By D. Snodgrass
Celsias
In Monsanto v. Geertson Seed Farms, No. 09-475, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case which could have an enormous effect on the future of the American food industry. This is Monsanto’s third appeal of the case, and if they win a favorable ruling from the high court, a deregulated Monsanto may find itself in position to corner the markets of numerous U.S. crops, and to litigate conventional farmers into oblivion.
Here’s where it gets a bit dicier. Two Supreme Court justices have what appear to be direct conflicts of interest.
Stephen Breyer
Charles Breyer, the judge who ruled in the original decision of 2007 which is being appealed, is Stephen Breyer’s brother, who apparently views this as a conflict of interest and has recused himself.
Clarence Thomas
From the years 1976 – 1979, Thomas worked as an attorney for Monsanto. Thomas apparently does not see this as a conflict of interest and has not recused himself.
Fox, meet henhouse.
The lawsuit was filed by plantiffs which include the Center for Food Safety, the National Family Farm Coalition, Sierra Club, Dakota Resources Council and other farm, environmental and consumer groups and individual farmers.
Read the full post at Celsias!
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Buzz this, today! http://buzzflash.net/story.php?id=1084122
just when you think it can’t get any worse…
here’s another monsanto man… from way back (1987)
Ever wonder how genetically modified food got approved in the US behind the public’s back? This clip from the film, The World According to Monsanto, captures the moment:
IF CLARENCE THOMAS DOES NOT RECUSE HIMSELF FROM THIS CASE, THEN HE SHOULD BE IMPEACHED!
He should be impeached anyway. He failed to report 700K in income his wife brought in, much of it from highly political sources.
No one is obligated to “report” income other than their own. His wife is obligated to report her income, not you, not me, not Clarence Thomas.
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At least 2 continental US sized garbage gyres in the Pacific that are carcinogenic soup of plastic that will be forever with us. An area the size of England is being strip mined for tar sands in Alberta. The deltas of the Niger and the Orinoco despoiled. The largest oil spill in history occurs in Indonesia and the world never hears about it.
Our planet is dying before our eyes and my heart is broken.
miles to go before we sleep
I thought the companies in Canada were removing the oil from the tar sand and in effect cleaning the soil. Maybe I misunderstood something.
Good point….the should be commended
I will go with misunderstood..yeah i would bet the tar sands areas pretty U/S for much, but then La brea pits held a lot of fossilised treasure.
I also suspect that the chem used to extract isnt going to be any “nicer: than the petrochem there naturally,
I would think the waste is still going to be pretty foul unless they get someone with smarts and Shrooms like Paul Stamets in to bioremediate, and its a Huge area. one hell of a job indeed.
The fact the areas crap already makes the business of exraction marginally less lousy than frakking clean areas i guess, or spillage in oceans.
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wow didn’t know that
that bloody revolving door syndrome, again.
Taylor for the milk, and substantial equivalence,
this..is Business as usual
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As we are all discussing Ex Monsanto Lawyer Clarence Thomas to Hear Major Monsanto Case | COTO Report, He needs to hold years of experience in criminal law services and should have handled certain special cases and specific domains as well.
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Mr. Thomas MUST recuse himself. That’s the long and the short of it. Regardless of the arrogance of Monsanto trying to pursue this all the way to the Supreme Court… the fact remains that Thomas has been compensated in the past by Monsanto, and he needs to recuse himself. Let’s make that the issue. Demonizing Monsanto, while justified, is secondary to the recusal issue.
Sadly Thomas is a brazen and corrupt piece of work. Another justice with less of a conflict HAs recused himself tho….:
“Stephen Breyer: Charles Breyer, the judge who ruled in the original decision of 2007 which is being appealed, is the brother of Stephen Breyer, who apparently views this as a conflict of interest and has recused himself.
Clarence Thomas: From the years 1976 – 1979, Thomas worked as an attorney for Monsanto. Thomas apparently does not see this as a conflict of interest and has not recused himself.”
more here:
http://markcrispinmiller.com/2011/01/ex-monsanto-lawyer-clarence-thomas-wont-recuse-himself-from-big-monsanto-case/
Not to the point of Thomas recusing himself although an obvious insult to the Justice system and the people it is charged with serving.
An interesting note in this article is how Monsanto is able to take legal action against a farmer who’s farm is found to have harvested crops with the presence of the GMO gene.
“Monsanto has a policy of filing lawsuits or taking other legal actions against farmers who harvest crops that show the presence of the company’s patented gene technology. It has sued farmers even when they have tried to keep their own fields free from contamination by biotech plants on neighbouring farms.”
It seems painfully obvious that these farmers should be able to take legal action against Monsanto for infecting their crops…
WTF?
End the fed govt intrusion into our lives. Ron Paul 2012 will end the fed EPA, FDA, USDA thus ending the revolving doors and allowing the States to deal with those issues. Do your research! ON top of all that, Ron Paul wants to end the fed reserve (1913 – research it) and end the war on drugs. And end the wars by bringing out kids home. And he wants to end the NDAA, SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, TSA and anything that the fed govt has taken upon themselves to throw on its people. The media blackout won’t tell you about Ron Paul. It is up to you to find out!
Ron Paul is a wacko extremist who wants to end gov’t altogether – the good ideas are far outweighed by the very bad ones he espouses. Maybe you should do a bit more research on Ron Paul and see for yourself…
Granted, we are facing a field of losers, including Obama. Obama has proven he can screw his own with the best of them which in my book excludes him from another term. When we look at the Four Republican Horsemen of the Apocalypse, wacky Ron Paul stands head and shoulders above the rest. I for one do not like it when people who say they are my friend sh*t on my head daily.
🙂 an extremist?? uh?
he wants to cut debt, rid the nation of the maggots sucking it dry right now, remove a lot of the insane rules and regs that hinder folks from even being able to try and earn a living, I am not seeing much to worry about in his ideas, just a conservative chap who seems to be a far saner option over the buffoons also running.
he sure isnt planning on killing more of your young in pointless wars, or removing the basic tenets your nation was founded on.
care to post whats got you bothered by him?
You sir, are an idiot to put so much stock in one person. Obama acolytes have found that out. Remember your civics class from 8th grade? 3 branches of federal government. Executive, Legislative and Judicial. Do you think Ron Paul will get whatever he demands? If so, you are naive or a fool.
You misused the word “idiot.”
This is a horrifying lawsuit. The fact that Thomas has not recused himself is not surprising.
Love4ourHumans: I really want the USDA, FDA and EPA to do their jobs. Without them, our food, drugs and air will quickly become unsafe. If you have studied economics, you should realize that the marketplace does not solve all problems, and some regulation is necessary. The fact that Paul does not acknowledge this makes me think he is deranged.
This has the sound of Sleaze, the look and feel of sleaze. No ethics no future. There are no explanations nor excuses. Not only will it monopolize our food, farms , freedom and growth but it will paralyze mankind.
The FDA and similar bureaucracies have no oversight, and function independent of election or discipline. The Supreme court is not elected, it’s selected, usually for political reasons by the current President. Also no way to be disciplined or removed that I know of…Does anyone else? Is there any way to remove a Justice for incompetence or illegal behavior? I’d like to know.
Justices can be impeached just like the president.
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The “Honorable Justice” Clarence Thomas is both a travesty of justice and a travesty of a justice. I hope he has never been near the offices of nor even approached a chair therefrom nor ever allowed to sit even next to any seat at the august bench of The Supreme Court of The United States of (not “IS”) America where The Great and Truly Honorable Justice Thurgood Marchell served. Justice Marchell HONORABLY served the The Constitution of The United States of (not “IS”) America and THE PEOPLE thereof. Why don’t he, “Justice” Thomas, just go home? I ask with total seriousness and sincerity. Why does he not do the honorable thing; take the ethical course of action?
Anything we can do to get rid of Monsanto will be good for planet earth
I AGREE …WE SHOULDN’T STOP THERE. WE SHOULD BAN ALL AGRIBUSINESSES AND PUT AN END TO ALL FORMS OF AGRICULTURE AND RANCHING COMPLETELY. WE SHOULD LET ALL THE FARMS GO BACK TO NATURE. THINK OF ALL THE TRUCKS THAT HAUL PRODUCE AND FOOD PRODUCTS ACROSS THE COUNTRY THIS WILL TAKE OFF THE ROAD. ALL THOSE GROCER STORES WE WILL NO LONGER NEED CAN BE TURNED INTO GREEN SPACES. I THINK EVERYONE SHOULD GROW THEIR OWN FOOD IN A WINDOW PLANTER BOX AND EAT LOTS OF SEA WEED DISHES. WITH MONSANTO OUT OF THE WAY CROP YIELDS CAN GO BACK TO PRE 1950 LEVELS AND THAT SHOULD TAKE CARE OF WORLD OVER POPULATION WITHIN A DECADE. IT’S THE BEST SURE FIRE WA TO PUT AN END TO OBESITY IN AMERICA TOO. LETS GET RID OF ALL FORMS OF ENERGY AND AGRICULTURE. WHO’S FOR BEATING THE EATING AND HEATING HABIT?
ah Michael, you the monmens shill for this page?
or is your tongue firmly planted to the side?
the super green agw true believers, would agree with you.
however realists realise we need agri in reasonable, and that! is the crucial word..Reasonable, portions.
NOT the monmongrels monocrop chem to hell inside and in soil and air and water methodology.
every nation thats gone to massive broadscale ag that ruined rural economies closed town and all affiliated services as a follow on, and forced the now jobless rual dweller to slums in cities is paying a horrible toll for doing it..
massive monocrops all ripening in the same week require massive harvesting, processing and gluts that ruin prices for the poor producers too., as well as storage issues. huge outlays for equipment and low labour.
and if a natural event wipes it out its a Huge wipeout, smaller areas scattered all over fare better. some is better than none.
smaller family farms using One or two machines in a co op as Aus used to do really did work well, and variation on seed meant crops and planting was also staggered, reducing the pressure on everyone..
the waste used to be used Safely for fodder, with the toxins on and in it now its only fit to brew biofuels at a loss anyway.
and still they screw the pooch and feed that crap back to the poor CAFO victims to get every last cent of profit.
the soils loose the scattered nutrient return, from the crop bioprocessed BY the cows or sheep
. = more Inputs of chem crap. that is NOT bio available and actually kills the biota. easy evidence of how toxic this crap is seeing herds all die from nitrogen poisoning after someones let them into newly treated areas. superphosphate kills.chemical urea is NOT the same as natural urea..
for weed control 3 passes over 14 days using a tractor is Still more earth friendly to kill weeds with than using direct drill and poisons, the fuel cost is NOT as high as the chem trick by a long shot. and you dont need the machinery and the debt to the banks to do it .
soils started blowing away ONLY when the huge chem cos and big equipment got started, odd isnt it> before that erosion was NOT an issue. small fields with edge trees to block winds and help stop runoff also saved soils, but they were sooo old fashioned, ha.
tell me just How? growing masses of tomatos(or anything else) in one area and gassing chilling and dragging them over an entire country is a smart idea? when local areas could and did produce them with better quality, a lot less handling storage and fuel to distribute them? oh and people had jobs and pride. manual labour does NOT preclude intelligence, you can do a lot of thinking and talking while you work weeding etc as well as getting fit. rotated and varied crops according to the season didn;t allow massive bug buildups either, monocrops is a bugs heaven.
another smart new tech idea from big agri , oh boy.
and back to the title post,,ignorant people like Justice Thomas working for big agri with not one bloody idea of the real world making decision on Financial and patent rights are the death of ameriKKa and its people.
So yet again Justice Thomas will sit in on a case and rule knowing that Monsanto is appearing before him and the other Justices. Any bets on whose side he will rule?
This man is a disgrace to any court. He did not recuse himself when hearing the appeal from the Vietnamese affected by Agent Orange, manufactured by Monsanto and others.
And what was being asked of the Supreme Court, that they call for the papers from the lower court and see if there was a case to be heard.
Of the nine Justices, the Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Steven’s decided not to particpate. This is what Thomas should have done, his was a stronger reason not to sit in and rule, so the question is WHY?
WHY? You pose the same question for the same reason I have. Now I add: How can he still be on the bench? He has no judicial ethics nor honor. I believe him to be totally inept at judicial deliberations and judgement beyond traffic violation issues and dog bite cases. He is simply there, where he does not belong and never should have been confirmed, he is there as a fudking lackey-rubber-stamp for Fascist Undemocratic Despotic Kleptocratic Ignoble Neoconservative Retrograde (FUDKING) right-wing, racist, REPUBLICAN RATS.
Readers are encouraged to visit ‘The Agent Orange Action Group’ at http://www.aoag.org Those with an interest in Monsanto and Agent Orange please visit a previous Food Freedom ‘classic’ at http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2011/07/08/monsantos-agent-orange-being-used-to-clear-brazils-rainforest/ The comments are a MUST read! Justice for the Victims of Agent Orange!
Let’s see if Justice Elena Kagan recuses herself when the court hears the “Obamacare” case.
To answer this broken record of yours…..she has already stipulated her recusal from the case. Satisfied? Let me guess…NO.
the media if ethcail should be all over this! I believe that if enough people share this and make it public knowledge like occupy became we have a chance of changing history or is this being censored in the states? The media will not be interested till people make it a issuse. Please the people of USA speak up and share corruption facts with your neighbours. Your health and childrens health depend on it.
http://ppjg.me/2010/05/13/another-pro-monsanto-supreme-court-justice/
And you all know that Kagan sued on behalf of Monsanto for GE Alfalfa, right? The same case that was before Judge Charles Breyer, brother of Supreme Court Breyer.
By this logic, Kagan ought to recuse himself from all the cases that the Obama administration is involved with because she worked for the administration. In addition, she was just working for Obama just a year ago. Thomas worked for Monsanto over thirty years ago.
Typical republican pivot.
MONSANTO IS DESTROYING FARMS AND FARMERS. IT IS IMPERATIVE TO STOP HIM.
Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan will recuse herself from at least 25 cases already on the docket. That means she will not sit in oral arguments or vote on the outcomes. Probably not sufficient enough evidence for John R Lott Jr.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/10/04/scotus.new.term/index.html
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This is proof this country is nothing more than an Oligarcky. “To consider the judges as the ulitimate arbiters of all Constitutinal questions (IS) a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an Oligarcky”. Thomas Jefferson.
I just heard of a Railroad Mike in New Orleans…
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