This November, California voters will have an opportunity to vote on a simple, yet important ballot initiative called Prop 37 – the California Right to Know Act. If approved, it would require food sold in California supermarkets be clearly labeled if it has been genetically engineered.

There is no clearer David versus Goliath fight on this year’s ballot. On one side, is a truly grassroots people’s movement that generated over a million signatures in just 10 weeks, easily qualifying for the November ballot. On the other stands the largest anti-union, pro-pesticide, agrochemical interests in the world dedicated to saying and spending whatever it takes to hide the fact that some of our most important crops are being genetically engineered in a lab without our knowledge or consent.

As noted by Marc Lifsher in a recent story in the Los Angeles Times, “Proposition 37 promises to set up a big-money battle pitting natural food businesses and activists against multinational companies including PepsiCo, Coca-Cola and Kellogg.”

But the most notable opposition to date comes from the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), which has given $375,000 to the cause already, and according to their spokesperson “Defeating the initiative is GMA’s single highest priority this year.” The GMA’s membership reads like a virtual who’s who of anti-worker, anti-health, and anti-family farmer corporate interests, including outsourcing trendsetter Bain and Company, ...

Britain has launched its biggest peacetime security operation ever ahead of the opening of the Summer Olympics. Nearly 20,000 armed forces personnel are now providing security — almost double the number of British troops currently serving in Afghanistan. The Olympic Games are estimated to cost British taxpayers a staggering $17 billion. At the same time, Brits near the Olympic Park have been subjected to sweeping censorship laws enacted by their government at the behest of the International Olympic Committee. Meanwhile, activists are outraged that the Olympics’ long list of sponsors include companies, such as Dow Chemicals and BP. They say the corporations’ human rights records are at odds with the Olympic ideals of global peace and goodwill. We go to London to speak with Jules Boykoff, a professor and author who is currently writing a book on dissent and the Olympics. He played for the U.S. Olympic soccer team in international competition from 1989-1991.

As the 2012 London Olympics gears up to open on Jul. 27, criticism of the longstanding partnership between the Games and sponsor McDonald’s has stolen a small portion of the limelight.

It’s not only civil society activists protesting the fast food giant this year, but local politicians.

“London won the right to host the 2012 Games with the promise to deliver a legacy of more active, healthier children across the world,” the Green Party’s Jenny Jones, who recently proposed a motion to exclude McDonald’s, Coca-Coca-Cola and others from the Games, told the 25-member Labor-dominated London Assembly.

”Yet the same International Olympic Committee that awarded the games to London persists in maintaining sponsorship deals with the purveyors of high-calorie junk that contributes to the threat of an obesity epidemic.”

The McDonald’s marketing strategy means that investment in sporting education goes hand in hand with the sale of low-priced, high-calorie fast food. In the UK, the company is offering up to 117,000 dollars to local football clubs.

“McDonald’s anticipated the criticism around its junk food 30 to 40 years ago. It spent those decades building a structure and good will to deflect criticism about the health impact of its products,” Sara Deon of Corporate Accountability International told IPS, highlighting McDonald’s sponsorship of the Games as a clear example of this.

McDonald’s has been an official sponsor of the Olympics since 1976. The company recently had its contract extended by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to 2020.

Coca-Cola has also been a partner of the games since 1926. According to Benjamin Seeley of the International Olympic Committee, the company “sponsors more than 250 physical activity and nutrition education ...

Rather than find ways to cooperate with the natural world, America's agribusiness giants reach for the next quick fix in a futile effort to overpower nature. Their attitude is that if brute force isn't working, they're probably not using enough of it.

Monsanto, for example, has banked a fortune by selling a corn seed that it genetically manipulated to produce corn plants that won't die when sprayed with the Roundup toxic weedkiller. Not coincidentally, Monsanto also happens to manufacture Roundup. It profits from the seed and from the huge jump in Roundup sales that the seed generates. Slick.

But Mother Nature, darn it, has rebelled. So much of Monsanto's poison was spread in the past decade that weeds naturally began to resist it. As a Dow Chemical agronomist explained, "The real need here is to diversify our weed management systems."

Exactly right! We need non-chemical, sustainable systems that work with nature and without genetically altered crops.

But, no, the Dow man didn't mean that at all. He was calling for more brute force in the form of Dow's new genetically altered corn seed that can absorb Dow's super-potent 2,4-D weedkiller, which it markets under the "Enlist" brand name. Use this stuff, he says, and nature will be defeated.

Wrong. Nature doesn't quit. The weeds will keep evolving and will adapt to Dow's high-tech fix, too. By pushing the same old thing relentlessly, says an independent crop scientist, agribusiness interests "ratchet up [America's] dependence on the use of herbicides, which is very much a treadmill."

It's time to start listening to the weeds — and cooperating with Mother Nature. To advance this common sense approach, a national coalition is backing a California "Right to Know" initiative requiring the labeling of ...

Thanks to the blessings of nature and good farmers, you and I can enjoy such scrumptious delights as fresh corn-on-the-cob, popcorn and many other variations of this truly great grain. And now, thanks to Dow Chemical and federal regulators, we can look forward to "Agent Orange Corn." The chemical giant is in line to gain approval for putting a genetically altered corn seed on the market that will produce corn plants that won't die when doused with high levels of 2,4-D.

This potent pesticide was an ingredient in Dow's notorious Agent Orange defoliant, which did such extensive and horrific damage to soldiers and civilians in the Vietnam War. However, the corporation and the feds claim that 2,4-D was not the deadliest ingredient of the killer defoliant and has not yet been proven to cause cancer in humans, so they're pressing ahead to let this corporate-constructed seed be planted across America.

Dow now sells 2,4-D to help kill various weeds, but the herbicide is so strong that it also kills nature's own version of corn plants. Thus, Dow's genetic engineers went into the corporate lab and manufactured a new corn that's immune to the weed-killer. This would let the chemical maker profit from selling the patented seed, plus enjoying a huge increase in sales of its 2,4-D herbicide. How happy for Dow! Not so happy, though, for consumers worried about the untested long-term health consequences of the altered corn and the carcinogenic possibilities of ingesting more 2,4- D. Also, when sprayed, this herbicide can vaporize and spread for miles, killing crops that are not immune, poisoning the surrounding environment, and endangering the health of farmers and townspeople throughout the area.

Dow is hardly alone in pursuing its happiness at the expense of others. Indeed, rather than finding ways to cooperate with the natural world, America's agribusiness giants generally reach for the quick, high-tech fix in a ...

You can help to hold the USDA and Dow Chemical accountable simply by posting your comments on the official public record of Dow Chemical’s petition with the USDA to approve their 2,4-D herbicide resistant GMO crops (remember that 2,4-D herbicide is half of the recipe for Agent Orange).

The USDA is required to respond to all UNIQUE comments publicly. Therefore, it is essential that you write your own message in addition to using any of the issues listed below. It’s also important to note that comments close April 27th, so make sure to get them in today. It’s simple to do, and you can view the list of issues and links below. Simply go to the USDA website to leave your comments and take action!

Here is a list of issues concerning the new dangerous 2,4-D herbicide resistant crops and source links that we encourage you to use, along with your own message, in your comments to the USDA:

Effects on human health:

• I am demanding a full Environmental Impact Statement on these crops because they can affect human health.

• What are the cumulative effects for these crops and the increase in 2,4-D herbicide usage?

• EPA documents show that 2,4-D herbicide is the seventh largest source of dioxin in the US.

• Link: http://www.epa.gov/oppsrrd1/REDs/24d_red.pdf

Pollution of the environment:

• EPA documents reveal that 2,4-D agricultural runoff has polluted groundwater across the US. Dioxin has a half-life of more than 100 years when leached into soil and embedded in water systems. Additionally, ...

2,4-D and the dioxin pollution it creates are too dangerous to allow, period, but in the hands of bad actors like Monsanto and Dow Chemical the dangers increase exponentially. What's the Environmental Protection Agency doing? Helping cover-up the chemical companies' crimes!

In February, Monsanto agreed to pay up to $93 million in a class-action lawsuit brought by the residents of Nitro, West Virginia, for dioxin exposure from accidents and pollution at an herbicide plant that operated in their town from 1929 to 2004. 

That may seem like justice, but it is actually the result of Monsanto's extraordinary efforts to hide the truth, evade criminal prosecution and avoid legal responsibility. 

A brief criminal fraud investigation conducted (and quickly aborted) by the EPA revealed that Monsanto used a disaster at their Nitro, WV, plant to manufacture "evidence" that dioxin exposure produced a skin condition called chloracne, but was not responsible for neurological health effects or cancers such as Non-Hodgkins lymphoma. 

These conclusions were repeatedly utilized by EPA and the Veterans Administration to deny help to citizens exposed to dioxin, if these persons did not exhibit chloracne.

The EPA knew the truth about Monsanto's dioxin crimes, but it decided to hide it. Why? It would have affected us all. EPA's brief criminal investigation of Monsanto included evidence that Monsanto knowingly contaminated Lysol with dioxin, even as the product was being marketed for cleaning babies' toys.

Here are the details of this jaw-dropping and ...

The whistleblowing website WikiLeaks has begun publishing what it says are 5.5 million emails obtained from the servers of Stratfor, a private U.S.-based intelligence-gathering firm known to some as a "shadow CIA" for corporations and government agencies. The emails were reportedly obtained by the hackers group, Anonymous. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said the files implicate some of the world’s largest firms in corporate espionage. Firms with ties to Stratfor include Coca-Cola, Goldman Sachs, Dow Chemical, and sectors of the U.S. government, including the Department of Homeland Security, the Marine Corps and the Defense Intelligence Agency. Coke asked Stratfor to keep tabs on the protest plans of the group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. "We’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the stories based on the material. They will come out in the next coming days and weeks," said Kristinn Hrafnsson, a WikiLeaks spokesperson who has been a key member of the project to release the Stratfor emails. "What we were doing yesterday was introducing the project, the nature of Stratfor and how they operate and their ties."

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AMY