What is Mon­san­to hid­ing in secret documents?

A sci­en­tist offers shock­ing comments.

“Let’s have a fed­er­al court where the judge pre­tends the lawyers for the defense are ful­ly informed about the facts of the case. The plain­tiff, a giant cor­po­ra­tion, pre­tends it’s con­cerned about the safe­ty of the pub­lic. The press pre­tends it’s cov­er­ing the court case. Activists for the pub­lic who live more than a hun­dred miles away from the cour­t­house pre­tend they care about what hap­pens. The over­whelm­ing num­ber of fed­er­al employ­ees don’t even know there is a case. The defen­dants, who are being poi­soned by the giant cor­po­ra­tion, at one time lived on their land in an undis­turbed way—until out­siders, whose descen­dants now con­trol the court, took away the land by force. Per­fect jus­tice, cor­rect? Absolute­ly no prob­lem.” (The Under­ground, Jon Rappoport)

Two days ago, I report­ed on a scan­dal occur­ring in the Mon­san­to vs. Maui court case:

Name­ly, heav­i­ly redact­ed doc­u­ments, which Mon­san­to has offered to the court in defense of its posi­tion that it should be allowed to con­tin­ue tox­ic pes­ti­cide and GMO exper­i­ments in Maui County.

Fed­er­al Judge, Susan Oki Moll­way, who will decide the case, has read the full unredact­ed ver­sions of these Mon­san­to documents—but the lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the peo­ple of Maui have not. And they can’t. The blacked-out infor­ma­tion is off-lim­its to them.

This means they can’t argue their case with full knowl­edge. They’re ham­strung. To con­clude this sit­u­a­tion is unfair and ille­git­i­mate is a vast understatement.

A sci­en­tist famil­iar with this court case has com­ment­ed to me about the cur­rent situation.

Dr. Lor­rin Pang’s CV reads in part: retired US Army Med­ical Corps, for­mer con­sul­tant to the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion for 20 years, cur­rent­ly advi­sor to the US Con­gress for med­ical research. Amer­i­c­as Best Doc­tors listing.

Dr. Pang offers his impor­tant assess­ment of what might sit under­neath all those Mon­san­to blacked-out lines:

“There are two wor­ries I have about the redact­ed lines which only Mon­san­to and the judge sees. What if…[the redact­ed lines] ref­er­ence a Monsanto…chemical sim­i­lar to toxaphene (banned for tox­i­c­i­ty and spread­ing hun­dreds of miles). Can she [Judge Moll­way] tell us what [Mon­san­to] chem­i­cals are sim­i­lar enough to toxaphene to be wor­ri­some? Can she rec­og­nize the chem­i­cal struc­ture of toxaphene (from mul­ti­ple choice dia­grams)? What if it is toxaphene itself? Furthermore…the [Mon­san­to legal] argu­ment depends inti­mate­ly on untest­ed com­bi­na­tions [of Mon­san­to chem­i­cal pesticides]……I need to know the num­ber of chem­i­cals used AND the amounts used to see their poten­tial for [tox­ic] over­lap. I feel I am com­pe­tent to make these assessments.

“I don’t have access to the [un]redacted ver­sions of Mon­san­to doc­u­ments]. Only two oth­er par­ties do. 1) Mon­san­to is gross­ly biased and 2) the Judge who is not sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly qual­i­fied. If she brings in a third par­ty “inde­pen­dent” (say UH) to assess for her, they have to be both non-biased and sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly qual­i­fied. I am not even con­vinced she can rec­og­nize the sci­en­tif­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tions of her own advis­ers. For exam­ple, ask them their opin­ion on the recent rul­ing of WHO on glyphosate risk of can­cer [glyphosate is the pri­ma­ry ingre­di­ent in Monsanto’s pes­ti­cide Roundup]. On the muta­tion­al poten­tial of glyphosate for human pathogens relat­ed to antibi­ot­ic resis­tance. On the gene tox­i­c­i­ty (same mech­a­nism as can­cer) rela­tion­ship [of glyphosate] to birth defects (wide­ly pub­lished, even before the can­cer risk publications).

“If [the Mon­san­to] info is redact­ed because of threat of van­dal­ism [at their secret facil­i­ty loca­tions on Maui]—that is a police issue to be resolved if it occurs, not a court decision.”

Dr. Pang is rais­ing vital issues that oblit­er­ate any ratio­nale for Mon­san­to and the fed­er­al court to heav­i­ly cen­sor Mon­san­to documents.

How in the world can Judge Moll­way eval­u­ate what Mon­san­to is say­ing about its pesticide/GMO exper­i­ments in Maui County—namely that there are no health prob­lems, the work is safe, and no one is threatened?

What experts will the Judge rely on? Who are they? What bias do they bring? The Judge has no way of eval­u­at­ing scientists.

Indeed, the case is already stacked in favor of Mon­san­to and against the peo­ple of Maui, and the like­ly sci­en­tif­ic experts on tap will sup­port Monsanto’s position.

This court case is a poor­ly staged cha­rade, the objec­tive of which is to exon­er­ate Mon­san­to and per­mit it to con­tin­ue to use the “open-air lab­o­ra­to­ry” of Maui as a test­ing ground for unap­proved tox­ic pes­ti­cides and GMOs.
I con­tin­ue to be aston­ished by the lack of cov­er­age this case is get­ting in the alter­na­tive press. Maui is ground-zero in the bat­tle against Mon­san­to, because the cor­po­ra­tion has estab­lished its pri­ma­ry exper­i­men­tal premis­es there.

On Elec­tion Day, the peo­ple of Maui legit­i­mate­ly vot­ed to place a tem­po­rary ban on all Monsanto/Dow exper­i­men­ta­tion in the Coun­ty. Not a label, a ban.

They vot­ed to order a deep and inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion of all Monsanto/Dow exper­i­ments in the County.

That vote has been sus­pend­ed and sup­pressed and neu­tral­ized and stepped on by Mon­san­to and Dow’s court filings.

Now, Dr. Pang has come for­ward and cor­rect­ly expressed his refusal to believe that the Judge in the case, Susan Moll­way, is even remote­ly com­pe­tent to rule.

What else do we need to know?

This is a rig-job. A legit­i­mate vote by cit­i­zens has been obliterated.

The “sci­ence” favor­ing Mon­san­to has been cooked.

A cor­po­ra­tion is run­ning a fed­er­al court.

Why not just say, “A Mon­san­to Fed­er­al Court has ruled that Mon­san­to is inno­cent. Don’t wor­ry, be happy.”