Clintons and Monsanto--a match made in hell

Well.

I hinted back in January about Hillary Clinton's shady choice to align herself with Joy Philipi, the fourth-generation "family farmer" whose hog farm is home about 2,000 unfortunate pigs. Philipi is also the former president of the National Pork Council, a "poster organization for corporate agriculture." (If you are unfamiliar with industrial pork production, you might take a painful look at this provocative piece that Rolling Stone put out in late 2006. Warning: this will likely put you off bacon for awhile, or at least have you running for the nearest small family farm).

Now, even more damning ties to agribiz are popping up--this week, the second of two scathing open letters to Senator Clinton, written by former supporter and fellow Wellesley alum Linn Cohen-Cole hit the internets (read the first here). Prompted by an emotional reaction to a PBS special on farmer suicides in India (the result of farmers being tricked into buying expensive biotech rice, which didn't grow, leaving the farmers desperate, starving, and drowning in debt), Cohen-Cole spent the last few months digging up information on Clinton's ties to Monsanto, the biotech company that sold the GM rice to the Indian farmers. And she did a bang-up job--these letters are full of juicy (and scary) links that read like a primer on Monsanto's evil doings--of connecting the dots.

Sigh. I can't say that I'm shocked as much as saddened by this information. Sometimes it really does seem like we're just fucked--I doubt that Obama's nose is much cleaner than Hillary's--and even if by some miracle, Monsanto went out of business today, their GM seeds would continue to drift through the air, contaminating natural crops, and the chemicals they've tricked and bullied farmers around the globe into buying would continue to leach into ground waters and otherwise sicken us.

If you don't know much about Monsanto, and most people don't--they spend about $50 million in PR every year to keep us misinformed--they are the evil scientists who brought us DDT (outlawed in the 1970s, but due to a long half-life, still sickening people around the globe), rBGH and Agent Orange. And they are as powerful and insidious as they are tricky and ruthless. Right now, Monsanto is fighting on a state-by-state level to keep family farmers from labeling their dairy products "rBGH-free." They also make massive donations to university agriculture programs, but only if they're doing biotech research. And (shudder) who knows what those crazy fuckers are cooking up these days.

A few years ago my dad, who was drafted into the Navy during the Vietnam War, joined the ranks of thousands of fellow veterans who've developed prostate cancer since being exposed to Agent Orange while serving in that conflict. Of course, prostate cancer is not the only increased health risk for vets, and things are even worse for the Vietnamese still living with contamination, over 3 million of whom suffer its consequences (cancers, diabetes, spina bifida and other birth defects) today. In the 1973 Peace Accords at the end of the war, Nixon acknowledged America's responsibility for Agent Orange's destructive impact and promised $3 billion in reparations to the devastated country.

But the US has yet to cough up a dime of that sum (and needless to say, neither has Monsanto). If you are of a mind to take action on the Agent Orange issue, check out the Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign.

To learn more about politicians with ties to Monsatan (including Clarence Thomas, Jon Ashcroft, Donald Rumsfeld, and former Secretary of Agriculture Anne Veneman) and see what else you can do, check out the Organic Consumers' Association's Millions Against Monsanto campaign.

What else can you do? Support your local small-scale family farmers. Get yourself some organic/heirloom seeds, share them with your friends, tend them carefully, doing your best to protect them from GM contamination, and save them, Lorax-style. They are the best hope we got, as far as this mouthy femme can see.

Home Sweet Home

Mr. Man and I actually got home on the 29th, but the jet lag, the overdue spiritual cleansing of the house (which up until just before I moved in, also housed a crazy bitch who I won't comment on here but suffice it to say had left something of a bad air in the place), a long, wonderful visit with two of his besties, getting back to work (sorta) and a day or two of overdue processing (phew!) really took it out of me and it's only now that I remembered that I started a blog last year. Oops.

Anyhoo, my trip home was a little depressing--I hail from Western Washington State, an area which was ravaged by floods in early December. Although the closest acquaintances of mine to be personally affected by the flood was the cuh-razy sister of my "estranged" sister-in-law and the new-ish boyfriend (who I'm not quite sure about) of one of my besties, and the freeway and most public areas had been cleaned up pretty good, there was a definite air of depression and loss in Lewis County. Also, my little brother's wife (the estranged sis-in-law, who I love--the "estranged" term was her own, and tongue-in-cheek, though I can tell she feels bad for having done by brother so wrong) left him last summer, and although my adorable neices are dealing and I think they'll be fine, I feel bad for my bro and just wish the whole thing had gone differently.

On top of that, a truly estranged friend of his and mine passed away and we skipped out on the service, which I think is fine--the deceased, a drug addict from way back, had fucked my brother over in some unforgivable ways, which complicated the "grieving" process. I'm not saying that we should or shouldn't have gone to the funeral--I think there are lots of ways to say goodbye to someone, and lots of people piss people off before they die--but the whole thing took me back to an even sadder time, when my brother was a junkie and made me reflect on what kinds of chances this guy ever had, which were not many. Erk.

The day after Xmas I flew to Denver to meet Mr. Man's mother, brother and brother's girlfriend. Which went ok, in spite of the fact that the four of them had spent most of the previous six days together, and his mom, like my own, is a pretty tough case. His brother's girlfriend seemed to have suffered the most stress, which resulted in her hiding in their bedroom the length of my visit and saying about three words to me the entire time I was there. Which made for some uncomfortable moments. Erk again.

So talk about PHSD (post holiday stress disorder)! It was really good, after all of that, to get back to our own little house. We finally got some decent food (the families don't know how to eat anything but processed yuckiness that Hillary Clinton endorses) and cleansed the place in our birthday suits, and then welcomed our friends to the Charm by taking them to a fabulous New Year's Party, held by our best new couple friends (we seem to have hit the equivalent of a queer networking gold vein with this couple, who we also adore--the party was crawling with adorable and brilliant queers). And although we are both still suffering some of the fallout of PHSD, and getting back into the swing of domestic bliss, I am wicked glad to be sat on a comfy couch, free of all things familial (except the pet-daughters) next to the best boyfriend money could buy.

Happy New Year.