By:
Badlands Journal editorial board5-23-13
Read More »Genetic Engineering
The despoilers
Submitted: May 26, 2013
Our grand "stewards of the land"
Submitted: Mar 16, 2013
By:
Badlands Journal editorial boardThe continuing decline of imported and wild species of bees makes us gag at one of San Joaquin Valley agriculture's most cherished slogans: "Farmers are the best stewards of the land." Agribusiness, which we have entrusted with growing most of our food, is killing the bees that pollinate so many of the foods we eat. What is the real price for a price setting world monopoly in almonds, if during the largest annual pollination event in the world, the pollinators are destroyed?
These grand "stewarts of the land" cannot be trusted to conduct their business without destroying all that is not their business. We ought to begin thinking about bees, especially the Honey Bee, as an endangered species in need of protection from agribusiness and beekeepers by a wise governing force. Instead, we have government, governed in the instance of the bees, by agribusiness.through the land grant universities and the members of Congress that agribusiness funds. We cannot expect the scientists or the politicians to bite the hand that feeds them.
Read More »Great "stewards of the land"
Submitted: Mar 16, 2013
By:
Badlands Journal editorial board It is one of San Joaquin Valley Ag-flak's favorite slogans-- that "farmers are stewards of the land" (and therefore could not do anything wrong on the land) -- that makes us gag to relate in light of the decline of the bees, domestic and imported. It would appear that agribusiness, which we have entrusted with growing most of our food, is killing the bees that pollinate so many of the food s we eat. We take the view that agribusiness is the cause of the decline because the more dominant this passionately greedy form of agriculture has become, the more idioticly defined by the narrowest economic aims (what a price for a world monopoly in almonds if it kills the bees) it has become (monopolies can control prices).
Clearly, these "stewarts of the land" cannot be trusted to conduct their business without destroying all that is not their business. We ought to begin thinking about bees, especially the Honey Bee, as an endangered species in need of government protection from bee keepers and farmers.
Read More »Vandana Shiva: Violence against women, the earth, seed and farmers
Submitted: Mar 09, 2013
By:
Badlands Journal editorial board3-8-13
Democracy Now!
Vandana Shiva on Int’l Women’s Day: "Capitalist Patriarchy Has Aggravated Violence Against Women"
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/8/vandana_shiva_on_intl_womens_day
AMY GOODMAN: We continue our conversation on this International Women’s Day with world-renowned feminist, activist, thinker from India, Dr. Vandana Shiva. India witnessed nationwide protests earlier this year following the brutal gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old student in Delhi in December. The rape brought attention to other instances of sexual violence in India, where one woman is raped every 20 minutes, according to the national crime registry there. The conviction rates in the rape cases in India have decreased from 46 percent in 1971 to 26 percent in 2012.
To talk more about the significance of International Women’s Day, we go to Los Angeles to speak with Vandana Shiva, where she’s on tour right now. She’s the author of many books, including Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace, Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development. Her most recent book is Making Peace with the Earth.
Vandana, welcome to Democracy Now! As you travel in the United States from India right now—you’re an environmental leader, you’re a feminist, you’re a scientist—what is your message on this International Women’s Day?
UC and genetic engineering
Submitted: Feb 26, 2013
By:
Badlands Journal editorial boardA brilliant article on UC's genetic engineering patents and its legal shenanigans. -- BLJ
2-26-13
Pueblo Lands
UC: A University, or a Biotech Company?
Vernon Bowman
http://darwinbondgraham.wordpress.com/
Last month the University of California intervened in a high stakes U.S. Supreme Court case on the side of the agribusiness giant Monsanto Company by filing an amicus brief stating that the university would be harmed materially if Monsanto doesn’t prevail. On the receiving end of UC’s legal argument is Vernon Bowman, a 75 year-old grain farmer from southern Indiana who has been battling Monsanto in court for several years now. It was already a David v. Goliath kind of fight, pitting an elderly guy in overalls against a global corporation with a bottomless pocket for legal expenses; the entry of UC into the court’s deliberations makes that two Goliaths.
Quote of the Week, February 10, 2013
Submitted: Feb 13, 2013
THERE ARE LIMITS!!!
Submitted: Jan 25, 2013
By:
Badlands Journal editorial boardAs has been said with increasing force in the American economy by responsible critics for the last 40 years: THERE ARE LIMITS!
Badlands Journal editorial board
1-24-13
Paul Craig Roberts
Institute for Political Economy
Nature’s Capital Is The Limiting Resource
Life will perish as the environment perishes
21st century ecological economist
Paul Craig Roberts
Only in science fiction can humans escape the consequences of destroying their own habitat. In Robert A. Heinlein’s Time Enough For Love, the “Great Diaspora of the Human Race” began “more than two millennia ago” and has spread to more than “two thousand colonized planets.” The once “lovely green planet” Earth is a slum planet barely able to support life where only the poorest live, Earth’s natural capital having been consumed over two thousand years ago. Humans have found the ability to rejuvenate themselves and to live almost endless lives, but they are unable to rejuvenate the planets whose natural capital they devour. Humans have not encountered “one race as mean, as nasty, as deadly as our own.” As homo sapiens use up the environments of colonized planets, “human intergalactic colony ships are already headed out into the Endless Deeps,” leaving their ruins behind them.
If farmers arn't stupid ....
Submitted: Dec 17, 2012
By:
Badlands Journal editorial boardSo, the “Farmer Assurance“ thing – using farmers as their poster children — is
quite disingenuous. The biotech industry cares about farmers because farmers are their meal ticket.
Farmers are not stupid; we've learned that the promises of biotech were short
lived at best and to various degrees, simply false. The new GE crops are
basically the old GE crops, just redesigned to resist different, more toxic
herbicides while having become less effective at killing insect pests...Goodman, 12-14-12
If farmers aren't stupid, why have they planted GE crops from Saskachewan to Argentina? Why do Monsanto and their fellows in the Biotech Industry Association figure it is worth millions in bribes to Congress to make official the federal government failure of oversight concerning the health and environmental damage done by GE crops? Given that they know their business and have test marketed SWAT teams invading alleged seed saving farms and have streamlined their legal and propaganda operations to a point far more effective than their science ever was, the only way to figure their behavior is that they are betting on a near sure thing: the stupidity of farmers.
Read More »Fill in the blanks
Submitted: Dec 10, 2012
By:
Badlands Journal editorial board
________ has to grow (or else it is in crisis) and its very logic and motivated force impels growth.
Fill in the blanks
Submitted: Dec 10, 2012
By:
Badlands Journal editorial board
________ has to grow (or else it is in crisis) and its very logic and motivated force impels growth.
