It isn’t just the Trump administration that is thoroughly corrupt. In fact, it’s hard not to see Trump’s collection of mob wanna-be’s and hangers-on as representative of far too many American mega-corporations.
Take Monsanto. (As Henny Youngman might have said, please…)
A while back, the Guardian published an expose–one of many–that confirmed what farmers and rural folks have known for years, namely, that the company is rapacious, dishonest and immoral.
The US agriculture giant Monsanto and the German chemical giant BASF were aware for years that their plan to introduce a new agricultural seed and chemical system would probably lead to damage on many US farms, internal documents seen by the Guardian show.
Risks were downplayed even while they planned how to profit off farmers who would buy Monsanto’s new seeds just to avoid damage, according to documents unearthed during a recent successful $265m lawsuit brought against both firms by a Missouri farmer.
The documents, some of which date back more than a decade, also reveal how Monsanto opposed some third-party product testing in order to curtail the generation of data that might have worried regulators.
And in some of the internal emails, employees appear to joke about sharing “voodoo science” and hoping to stay “out of jail”.
Think about that last paragraph for a while.
The Guardian investigation focused on a product intended to replace Roundup–the company’s best-selling herbicide that has been connected to various cancers. Not that concern about user’s health entered into the equation. It seems that millions of acres of US farmland have become overrun with weeds that have become resistant to Roundup, the company’s name for glyphosate.
Farmers using Roundup would spray it on crops that Monsanto had genetically engineered to survive being sprayed with glyphosate. That was popular with farmers everywhere, not just in the U.S., but it led to the emergence of weeds that were also resistant to Roundup. The new system promoted by Monsanto and BASF uses a herbicide called dicamba; it “similarly provides farmers with genetically engineered dicamba-tolerant soybeans and cotton that can be sprayed directly with dicamba.” The weeds sprayed with the new product die–at least, so far– but the crops don’t.
There is, it appears, a down-side to the new product (other than the consequences of such herbicide use generally).
Dicamba has been in use since the 1960s but traditionally was used sparingly, and not on growing crops, because it has a track record of volatilizing – moving far from where it is sprayed – particularly in warm growing months. As it moves it can damage or kill the plants it drifts across.
The companies said they would make new dicamba formulations that would stay where they were sprayed and would not volatilize as older versions of dicamba were believed to do. With good training, special nozzles, buffer zones and other “stewardship” practices, the companies assured regulators and farmers that the new system would bring “really good farmer-friendly formulations to the marketplace”.
You can guess the rest. Only farmers buying Monsanto’s own dicamba-tolerant cotton and soybean seeds would be protected from drift damage. And they knew it. According to a report prepared for Monsanto in 2009, such “off-target movement” was expected, along with “crop loss”, “lawsuits” and “negative press around pesticides.” Monsanto’s own projections estimated that damage claims from farmers would total more than 10,000 cases. Evidently, those anticipated lawsuits were just a cost of doing business–business that generated enough profit to make even significant losses quite manageable.
And of course, one way Monsanto generated profit and business was through the drift–which encouraged the “drifted on” farmers to buy Monsanto’s resistant seeds.
It’s Roundup all over again.
Three juries so far have found that Roundup is carcinogenic and that Monsanto hid the risks. And just as Monsanto has done in the Roundup cases, it has tried to keep most of the discovery from the dicamba litigation designated confidential. According to the Guardian, some 180 of those documents have been unsealed.
“The documents are the worst that I’ve ever seen for any case that I’ve worked on,” said lawyer Angie Splittgerber, a former tobacco industry defense attorney who works with Randles in the firm Randles & Splittgerber. “So many of them put things in writing that were just horrifying.”
The linked article has facts and figures and is worth reading in its entirety–not just because Monsanto’s behavior has been utterly despicable for many years, but because lax government oversight has allowed a number of companies to behave with similar impunity. Too many of America’s “movers and shakers” consider this kind of behavior “doing business.”
Capitalism requires effective regulation in order to work properly. This is what happens when the regulated capture and control the regulators.
This is the cesspool from which Trump and his enablers emerged. This is their “normal.”
An economic system that requires constant attention to achieve effective regulation through a political system that requires constant negotiation to achieve consensus is bound to fail the very people it claims to serve.
Yes Sheila!
It goes to show that human life is just a Commodity! That’s obvious.
If they can make a buck you are out of luck.
Idoliters one and all, worshipping at the alter of riches. Life is cheap, that is, if it is not theirs.
Wshington’s regulatory agencies have become death chambers under the party that complained about health insurance for everyone somehow equating to death panels. George Orwell would be saying “I warned you.”
Theresa,
Excellent summary. Capitalism is devouring itself like a snake eating its own tail.
Nancy,
Also and excellent summary. Karl Marx did indeed warn us….in 1850….that capitalism would destroy itself from within.
Many on this blog have been pointing out this phenomenon of the lust for unregulated capitalism. The Monsanto/BASF crimes are just one of thousands allowed by deregulation. It will continue until there is a world-wide collapse. We got a taste of that collapse in 2007. So what did Republicans do? They fought a financial recovery. They advocated for more de-regulation like the de-regulation that caused the disaster in the first place.
Who owns and operates the Republican party? Wall St. Banks. Corporations. Todd will add that the Democrats are just as complicit, but they really aren’t. Bill Clinton’s tragic mistake of signing the overturning of Glass-Steagal was really, really bad, but most Democrats want regulations on industry and business to PREVENT social disaster and collapse….you know, like we’re seeing today with the colossally mis-managed pandemic response.
Again, we will continue on this broken glass strewn path until Republicans are removed from power in government. Voting – while we’re still able – will create that situation where idiots like Brian Kemp won’t be able to cut voting rights on a whim anymore.
We’re in a bar fight, folks. It won’t be anything but the dirtiest fight we’ve had since the civil war. The trick will be winning that fight without ANOTHER civil war.
If all of our farmers are buying Monsanto seeds and using their herbicides to protect produce; why do we import so much produce to be canned or frozen and to fill the supermarket produce sections with fresh produce that is tasteless? Then again; why do we produce the fabric used to make the protective medical coverings and ship it to other countries to be manufactured into those coverings and imported to be used in our hospitals? Why do we ship recycled cardboard to China to be reused to manufacture cardboard boxes and shipped back to this country to be sold to corporations such as Amazon and to shoppers as gift boxes?
I have talked to others who have been aware of the strange “weeds” and growth appearing in our yards and the disappearance of familiar weeds such as lambs quarters. My back yard has a large area of green which is not grass but a strange “weed’ in the areas where there is always standing water after rains. I used Roundup 2 years in a row on growth between bricks in a small area behind my house before the warnings when I ceased using it. Nothing else works as well as Roundup killing weeds but nothing else kills people like Roundup.
“The linked article has facts and figures and is worth reading in its entirety–not just because Monsanto’s behavior has been utterly despicable for many years, but because lax government oversight has allowed a number of companies to behave with similar impunity. Too many of America’s “movers and shakers” consider this kind of behavior “doing business.”
This is but one area of government actions which have gradually worked its way into our lives virtually unnoticed, then ignored or overruled by the courts. Not unlike Nixon’s repeal of the law prohibiting health care from becoming a for-profit business which has become a medical corporate conglomerate over the 47 years since his repeal now hauling in billions in profit annually. FOLLOW THE MONEY!
at one time the FDA and EPA worked with each other,and testing was a 5/7 year long process. monsanto started the no hoe soy beans because the work involved with keeping weeds out of the field. the process was , as the beans were in growth, you had farm workers walk the entire field,and hoe the weeds up by hand. as that farming progressed,then there was the bean bar,where 5/7 or so people would ride on the front of a tractor on a bar that was say, 15 feet wide, 5/7 seats across this, and they each had a spray gun,with herbicide. shooting each weed,because you couldnt shoot the growing beans without damage..then came cambria,and such other herbicides,that ended farm labor as we know it. farmers were in the profit,and the market was happy. sound familiar? farming is a gamble,and its not for startups. many of not all now, are seasoned farmers with banks backing to buy up failures and retirees, as they come up, expanding the wealth,er, so called land rich,cash poor.. farmers will always complian about their way to make a living is keeping them poor,while its only a talk,they keep the land,out of corprate farming. but now so many are so big,states and feds are leaning on them in some way to spell corprate farming in their game plan..when the likes of big ag,like monsanto,con agra,adm,etc, are the cheerleaders, ya know where this is going. the organic market is being hammered,by cross field contamination,guess who wins in court battles? theres little news about who,was cross contaminated,the word organic,is never mentioned. i was working with such a person,
whos dad started farming on never tilled soil in 1949 near tuttle n.d. Jake leno. he never sprayed a filed,his son Randy,took over when dad couldnt farm anymore. both,never sprayed,and used organic methods. its labor intensive,three timed passes in the field for each weed emergance,then plant. then careful management. a german coop, ocia? cant remember for sure,visited Randy every year, checked for spraying,and land management..one very nice person,and he was dedicated to seeing the euro market was clean of any,American corprate bullshit. Randy sold well above the avergae market price. then came his neighbors spraying and cross contamination became the issue.. ill be frank here, the fucking lawyers in NoDak refused to represent (with any compassion)any organics. the mere fight,as i was told, wasnt worth the money you pay spineless barristers. the cost of, labs,scientists,studies,etc, overwhelemed the notion of ever winning a case, this was done in Canada,and they lost big time decades ago to,monsanto on the seed a neighbor saved,and replanted. it was cross contaminated,and Monsanto sued for use of a patent infringement. the seed was suppose to be,organic,,the farmer lost. Randy sold his farm,and died a few years later.. the farmer today,his mindset is, hes taken so much abuse to stay in buisness, his thoughts are,screw em,im still alive,and the studies about anything against his use,is,well conspiratorial. his excuess to do as corprate America wants,keeps him in the money.. imagine that..and thats how the game is played,you either allow corprate ag run your life,or you bail….(not to be rude here,but in NoDak the lawyer is corprate friendly,and thats all ya get) theres a farm journal,by Alan guebert,, farmandfoodfile.com. he is a farmer in Illinois,if ya want some insights on whats going on in the field..this has been a past issue in his work…best wishes.. washdapaws..
It’s been 50 years since the first Earth Day and we have yet to decide that it’s really important to be good stewards of our planet. It’s taken 45 just over 3 years to destroy the EPA. It’s taken 3 months for the Corona Virus to remind us just how beautiful our earth is. This is our chance to do better when we all come out to play again.
Vernon,
“The trick will be winning that fight without ANOTHER civil war.” Can you tell us how to do it?
JoAnn,
the lack of farm workers by dr trump has made our farm to store provide less. the money now goes to corprates like dole, etc, to farm in Mexico. and hense,our dollars go there, for the not the same practices here..Mexico allows farming in thier needs,spray etc. does it get to cross our borders then,to your store? does dole etc, even check,and comply,or are they allowed,by those same gov,agencies to sell it here in America,because,it wasnt grown here? keep the tag on the bag,where its grown,ask questions,and make a effort to weed out the alex jones stories first. And,,,just because it says organic,under who rules? i use to haul produce from border towns like tuscon and mcallen. i gave it up because of the abuse we truckers get at grocery warehouses. and that has never changed,or its never mentioned..its money out of our pockets to hire help to unload our trucks,at their warehouse..and many more games, never mentioned..best wishes
Marv,
I have my suggestions, but they all involve doing things the right-wing lunatics would hate, thus exacerbating the conditions for that war. Unless our military steps up and does the unthinkable – defy the president – we’re in for bloody times. If Trump even looks like he’s going to lose by October, the shit will hit the fan.
Marv,
G,mornin.. the civil war, just warn em of marshall law,and explain ,then its the military who comes for their guns.. ya be suprised how the light in thier p brain opens up. civil war,,it may also be a scam by some org to push the therory,to provide just that.. watch what ya write in face and google,the AI factors are running,key strokes and words monitored are timed at 1/100th of a second. this gathered info is the sold to whoever..for whatever,,(cambridge analytical anyone?)or if ya run the gamit on any conspiracy stuff, your probably under a “easy to be influenced” catagory,and sold as such by google to third parties.. like toilet paper.. id be open to say, its been going on for some time,ask trump..alex jones,and his mob,taking to the streets in military garb and acting like fools.. seems they have thier own catagory…
if ya want to chat sometime,ask Sheila for my e dress… maybe we can put together some thoughts.im back at work on a road crew in NoDak, so social distance isnt a issue in my work…
and maybe we could work on something that would make a diffrence..best wishes..
V.ernon,
“I have my suggestions, but they all involve doing things the right-wing lunatics would hate, thus exacerbating the conditions for war.”
Maybe there are other suggestions out there that don’t involve the right-wing lunatics.
You also stated: “Who owns and operates the Republican party? Wall St. Banks. Corporations.”
Right. And who owns the Wall St.Banks. Corporations? THE DEVIANT ELITE aka THE RACIST OLIGARCHY.
If you can hit that target with a “BULL’S-EYE” then the whole rotten system that they control will be vulnerable to a never-ending DOWNWARD CASCADE.
There doesn’t have to be a war.
Sun Tzu said: “Therefore, one who is skilled in warfare principles subdues the enemy without doing battle, takes the enemy’s walled city without attacking, and overthrows the enemy quickly, without protracted warfare”
“The Art of War–Spirituality for Conflict” by Thomas Huynh (Skylight Paths Publishing, Woodstock, Vermont, 2008) p. 35
This was the subject of my presentation at the Ist International Sun Tzu Conference held at Vanderbilt University in 2015.
I have been sour on Monsanto for a while now. We were planning a vacation to Italy and a local wine dealer suggested we make a trip to the Monsanto Winery while we were in Italy.
They have no relation to Monsanto Corporation other than the name. They are a fairly large (1000 acres) winery near the town of Monsanto Italy, and have been making wines under the Monsanto name since the mid-1500’s.
When I asked if there was any relationship between them and Monsanto Corporation, I got an angry tale about how Monsanto Corporation had sued the winery some years back over the “infringement” on the name. The winery spent years in court, nearly went bankrupt over legal fees, but eventually won.
At that point I knew that The Monsanto Corporation was run by evil unscrupulous bastards.
Oh… and by the way, if you ever get to try a Monsanto Chianti Reserve, they are very good wines.
the lawyers at monsanto are not of any spieces,there foriegn alliens with no morals. money is the game,and their needs are first.. like wall street,and soon to be life here after this bailout..
farming today is one road, you buy a tractor,yellow,blue,green,red..you only plant whats handed to you, you follow a strict guideline on every aspect, the practice today is only one road, since a few corps have bought up almost every seed company,every fertilizer brand,every spray to whatever, and even the fuel. its either follow the same road, or fail. locked in with few other alts. like being trapped in a tube, but that is what corp America wants, you can not leave,you can not survive,you can may not change..the real FIRM..
and ya thought it was about law and Grisham… farming is the very foundation now that is required,or soon to be required practices,,by wall streets plan..
Let’s say democrats hit a home run in the 2020 election and then control both houses of Congress and the White House. Let’s say democrats then pass an army of bills designed to regulate business behavior.
What do democrats propose then doing to prevent mass exodus of major industries and their jobs to foreign lands of bribes, corporate permissiveness and absence of regulation?
I have seen no serious discussion within the ranks of doers and shakers about that problem. I’ve seen no recommendations, no proposals, and not even a memorandum defining the problem.
Idea # 11,431
Create a FEDERAL BUREAU OF CORPORATE COMPLIANCE. It would be headed by a cabinet-rank equivalent to the Attorney General, have all the investigative powers of the FBI, be superior to all other federal offices that involve commerce, such as the SEC, and it would be as independent as the CBO.
It’s mission would be to scare capitalism straight. Investigate. Prosecute. Inform Congress. Recommend legislation to plug loopholes in current laws. And when necessary, hang CEOs from lampposts.
I did not see any mention so far among contributors today in re what I think is the real problem in this world of Monsanto, i.e., no enforcement of anti-trust laws. Contracts between Monsanto and farmers which require, among other (restraint in trade) provisions, that such farmers buy and use only Monsanto seeds (contracts the courts are enforcing to bankrupt farmers who may think Monsanto needs competition), lead to monopoly, and if current Sherman language doesn’t cover such travesties per Supreme Court opinion, then let’s amend the language to cover such clearly monopolistic practices by Monsanto and other such corporations who are enjoying yet other monopolistic practices a perhaps paid Congress is ignoring.
Monsanto needs more (if less toxic) competition and (along with corporations in general) less legalized rights to pursue monopolistic practices in either apocryphal or plain view. How to make such practices illegal and reverse court decisions approving such pursuits? Amend Sherman.
Make more money now regardless of the impact on all others ever, or, in other words, both the one rule of corporatism and the law of the jungle, grows corporate winners as effectively as Monsanto seeds and Roundup grow monolithic corn. The real result of corporatism is to reduce the world to a few international corporations who run the world in order to eliminate regulation and competition. Global corporations vs local governments and cultures designed and built by adverting and a financial world built on debt in order to tame the masses. Slavery without the guilt, the new colonialism.
One fly in that ointment though is that it requires an ever growing population and it’s success at doing that is it’s undoing as well. The resources of the world are not adequate to sustain the population that we have much less more growth.
Now what?
Oh my god, I had no idea that Monsanto was a Trump invention!
There are many smart people who’ve been telling (warning) us about the agribusiness in this country and around the globe. My doctor just shakes her head during the picking season in Indiana coinciding with serious breathing illnesses coming to her office.
Imagine if our ‘for-profit’ healthcare went to a more preventative model where the government, as a single-payer, wanted to reduce healthcare costs instead of spending mass quantities of dollars on expensive cancer treatments.
Can you imagine all the changes brought about by converting one singular institutional model?
How many of our so-called state and federal regulators would actually be granted authority and teeth to enforce any industrial violators who make us sick?
THE primary focus of a single-payer system would be preventing avoidable major illnesses; agribusinesses would crumble. The monopolies would be broken up, externality costs like fighting pandemics and cleaning up pollution would be borne by the actual polluters instead of absorbed by the taxpayers who are being poisoned.
By the way, traceable campaign contributions to political parties are around 60-40% with the GOP leading the race.
This is far from Democratic or Republican issue. These companies are global monopolies who literally have the impunity to do whatever they want to whomever they want and they do not have a moral compass; it’s 100% driven by profits. Deaths and lawsuits are simply a cost of doing business.
Yasha Levine wrote a story in Grayzone about an Evolutionary Biologist Rob Wallace. I tracked a couple of the links and brought this solution for the unsustainable global agribusiness:
“Agribusiness as a mode of social reproduction must be ended for good if only as a matter of public health. Highly capitalized production of food depends on practices that endanger the entirety of humanity, in this case helping unleash a new deadly pandemic. We should demand food systems be socialized in such a way that pathogens this dangerous are kept from emerging in the first place. That will require reintegrating food production into the needs of rural communities first. That will require agroecological practices that protect the environment and farmers as they grow our food. Big picture, we must heal the metabolic rifts separating our ecologies from our economies. In short, we have a planet to win.”
(https://thegrayzone.com/2020/03/30/china-origin-coronavirus-political-global-usa/)
If you notice, there is a common theme in all that ails society: we have an economic system that sacrifices lives and the planet which sustains us. It’s insanity and neither of the capitalist owned political parties has the will to make the changes required. And our capitalist owned media sure isn’t going to make a case against itself.
For those good at projecting capitalism’s trajectory…
Todd,
We’ve once again defined the downside of unregulated capitalism.
Marv,
I’m not smart enough nor knowledgable enough to make the right suggestions to avoid the coming conflict. Marshall Law, I think, has to be invoked by the President. Does anyone think this president is going to do that if his people openly become violent? Look how much mayhem just one donor caused in Michigan. That donor, of course, was Betsy DeVos’s family. What a lovely bunch of coconuts we have here….
Jack,
If we’re all being monitored, why aren’t any of us getting the 3:00 A.M. knock on the door? Maybe the jails aren’t big enough to hold all of us speaking freely on blogs like this.
Vernon,
“Marv, I’m not smart enough nor knowledgable enough to make the right suggestions to avoid the coming conflict.”
It’s not all about being smart enough nor knowledgable enough. It also helps to have been an eyewitness from the beginning, much like with the treatment of any Level 4 virus, where you have to be aware of “ground zero” or you might end up dead.
See “They Thought They Were Free” by Milton Mayer.
We do not need a violent revolution. A single simple Act of Congress will do. An Act that would create an effective public campaign funding system. This Act would have Congress put up a Public Prize every Fiscal Quarter and award only Political Parties (willing along with all their candidates to use no other money to compete for any elective public) one share of the Prize per member. Each Party would allot its Prize money among its candidates’ campaigns and its various committees and other entities as its elected officials see fit. This is the fairest and most effective way to drive Big Money out of America’s politics. We must elect its advocates and reject its opponents.
For those who didn’t know, Smithfield is now owned by the Chinese and controls about 25% of the pork market right here in the grand ole USA…meanwhile, the winning strategy for the GOP is to blame China for the virus which is crippling our economy. What will his majesty do?
Also, look closely at the employee makeup at Smithfield…
From the NYT:
“By Thursday, the tests had revealed that the pork plant was the nation’s single largest “hot spot,” with about 16 percent of the 3,700 employees testing positive for the virus. The hospitalization rate among the workers has been relatively low because they tend to be younger, said Dr. David Basel, a vice president at the Avera Medical Group in Sioux Falls, who has been involved in the testing of the Smithfield employees.
Dr. Basel praised Smithfield for encouraging its employees, many of whom are refugees and immigrants from Latin America and Asia and speak 80 different dialects, to get tested. Doctors made instructional videos in Nepalese and Spanish, and tracked down and tested workers who had been in close contact with infected employees.”
Dr. Basel is a communist ass-kisser! Lol
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/18/business/coronavirus-meat-slaughterhouses.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20200419&instance_id=17774&nl=morning-briefing®i_id=61090935&segment_id=25500&te=1&user_id=6672cefac2740c2732eb324be37dd31e
Tom,
That suggestion about publicly funded elections has been on this blog for some time. The thing is, this Congress, especially the Republicans still in it, will NEVER go for this idea. Their donors won’t allow it….and there you have the rub.
We have several problems that could solved by enforcement.
Gerald’s suggestion of enforcing anti-trust laws is good, but I don’t see several chemical/seed companies acting any better than a single Monsanto.
Other problems could be solved by legislation.
Our first problem is our worship of “intellectual property”. Henry Ford may have challenged George Seldon’s worthless patent on the “idea” of an automobile, but we now have returned to a time when we hand out patents like candy and measure the number of patents as a sign of “progress” – As Seldon and Orville Wright proved, patents impede progress.
I would suggest that “intellectual property” only protect profit taking from infringements involving competing products and that it not protect safety investigations, election machine software fraud, or other instances of anti-citizen activity. All confidentiality contracts should be limited competing products and not protect loss of profits from exposing wrong doing. In fact, it should be a crime for any employee to be complicit in hiding these facts.
Liability for hiding wrong doing should be 50 to 500 times the corporate gross income and criminal penalties should be imposed on top management. Also, each and every human life shouldn’t be measured by the income they might have produced, but set at $50 billion – adjusted for inflation each year (I would accept a higher figure).
Of course, all of this would be struck down by the Supremes.
Still some progress could be made.
Larry Kaiser – I like your Idea # 11,431 – that would have involve an increase in the belief that a strong federal government is a good thing – the “era of Bill Clinton’s era of big government being over” should be over
Len, I disagree. If my idealized amendments to Sherman were the law of the land, seed and chemical companies would live in a competitive world and we would see a very big difference in consumer pricing due to absence of price fixing, restraint of trade, and other monopolistic practices. I would also expect to see many new such companies in the business what with a level playing field legislatively established and (I hope) enforced.
While everyone is fighting this obvious collusion between special interest groups and powerful politicians and corporations. Those people have profited by not only destroying the planet. There are people’s lives at stake ! Those like me fooled about the safety of Roundup. I was led to believe it was the safest and most harmless chemical for eradicating weeds. I landscaped my entire life using Roundup regularly. Then I was hit with an inoperable grapefruit mass, a golf ball mass and my lymph nodes in my groln removed. Stage four non-hodgkin’s lymphoma !
My life has changed and been permanently destroyed. I’ve lost everything and wait for the corporations to hide behind lawyers. All why I suffer everyday hoping not to die before a settlement is reached. The government and these companies know what they did ! They’d rather see us die before they settle. They’d bankrupt us to protect themselves and they’re shareholders. It’s about time our government stops defending these people. They may as well put a gun to our heads and get rid of us. We’re just collateral damage for the wealthy politicians and corporations whose only interest is the bottom line.
We’ve lost touch with justice as it was originally designed. Today It’s who has the most money to fight wins. It’s time our government steps up an protects innocent citizens over special interest groups and lobbyists. How many innocent people have to die or be harmed before companies are held accountable ? How do these CEO’s justify the billions of dollars profit over human rights ?
Marv,
I would have to agree with you! There doesn’t necessarily have to be blood, but something would have to be done before martial law is declared! Hit them in the pocket books! Quit shopping at specific establishments or buying certain goods! The amount of people who don’t agree with the agenda of what’s going on now are much higher than those that do.
In modern times, Martin Luther King was a shining example of civil disobedience, they brought the bus companies to their knees, that’s a winning blueprint right there.
King Cyrus of Persia wanted to overthrow the city-state of Babylon, she was an extremely powerful entity back in the day. King Cyrus knew that he could not take Babylon on in a frontal attack, they were just too powerful! So what did he do? He diverted the river and Cyrus and his Persian army walked down the dry River bed through the gates that were left unlocked! The moral of it is, they felt safe and secure and did not stay vigilant. they were conquered without a shot being fired so to speak.
In actuality, this very event was prophesied by Isaiah 200 years before the fact. And it happened just as he prophesied! And, in his prophecy he even mentioned the King of Persia by name (Cyrus) and how would happen, by walking up the dry River bed and going through the unlocked Gates!
Martin Luther King was a true student of scripture, he not only was a student of the Christian Greek scriptures, but he was a very adept student concerning the Hebrew scriptures! He knew that he could accomplish what he wanted without resorting to terrorist activities, and in the face of insurmountable odds, he succeeded and those who were in The majority at that time were the ones who resorted to the terrorism! That in itself changed a lot of minds and hearts across the country.
It can be accomplished that way, yes, without resorting to violence, and I mean violence on a grand scale, not self protection and self-defense.
The blueprint is there, and it was a successful blueprint, so why try to change it! Use your wallet, that can bring the elite to their knees quicker than anything else!
john,
“The moral of it is, they felt safe and secure and did not stay vigilant. they were conquered without a shot being fired so to speak.”
Right on point again. We haven’t been vigilant and failed to REGENERATE new pro-democracy NGO’s when it was evident that the SPLC, ADL, Political Research Associates, et al were not up to the task. Consequently, we left ourselves wide-open for a DECEPTIVE frontal attack, very reminiscent of the one at the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge during W.W. II.
Can we re-organize and neutralize the attack without creating a Civil War? Maybe so, but at this junction, it will take a miracle for sure.
With any miracle in mind, I would strongly suggest reading “The Regenerative Business: Redesign
Work, Cultivating Human Potential, Achieve Extraordinary Outcomes” by Carol Sanford (Nicholas Brealey Publishing, Boston, MA, 2017). The wisdom inside also applies to political NGOs as well.
At Amazon, the Kindle edition is a steal at $3.99
BUSINESS DISTANCING AS A WEAPON
One thing this Covid-19 101 course is teaching us–who pay attention–is how POSSIBLE it is to make the largest corporations CRY UNCLE, even corporations homed in other countries.
…Most everyone stop buying a targeted product or service for a few days (even the rumor of such a thing is a force that keeps CEOs awake at night–their billion-dollar overhead continues even if the income dwindles for a day or a week)
…Most everyone call in sick to work for a few days.
…Most everyone act together in targeted concert.
It takes leadership of MLK or Bobby Kennedy quality to set the target and motivate the masses.
It takes communication for leadership to reach the masses, and what better time in history to act–when communication of the most personal and the most universal kind (even encrypted) is at our fingertips?
The most encouraging thing about it is it works–we’re seeing it work–even if many individuals fail to cooperate.
Folks, Capitalism has come into our house, pounded on our kitchen table with its bloody shoe, and announced that it is going to bury us, and it, Capitalism and the capitalists, not our children, are our beneficiaries. If that is not a declaration of war, then there is no such thing as war.
You’re either on the side of your neighbor, or you’re on the side of the likes of Monsanto.
OK Larry!
That’s the shiznit right there!
Marv & Larry,
2 heads are better than one, you are @ polar ends at times & that makes you strong, communicate more!
john,
I’m not against a Shaka Zulu like double envelopment, if that is our only answer to the TAKEOVER.
A combination of the strategies of MLK and Shaka Zulu would make for a formative foe against our present “Monster from the Black Lagoon.”
Gerald – Perhaps I am more cynical, but I think your approach IS worth a shot. I do suspect that the amendments you mention would be required, but perhaps with those, if they are strong enough, competition could ensue and the ideal of a competitive marketplace (or something close) would solve that problem.
John
I agree, Stop buying their products. Hit them in their pocket books. I have been doing that for a number of years already.
I grew up around family farms. My maternal grandfather was a farmer who understood that if you don’t take care of the land, the land can’t take care of you. I miss those family farms. Monsanto is a perfect example of what happens when we deregulate corporate giants. And yes, what did happen to antitrust laws? It’s obvious to me that Monsanto has no reverence for life.
I am now gluten sensitive. I often wonder if what Monsanto has done to our seeds has contributed to this.
I wish we had a plethora of family farms so I could buy more local produce and eat seasonally which would help cool the earth.