Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Recombinant Straw Falling on a Sick Camel's Back

Recently it's come to my attention (thanks, Randall!) that Monsanto, Cargill, and the rest of the nutritional vandal lobby have been pushing hard for the passage of three new food regulation bills that will, in essence, turn America's growing legions of organic farmers into unwilling indentured servants of the agricorps. The bills are up for vote soon, violating Obama's campaign promise to allow lots of time for the review of legislation before bringing it to vote, but one more violated promise? That's already getting old, and he's barely over a month in the Oval Office.

Phew! I thought. Thank God I'm in Canada. I'll just have to be especially careful in the future to avoid any and all American produce, as if those bills get passed every last vegetable will be sprayed with biocidal chemicals and every last cow will be force-fed antiobiotics. Well, that was pretty much true of anything the US has been exporting for a while anyways, and with full knowledge of that I've been avoiding American agricultural exports like the plague they are for some time now. So, really, for me, those bills don't change anything. Living in Canada doesn't mean I'm home free, but it does buy me some time, right?

Well ... maybe not so much as I thought.

Monsanto's been on the warpath in Canada, too. Here's one venerable old farmer's story, mostly a familiar tale of disingeuous accusations and insane high court rulings until, near the end, he drops the following bomb:
But I think the greatest curse is still coming. And that's coming in the line of prescription drug plants or 'pharma-plants'. There are six major drugs that are now being produced by genetically modified plants: vaccines, industrial enzymes, blood thinners, blood clotting proteins, growth hormones and contraceptives. What if somebody has had major surgery and they then eat food that is contaminated with genes from a plant manufactured to be a blood thinner? Or what about a pregnant woman who eats food contaminated by genes from a plant that is manufactured as a contraceptive? Remember, there is no such thing as containment or co-existence.
Contraceptives in food? My blood ran cold when I read that, and I'm hoping that wasn't some heathen mixture of blood clotters and blood thinners from last night's broccoli. The first image that came to mind was watching five, ten years down the line as my beautiful wife suddenly miscarries after eating the wrong tomato and hemorrhage's to death in the process due to an impurity in the wheat germ that was used to make her sandwich.

I'd love to chalk all this up to the short-sighted obsession with quarterly profits of a few amoral suit-wearing psychopaths. It would almost be comforting. Sure, they're throwing monkey-wrenches into the biosphere that will carome around in the gene pool for eons to come, but that's just because they're clumsy, stupid, and misguided, right?

Sure. Except then you read something like the following:
Deerfield, Illinois-based pharmaceutical company Baxter International Inc. has just been caught shipping live avian flu viruses mixed with vaccine material to medical distributors in 18 countries. The "mistake" (if you can call it that, see below...) was discovered by the National Microbiology Laboratory in Canada. The World Health Organization was alerted and panic spread throughout the vaccine community as health experts asked the obvious question: How could this have happened?
This incident was not and could not have been accidental. Read the article to find out why. Whether Baxter's motivation was merely a venal lust for profit, or whether it was part of a larger, darker aim is a determination I'll leave for the reader to make.

This is getting serious. Whether our adversaries are too stupid to be trusted with power and wealth, or simply too evil, is almost immaterial. The Enemy is making their moves, fast and furious; and while the mad caperings of the men behind the curtain are revealing their presence to more people every day it's not clear that matters. Certainly they don't think so, or they wouldn't be getting so blatant about it. They've softened us up for the kill in every conceivable way: our bodies poisoned by toxic food and adulterated water, minds dulled with pharmaceuticals entrained by mass media, communities atomized by economic exploitation at every level. We lie prostrate before them, and like a pack of wild hyenas they're circling in for the kill.

So, do we just stay on our backs and get eaten? Or....

6 comments:

su said...

Moonfood,
Clip no longer available.
Any other way of sourcing it?
The basic truth is you can't fool around with mother nature.
Splicing in something may seem like a great idea at the time, but with our limited intellects there is no way we can take all the possibilities on board. They are infinite after all.
Scary stuff all in all.
Here in South Africa for the first time our food imports outweighed our exports.
Why - farm murders have forced many farmers off the land and threats of land reclamation likewise.
I think every fucking political leader should resign and we, the people will choose who we want to lead.
Because one things for sure the people who want to rule, should never be allowed to.
Reluctant rulers are the only choice.

psychegram said...

Hmm. That's odd. The clip seems to be working ... though I wouldn't be surprised if it got taken down, given its nature.

Here's another version.

And in case that gets taken down, too, go to youtube and search for "The Most Important Video on the Internet", and other versions should pop up.

Not only do I think every political leader should be forced to resign, I don't think anyone should be allowed to take their places. Personal responsibility is the only guarantor of true freedom. The corollary is that only when every human being is her own leader can real progress be made. Human nature being what it is, other leaders are likely to step forward ... but 'leaders' and 'rulers', reluctant or not, are not what we need. We've been down that road, and they've led us to the brink of annihilation. What we need now is teachers.

su said...

N, please not teachers.
What we need are a couple hundred Lao Tsu's.
That would be the ideal

psychegram said...

I think we're going to have to do a whole lot better than that. If this species is to survive the approaching shitstorm, it's going to take a million Lao Tzus, Christs, Buddhas, and Ghandis. And I think that's exactly what we're going to get!

su said...

Do you really think that?

psychegram said...

Perhaps I exaggerate some. Hyperbole is a useful tool. But absent a massive spiritual awakening, we're lost ... and on the bright side, I see signs of that awakening everywhere I look.