Monsanto

Maybe it's the e-company I keep, a bunch of bleeding heart lefties with progressive politics, or this current climate of discontent running hot with the Occupy movement, but it seems like Facebook is inundated these days with cyber fist pounding and moral outrage over sins committed by the corrupt corporate oligarchy.  Even more than usual.  And the FB is always a hotbed of reactionary knee-jerking activity.  Don't misunderstand.  I am no fan of big business; the money-grubbing, -thieving bastards who latch on like succubi and syphon off my money can suck my balls.  (As if I needed to be reminded of the insurance racket, my basement walls are leaking.  Forget that I pay a hefty premium.  Doesn't matter.  Because A.) insurance doesn't cover it, and B.) even if they did, my premiums would go up, thus negating any savings.  What the fuck do I have insurance for if it doesn't cover shit like this?  Is there a bigger racket than the cocksucking insurance industry?  Only health care and all the others, brother.)

Still, it's the outrage that stands out to me, the shock of it all.  As if this is somehow news that people (and corporations are run by people) wouldn't do damn near anything to make an extra buck.  Sure, that's a simplistic approach, Business for Dummies, a complicated issue cut into bite-size Chicken-Soup-for-the-Soul-like pieces for mass consumption.  I am not a business major.  My wife is a business major. But not the bad kind.  She's going to Mills, which promotes progressive, green, and sustainable business practices.  Don't understand what any of those things mean, even though she's tried to explain them to me many times.  I am the epitome of one-track.

Each morning, after I change and feed the kid, I plug in, check correspondence and start the self-promoting wheels, plugging my work on the various social networks. There is always some new egregious offense that has my e-brothers and -sisters up in arms.  Lately, it's been all about Monsanto.

Until two months ago, when I learned how to play Son Volt's "Methamphetamine," I had never heard of Monsanto.  In fact, when I was learning the lyrics, I mistakenly took the line "It's either working these gauges for Monsanto / or a bar-back job for the casino" to mean the narrator was working for some guy named Monsanto. Again.  One track.  But in my defense, how much shit can we really fit in our heads?  I mean, if I consciously acknowledged Monsanto, I might have to lose the answer to who were the three Yankees who came to bat when they resumed the "pine tar game" in 1983*.  And if I did that, I might lose should they ever ask the question at Sports Trivia night at the local pub.  Even though I don't drink.  Or go to pubs.

(* Mattingly, Smalley, Gamble.  Knowing this was a lot more impressive before Google.  I retained that info for 30 fucking years.  Now all you need is a goddamn search engine.)

I am very selective in my memory, and I push out the things that can't help me in my daily life.  Monsanto, the genetically altered food corporation and its nefarious plans to poison the American public for profit?  Not as important as a good Son Volt tune.

Obviously that's not true.  I mean, this is a big deal.  I think.  I only get what everyone's so pissed about for less than two months, but it seems pretty fucked.

So in case you are like me and live under a self-imposed rock, here is the latest cause de FB:


Whole Foods Market Caves to Monsanto

Submitted by Anne Landman on January 28, 2011 - 3:09pm

• agriculture
 
• food safety
 
• environment

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After 12 years of battling to stop Monsanto's genetically-engineered (GE) crops from contaminating the nation's organic farmland, the biggest retailers of "natural" and "organic" foods in the U.S., including Whole Foods Market (WFM), Organic Valley and Stonyfield Farm, have agreed to stop opposing mass commercialization of GE crops, like Monsanto's controversial Roundup Ready alfalfa. In exchange for dropping their opposition, WFM has asked for "compensation" to be paid to organic farmers for "any losses related to the contamination of his crop." Under current laws, Genetically-Modified Organisms (GMOs) are not subject to any pre-market safety testing or labeling. WFM is abandoning its fight with biotech companies in part because two thirds of the products they sell are not certified organic anyway, but are really conventional, chemical-intensive and foods that may contain GMOs and that they market as "natural" despite this. Most consumers don't know the difference between "natural" and "certified organic" products. "Natural" products can come from crops and animals fed nutrients containing GMOs. "Certified Organic" products are GMO-free. WFM and their main distributor, United Natural Foods, maximize profits by selling products labeled "natural" at premium organic prices.  (A typographical error in the second sentence of this story was subsequently corrected.  We regret this minor error.)

http://www.prwatch.org/spin/2011/01/9903/whole-foods-market-caves-monsanto

My perspective might be skewed, since I live in Berkeley (or close enough), a city divided in two: those who take yoga, and those who teach it, everyone draped in rainbow flags and Birkenstocks, chomping on kale chips and pot butter; my mother-in-law weeps over my refusal to spend $300 a week on organic groceries.  I don't buy into the organic thing, for the most part.  I don't trust the government.  I don't trust the FDA.  And I don't trust his mythical coalition of Dudley Do Right Organic Farmers who will sacrifice profit for the greater good.  Except when it comes to buying milk for my boy.  The hormones they pump in that shit will give you man boobs.

Most of this recent batch of Monsanto news comes via left-leaning outlets like PR Watch, the Progressive Dieter, Che Guevara's Guavas and Revolution.  OK.  I made that last one up.  But you do have to temper the message.  No different than FOX News reporting on, well, anything.

I am not making light of frankenfoods.  OK.  I am making light of frankenfoods a little bit.  But not because the thought of Dr. Evil pissing on the crops with which I feed my family isn't nauseating.  It's because it reminds me of just how helpless I am.  You can either find a way to laugh or you storm the bastille.

I abused my body for years.  I pumped God-knows-what directly into my bloodstream with reckless abandon, with not the slightest concern for whether I lived, died, or otherwise.  I remember a hot shot I took one morning, and walking out of my apartment and collapsing on the sidewalk, paralyzed, as whatever poison I had just willingly injected into my body caused my temple veins to throb to the point of near aneurism.  And I lay there until the moment passed.  Then I was up and on my way to find my next fix.  Didn't even momentarily entertain the notion of taking a break.  

When I got clean, I tried to make it up to my body.  It took a while, but slowly I began eating more vegetables, exercising more, drinking less soda.  I still willingly sacrifice some degrees of health for vanity's sake, like using non-stick sprays over cooking in olive oil, because I'd rather look good and be dead than be overweight (and alive).  It's my value system.  Don't judge.  

Despite my inherent skepticism re: most organics, I still buy a lot of them.  I won't buy Supermarket meat.  Because it tastes like shit.  I buy from a butcher, and generally grass-fed, hormone free, free range, organic meats.  Which ain't cheap. You are what you eat, and beef should be red, not pale packaged pink.  I want to taste the fresh blood from my cow.

I used to buy meat from Whole Foods.  But I don't anymore.  I sort of hate Whole Foods for its hipster-attracting qualities, and severe overpricing.  I've found other "natural" markets sell the same shit, for far less; all you miss out on is the Whole Foods experience.  Not such a loss.

This afternoon, I saw most of my friends were posting requests to contact the president and complain about FDA forcing Whole Foods to accept Monsanto's evil goods.  Not quite sure that is what is happening, from the limited reading I've done. But I signed the petition anyway.  Monsanto seems like it's run by a bunch of dicks, and I'm always for sticking it to the man.

Won't make a difference.  Then again, that's what I thought a few weeks ago when the cause of the day was stopping PIPA or SOPA or whatever the fuck that anti-piracy crap was called that had Wikipedia going black for 24 hours (and thus thwarting my "research").  I was, like, Yeah, that's gonna work.  I thought, What a waste of time.  If congress and its big business buddies want this bill passed, they are not going to give a shit about a few cybernerds shaking their skinny British guitar player arms at the screen.  Only they did.  So many people got pissed, such a consolidated effort and opposition staged, that SOPA/PIPA went quietly into the good night.  Leaving Duff McKagen to weep silently...

Maybe I've been selling grassroots short and the art of muckracking isn't dead after all.

I cut myself off from caring about outcomes because there's less room to get hurt that way.  Nothing revolutionary.  People do it all the time.  I think it's one of the governing precepts of Buddhism.  And as a white American who intermittently considers himself Native American when he's suffering a lack of cultural identity, obviously I've dabbled in the religion.  I like dabbling.  Beats full on submersion. Less risk, even less residue.  All sorrow comes from attachment, life is suffering. Sounds like my kind of religion.  But it was missing something.  The guilt.  Which is why I learned to incorporate a little of the Catholicism of my youth to make myself truly miserable.

I don't know what these bastard fucks are doing at Monsanto.  Or where Monsanto is even located.  But I don't want my corn genetically modified.  (Unless it passes on significant savings, allowing me more money to consume shit I don't really need, like a talking monkey butler/robot.)  Mostly I don't like to be bullied.  Nobody does. But this resistance to being pushed around seems to strike a distinctly American chord.  There's a lot about this country that will bug me (Puritan views of sex, etc.), but I always admired the spunk, that scruffy-faced kid part that doesn't take kindly to being told what to do.  It's in those moments where the little guy stands up, takes his hits, and keeps moving forward that I feel part of a something greater than me (it also makes me really want to re-watch Rocky).

The nameless, faceless money-making machines will keep on pushing.  That ain't ever gonna change.  But it's good to know, even if the opponent is a little murky, they can only push so far before we start pushing back.

Pavement

Read this in the SF Chronicle last week.

PG&E diverted safety money for profit, bonuses Eric Nalder, Chronicle Staff Writer Friday, January 13, 2012 (page 1 of 2) SINGLE PAGE Print E-mail Share Comments (408) Font | Size:  591 Paul Chinn / The Chronicle Emergency crews comb through the rubble of burned homes next to a crater that was caused by the explosion of a 30-inch natural gas pipeline in San Bruno's Crestmoor neighborhood Sept. 10, 2010, the day after the blast.  View Larger Image MORE BAY AREA NEWS Richmond victim says sniper shot him 01.16.12 Walter Johnson dies - headed S.F. Labor Council 01.14.12 Rain on the way at last, but first comes the cold 01.16.12 Pacific Gas and Electric Co. diverted more than $100 million in gas safety and operations money collected from customers over a 15-year period and spent it for other purposes, including profit for stockholders and bonuses for executives, according to a pair of state-ordered reports released Thursday. An independent audit and a staff report issued by the California Public Utilities Commission depicted a poorly led company well-heeled in its gas operations and more concerned with profit than safety. The documents link a deficient PG&E safety culture - with its "focus on financial performance" - to the pipeline explosion in San Bruno on Sept. 9, 2010, that killed eight people and destroyed 38 homes. The "low priority" the company gave to pipeline safety during the three years leading up to the San Bruno blast was "well outside industry practice - even during times of corporate austerity programs," said the audit by Overland Consulting of Leawood, Kan.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/12/BAUS1MOSUC.DTL#ixzz1jfYEhVsX

Big fucking shock there.  Company choosing profit over moral responsibility to the public it serves?  Front fucking page news.  You can read the whole thing by following that link.  I always love pieces like this, especially when it gets to the hand wringing parts, pious politicos incredulous, citing such actions as "inconceivable."

Apparently folks didn't see that one coming.  How could monies meant to shore up safety measures be allocated as anything but?  Don't worry that no one's checking up to make sure the cash is being used properly, because there's a magic, make-believe realm where core values supersede bottom line.  This is the same dipshit rationale that gets jackwagons to fall for the organic scam (who's regulating what's "organic"?  The government?  A coalition of honest, humble farmers who don't care about making money and only want to serve the greater good by providing wholesome, pesticide-free foods, even if it spells an economic loss for them personally?).  It's moments like this where I really wish there were more Man with Two Brains clips on You Tube.  There's not.  So I'll have to trust you've seen it for the Merv Griffin analogy I'm about to drop to make any sense.  It's like after Dr. Hfuhruhurr (Steve Martin) discovers that the Elevator Killer is actually Merv Griffin. Pressed for time (as he has to transplant Ann Uumellmahaye's brain into Kathleen Turner's hot body), Hfuhruhurr tells Merv Griffin he doesn't have time to take him to the police, and so he makes him promise he'll turn himself in.  "You promise to turn yourself in?"  "I promise!"  You swear you're going to use this money for safety measures and not line the pockets of shareholders and executives?  I promise!

I made a pledge on here long ago that I wouldn't get political.  And I have no intention of violating that this morning.  Mostly because I don't give a shit.  But outrage isn't a partisan issue.  The fact is a company entrusted with a shit-ton of public funds to shore up operations in order to prevent another tragedy like the San Bruno pipeline explosion (http://tinyurl.com/23dkum4) said Fuck you; and if you think there are going to be any serious repercussions, I've got some organic rutabaga juice I'd like to sell you for $15 a bottle.  This post isn't about condemning PG&E.  Of course that's what they are going to do.  "Should" and "will" are separate entities, mutually exclusive; they are a goddamn dichotomy.  The difference is, this sort of thing used to incense me, back when I was, like, 25 and thought real change could be effected.  Now I turn to the sports page.

Of course I am not calling everyone who demands better an idiot.  God bless that someone still gives a shit.  I simply don't have time for losing battles.  I scarcely have time for the break-even ones (which are most of the battles I fight).  What gets me, however, is the question/comment that almost always follows news like the PG&E thievery, a variation of, "I just don't understand how anyone could possibly do such a..."  How could they?  Because fucking money is involved, that's how.

You may recall, at least if you live the Bay Area, that another fallout from the San Bruno explosion was the number of people attempting to cash in on the catastrophe http://tinyurl.com/83u2xxp by pretending to be victims.  People might be upset about this latest PG&E news, but I have yet to read a report calling any execs "vermin."  When news broke of opportunists assuming identities and making up addresses to get free money following the pipeline blowing (an event precipitated by PG&E's wanton disregard for safety measures), the public was far more incensed over that than they were over any white collar crimes.  I am not endorsing nor excusing crooks who tried to take advantage of a dire situation; it's incorrigible.  But I understand it, and have more empathy for them than the suits at PG&E who only care because they got caught.  It's not like the choice was this or cashing in the 401K.  I'm guessing the folks who tried to receive reparations from the state did so because it was the path of least resistance, which is the path we are going to take 99 out of 100 times.

Wherever money is concerned, I don't think I've ever had to ask "How could they?" When you assign paramount importance to a piece of paper, folks will do a lot of fucked-up shit.

Ain't that right, guy who sang "Jump Around"?

Again, not saying it's OK.  But I get it.  And I will always sympathize more with the man on the street, however crooked, criminal, or maligned, than I will the man in the penthouse calling the shots.  It's the old punk in me.  (Although, I am forced to admit, I was never close to a punk.  Always been too concerned with appearance to dress like that.)

Probably wouldn't be bringing any of this up, had it not been for my drive home yesterday.  Saw the PG&E thing last week, and I thought about writing about it then, since it's so fucked up, but that thought lasted about seven seconds until the commercial ended and ESPN's First Take came back on, and Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless went back to debating the finer points of Tebow.  Why bother?  It's not like someone at PG&E is going to read this blog (in between charging me $316 for fucking gas and electric) and go, "Oh, no, we upset that creepy angry dude with the crappy looking blog [which I swear I am fixing].  Better knock it off."  But driving home from the shrink, I was listening to sports talk, basking in the miraculous 49er win, due to the brilliant QB play Alex Smith, a man I've always supported*, and they had one of those News of the Weird items, about a woman caught trying to exchange sexual favors for Chicken McNuggets at McDonalds.

L.A. NOW

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA -- THIS JUST IN

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Burbank, Calif. –  A Los Angeles woman was arrested last week for offering sexual favors in exchange for chicken McNuggets, according to Burbank police.

Khadijah Baseer of Los Angeles allegedly opened customers’ car doors while they were in the drive-thru of a Burbank McDonald's. 

A witness reported Baseer's activity to police and she was arrested on suspicion of prostitution. 

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/01/16/police-say-woman-offered-sexual-favors-for-chicken-mcnuggets/?test=latestnews#ixzz1jgYYoOc8

I know there is a joke in there.  And anyone reporting on this story is going to make it.  But not me.  Ain't nothing remotely funny about it.  OK.  That's not entirely true. Obviously a woman offering to blow strangers for Chicken McNuggets is ripe for fodder.  Which is why they were taking cheap shots on the radio.  And from a detached POV, driving in one's car, hearing about the exchange of sex for food, especially chicken by-products of assholes and elbows, it is an easy target for a quick laugh.  Until you stop to think about about low and awful it really is.  That a fellow human being's life is worth so little that she is willing to stick a stranger's dick in her mouth for food.  Then it ain't so funny.

Yeah, I'm a bleeding heart.  But I can also be a cold sonofabitch at times, and as I get older, I get less weepy for the bums pleading for change.  Mostly, because like so many unpleasantries in life, I've learned to tune them out.  Once in a while, I drop a buck in the can, donate a bill to a charity, and so feel less like a douche bag for the privilege and second chances I've been afforded.  But I was also outside many cold, rainy nights, hungry and broke, and whether I deserved to be there because of my immaturity, selfishness, or drug use, we can save that debate for another time.  I was still hurting.  The difference in my case, and why I can't cry poverty and poor me, is that I was free, at any time, to pick up the phone and say, Mom, I want to come home.  Any.  Time.  Which may have something to do with why I was never offering to blow strangers for a Big Mac.

Listen, I don't know this woman's story.  Maybe she really likes Chicken McNuggets, loves sucking dick, and figures she has hit upon the perfect career choice.  Yet, I am guessing, willing to go out on a limb here and venture that the woman was just really hungry and didn't have enough money to eat.  And I don't care if that's because she spent it all on drugs.  And I don't care if the state should foot the bill for her get her help.  I am not asking whether it's about rehabilitation or punishment or the hands of an angry god.  I'm not touching any of that. All I am saying is that, regardless of reason or remedy, it's sad.  Beyond sad.  It's fucking soul-crushing depressing.  And I'd say, "But for the grace of God," except that that expression falls to take into consideration one small, important detail: what about that poor fuck over there?  Where is his or her grace?  That's not a condemnation on religion. I believe in God.  (You better believe I believe in God.)  It's more a commentary on (super)natural selection.  I don't know what I did right and what McNugget did wrong, but I'm pretty sure in neither case does it warrant the disparity of fates.