Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas
a Gullah speaker
In Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' Own Words
12/14/00 In Clarance Thomas's Own Words
"When I was 16, I was sitting as the only black kid in my class, and I had grown up speaking a kind of a dialect. It's called Geechee. Some people call it Gullah now, and people praise it now. But they used to make fun of us back then. It's not standard English. When I transferred to an all-white school at your age, I was self-conscious, like we all are. It's like if we get pimples at 16, or we grow six inches and we're taller than everybody else, or our feet grow or something; we get self-conscious. And the problem was that I would correct myself midsentence. I was trying to speak standard English. I was thinking in standard English but speaking another language. So I learned that --- I just started developing the habit of listening. And it just got to be --- I didn't ask questions in college or law school. And I found that I could learn better just listening. And if I have a question I could ask it later. For all those reasons, and a few others, I just think that it's more in my nature to listen rather than to ask a bunch of questions. And they get asked anyway. The only reason I could see for asking the questions is to let people know I've got something to ask. That's not a legitimate reason in the Supreme Court of the United States."
Virginia Mixson Geraty: "Along the southeastern coast of the United States there is a narrow strip of land which is known to linguists and dialect geographers as the Gullah Area. This region, which includes the sea islands along the coast, extends roughly from Jacksonville, North Carolina to Jacksonville, Florida, and inland for about one hundred miles. Living in this area are African-American people who are descendants of the tribesmen brought to the New World during the time of the Slave Trade. These people still speak variations of the original creole language known as Gullah."
1/13 The Silence of the Clarence is broken
Justice Clarence Thomas breaks a self-imposed seven-year silence to take a four-word jab at the Ivy League. "Well, he did not." ~ meaning an ivy law degree doesn't necessarily mean the lawyer is qualified.
When I first arrived on the Court after leaving the bench one day I said to Judge Sentelle that there was an internal inconsistency in the counsel's argument to which he responded to me in his North Carolina drawl, "Clarence, he met himself coming back." (Laughter.) JUSTICE THOMAS: I said quietly to myself, now there's a man who knows how to speak English. (Laughter.)
JUSTICE THOMAS: So there were times when I could say to him David, I'm busier than a short-tail cow in fly season. Well, he would understand that I was really busy and said he'd call back. Other people would look at me, what the heck does he mean about that? Or, if I said David, I'm as a nervous as long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. He would fully understand. Or, if you said David, who your people? He wouldn't look at me as though I had dropped too many verbs or something. He would understand that I'm speaking proper Southern. So I loved talking to him. It was always wonderful.
6/ 7/ 2013 CRS Report for Congress: Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress: Unapproved Genetically Modified Wheat: Discovered in Oregon:Status and Implications by Tadlock Cowan
Analyst in Natural Resources and Rural Development
4/4/13 The #Monsanto Protection Act
Monsanto Wins and can Rule the World
You Stuck What Where Now?
The Monsanto Protection Act shows that the laws of the most powerful nation on Earth are written with the same level of accountability as Internet comments.
In 60 Seconds Lawmakers protect genetically-modified food companies.
Tags: #accountability,#lobbyists, #laws, #government, #Congress, #farming, #money, #voting, #food, #guns, #weapons
Big Food Found Guilty in Multimillion Dollar Cover Up in GMO Labeling Fight documents from the GMA clearly show that one of the primary purposes of the “Defense of Brands” fund was to conceal member identities.
1/28/16 Spy confesses to stealing Monsanto and DuPont GM seeds for Chinese conglomerate. Mo, a China-born US citizen who has lived in the country since 1998, accepted a plea agreement with prosecutors that will see him sentenced to up to five years in prison for a conspiracy to steal trade secrets from agro-giants DuPont Pioneer and Monsanto on behalf of the Beijing-headquartered DBN Group. The crime would normally be punishable by up to ten years behind bars and a $250,000 fine.
10.30/13 The Founding Fables of Industrialised Agriculture what's wrong not just with GMOs and Golden Rice but with the approach to agriculture that is driving them explained.
Monday, Jan. 30, 1939: Edgar Monsanto Queeny is president of $61,000,000 Monsanto Chemical Co.. which his father founded in 1901 on an original investment of $5,000. Monsanto is a family name (President Queeny's mother's), but Monsanto Chemical is not a tightly-owned family business.
In 2013 Monsanto insiders own less than 10 % of the corporation. The rest are shown as pensions, insurance and/or saving accounts. It is buried in the system of shareholder capitalism, where massive powerful corporations have huge numbers of shareholders, including all kinds of mutual fund holders, capital managers, insurance companies, etc. are the owners.
Who owns seeds? Not you, Monsanto says.
US Supreme Court set to hear case of farmer using seeds grown from Monsanto's genetically modified seeds. Monsanto won the first round, claiming the farmer violated its patents, but his appeal has won a hearing in the Supreme Court.
2/3/11 USDA announced a policy that supports the interests of Monsanto and big biotech and deals a major blow to organic farming. They decided to "deregulate" genetically engineered (GE) alfalfa, meaning to allow its unrestricted use. This chemical giant is steamrolling over farmers, consumers and organic foods supporters. So, it is particularly sad for me to report to you that in this latest round, which is surely just one chapter, they won and we lost. Stop Monsanto7/3/14 Inside Monsanto, America's Third Most Hated Company to make your head spin: You may think Monsanto is the genetically-modified seedmaker but that's just a tiny sliver of their business, they're selling insurance and software and they're so far ahead of the game that if you think labeling genetically modified food is the answer, you don't know that most of their products come from breeding and that's been done for a hundred years! In a Harris Poll this year measuring the “reputation quotient” of major companies, Monsanto ranked third-lowest, above BP (BP) and Bank of America (BAC) and just behind Halliburton (HAL). For much of its history it was a chemical company, producing compounds used in electrical equipment, adhesives, plastics, and paint. Some of those chemicals—DDT, Agent Orange, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs)—have had long and controversial afterlifes. The company is best known, however, as the face of genetically modified organisms, or GMOs.
How Thomas Makes Money for Monsanto and Conservative Republicans dismantle regulations that watch over the health of the planet.
From 1974 to 1977, Thomas was an Assistant Attorney General of Missouri under then State Attorney General John Danforth, who met Thomas at Yale Law School.
1976 to 1979, Thomas worked as an attorney with Monsanto Company in St. Louis, Missouri, the only private sector job he would ever have.
In June 1989, President George H. W. Bush appointed Thomas to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
After the appointment of David Souter and the ensuing disappointment of conservatives, White House chief of staff John H. Sununu promised that the president would fill the next Supreme Court vacancy with a "true conservative" and predicted a "knock-down, drag-out, bloody-knuckles, grass-roots fight" over confirmation. On July 1, 1991 President Bush nominated Clarence Thomas to replace Thurgood Marshall, who had recently announced his retirement. Marshall had been the only African-American justice on the Court. Legal author Jeffrey Toobin says Bush and others saw Thomas as the only "plausible" black candidate who would provide a reliably conservative vote.
MONSANTO CASE JUDGE WAS FORMER ATTORNEY CLARANCE THOMAS
On the 10 December 2001 biotech companies' patenting of not only genetically modified seed but also conventional varieties was legitimated by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, in the case of J.E.M. Ag Supply v. Pioneer Hi-Bred International. The decision means firms like Pioneer Hi-Bred and Monsanto can require farmers to sign contracts prohibiting seed-saving of any patented seed and it also allows them to check farmers' crops for violations.
Writing up this Supreme Court majority decision, favouring corporate monopoly and bioserfdom, was Justice Clarence Thomas, a Bush Senior appointee and former attorney for... biotech giant Monsanto! n American Enterprise Institute. 2001, as well as ruling on the seed patent issue, Justice Clarence Thomas received the Francis Boyer Award "established by [chemical / pharma giant ] SmithKline Beecham in memory of Francis Boyer, a former chairman of SmithKline and a distinguished business leader for many decades" more
In Monsanto v. Geertson Seed Farms, No. 09-475,
the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case which could have an enormous effect on the future of the American food industry. This is Monsanto's third appeal of the case, and if they win a favorable ruling from the high court, a deregulated Monsanto may find itself in position to corner the markets of numerous U.S. crops, and to litigate conventional farmers into oblivion.
Here's where it gets a bit dicier. Two Supreme Court justices have what appear to be direct conflicts of interest.
Charles Breyer, the judge who ruled in the original decision of 2007 which is being appealed, is Stephen Breyer's brother, who apparently views this as a conflict of interest and has recused himself.
Why Monsanto Thought Weeds Would Never Defeat Roundup March 11, 2012 by Dan Charles
Why didn't Monsanto's scientists foresee that weeds would become resistant to glyphosate, the weed-killing chemical in their blockbuster herbicide Roundup?
In 1993, when Monsanto asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture to approve Roundup-tolerant soybeans, it dispensed with the issue of potential resistant weeds in two modest paragraphs. It told the agency that "glyphosate is considered to be a herbicide with low risk for weed resistance." The company also wrote that several university scientists agreed "that it is highly unlikely that weed resistance to glyphosate will become a problem as a result of the commercialization of glyphosate-tolerant soybeans." Oops. Since then, resistance to glyphosate has emerged in 20 different weed species.
I called up several people who were at Monsanto at that time. Why didn't people there think resistance would happen? They all told a similar story.
First, the company had been selling Roundup for years without any problems. Second, and perhaps most important, the company's scientists had just spent more than a decade, and many millions of dollars, trying to create the Roundup-resistant plants that they desperately wanted — soybeans and cotton and corn. It had been incredibly difficult. When I interviewed former Monsanto scientists for my book on biotech crops, one of them called it the company's "Manhattan Project."
Considering how hard it had been to create those crops, "the thinking was, it would be really difficult for weeds to become tolerant" to Roundup, says Rick Cole, who is now responsible for Monsanto's efforts to deal with the problem of resistant weeds. Cole went to work at Monsanto in 1996, the same year that the first Roundup Ready crops went on the market.
So how did the company's experts react when weeds began to prove them wrong? "The reaction was, 'What is really going on here?' " says Cole. Monsanto began a "massive effort" to figure out how the weeds withstand glyphosate. Some weeds, Cole says, appear to keep glyphosate from entering the plant at all; others sequester the herbicide in a spot where it can't do much damage. Monsanto's genetically engineered crops use a different technique entirely.
Indigenous communities poisoned by pesticides
Industrial activity by foreign companies is the main cause of contamination, in particular the “Big 6” agrochemical giants from the United States, Germany and Switzerland (the Multi-national Corporations Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow, DuPont, Bayer, and BASF), the world’s six largest manufacturers of pesticides.
Disclosure SHOWS anti-reform lobbying conflict of interest
JUNE 1 2011 The Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' latest financial disclosure reveals details of his WIFE GINI THOMAS anti-reform lobbying and exposes a major conflict of interest.
By Stephanie Mencimer | Tue May. 31, 2011 8:11 AM PDT
Following a time-honored Washington tradition of dumping required but embarrassing information on a Friday night before a major holiday, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas finally released the details of his wife's income from her year or so working for the tea party group Liberty Central, which fought President Obama's health care reform law. His new financial disclosure form indicates that his wife, Virginia, who served as Liberty Central's president and CEO, received $150,000 in salary from the group and less than $15,000 in payments from an anti-health care lobbying firm she started.Thomas had failed to disclose Virginia's income on his financial disclosure forms for 20 years; under pressure from Weiner and others, he had recently amended old disclosures to reflect hundreds of thousands of dollars she had earned working for the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank that also opposed Obama's health care plan.
But, up until now, Thomas had not revealed how much money his wife made from her controversial Liberty Central work. . When she left the organization, she created a new consulting firm, Liberty Consulting, which also did anti-health care reform lobbying. Justice Thomas finally released the details of her compensation late Friday night before a long memorial day weekend when no one pays attention to the news.<more> http://motherjones.com/print/115416
Clarence Thomas: A supreme ethical conflict
The Thomas family has financial ties to the conservative organizations leading the campaign to bring down our new health care law — the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
A case challenging the constitutionality of the health care reform bill passed by Congress is headed to the Supreme Court, and Justice Clarence Thomas has a supreme ethical conflict. Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), and 73 other members of Congress have signed a letter detailing the appearance of ethical conflict and asking Justice Thomas to recuse himself from deliberations on the constitutionality of health care reform.
1What else haven't they told us?" Common Cause, Jan. 21, 2011
2Adventures of Ginni Thomas," Ben Smith, Politico, Feb. 4, 2011
3Justices Scalia And Thomas's Attendance At Koch Event Sparks Judicial Ethics Debate," Sam Stein, Huffington Post, Oct. 20, 2010
Scalia and Thomas are both Republican Koch Puppets
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wife is a Tea Party Activist
Bush and others saw Thomas as the only "plausible" black
candidate who would provide a reliably conservative vote.
Koch money owns Clarence Thomas who admits to thinking just like his tea party wife when defending her. POLITICO reported that the group received a $550,000 infusion from two anonymous contributions while the Supreme Court was deliberating over the Citizens United case. Ginni Thomas stepped down from Liberty Central in December after controversy over a message she left on a voice mail requesting an apology from Anita Hill, the woman who accused her husband of sexual harassment during his confirmation hearings for the high court in 1991. Thomas had to amend 13 years' worth of financial disclosure reports to indicate the sources – though not amounts – of his wife's income after Common Cause raised questions about his omission of the information. More recently, both Thomases were criticized after POLITICO revealed that Ginni Thomas had started a lobbying group that bills itself as using her “experience and connections” to help clients “with “governmental affairs efforts” and political donation strategies. 74 House Democrats signed a letter asking Thomas to recuse himself from any cases related to last year's Democratic healthcare overhaul bill partly because of his wife's lobbying. Richard L. Hasen, a law professor at the University of California Irvine who sharply criticized the Citizen United decision, nonetheless called Common Cause's letter to the Justice Department, which also mentioned fellow Justice Antonin Scalia's attendance at a 2007 Koch retreat, "an unwarranted attack on the ethics of the Justices."
Wife, Virginia Thomas, stumped at Tea Party rallies helped create the Tea Party organization Liberty Central and agrees with Skousen's ideas. W. Cleon Skousen constitutional guru of the Tea Party movement.
Thomas started Liberty Central in May as a grass-roots organizer and educator and intended for it to serve as a clearinghouse of policy and candidate information for conservative activists and tea party groups.
More recently, however, she has been in the news as a result of a recent phone call she made to Anita Hill, the lawyer who accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during his 1991 Senate confirmation hearings. Virginia Thomas rekindled a long-ago controversy by leaving a voice mail message at Hill's Brandeis University office seeking an apology. BIG MISTAKE
"Good morning, Anita Hill, it's Ginni Thomas," said the message left last month, according to a transcript provided by ABC News. "I just want to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology sometimes and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband."
Monsanto hacktivists dump some data as they ramp up
7/12/11 Over the last 2 months we have pushed the exposure of hundreds of pages of articles detailing Monsanto's corrupt, unethical, and downright evil business practices. Press Release
We've created a nice go-to reference guide on piratepad/anonpad(anonpad.org/opmonsanto, backed up elsewhere), where anyone can read up on and add their own info about Monsanto Co. Indeed. It seems some Monsanto employees' and customers' first and last names, email addresses and street addresses have been dumped on Pastee.org. But there was much more, it seems, as the hackers also posted over 2500 names, email addresses, street addresses, companies, and phone numbers. Other messages from the hactivists have been reproduced on the Grow Switch Blog.
Percy Schmeiser - David versus Monsanto
a film by Bertram Verhag - Now on DVD!
Imagine that a storm blows across your garden - and that now, without your knowledge and without your consent, foreign and genetically-manipulated seeds are in your vegetable patch which you have nourished and maintained for many years. A few days later, representatives of a multi-national corporate group pay you a visit at home, demand that you surrender your vegetables and file a criminal complaint against you requesting a fine a $20,000 USD against you - for the illegal use of patented and genetically-manipulated seeds.
What's more: The court finds for the corporate group!
Yet, you fight back....
EXPERT DR. VANDANA
Dr. VANDANA SHIVA is an Indian Physicist, Feminist, one of the world's leading environmental thinkers, authors and environmental activists.
Her work connects the dots between global poverty, sustainability, agriculture and human rights, particularly the full participation of women in society. Among her core concerns is how the developed world exploits the developing world in international trade, especially how genetically modified crops undermine rural and sustainable agricultural traditions that date back millennia. She has raised alarms about the threats to the world's freshwater supplies from pollution, habitat destruction and privatization. And she is one of the intellectual architects behind the concept of “eco-feminism.”
Monsanto, one of the biggest chemical companies in the world and the provider of the seed technology for 90 percent of the world's genetically engineered (GE) crops. Do Monsanto's GMOs, hybridized with wild crops, kill honeybee hives? Round Up Ready Nation
The World According to Monsanto the film tells the tale of an industrial empire that, thanks in part to misleading reports, collusion with the American government, pressure tactics and attempts at corruption, has become one of the world's biggest seed manufacturers. It shows how the clean, green image conveyed by the company's advertising serves as a smoke screen for Monsanto's quest for market supremacy, to the detriment of global food security and environmental stability.Joining Monsanto in the gmo crops are the Agent Orange partners Dow and Dupont. Their history and ethics are well summarized at the spoof site. Critics of American petrochemical companies can't hear a word about the privitization of THE COMMON WEALTH - THE FOOD SUPPY - THE PUBLIC AIR WAVES.
Monsanto GMO Ignites Big Seed War Monsanto GMO Ignites Big Seed War Soybean 8 separate Genetically engineered traits.
Monsanto Plants Its Lies in the Gates Foundation-funded NPR
The Gates Foundation, one of the bigger supporters of Monsanto's colonisation of Africa, invests in business-friendly African organisations, including the African Agricultural Capital which supports "plant breeding, seed production"
INDIAN AFFAIRS AND THE COURTS