by Ben Taylor
There has been a concerted effort for most of the past century in America (as well as Canada, Mexico, and around the world) to wrest control of the land and ultimately the production of food from the hands of the small family farmer and rancher, as well as any kind of self-sufficiency from the common people.
That depression did much worse than put us on the treacherous path of forced communalism in the function of “government” in America, but also placed us on a high wire above a bottomless chasm as far as the ability of individual men, women and families to be self-sustaining on the land. Slowly but surely since the 1920s, family farms have steadily shrunk in numbers and in agricultural production. Government programs supposedly designed to “help” farmers and ranchers have always resulted in little more than making them slaves to “government” rules, regulations, and ill-conceived mandates. For my farmer and rancher friends who still attempt to defend their government welfare programs that firmly locks that ball and chain around their necks, please explain, if all of these “programs” to help small agri-business really worked, why has the result been exactly the opposite? I’m not going to get into citing statistics here and the truth is as undeniable as the stars in the heavens and if you do not see it now, numbers will not convince you.
This system under which the small family farmer and rancher in America has steadily declined was “designed” to accomplish exactly that!!! Look about you my friends, the same thing happened to the small town banks. A system promoted and mandated by “government” whereby small banks and lending institutions were lured into a spider’s web from which they could never become untangled. When it was all said and done, most were either out of business or bought out by a multi-national banking entities. Today most of the banking and lending is controlled by a small handful of large banking cartels which are nothing less than criminal cartels. Even small financial institutions that have survived have little self control or autonomy and are under the thumb of the privately owned banking cartel called “The Federal Reserve”. You guessed it; it is neither “Federal”, nor is it a “reserve”, it is nothing less than a criminal syndicate.
Does everyone remember when the number of small oil and energy producing companies were too numerous to count? What happened to them? As with banking, most of the small energy producers were either squeezed out of the market or have been bought out by large multi-national companies. Where was our government to protect America’s self-sufficiency for our energy needs? Instead of protecting our national interests, it has all along been working in concert with Exxon, Shell and other energy cartel members and near monopolies to impose rules, regulations and mandates on producers that completely gutted America’s small producers. Now we are paying the price at the pump and we all better get ready to open our wallets even wider when we buy gas for our cars and electricity for our homes. For those of you who missed basic economics, when competition is reduced or eliminated, prices go higher, not lower.
Although I served eight years as a Republican Party County Chairman in Texas, I know it is not just the Democrats who are to blame for the destruction by monopolization of our Nation’s food, banking and energy infrastructure. Both major parties are complicit as they are controlled by “the same” big money and therefore share equal blame. Democrats have been instrumental in helping the Internationalist power-brokers usher in the principles of communalism and welfare-ism that ultimately gives all power to the “state” while on the other hand Republicans have been the driving force in protecting “corporate” monopolist interests that destroys small businesses. Both are nothing more or less than the flip side of the same coin. They allow and encourage us to argue pro-abortion vs. pro-life, open borders vs. closed borders, liberal vs. conservative, while all the time they are systematically stealing all our Rights by our tacit assent and consent.
When corporate business power becomes concentrated in the hands of a few, guess whose money ends up influencing so-called “public servants” in government (which is also a series of corporate entities) the most? You need only follow the money trails and see where high government “officials” go to “work” after their tenures in office. This will tell you who they were really working for when they were supposedly serving you and I. By the way, when you have a merging of corporate government and corporate business, you have Fascism. Didn’t our fathers and grandfathers fight a war to stop such a Fascist philosophy from taking over the world? Didn’t we also fight several other wars to supposedly stop the philosophy of Communalism from dominoing and dominating the world? Now just how and when did those two supposedly divergent philosophies merge into one and become the dominant political force it is in the world today? Answer that and you will be on the path of understanding what is really happening behind the scenes in our Nation and planet Earth today.
There are only two choices here and it is black and white no matter how much gray is painted over it. The gray we should be talking about is the so-called gray matter in our heads, otherwise we will be “seeing” it when we do decide that enough is enough. We can sit on our laurels and ignore the truth about what is going on or we, as Free Men and Woman (for a little while longer) can stand up and say no. This evil force, embodied in Fascist and Communal political philosophies cannot steal our Right to sustain our families, cannot steal our Right to Live on the land and raise our food, cannot steal our Right to choose how to take care for our Heath, cannot steal our Right to buy and sell, and cannot steal our Right to worship, …unless we allow them to. I firmly believe that God’s protection is with us, but not to the extent we might like if we do not claim the Rights and the power that is ours.
I’ve heard people say that they would simply pray for divine intervention and leave things in God’s hands. That is good to a point. I too was raised to believe that there is power in prayer and it should be an important part of our spiritual lives, but I was also raised to believe that God helps those most who help themselves. Do not misinterpret my meaning here; I do not refer to those who go out and help themselves unjustly to the labor of others or who take advantage of others, but that God expects each of us to put our hands to the till and to work and then we will enjoy the fruits of our labor.
The following is borrowed from another article by Ben Taylor not yet published. “Those who sit and pray for sustenance, may often starve, while those who till the land and plant the seeds while praying for God’s blessing on their work and their harvest will prosper and be sustained. Moses hiked up the mountain to receive The Law from The Lord; he smote the rock and then water sprang forth; David picked up that small stone, placed it in his sling and then let it fly, then Goliath fell; Jesus made himself a whip and went through the Temple swinging it and turning over tables to drive out the money changers; and he broke the loaves and the fishes into pieces and had his disciples do the same. The Lord could have performed these miracles and acts simply by his will and the speaking of a man, but he didn’t; he instead commanded physical action and then the miracle was accomplished. So pray mightily, for there is much power in your words and prayers, but get out there and beat a path around the walls of Jericho while you are doing it.
The following letter was written by a former Hillary Clinton supporter who investigated the Clinton’s connections to large multi-national agri-business cartels who care only about profits and control over the food supply. There is no other reason for “designing” and genetically engineering seeds so that they produce plants that then cannot reproduce. It is not natural and it is not God’s way.
Note: Although this particular letter is directed at the Clinton’s, remember they have their counterparts in the other party as well; both are equally to blame for what has and is taking place.
An Open Letter to Hillary Clinton from Another Wellesley College Alumna
Hillary, Will You Renounce Your Ties to Monsanto?
By Linn Cohen-Cole
Dear Hillary,
By polling logic, I should be your supporter — Democrat, woman, white, liberal. But this past summer I saw a News Hour show on farmers committing suicide in Maharastra, India, which affected me deeply. I started learning what was happening to farmers and to food and how the Clintons are connected.
The News Hour piece said Monsanto, a US agricultural corporation, hired Hollywood actors to sell illiterate farmers Bt (genetically engineered) cotton seeds, promising they'd get rich from big yields. The expensive seeds needed expensive fertilizer and pesticides (Monsanto's) and irrigation. There is no irrigation there. Crops failed. Farmers had immense debt and couldn't collect seeds to try again because Monsanto seeds are "patented" as "intellectual property").
"Genetic Engineering is often justified as a human technology, one that feeds more people with better food. Nothing could be further from the truth. With very few exceptions, the whole point of genetic engineering is to increase sales of chemicals and bio-engineered products to dependent farmers." David Ehrenfield: Professor of Biology, Rutgers University.
Monsanto has a $10 million budget and 75 person staff to prosecute farmers.
Since the late 1990s (as industrial agriculture took hold in India),166,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide and 8 million have left the land (P. Sainath, The Hindu). Farmers in Europe, Asia, Africa, Indonesia, South America, Central America and here, have all protested Monsanto and genetic engineering.
What does this have to do with you?
Your Orwellian-named "Rural Americans for Hillary" were Monsanto's lobbyists. My greater concern, though, is you former-employer, Rose Law Firm, representing Monsanto, world's largest GE (GE – genetic engineering) corporation; Tyson, world's largest meat producer; Walmart, the world's largest retailer. Rose is home to Industrial FOOD.
Rose's cozy connections: Jon Jacoby, senior at the Stephens Group – one of the largest shareholders of Tyson, Walmart, DP&L – is C.O.B. of DP&L, arranged the Wal-Mart deal. Jackson Stephens' Stephens Group staked Walton, financed Tyson. Monsanto bought DP&L. Walmart's board invited you on, Tyson executive helped you do $100,000 trade just before Bill' governorship, Jackson Stephens backed Bill for Governor, then President (donating $100,000).
Monsanto made Agent Orange, PCBs, nuclear weapons components, pesticides, and with that diverse background in death, are now "doing" food.
Bill in office:
USDA immediately significantly weakened chicken waste/contamination standards, easing Tyson's poultry-factory expansion.
1. Monsanto people were put in charge of food, …
2. FDA okayed Monsanto's rBGH (bovine growth hormone), first GE-product ever approved.
3. Despite bovine illness/death, FDA didn't recall or warn.
4. When dairymen labeled milk "rBGH-free," USDA threatened confiscation.
5. Organic food was the last way around unknown danger. FDA tried to close that escape with new "organic" standards, to include: genetic engineering of plants/animals, food irradiation , sewage sludge fertilizer.
USDA backed down from public response 20 times greater than to anything before American food:
Oils: Indian sheep died eating from Bt cotton fields. Our children eat Bt cottonseed oil in peanut butter, cookies.
Grains: 49 per cent of corn acreage planted in Bt corn in 2007. A French study indicates it causes kidney and liver toxicity. . Monsanto controls US's two main crops, soy (90% GMO, 90% of traits "belong" to Monsanto) and corn, the largest crop (60% GMO, nearly 100% Monsanto "owned" traits).
Meat: Steroids bulk athletes, Monsanto steroids fatten animals, our fattening children eat steroid-laced meats. FDA allowed "known TSE-positive (Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy Mad Cow Disease) material to be used in pet food, pig, chicken and fish feed." Monsanto's GE-hormone increases risk sick cows are entering US food chain
Poultry: USDA weakened waste/contamination standards. Waste from transnational poultry industry is now implicated as the source of bird flu. The poultry industry is using the crisis to push out small farmers.
Milk: Scientific studies indicate Monsanto's rBGH increases risks of breast cancer by up to seven-fold, increases colon, prostate cancers risks. Canada, 29 European nations, Norway, Switzerland, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa ban U.S. rBGH dairy products. Bill's USFDA put no restrictions, warning labels, or any labels.
Control out of control.
Monsanto's Terminator genes make plants sterile after one season, posing apocalyptic risk of breaking out into nature. GE breakouts have contaminated maize and weeds, already.
Monsanto, meat-packers, and the USDA are pushing NAIS (National Animal Identification System), a corporate database tracking small farmers' livestock.
Monsanto pushing state laws taking control from farmers, communities, over GE planting.
Cattle living in filth, 12,000-year-old seed loss, poultry industry implicated in bird flu, Mad Cow disease, bee colony collapse, poisoned soil, depleted water, Superweed), lawsuits against farmers, loss of family farms throughout the world, … farmers committing suicide. Industrial agriculture.
Bees and farmers, dead canaries in that mine.
Your proposed "Department of Food Safety" centralizes control over food into whose hands? Tough talk on labeling "foreign" food but Bill degraded US food and prevented minimally sane labeling. You never objected.
Monsanto uses child labor in India.
You take Monsanto donations. Blacks, our poorest group, have to eat Monsanto's steroid/hormone/antibiotic-filled GE food. You take Monsanto donations.
Who are you protecting? National Black Farmers Association, boycotting Monsanto? Babies drinking rBGH milk? Women fearing breast cancer? Despairing farmers? Suffering animals? Children fed kidney-and-liver-toxic Bt-corn?
Or Monsanto?
I am a person before I am a woman. Your gender is irrelevant. Given deadly threats to my grandchildren's future by your corporate connections (Edwards was right), I don't believe your talk of "caring" about Blacks/women/children/health/farmers/food.
I will vote for someone committed to small farmers – our ONLY real food safety. Your friends, though, are the heart of an international industrial agricultural nightmare.
Linn Cohen-Cole
Atlanta
Disclaimer. I am not a scientist. I have read for months on this subject, and am including only a tiny portion of the horrifying things I have learned. I am expressing my opinion as person and may be wrong. Perhaps things are swell out there and rBGH is fabulous and TSE-laced feed is great, and genetic engineering is the best thing since manna. But I am scared for my family and I have not only a right to say so but an obligation to do so. I am angry that Monsanto was allowed the influence it had and has done the things it definitely seems to have. I am disgusted by industrialization of every tender and beautiful part of our world and hope, for all our children's sake, we are not too late to pull back.
Additional Note From Linn Cohen-Cole:
When I originally wrote it, it was 7000 words long. A shorter version was circulated. I want to be careful it doesn't give a wrong impression in my having deleted so much to make it short enough for people to read easily. Would you do me a favor and insert this sentence near the beginning? Please, would you replace: Since the late 1990s (as industrial agriculture took hold in India),166,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide and 8 million have left the land, and it has increased since 2002 to an average of 1 every 20 minutes (P.Sainath, The Hindu). Farmers in Europe, Asia, Africa, Indonesia,South America, Central America and here, have all protested Monsanto and genetic engineering. With: Since the late 1990s (as industrial agriculture took hold in India?), 166,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide and 8 million have left the land, and it has increased since 2002 to an average of 1 every 20 minutes (P.Sainath, The Hindu). The reasons for suicides are always complex and Monsanto is not the only giant agribusiness now in India, but it is one of the largest, and the main one in Maharastra where the suicides are especially high. Farmers in Europe, Asia, Africa, Indonesia, South America, Central America and here, have all protested Monsanto and genetic engineering. Thank you. Best wishes to all of us.