Monsanto's history is one steeped with controversial products, deadly consequences, massive cover ups, political sleight of hand, and culminates as a modern day plague on humanity, a plague that is about to peak to biblical proportions. Created in 1901, the company started producing its first form of poison, the artificial sweetener saccharin. The rise in use of saccharin really began 70 years later. Monsanto had plenty of time for a realistic and long term study on the impact of saccharin on human health. Instead, Monsanto learned how to finagle political support and grow its empire despite the growing consensus that saccharin caused cancer.

from Crikey .....

Beecher: Corbett, the functionary, sees Fairfax die on his watch

Eric Beecher, chairman of Private Media (publisher of Crikey), writes:

FAIRFAX MEDIA, GREG HYWOOD, ROGER CORBETT

The Muslim Brotherhood has vowed to face down Egypt's ruling generals in a "life or death" struggle over the country's political future, after declaring that its candidate had won the presidential election and would refuse to accept the junta's last-ditch attempts to engineer a constitutional coup.

As final ballot results trickled in and unofficial tallies suggested that Mohamed Morsi had secured approximately 52% of the popular vote, the Brotherhood deployed its harshest language yet against the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (Scaf), promising to bring millions of Egyptians back on to the streets if attempts to rebuild the old regime continued.

The next election will be austere if the Treasury boss, Martin Parkinson, gets his way.

Dr Parkinson told the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia in Canberra last night that Australians should get real and realise they couldn't ''have it all''.

Ageing and rising expectations were likely to put ''enormous pressure'' on budgets, he said. The taxation base was ''weaker than had been imagined in the mid-noughties''.

from Crikey …..

Essential: we trust the leaders-in-waiting more than the leaders

The Coalition's latest asylum seeker plan is inhumane and lacks integrity.

Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison recently stood in front of Australia and proudly presented the Coalition's plan to ''ensure integrity and restore confidence in refugee assessment''. There is not much to be proud about in this policy. The announcement was based on misinformed and misleading information that plays straight into the unfounded public fear of asylum seekers.