Last updated on 2018-04-24
In this week’s corporate fascism file, Energy Transfer Partners is suing Greenpeace and other environmental groups who protested ETP’s Dakota Access pipeline. ETP portrays the diverse anti-pipeline forces as an “Enterprise” that conspired to spread false information about the pipeline and incite terrorism against it:
The Complaint, which is Index number 1:17-cv-00173, alleges that this group of co-conspirators (the “Enterprise”) manufactured and disseminated materially false and misleading information about Energy Transfer and the Dakota Access Pipeline (“DAPL”) for the purpose of fraudulently inducing donations, interfering with pipeline construction activities and damaging Energy Transfer’s critical business and financial relationships. The Complaint also alleges that the Enterprise incited, funded, and facilitated crimes and acts of terrorism to further these objectives. It further alleges claims that these actions violated federal and state racketeering statutes, defamation, and constituted defamation and tortious interference under North Dakota law [Energy Transfer Partners, press release, 2017.08.22].
Resolute Forest Products filed a similar lawsuit against Greenpeace in May 2016 over logging protests. Resolute Forest Products and Energy Transfer Partners are both represented by Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP, whose managing partner Marc Kasowitz has served as the personal attorney of Donald J. Trump.
The 1983 American Heritage Dictionary defined fascism as: “A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.”
Fascism originated in Italy, and Mussolini claims to have invented the word itself. It was actually his ghostwriter, Giovanni Gentile, who invented it and defined it in the Encyclopedia Italiana in this way: “Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power” [“No Actually, This Is What a Fascist Looks Like,” TruthOut, 2013.01.18].
Meanwhile in South Dakota, 155 farmers have reported damage to their crops by herbicide drift, allegedly by a Monsanto product called dicamba and sold under the brand names Engenia, FeXapan, and Xtendimax. Monsanto recently started selling dicamba-resistant soybean and cotton seed after the Obama USDA deregulated those engineered seeds in 2015. The expanded use of dicamba has led to crop damage in several states:
Estimates of dicamba’s damage, however, continue to increase. Since the Plant Board’s vote, the number of dicamba-related complaints in Arkansas has soared to 550. Reports of damage also are increasing in the neighboring states of Tennessee, Missouri and Mississippi. The total area of damaged soybean fields could reach 2 million acres.
“I’ve never seen anything even close to this,” says Larry Steckel, a weed specialist at the University of Tennessee. “We have drift issues every year in a handful of fields, but I’ve never seen anything like this.”
…The problem is, dicamba doesn’t always stay where it’s supposed to. In hot weather, dicamba turns into a gas that apparently can drift for miles. And soybeans that haven’t been specifically engineered to tolerate dicamba are extremely sensitive to it.
According to Steckel, soybean farmers in western Tennessee are in one of two camps. Perhaps 60 percent of them are spraying dicamba, because they invested in Monsanto’s new dicamba-tolerant crops. The rest, with soybeans that are vulnerable, likely have seen some fields damaged [Dan Charles, “Damage from Wayward Weedkiller Keeps Growing,” NPR: Morning Edition, 2017.07.06].
Apparently it’s not enough for Monsanto to promise products that will deliver better yields. It has to design products that kill the competition. (But let’s wait to see final yields: SDSU Extension says dicamba drift sometimes increases yields… although this seems an opportune moment to remind everyone that SDSU’s most recent former president is still on Monsanto’s board of directors.)
Arkansas has temporarily banned dicamba. Numerous farmers say Monsanto’s 4,550-word dicamba instruction label is too hard to understand; Monsanto says farmers just need to learn how to use dicamba properly. Sales of dicamba-resistant Xtend soybeans helped boost Monsanto’s profits this spring by 1%, so naturally (funny word to use here), Monsanto vows that its product is here to stay.
Also possibly related:
As we know, fascism was eventually defeated in World War 2. But just before the end of the war, with the fascists on the ropes, the Vice President of the United States at the time, Henry Wallace, penned an op-ed for the New York Times warning Americans about the creeping dangers of fascism – or corporate government.
He defined a fascist as, “those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion” [TruthOut, 2013.07.06].
Citizens organize protests against a corporation’s environmentally risky project, and the corporation sues the protestors as racketeers. Farmers suffer real economic damage from another corporation’s product because they choose not to use that corporation’s products, and that corporation says, “Tough shiskey, knuckleheads,” and keeps driving toward monopoly.
For some of you South Dakota homers, Henry Wallace was all iowa’s. Thank you.
Monsanto claims that there is nothing wrong with instructions. Didn’t Monsanto sue organic farmers whose crops were infected with RR genetics for patent infringement or something and won in court?
Yup. Their product drifts onto non-customers’ property, and it’s the non-customers’ fault.
Wow, Cory, that is a great piece! Pretty much describes where we have been heading.
Thanks, Clyde! ETP’s lawsuit and dicamba drift are notably different issues, but environmental concerns link them, and the two stories both represent the corporate effort to squash our freedom. ETP is trying to crush freedom of speech and dissent, while Monsanto is trying to crush the freedom to farm.
Sorry Corey, this not all Monsanto. Enginia is not a Monsanto product, it is marketed by BASF who claimed it is safe. BASF has not taken anymore responsibility than Monsanto has. I have crop damage from both BASF and Monsantos products and both are ignoring the damage. It a farmer sprays and damages your crop they should be liable and they should go after Monsanto for promoting this new technology disaster. So far no one is taking any responsibility. The guy that ruined your beans has a beautiful crop and doesn’t care.
When farmers organize nationwide (I remember dumping milk in the days of the NFO) Monsanto and Enginia will be forced by Democrat state legislatures to create a damage fund to compensate farms who’ve been damaged by wandering spray of intolerant chemicals. Since Big-Ag Republicans control state houses in most ag states … fat chance for now.
~ As an aside … I believe farmer’s unions continually fail because no two farmers can agree on much of anything. It’s a competition with your neighbor when it should be a neighborly group dedicated to fighting the big corporations.
https://www.dtnpf.com/agriculture/web/ag/perspectives/blogs/ag-policy-blog/blog-post/2017/07/08/basf-monsanto-respond-dicamba-bans
BASF and Syngenta wanted to acquirer Monsanto. Some Chinese corp purchased Syngenta (which just lost a whopper lawsuit in Texas over corn) and now Mionsanto and Basf are looking to join forces.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-23/syngenta-ordered-by-jury-to-pay-218-million-to-kansas-farmers
Cross contaminated corn exports wouldn’t sell in China causing farmers to lose beau coup bucks.
Thanks for that update, Greg! There’s more than one bad corporate actor. Just as bothersome is the attitude you ascribe to the farmers who use the Monsanto/BASF products. Farmers used to stick together and look out for each other, didn’t they? The idea that one farmer would use a product with wanton disregard for the harm it does to his neighbors and fellow farmers suggests a gloomy future for organizations like Farmers Union that try to get farmers to work together for their common interest and stand united against corporate domination.
I don’t think that farmers don’t care about the drift on their neighbor’s fields. I for one have no intention of ever using this program again, because of drift issues. My biggest problem is where did the drift come from? That stuff can travel in any direction for miles days after it is applied(an issue that we, as consumers, were promised was fixed). If someone can show where the drift was directly from me, and not from any other Dicamba field in a few mile radius, then I’m glad to talk. If not, then we’ve got a problem. If the label was followed, and the product was defective, that makes the whole process even harder. I have a laundry list of issues with this “technology” but we all need to look around before we start pointing fingers and labeling producers.
That is a problem, Chip, if the chemical is so long-lasting, easily drifted, and hard to trace that we can’t hold any user accountable. That actually sounds like a chemical too dangerous to be on the market and used in the open.
Dicamba has been around for decades. It has been commonly used in corn fields for years in such products as Clarity which was popular at one time a few years ago:
http://agproducts.basf.us/products/clarity-herbicide.html
Clarity was designed to be less volatile than the earlier versions of dicamba products like Banvel which tended to have vapor move off target under the right conditions. The latest versions of dicamba based herbicides were designed to be less volatile than Clarity and the use requirements for farmers are more onerous than for Clarity.
Something is amiss when comparing times when farmers commonly used Clarity and had relatively few problems and now using the more advanced Extendimax and Enginia herbicides we are seeing more frequent problems.
I suspect the more frequent problems will be found to be attributable to a combination of off-label application methods and the later season conditions that are found when spraying soybeans as opposed to the earlier season conditions found when spraying corn. The later months of summer have more heat and humidity which can contribute to volatilization of the dicamba.
and global warming is real and will do nothing to cool the temps down. Sounds like there will be a definite need for court usable expert witnesses on both sides.
Of course, it might just be part of a master plan to infect all crops with patented genetics and then have Monsanto sue everybody but themselves for stealing.
Oh why can’t this stuff drift over Drumpf’s golf courses?
We use a lot of Dicamba, in products that are far more volatile than what these new formulations were(or were supposed to be). Just never in early-mid July. I think this has everything to do with ground temperature. As the ground heats up it lets off heat and heat waves. Typically we spray Dicamba early in the spring, when the ground is cool, and late summer when the crops are past the point of being able to be damaged.
Chip, you sound like all of my neighbors that are in denial that you damaged someone’s crop. If you sprayed dicamba and the adjacent field has damage that diminishes on the opposite side it is pretty clear what happened. If you think the burden of proof lies on the farmer that has the injured crop before you will talk to them I am glad I don’t farm by you. Chip, it is time for you users of this new technology to own up to thee fact that your herbicide program has caused your neighbor financial damage. Quit drinking the corporate koolaid.
Monsanto is planning to merge with Bayer.
Big Ag is engaged to Big Pharma.
I expect the wedding to take place as soon as the nation embraces medical marijuana, Monsanto can patent the seeds, demanding royalties from the growers, while Bayer can market the new product. Bayer is already producing Ag chemicals.
A slogan for the new corporation might be “first we’ll make you sick, then we’ll sell you the cure”
As I said Greg, I don’t ever intend to use it again. I don’t see how that’s drinking anybody’s Koolaid.
It’s funny you should mention that Anne. The weed pressure is a direct result of the crap they’ve been selling us. We’ve degraded our soil to the point that invasive weeds, insects, and diseases dominate our crops. When farmers figure that out, as they are around the world, these companies will be in trouble.
How is that for corporare Koolaid?
One can read Monsanto’s instructions for Xtendimax™ with VaporGrip™ Technology here.
Interesting that Monsanto says not to apply Xtendimax when there is less than 3 mph wind. The optimal wind conditions are 3–10 mph. From what I gather from the label, when there’s no wind, there’s a greater chance of temperature inversion, which increases the chances of drift.
Users should also keep a downwind buffer of 110–220 feet, depending on concentration of herbicide being applied.
Absolutely right Cory. Inversion damage is typically far worse than drift. Drift may go 20-30 feet. Inversion can go hundreds of feet. Or further. In the case if Dicamba drift it’s often from one end of the field to the other. I talked to a guy last winter that has gotten on a layer of Dicamba 100 feet up in the air with his open cab plane and followed it for miles. A change in temp or wind will stir up that air and eventually it will drop. Just a matter of where.
This stuff has its own “vapor grip” drift retardant. Plus you had to add another separate drift guard. Plus use special tips that made big drops instead of a mist like you would generally like.
Mother Nature will always expose the hubris of man: http://non-gmoreport.com/articles/april2012/scientist-biotech-gmo-herbicide.php
The “chemical treadmill” is a no-win situation for farmers, eaters, and the environment. The solution? Speak with your wallet at the grocery store and raise as much of your own food — sans chemicals, of course — as possible.
Off Topic But Timely … I just Facebooked with a friend I grew up with in SoDak in the 1960’s who is in Hurricane Harvey. He’s been stranded on his land a little nor th of Houston with 33in. of rain, so far. He’s an Eagle scout so you can believe his opinion about weather. I asked him if Harvey was stronger than the Blizzard of ’66. He says that they’re both mighty powerful but that running water is more dangerous than blowing snow. There ‘ya have it …
For you young’uns who don’t remember ’66 here’s a little story with a photo I’ve kept to show Colorado people what a blizzard is. (In the 45 years I’ve lived in CO we’ve only had one real blizzard.)
https://www.weather.gov/fgf/blizzardof66
Amen HydroGuy. Weeds are there for a reason. Just killing them doesn’t fix anything. You need to figure out why they are there and fix that problem. Could be an anaerobic problem. Could be a mineral deficiency. Could just be from bare soil. Could be a combination. This is why you need cover crops. Identify your problem ares and choose plants that fix them.
As Chip and HydroGuy say, there’s got to be a better, healthier solution than resorting to more and more powerful chemicals that require more complexity in their application than is feasible. If a chemical applied wrong could drift that far and affect that many neighbors (miles?!), we should get back to smaller-scale, more natural farming… or maybe concentrate all Monsanto farming in the center of the continent and build giant domes over their chem fields.
Exactly, Mr. Heidelberger … USA is ready for “dome food”.