by S. Marks
Ironically, there is much to be gained from the devastation of the US economy. Money has proved a false god. Others control it and buy democracy with it - courts, Congress, presidents, agencies. Corporate advertising wears thin. Is the new car model in the ad fun to drive past shuttered businesses and homeless people on the street?
A Great Age of Greed was sold to everyone via corporate media - want more, remodel yet again, be cool, faster, faster. Women who forwent extra income to stay home with their children were made to feel worthless, those going to work encouraged into an orgy of purchases to expiate guilt toward children they'd left. Children were taught to hunger for things, and then for new things. Everything, including sexuality, was commodified. The models for behavior became paid models, the dreams - those engineered by corporate executives with long term plans for how to bilk the society by breaking down all values that defended against excess and greed.
As all that "Trump"ed up excess now collapses into joblessness and homelessness, thanks to bank and corporate theft, what emerges from the rubble? Belief in something larger than ourselves - family, courage, nature, sharing, community, love .... All are there, none having "dropped in value," as material things do. They are the true riches in life, waiting to shelter everyone.
With all that has been lost, people are rethinking jobs dependent on others and what most simply provides enough to support life and many are seeing it comes down to the very basics - the earth and food. When people grow their own food and share with neighbors, they walk away from a money economy controlled by others. They do not pay for food and are not touched by food price rises, and they automatically protect their health. In all this, they become more connected to neighbors and to nature, increasingly skilled in self-sufficiency, and freer as people. This shift to simpler lives has so much offer, an increasing number of people are
choosing it voluntarily and finding happiness.
The corporations are aware that if people can grow their own food and look after their health through good food, their investments in agribusiness and processed food and pharmaceuticals will wither. People dependent on supermarkets mean profit and as well as ill health and that in itself is worth a fortune. And people raising their own food, closely connected to neighbors, and with a strong sense of community values, are not the passive and ignorant consumers corporations depend on for sales.
To ensure that stealing homes and jobs will force people into greater dependency and helplessness, rather than toward a free life, agribusiness, the food industry and the pharmaceutical industry (in many ways, indistinguishable) have introduced "food safety" bills into Congress that would shut off everyone's means to look after themselves, through food and nutritional health.
This article cannot begin to give adequate detail on
how disturbing these bills are (e.g. threat to farmers, to gardens, to animals, to supplements, to human rights, to constitutional law).
"If accepted [S 510] would preclude the public's right to grow, own, trade, transport, share, feed and eat each and every food that nature makes. It will become the most offensive authority against the cultivation, trade and consumption of food and agricultural products of one's choice. It will be unconstitutional and contrary to natural law or, if you like, the will of God." ~Dr. Shiv Chopra, Canada Health whistleblower
Suffice to say, these are corporate bills and the corporations are at a crossroads in history and know it. Human beings have learned they are being made sick from toxic corporate products (e.g. food, drugs, vaccines, pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, housing materials, plastics) and are sick of it. They understand that health comes from clean food which comes
only from clean and humane sources - all of them non-corporate. Corporations offer unclean, unsafe food and sickness, so people are increasingly buying directly from farmers and growing their own food. Corporate profit has no place in either. Rather than allow themselves to be bypassed, the only option the corporations have is to remove all other options (the decent ones) from the public, leaving only corporate products, which, in medicine, they are pushing through
faked pandemics and behind the scenes state legislators to impose mandates.
From the public already robbed of jobs and homes, the corporations are set to steal the very basics of life now - food and health. They have arranged to end access to a known (but suppressed) cures for cancer and other diseases, and to safe food itself. The "food safety" bills - S 510 and S 3767 - would do both.
The public is on the cusp of a chance for a full and happy life of good food and assured health, and the freedom both imply. Or they face corporate control over their lives and
premature deaths.
With such a clear alternative and so much good to be had, perhaps people will begin informing every possible person they know, so each person can in turn reach hundreds of others, and everyone can call and then continue calling Senators and emailing Senators (on their own websites) and faxing them.
No one should solely rely on organizations and "clicks" to do this work for them because many organizations that may sound "pro-people" receive funding from the very corporations and bankers behind these bills. Using organizations' "click system" is only all safe if it comes on top of each person's personal efforts to reach as many friends and family and colleagues as possible, and then to reach Senators on one's own.