Scripps Howard News Service Columnist, Michael Fumento, was fired after it was discovered he had been taking money from Monsanto as incentive to bias his articles as Pro-BioTech.

MIchael Fumento got $60,000 from Monsanto to disseminate false and misleading information to the American People.

How un-patriotic and criminal. What other reporters and politicians has Monsanto been bribing? Will this corruption in our country ever end?

In 1985 Monsanto purchased G.D. Searle, the chemical company that held the patent to aspartame, the active ingredient in Nutra Sweet. Monsanto was apparently untroubled by aspartame's clouded past, including a 1980 FDA Board of Inquiry, comprised of three independent scientists, which confirmed that it "might induce brain tumors."

The FDA had actually banned the drug based on this finding.

Then Donald Rumsfeld, Searle Chairman (currently the Secretary of Defense), vowed to "call in his markers," to get it approved.

On January 21, 1981, the day after Ronald Reagan's inauguration, Searle re-applied to the FDA for approval to use aspartame in food sweetener, and Reagan's new FDA commissioner, Arthur Hayes Hull, Jr., appointed a 5-person Scientific Commission to review the board of inquiry's decision. It soon became clear that the panel would uphold the ban by a 3-2 decision, but Hull then installed a sixth member on the commission, and the vote became deadlocked. He then broke the tie in aspartame's favor. Hull later left the FDA under allegations of impropriety, served briefly as Provost at New York Medical College, and then took a position with Burston-Marsteller, the chief public relations firm for both Monsanto and GD Searle. Since that time he has never spoken publicly about aspartame.

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The president's Monsanto men

The Bush administration's could be called the Monsanto Cabinet, per Robert Cohen, author of “Milk, The Deadly Poison” which details the horrid politics behind the contamination of our nation's milk and beef supply with bovine growth hormone.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was president of Searle Pharmaceuticals, a company owned by Monsanto. Rumsfeld was also the Secretary of Defense under President Ford.

Rumsfeld is believed to have earned around US$12 million from the sale of Searle to Monsanto.

Attorney General John Ashcroft reportedly received $10,000 for his senatorial campaign from Monsanto in the mid 90s. Ashcroft's contribution from Monsanto was five times that of any other congressional hopeful. Ashcroft, and Sr. Bush Supreme Court appointee Clarence Thomas were instrumental in gaining Food and Drug Administation (FDA) approval for Monsanto's controversial artificial sweetener aspartame, which has been linked to over 200 ailments that include Alzheimer's disease, juvenile diabetes, depression, epileptic seizures, blindness, memory loss, excitability, weight gain, multiple sclerosis and lupus (The Idaho Observer, November, 2000).

Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman was on the board of directors of Calgene Pharmaceutical, another company currently owned by Monsanto.

Secretary of Health Tommy Thompson is the fourth member of the Bush cabinet to have direct ties to Monsanto. The former governor of Wisconsin designated his state as a “biotech zone” for the use of Monsanto's bovine growth hormone even though dairy farmers in his state opposed the designation by a 9-1 ratio. Thompson reportedly received $50,000 from biotech companies during his election campaign.

Bovine growth hormone, which does increase the productivity of dairy cows, has also been linked to many health problems in children and adults (The Idaho Observer, November, 2000) and makes cows sick.

Bovine growth hormone has been outlawed in most countries, but not the U.S.

And as Cohen points out, another player in the Monsanto-studded Cabinet is Rep. Richard Pombo, who will head the Agriculture Subcommittee on Dairy, Livestock and Poultry. Pombo is also a Monsanto boy, having taken campaign money from it while stalling a 1994 bill to make labeling mandatory for milk or milk products containing Bovine Growth Hormones. Pombo helped kill the bill in committee.

Monsanto also holds the patent on the “terminator gene” which prevents plants from producing viable seed so that farmers, and therefore people, will be dependent upon the multinational corporation for their food supply.

Monsanto has proven to be one of the most greedy, ruthless and environmentally irreverent corporations in world history. One cannot serve the interests of Monsanto and serve the interests of people at the same time.

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Racketeering charges have been filed against Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, Monsanto, NutraSweet Co., the American Diabetes Association and Dr Robert Moser for distributing toxic aspartame, in a class action representing many plaintiffs, filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California seeking $350 million in damages.

The suit charges the defendants with manufacturing and marketing a deadly neurotoxin unfit for human consumption, while they assured the pubic that aspartame (also known as NutraSweet/Equal) contaminated products are safe and healthful, even for children and pregnant women. Present US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, is mentioned throughout the lawsuit.

As evidence, an explosive affidavit from a former translator for the GD Searle company - the developer of aspartame - was made recently public and revealed the following.

For 16 years, the Food and Drug Administration denied approval of aspartame because of compelling evidence of its contributing to brain tumours and other serious disabilities. Donald Rumsfeld left President Ford's administration as Chief of Staff to become the CEO of aspartame-producer GD Searle Co. in 1981. Shortly after, Rumsfeld became the CEO, and the day after President Reagan took office, aspartame was quickly approved by FDA Commissioner Arthur Hayes over the objections of the FDA's Public Board of Inquiry. Hayes had been recently appointed by the Reagan Administration. Shortly after aspartame's approval by the FDA, Hayes joined NutraSweet's public relations firm under a 10-year contract at $1,000 a day.

In January 1977, the FDA wrote a 33-page letter to US Justice Department Attorney Sam Skinner: "We request that your office convene a Grand Jury investigation into apparent violations of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act." Skinner allowed the Statute of Limitations to run. Three FDA Commissioners and eight other officers and Skinner took jobs in the aspartame industry shortly after it was approved.

The FDA once listed 92 adverse reactions from 10,000 consumer complaints and would send the list to all inquirers. In 1996 the FDA stopped taking complaints and now denies the existence of the report. Seizures, blindness, sexual dysfunction, obesity, testicular, mammary and brain tumours and death, plus dozens of other dread diseases named in the suit, arise from the consumption of this neurotoxin.

Defendant Moser, past CEO of NutraSweet, is cited for misrepresenting facts to public and commercial users with full knowledge of the deceptions. Aspartame/Nutrasweet is sold to Bayer, Con Agra Foods, Dannon, Smucker, Kellogg, Wrigley, PepsiCo, Kraft Foods (Crystal Light), Conopco (Slim-Fast), Coke, Pfizer, Wal-Mart and Wyeth (to name a few), who use it in some of their products, including children's vitamins. These entities are named in other suits now in Californian courts.

Defendant American Diabetes Association is meant to care for diabetics. A 35-year ADA member, diabetic specialist HJ Roberts, MD, FACP, discovered aspartame can precipitate or aggravate diabetes and its complications, or simulate the complications (especially neuropathy and retinopathy). His report, intended for the Annual Scientific Meeting of the ADA, was rejected for presentation - and even publication of the abstract - but was later published in another medical journal.

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The Grand Ole Pedophile party is having a little trouble explaining why they didn't take action when they found out Republican Congressman Mark Foley was exchanging e-mails in which he propositioned 16-year-old boys. The Republican leadership took no action to take Foley off the Missing and Exploited Children's caucus, which he co-chaired.

According to ABC: "Hastert's staff and Republicans in leadership, including Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Rep. Tom Reynolds, R-N.Y., the chairman of the House campaign effort, for months had been aware of a questionable 2005 e-mail exchange between Foley and a Louisiana teen."

House Speaker Dennis Hastert said the reason he didn't take action to remove the pervert from his seat as co-chair of the Missing and Exploited Children's caucus was that "the parents didn't want the matter pursued." So they just left him on the committee. Hell with the parents of other kids who would be next to be propositioned by Foley. (New York Times)

According to epluribusmedia.org, "At least 4 years after having been exposed to House Leadership as a pedophile who presented a danger to teen pages, Foley was not only allowed to remain in Congress, but was allowed to be in a powerful position on committees affecting the well-being of children. After Hastert knew what he was up to, after it had become such common knowlege in Foley's office that staffers would warn incoming children about his abusive behavior, Hastert and the rest of the Republican leadershiop not only abandoned the children in his office to his abuse, but allowed him to influence policies that could leave other children vulnerable to other predators."

Check out Foley's website: "Mark plays a powerful role on the Ways and Means Committee by reforming the tax code, providing tax relief, expanding trade while protecting Florida’s farmers, seeking solutions to save Social Security, shoring up Medicare, reforming welfare and fighting child exploitation. In addition to his committee assignments, Mark serves as Chairman of the Entertainment Industry Task Force, Co-Chairman of the Missing and Exploited Children’s Caucus and Co-Chairman of the Travel and Tourism Caucus."

In this video at Think Progress, Hastert says he didn't remember being told about Foley last spring because he thought that it was "resolved" because "the family had got what it wanted to get". And "if he told me it would have been in the context of half a dozen other things ... that might have affected campaigns." No need to be concerned, as long as it didn't affect any campaigns.

www.davidcogswell.com

October 8, 2006
The Foley thing is fascinating. The Republicans, as they say, don't know whether to s*** or go blind. They are finally at the end of their bag of tricks. This particular twist is beyond their repertoire. All their familiar poses of sanctimonious virtuousness fall flat in this circumstance. It's just so hard for them to appear holier than thou. But that doesn't stop them from trying. What else can they do? For years they've clanged on the same tiresome bell. Ultimately it doesn't matter what people think because they can control the outcome of the elections with a few well-placed strokes in a master computer. But their pretense that they won in 2004 because of an inexplicable surge of concern with "values issues" like opposition to gay marriage, is going to be hard to pull off this time.

They can always employ the series of defense measures of any scoundrel: lie, lie, deny, blame someone else. And the Republicans can always pull out their phony religious act. But in this case that schtick is a drawn a little thin. And then of course, natural for the Republicans, they can go on the offensive. According to the Mercury News, "Republican Rep. John Shimkus demanded Friday that two of Congress' leading Democrats apologize for what he said were accusations that he tried to cover up the Capitol Hill pages' scandal involving former GOP Rep. Mark Foley." But "Rather than apologize, spokespeople for Durbin and Pelosi counterattacked. 'It's been a week since this scandal broke and U.S. Rep. Shimkus still doesn't get it,' said Durbin spokesman Joe Shoemaker. 'This isn't about too much partisan politics - it's about too little effort to protect children under his care. It is not a House scandal or a Republican scandal - it is a national disgrace.'"

Bush seems almost constitutionally incapable of giving in on anything or admitting error. His intransigence may in the end be his undoing, but it may first be the undoing of America. Will Americans finally say they've had enough with the Foley bit, the fact that Republicans abandon all their supposed principles of morality when it comes to the only thing they really believe in: power? Will it work?

Please email this web page to your friends and to people who are concerned about our future and our Grandchildren’s future. Thank you.