I wasn't expecting a free bag of toes
I love it when companies shove bald-faced lies in your face, like Fritos saying on it's Corn Chips packages, "Made with ALL NATURAL OIL." All natural oil? What is that. Is that like non-petroleum bi-product? Would the chips otherwise be made with plastic or something? We need to worry about oil now? Yes we do, in fact. Most corn in this country is GENETICALLY MODIFIED. So, Fritos, one of the biggest corn consumer-manufacturers, is genetically modified to begin with. The oil they use for their chips is CORN oil? So, what, they go out of their way to get non-GM corn oil when their chips are already GM? I think not. So, what the hell are they talking about?
Unless the oil is SUNFLOWER OIL, (or certified organic), the oil that companies use is most probably genetically modified. And if it isn't? Well, they are NOT ALLOWED, by the government, (which we pay for), to actually SAY they are NOT using genetically modified oil, or grain, or anything else. And I guess the reasoning for this is kind of like the reasoning behind taking Oprah to court for, "Insulting hamburgers". We wouldn't want to insult corn oil, would we, especially since we don't have the power of an Oprah to avoid a law suit?
And, we all know that: Since corporations are now PEOPLE, even though they never die and don't ULTIMATELY pay taxes, and can pour tonnes of campaign funds into political candidates, from foreign countries, without reporting it to anyone, it won't be long until hamburgers and corn oil are declared PEOPLE too. There could come a day when we would be accused of insulting humans if we should refuse to eat those new-fangled burgers being grown in Japan, out of human excrement.
Well, GM corn, like cellphones (at one time), INJURE YOU, but there's a message industry making you believe this is not so. A lot of dogs won't go near dog-food made from genetically modified corn. Hurray for dogs, which we will one day be eating. Cows which eat genetically modified corn have intestines and meat which turn dead and yellow, attacked by their own gut bacteria which is actually genetically transformed by the UNNATURAL grain.
The major problems I have with genetic modification are that it is, first, entirely random in the DNA, and second, it does not study unforseen consequences or secondary costs assumed by society and the environment. Studies are fudged, inadequate, inappropriate, or NOT EVEN REQUIRED. But, think about it, how have we even gotten to this point? Cows were never meant to eat GRAIN in the first place, making them 5 times less healthy, and 5 times less nutritious. WE shouldn't even be eating so much grain - grain is just a recent development of CIVILISATION, which constantly kills off the grain-intolerant via Pellagra, or the Gout, or allergies, or Diabetes, or malnutrition, or metabolic syndrome, or Celiac Disease, or Crohn's Disease, or candida, or possibly autism-type syndromes, or - ALCOHOLISM.
But no, we're not only going to pork-up livestock on expensive, government-subsidised corn, believing that constantly pumping them full of ANTIBIOTICS, will do no harm to anyone - we're going one step further and feeding them corn that has been haphazardly altered to be tolerant of the HERBICIDE, Round-Up. And we'll allow that corn pollen and seeds to blow into fields and infect other crops across the planet, so we can sue those farmers for patent-infringement, until we control the global supply of grain which, which can only be purchased each and every year, instead of replanted! Now, yes, that makes a lot of ecological sense, making sure a day will come when the entire supply or crops withers from some new disease.
But no, let's go even farther! Let's grind up other dead cows and feed THAT to cows! Because they now need the protein. Not that that could POSSIBLY provide a robust vector for prion, wasting-syndromes like MAD COW DISEASE, CJ Disease, deer etc. wasting diseases - and, who knows, maybe even alzheimers or CFS related illnesses! Because we corporations are PEOPLE and we know EXACTLY what we're doing: Through "empathy" (i.e., profit and profit alone), we are striving to provide a single product to millions of consumers, and damn all else. And, by the time we get blow-back, we mortals will all be dead in more-or-less comfortable coffins.
But no, here! We can even insert human genes into cows so the cows produce HUMAN MILK which our babies can DRINK! And THAT would be so much healthier than the crap cow's milk they are already being fed! And then, we'll subsidise the emrgence of a new, "Soilent GREEN Party," which will pass laws making it a crime to suckle infants at a human mother's breast, since, you know, that is full of mercury. Boo!! Not enough NATURAL omega oils in that corn-based human/cow milk? Simple! We'll just splice in a few giant salmons and once again the Invisible Hand will deliver us from all further fears. It drives me nuts, folks. They don't know what the hell they're doing, when only money talks. Making the world safe for BP.
ANYWAY - I was thinking of posting about how the hippie 1830's were the foundation of the Civil War, but you can goggle before I post that, things like: Whiskey Rebellion; Andrew Jackson gold central bank; trail of tears; democratic puritanism; Mexican-American war; abolitionists; South Carolina 1830', Transcendentalists. As if you will. The whole picture is just too big for my warped brain. The ironies - the politics of race, moralism, the present day. I can't wait for the day I can sit down "at my leisure, bro," and write these things out, for no one to read except maybe for some future mosquito is somehow descended from me through a million degrees of seperation. I found writing from my old spiral-bound journal, most of which was "lost", which I really want to transcribe, also too. But - I am just too drawn and pressed right now to write some awesome 4th of July post about the 1830's. Best to you all.