Monsanto Wins Supreme Court Victory

The constantly controversial Monsanto (the company that brought you Agent Orange, Nutrasweet, and DDT) has won a surprising victory in the U.S. Supreme Court: an injuction has been lifted that had been a stumbling block for Monsanto's plan to sell genetically modified alfalfa seeds without having completed safety tests on them. A lower court had previously barred the sale of their modified alfalfa seeds as scientists warned of the potential danger of the "Frankenfood" plants cross-pollinating with other neighboring crops.

Monsanto was charged a few months ago in France for blatantly lying about the safety of their best-selling weed-killer, Roundup. Glyphosate, Roundup's main ingredient, is classed as "dangerous for the environment" by the European Union. (A Monsanto shill actually stated that Roundup is "safer than table salt" - I'd love to see him consume some of the stuff, then.)

According to a recent Associated Press article, Monsanto's patented genes are inserted into roughly 95 percent of all soybeans and 80 percent of all corn grown in the United States. In other words, it's nearly impossible to avoid Monsanto products. This is disturbing enough on its own merits, but even more so when you consider studies that suggest that Monsanto corn is dangerous to your health.

There are more horror stories about Monsanto than I would have the patience to relay here, or you would have to patience to read. However, I strongly recommend you check out the documentaries Food, Inc. and The World According to Monsanto which is viewable on YouTube.

More relevant to this blog, however, is that we haven't forgotten the case of Kentucky farmer David Chaney who made worldwide headlines when busted by Monsanto's "gene cops". His crime? Saving his own soybeans for the purpose of replanting.

You see, Monsanto wants farmers to purchase new seeds from them every year, and they believe they have the right to stop anyone from planting seeds containing Monsanto's genetic markers. They're calling it 'seed piracy' even though there's no real similarity to other so-called "pirating" like home taping - seems logical enough to me that if you purchase seeds, you unequivocally own the plants that grow from them, and in turn you own whatever your plants produce. But Monsanto doesn't see it that way, and to the astonishment of many observers, the U.S. Government and the law have often come down on Monsanto's side, allowing them to patent life forms as "intellectual property".

But despite the Supreme Court ruling, this victory isn't quite the one Monsanto was hoping for. The ban on their alfalfa is technically still in place, and will remain so for a least a year pending USDA deregulation, which may or may not take place. The Center for Food Safety notes:

Generally speaking, Monsanto asked the Supreme Court to rule on three main issues: (1) to lift the injunction on GMO alfalfa; (2) to allow the planting and sale of GMO alfalfa; (3) to rule that contamination from GMO crops not be considered irreparable harm. In fact, the court only ruled on the first request which it did affirm by stating that the injunction was overly broad and should be overturned; however, the Court ruled in CFS’s favor on the other two issues, which in many ways are more important as the fact remains that the planting and sale of GMO alfalfa remains illegal.

I was a bit surprised to find that Monsanto has an official blog filled with self-serving disinformation, and that they're heckling the Center for Food Safety in a rather unprofessional, snarky, and downright bitchy manner:

According to CFS, they are “celebrating” today the victory of a 7-1 ruling against them. I guess maybe CFS runs with a glass half-full mentality.

We had a reporter call and ask if CFS mistakenly issued the wrong statement. Go figure.

Missing Hands (and other stuff)

With a topic like this, I thought maybe this would be a good occasion to use this image of Kali.

UnK reader "Old" posted a comment to yesterday's entry about the mysterious death of Secret Service agent Gary Joe Bergsen:

"I don't know if you know much about this, but there have been reports of people going missing in between Jackson County and Rockcastle County in recent years and if they find the bodies they generally find that their hands have been cut off."

Well, removal of a corpse's hands is an antiquated gangster-style method of making identification of a body difficult, apparently done by persons who forgot about toeprints, teeth, DNA, and other identifying factors. I don't know of any instances of it of occuring down in Jackson/Rockcastle counties, but I don't doubt that such cases exist. We tend to only hear about the ones where the bodies remain unclaimed and unidentified, on websites that keep track of John Does and Cold Case Files, such as:

Henderson: "The remains of a severely beaten young man who had his hands and feet cut off and his teeth knocked out remain unidentified despite an earlier, false identification in 2007 that named the victim as Indianapolis area resident Scott Michael Morris."

Madison County: "1993. White male between 25 and 30. Asphyxia from bag tied around head with belt. Missing hands. ESTIMATED YEAR OF BIRTH 1963-68."

Grant County: "1989. White male in 30's. 6 1/2 feet tall and weighed 220 lbs. Body found in tobacco barn. Hands cut off and multiple gunshot wounds, blow to the head. ESTIMATED YEAR OF BIRTH 1949-59."

Last November, I also reported on a case where the body of a male with hands and feet removed was found in a briar thicket in Daviess County.

Scuffletown

Another of Kentucky's Ghost Towns is Henderson County's Scuffletown, which is on the Kentucky-Indiana border along the Ohio River, just above the mouth of Green River.

According to the 1976 book The Annals and Scandals of Henderson County by Maralea Arnett, Scuffletown was built up around a tavern/trading post run by one Jonathan Thomas Stott. "Since he kept a good supply of liquor, it became a rendezvous for flatboatmen and others on the river. Often a general fight developed after several hours of drinking and the place received the name of Scuffletown."

A tobacco-processing operation in Scuffletown was quite successful, exporting 400 to 450 hogsheads of tobacco per year to Europe, for pipe tobacco and nasal snuff.

According to them there Wikipedia folks:

The site witnessed numerous Civil War-era activities. It may have been the intended target of a raid by a handful of Confederate cavalrymen from Tennessee led by Captain Jake Bennett. It was Colonel's Johnson set up his cannon a few miles below Scuffletown to take Newburgh. The Silver Lake No. 2, a sternwheel packet (steamboat) weighing some 129 tons and outfitted with six cannons capable of firing 24 pound shot, stopped at Scuffletown during its patrols of the Ohio. In 1863, eight Union companies of infantry and one company of artillery were stationed at Scuffletown to protect the area of Confederate raiders. Scuffletown is mentioned in the Civil War account Operations of the Mississippi Squadron during Morgan's Raid.

In 1893 the Southern Cherokee Nation were welcomed to Kentucky in Scuffletown and recognized as an Indian tribe by Governor John Y. Brown. The Southern Cherokee is still living on the Green River today.

The 1913 flood greatly devastated the city, causing a mass exodus that they never recovered from. Its post office closed permanently the following year. An even larger flood in 1937 decimated what was left, and a vast chunk of real estate has sat inexplicably deserted ever since. There's been talk for a decade about having it declared a protected wetland and setting up a national wildlife refuge there, but so far not much has happened.