will eliminate the need for many chemical fertilizers. What does it take to produce those fertilizers? Natural gas.

Got it now?

Using a charitable foundation, to use the law to force people to use your product, to use regulatory power to keep competitors out of the market or force them into selling or go bankrupt, and to protect you from liability for your product in order to reap a guaranteed profit is tax-exempt racketeering, and on a grand scale.

[texjan]

THE STENCH FROM PEW (videotape exposes phony buzz created for McCain-Feingold CFR)http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1367081/posts