Saturday, February 16, 2013

Vernon Bowman, Indiana Farmer, Prepares To Take On Monsanto In Seed Patent Case

By Carey Gillam

Feb 15 (Reuters) - A 75-year-old Indiana grain farmer will take on global seed giant Monsanto Co at the U.S. Supreme Court next week in a patent battle that could have ramifications for the biotechnology industry and possibly the future of food production.

The highest court in the United States will hear arguments on Tuesday in the dispute, which started when soybean farmer Vernon Bowman bought and planted a mix of unmarked grain typically used for animal feed. The plants that grew turned out to contain the popular herbicide-resistant genetic trait known as Roundup Ready that Monsanto guards closely with patents.

Read more at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/15/vernon-bowman-indiana-farmer-monsanto_n_2691607.html

West Point Cadets Taught Patriots Are Terrorists

At West Point where cadets are groomed into officers, a new 148-page report released on January 15 is urging enlisted men and women to be on alert for “terrorists” in the form of those who consider themselves patriots.

This study, released by the United States Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center, is entitled “Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America’s Violent Far-Right.” Its author, Professor Arie Perliger, the Director of Terrorism Studies at the Combating Terrorism Center and Assistant Professor at the Department of Social Sciences at West Point, holds membership in the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, as well as being a former instructor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Considering his background, Perliger warns that growing legions of conservative-minded citizens across the U.S. pose a serious threat to our nation’s safety. Yet, whom precisely does Perliger deem as being affiliated with what he labels the “violent far right?”

In his own words, Perliger placed a bulls-eye on those who “espouse strong convictions regarding the federal government, believing it to be corrupt and tyrannical, with a natural tendency to intrude on individuals’ civil and constitutional rights.”

Even more specifically, Perliger asserted that other so-called extremists fall into the categories of anti-federalists, fundamentalist Christians, survivalists, gun-rights advocates, libertarians, pro-lifers, and those who oppose high taxation.

Not content with simply fingering these broad-reaching factions, Perliger zeroed in on another favorite globalist target. “Some groups are driven by a strong conviction that the American political system and its proxies were hijacked by external forces interested in promoting a New World Order.”