permaculture

[Steve Hart <stevenlawrencehart@gmail.com>]

LL...is this your writing ?

Steve

Kia ora Ehoa

*Steve Hart*
*Ecology Architect*

Designer, Teacher, Builder of Ecologically Sustainable Resilient
Environments, through Urban Design, Architecture, Landscape Architecture
and Systems Ecology via Ecological Agriculture..​


*Skype: tipenemanawaPhone: +64 220 75 62 11*



The Permaculture International College
https://permacultureeducation.com/
https://permaculturecollege.academia.edu/SteveHart





On 2 July 2018 at 15:54, Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com> wrote:

> Mass deception:
>
> "Most all of our society is the victim of a stupendously successful,
> century-long effort of mass deception. The idea that organically certified
> farming is making a significant difference is just one of the many myths.
> More on that below, but first, let me sketch a more general, historical
> picture - the necessary context.
>
> The advent of mass communications and the arrival in the US of Freud's
> kinsman Edward Bernays, both at the beginning of the 20th century, was a
> fortuitous convergence for our rulers. Bernays showed industrialists how to
> manufacture desire using psychology, and spread it via the growing media of
> mass communication, and the first industry of mass deception was born,
> known as advertising. It was so successful in ramping up consumption,
> burning through resources at the fastest rate, and thereby maximizing
> capitalist profits, that Bernays was engaged to apply his methods of mass
> deception more generally to allow ruling strata to achieve near total
> social control with rare use of force. Bernays taught ruling strata how to
> use propaganda to, in Chomsky's words, manufacture consent to a social
> system where most of the power lies in the hands of the few, by using a
> psychologically sophisticated narrative to sell the myths of democracy,
> free enterprise, free market, free trade, and free speech.
>
> The result is that today most people are badly misled as to how our society
> works and who its most powerful institutions serve. Government, media,
> markets and the knowledge business itself are sufficiently under the
> control of ruling strata that they serve primarily the interests of the
> few. Hence government agencies serve the economic sectors that they are
> supposed to regulate: the USDA serves industrial agriculture, not the
> public interest. The historical record shows that it always has. The first
> Secretary of Agriculture created the Pioneer seed company, which used
> hybridization to take control of seeds away from farmers.
>
> What is the reality regarding the present food system? Certified organic is
> a joke, just another brand that agribusiness uses to more fully exploit the
> discretionary consumption capacity of the gentrified market. Make oats into
> the letter O, call them Cheerios (because they start your day with cheer),
> then call them Honey Nut Organic O's to sell even more oats - at twice the
> price. Moreover, this branding hardly makes a difference in the quality of
> the US food system. 10% of US farms produce most of the food. These are the
> biggest, foulest farms in the food economy. The same is true for organic -
> the biggest, least sustainable certified organic farms produce the lion's
> share of the organic food economy, thanks in large part to the NOP that
> nationalized organic food miles. Worse, organic is a drop in the bucket: US
> acres in farming is 844 million, certified organic acres is 5.4 million -
> 0.64% of the total farm economy (see below and also in attachment).
>
> Think about that. After decades of the organic movement, certified organic
> food is a tiny fraction of the US food economy, less than 1%. And
> incessantly corrupted, at that, gradually eroding trust even in the
> miniscule gentrified market that it serves. Not that agribusiness cares
> that much for such a small market fraction.
>
> None of the above is meant to lay blame on farmers, conventional or
> organic, or on anyone who works for a more sustainable agriculture. But
> when we falsely believe we are making much of a difference, or expect any
> help in that effort from the government or any of its agencies, or any of
> the other major institutions in our society, we are deluded, duped, in a
> word, and the system will not change for the better as long as that mass
> deception reigns supreme.
>
> We have been taught to dismiss any attempt to lift the veil as 'conspiracy
> theory', but knowledge about how things really work is available, not
> secret, if one is willing to look beyond the sources the oligarchs daily
> put before our eyes and ears. Education must start with an understanding of
> the concentration of power that makes possible the control of institutions
> and the success of indoctrination. The public is even misled about that,
> although the information is readily available if one looks for it. The
> public is aware that there is inequality, but the concentration of wealth
> and power is orders of magnitude above what the average person thinks.
>
> Those who try to lift the veil will be called names, suggesting they are
> promoting some impossible future, and diverting attention from the real
> question: how much of our conception of the present is myth. "
>
> NPR:
>
> "NPR, National Propaganda Radio, bravely soldiering on the business of
> serving up the same garbage as the rest of the mass media while
> masquerading as an alternative, thus misleading millions of politically
> illiterate liberals into thinking they are hearing anything but fake news."
>
>
>
> --
> Lawrence F. London, Jr.
> lfljvenaura@gmail.com
> https://sites.google.com/site/avantgeared
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