India & French elections, Marriage, Law, Culture, Monsanto and Technology
5/20/12
Dear Purnima,
Some ugly news out of India and the role the Times of India played in falsely given a positive spin to the woes of cotton farmers who had chosen to plant Monsanto GM cotton.
I think Monsanto and the other GM seed producers will prove to be the scourge of the planet. As one poster puts it, “If the world doesn’t destroy Monsanto, Monsanto will destroy the world !”
Bay area here I come. I’m going to make a quick trip to the States in two weeks to see my two sons. The youngest, the one who is the Navy pilot.
Roger
Dear Roger,
Back to India French elections, who is Hollande and how come no one seems to have heard of him outside France? How did he swing the vote and wrestle it out of your much-in- the-news, red carpet, bling bling Prez? Would love to hear all about him not from the “feeder stations/media” , but from you someone who has been so intrinsically entwined with France and can translate it along with all the cultural nuances into English.
Talking about the media, they seem to be on a suicide mission to extinguish themselves. Their credibility has already been seriously eroded and most of the youth are veering away from the conventional media outlets looking for bloodspots, tweets from the ground, and sources online to get a true snapshot of the current news. These conventional media outlets are already being looked upon as secondary sources to fill in the gaps or as an alternate opinion.
The tragedy of the Indian farmers who are so tied to their land and all the vagaries that afflict it, like drought, inadequate monsoon rains, pestilence, crop failure and inadequate irrigation leaving them at the mercy of those that lend the funds/technology to tide them through the difficult times. However, in the instance of money lenders or lending organizations, India has learnt from a long and tumultuous history going back to the Bengal famine of 1770 and The British East India Company’s policies in Bengal which resulted in the death of ten million people due to the farmers being compelled to plant the cash rich crop indigo to suit the companies trading requirements instead of the staple of rice.
See below The Bengal Famine:
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1770)
India, recognizing the oppressive role of these moneylenders through its history has made some provisions to supervise and supplement the same services at subsidized rates, however, the issue of Monsanto and technology is a brand new one and it appears that like The Bengal Famine, this lesson will have to be learnt in blood. The whole idea of the fast developing field of genetic technology, gene splicing, cloning, drug resistant crops, cows that are cloned for their copious milk production and man made meat which is fast becoming a norm the food industry, is an idea that is not comprehended by the leaders and judiciary of even the most powerful and wealthy nations of the world where there “Gargantuan Monstro-santos” lie. Yes, Monstrosantos, in the plural representing these ginormous corporations that are on the cutting edge of technology and are running off the with cake and pastry because no one is around, aware or able to put in the stops guide them encourage the commerce but institute the safeguards.Thus they remain unrecognized and little understood by the people of the nations of source, and thus are given a free reign to go forth and colonize the world where the Europeans left off and since the technology is developing faster that most are capable of understanding even one from my position (one that is interested and attempts to remain upto speed on current tech developments) I can safely say that the way laws of nations are currently designed, they remain inadequate even incompetent to address the impending issues of today and tomorrow. This is a topic I will leave suspended until a time where we can have a leisurely long lunch interlaced with an animated discussion on Law, Technology and Monstrosantos.
Moving from Europe to North America and your elections…did I hear correctly that Obama has come out in public supporting gay marriage? This is incredible…incredibly brave! I must admit that for the first time in over a decade I am sitting up straight and listening. The conservative core of the US who seems to be wielding the reigns are being thrown a challenge and gladiator Obama has finally put himself into the stadium. This has changed me from a cautiously supportive neutral party to a front row cheerleader. Obama with this statement has stepped out of the mould and in my opinion supported the core idea of freedom…The Freedom to Love upon which the nation is founded. Let me now take a step back and put this all into a legal perspective, what i mean by The Freedom to Love is the freedom to love between two “capable” consenting adults. Please understand this is a tier below “competent” which would imply average IQ, mental and motor abilities. If two persons who are capable of expressing and reciprocating wish to be conjoined and intimate taking on the world as a unit, whether by working, loving, paying taxes, or bedridden in their nursing homes with their few years and their last few grey cells or even handicapped in any other form. How can any government, structure or social organization deny two people the right to this very human trait of love and intimacy especially where they are crying out to be accepted within the fold of society willing to contribute towards it as a unit (joint taxes) merging into it and expressing themselves as an integral component of it. In the eyes of a secular sovereign state, that has the duty to be fair and just towards its citizens how would it assess the sincerity of a marriage performed and sanctioned by religious authorities as a true marriage to be incorporated in to the register of the state where the marriage might be purely premised on monetary considerations between two persons incapable of even physical intimacy and far removed from love ( as we have seen in numerous celebrity unions) , and deny one between two sincere capable consenting adults that wish to live, love and work together to be an integral piece of our social fabric. The primary factor motivating marriages of the past, ie children, has been already nullified by Technology. The world of today does not require a union of two opposite sexes in order to produce children, in fact it doesn’t even require copulation making immaculate conception a reality. In agriculture things have gone way beyond even the human spectrum opening life to the cloning/self replicating process. What then forms the basis of a marriage, in my opinion it is love, respect, and the sincere commitment to be there for each other until “death do us part”. This ironically is from one who has just been through an acrimonious divorce but in all sincerity held on where most would have long dropped off…the last twelve long years!
Before I say au revoir, I would like to insert yet another idea, albeit a bizarre one into your mind and anxiously await the response: Roger, do you suppose the Earth is trying to tell us something as we cross the six billion persons barrier? Is it possible perhaps that we are all more interconnected with the earth, soil and stars than we realize? Do you suppose the Earth, soil and stars are telling us we have reached full capacity and the Earth together with all it’s resources is incapable of supporting the rapidly accelerating human explosion. Do you suppose that in order to balance this human explosion there are some subliminal changes taking place at our core/genetic levels firing messages to manage this explosive growth. Are we seeing more pairing between same sexes as evolutions answer to restore this balance. If so, do we have the social and legal tools to deal with it, to deal with this possible evolutionary change and the technology that is nullifying it?
I return you from the land of sic-fi to your lovely home in France and look forward to hearing from you very very soon.
Love and hugs to all. Do pass my kisses onto all the cute seals of Newport (bring the shiniest back for me)!
Purnima
Dear Purnima,
I have a million, trillion things to write and no time to do it. I leave in the morning for Frankfurt/Boston and all those good looking Navy Seals in Newport, and I still haven’t finished packing yet. I’m been rushing like mad to get a few terribly necessary things done before it gets too late, but I have to get up around five to make it to the airport before the morning traffic jams start.
You really did hit it on the head with your comments about our tried and trusted MSM. After the so-called “Newspaper of record”, the NY Times, sold the American people such a load of crap about the necessity for going to war with Iraq, I think a lot people have begun to seriously question the true nature of corporate and sponsor controlled big media outlets. One gets very suspicious about what one reads any more, and with the exception of a few trusted and tried names among journalists and freelance reporters, and some very well informed bloggers, it’s a scary jungle out there.
I’ll give you my take on the French elections when I get a few minutes to write from Newport. I’m overjoyed that Sarkozy has been put out to pasture (He is relaxing and “recharging his batteries” right now in a spacious and luxurious palace somewhere in Morocco, undoubtedly the guest of one of his richissisme buddies. Hollande took the train to a high-level meeting in Bruxelles today. When Sarkozy went to such meetings, he always took two very expensive planes, one for himself, I guess, and one for his entourage and reporters (he even had a bathtub installed in Sarko 1, which caused all kinds of technical problems, not to mention needless expense).
And your intriguing thought about Nature perhaps taking matters into her own hands by favoring same-sex marriages (Yes, Obama really did, quite courageously, come out in favor of gay marriage last week) in order to deal with the population explosion. I remember back in the 1970’s reading Paul Erlich’s fascinating book “The Population Bomb” and thinking then that it wouldn’t be too far down the line before our poor planet had totally exhausted all its possibilities for supporting an increasingly large, and wasteful, mass of humanity. I doubt very much whether I will be around to witness much that the future has in store for us, but I fear for our children and grand-children. It’s not going to be a pretty picture, I’m afraid. There was a report on the BBC this morning about the ever-increasing and alarming rate at which water supplies are dwindling in many parts of the world. All we need now is water wars on top of wars for oil and energy supplies.
I’ll think of you on my trip, especially when I’m in CA. More very soon from the good old US of A (that sounds so very corny !)
Giant hugs,
Roger
PURNIMA VISWANATHAN
Whodunnit: Blogger/Writer/CyberSmurf 