Disgraced Trumpist lies about history, science, and his actions/statements.

Morons think this is evidence of something besides Trump’s utterly disastrous covid response, praising China and Xi and completely denying COVID’s dangers, needlessly costing a minimum of 500000 American lives and trillions of dollars wasted according to his own appointees.

What the report she mischaracterized said was genetic studies had PROVEN the virus was not genetically modified or “created” by any known unnatural process, (a conspiracy theory the right tried to float) so the theory that it had been CREATED in a lab was proven false. Banana republicans are too dumb or dishonest to make that clear.

What they also love to ignore is the eradication of our international pandemic response teams that had been stationed in countries world wide including China before Trump closed their offices, and they would have been on scene in September when the first cases were discovered not only to definitively identify the source, but to start efforts to combat it 8 months earlier that the Trump administration did. That could have completely prevented the pandemic, and would have offered the opportunity to properly respond well before it came to America, saving well over a million American lives and up to $16 TRILLION dollars.

Too bad Banana republicans have such selective memories. It make any discussion with them a fight over reality, because they always deny reality and history and think their conspiratorial fantasy holds more weight than scientific facts.

Edit: downvoted into oblivion in under an hour! Good job sift.
This type of history rewriting propaganda has no place anywhere, especially in congress, and should be plucked like a weed and burned with fire every time it pokes itself above ground.
Pedal your silly propaganda on Toth Senchal where it’s not just accepted it’s celebrated.

"Can I get a flock and train them to be my minions?!?"

You'll have to have them genetically modified to be yellow first.

That is clearly not true. It may be one of the less toxic human made functioning, profitable herbicides, but that's not what you said by far.

Roundup is not a pesticide, it's an herbicide. Conflating it with pesticides is ridiculous and incredibly misleading. Roundup is used to control weeds and remove genetic 'contamination' of specific crops. EDIT: Many of those crops are genetically modified to act as pesticides without spraying chemicals, which is a good reason to want to limit cross contamination in either direction.

Other alternatives are no chemicals at all, or only ecologically safe (usually natural) chemicals. I don't use chemicals on my farm, I weed, I spray horticulture oil, I spread ashes, I grow twice what I can eat so some loss to insects won't matter, and I remove insects, slugs, and snails by hand. It takes more work, but the statement that the only alternative to Roundup is worse chemicals or agriculture collapse is completely and obviously false and indicates a total ignorance of the issue you speak about.

"Modern Agriculture" today means hydroponics, aeroponics, and aquaponics, none of which can benefit a whit from Roundup. You mean to say "Industrial Agriculture". The collapse of industrial agriculture might not be a bad thing, as it's incredibly destructive and produces a sub par product. More people farming on smaller farms puts more people to work, makes better product, and makes the people who work on the land feel responsible for it's upkeep, not consider it a resource to be exploited as efficiently as possible.

Mentioning Monsanto's involvement in the project is not the same as saying "neither Einstein or Openheimer or others were behind the Manhattan project, it was Monsanto all along that plotted to destroy Japanese cities with nuclear weapons". They clearly implied that Monsanto joined the project as a way to 'cozy up to' the political elite, and it worked.

Where did you hear this ridiculous hypothesis about their motive? Do you see and hear things that other people don't see and hear? It's clear that the motive in all cases was profit, either directly, or future profits secured by 'making friends' in government by cooperating with them or by forcing farmers into untenable contracts and positions where, in some cases, farmers that don't use Monsanto crops were sued because Monsanto said the pollen that pollinated the crops came from a neighbors Monsanto crops, so the seed belongs to Monsanto. Monsanto does not set out to cause damage and harm, they simply don't care if it happens as a side effect of their profit making methods, which they will protect with any means possible.

Just wow, a more deliberately misleading description of the video would be hard to create.

There are a number of other techniques for suppression or elimination of particlular pest species around the world. Check out the Sterile Insect Technique being used against the screwworm fly which has already 100% eliminated that particular nasty from the US and Mexico. There is also the Daughterless Carp Project in Australia aimed at eliminating an invasive carp species from the Darling River system. It involves releasing genetically modified male carp that are incapable of producing female offspring. Unlike 20 or 30 years ago I think the possible consequences of these various techniques are now being considered.

Kahn is a genetically modified human, a leftover from Earth's Eugenics Wars. Played by Montalban and ruled over Asia and the Middle East before being deposed, some books place him as North Indian and a Sikh, but then who knows what genetic modification might do to someone's racial appearance.
So while Montalban is still not white, he's not Indian either.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khan_Noonien_Singh

Well, wouldn't someone EXPECT that compounds on Mars would be pesticide-free, non-genetically modified, and free-range?

Neils thoughts on the viral video

*** August 3, 2014 -- Anatomy of a GMO Commentary ****
Ten days ago, this brief clip of me was posted by somebody.

It contains my brief [2min 20sec] response to a question posed by a French journalist, after a talk I gave on the Universe. He found me at the post-talk book signing table. (Notice the half-dozen ready & willing pens.) The clip went mildly viral (rising through a half million right now) with people weighing in on whether they agree with me or not.

Some comments...

1) The journalist posted the question in French. I don't speak French, so I have no memory of how I figured out that was asking me about GMOs. Actually I do know some French words like Bordeaux, and Bourgogne, and Champagne, etc.

2) Everything I said is factual. So there's nothing to disagree with other than whether you should actually "chill out" as I requested of the viewer in my last two words of the clip.

3) Had I given a full talk on this subject, or if GMOs were the subject of a sit-down interview, then I would have raised many nuanced points, regarding labeling, patenting, agribusiness, monopolies, etc. I've noticed that almost all objections to my comments center on these other issues.

4) I offer my views on these nuanced issues here, if anybody is interested:
a- Patented Food Strains: In a free market capitalist society, which we have all "bought" into here in America, if somebody invents something that has market value, they ought to be able to make as much money as they can selling it, provided they do not infringe the rights of others. I see no reason why food should not be included in this concept.
b- Labeling: Since practically all food has been genetically altered from nature, if you wanted labeling I suppose you could demand it, but then it should be for all such foods. Perhaps there could be two different designations: GMO-Agriculture GMO-Laboratory.
c- Non-perennial Seed Strains: It's surely legal to sell someone seeds that cannot reproduce themselves, requiring that the farmer buy seed stocks every year from the supplier. But when sold to developing country -- one struggling to become self-sufficient -- the practice is surely immoral. Corporations, even when they work within the law, should not be held immune from moral judgement on these matters.
d- Monopolies are generally bad things in a free market. To the extent that the production of GMOs are a monopoly, the government should do all it can to spread the baseline of this industry. (My favorite monopoly joke ever, told by Stephen Wright: "I think it's wrong that the game Monopoly is sold by only one company")
e- Safety: Of course new foods should be tested for health risks, regardless of their origin. That's the job of the Food and Drug Administration (in the USA). Actually, humans have been testing food, even without the FDA ,since the dawn of agriculture. Whenever a berry or other ingested plant killed you, you knew not to serve it to you family.
f- Silk Worms: I partly mangled my comments on this. Put simply, commercial Silk Worms have been genetically modified by centuries of silk trade, such that they cannot survive in the wild. Silk Worms currently exist only to serve the textile industry. Just as Milk Cows are bred with the sole purpose of providing milk to humans. There are no herds of wild Milk Cows terrorizing the countryside.

5) If your objection to GMOs is the morality of selling non-prerennial seed stocks, then focus on that. If your objection to GMOs is the monopolistic conduct of agribusiness, then focus on that. But to paint the entire concept of GMO with these particular issues is to blind yourself to the underlying truth of what humans have been doing -- and will continue to do -- to nature so that it best serves our survival. That's what all organisms do when they can, or would do, if they could. Those that didn't, have gone extinct extinct.

In life, be cautious of how broad is the brush with which you paint the views of those you don't agree with.

Respectfully Submitted
-NDTyson

Did you read my post you quoted?

Let me refresh your memory:

Should there be strong regulatory oversight? Of course, same way there is for any commercially produced food.

Your video, Neil deGrasse Tyson on genetically modified food, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Ok guys, Genetically Modified Organism refers to both "artificial selection" and "genetic engineering". But both are not the same. Artificial selection has gone on for millennia while genetic engineering has been going on for only a few decades. Genetic engineering comes in many forms: gamma ray bombardments for chaotic mutations, splicing and dicing genes, implanting and hormonal reproduction of clones can indeed create many monsters both visible and invisible. The invisible monsters and the toxins they can create with their genes are the threat here. The manufacture of biological warfare, virus engineering and playing with the elements that make up life without understanding the consequences is the threat here. The bullying of corporations playing God and patenting their spreading genes are the threat here. Not the fact that apples or cows are bred to be bigger and juicier. Give me a fucking naive simpleton break, gawd that was disappointing.

Yeah, this broke my heart when I saw it the other day. Sure we've been genetically modifying food for millennia, but I'm pretty certain none of that resulted in the new organism producing round-up-like pesticides on its own.
And I don't know why it has to be controversy when the general populace says it doesn't want to be some shit-corps fucking guinea pigs.

Jesus. Someone genetically modified the original hosts cadence to make it super-annoying. Didn't think that was possible.

Because people have misconceptions about GMOs, thanks to the nonsense spouted by many anti-GM advocates. Even though most currently used GMOs have been pretty conclusively shown to be safe, most people are not aware of the research. They will see a label saying "genetically modified" and in their heads it will sound terrible. Giving people information they don't understand and are likely to misinterpret is not always a great idea.

Being worried that your food contains genetically modified products is sort of like being worried that your food contains chemicals. Both worries are fairly common, but neither makes any sense.

@enoch

From the Smithsonian article:
"already more than 70 percent of the processed foods in the U.S, such as snacks, breakfast cereals and vegetable oils, contain traces of GM crops because common ingredients, including corn, soy and canola oil,usually have been genetically modified."

Also from the article:
"And so far, there’s little to indicate that GM food is harmful to humans."

It says that more than 2/3 of PROCESSED food contains TRACES of GMO. Reality just isn't as scary as melodramatic music videos on YouTube would have you believe.

My biggest concern regarding GMOs is the relatively unknown influence it will have on natural ecosystems and therefore I am definitely concerned about Monsanto's political influence, but to say that it is all poison is just silly.

And yes, a YouTube video that uses dubious claims and a harrowing soundtrack in order to gain Facebook shares sounds pretty slactivist to me.

"This means that almost all of the food you see in a typical grocery store is pure poison, genetically modified."

More important than simply being factually untrue, this statement shows that whoever put this information together doesn't take any time to understand the complexities of the issue.

Don't get me wrong - I'm definitely a local farmer's market kinda guy - but this kind of uneducated slactivism really pisses me off and does more harm than good because the people that actually make a difference can somewhat justifiably write them off.