Archive for March, 2008

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The Creepiness of Monsanto and Agribusiness: Controlling The World’s Food—One Farm, One Seed At A Time

Sunday, March 30th, 2008

“What you are seeing is not just a consolidation of seed companies, it’s really a consolidation of the entire food chain…”
—R Fraley, Co-President of Monsanto’s Agricultural Sector, 1996

I confess, I feel food is not just vital for life, but by the mystery in which it sustains life, and is life, it is sacred. I also believe it would be much preferable if people who cared about food were growing our food, protecting our food, preparing our food and so on.

Unfortunately, caring about food and understanding the human-food relationship in any sustainable/socially responsible/beautiful way is not what comes out of the grinder of modern corporate philosophy.

To quote again legendary business guru Peter Drucker, speaking without irony or moral confusion, from the film The Corporation:

If you have a business executive who really wants to take on social responsibilities, get rid of him fast. He doesn’t have the right sense of priorities and will do a poor job running the business.

YE OLDE FEUDAL SYSTEM

Here’s another truly insidious way the process of control and takeover unfolds in the agribusiness world. This one involves Monsanto’s Roundup-Ready herbicide tolerant soybeans (Monsanto is a symbol of the war being waged by these corporate behemoths beholden to no one save profits).

This from an article by Tim Philpott called Dominant Traits: Monsanto’s latest court triumph cloaks massive market power, that is really worth reading.

An excerpt:

To understand how this product conquered the farm belt so rapidly, you have to understand how large-scale commodity farmers make decisions. Your neighbor tries a new product, and suddenly boasts weed-free fields and yields that trump yours.

He reveals that he bought newfangled, high-dollar seeds—and more than made his money back with the higher yield. So you do the same. Trouble is, everyone else does, too—and the higher yields nationwide lead to lower prices for soy, erasing any advantage of the new seeds.

Indeed, USDA figures show that soybean production surged after the introduction of herbicide-tolerant varieties in 1995—and prices dropped. Soy prices didn’t recover in any meaningful way until the great biofuel boom that started in 2006. All things being equal, technologies that increase yield end up lowering prices—erasing any net gain for farmers.

Thus in their rush to adapt new technologies, farmers aren’t working in their own interest, but rather in the interests of big corporate buyers like Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill—and, of course, in the interests of the companies that sell the new technologies, like Monsanto.

The full article is here, and again, really worth reading.

A friend of mine (with a passion for ‘games theory’ which shows that humans, surprise, surprise, will often do what they think is best for themselves, but it turns out it’s not!), quite by coincidence, sent me this message, for which I do not have references, but I thought it was informative:

This effect you mention here is also illustrated by the use of Posilac to boost cows’ milk production. Thankfully, it’s not permitted in Canada, but in the US most of the cows (or “production units” as Monsanto calls them) are boosted with hormones that increase milk production at the cost of a higher pus content in the milk and pain for the animals.

Watch the simplicity of the mechanism, again:

All cows produce more milk, prices fall, and there’s no benefit except to Monsanto, who sells the hormone. Precisely the same economic effect as with the soybeans, and the same social mechanism: the individually optimal strategy produces the worst collective result.

And for Monsanto’s diversification and contribution to the War on Drugs, take a look at this blog from a few days ago.

I know, I know, somebody’s got to do it.

Finally, in personal communication, legendary Indian journalist P Sainath summed up subsidies, Monsanto and the ‘free market’ this way:

Neither Monsanto nor any of the other majors would have any chance in a decent world that placed people above profits and communities above corporations.

The ‘free market’ does not exist. It means a situation where corporations are Free to Market, [to] impose, using various dirty tricks, their crap on the world. If it were not for US and EU subsidies for instance, world cotton prices would be double what they are, and farmers in Vidharbha and West Africa would come out of debt.

Food for thought. Support people who care about food, about the cycle of this journey, about sustainability, about smaller enterprise, and individuality, about fair play.

If this begins with phoning your mother to tell her you love her, do it. After that, check out the massive connections political candidates and leaders have with agribusiness, factory farms and other ugly, ugly, ugly processes. Between appointees for the FDA, the EPA, their direct links with big businesses, and contributions to leaders, there is a never-stop-spinning revolving door of conflict-of-interest connections.

Money can buy lots of things, like power, and Monsanto can kill beetles, but as the Beatles said, “money can’t buy you love.”

Love to you and yours—and may growing and eating food be remembered as the sacred cycle that it is,

Pete

Posted in Activism, Economics, Human Rights, Politics, Social Awareness, Spirituality, Vegetarian, War on Drugs, posted | 3 Comments »

SUN-ERGY AND ECO-NOMY: BELIEVING THE FUTURE HAS MEANING

Friday, March 28th, 2008

It is not for me to change you. The question is, how can I be of service to you without diminishing your degrees of freedom?
—R. Buckminster Fuller

Sort of the polar opposite objective of propaganda.

Admittedly, I’m not well-versed at all in nuclear energy or energy systems in general, but for all its actual and potential value today, controlling nuclear waste long term seems to be a serious and relevant concern.

Here’s a question—and, hey, we live in an intense world—what happens if a nuclear energy plant is bombed? Are plants impervious to military force—or, ironically, nuclear weapons? Just a question.

Here’s what appears to be a relatively concise list of standard nuclear power pros and cons.

Whatever will happen in the future already has, literally, billions of years of force built into it and behind it, so good luck changing whatever course we’re on!

Not only that, all of these big-issue debates undoubtedly (to me) lack the deepest, truest thinkers of long-term sustainability. As for those who truly ‘know’ by feeling, by realized knowledge, by love and by studying what this relationship between humanity (and the rest of the beings) and this ‘live’ earth really is, they are either meditating somewhwere in the Himalayas, they’ve been wiped out by conquerors, they’ve taken vows of silence, they know there is no point in saying anything because life will unfold as it will anyway, or these types of thinkers and visionaries don’t actually exist.

IN THE MEANTIME…

A friend of mine, and even peope like Gaia-hypothesis recreator (its thesis has been known and felt by indigenous peoples in varying degrees since time immemorial, or at least last Friday) James Lovelock, are convinced that nuclear energy is the answer—and maybe it is.

For me, though, that thought is based on the idea that it is simply an answer now, in understandably desperate times, with an insufficient hesitation for the potential dangers in the future.

ENERGY SAVERS

With this “it’s good in the immediate now” mentality, I was reminded of several recent and perhaps non-related historical events that were undertaken under a similar fervor of certainty:

In 1953, British and American Intelligence agencies helped overthrow the leadership of democratic Iran, replacing Dr Mohammad Mossadeq with a Monarchy—the Shah of Iran. Why? Mossadeq was attempting to nationalize Iranian oil.

The longterm effects of that political and economic decision (mostly for the citizens of that country) are complex and ugly. In fact, it is from this endeavour that the CIA coined the phrase “blowback”, referring to the potential and unforseeable fallout (nuclear-pun intended) that might result from this action.

Over fifty years on, you be the judge.

In Uganda in 1970, both Israel and Britain supported the brutal Idi Amin in his overthrow of democratically-elected Milton Obote, who was both no saint and trying to nationalise certain institutions. Nonetheless, for his seemingly pro-British business interests and pro-Israli (or anti-Arab, pro south Sudan) stance at the time, Idi Amin was brought to power.

The longterm effects of that political and economic decision (mostly for the citizens of that country) are complex, and ugly.

In 1980, the CIA and Pakistani Intelligence worked their magic to bring together disparate and extreme Muslims from all over the world. These “freedom-fighting” Muslims were gathered to turn them into an organized, trained and financed group capable of fighting the brutal Russian Army that had invaded Afghanistan in late 1979.

The fighters, known as the mujahideen, were also funded by a sudden and uncannily-timed blossoming opium trade—the same trade that now funds the Taliban.

The longterm effects of that political and economic decision (mostly for the citizens of that country) are complex, and ugly.

This list, of course (for both positive and negative things), could go on forever.

Jeremy Rifken gave an interesting interview in the Corporation:

The Chakrabarty case is one of the great judicial moments in world history. And the public was totally unaware it was actually happening as a process was being engaged.

General Electric and Professor Chakrabarty went to the patent office with a little microbe that eats up oil spills. They said they had modified this microbe in the laboratory, and therefore it was an invention.

The patent office and the U.S. government took a look at this quote “invention.” They said, “No way. The patent statutes don’t cover living things. This is not an invention.”

Turned down.

Then, General Electric and Doctor Chakrabarty appealed to the U.S. Customs Court of Appeal. And, to everyone’s surprise, by a three-to-two decision, they overrode the Patent Office.

They said, “This microbe looks more like a detergent, or a reagent, than a horse or a honeybee.”

I laugh because they didn’t understand basic biology; it looked like a chemical to them. Had it had an antenna, or eyes, or wings, or legs, it would never have crossed their table and been patented.

Then the Patent Office appealed. And what the public should realize now is the Patent Office was very clear that you can’t patent life. My organization provided the main amicus curiae brief.

“If you allow the patent on this microbe”, we argued, “it means that without any congressional guidance or public discussion, corporations will own the blueprints of life.”

When they made the decision, we lost by five to four, and Chief Justice Warren Burger said, “Sure, some of these are big issues but we think this is a small decision.”

Seven years later the U.S. Patent Office issued a one sentence decree “You can patent anything in the world that’s alive, except a full-birth human being.”

The sun is the energy that truly sustains the biosphere of this planet. Life can carry on without the exploitation of oil, natural gas, nuclear energy or most any other energy source, but the sun is an endlessly giving generator of hope and good tans.

Not speaking semantically, but perhaps poetically, one could say ‘life’ exists by turning all nourishment back into energy—in a sense by trying to turn food energy back into sunlight. We are built, powered and eventually recycled by sunlight and its workhorses. We are made from solar material. The earth came out of stardust. Heck, we even got a Sunday out of it. The unseeable relationship between “sun ‘n us”—notice the mystic palindrome— is mindblowing, if not intentional (and I tend to vote for intention).

Nuclear energy could be described as an unconscious or perhaps intentional desire to recreate the sun, in a sense a means of owning the sun—and by doing so believing that life can be controlled—instead of working with the sun, with a stance of awe, compassion and gratitude.

Humans, perhaps by their present nature, tend to use resources in a way that attempts to put us in control of the earth—and certain humans in control of many other humans. The results are impressive, in both sustainable and disastrous ways.

Nuclear powers’ vast immediate possibilities notwithstanding, I write this with the suggestion that we humans are not breathing deeply enough to understand the long-term problems of nuclear power.

It seems to me that those who are truly in search of equilibrium, in the service of all, of life itself, with the best intention for everyone and everything, would be seeking how to work with a diversity of energies, but primarily the sun—to work with solar energy—in a sustainable way for thousands of deserving future generations, as if those generations had a right to life, too.

If anybody has any insights on energies, please pass them along.

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change
something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
—R. Buckminster Fuller

Check this site out, Juergen Kleinwaechter, and his Solar Power Village ideas, and a video on it in three parts, on youtube.

Love to you,

Pete

Posted in Economics, Human Nature, Science, Social Awareness, posted | No Comments »

STAY STEADY, BREATHE DEEPLY, BE NOT SURPRISED: THIS IS THE MATERIAL WORLD

Thursday, March 27th, 2008

“Sail forth—steer for the deep waters only,
Reckless O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me,
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

O my brave soul!
O farther farther sail!
O daring joy, but safe! are they not all the seas of God?
O farther, farther, farther sail!”
—Walt Whitman

There’s a great and amusing line in the Indian text the Bhagavad Gita. It says:

Armed with yoga, stand and fight.

It’s interesting, because one might ask, what has yoga got to do with fighting? Well, in the material world, if you are of a certain nature, everything. The line is saying, on one level, anyway, ’stay steady in the material when everything is spinning wildly around you—this wild spinning is the way of the material world.’

In other words, don’t run and flutter and shake and twist with every new incoming problem, threat, news flash etc. If you do (and god knows we do!), you will be driven insane, the proverbial chicken with its head cut off.

I get that. That’s what a yoga pose (an asana) is—a symbol for standing with grace and steadiness in the material world. Doing an asana is to be in an awkward position and stay steady by steadying the breath, and understanding these fluctuations and madnesses all around us (and within us) are the way of the world—and in that way, quite predictable.

In this same spirit, I wrote the other day:

Sometimes I think one of the worst methods of gathering a complex knowledge of what’s going on in the world is by watching the news every night.

I know good people who watch the news every night and know virtually nothing original or insightful about world events—let alone anything comprehensive or expansive.

“Myths which are believed in tend to become true.”
—George Orwell

The daily deluge of political rhetoric allows new lies to become “facts” through repetition.

Like natural selection, this repetition not only changes, bit by bit, what was said or promised in the original rhetoric, recreating objectives, but it creates—probably due to excessive out of context information—what is known as a memory hole.

In other words, if knowledge is lost, it will be replaced by every stupefying bit of information that comes in from the outer world.

The rest of the essay is here.

And then I wrote even more recently, quoting the yogic idea of “stand and fight” again:

To be overly affected by… daily news flashes is to be hopelessly vulnerable. The appalling acts going on all over the globe have very little to do with [every little bit of boring, scandalous pseudo-news with which we are bombarded]. As it says in the Baghavad Gita, “Armed with yoga, stand and fight.”

In other words, understand, in varying degrees, these unfoldings [of boring, scandalous pseudo-news, and even serious, painful events that deeply effect innocent people] are part of the world. From there, breathe deeply and act according to your nature, as best you can. If love can be increased, or hate decreased, how beautiful is that?

The rest of this essay is here.

So you get what I’m trying to say: Not ‘relax’ per se, but (like I am trying to do, too), try to understand that these endless bombardments—magnified in the 2008 superhighway—are how the world, in variations on the theme, has always unfolded. Greed. Scandal. Gossip. Basically varying levels of consciousness with some of the lower versions dominating the airwaves and, thus, mass consciousness.

As it turns out, this same phenomenon was described in less spiritual/energetic terms in Rolling Stone magazine the other day. I thought I’d quote Matt Taibbi in his article Generation Squeeb: Barack Obama’s Reverend Wright controversy, and America’s squid-heart:

The endless onslaught of tiny scandals trains the electorate to be hyper-responsive to temporary, superficial outrages while simultaneously chipping away at their long-term memories [hence, the memory hole], their inclination to look at the big picture, their ability to grasp subtleties of opinion and policy.

So instead of talking about the fact that Barack Obama once introduced a bill to give a tax break to a Japanese company whose lawyers donated fifty grand to his Senate campaign, we’re freaking out for five minutes about the fact that Obama’s pastor thinks America spread AIDS on purpose in Zambia.

And instead of talking about the fact that Hillary Clinton took $110,000 from a New York food company she later helped by introducing a bill to remove import duties on tomatoes, we’re ranting and raving about Gerry Ferraro’s paranoid ramblings about Obama’s blackness.

We can’t keep our eyes on the ball and really think about the serious endemic problems of our system of government [in step with unelected multinational corporate power] because we’re too busy freaking out like a bunch of cartoon characters over silly, meaningless bullshit. And then forgetting about that same bullshit ten minutes later, so that we can freak out all over again about something else later on.

That’s just the way we are, and maybe it’s time to wonder why that is…

We can’t focus for more than ten seconds on anything at all and we’re constantly exercised about stupid media-generated non-scandals, guilt-by-association raps, accidental dumb utterances of various campaign aides and other nonsense—while at the same time we have no energy at all left to wonder about the mass burgling of the national budget for phony military contracts, the war, the billion dollars or so in campaign contributions to be spent this year that will be buying a small mountain of favors for the next four years. And we… shit, I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore.

Matt, remember your breathing! You’re onto something, so stand and fight without collapsing! Do not become cynically superior! See it is as the human condition that we are all under, in varying degrees! Love more, Matt! Matttt!

Matt continues…

I’m just tired of this tone that’s always out there when these scandals break, like we can’t fucking stand the existence of this Wright fellow for even a minute longer, not a minute longer!—when we all know that come Monday, or Tuesday at the latest, Jeremiah Wright will be forgotten and we’ll be jumping en masse in a panic away from the next media-offered shadow to fall across our bow. What a bunch of turds we all are, seriously.

God help us if we ever had to deal with a real problem.

The full article is here.

I would suggest statistics in Iraq that match and in some places are worse than in the Bush-labelled genocide in Darfur might just be that real problem. And the Chinese dictatorship is brutally and awfully—ugly yet admittedly—funding a heinous regime in Sudan to ensure their line to oil.

As one of the Chinese politicos said, “It’s just business.”

America has invaded Iraq, and bankrupted their own country, and still the issue actually drops out of sight in the election from time to time, and the military actions taken (now at five years and hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of displaced people) is always only misguided, never immoral, or internationally illegal.

This is one of those painfully and brutally distracted-by-scandal sicknesses.

But the point is: stay strong, my dear friends, keep breathing, do what you can but with ahimsa (causing as little damage as possible), and understand this is just the material world being itself.

Seek the balance point within yourself through deeper knowledge and understanding, whatever that journey may be for you.

In short, “Armed with yoga, stand and fight.” And yoga is a non-sectarian term, coming from the root ‘yug’ meaning ’stay connected…to the the Source of your deeper, sustainable, love-expanding wisdom, whomever He or She or It may be.’

To beautiful sisters and brothers everywhere, that all beings may be seeking a little more balance, in an imbalanced world. Love more!

Pete xox

Posted in Activism, Courage, History, Human Nature, Politics, Social Awareness, Spirituality, posted | No Comments »

I Went To A Fight The Other Night, And A Hockey Game Broke Out: Patrick Roy, his son, Human Nature, ‘Pulling a Gandhi’ and the Military Industrial Complex

Wednesday, March 26th, 2008

That ol’ gag.

I tried to write this blog but it just got out of control. This is what came out. I have no idea if it’s clear, but it’s 2:20 am…

“It’s just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.”
—Muhammad Ali

I’m not sure where directing a documentary on boxing places me in terms of glorifying sports violence, but I thought I’d make a comment about fighting in hockey anyway.

This comes after the recent brawl in a junior hockey game, that may not even have reached the rest of the world as news—which is good. Goaltending legend Patrick Roy’s son Jonathan skated across the ice and pounded the opposition goalie. The opposition goalie had ‘turtled’—which means he was unwilling to fight.

Frankly, I commend the choice to not fight, and I think the derogatory use of the term ‘to turtle’ should be replaced with, say, ‘he pulled a Gandhi’ or ‘he did the Martin Luther King.’

It should also be noted that when I played junior hockey, I was no fighter and barely a scorer, which surely accounts for a career of staggering brevity and anonymity. I also disliked showering with a bunch of men, but that has nothing to do with this article.

CODE OF HONOUR

What’s interesting about Patrick’s son’s behaviour—though hardly shocking or even surprising, given hockey—is that it’s not vilified because it was violent, it’s vilified because it was outside the acceptable code for fighting on the ice.

Given that fighting of any nature is allowed in hockey, that’s a bit of a curious comment—but it’s true. But the only fighting that is ‘acceptable’ in hockey—indeed encouraged, celebrated and even honoured—is the fight between two voluntary participants.

No head-butting. No biting. No kicking. And no fighting someone who refuses to fight. Hey, it’s not a free-for-all! This isn’t Iran, you know, it’s smack in the middle of modern civilization!

IN THIS CORNER, WEARING WHITE HOCKEY PANTS WITH A BLACK STRIPE…

The only fighting that’s allowed in hockey is straight ahead bare-knuckle punches to the face, by two willing participants for as long and as hard as they can keeping going without the linesmen having a safe way to break it up. If children are watching, so be it. If they’re cheering (from an economics point of view), all the better.

Suspensions, however, happen to those who commit infractions outside of this code—like Jonathan Roy, in this relatively insignificant outbreak. Whether what happened was excessively dangerous or caused injury is ultimately, but not completely, beside the point.

REAL ENFORCERS

This is instructive, and also disconcerting, because pro hockey players who actually fight for a living, generally within the ‘code’, are incredibly tough, aggressive, powerful and dangerous athletes: they can weigh 240-odd pounds, be adept in martial arts and pumped to the max on steroids—at least during their summer training regime. And the toughest junior players aren’t far behind.

Hell is bound to break loose during the season.

COMING INFRACTIONS

I would not be at all surprised if one day somebody is killed in a hockey game, not by actions outside of the ‘code’ where a loose canon pounds away on a turtling goalie, although something brutal could happen there, but by a clean punch or combination of punches in a fight that is considered acceptable.

Many hockey players more than willing to fight, with a maximum penalty of five minutes for their actions, have had their careers finished from being walloped.

Adam Deadmarsh, for example, was concussed by one punch, and never really fully recovered, putting an end to a promising career. A brutal punch and then falling face-first onto the ice, unconscious, also convinced Nick Kypreos to pack it in.

It’s not pretty, it has nothing to due with the stick or the puck, and it’s after the whistle—but people defend its place in the sport.

UNAVOIDABLE

With regards to what happened in Quebec the other night, my point is simple and two-fold.

One, who cares? It’s only hockey and the importance of sport is ridiculously overblown. I don’t even think anyone was hurt, and we live in a world where sanctioned mass killing goes on day and night.

Not to mention we have endless video war games, a war culture, ultimate fighting as entertainment, films of deep violence without redemption winning Academy Awards, and factory-farm food fed to our children and ourselves nearly 24-7. One can only pray there is a lot of love at home.

LAWS OF NATURE

Two, as long as bare-fisted, unlimited pummeling is an encouraged part of the game of hockey, greater mayhem has to occasionally spill over—including bench-clearing brawls, rude words and even the occasional fashion faux-pas. This is science as much as morality, if not more.

Anyone who can’t accept this truism just doesn’t understand the law of association, the law of thermodynamics, the law of the jungle or the law of being an idiot—heck, just ask any parent. If the zeitgeist created is full of violence, violence will erupt.

To be overly affected by its daily news flashes is to be hopelessly vulnerable. The appalling acts going on all over the globe have very little to do with a scrappy night in a Quebec ice rink. As it says in the Baghavad Gita, “Armed with yoga, stand and fight.”

In other words, understand, in varying degrees, these unfoldings are part of the world. From there, breathe deeply and act according to your nature, as best you can. If love can be increased, or hate decreased, how beautiful is that?

And if one of your goals in life is to have fighting in hockey banned, good luck to you.

LETHAL WEAPON

But the effects of association, of energy, are evident everywhere, and are perhaps even more important to try and understand. Indeed, this is the stuff of life. Take the weapons industry, for example. If trillions of dollars are spent on their production, there is a force behind such ventures—even an energetic force. By design, it seems to me, they will eventually be used.

Is weapons being used the problem, or is weapons being built the problem—or is maximizing profits in any way possible—fighting, drugs, weapons—the problem? And what are the unseen emotional effects of the weapons industry being a major part of, say, the American economy?

It’s the law of association—it’s the allowable parameters within a system. It’s seeing where a question begins, and the question that is allowed to be asked.

Corporations exploit humans and the environment because in this curious world they’re sanctioned and applauded and rewarded for doing so. Discouragement is trivial.

So it goes, in a microcosmic way, for fighting in hockey.

THE SECRET

Being surprised or appalled at what happened in that junior game is like being surprised when Mike Tyson’s nature and profession spilled over into his love life. Tragic? Yes. Surprising? Not so much. Okay, the ear was a bit of a shocker. Okay, the second bite.

Again, way outside the code of allowed violence.

JAILHOUSE ROCK

Take prisons. Is anyone surprised one goes in to those hard, cold, brutal places for a small crime and comes out a hardened criminal? If I had my way, prisons would be (for starters, a lot less full), the meals would be vegetarian, the walls would be a soft colour, and there would be no televisions.

Wait a second, that’s my house.

HUMAN NATURE

Maybe fighting in hockey should be banned, or restrained, or penalized for seven minutes, or maybe it shouldn’t. Either way, is it incomparable to the sickness of sanctioning, endorsing and funding the blowing up of women and children in foreign countries—and obtaining massive wealth for doing so?

What questions aren’t asked in our silly outrage over something like a bench-clearing brawl at a hockey game between boys?

Here’s what I know: if governments and corporations, in some revelatory tandem, stop inflicting their Military Industrial Complexes onto innocent people in other parts of the world, because it’s wrong to do so, I guarantee that fighting in hockey will slowly cease to be.

Indeed, the sport will probably become a sort of figure skating with a stick and a puck. I wouldn’t even be surprised if those one piece sky blue jump suits (with the curious bulge in the middle) cross-over too—maybe even with sequins.

But before we get too honest or too gentle, we should ask ourselves: is that really what we want? Fairly-treated people in light blue jump suits all over the world, eating nutritious salads and unafraid to ‘turtle’? Not ony that, who knows if the Chinese or the Russians will play along.

Maybe I’ve just got to minimize anger and cruelty in my own life—in how I eat, talk, work and play. No, that can’t be the problem!

I love you—garl darn it I love you!

Pete xo

Posted in Goofy, Human Nature, Social Awareness, Sports, posted | 3 Comments »

KILLER RELATIONSHIPS: AGRIBUSINESS, THE WAR ON DRUGS and MONSANTO

Monday, March 24th, 2008

The mass suicides that take place across the world with peasant farmers as they lose their farms to subsidized agribusiness (for different reasons) is a devastating and well-documented side-effect of uglier and uglier massive corporate control of our food.

Agribusiness’ connection to the so-called war on drugs is less obvious, or well known. I heard this in a film called Plan Colombia: Cashing In On The Drug War Failure. Plan Colombia is the controversial American Plan, begun under President Clinton in 98/99 I believe, of what to do with and how to eradicate Colombia drug trafficking.

What was mentioned in the film surprised me—and although I haven’t read any supporting documentation, this is what was said:

“Despite thirty years of US led war on drugs, and the fall of flamboyant drug lord Pablo Escobar, the traffic seems healthier than ever, with tens of millions of users and hundreds of billions of dollars of profit.

No longer imported from Peru and Bolivia, coca leaves—the primary ingredient of cocaine—are now home grown in practically all parts of Colombia.

Hundreds of thousands of farmers, driven to poverty by the international agribusiness competition, have been hired by the traffickers…”

And here’s an interesting addition to Monsanto’s diversification, just to cover all their profit angles of worldwide crop control—by law or by terror—also from the film:

“The Monsanto chemical corporation was commissioned by the US State department to provide a defoliant that could be spread on large areas of forest from a safe altitude above insecure terrirtories.

The result was Roundup-Ultra, a modification of the commercially available Round-Up weed killer [see Canadian farmer, Percy Schmeiser], with a new formulation which has not been disclosed.

With rain and humidity, these deadly chemicals are running into the water supply of the entire Amazon basin—and issue that effects not only Colombia, but parts of Ecudaor, Peru and Brazil as well.”

William Brownfield, current US Ambassador to Colombia, says he has seen no credible scientific data showing these defoliants are dangerous. Dr Theo Colborn, from the World Widlife Fund, offers this in response:

“One of the earlier studies discovered that Round Up—or glyphosate—actually interferes with enzyme systems in the thyroid, in the brain, in the liver abd the pancreas.

And one of the studies actually showed that gyphosate caused tumours in the thyroid, and also in the pancreas, and in the ladig cells, or the testicals. These are the cells that are critical for sperm production in the male.”

I thought you might find it revealing, and even inspiring to consider what you’re eating, and who makes it—support your local food producers! Believe in food!

Lots of love to you,

Pete

Posted in Activism, Economics, Human Rights, Law, Politics, Social Awareness, Vegetarian, War on Drugs, posted | 3 Comments »

IF WE ARE BUT SPECKS IN THE UNIVERSE, WHY DO THOSE WHO BELIEVE THAT EVEN WRITE ABOUT IT?

Monday, March 24th, 2008

A propos to some recent writings, this is a brief excerpt from an interview by Sashi Kumar with Professor V.S. Ramachandran, a world-renowned explorer of the human brain (though I’d never heard of him), called In the mind of the brain.

The points about personalism and impersonalism, and Western science, are brief yet instructive, and explain, if only laterally—but with a little thought, you’ll get my drift—why we have massive drug-dealing Tobacco producers (Philip Morris et al.) and war-aiding Agent Orange producers (Monsanto et al.) in charge of our food, and science/business support this more than oppose it.

QUESTION: Did you make an oblique reference earlier to the possibility of neuroscience drawing from some things that are unique to eastern philosophy or Hinduism?

Ramachandran: Not so much in neuroscience as in the epistemology of ‘who am I?’ And there I like Schrodinger’s approach to it—and the Vedantic approach to it—saying there is this fundamental asymmetry in nature between my personal point of view, my puny self, my brief personal existence, my vantage point…which simply doesn’t exist in physics.

Physics doesn’t acknowledge your vantage point [yet it is all from your vantage point]. There is only the universe with lots of people, lots of events.

The personal point doesn’t have privileged status. And yet from your point of view, it is everything.

So there is this fundamental asymmetry, which western science simply doesn’t deal with. It just says it’s trivial, it’s a non question, whereas eastern philosophy is perpetually obsessed with it—this is the whole atman[soul]-brahman[super soul], dvaitam [distinctions are real]-advaitam [no second/non-duality/you are not real] conundrum.

Not that I have the answer to this.

But I think we have to deal with it.

QUESTION: Do you get valuable insights for your science in any of this?

Ramachandran: I do, because western science simply denies the existence of your personal self.

Vedanta, and Erwin Schrodinger, says you can’t do that because it is the only reality you know directly. Is the world that you have created, and science that is created from your mind, pushing you out? That’s also illogical, isn’t it? It says there is no place for you.

So the only way to reconcile these points of view is to say that you always existed and are all-pervasive, and the notion that it is private and is confined to this thing called your body is the illusion—all this maya [illusion] business.

So if I am able to reconcile the Vedantic-Schrodinger approach with neuroscience or physics without this schizophrenic mentality, it’s fine. But I must confess it’s still an eternal riddle. It’s not that I am claiming to have solved it.

But ninety-nine per cent of scientists are not even aware of this.

The full interview is here.

Oh, and the reason food haters all about strange progress and the mighty dollar (euro!) can run the food chain—and put people in chains—is because, in so many ways, with science and business, people are somehow secondary to progress and profit.

Talk about a poor methodology.

Love on, you gorgeous speck! And remember, those who say that that’s all we are, are purely speck-ulating, and getting paid well to do so.

Pete xox

Posted in Activism, Economics, Human Nature, Human Rights, Science, Spirituality, posted | No Comments »

The Extraordinary Mystery of Being: Garl darnit, that’s us!

Saturday, March 22nd, 2008

Just in the middle of Muhammad Ali research and at the same time trying to grasp further the complexities of how agribusiness is controlling our food, worldwide and brutally, and wondering if Hillary Clinton is in Agribusiness’ backpocket, life tears open a contracted thought, and reminds me how serendipitous a series of events might be—or might not be.

Either way, I just got an email from my friend Marina with a note to watch a video that she found both moving and inspiring, and far above the limited-consciousness bandwidth of political lobbying.

What’s more, as I watched it—while doing situps to limber the old back and core muscles—I thought, ‘Hm, I’ve just been writing on my last three blogs about this exact subject: asking what we might be—who are we?—and the mysterious nature of being—between an expanded us and contracted us.’

Interestingly, the yogis have spoken about these wondrous themes for thousands of years—musings most scientists don’t admit have been spoken of, let alone do they agree with them.

But here’s a question: is it because of those ancient (and present) descriptions of consciousness and oneness and what we might be, already being “out there”, from yogis, that Dr Jill Bolte Taylor voices her experience of having a stroke as she did in similar terms of oneness etc., or are wereally this combined force of contracted and, ultimately, expanded individuality?

In other words, are we—as the yogis suggest—much more and expanded than we think we are?

Of course I don’t know—and this morning I’m pretty darn stiff (so I’m contracted, evidently).

But, mm-mm-mm it’s beautiful food for thought.

Here are three short clips from the last three blogs that are so related to what she’s talking about—which isn’t so surprising, because it’s what I think about a lot:

SILENCE! (6:21 am)

In silence
I learned
We have prisons
because we are imprisoned
We have propaganda
because we are hypnotized
All day we live in a movie
and later the angels come
and show us more movies
Watching my thoughts
I knew
there is freedom too
Now I must
make a fire
and start the day

The rest of the poems are here.

Then this short blog here, about the relationship between an expansive Redwood and a tear drop of devotion, called Three Hundred and Fifty Feet High:

THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY FEET HIGH

It is only our linear thinking
held firm by the Scientific Method
that prevents us
from believing
in the very reasonable assumption
that the Supreme Intelligence
can easily fit
a Giant Redwood
thirteen feet wide
and three hundred and fifty feet high
inside a seed
the size
of one
tear drop
of gratitude

And then an excerpt from this essay called Me And God Down By The Schoolyard:

The miraculous marriage of individuality and oneness is the ongoing tension that is life—the unstoppable force arising from the scientific predictability of entropy and the utter mystery of the organization that led to us. Organization makes no sense whatsoever in an expanding universe, or in my upstairs office. Yet here we are.

The fact is we are individual beings—inconceivably being—mysteriously piercing the material world with a series of unanswerable questions and disconcerting twitches.

Temporary? Yes, we appear to be—but who knows? And who knows for how long? And who knows why?

We may even be fragments of some utterly transcendent divine being who possesses an intelligence even slightly greater than Richard Dawkins’. That would be terrific, because I really enjoy being, and given my druthers, I’d rather it continued, minus the entropy and taxes.

Deluded? Perhaps. An illusion? Sure I’ve got some sleight-of-hand tricks up my sleeve, but who doesn’t?

But am I God? Well, not as far as I know. Then again, as any nondualist worth her illusory self will tell you:

“He who knows, knows nothing; and he who knows nothing, is unemployed.”

Full essay here.

Oh, and now here’s the 18 minute talk from Jill Bolte Taylor, a brain scientist who had a stroke, and lived to explain what she experienced. Take what you need, and exhale the rest into to that great mystery in the sky, and in your heart…

You are getting sleepy, very sleepy…

With great expansive gobs (gobs in the sweet sense) of gratitude, and a means of getting through the contracted troubles (and joys) of the day—love more!

Pete xoxox

Oh, and these musings are why I wrote Wide Open.

Posted in Human Nature, Poetry, Spirituality, posted | No Comments »

SACRED FIRE, HOLY SMOKE—One Morning On Keats

Saturday, March 22nd, 2008

SACRED FIRE, HOLY SMOKE
One morning on Keats

March 15, 2008

I woke up early and slightly uneasy, as life would have it. It was a compressed night on a compressed island surrounded by salty water and probably the occasional 24-foot Basking shark minding its own beeswax. All of this took place within earshot of bright lights and sad stories.

For those keeping track at home, Keats Island is west of Bowen Island and Calgary and countless other cities including Istanbul, Syracuse and several more who asked not to be identified.

Friends were sleeping in the loft above and so on, so they say, so I made a fire and meditated in darkness, just above my legs. From there came a moment of watching my own thoughts being transmitted from somewhere I couldn’t find.

Then afterwards a poem was scribbled…

To see them, and the rest of the introduction—all very short—press here.

Love ya,

Pete

Posted in Poetry, posted | No Comments »

THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY FEET HIGH

Saturday, March 22nd, 2008

THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY FEET HIGH

It is only our linear thinking
held firm by the Scientific Method
that prevents us
from believing
in the very reasonable assumption
that the Supreme Intelligence
can easily fit
a Giant Redwood
thirteen feet wide
and three hundred and fifty feet high
inside a seed
the size
of one
tear drop
of gratitude

Posted in Poetry, posted | 1 Comment »

I AM GOD and other FLEETING THOUGHTS

Friday, March 21st, 2008

NOTE: I wrote this essay the other day. If you find musings of a spiritual nature interesting, you might find this is up your alley—if God wills it.

***

ME AND GOD DOWN BY THE SCHOOLYARD

I have a subscription to a magazine called Parabola: Tradition, Myth and the Search for Meaning. It is a lovely, peaceful, often inspiring magazine with a largely Eastern sensibility—and in general shows how expanded interpretations of the Christian, Jewish and Islamic traditions can feel comfortable in that space.

In the Spring 2008 issue, I read an article called The Deepest Silence, by John Roger Barrie. The piece was sweet, and finished with a phrase that I often hear in contemplative or New Age circles.

Here’s the paragraph:

“The successful inner voyager treks to the precipice, and then, having encountered the Unknowable, brazenly discards maps and compass and boldly treads onward. The yearning heart echoes the cry that seized the Psalmist: “Be still and know that I am God.” The knowing mystic, seized with a searing nondual vision, confidently answers back, “Be silent and know that you, too, are God.”

I’ve never understood the point of saying ‘I am God.’ In fact I’ve always found the phrase sort of pointless. But perhaps I just wasn’t ready….

THE COMPLETE ESSAY is here…

Lots of love to you on your journey,

Pete xo

Posted in Goofy, Human Nature, Spirituality, posted | 1 Comment »

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