Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear

There are few faceless corporations that are truly evil. Monsanto is one of them. One must wonder about the people who are the tireless cogs in its machinery -- as they slog away, do they ever wonder about the machine they power? Vanity Fair is running an investigative piece that looks at Monstanso: its quest to control the food supply chain and the destruction of the environment that it is responsible for. If I worked for Monsanto, I think I would breaking glass and diving out of the offices of its highest towers, because I wouldn't be able to live with myself. Evil.

Public Stupidity in Whitewater

So what exactly is wrong with anonymous free speech? If you're a public figure, especially in a position of power, anonymous critique is construed as an open, if faceless, assault. And with great power, usually comes great irresponsibility. Rather than welcome criticism as an opportunity for improvement -- a perspective that any public servant should take when facing heat from their constituents -- most counterattack. That is the case currently being played out in the backwater town of Whitewater, Wisconsin, where John Adams, an anonymous blogger is raining on the stupidity of public officials there. In response, the police chief, James Coan, is using city employees to play detective to unmask John Adams.

Can we say misuse of public resources, folks?

Apparently not, say Coan and his cohorts in government. The the police, the blogger "seems like an anti-government radical." Yes, criticizing the people who work for you is considered radical by some. WTF?

Assaulting the Poor

This image was taken by Luis Vasconcelos and posted on Reuters blog. The caption:

An indigenous woman holds her child while trying to resist the advance of Amazonas state policemen who were expelling the woman and some 200 other members of the Landless Movement from a privately-owned tract of land on the outskirts of Manaus, in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon March 11, 2008. The landless peasants tried in vain to resist the eviction with bows and arrows against police using tear gas and trained dogs. REUTERS/Luiz Vasconcelos-A Critica/AE (BRAZIL)

More on the Landless Workers' Movement can be found on Wikipedia. Yet again, another example of the rich living off the poor.

Stuffed Cardboard Buns

Chinese food quality is making the rounds in the news in North America. Food quality is also making the news in China. Yesterday, as I flew out of Shanghai, I heard the news of an undercover TV crew that busted a dim-sum restaurant in Beijing's Chaoyang District. The restaurant, in a effort to save money amid rising pork prices, started to cut their steamed pork-stuffed buns with cardboard.

The recipe went like this: Cardboard was soaked in water and an industrial-use caustic soda, a poisonous chemical, was added. The cardboard lost its normal color and became fragile under the soda's strong causticity, making it look more like pork. Finally, pork-smell essence and pork fat were stirred into the concoction to make the stuffing more "vivid."

Product quality in China is suspect, and to be fair, China is starting to take product quality seriously. Earlier this month China executed the State Food and Drug Administration director, Zheng Xiaoyu, for taking bribes to look the other way on food and drug quality. The execution was a signal -- but hardly the end. A heck of a lot more needs to be done.

Democracy in Trouble

If you've been keeping tabs on democratic process south of the border, you'd rapidly be coming to the conclusion that democracy is in decline. In the country that holds itself up to the world as an example of rule by the people, the United States of America has done an awful job of living up to the basics, let alone the idealism it seeks to inspire. From the debacle of the last election, to the abuses of the Bush Administration and the wars the country has fought -- including the secret ones -- America has really been a terrible disappointment.

Now the hoedown has started again, as candidates from the Republicans and Democrats, test the waters of presidential candidacy -- and what little hope there may have been for change, is slowly morphing into yet another disappointment. The impartial media has been weighing in on candidates, and with their subtle machinations, continuing the sacking of democracy.

Candidates are who the media portray them to be. Case in point, Al Gore. In the last election, the media collectively worked to destroy a candidate who was a much better choice than the Texan idiot the country was saddled with. The media is at it again. Candidates participating in debates are not being given fair and balanced coverage by the media -- and in some cases, are simply being removed entirely from be covered. Try a blog search for Mike Gravel or Ron Paul to see what I mean. As a recent editorial in the Washington Post puts it, candidates don't make good copy; don't make good TV; and perhaps, after debates, they should simply be voted off the debate circuit by TV viewers. That's right -- like a reality TV show, candidates should be voted off the island, after all, "it seems to work well for other TV programs".

Busted

In the years since Randall "Duke" Cunningham lurked in the Washington halls of power as a Congressman, he preyed on taxpayers, bilking the public of millions of dollars. The money came indirectly from the public coffers, in the form of bribery from Brent Roger Wilkes of ADCS, and Mitchell J. Wade of MZM, for hundreds of millions of dollars in government business. The business thrown to ADCS and MZM was in information technology, specifically in the security and defense areas. In a post 9/11 US, the gravy flowed, and the salivating Wilkes and Wade piled on the bribes to Cunningham for the train to be directed their way.

In the end, Cunningham was busted. So was Wilkes and Wade. Other politicians may have also benefited for doing their personal bit to directing public defense, military and intelligence spending towards ADCS and MZM. Specifically named by Cunningham was Florida's Secretary of State, Katherine Harris. If you recall, Harris was the Florida politician responsible for the vote recount in the last US federal election, that handed the presidency to George W. Bush.

In a just world, prosecutors would not stop at Cunningham. They would follow the stench to the dank swamps of hell to find every last one of the culprits that misused public trust and curried their positions for personal financial gain. The world in the US under the presiding monarch, however, is hardly a just place. US Attorney Carol Lam, who threw Cunningham in jail, was one of the eight US attorneys fired by the Justice Department, as direct by the White House. She was canned because the Justice Department felt she should have focused more on illegal immigrants entering the US from Mexico, instead of white collar crimes.

The rot from the corruption is overwhelming. Wake up America.

[Read the sordid tale in Baseline Magazine.]