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permaculture - [permaculture] Big Ag, Oil and Tobacco Will Kill You For a Profit, By Jane Smiley, HuffingtonPost.com. Posted August 23, 2006.

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  • From: Keith Johnson <keithdj@mindspring.com>
  • To: Permaculture ibiblio <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>, openpermaculture <permaculture@openpermaculture.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] Big Ag, Oil and Tobacco Will Kill You For a Profit, By Jane Smiley, HuffingtonPost.com. Posted August 23, 2006.
  • Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2006 21:40:27 -0400

http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/40682/

Pithy, penetrating, and barbed comment from Pulitzer prize winner Jane Smiley. Powerful and quotable.

snip

The ag companies, however, preferred to remake the ecosystem so that farmers would use more chemicals rather than fewer; they genetically modified seed to make it resistant to an herbicide, Roundup, that when applied would destroy every living plant around it except the proprietary seed plants also owned by the corporation that formulated Roundup.

This is exactly analogous to an act of war against the natural ecosystem. It produced acts of war against the farmers, too, because Monsanto aggressively pursued royalty payments from anyone and everyone who had those genetically modified plants in their fields, no matter how they got there, and even if the farmer didn't want them there. Let's say vandals invade your house, eat all your food, drink all your liquor, and make a terrible mess. After they burn the house down, they send you a bill, and sue you if you don't pay it. And the judge backs them up. That is what Monsanto has done to the farmer, and what it is doing to the ecosystem.

snip

Given what these big corporations routinely do, we have to ask, are they filled and peopled from top to bottom by ruthless monsters who care nothing about others, and also nothing about the world that we live in? Are these CEOs and CFOs and COOs and managers and researchers and stockholders so beyond human that, let's say, the deaths in Iraq and the destitution of the farmers and the tumors and allergies and obesities of children, and the melting of the Greenland ice cap and the shifting of the Gulf Stream are, to them, just the cost of doing business? Or are they just beyond stupid and blind, so that they, alone among humans, have no understanding of the interconnectedness of all natural systems?

One thing you have to ask yourself, faced with American corporate culture, is, what is it about Americans, in particular, that makes them so indifferent to consequences, especially the consequence of doing harm to others, over and over and over? Why did those big tobacco folks persist, for fifty years, in poisoning their customers and attempting to get more customers? Was that what Jesus told them to do?

I bring up Jesus because many, if not most of these companies are headquartered in red states, states proud of their Christian heritage. Big tobacco is (or used to be) located in the south, big oil in Texas, big ag in St. Louis, Minnesota, and Iowa. If Christianity abounds in these states, and people working in these corporations, and running them, are professing Christians, and these people give themselves a license to steal and destroy every day of the year, what does that say about Christianity? Let me tell you. It says that Christianity, especially American Christianity, is the religion of death.

snip
The war machine, as in Lebanon (epitomized by aerial destruction) is just as clumsy as it ever was. You cannot torment and injure and murder and disfigure people into liking or agreeing with you, only into going underground while they prepare their revenge. You cannot treat people, even people who don't speak your language or dress like you, as suckers and babies (as in, taking candy from a baby). The average person knows this, but CEOs and CEO Presidents apparently do not.

snip
By deregulating themselves, they made sure only that the consequences of their misguided policies would be bigger -- global climate change rather than higher gas prices, contaminated gene pools rather than lower profits from pesticides, global famine rather than localized corn blight, tens of thousands dead in Iraq rather than higher R and D costs, the death of the Ford motor company rather than a shift to less profitable, more fuel efficient cars.

--
Keith Johnson
Permaculture Activist Magazine
PO Box 5516
Bloomington, IN 47408
(812) 335-0383
http://www.permacultureactivist.net
also Patterns for Abundance Design & Consulting



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  • [permaculture] Big Ag, Oil and Tobacco Will Kill You For a Profit, By Jane Smiley, HuffingtonPost.com. Posted August 23, 2006., Keith Johnson, 08/31/2006

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