Ms. M.W. sent me this important article, and it is definitely worth sharing. The game is afoot, it seems, for yet another of those cosmetic Madison avenue approaches to "address" the GMO issue, not with substantive science, but by more tinkering with language, which has become the fundamental tool in the arsenal of social engineering; substantive issues can be diffused and real debate and science replaced by mere adjustments, George Orwell style, to language:

World Food Prize winner outlines shift in strategy FOCUS ON CONSUMERS NOT JUST GROWERS

What's behind the move? Well, as the article notes, perhaps it's Mon(ster)santo having been voted Most Evil Corporation of the Year:

"Perhaps, but one thing is certain: Monsanto does seem acutely aware that the battle between supporters and opponents of GM has heated up and is extremely fierce. Moreover, after years of accumulating what Fraley views as an unfairly bad reputation, the Gene Giant has decided to change strategy: It plans to get closer to the consumer so it can work at convincing skeptics and critics of the safety of its products and the positive effects biotechnology presumably has on world agriculture [sic]. Monsanto admits it has a growing “credibility crisis” among consumers worldwide but it is playing an old discursive trick, asserting that this is not a problem of risk but of risk communication. According to Faus’s report, Monsanto’s lack of credibility is more complicated as illustrated by consumer rankings for 'Most Evil Corporation of the Year.'”

The Orwellian nature of the planned coming campaign is quite succinctly and aptly stated:

Monsanto likely realizes this is more than a problem of risk communication and is instead more a question of taking control of risk characterization to manipulate and create confusion and hence inaction among the broadest consumer market segments possible. Doublethink style, education is obfuscation. (Emphasis added)

True enough, that is what "education" is in modern corporate crapitalist oligarchical corrupt America: it's just another system of obfuscation:

"The artist [sic] in the age of digital reproduction becomes an information manager who is best when s/he recognize how to manipulate language and other symbolic discursive games, especially through what we might term systematically-distorted communication. Presumably it then becomes a simple matter of activating mass media discourse agents to define and constrain truth claims and the qualification of those deemed able to make objective truth claims by virtue of a particular (reductionist) way of knowing the world."

As is evident, this skilfully written and considered article is as much about the GMO issue as a culturally defining issue, exposing the methods and interests of corpoate elites and their attempts to manipulate the public through what can only be described as social engineering gimmicks: all form, and, typical for Mon(ster)santo and other GMO corporations and advocates, no substance. So watch for it, folks, because it's coming: the agribusiness racketeers will now change the vocabularly in their commercials and appearances, from "Genetically Modified Organisms" to "Genetically Improved Food", and voila! Crisis averted.

Of course, it won't work, and it won't work because these people are clueless, and they are clueless because they have surrounded themselves with their own yes men and propaganda. What they don't get and will never admit is that the real science is increasingly against them, the real production figures and economics of genuine heirloom seeds are increasingly against them; they will never admit that their science was inadequate, they will never admit that they wickedly stacked the government deck in their favor, and that they wickedly pursued the small farmer. They won't admit that the issue is substantive, and not something that people will fall for in another advertising campaign by merely tinkering with language. They won't admit even the possibility that there may be another legitimate point of view. The inability to even acknowledge this possibility is always the first step toward Orwellian "solutions" of doublespeak.

That said, watch for the coming "language change", rather like when global warming didn't pan out, it had to be changed to "climate change." Well.. duh! The climate changes! We used to call it "the seasons."

See you on the flip side.