September, 25 2013, 11:51am EDT
Activists Score Major Victory in Senate Against Monsanto Protection Act
Senate Removes Law Protecting GMO Crops From Court Authority From Spending Bill
WASHINGTON
Food Democracy Now!, a grassroots movement of more than 650,000 farmers and citizens, is praising Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Chair of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, after she announced last night her intention to strip the controversial Monsanto Protection Act provision from the Senate's version of the stop-gap spending bill, which extends the current budget deadline from September 30th to December 15th.
READ MORE HERE: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/24/monsanto-protection-act-expire...
"This is a major victory for the food movement and all those who care about openness and transparency in their government," said Dave Murphy, founder an executive director of Food Democracy Now!, a grassroots movement of more than 650,000 farmers and citizens that led the charge against the secret rider for the past year. "And a sign that our voices can make the difference when we are effectively organized."
The Monsanto Protection Act (section 735), a provision that circumvents court authority to stop the planting and cultivation of GMO crops, was set to expire at the end of September, but its inclusion in Continuing Resolution (HJ.Res.59) by House Republicans, which passed by a vote of 230-189, would have kept the provision as law through the end of the year. But last night, Senator Mikulski, responding to the tens of thousands of phone calls from outraged citizens around the country, announced she would remove the Monsanto Protection Act from the Senate's version of the continuing resolution.
"This is what happens when people become engaged in the democratic process," Murphy said. "Millions of people around the world were outraged when the bill passed originally and removing the Monsanto Protection Act from the current bill is a sign that the food movement has arrived politically. The American people are tired of Monsanto's lies and the manipulation of our political process and we're not backing down."
Since the passage of the Monsanto Protection Act, Food Democracy Now! has generated more than half a million signatures to Congress and the White House asking for the removal of the secret rider, including more than 40,000 phone calls to Congress in the past two weeks.
"Corporations shouldn't be allowed to win special interest handouts in closed door meetings with a handful of members of Congress. It's time that our elected officials stop cozzying up to rogue corporations like Monsanto and get down to the business of representing the interests of the American people," said Murphy.
VIEW THE ACTION HERE: https://action.fooddemocracynow.org/call/tell_Congress_to_stop_the_monsa...
For interviews with Food Democracy Now!, please contact Brett Abrams at 516-841-1105 or by email atbrett@fitzgibbonmedia.com.
Food Democracy Now! is a grassroots community dedicated to building a sustainable food system that protects our natural environment, sustains farmers and nourishes families.
LATEST NEWS
Sanders Champions Those Fighting Back Against Water-Sucking, Energy-Draining, Cost-Boosting Data Centers
Dec 10, 2025
Americans who are resisting the expansion of artificial intelligence data centers in their communities are up against local law enforcement and the Trump administration, which is seeking to compel cities and towns to host the massive facilities without residents' input.
On Wednesday, US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) urged AI data center opponents to keep up the pressure on local, state, and federal leaders, warning that the rapid expansion of the multi-billion-dollar behemoths in places like northern Virginia, Wisconsin, and Michigan is set to benefit "oligarchs," while working people pay "with higher water and electric bills."
"Americans must fight back against billionaires who put profits over people," said the senator.
In a video posted on the social media platform X, Sanders pointed to two major AI projects—a $165 billion data center being built in Abilene, Texas by OpenAI and Oracle and one being constructed in Louisiana by Meta.
The centers are projected to use as much electricity as 750,000 homes and 1.2 million homes, respectively, and Meta's project will be "the size of Manhattan."
Hundreds gathered in Abilene in October for a "No Kings" protest where one local Democratic political candidate spoke out against "billion-dollar corporations like Oracle" and others "moving into our rural communities."
"They’re exploiting them for all of their resources, and they are creating a surveillance state,” said Riley Rodriguez, a candidate for Texas state Senate District 28.
In Holly Ridge, Lousiana, the construction of the world's largest data center has brought thousands of dump trucks and 18-wheelers driving through town on a daily basis, causing crashes to rise 600% and forcing a local school to shut down its playground due to safety concerns.
And people in communities across the US know the construction of massive data centers are only the beginning of their troubles, as electricity bills have surged this year in areas like northern Virginia, Illinois, and Ohio, which have a high concentration of the facilities.
The centers are also projected to use the same amount of water as 18.5 million homes normally, according to a letter signed by more than 200 environmental justice groups this week.
And in a survey of Pennsylvanians last week, Emerson College found 55% of respondents believed the expansion of AI will decrease the number of jobs available in their current industry. Sanders released an analysis in October showing that corporations including Amazon, Walmart, and UnitedHealth Group are already openly planning to slash jobs by shifting operations to AI.
In his video on Wednesday, Sanders applauded residents who have spoken out against the encroachment of Big Tech firms in their towns and cities.
"In community after community, Americans are fighting back against the data centers being built by some of the largest and most powerful corporations in the world," said Sanders. "They are opposing the destruction of their local environment, soaring electric bills, and the diversion of scarce water supplies."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Protest in Oslo Denounces Nobel Peace Prize for Right-Wing Machado
"No peace prize for warmongers," said one of the banners displayed by demonstrators, who derided Machado's support for President Donald Trump's regime change push in Venezuela.
Dec 10, 2025
As President Donald Trump issued new threats of a possible ground invasion in Venezuela, protesters gathered outside the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo on Tuesday to protest the awarding of the prestigious peace prize to right-wing opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, whom they described as an ally to US regime change efforts.
“This year’s Nobel Prize winner has not distanced herself from the interventions and the attacks we are seeing in the Caribbean, and we are stating that this clearly breaks with Alfred Nobel’s will," said Lina Alvarez Reyes, the information adviser for the Norwegian Solidarity Committee for Latin America, one of the groups that organized the protests.
Machado's daughter delivered a speech accepting the award on her behalf on Wednesday. The 58-year-old engineer was unable to attend the ceremony in person due to a decade-long travel ban imposed by Venezuelan authorities under the government of President Nicolás Maduro.
Via her daughter, Machado said that receiving the award "reminds the world that democracy is essential to peace... And more than anything, what we Venezuelans can offer the world is the lesson forged through this long and difficult journey: that to have a democracy, we must be willing to fight for freedom."
But the protesters who gathered outside the previous day argue that Machado—who dedicated her acceptance of the award in part to Trump and has reportedly worked behind the scenes to pressure Washington to ramp up military and financial pressure on Venezuela—is not a beacon of democracy, but a tool of imperialist control.
As Venezuelan-American activist Michelle Ellner wrote in Common Dreams in October after Machado received the award:
She worked hand in hand with Washington to justify regime change, using her platform to demand foreign military intervention to “liberate” Venezuela through force.
She cheered on Donald Trump’s threats of invasion and his naval deployments in the Caribbean, a show of force that risks igniting regional war under the pretext of “combating narco-trafficking.” While Trump sent warships and froze assets, Machado stood ready to serve as his local proxy, promising to deliver Venezuela’s sovereignty on a silver platter.
She pushed for the US sanctions that strangled the economy, knowing exactly who would pay the price: the poor, the sick, the working class.
The protesters outside the Nobel Institute on Tuesday felt similarly: "No peace prize for warmongers," read one banner. "US hands off Latin America," read another.
The protest came on the same day Trump told reporters that an attack on the mainland of Venezuela was coming soon: “We’re gonna hit ‘em on land very soon, too,” the president said after months of extrajudicial bombings of vessels in the Caribbean that the administration has alleged with scant evidence are carrying drugs.
On the same day that Machado received the award in absentia, US warplanes were seen circling over the Gulf of Venezuela. Later, in what Bloomberg described as a "serious escalation," the US seized an oil tanker off the nation's coast.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Princeton Experts Speak Out Against Trump Boat Strikes as 'Illegal' and Destabilizing 'Murders'
"Deploying an aircraft carrier and US Southern Command assets to destroy small yolas and wooden boats is not only unlawful, it is an absurd escalation," said one scholar.
Dec 10, 2025
Multiple scholars at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs on Wednesday spoke out against the Trump administration's campaign of bombing suspected drug boats, with one going so far as to call them acts of murder.
Eduardo Bhatia, a visiting professor and lecturer in public and international affairs at Princeton, argued that it was "unequivocal" that the attacks on on purported drug boats are illegal.
"They violate established maritime law requiring interdiction and arrest before the use of lethal force, and they represent a grossly disproportionate response by the US," stressed Bhatia, the former president of the Senate of Puerto Rico. "Deploying an aircraft carrier and US Southern Command assets to destroy small yolas and wooden boats is not only unlawful, it is an absurd escalation that undermines regional security and diplomatic stability."
Deborah Pearlstein, director of the Program in Law and Public Policy at Princeton, said that she has been talking with "military operations lawyers, international law experts, national security legal scholars," and other experts, and so far has found none who believe the administration's boat attacks are legal.
Pearlstein added that the illegal strikes are "a symptom of the much deeper problem created by the purging of career lawyers on the front end, and the tacit promise of presidential pardons on the back end," the result of which is that "the rule of law loses its deterrent effect."
Visiting professor Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, argued that it was not right to describe the administration's actions as war crimes given that a war, by definition, "requires a level of sustained hostilities between two organized forces that is not present with the drug cartels."
Rather, Roth believes that the administration's policy should be classified as straight-up murder.
"These killings are still murders," he emphasized. "Drug trafficking is a serious crime, but the appropriate response is to interdict the boats and arrest the occupants for prosecution. The rules governing law enforcement prohibit lethal force except as a last resort to stop an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury, which the boats do not present."
International affairs professor Jacob N. Shapiro pointed to the past failures in the US "War on Drugs," and predicted more of the same from Trump's boat-bombing spree.
"In 1986, President Ronald Reagan announced the 'War on Drugs,' which included using the Coast Guard and military to essentially shut down shipment through the Caribbean," Shapiro noted. "The goal was to reduce supply, raise prices, and thereby lower use. Cocaine prices in the US dropped precipitously from 1986 through 1989, and then dropped slowly through 2006. Traffickers moved from air and sea to land routes. That policy did not work, it's unclear why this time will be different."
The scholars' denunciation of the boat strikes came on the same day that the US seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela in yet another escalatory act of aggression intended to put further economic pressure on the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular