A headline quoted at Drudge makes the following claim:
Protesters in over 400 cities march vs MONSANTO...
Really? That sounds like quite a movement. I didn’t know that many people cared. So I checked out the AP story, and — lo and behold — the source of the “news” was revealed in the first sentence:
LOS ANGELES — (AP) Organizers say two million people marched in protest against seed giant Monsanto in hundreds of rallies across the U.S. and in over 50 other countries on Saturday.
“March Against Monsanto” protesters say they wanted to call attention to the dangers posed by genetically modified food and the food giants that produce it. Founder and organizer Tami Canal said protests were held in 436 cities in 52 countries.
Organizers said?
A statement from activists about their own activities is dutifully reported as news?
“Founder and organizer Tami Canal” (assuming that is a real name of a real person) is also quoted as saying that “two million” responded to her Facebook page. (Really? So how come there are only just over 1100 “likes”?)
Nice to know that everything has been all verified and checked out by the armies of fact checkers at the MSM.
Such misleading reporting is so typical and mundane these days that I wouldn’t have bothered with post, but seeing the headline at Drudge reminded me of a local news report about what is very generously called a protest march here in Ann Arbor.
Hundreds of people marched through the streets of Ann Arbor Saturday to protest the use of genetically modified foods. The protest, dubbed the March Against Monsanto began on the University of Michigan Diag at 1 p.m. and ended at Hanover Square Park on Packard Street.
Monsanto is a $ billion St. Louis, Mo.-based agriculture technology company that sells, among other things, genetically modified seeds for farming. It says its products pose no risk to humans.
People of all ages, including children, were among the protesters, many of whom carried signs with messages like “My family’s food is not your experiment,” and “Do you know what you are eating?” One little girl wore a sign around her neck stating, “I am not a science experiment.”
Ah, a a little girl not wanting to be experimented upon! How touching is that?
The thing is, Ann Arbor is one of the most left wing places in the United States, and the reporters here can be expected to be reliable in cooperating with the left wing agenda. Still, I’m curious to know whether “hundreds of people” did in fact turn out, or whether that is once again a figure given by the organizers themselves, and dutifully reported verbatim.
While pictures are not conclusive proof of anything, I think that a very telling clue can be found in the accompanying picture of the march:
If we assume that the reporters were in fact doing their job in covering the march, and that this is an accurate photo of it, I’m just not seeing “hundreds” of people there. I count around 15, and even if we make allowances for stragglers on the sidewalk behind, there’s no way that there are hundreds. Dozens, perhaps. And even that is generous, I’ll grudgingly grant that the organizers were able to assemble dozens.
In Ann Arbor.
What fascinates me are the dynamics at work if we suppose this is a pattern. A dozen here, and a dozen there, and hey, pretty soon we might be talking about a few hundred people. Out of a country of 300 million. Yet these measly protests are being taken deadly seriously by policy makers at national and local levels.
Ever wonder how so few people are able to achieve so much influence over so many?
They have help.
Comments
6 responses to “How to turn dozens into hundreds, and hundreds into millions!”
As much as I despise Monsanto for their high handed legal maneuverings with licensing and patents to discourage and destroy competition and entrap customers; there is just no evidence that the GMO crops are the threat these groups claim.
Alternative headline:
Silly, Confused People Wear Clown Masks; Protest Something
That could be right, actually – one small nursery client of ours (we call the owner The Hippie) was holding a Monsanto march Saturday at her nursery – I’ll bet she got at least 15-20 people. Multiply that by all the idiots around the world (innumerable) and you could easily have a couple of million.
Divide that by the world pop. estimate of 7,121,803,446… and laugh.
Seriously, I agree with Will on Monsanto’s patenting. BUT GMO is not a sin. Just about everything we eat is genetically modified. Often through years of selection.
What the GMO people are actually upset about is plants that are injected with genes of other plants (or even animals). Which – while I can see the Vegan problem – is silly to the rest of us. I’d love me some protein-enhanced tomatoes.
Especially if they were immune to late blight and tobacco mosaic virus…sigh.
The concerns are not necessarily silly, despite the face put on them by these protestors. There should be some concern with, for example, breeding crops that produce their own pesticides. Since the amount that the crops produce need to be low (otherwise they wouldn’t be safe for consumption), the consistent, low dosage could induce resistance in pests.
Whether this is more of a problem than pesticide resistance from conventionally applied pesticides, I don’t know (I’m no expert). But it’s certainly not something to dismiss.
A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. Perhaps, very little is extremely dangerous. It’s nice to think about farming as some “authentic” man outstanding in his field, but the next time you stop by your John Deere dealer and price out a combine, recognize that farming is a big ticket enterprise. When you plant you don’t want failure. Non-germinating seed stocks may seem “authentic” but waste a resource that will never come back; time.
My state’s junior senator made a big deal out of this last week, and I posted about his/our mind-numbingly stupid electorate. How out of touch with genetics, and farming, need you be to support this kind of intellectual farago?
Seemingly, almost completely.
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