Monsanto – The New Bread of Life – God? – Vandana Shiva thinks not!

I ran into Bill Moyers Journal with the Indian Activist Sandana Shiva and my third eye opened up in terms of putting the Global concept on the individual level that I try to follow and document.

But the disturbing thing is how International Corporate Agri-Business is gobbling up the third world like in India and killing off hundreds of thousands of farmers through suicide who can no longer live or compete on their small plots of once fertile and plentiful food producing land. They can’t compete with the new God Monsanto – and its patented re-definitions of Food and God.

I am getting old.  I can remember when Monsanto was a chemical company primarily into the production of linoleum. Linoleum? What’s that? Told you I was old.

But my getting old is not the issue. The issue is how the global corporations are taking the global concept to a control all level of the human existence.  Humans no longer count in the Agri-business global model.  Humans and Farmers – being tossed off the Global Corporate Spreadsheet genetically engineered at Wharton, Brown and Harvard.

Monsanto is not God! Though it is trying to play God all over the planet with its genetically altered food, patenting it and monopolizing worldwide food production in that only its patented seeds are the only seeds available now to many farmers in the third world.

That lies that genetically altered seeds produce more food, greater yield, are even believed by fools like Bill Gates of Microsoft.  Bill better get off his high horse if he genuinely wants to help humanity and not corporations.  

http://billmoyers.com/segment/vandana-shiva-on-seeds-of-humanity/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandana_Shiva

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We Shall Overcome – Human Rights – Joan Baez

Perhaps the civil rights movement was only the beginning. Human Rights as a core belief in the dignity of man, of all men and women, as a Creation of God is not only a global issue but apparently it is to anyone, who is not blind, clearly a domestic issue as well these days. 

Cordoba House - WTC - Columbia College - NYC

College and University is a place to broaden one’s knowledge of the diversity of the world in all its aspects.

Some American universities such as Harvard started out as places to study theology. While a degree in Theology at Harvard is a noteworthy thing, it does not say much about the individual that holds the degree.

Life is about Experience. The experience many had on 911 at the World Trade Center effected all of American culture including its thinking. While the theme behind 911 was anti-American, it was also anti- western Christian Culture. 911 began as a domestic American day. It ended as a day of global reflection.

The Cordoba House/Mosque complex in New York City to be built in an office tower structure of 13-15 stories sits exactly on part of the foundation stones of part of the original King’s College building – later to become Columbia University uptown. Literally, this is true.

It is rather fitting that a place, a Muslim culture place, be part of the world and or global culture and that it is to sit on a place dedicated to learning that goes back almost two hundred and fifty years. The beginnings of a Global Culture, of a new human race, I believe starts at the New World Trade Center rising from the ashes of the old.

So like the secular colleges of today, the Cordoba House/Mosque center will be a place of learning and broadening outlooks from the very narrow focus that began the day of 911. The end of that day sent us looking for many answers.

Sometimes the answers are right there in our midst. A mosque in downtown NYC is as natural as the wind as a place to be. And a place for cultural growth.

Tolerance. Learning. Diversity. Just a few global words to throw out there today.

Globish World

There is a small amount of words used as a new working business English called Globish. Globish stands for global and English.

I saw this on PBS last night. Wikipedia is split between two branches of the new language.

Globish (Nerriere)

Globish is a subset of the English language formalized by Jean-Paul Nerriere. It uses a subset of standard English grammar, and a list of 1500 English words. According to Nerriere it is "not a language" in and of itself, but rather it is the common ground that non-native English speakers adopt in the context of international business.

And:

Globish (Gogate)

Globish is an artificial language created by the Indian Madhukar Gogate using the English language and simplifying it. It was presented to "Simplified Spelling Society" of Great Britain in 1998. According its creator, it can be considered an artificial dialect of the English language, proof of the possibility of simplification of orthography and pronunciation of standard English.

With a limited vocabulary of approximately 1500 words and many connected to business terms, the world has a crude common language. Don’t know if this is good or bad toward the global cultural model but it is step in that direction. But you get the idea. FYI.

A New Global Future Priced at $35

The idea is not new. It has industrial models to draw upon.

Potentially, the way the whole human race sees itself will have profound effects into the future. This modern adaption of the computer to put in every person on the planet’s hands triggers an immeasurable amount of possibilities.

Computers have freed us from useless labor and ripped the heart out of the West’s traditional middle classes. The ability to use some of the tasks listed below is a smell of the future. Why does this idea and concept happen in India and not China? Good question? I don’t know.

Certainly India’s new middle class will expand faster than China’s class system and its recent industrial progress? Friction or cooperation is on future political and economic menus?

Individuals will now have more opportunity to define themselves against a global norm of other peoples and cultures. Peoples and cultures in some areas will dissolve away into a Global category of all things human.

Is this part of Intelligent Design and or the chaos of evolution making new species?

India's $35 PC is the Future of Computing

The Indian prototype is impressive--especially at a $35 price point. The device runs on a variation of Linux. It has no internal storage, but it is capable of storing data on a memory card. It has a built in word processor, video conferencing capabilities, and--most importantly for a cloud-based workforce--a Web browser. Oh--it can also run on solar power.


At $35, the Indian tablet is virtually disposable--far exceeding the $100 laptop developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and used in the non-profit One Laptop One Child program. In fact, in many ways the $35 tablet also makes the $500 iPad seem significantly over-priced.

Syria Bans The Veil

There would seem to be in some secular Muslim countries a global minimalist consensus existing that females should be treated with some level of equality with men. This, at least in the academic sense.

Syria bans face veils at universities

Female students wearing a full face veil will be barred from Syrian university campuses, the country's minister of higher education has said.

Ghiyath Barakat was reported to have said that the practice ran counter to the academic values and traditions of Syrian universities.

His ruling, published on the All4Syria website, was said to be in response to requests from students and parents.

The issue of full face veils has caused controversy in other countries.

While this is a small step, it is a step in the right direction for women’s rights somewhere in the middle between secular and fundamentalist Islamic nation state perspectives.

While the world will not change a great deal with this action at the universities in Syria, a secular Muslim country, it is the right start in recognizing something of a common global approach to interact with all the nations and cultures of the planet presently and into the future.

Global Culture War Continues

In my search and sometime mediocre comments on what might be an emerging global culture I am many times distracted or distraught and have to reconcile myself to the fact that the rest of the world does not see things the same way that I see things.

What might be a global culture war is going on all around us. The west, America and Europe, may have reached a brave new secular world supported by technology and science and the east may be lagging behind and or not want to join the dance with the west.

In retrospect, as the Internet and other communications become reality within reach anywhere on this planet and within seconds, maybe too much view and too much analysis does not increase the quality of life locally or globally.

I have to wonder how the young will have to deal with this not so brave new world but rather a cold push button reality.

One case in point, the war in Asia is spreading to Pakistan. It is not so much that one or several branches of local Fundamentalist Islam aka the Taliban are any real immediate danger to the United States so much as their control of Pakistan and control of a dozen odd nuclear weapons would, could radically change the face of global politics.

The US turned a blind eye and or may have added some help when Pakistan started its nuclear program while the Soviet Union was the current next door world power stuck in the quagmire of Afghanistan in the early eighties.

Now a few or even one nuke could destroy a city somewhere in the west. That Pakistan with nukes as a deterrent to the Soviet threat or India (not in our camp back then) was a temporary, now permanent, foreign policy mistake of administrations back when.

Now the CIA and the US Air Force can target any “raghead” in sight in our Asia land war run amuck.

No-name terrorists now CIA dron etargets

Once upon a time, the CIA had to know a militant's name before putting him up for a robotic targeted killing. Now, if the guy acts like a guerrilla, it's enough to call in a drone strike.

It's another sign of that a once-limited, once-covert program to off senior terrorist leaders has morphed into a full-scale -- if undeclared -- war in Pakistan. And in a war, you don't need to know the name of someone on the other side before you take a shot….

In Pakistan, however, the opposite has happened. Starting in the latter days of the Bush administration, and accelerating under the Obama presidency, drone pilots have become more and more free to launch their weapons.

The situation in Pakistan is more on a macro level. On a micro level is how a Pakistani who spent ten years in our country repaid our cultural hospitality and education with a failed attempt to bomb and kill tourists in Times Square. I should add that killing anybody in Times Square, crossroads of the world, would be an attack on the United Nations considering the variety of tourists and foreign nationals as tourists on that particular piece of Manhattan turf 24/7.

I was rather taken aback when I saw the article below. While the government is trying to look for terrorist training camps to drone out and are looking for a money man behind the attempted Times Square attack - the bottom line is that Faisal Shahzad, would be Times Square Bomber, spent about $7000 on rent, a used car and gasoline, fertilizer and firecrackers in his failed attempt.

And that in all probability, this creep was self financed by a home equity loan of $65,000 he received on his house in 2009 from Wachovia Bank.

Bizarre. Bizarre. Bizarre.

Times Square plot may have cost as little as $7K

Until that departure, there was no trail of lawsuits or missed payments indicating he was in trouble. In fact, his financial history was clean enough that Wachovia Bank gave him a $65,000 home equity line in January 2009.

I wonder why banks are still making home equity loans. I wonder why the money is not invested better elsewhere in the economy. I think that Big Banks are only an ATM or Internet push mutton robot to disperse wealth to anyone. We need small local banks to administer and make loans and mortgages. There is no local humans left in the US in the banking equation. Your local bankers used to know who you were. You were not anonymous in terms of using the banks’ local depositors' money.

That and I have to wonder why Faisal Shahzad, even if he was witness to "man’s inhumanity to man" in Pakistan, why does he see justification in trying to kill his local neighbors in Connecticut/New York in the scheme of things.

Perhaps while the global statement to “Love your Neighbor” sounds good in theory but may only work locally at best. My global vision is a farce I fear and perhaps an impossible dream as well.

Darfur - the dogs and demons of war

I see in the world press that the President of Sudan has been indicted for War Crimes in Darfur by the International Criminal Court in the Hague, Netherlands. This is a step in the right direction for the International Global approach to try and put a lid on and discourage future atrocities from happening in Sudan and elsewhere.

Bashir Defies Arrest Order on War Crime Charges

After months of deliberation, the judges charged Mr. Bashir with war crimes and crimes against humanity for playing an “essential role” in the murder, rape, torture, pillage and displacement of large numbers of civilians in Darfur. But the judges did not charge him with genocide, as the prosecutor had requested.

In issuing the order, the three judges put aside diplomatic requests for more time for peace talks and fears that the warrant would incite a violent backlash in Sudan, where 2.5 million Darfur residents have been chased from their homes and 300,000 have died in a conflict pitting non-Arab rebel groups against the Arab-dominated government and its allied militias.

Because of this international indictment, there are likely to be disruptions in humanitarian aid going into the war torn region as written in the following article, along with a synopsis of the political story behind this tragedy.

Graham: Arrest of Bashir Threatens Chaos in Sudan

“Mr. Bashir is rightly accused of great cruelty and destruction,” (Franklin) Graham writes. “But I have been able to deal with him.”

The op-ed was posted just one day before the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for President Bashir for the violence in Darfur. Bashir is charged with seven counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder, extermination, forcible transfer, torture, and rape, according to CNN.

Violence broke out in the western region of Darfur, Sudan five years ago when ethnically African Darfurians rebelled against the central Arab-dominated Khartoum government. The government, in turn, is accused of unleashing Arab nomads called janjaweed militias on Darfur civilians, resulting in more than 200,000 deaths and the displacement of 2.5 million civilians since 2003.

News of the arrest warrant for Bashir have been met with cheers from human rights groups that have long sought for greater international intervention regarding the Darfur genocide.

Save Darfur Coalition president Jerry Fowler commended the ICC for issuing the arrest warrant and called the act a “game changing moment.”

I, as a common man or global observer, do not completely know what to make of this "man's inhumanity to man" that is going on in place like Sudan. In a 10-15 second sound bite media world it is hard to get the planet’s attention about war, murder, rape, famine, overpopulation and the vestiges of the cold war in the ongoing and lively armament sales industry.

The UN ( United Nations ) is used at times to stand on a dividing line between “us and them” and to distribute basic food stuffs and aid to famine victims and war refugees. The UN can do little else unless empowered by many nations to do something more than just hand out packages after some tragedy has occured.

Under the land that is Africa there is no doubt a lot of minerals and natural resources. It is difficult at times to understand all the sides in a conflict that makes up what seems likes a civil war fighting for, in this case, limited surface resources such as water, food and grass for herding. How can so basic a human right as food and water trigger so many global conflicts and concerns? Where is there decent management and husbandry of the land?

The outside world picks a point of view that suits its own economic, political, ethnic or religious spin. Pick a side or POV. It is too complicated for a convenient ten second sound bite solution.

The people on the ground are suffering and we seem to be in the distance playing at some celestial focus, gazing out on the images of the idiot box in the living room, if we are interested at all - many are not interested sad to say.

I cannot see too clear a picture of this mess other than to agree that it is a tragic mess indeed. The conflicts being played out in Darfur so far from the central capital makes me want to make a few points which may or may not help you in forming an opinion in this human tragedy. It reminds me of the Nicaragua thing of a generation ago.

I never could figure out the linguistics (PC) of Nicaragua in the 1980’s in terms of who we (USA) were backing and who we were opposing. I still could not tell you who or what the Sandinistas or Contras were all about and that I used to watch the “Great Communicator” Ronald Reagan keeps pounding on these sound bites. This must make you think how dumb I must be.

Perhaps I knew that I had nothing to do with U.S. foreign policy in Nicaragua. It was already a crock and was decided or was a legacy going back to 1849 with shipping magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt trying to build a canal to go from the Caribbean to the Pacific ocean. If you are interesting in an offbeat movie on that historic situation, footnote, I recommend “Walker” 1987, Alex Cox Director…

"Walker", 1987, Alex Cox Director

…whereby an American mercenary walked into the civil war involving Vanderbilt, British and internal Nicaraguan interests and got himself “elected” President of the country and recognized by the U.S. government. The US foreign policy has been stuck there ever since.

So too in Sudan and Darfur, the story line must go back decades, generations and centuries and even before the European Colonial Powers started to draw lines on paper maps in London, Paris, Lisbon, and Berlin.

Part of the difficulty and reason for the present war in Iraq goes back to a fcuked up set of map lines dividing the middle east into British and French spheres of influence after the sleazy Treaty of Versailles and following the European World War One.

But Nicaragua and Iraq are not Darfur or the Sudan. I see it as a global formula or equation by which the standards set up by the major world religions - do not live up to these ideals in dealing with global situations wherever they occur. All politics are local, all beliefs are local and sad to say all mercy and justice must be local as well. Humanity is factored out in so many possible win-win global equations of the media, politics, economics etc. - or humanity is used all too often to frame a self interest agenda.

I cannot directly help cure the present Darfur genocide or whatever PC word your government or monied or cultural interests demands that you label it. It is a mess. I am a helpless bystander witness of the world stage and the world’s inability to get a little more human and economically efficient. The future of Africa and the planet may get better only if we start building a future from the zero of now.

What I would suggest in the decades to come to prevent these Keystone Cops, puppet regime forms of government in the Raped Lady = Africa, is to let big one-city countries sprawl and rule and corrupt themselves. Let a more aggressive United Nations or Capitalist Interested Corporation administer all the small towns and villages that do not get aid from any central regime in times of drought and famine.

That investment through capitalist interests in that continent could distribute wealth and profits from exploitation of natural resources and minerals. That roads, clean water and education be given global priority for a couple of decades. Then step back and decide where political and economic lines can or should be redrawn in the capitals of real world power, corporations, and local centers of common human interest.

The feudal way that Africa is still administrating itself is indirectly a threat to future world peace.

Let us start to set long term common goals in the vast regions of the continent of Africa. The age of two bit dictators and two bit capitalism is over I hope. Yeah right.

I can do little more than pray for the victims of war, make a check out to a reputable charity, and write my congressman.

God have mercy on us and God be with us all!