modern life vs. human nature

In the most absurd ruling I have ever heard of in the US, 5 Republican appointed chief justices ruled that corporations could spend without limit to sway voters in federal elections. The court essentially said that corporations have the same rights as individuals to free speech.

As someone who owns a corporation I know that corporations are like individuals without bodies or morals; sort of like zombies that anyone can control. If a corporation slanders someone you cannot put the corporation in jail. You can sue the corporation but bankruptcy is an easy out if that corporation doesn’t happen to have the funds to bankroll a lawsuit. Chances are that a corporation backing a particular candidate would have a lot of money. Plus, corporations were originally created to avoid personal responsibility(lawsuits) and personal taxation.  In the simplest of comparisons if a human came over to your house and pissed on your lawn you could

1)kick his ass

2)call the police and have him arrested

3)charge him with somekind of trespass and destruction of property and

4) tell everyone you know and have them ostracized in the community.

What if a Coca Cola truck dumped 100 gallons of Coke on your lawn..killing all of your grass what are you going to do? Call the police? Sure, but they wouldn’t know what to do and would most likely say call Coke. You would have to call Coke and talk to their customer service department. Then you would have to call a lawyer and pay a heap of money to sue Coke if your grass died. After dropping $5000 on a retainer for a lawyer, that lawyer would then tell you that it wasn’t worth your time…”go buy new grass”. How about them apples? Satisfying isn’t it. Now extrapolate that to every political view you have ever held and throw them all out the window onto your dead grass, shut your mouth and go to Walmart and buy new grass.

But seriously, I don’t even think I need to make an argument why this is such a terrible idea for a democracy. But here’s an example. If I owned an oil company and I wanted to make huge profits and destroy the environment without having to deal with things like laws, and pollution I would just find a candidate that agrees or is too stupid to understand anything..let’s say Sarah Palin. Not that she is stupid or doesn’t understand much but she just makes a good example here. So me, as a big oil guy wants less environmental restrictions, less education on the pollution caused by oil and less competition from alternative sources of energy. I can now have a discreet conversation with Sarah and let her know that my corporation will put together a multi-million dollar ad campaign that will promote her if “wink-wink nudge-nudge” she does what I want, therefore saving her campaign money to spend on other things. As a bonus, I would even throw in ads to say the other candidate is a “bad man, that hasn’t done anything for the country” but not in so many words that I could get sued…because I would pay for a good ad agency that could put depressing music and poor, starving, helpless americans in the advertising. Or..even better… let’s say I was an owner of health insurance company. Think about it. Getting a healthcare bill in America is already seemingly impossible but add a few billion dollars in corporate advertising blaring at people everyday and consider the healthcare debate over. No politician will ever be able to take on a big evil corporation again without fear of never ever being elected again.

So ultimately this means that elections will be won and lost by powerful corporations whose primary reason for being is profit. Does that sound like a good place to live? Does that sound like individual freedom? Hopefully this decision is overturned somewhere and somehow but it seems like just another step toward a sort of capitalist takeover of the largest democracy in the world.

Good bye America. It’s been nice knowing you.

This is going to start happening more often as the bigger companies try to add less toxic materials to their supply chains. There are always going to be cheaters on the supply side because there are always greedy, careless business owners. However, H&M admitted the mistakes and are trying to correct them. Am I letting them off the hook? Not really. But I’m not going to trash them today.  You can read the full story at treehugger.com.

It is interesting to note that third party certification agencies EcoCert and Control Union were fined. Why is this interesting? I’m not sure because I just realized I won’t remember these names come purchase time anyway..or will I?

Oh and I chose this picture because India is the largest producer of organic cotton.

Enjoy.

Before I begin I would just like to say that I don’t like eating. I would rather be doing something else; biking, swimming, playing sports or even working on a project. Maybe it’s because I don’t want to be fat. Maybe it’s because my Mom would force me to eat canned peas when I was young or maybe I’m missing something very important in my life..such as a cook.

However, when I do eat 75% of the time I want it to be healthy, nutritional food because I understand that good food means energy to do the things I like to do. Accordingly, I like to know what I’m eating  and if it’s crap I want to know.

So I recently watched a documentary about Monsanto. If you don’t know this company, it is a bio-tech company that now makes seeds; mainly corn and soya beans. Yes, they make genetically modified and patented seeds. Cool technology. In the past they have produced “agent orange”(think millions poisoned in Vietnam), bovine growth hormone(banned in Canada and Europe) and now genetically modified organisms(GMOs).  So although the first two items might be a little on the “holy crap, that’s some evil stuff” they seem to be working toward a nicer, gentler albeit genetically enhanced future.

Oh I forgot to mention that Monsanto has created some of the world’s most famous food chemicals including aspartame; a yummy, sweetener that causes cancer and is found in all gum and most carbonated beverages.  But I wrote about aspartame earlier so let’s move along to these franken-seeds. The patent part was the real kicker. It’s a savvy business strategy whereby Monsanto creates genetically modified seeds that are immune to it’s own weed killing pesticide so that the farmer can grow more crops with less labour. By spraying on the pesticide the farmers don’t have to hire weed pickers and therefore save money. The unfortunate part of the tale is that the pesticide contaminates everything but the genetically modified crops(or so they say). The really smart part is that Monsanto charges farmers a royalty on all crops that use GMO seeds. The crazy smart part is that when the GMO seeds mysteriously show up in farmers crops who don’t buy Monsanto’s gmo seeds they can can still charge the farmers a royalty; because Monsanto owns the patent on the seed and therefore the plant. Now , the insanely ingenius part is that through natural pollination the gmo seeds creep into other crops anyway so the farmers don’t really have a choice. So when the farmers use the Monsanto pesticide to kill the weeds it kills all the other non-gmo seed and plants as well because only the Monsanto seed is engineered  to withstand the pesticide. If that isn’t the best strategy for domination of the global food chain I don’t what is. Move over McDonald’s your methane spewing, rainforest wrecking, steroid induced cow burgers have just slid down the scale of “world’s biggest super evil, greedy pig corporation”.

So what does this mean for you and me? Well, for me it means no more soy or corn unless it is from a non-gmo crop and more so that organic and local vegetables are the way to go…even if I have to eliminate strawberries in the winter.

Here’s the link from youtube.

enjoy!