<nettime> natura naturans digest [pentecost, dery, mandl, guderian]

[claire pentecost <cpentecost@compuserve.com>]

in a nettime posting (6/11) from me in the wake of skirmishes over
agricultural GMOs I wrote the following about Scott McPhee (not a terribly
well-written sentence I admit):

"His claim that identifying the current genetic manipulations as
no different from centuries-old methods should not identify him with
corporate interests is naive."

McPhee has answered me:

"and in no place did i *ever* say GM food was 'no
different' (which goes even further than david mandl did in placing words
into my mouth)!!! I challenge you to reproduce this statement! i asserted
that there is merely an area of commonality.  fully, it is indeed a **red
herring** but one that people appear to love, if one just happens to
mention it in passing, then the rest of one's views can be disregarded.

it is just classic character assassination bullshit."

Here is McPhee's original statement which seems to have given rise to his
sense of misrepresentation, from a nettime post on 5/17:

"And of course all agricultural crops and animals are 'GM'
by virtue of selective breeding anyway."

I find this statement easy to interpret as saying that what we now call GM
is no different from all other selectively bred agricultural crops and
animals.

But perhaps it was me who was sloppy.
I assure you I have no interest in "character assassination" and most of my
post of 6/11 was an effort to clarify the issues at hand.  I am not
interested in picking on McPhee per se, but I am very sensitive to casual
statements that do affirm the position that has made it so easy for the
corporate macrosubject to quite covertly redesign our food supply in less
than a decade.

all apologies to Scott McPhee, who I understand was simply trying to get
some information.

claire pentecost
cpentecost@compuserve.com

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