Imag­ine you are a lawyer argu­ing a case before a judge. There is no jury. The judge will decide the outcome.

The judge tells you, “Look, the oth­er side, your oppo­nents in this case, have filed doc­u­ments with me. These doc­u­ments are at the heart of their argu­ment. I can’t allow you to read the doc­u­ments. I can only give you access to heav­i­ly redact­ed ver­sions. You’ll have to do the best you can. I have read the full doc­u­ments. Your oppo­nents, of course, know every word of those doc­u­ments. But you don’t. And you won’t. Good luck. Limp along as well as you can.”

That’s what we’re talk­ing about here.

(The link to the doc­u­ment is locat­ed at the bot­tom of this article.)

Last Elec­tion Day, the peo­ple of Maui Coun­ty vot­ed to halt all local GMO and pes­ti­cide exper­i­men­ta­tion being car­ried out by Mon­san­to and Dow.

Dur­ing the tem­po­rary halt, a com­plete inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion would be done, to find out exact­ly how harm­ful the pes­ti­cides and GMOs were.

But the legal and bind­ing vote was sus­pend­ed, because Mon­san­to and Dow imme­di­ate­ly sued.

The case is now hung up in Fed­er­al Court.

I’ve just learned that Mon­san­to filed doc­u­ments “under seal,” to make its case in the pro­ceed­ing now before Fed­er­al Judge Susan Oki Moll­way.

Mon­san­to request­ed the court make the doc­u­ments secret, and the pre­vi­ous Judge, Bar­ry Kur­ren, agreed to it.

Here, in legalese, is Kurren’s decision:

“ORDER GRANTING PLAINTIFFS’ EX PARTE APPLICATION TO FILE UNDER SEAL IN PART THE DECLARATIONS OF SAM EATHINGTON, JESSE STIEFEL, AND ADOLPH HELM IN SUPPORT OF PLAINTIFFS’ MOTION FOR TEMPORARY RESTRAINING ORDER AND PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION re 13- Signed by Judge BARRY M. KURREN on 11/14/2014.
‘IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that Plain­tiffs’ ex parte appli­ca­tion is GRANTED. Accord­ing­ly, the sub­ject dec­la­ra­tions shall be filed by the Court under seal, and redact­ed ver­sions may be filed with the Plain­tiffs’ Motion.’”

That means the lawyers for the vot­ers of Maui can’t see those Mon­san­to doc­u­ments. Not in full. They can only read redact­ed ver­sions of Mon­san­to mak­ing its case for con­tin­ued GMO/pesticide exper­i­ments on Maui—contravening the demands of Maui voters.

What kind of court is this?

Judge Moll­way, who will decide the case, can read every­thing Mon­san­to offers in its defense, but the lawyers against Mon­san­to have no full access and, there­fore, can’t argue their side from full knowledge.

This echoes of cas­es where pros­e­cu­tors claim “nation­al secu­ri­ty” as an issue. In those instances, doc­u­ments are either exclud­ed as evi­dence, or only redact­ed ver­sions are allowed in.

Is this what we’re deal­ing with here? Monsanto’s con­cerns have become, in a fed­er­al court, a mat­ter of nation­al security?

Below, you will see a link to one such redact­ed Mon­san­to doc­u­ment. You will see the many blacked out lines.

One sec­tion (no.7) states: “…Mon­san­to cur­rent­ly owns or leas­es approx­i­mate­ly 784 acres of farm­land on the island. Cer­tain spe­cif­ic loca­tions on Maui are unique­ly suit­able to mul­ti-sea­son/­cy­cle breed­ing and research.” The next 14 lines of the sec­tion are blacked out.

It’s not much of a stretch to infer those 14 lines are blacked out to con­ceal Maui loca­tions of Mon­san­to facil­i­ties. You mean the address­es and names of Mon­san­to sta­tions and grow­ing fields on Maui are a secret?

Sup­pose, in your city, in your region, a major cor­po­ra­tion was car­ry­ing out, on a reg­u­lar basis, exper­i­ments with new, non-com­mer­cial, tox­ic pes­ti­cide chem­i­cals and genet­i­cal­ly altered organ­ic mate­ri­als. And sup­pose you were told that the per­ma­nent facil­i­ties of that cor­po­ra­tion in your region were locat­ed at secret sites. How would you feel about it?

Wouldn’t that raise sig­nif­i­cant sus­pi­cions in your mind? Wouldn’t you want to know exact­ly what was going on at each and every one of those facil­i­ties? And if you were denied that infor­ma­tion, as well as the names and address­es of the loca­tions, wouldn’t you infer the secre­cy was cov­er­ing up some­thing harm­ful to you?

Whole sec­tions of the Mon­san­to court doc­u­ment are blacked out (e.g., no. 8 and 9). What do they say? Only the Judge and Mon­san­to know. The lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the vot­ers of Maui don’t have a clue.

Sec­tion 10 states: “The cur­rent [Mon­san­to] work­force in the Coun­ty [of Maui] has been trained over many years at the pre­cise pol­li­na­tion tech­niques required and to per­form oth­er spe­cial­ized tasks.” The next two lines are blacked out. Why? Because Mon­san­to con­sid­ers fur­ther expla­na­tion of what these work­ers do to be pro­pri­etary secrets? This is what the Maui vot­ers want to know about, because they, the peo­ple of Maui, are on the receiv­ing end of the secret wind-blown pes­ti­cide and GMO exper­i­ments.

Sec­tion 11 of the court doc­u­ment is quite strange. It states: “And the US Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture [USDA] sets require­ments for how reg­u­lat­ed field tri­als of new GE [genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered] crops must be con­duct­ed.” The next 12 lines are blacked out. Why? Are the USDA reg­u­la­tions them­selves a secret? Is there some­thing about these reg­u­la­tions Mon­san­to doesn’t want the pub­lic to know? The “field tri­als” are at the heart of what the peo­ple of Maui are object­ing to. How tox­ic are the secret exper­i­men­tal pes­ti­cides? How dan­ger­ous to health are the secret exper­i­men­tal GMOs?

Sec­tion 13 men­tions a corn-crop dis­ease called Goss’s Wilt. Then, six lines are blacked out. Why? What is Mon­san­to hid­ing from the peo­ple of Maui?

How in the world can the lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the vot­ers of Maui argue their case in fed­er­al court when all this infor­ma­tion is being with­held from them? The answer: they can’t.

Is some of Monsanto’s fed­er­al­ly fund­ed biowar­fare research (con­tract­ed by the US Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health)—the details of which Mon­san­to won’t dis­close—tak­ing place on Maui?

The lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the peo­ple of Maui should be fil­ing new motions to declare this case an impos­si­ble trav­es­ty. Until the lawyers can read every word of the doc­u­ments Mon­san­to has filed with the court, there is no case, there is no pro­ceed­ing, there is only a con job, with Mon­san­to the pre­or­dained win­ner by default.

And until the alter­na­tive media cov­ers the Mon­san­to-Maui case and blows it up into the scan­dal it is, there will be no chance of justice.

Here is a link to the Mon­san­to court doc­u­ment I’ve been refer­ring to (Dec­la­ra­tion of Sam Eath­ing­ton, Vice Pres­i­dent of Glob­al Plant Breed­ing, Mon­san­to):