White House blocking release of Monsanto-linked lobbyist’s email.(ETL).By Madison Ruppert.The Obama administration is now blocking a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by an environmental group, Public Employees for Environment Responsibility (PEER), which is attempting to uncover Obama’s connections to Monsanto-linked lobbyists.
Keep in mind, Monsanto’s products have been linked to some horrific effects on biological systems like the human body, not the least of which is creating necrosis and significant mutations in critical cell types.
Also quite noteworthy is the fact that Monsanto was actually recently found guilty of chemical poisoning in the case of a French farmer.
The group suspects the Obama White House of working with these lobbyists to defend genetically engineered (GE) crops and the attempts to get these GE crops planted in wildlife refuges across the United States.
Part of the information which is currently being withheld by the Obama administration is part of an email from January 2011 from a lobbyist to a top White House policy analyst.
This lobbyist was with the Biotechnology Industry Organization, or BIO, which regularly represents the interests of companies specializing in GE seeds like Syngenta and the infamous multinational giant Monsanto.
The White House claims that they had to block portions of the email because it contained information on BIO’s lobbying strategy.They claimed that if this strategy was released, it could cause damage to the group’s competitiveness and those of the companies it represents.
“We suspect the reason an industry lobbyist so cavalierly shared strategy is that the White House is part of that strategy,” said Kathryn Douglass, the staff counsel for PEER.
Douglass is arguing that the email should be public record, adding, “The White House’s legal posture is as credible as claiming Coca Cola’s secret formula was ‘inadvertently’ left in a duffel bag at the bus station.”
PEER has been doing phenomenal work exposing the connections between our government and BIO lobbyists, including the release of internal emails last July.
The email release revealed that Peter Schmeissner, a senior science policy analyst and member of the biotechnology working group at the White House, actually had been corresponding with a BIO lobbyist about one of PEER’s legal challenges.
The lawsuit, filed by PEER and their allied groups, was quite successful in that it halted the planting of GE crops within the wildlife refuges across northeastern states.PEER has obviously not given up and they continue to fight the planned plantings of GE crops across the nation.
Truth-Out has been doing one of the best jobs of keeping track of the United States’ efforts to pressure foreign nations into accepting exports and GE crops, including countries like France and Spain.
Through the release of some WikiLeaks cables, it was found that essentially United States diplomats were working for companies like Monsanto by going around the world promoting their GE products.
The first legal challenge relating to the planting of GE crops on wildlife reserves came after PEER was contacted by biologists with the FWS who were opposed to the planting of GE crops on said reserves.
Later, PEER actually received an internal email which they believe shows that Tom Vilsack, Secretary of the USDA, actually was pressuring FWS to support GE crops.
In the email, dated January 14, 2011, David Hayes, the Interior Department Deputy Secretary, relayed to some of the top Interior Department and FWS officials that, “Apparently Vilsack is somewhat exercised that the Administration is not being consistent in supporting genetically modified crops.”
Of course when asked about this high-level pressure, Rocque claimed that she was completely unaware of any internal pressure coming from the upper levels of the Obama administration.
This is just more of the “I do not recall” plausible deniability nonsense.The case of Monsanto and the American diplomats promotion of their products is just about the most perfect example of how corrupt our so-called government has really become.Hmmmm........Obama: "All the Choices We've Made Have Been the Right Ones".Read the full story here.
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