More evil than Walmart

"...controlling the seeds is not some abstraction. Whoever provides the world’s seeds controls the world’s food supply."

Monsanto's Harvest of Fear (from Vanity Fair, May 2008)

Every time I read about Monsanto I'm reminded of the Umbrella Corporation from Resident Evil. Now that I've read Margaret Atwood's amazing, scarily possible Oryx & Crake another comparison might be to OrganInc or HelthWyzer.

One of the VF article's most damning tales is of the town of Nitro where Monsanto ran a chemical plant:

On March 8, 1949, a massive explosion rocked Monsanto’s Nitro plant when a pressure valve blew on a container cooking up a batch of herbicide. The noise from the release was a scream so loud that it drowned out the emergency steam whistle for five minutes. A plume of vapor and white smoke drifted across the plant and out over town.Residue from the explosion coated the interior of the building and those inside with what workers described as “a fine black powder.” Many felt their skin prickle and were told to scrub down.

Within days, workers experienced skin eruptions. Many were soon diagnosed with chloracne, a condition similar to common acne but more severe, longer lasting, and potentially disfiguring. Others felt intense pains in their legs, chest, and trunk. A confidential medical report at the time said the explosion “caused a systemic intoxication in the workers involving most major organ systems.” Doctors who examined four of the most seriously injured men detected a strong odor coming from them when they were all together in a closed room. “We believe these men are excreting a foreign chemical through their skins,” the confidential report to Monsanto noted. Court records indicate that 226 plant workers became ill.

According to court documents that have surfaced in a West Virginia court case, Monsanto downplayed the impact, stating that the contaminant affecting workers was “fairly slow acting” and caused “only an irritation of the skin.”....

....In 1981 several former Nitro employees filed lawsuits in federal court, charging that Monsanto had knowingly exposed them to chemicals that caused long-term health problems, including cancer and heart disease. They alleged that Monsanto knew that many chemicals used at Nitro were potentially harmful, but had kept that information from them. On the eve of a trial, in 1988, Monsanto agreed to settle most of the cases by making a single lump payment of $1.5 million. Monsanto also agreed to drop its claim to collect $305,000 in court costs from six retired Monsanto workers who had unsuccessfully charged in another lawsuit that Monsanto had recklessly exposed them to dioxin. Monsanto had attached liens to the retirees’ homes to guarantee collection of the debt.

Monsanto stopped producing dioxin in Nitro in 1969, but the toxic chemical can still be found well beyond the Nitro plant site. Repeated studies have found elevated levels of dioxin in nearby rivers, streams, and fish. Residents have sued to seek damages from Monsanto and Solutia. Earlier this year, a West Virginia judge merged those lawsuits into a class-action suit. A Monsanto spokesman said, “We believe the allegations are without merit and we’ll defend ourselves vigorously.” The suit will no doubt take years to play out. Time is one thing that Monsanto always has, and that the plaintiffs usually don’t."...

...What had Monsanto known—or what should it have known—about the potential dangers of the chemicals it was manufacturing? There’s considerable documentation lurking in court records from many lawsuits indicating that Monsanto knew quite a lot. Let’s look just at the example of PCBs.

The evidence that Monsanto refused to face questions about their toxicity is quite clear. In 1956 the company tried to sell the navy a hydraulic fluid for its submarines called Pydraul 150, which contained PCBs. Monsanto supplied the navy with test results for the product. But the navy decided to run its own tests. Afterward, navy officials informed Monsanto that they wouldn’t be buying the product. “Applications of Pydraul 150 caused death in all of the rabbits tested” and indicated “definite liver damage,” navy officials told Monsanto, according to an internal Monsanto memo divulged in the course of a court proceeding. “No matter how we discussed the situation,” complained Monsanto’s medical director, R. Emmet Kelly, “it was impossible to change their thinking that Pydraul 150 is just too toxic for use in submarines.”

Ten years later, a biologist conducting studies for Monsanto in streams near the Anniston plant got quick results when he submerged his test fish. As he reported to Monsanto, according to The Washington Post, “All 25 fish lost equilibrium and turned on their sides in 10 seconds and all were dead in 3½ minutes.”

The More Loving One
by W. H. Auden

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

(The rest of the poem sucks, so I'm only posting the first part.)

"The places you love that you can never return to are also places
you can never leave.
They become part of your own small portion of eternity."

.

Paris: April 22 - May 1, 2008

"All Paris was spread out at his feet, with her thousand turrets, her undulating horizon, her river winding under the bridges, her stream of people flowing to and fro in the streets; with the cloud of smoke rising from her many chimneys; with her chain of crested roofs pressing in ever tightening coils round about Notre Dame."

- Victor Hugo, 'Notre-Dame de Paris,' Chapter 2

Grave matters

"Of all the world's wonders, which is the most wonderful? That no man, though he sees others dying all around him, believes that he himself will die."
- Yudhishtara answers Dharma, from "The Mahabharata"

Some people find it morbid to think about death - particularly their own or that of those they love - and so never dwell on it, never discuss it. But I can't help contemplating the inevitable on at least a weekly, if not daily basis. Maybe its because of my religious background - death was a constant topic and was nothing to be feared at the time because we were so completely confident that we knew what would come after. Of course now not so much. Now its just a huge unknown. (Though not necessarily a terrifying one.)

Anyway, it was interesting to come across this and see that I'm not actually alone in this obsession with my own mortality and that thinking about it may even be healthier than not. I'm not a fan of the "psycho" fields (psychology/psychiatry), but this seems like undeniable common sense thinking to me:

The Salon interview with Irvin Yalom

-a-note-

I have a new (anonymous) blog, thus the lack of posts in this one.
I may still use this one for nonpersonal posts. We shall see. I'll at least retain the alias.
I feel like instead of being a place to record what was happening in my life so that I'd be able to look back and remember years later, this blog turned into a mess of posts on random things.
And at this point, I'm just not the kind of writer who wants to journal openly. I end up going overboard and putting waaay too much time and thought and effort into my posts. Plus, there are so many things I feel I can't post about here. And life is so busy right now that when I do have time to write, I don't want to have to hesitate or censor myself.

A Newborn Girl at Passover

This is for my sister, a somewhat belated birthday poem:


Consider one apricot in a basket of them.
It is very much like all the other apricots--
an individual already, skin and seed.

Now think of this day. One you will probably forget
The next breath you take, a long drink of air.
Holiday or not, it doesn't matter.

A child is born and doesn't know what day it is.
The particular joy in my heart she cannot imagine.
The taste of apricots is in store for her.

by Nan Cohen

Not such a wonderful wizard

I'm reading Thomas King's Green Grass, Running Water for my English class. Today I went through it and looked up a bunch of the names and events that it references.

By way of the Wikipedia articles on Sitting Bull and the massacre at Wounded Knee I was led to this:

"The proud spirit of the original owners of these vast prairies inherited through centuries of fierce and bloody wars for their possession, lingered last in the bosom of Sitting Bull. With his fall the nobility of the Redskin is extinguished, and what few are left are a pack of whining curs who lick the hand that smites them. The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; better that they die than live the miserable wretches that they are. History would forget these latter despicable beings, and speak, in later ages of the glory of these grand Kings of forest and plain that Cooper loved to heroism."

"The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extirmination [sic] of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth. In this lies future safety for our settlers and the soldiers who are under incompetent commands. Otherwise, we may expect future years to be as full of trouble with the redskins as those have been in the past."

Who wrote the above?

L. Frank Baum, the author of the Wizard of Oz books.

Are you wondering what I'm wondering?

Can a good thing be "tainted"? A "bad person" (what does the term really mean though - is anyone ever wholly "bad"?) can create "good" art. But if the artist is racist and cruel can those aspects of their character "infect" their art? Without our realizing it? And even if the art is free of the unsavory aspects of the creator's character, is it wrong for us to enjoy it? Should we dismiss it completely as an unacceptable product of a "bad person"?

If Hitler had written great children's' books would we be reading them to our children today?

How much consideration should we give to the moral character of the author of a piece of art?

This could obviously be taken to extremes (and already is).

Should we start banning The Wizard of Oz? Should it join Judy Blume's Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret on the list of books that have already been banned for their supposed moral offensiveness?

Or should we perhaps preface our reading of The Wizard of Oz to children with a comment about the author's hatred for Native American people so that they're provided with a greater awareness of the complexities of life?

Its a quandary.

In any case, I've never really liked The Wizard of Oz much...

In Winnipeg at Christmas

In Winnipeg at Christmas
there's lots and lots of snow,
Very clean, and crisp and hard
And glittering like a Christmas card
Everywhere you go;
Snow upon the housetops,
snow along the street,
And Queen Victoria in her chair
Has snow upon her snowy hair
And snow upon her feet.

In Winnipeg at Christmas
they line the streets with trees-
Christmas trees lit up at night
With little balls of coloured light
As pretty as you please.
The people hurry past you
in furry boots and wraps;
The sleighs are like a picture book,
And all the policemen look
Like Teddy Bears in caps.

And oh! The smiling ladies
and jolly girls and boys;
And oh! The parties and the fun
With lovely things for everyone-
Books and sweets and toys.
So, if someday at Christmas
you don't know where to go,
Just pack your bags I beg,
And start at once for Winnipeg;
You'll like it there I know.

Rose Fyleman

Reading journal for A Complicated Kindness

I’m not sure I can write about A Complicated Kindness (or Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, for that matter) without straying and making personal references. And I’m not at all sure I want to or even should make those references (one reason simply that it can be incredibly difficult to write sensibly about something close to one’s heart). Suffice it to say that shunnings do not just happen in small rural communities and they are not a solely Mennonite phenomena. Seven years ago, my sister, like Tash, 1 came home with science books from the public library and set in motion a series of events that culminated in our being shunned by our family and community. The people we left behind would never pick up a book like A Complicated Kindness and so they will never see themselves reflected in it. Everything they read (or watch, or listen to) is strictly dictated by a biblical code. If you – an outsider – were to challenge their tradition of shunning, perhaps calling it cruel (or ‘destructive, sad, ridiculous, hateful’ as Toews has done), they would explain that though having to enforce the practice deeply saddened them it was absolutely necessary in order to keep their community (“God’s people”) free of impurities and apostate influences.2 They would have no trouble justifying the practice biblically or telling you that it was what God wanted them to do. They believe that what they are doing is fitting and right. (And after all, as an outsider, an unbeliever, who is hardly living what they would consider to be a “godly life” why should your opinion really matter to them?)

Miriam Toews has written about a fairly obscure religious practice and the story has been welcomed and praised – by a mostly secular audience but also by some more liberal Mennonites. But among all those who have read and praised A Complicated Kindness, there are certain basic things that must be held in common to be able to read and appreciate such a book; the most essential of them perhaps being the willingness to admit doubt, to question, criticize, challenge. How does one reach people who refuse to do those things? The people we call “fundamentalists” who will accept no lesser authority than God, who accept the Bible as infallible truth, who believe that the men (for it is almost always men) who lead their church are divinely appointed and thus who’s judgments are beyond question.

Perhaps I’ve made it sound too black and white. Perhaps the urge that follows is to dismiss the people who believe this way as being radical, intolerant fundamentalists, lacking in rational thought. But the beauty of A Complicated Kindness lies in the way that Nomi – Toews – refuses to do that: “…there is a kindness here, a complicated kindness. You can see it sometimes in the eyes of people when they look at you and don’t know what to say.” (P. 46) Nomi “sees all this, names all this, yet recognizes in the same moment that there is in East Village a kind of goodness, a complicated kindness; recognizes that while this excuses nothing, it is not, at least, a place of uncluttered cruelty.”3 The people who choose to live a religious type of life – one that can seem medieval and foreign to us, are incredibly complex, complicated beings, more than just the sum of their parts (or their prejudices). Behind Toews story is a real community with real people in it – flawed, yes, but not lacking in human kindness and who shunned, not necessarily out of malice, but out of misguided love. And if we resort to a reductionist way of looking at them, of distancing ourselves from them, we are falling into a similar fundamentalist trap.4


___________________________
1 “Why did my sister require more than that? What the heck was she doing with that library card of hers? She’d gone too far, I knew that much.” (P. 120)
2 “And everybody was sad, I’d say. Right? Yes, everybody was sad. It was a very difficult position to be in not only for the person who was shunned but for the people who loved them. God especially, I’d say. Right? Yes, God especially. I loved that hook. Even though he was the ultimate punisher, he got no satisfaction from it. It hurt him, but it had to be done. I thought that was damn heroic.” (P. 44)
3 Richardson, Bill. “A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews.” The Globe and Mail. May 1, 2004.
4 “Fundamentalism offers a really simplistic, easy version of things to believe in. All those difficult, unanswerable questions that real life asks, are answered.” (Toews, as quoted in “A Complicated kind of author,” Herizons, Vol. 19, No. 1, P. 20)



[Sorry, this is totally not a real entry, I'm too busy with school work right now to write a real one. I'm just posting this due to a request. For the record, my prof responded to the "black and white" query with the comment of, "No, not really." And to the final sentence, with: "Perhaps, but it's arguable..." I'd also attached a print-off of the Wikipedia entry for "Jehovah's Witnesses and congregational discipline" (a.k.a. shunning) to my RJ so my prof would understand my allusion.]