Occupy Monsanto

When RE, head admin and creator of the Doomstead Diner, asked me to write an article about the evils of Monsanto I was a bit confused by the request at first. "Aren't we just preachin' to the choir" I wanted to know. What am I going to write about that most people don't already know? Most of what I know is from documentary films such as Food Inc., a Michael Pollan book or two (as well as many other books), the occasional internet article, as well as the annual report generated straight from Hell. Haven't heard of that report? It's called the Earth Rape Newspeak Players Ball Report and it's discussed at the annual Newspeak Players Ball. This is the real purpose of the Bilderberger meeting every year. It's where the awards are handed out by Satan himself. Monsanto has won four out of the last 10 awards with Satan praising their use of the word sustainability. He took the time to point out (at last years Earth Rape) how wonderfully crafted and full of diverse and pure Newspeak Monsanto's "AboutUs" section of their website is:

 

At the heart of Monsanto is a very clear and principled code of conduct – one we expect all employees, contractors and management to live by every day. We operate under a genuine value system—our pledge—that demonstrates integrity, respect, ethical behavior, perspective and honesty as a foundation for everything we do.

A key part of fulfilling the promise of our value system is by engaging our communities in a significant and positive manner. Not only do we work hard to support the family farmer in a variety of ways, but we also:

• provide extensive educational programs – particularly in science and agriculture – for students around the world

• fund numerous research grants for graduate students

• work in partnership with government bodies, non-profit agencies and advocacy groups to make agriculture more sustainable"

While I'm at it, here's a video from Monsanto's website that might make you throw up a few times.

This type of write up makes me very angry. Newspeak makes me angry in general. But this is particularly pernicious Newspeak. Monsanto making agriculture more sustainable? Is that why 16,196 Indian farmers killed themselves in 2008, with over 15,000 suicides a year from 2002 to 2008 according to Wiki. These deaths are mainly due to Monsanto's BT cotton, but more to the point it's due to Monsanto's "sustainable" agriculture methods. Now, I study and practice permaculture methods, which are actually sustainable agriculture methods. Monsanto practices chemical mediated, genetically modified, monoculture. Sustainability with plants depends mostly on diversity. That's why in nature you don't see monocultures. You see thousands of different species of plants growing in a true melting pot of diversity.

Monsanto's agriculture is the opposite of sustainable. They move into a country and get the farmers (whom practice sustainable agriculture passed on through generations) to plant their GM seeds which will not grow without Monsanto's application of poisonous chemicals. So now the farmer is beholden to Monsanto to get their crops to grow. To add insult to injury the seeds are what are known as "terminator seeds" because subsequent generations of the plant are sterile and will not produce the next years crop. So the farmer must buy more seeds from Monsanto. By this time Monsanto has complete control of the farmer (and their land) since the farmer cannot afford to continue the charade without a hefty loan from the bank, which they will never be able to repay since they will never see a profit. No worries, cause Monsanto doesn't give two shits about the farmers and their human needs. They've got huge machines that run by satellite programming to do the job of the farmer. This is the real reason why there has been an epidemic of Indian farmers committing suicide over the last ten years. So I guess if farmers killing themselves, genetically modified terminator seeds, and numerous application of deadly poisons is sustainable than Monsanto has nailed it. So this is the "variety of ways" that Monsanto "supports the family farmer"? By making them debt slaves whom find it practical to hang themselves?

There are many evils associated with what Monsanto is doing, but to my estimation, the most evil thing they have attempted to do is to patent life itself. Percy Schmeiser, of Saskatchewan Canada, can tell you all about that. His story is pretty well known, but in 1998 Monsanto sued him for growing their patented GM canola seed. Now, he didn't grow their seeds, their seeds contaminated his 50 years of work cultivating an heirloom canola variety. That happened because nature has this amazing capacity to pollinate with pollinators. His fields got contaminated with Monsanto's bull shit and then Monsanto sued Schmeiser for growing their crop without permission (luckily they did not succeed). I guess maybe next Monsanto will try to take the birds and the Bees to court for cross pollinating their patented genetic modifications?  What's with the birds and bees anyways? Don't they know there is law to follow?  Damn nature and it's anarchic form of resilient life.

As far as genetically modifying natures design goes, this is what Monsanto has to say about that completely risk free practice: 

 There is no need to test the safety of DNA introduced into GM crops. DNA (and resulting RNA) is present in almost all foods. DNA is non-toxic and the presence of DNA, in and of itself, presents no hazard. 

 Indeed, no need to test the effects of splicing non-plant DNA into plants such as the "fish tomato" with it's winter flounder anitfreeze transgene spliced into it for better frost protection. Granted, this fish tomato was not brought to us by Monsanto, but their logic applies here, and they were the first company to apply genetic modification to food crops. There is no need to test whether or not this is a safe practice because "DNA is present in almost all foods" and DNA is "non-toxic." Right, so sign me up for a "fish tomato" sandwich with round up ready corn on the cob. While I'm at it, why not some genetically modified soy formula for my 3 month old with a BT Cotton onesie. Might as well get him ready for his diet of mostly poisonous food so that he can get a head start on being sick for the rest of his life. But hey, at least he won't be hungry while he's dying from cancer.

The last thing we need is more chemicals on planet Earth. Monsanto is in the business of making humanity even more dependent on chemicals. A quick google search for "pollution in the womb" uncovered this gem:

 

Umbilical cord blood from 10 babies was tested for 413 industrial chemicals and pollutants. The tests found an average of 200 of these chemicals in each newborn, and a total of 287 chemicals in the group. The umbilical cord blood of the 10 babies harboured pesticides, consumer product ingredients, and wastes from burning coal, gasoline and garbage. Some of the chemicals found in the cord blood are banned or severely restricted in the US.

Among the chemicals found were:
- eight perfluorochemicals used as stain and oil repellants in fast food packaging, clothes and textiles, including the Teflon chemical PFOA. PFOA was recently characterized as a likely human carcinogen.
- 21 organochloride pesticides.
- dozens of widely used brominated flame retardants (PBDEs) and their toxic by products, used in TVs, computers, foam and many other products. They are also found in some foods.

Of the 287 chemicals detected in the study, 180 are known to cause cancer in humans or animals, 217 are toxic to the brain and nervous system, and 208 cause birth defects or abnormal development in animal tests.

I wonder how many of those organochloride pesticides are brought to us by Monsanto and their ilk? So we're going to Occupy Monsanto on September 17th. Everywhere. Not sure what my part will be short of writing this article. But maybe I'll put a sign up on the busy roadside in front of my house that says something like "Monsanto pollutes our wombs." Or "Monsanto causes cancer." Anything to bring attention to the evil that is being perpetuated in the name of profit by this ridiculous company and the food production philosophy they labor to cultivate. We don't need genetically modified foods in moncultures. It is not a sustainable practice. It is quite the opposite in fact. It causes more virulent and pesticide resistant pests for our food crops. It causes slaves to be made from simple farmers whom then kill themselves out of desperation. It causes humanity to ultimately be at the mercy of those who would seek to control all of our food for no other reason than profit via patents on plant DNA.

The question you have to ask yourself is do you want your food to be cheap, nutritionally deficient, and destructive to sustainable cultures throughout the world? Or do you want your food to be nutritious and produced using natural methods that mimic natures design while facilitating healthy human societies? We can do that as a species if we decide to. There is a lot stopping us from accomplishing the later goal, and Monsanto is behind a good bit of that reasoning. There is no reason why we can't produce all of the food we need as a species in a way that is regenerative, healthy, and supportive of all life systems involved in the ecology of food production. It's not a mystery. We know how to do it, and it does not require the use of man made chemicals that pollute the wombs of our unborn children, cause cancer, and convince simple farmers that killing themselves is a better option than remaining Monsanto slaves. We have the solutions. We can fix this mess. But we won't if you don't pull your head out of the sand and start paying attention to the evil's being perpetuated by corporations whom care about nothing but profit. And at the expense of the health of our planet and all of the species on it. We don't own the Earth, but we do share it with billions of other life forms, a healthy majority of which we are actively exterminating with the practices of our civilizations Big Agriculture headed up by the likes of Monsanto.

Zeitgeist Culture

I don't know how this looks, but I know how it sounds. Get some...of the love...blasting from the consciousness we all know is siphoning Earth love, Gaia, Ganja... it's a culture to which I belong fuck BAU, and fuck inauthenticity

Meet Rebelution

This is my home, my message, my lineage, and the perfect expression of where our species is

American Chicken Shit Corn Smut

Corn Smut...now there is a nuanced and serendipitously generated piece of American reality. The above picture came from a newfangled hybrid corn that happens to be purple, and sold at Lowes, that I grew a foot away from the roost that holds fifteen chicken asses...that's in my permaculture trailer park haven...next to the trailer park hugelmeadow that I hockity pockity wocked into existence...to hear my wife tell it. So the corn smut, that our government apparently spent "time and money trying to eradicate," that the Mexican culture has embraced due to edibility, dubbed huitlacoche,which means something along the lines of "sleeping Raven's excrement" (by my reading of wiki's entry on the topic). How perfect is that for a symbol to attach to the idea that America is a terminal, end stage, cancerous growth on homo sapien culture? The melting pot of culture brewed into a homogenous retardation of all that is good about our species. Corn smut...it's a corn tumor that enters the ovary of the plant and becomes the seed kernel itself, it's a fungus that sends out conjugation tubes to form hypha which parasitize the corn flesh. The corn kernel becomes corn smut.

I know that this corn smut is ripe with symbolism about what has happened to our culture. Our anti-culture as I like to call it. Interestingly enough, today I read about the Roma (gypsy) culture while reading Orlov's latest on the five stages of collapse. They live on the margins of any society, parasitizing the Gadjo (non-gypsy) culture, and they represent the best human cultural adaptation to the future we are rapidly approaching. According to Dmitry Orlov, they stand the best chance of surviving the collapsed end of this cancerous, Golden Rule smut ramification of, industrially consumptive, fossil fuel powered, cultural retardation. That is to say that the gypsy way will most probably survive the end of industrial civilization.

There is much about Roma culture that I find to be extremely fascinating. They are petty thieves who persist on tricking polite society into unwittingly supplying them with what they need to thrive. I guess they are similar to corn smut. They are also similar to the mythical trickster fox whom just takes what he needs from you via his trickery and then disappears. They hide in plain sight by hiding who they are, and they are generally considered a nuisance to those whom control the digibit levers. Sometimes it's easier to simply deal with them by banishment, and some governments have done so. I want to join the Roma culture, but seeing as how the only way to do so is to marry in, and I'm already married, there will be no gypsy made of me. However, my wife's avatar is "Gypsy Mama," (over at the Doomstead Diner) and she is so gypsy like that I'm convinced she is in fact unknowingly gypsy by family lineage.

Let me give you an example of what I mean by employing my favorite medium of literary conveyance called anecdote. Today my wife rounded up a bunch of consumer shit that we've managed to come into possession of. We've come to possess all of this, mostly plastic, Chinese made, stupid shit via the usual American avenues of mindless consumption. That mindless consumption happens without our participation, and ends up being given to us due to socially mandated empty rituals like baby showers, Christmas, birthdays, and whatever other reason us Americans have to go practice consumer therapy in the box store refrigerator habitats that house humans too fat to walk. They ride motorized consumer scooters while shopping for their fat inducing coma ridden soma high petroleum corn sugared treats. So now that I'm done explaining the nature of the stupid plastic shit that my wife rounded up today, let me proceed with the promise of anecdote in the next paragraph.

Today my wife returned consumer items to retail stores for store credit. Things like the safety knobs we've had on our gas oven that keep our toddler from burning the house down. She tried to return a dumb ass talking potty (that my son pinched a loaf in a time or two...and maybe pissed in a few hundred times...we didn't like the song the toilet sang was why we returned it...in perfect Gadjoesqueness)  but the new brainwashed employee refused refund, siting sanitation, (which I can't argue with...but Wendy figures she'll take it back again next time and hopefully the next proletariat dumb ass will acquiesce). I mean, let's forget about the damage that said talking toilet could have potentially done to my son had I not removed the batteries within days of the toilet being brought to defecating digital madness. There it is again...defecation...sleeping Raven excrement...tied to American anti-culture. What type of culture thinks that talking toilets that congratulate your water head toddler on his stinkin' MacDonald's fried shit is a good idea? Ethical even? WTF? We need plastic potties manufactured on the backs of starving third world children? And my wife and I are supposed to feel badly about returning this stupid plastic shit for organic baby formula to feed our exceptional newborn?

See, I do feel badly about it when I'm with my wife as she runs these legal scams (there are many corporate store policies that include no question asked, no receipt, returns). The reasons I feel badly about the returns are due to unconscious scripts that the anti-culture I've been brought up in have programmed into me. Logically I get why I should not feel guilty about it, but I still do. I especially hate the looks and sounds that are directed at you from the consumer zombies who are stuck in line behind you. My wife on the other hand just feeds her baby while in line, and says things to those behind her like "sometimes you just gotta feed your baby while you return shit." She's unaffected by the social program that says she's being a dishonest citizen of this FSoA (failed states of America). Today, she brought that senseless planned obsolescence back to the corporate monster that's destroyed anything resembling a descent American culture, and she bought about three months of formula with it (don't worry, she's breast feeding, but Tribann requires a LOT of calories to grow his physical form, and if he doesn't get them than stress erupts all over the place via forms like torturous eczema on my wife's hands).

This is one of the ways we use to generate money, or the digibit credits to acquire what our family needs. We subsist on the margins of society, in a gray area, living comfortably by taking advantage of the stupid and mindless cultural taboos embraced by our consumer cult of progress anti-culture. Government grants for college, medicaid for healthcare (except for me that is...Uncle Sam will excise a chunk of my vas deferens so I can't procreate any longer...but if I got a toothache, or a broke arm, I can go fuck myself), and a life paid for by the shadow of American waste. I'm a professional student these days. Learning how to work for the Ministry of Health. Well...learning is probably the wrong word...more like learning how to take tests (which Orlov points out in his latest book). I can take a test like a motherfucker...and on short notice.

Our just in time bull shit is about to be out of time. The writing is all over the god damned wall. Just look around outside. Look at the people you know who are a pussy hair away from economic non-person status, bankruptcy, and Limarita fueled, fermented, piss smelling destitution. I've got kids trying to thrive in this shit! Filled with hundreds of cancer causing chemicals en utero, usurping our women's ovaries to become tumor like growth on the maize that supplies the feedstock for something like 70% of our human bodies on the molecular level...according to a stat I read in one of Michael Pollan's books. We are the corn people. Warning, Big Lebowski Turrets dead ahead.

"I've got some corn, I've got some corn so big I can't even sit down...but you know me...I can't complain."

"Fuckin' A, I've got some corn smut man."

Indeed dude, I've got some corn smut. It grew on a newfangled, probably genetically modified, Ruby Queen corn stalk just next to 15 shittin' chicken asses in my back yard. Apparently corn smut has similar characteristics to ergot, which is associated with LSD. I don't know...I love and cherish Mexican food and Mexican culture. Mexicans eat corn smut, or huitlacoche, and they do that because it's edible, and the world doesn't care about our guts. It's practical, common sense even, and I get it. 

So now that I'm done pitching my two cents into the TEOTWAWKI blogosphere I'm off to eat some huitlacoche...here's to it's LSD like qualities. And here's to a new breed of post-petroleum people's who will most probably be gypsy like, and may be found hiding in a mythical place called the Foxstead...one day. Or maybe I'll take my wife and sons and join my uncles in SoCal, where I was hatched; who have plans to retire from the American hologram and take part in the growing sea gypsy movement. Apparently the apple don't fall far from the genetic tree. I've got a sail boat going uncle, and I may buy a sail boat with my Ministry of Health money, and join him. Polar bears are floating on chunks of ice in the arctic, and sea level is rising. What better way to adapt than a gypsy sea culture subsisting on gorilla grown food? If I end up buying a sail boat...Ima name it the Gypsy Corn Smut.  I think the future is going to be something resembling Waterworld...only it's fruition is maybe 50 to 100 years from now.