You mean these huge seed companies don’t give seed away?? Shocking!

From here:

The report noted that three big companies now control more than half of the global seed market – a position that has sent prices soaring. The report said the average cost of planting an acre of soybeans had risen 325% between 1995 and 2011.

I thought the seed companies were in this game because they love seed and they want to help other folks out.

They’re just trying to corner the market on seed to make money?  That’s fucked up.

I feel really disillusioned by this, but I’m not sure what to do because the Supreme Court which is one of our ‘protectors’ and the most noble of the three branches of our fine government, voted 9-0 to continue this trend of corporate ownership of seed.

They must feel like they’re looking out for us.

 

Our corporate kangaroo Supreme Court

From here:

In an unanimous ruling written by Justice Elena Kagan, the court ruled that the farmer, Vernon Bowman, had infringed on Monsanto’s patent for its GM soybeans when he bought some of those seeds from a local grain elevator and planted them for a second, late-season crop. Monsanto sued, arguing that Bowman had signed a contract when he initially bought the Roundup Ready soybeans in the spring, agreeing not to save any of the harvest for replanting. The seeds are genetically modified to be resistant to Roundup Ready weedkiller.

God bless this unanimous verdict!

I think it’s great one company wants to control all our seeds.  It keeps things more organized and it’s very profitable.

I get worried about nature’s ability to keep the seeds floating around and propagating themselves as they have for however many hundreds of millions of years they’ve been at it.

Sloppy ass, unprofitable nature, Monsanto is gonna take care of you.

 

War machine requires steady stream of enemies and cash

From here:

Excerpt 1:

“Abroad, new threats are rising, even as old threats become more menacing,” said Hewson, speaking at Lockheed’s annual Media Day event in Northern Virginia. “Iran, we know, edges closer to nuclear statehood, and North Korea has already achieved it. The list of threats goes on and on.”

Her not-so-subtle message: It’s a bad time to slash defense spending.

Excerpt 2:

Last year, (Former Lockheed Martin chairman — my add) Stevens described sequestration as a “blunt-force trauma” and suggested the cuts could force Lockheed to lay off 10,000 employees. So far, the company has let go about 50 employees as a result of the automatic cuts, which began taking effect on March 1, Hewson said on Tuesday.

 Lies too.  Don’t forget the lies.  You have to lie about the strength of our enemies so you can sell more weapons.  That happened all through the Cold War.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Al Qaeda was never more than 500 really pissed off dudes sprinkled across the globe.

But hey, we’ll never know, we’re just here to feed the war pigs.

Cornel West’s hammer hits nail right on head

From here:

West cited the need for a “democratic counterweight” against what he described as three dominant tendencies on the globe: “financializing, privatizing and militarizing.” He warned that as long as we’re stuck with an “empty” and “shallow” public sphere that has been “colonized” by the “oligarchs at the top,” we’re most certainly headed towards fascism. West remarked that the assassination of citizens without due process and other recent trends paint a grim picture of the effectiveness of our institutions.

Empty and shallow?  He’s being kind.

It’s a fucking wasteland.  You can’t get a conversation going unless you’re a hooker or you have a big bag of dope.

Is there anybody out there?

 

Fight for our country and become a debt slave

From here:

In June 2011, when Levon Tyler, a 37-year-old staff sergeant in the Marines, walked into Smart Choice Title Loans in Columbia, S.C., it was the first time he’d ever gone to such a place, he said. But his bills were mounting. He needed cash right away.

Smart Choice agreed to lend him $1,600. In return, Tyler handed over the title to his 1998 Ford SUV and a copy of his keys. Tyler recalled the saleswoman telling him he’d probably be able to pay off the loan in a year. He said he did not scrutinize the contract he signed that day.

If he had, Tyler would have seen that in exchange for that $1,600, he’d agreed to pay a total of $17,228 over two and a half years. The loan’s annual percentage rate, which includes interest and fees, was 400 percent.

1.  Only in America!
2.  Collective low self-esteem in action.
3.  We’re all on the same side.
4.  Greatest country the planet has ever seen.
5.  War is a scam.
6.  Capitalism is a predatory system.

Wow, this story encapsulates most of the key points of my blog.

 

I guess the po po don’t like being watched either

From here:

Following the death of father of four, David Sal Silva last week, his family’s attorneys are calling for police to release bystander video evidence that reportedly shows California Highway Patrol officers brutally beating the 33-year-old. A video from a surveillance camera (which does not show the scene close up) has been released and shows the man repeatedly struck with a baton.

The police confiscated this bystander video evidence.

Is that legal?  It certainly doesn’t sound fair to have the police on one side of the cameras and then when it doesn’t look good for them they get to confiscate the footage.

What happened to what’s good for the peasant is good for the po po?

A fantastic nugget of pro-corporate sociopath propaganda

From here:

Recently, Glencore Xstrata PC CEO Ivan Glasenberg argued that executives who start to focus on family and hobbies will find themselves undercut and replaced by ones who don’t.

It’s easy to dismiss these attitudes as outdated, macho, and unreasonable. But it’s possible that people seeking work-life balance are just avoiding finding a way to work extremely hard and be very happy about it.

Marty Nemko, a career coach, author, columnist, and radio host, argues that the most successful and contented people prefer a heavily work-centric life over work-life balance.

“The real winners of the world, the people that are the most productive, think that this notion of work-life balance is grossly overrated,” Nemko told Business Insider. “Most of the highly successful and not-burned out people I know work single-mindendly towards a goal they think is important, whether it’s developing a new piece of software, inventing something, or a cardiologist who’s seeing patients on nights and weekends instead of playing Monopoly with his kids on the weekend.”

The real winners of the world are, in my opinion, the ones most responsible for ruining the world and making it the toilet that it is.  I know this would come as a shock to these folks who think they are improving my life, but I don’t see it that way.

 

 

 

What folks in power don’t understand

From Wikileaks dude here:

There will always be people within the system that have an agenda to defy authority.

 

God, I hope Henry Kissinger dies soon

From here:

In 1975 Kissinger during a conversation with the US ambassador to Turkey and two Turkish and Cypriot diplomats assured his hosts that he could work around an official arms embargo then in effect. He is quoted in the documents as saying: “Before the Freedom of Information Act, I used to say at meetings, ‘The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer.’ [laughter] But since the Freedom of Information Act, I’m afraid to say things like that.”

One of our most senior and hallowed American fascists.

The world will be a better place when he’s gone.

For God’s sake he lost $6.5 billion dollars

From here:

THE Jamie Dimon lynch mob is growing. It calls for the separation of the role of chairman and chief executive officer, attacking him for holding both at JPMorgan Chase.

I have studied corporate governance for 35 years, and I have come across no evidence to suggest that anything would be gained by separating those roles.

I think Mr. Corporate Governance New York Times guy should take his 35 years of experience and shove them up his ass.

When people fuck up, they should be punished.  Even if they’re very wealthy, Wall Street sociopaths like Mr. Dimon.

This guy lost $6.5 billion dollars and he gets a slap on the wrist.  Fuck that, you take away one of his titles and buck him down like the rest of us.

Yet another example of two sets of rules — one for the honchos one for the peasants.