Friday, May 24, 2013

Frankenfoods............

Gotta Love the Internet………

This is aimed at no one person in particular. No one reads my blog anyway so it is a moot point.

Ten years ago Wifey and I were laying in bed listening to the shortwave radio. It was a broadcast from KOL The Voice of Israel. One of their top news stories was where a group of protesters was savagely beaten in the street for protesting the the planting of "Frankenfoods" on some of the Israeli farms inside the Gaza region.

"Frankenfood" is a made up scare word intended to frighten people away from genetically altered food sources. I guess the thought of a tomato in your BLT being modified so it resists fungal infection is a bad thing.

The people who beat them senseless, I think some were killed, were starving people who needed the increased food production to keep their families alive. Apparently the wheat and corn had been modified to grow in drier climates allowing higher crop yields per acre of cultivated produce.

Insecticides are going to kill everyone on the planet. We can't allow them to be used on our foods. Tell that to the hundreds of millions of people, human beings just like you and me, who have died from Malaria since DDT was banned. Just wait till Ebola mutates and is spread by mosquitoes. I'll bet you would love to have planes flying over your house with a few gallons of insecticide then.

Oil drilling and production in the Gulf of Mexico is dangerous and could potentially damage the environment. Yup. Too bad. All the tree hugging idiots who believe this need to wonder what would happen if BP said "Let's just not export any more oil to America. Let's not even produce any there either". Damn that would be funny. A calamity but funny no less.

The point being is that there is balance that needs to be struck between environmental concerns and societal needs. From food to oil, water to chemicals. There are no right answers. Just the most logical solutions. Becoming an extremest on anything should require you to do a little background work on both sides of the issue. The last thing you want to do is look like a fool when you go into battle for an ideal and not understand both sides.

Monsanto is a gigantic corporation who is deeply involved in producing genetically modified seeds for crop production. They also made Agent Orange during the Vietnam War and made the first plastic Coca-Cola bottle called the "Easy-Goer". The coke bottle plastic was later found to have a carcinogenic compound in it and was subsequently banned for human use. They didn't know it was bad when they produced it. Kind of like no one knew 75 years ago cigarettes were bad for you.

Yeah? So what. IBM, Smith Corona, Underwood Typewriters, International Postal Meter and General Motors made rifles that Americans killed people with in two world wars. Should you be persecuted because Mitsubishi made the Famous Japanese Zero fighter plane that killed thousands of American soldiers? The Same Mitsubishi piece of crap you drive to work everyday in.

People need to chill out and study the causes they want to get involved with before they launch into a dithyramb on the internet in front of potentially billions of people. Most of the time you will find that your opinion or cause is tainted by where you live and your current situation.

Sitting in your nice clothes, in your Freon cooled house, typing on your electric powered computer which is made mostly from petrochemical plastic, drinking a Coke out of a bottle delivered to the store by trucks that run on diesel fuel……. Have you got the point yet or do I need to type for another two hours about your hypocrisy?

Sorry about the rant. I think my blood sugar is low. I hope it's OK if I go take a sugar pill made from genetically modified corn sugar…………

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