Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Food for Fought: The Real Problem With GM

The real problem with GM is not necessarily the genetic modification itself. OK, we don't know whether the GM crops are more or less health, and we don't know whether GM food is detrimental to the health in the long term, because it largely hasn't been tested. But humans have been doing genetic modification for a long time - not in the lab manipulating the molecules, but in the field, manipulating the healthier, bigger grains or fruits to grow more. For example, in pre-industrial, agricultural Peru, there are 2000 potato varieties, with as many as 50 varieties per village - all of which stem from genetic modification by peasant farmers. (Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America, 1977 [1996], 177)

No, the real problem with GM is human freedom. Large agribusiness companies, like Monsanto, are the developers of GM seed, and they patent that seed so that it belongs to them. Farmers then have to pay Monsanto to use their seed. This doesn't seem like much of a problem, at this stage. But we have to look deeper.

Monsanto, et al, have developed terminator seed - that is, seed that will produce fruit one year, but the fruit it produces is infertile, meaning that farmers then have to re-buy seed the following year, and cannot re-plant what they have just grown. This traps farmers into buying seed yearly. Pretty bad, but again, not the end of the world, especially if their net profits are still up.

The next stage is that Monsanto sues farmers who don't use their seed if some of it happened to land (and grow) on the farmer's land. This happened in Canada, where a farmer was sued after seed, probably from a passing truck (although it may have been purposely planted by Monsanto), landed in a farmer's field - Monsanto then trespassed on his property, collected samples of the crop, and successfully sued him for not paying for their seed when he was growing (just a tiny bit of) their crop. This farmer then had to burn all the rest of his seed (generations of carefully grown and carefully improved seed), because of fear of continued sueing. They destroyed the farmer's life, destroyed the farmer's life work of seed-improvement. This is not unique, and not even unusual - hundred of farmers have reported threat-letters from Monsanto, and have reached settlements that they are not allowed to discuss.

The next stage, once farmers give in and buy Monsanto's seed, is for Monsanto to spread disease that their seed is protected against - any farmer with Monsanto's seed gets a good crop, any without is blighted and yields little or no harvest - forcing them to get Monsanto's seed. This, to the public knowledge, has not yet happened, although it is well within the companies ability and moral structure - it is likely, if not to have already happened, that it will happen soon.

At this point, Monsanto have a virtual monopoly on almost the entire world's food production. As we require food to live, Monsanto also have vast control over our life - if a nation disobeys them, they take away the (terminator) seed, spread blight, removing the food, and so the nation dies.

What is at issue in GM debates is the very freedom of human life. What Monsanto will tell you is that they're just trying to end world poverty. Don't believe them. They're on the path to the domination of human life, and they know it. And they want it. And they are willing to destroy lives to get it. This, if anything, is a cause worth fighting.

Some may say that the activists who destroy fields of GM crops are terrorists. They are not. They are activists, fighting for human freedom where government and society is failing. The real terrorists are the GM companies in their quest for global control. Stop them, and fight to make them illegal - fight to make them stop.

For more info, watch the documentary film The Future of Food (trailer, torrent download, torrent 2). Or go to GMWatch.eu.

Monday, February 18, 2008

DVD, CD and mp3 Morality

It has now come to the point where it is immoral to buy music or movies.

When an artist creates something, it seems fair that they should be the ones who benefit financially from their creation. This idea is why so many people are for the artist's protection via copyright law (copyright is better called Usemonopoly, for that is both a truer name, and reflects the attitudes of the intellectual property lawyers and discussion).

Musicians have ceased to gain real money from the sales of recorded music. If you wish to help an artist out, go to their concert or performance. For the recorded music industry have succeeded in taking away the money from the musicians, meaning that when you buy music (either online or on a CD) you are not giving money to the art, but to the corporation who reproduced their art. You are fueling the pockets of CEO's and contributing to the growth of already-oversized corporations. It is these rich CEO's and these large corporations who are fueling our desire for more, who are brainwashing us into consumerism, and so who are destroying the earth. It is immoral to contribute to this trend, and so it is immoral to buy music.

The same goes for movies. Of course, if the band/movie is a very small deal, and if the CD/DVD cases look homemade, or if the music is sold directly from the artist's website, then they probably get most of that money. This would again be moral, and it’s not immoral to invest your money in those artists.

At the cinema you'll often see an advert showing a thief steal a hangbag, and comparing that to steal movies. But is this a fair comparison? No. The crucial difference is that after stealing a handbag, the owner of the handbag is left without it. After downloading music or movies, the owner still has it.

Therefore, because it is moral to download media, and generally immoral to buy it, I recommend thepiratebay, isohunt, and these websites (for streaming TV and movies) to get you started. Of course, you'll need a torrent program to download this, for which I recommend the open-source Azeurus (if you have a fast computer), or old versions of uTorrent (for the low-resources option - my personal choice).

Sadly the law has not yet caught up to the morality of the situation. If you vote for the Pirate Party, then it may eventually do so. But law moves slowly, and so for a long time you'll be choosing to either be legal and immoral, or illegal and moral. For the sake of the earth, the poor, and the artists, choose to be moral!

Also see this excellent Harper's article (for a fuller, better essay regarding some of these issues).