Farmers Are Suing Monsanto!

Like food? Alright! Let's help our farmers get HEALTHY - non-GMO!-- food to our table! These guys need all the assistance they can get. I don't have much money in my PayPal account but every dime is going to them tonight. I hope all my Readers donate at least a few dollars, too. This is an issue which affects all of us in a very basic way. 

Family Farmers to Travel to Washington, D.C.  

to Take on Monsanto

Image Source

Activist Post,

Saturday, January 5, 2013

Dozens of family farmers, Plaintiffs in the landmark lawsuit Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association et al v. Monsanto, will travel from across America to Washington, D.C. next week to take on Monsanto and demand the right to farm. They will attend the January 10th Oral Argument in the Appeal of Dismissal to be aired before the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. A Citizen's Assembly in support of family farmers at 10am in Lafayette Square will coincide with the beginning of the Oral Argument inside the court room.
"Our farmers want nothing to do with Monsanto," declared Maine certified organic seed farmer, Jim Gerritsen, President of lead Plaintiff Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association. "We are not customers of Monsanto. We don't want their seed. We don't want their gene-spliced technology. We don't want their trespass onto our farms. We don't want their contamination of our crops. We don't want to have to defend ourselves from aggressive assertions of patent infringement because Monsanto refuses to keep their pollution on their side of the fence. We want justice."
Many farmers have been forced to stop growing certain crops to avoid genetic contamination and potential lawsuits from Monsanto. This case challenges the validity of Monsanto's genetically engineered seed patents and seeks Court protection for family farmers who, through no fault of their own, may have become contaminated by Monsanto's patented seed and find themselves accused of patent infringement.
Monsanto filed 144 lawsuits against America's family farmers and settled another 700 out of court between 1997 and 2010. These aggressive lawsuits have created an atmosphere of fear in rural America and driven dozens of farmers into bankruptcy.

"The District Court erred when it denied the organic seed plaintiffs the right to seek protection from Monsanto's patents," said attorney Dan Ravicher of the not-for-profit Public Patent Foundation "At the oral argument on January 10, we will explain to the Court of Appeals the District Court's errors and why the case should be reinstated."
A Citizen's Assembly In Support of Family Farmers is scheduled for 10am in Lafayette Square on Thursday, January 10. Family farmers, their lawyers, and supporters will join after the hearing to explain why they traveled thousands of miles to protect their farms and communities.
"Farmers have planted and saved seeds for more than 10,000 years without interruption until Monsanto's genetically engineered seeds entered the market in 1996. Almost immediately Monsanto began a campaign of harassment against America's farmers, trespassing on their land and launching frivolous patent infringement lawsuits," said Dave Murphy, founder and executive director of Food Democracy Now!. "It's time to end Monsanto's campaign of fear against America's farmers and stand up for farmers' right to grow our food without legal threats and intimidation."
The lawsuit was originally filed in March 2011 by a large group of 83 Plaintiffs, which included individual family farmers, independent seed companies and farm organizations, whose memberships total over 300,000 individuals. The case was dismissed in February 2012 by Federal Judge Naomi Buchwald who ruled that the farmers lacked standing.
Lawyers from the Public Patent Foundation representing the farmers have identified numerous reversible legal and factual errors committed by the judge, which they assert caused her to mistakenly dismiss the case and have filed a powerful appeal brief with the court. Amici briefs in support of the Plaintiffs have been filed by a group of eleven prominent law professors and by a group of fourteen non-profit agricultural and consumer organizations.
OSGATA has established a Farmer Travel Fund to provide travel assistance to Plaintiff farmers for the case. Donations can be made here:  www.osgata.org/support-osgata/.

About OSGATA: The Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association is a not-for-profit agricultural organization made up of organic farmers, seed growers, seed businesses and supporters. OSGATA is committed to developing and protecting organic seed and its growers in order to ensure the organic community has access to excellent quality organic seed free of contaminants and adapted to the diverse needs of local organic agriculture. www.osgata.org

UNCRC- Important Parental Rights Law video!

United Nations Conventions on the Rights of the Child(wiki link): When I stumbled across the video I've embedded below I was shocked, but not so shocked that I was falling on the floor twitching dumbfounded. Why? We've had enough run ins with our local elementary school which made me pull both my boys out to do cyber schooling two years ago. But this!! this is absolutely insane- and the USA is the only country so far which hasn't accepted it. Read how here. I find it positively nauseating to think that our current method of raising our two sons in Customary International Law, is illegal. If I didn't set boundaries for these boys they'd run over me and burn our apartment down. Or kill us. But hey, what's a little blood and gore between parents and kids if it's what the kids want, right?



Watch for yourself. It's true. After you watch the video think think long and hard about whether or not you want to have more children added to your family. And maybe in the end that's the whole point? Because if the government has control over your children and how you raise them then where has our freedom gone? We've signed them away. We're nothing more than a breeding workforce. There is hope. People are fighting this law. Keep reading and watching.

Here are some main points from the video:

• Uganda and other countries in the middle east: still figuring out whether or not honor killings should still be legal and yet they have passed the UNCRC for their country. So killing women who are raped is/maybe alright but disciplining your children is wrong? Who's raising who here? The parents or the state?
  
• Holland: children start sex education at the age of four. Why? I'm pretty sure they've seen body parts from both parents or siblings by then to say that there are differences between boys and girls. So why formally educate? So they can learn even earlier how to damage someone? As if the Terrible Two's weren't enough, for crying outloud. Next we're going to have eight year olds raping each other.
  
• Sweden: homeschooling is illegal. Only state indoctrination for the Swedes, it appears.
  
• Belgium: doctors can murder a child under a year old if they find the child physically or mentally deficient/disabled. In 16% of cases they didn’t even ask for the parent’s consent. Government sanctioned murder.
  

US courts are more frequently using ‘Customary International Law’ to decide domestic case outcomes. So we have not ratified the UNCRC here but it is still beginning to take effect in public schools and in the home itself.

Once enough of these bits and pieces of international law have passed here in the USA then a precedent is created and… UNCRC will be passed. Clinton(Mrs.) signed it already in the UN but Clinton(Mr.) didn't push it forward for ratification. And so it sits on the shelf scaring the crap out of parents in the US while it is slowly being obeyed by local family courts even without official ratification.

Taking the opinion of the child into consideration is the priority with CRC:

• The parent cannot have access to medical tests unless the child gives the doctor permission. Think your kid is high and up to no good? Good luck proving it! Even if the child is a danger to the rest of the family because of their mental state you can't do anything because the child will not allow the parents to see the drug tests.
  
• Anything the parents state the child must do to fulfill family obligations is subject to state approval. Real court case example given in movie: child doesn’t feel like going to church three times a week. Child complains to the school counselor. Child is removed from school and put into foster care and parents not even notified until after the fact. No court case is presented for abuse of any kind or imminent danger. The child simply doesn’t feel like complying with the family’s schedule. “I don’t wanna” becomes “I get put in foster care.” Surprising to the kid but then they decide to go along with it because it's how they can get what they want. Does this sound surprising to most parents? NO! (What, don't you remember being a headstrong little punk and driving your parents up the wall? I can answer honestly- yes, I do. I was a hellion.) Three times a week is too much for a thirteen year old but once a week sounds about right, according to Washington state law for a few years until it was thrown out. Many more cases were brought before family courts before it was taken out of the state’s law.
• Spanking? Forget about it. Grounding them? No can do. They have a right to freedom. Standing them in the corner or have them write a repetitive paper on their infraction(That's my personal fave. They hate handwriting assignments)? Get sued by your own child because they disagree with you. Can you imagine it, getting called into court because you tried to discipline your child and every spat turning into a legal battle? It'd be enough to give any sane person the chills when that pregnancy test comes up positive. At that point you might as well hand the child over to the state because everything you say or do is up for review in a court of law. I can see abortion rates rising exponentially as the generations get more and more unruly because to be a parent is to be the ultimate schmuck.
  

3) From the ParentalRights.org website an example was given of the ‘perfect storm’ which will rise up from the CRC being passed in the US: In the early 1980s, a landmark parental rights case reached the Washington State Supreme Court. The case involved 13-year-old Sheila Marie Sumey, whose parents were alarmed when they found evidence of their daughter's participation in illegal drug activity and escalating sexual involvement. Their response was to act immediately to cut off the negative influences in their daughter's life by grounding her.

But when Sheila went to her school counselors complaining about her parent's actions, she was advised that she could be liberated from her parents because there was "conflict between parent and child." Listening to the advice she had received, Sheila notified Child Protective Services (CPS) about her situation. She was subsequently removed from her home and placed in foster care.

Her parents, desperate to get their daughter back, challenged the actions of the social workers in court. They lost. Even though the judge found that Sheila's parents had enforced reasonable rules in a proper manner, the state law nevertheless gave CPS the authority to split apart the Sumey family and take Sheila away.

The moral I take from that story is that it's alright to say, "Sweety, we think your friends are a horrible influence," but it's not ok to keep your child safe inside your home from getting into trouble with those same horrible friends. What rights do we have left as parents??

ParentalRights.org has put together a Constitutional amendment(SR 99) which will actually spell out parents’ rights since currently there is nothing to protect a parent from saying no to their child and it being Constitutionally legal. That's right. It's not legal to tell your child NO! or that they must comply with your decisions about their friends, medical testings, education, etc. Let's just let the little darlings run wild, yes?

This is the proposed amendment SR99:

SECTION 1
The liberty of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children is a fundamental right.

SECTION 2
Neither the United States nor any state shall infringe upon this right without demonstrating that its governmental interest as applied to the person is of the highest order and not otherwise served.

SECTION 3
No treaty may be adopted nor shall any source of international law be employed to supersede, modify, interpret, or apply to the rights guaranteed by this article.

Sign the petition to pass the Constitutional amendment!

Reading the 'Parental Rights in the Courts' and 'Families in the News' examples on the site will blow your mind. This is real, people. The state believes it can raise your child better in foster care than you can!

• Parker v. Hurley(2007)
  
• Brown v. Hot, Safer and Sexy Productions
  
• Fields v. Palmdale School District
  
• Graham v. Florida(2012)
• + dozens more in the past twenty years.
  

More lawsuits are coming and things are coming to a head now.

Here is a direct link to the current 2012 update to the ratification process and who has has/has not supported the adoption of the International Treaty or the UNCRC. The statistics are appalling. The Democrats are trying to collectively throw our children under a bus.

So Readers, what is your opinion of the legislation? What have you seen or heard about it?