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