21st Century Progressivism

Category: Protecting Mother Earth

Protecting Mother Earth is a priority in our Season of Creation. If we are protecting Mother Earth, we will also be protecting the human race. This includes addressing the food systems that provide daily sustenance. The main enemy to this agenda today is war and its effects on human sustenance, both now and in the future. For example, white phosphorus dropped on ‘enemy’ populations destroys human lives in the short term and in the long term, it destroys the source of the human sustenance– farmland.

  • The Acoustic Resonance Loop

    Reading Time: 8 minutes

    1. Clearance of the Acoustic Sanctuary (Symphonic Edit)

    Every systemized empire in human history relies on a supreme, foundational illusion: that its power is cosmic, permanent, and absolute. To enforce this fiction, the modern corporate state surrounds us with bloodless, text-obsessed registries—central banks, real-estate title deeds, statutory codes, and the flashing sensory overload of media screens. We are conditioned to believe that human society is an artificial platform that can only be held together by a top-down manager holding a pen. But this illusion is challenged by the acoustic resonance loop.

    Beneath this heavy asphalt of paper and pixels, the human inheritance remains. We have argued that it is an ever-present spirit that cannot be audited. This article will describe one of its attributes; it seems to carry a raw acoustic frequency. In this series and in our Master Directory, The Corporate Enclosure of Reality: The Thousand-Year Pipeline of the State Spreadsheet, we document the presence and importance of this frequency by observing the machine’s fear of it.

    The Imperial Machine has demonstrated this fear all through history by violently clearing the physical attributes of a land, the language and the customs of its inhabitants. It even clears the inhabitants themselves. One way to explain this behavior is the machine’s desire to replace authentic human community with an artificial version that will allow extraction.

    But regardless of the motive, the machine inevitably tries to silence this acoustic connection between a people and their land. Whatever reason is given for this behavior, it suggests an invisible metaphysical battle. Long before the British arrived, the Roman military had already targeted the pre-English bedrock of the island for this exact reason.

    The Druids at Anglesey (60 CE)

    In the year 60 CE, the Roman Governor Gaius Suetonius Paulinus launched a targeted, scorched-earth military campaign to completely liquidate the Druidic sanctuary on the island of Mona (modern-day Anglesey). This community maintained a strict, absolute ban on writing down their laws, ensuring that justice remained a living, face-to-face relationship. In that way they were assured that no elite scribe could manipulate their foundational beliefs and practices from a distant office. We can guess the source of their laws and customs by the way the community at Anglesey resisted, and how this resistance affected the Romans.

    When the Roman legions hit the shores, they faced a wall of pure acoustic resistance. The Druids and their people stood in absolute, horizontal unity against the invaders. Cornelius Tacitus documented the scene on the beach, noting how the Roman legionaries were initially paralyzed by the sound of the native defenders. The legionaries were confronted by warriors and screaming women waving brands, and Druids lifting their hands to the sky, pouring forth the unwritten voice of the landscape to hold back the machine.

    “All around, the Druids, lifting up their hands to heaven, and pouring forth dreadful imprecations, scared our soldiers by the unfamiliar sight, so that, as if their limbs were paralyzed, they stood motionless.”

    The Machine’s Metaphysical Pretensions

    The Romans killed the people and cut down the living trees. Perhaps their aim was to clear a space for their written property book, or sell the lumber, or both. But this action was so excessively cruel and thorough that mundane explanations have the character of a rationalization. The underlying motive was the destruction of a way of life–the people, the language and the trees.

    Rome went the way of all empires, but it left its text-based software suspended over the mourning landscape like an alien, unnatural creature. Later, the British ledger would pick up the pen and reactivate the cage.

    The Acoustic Frequency of the Celtic Clans

    Centuries later, this exact same acoustic frequency vibrated in the throats of the Celtic Clans. The clans  defended themselves for centuries against the dynastic pretensions of kings and the creep of feudalism. They were finally brought down by the text-based British Empire.

    The clans too had an acoustic connection to the land. When a Highlander drew his claymore and charged into battle, he did not shout for an abstract political ideology, a written constitution, or a king’s low-country property ledger. He shouted to the mountains and cliffs the Sluagh-ghairm—the literal name of his ancestral homeland baseline.

    Clan Chattan Confederation would have shouted, “Loch Maigh!” (Loch Moy, was the historic seat of the Mackintoshes). The MacGillivray clan’s war cry was “Dunmaghlas“, (the name of the clan chief’s estate in Inverness-shire). Clan MacLachlan roared, “Creag An Fhithich” (The Raven’s Rock!) while Clan MacLean screamed “Bas no Beatha” (Death or Life!). For Fraser of Lovat, two war cries are recognized. The first is, “Caisteal Dhuni” (Castle Dounie/Downie, a former ancestral castle and clan seat.) Their second war cry is, “A Mhòr-fhaiche” (The Great Field).

    2. The Acoustic Weapons of the Baseline: The Shofar and the Carnyx

    The machine’s modern, text-obsessed enforcers would like humanity to view ancient horns merely as early signaling tools or musical decorations. But in reality, both the Hebrew Shofar and the Iron Age Celtic Carnyx were engineered as metaphysical and psychological defensive shields. They were designed to reject the silent, bloodless abstraction of an invading empire. The exact same acoustic principle as the Sluagh-ghairm and the bagpipe drone is operable in both instruments. Their purpose is the mobilization of horizontal presence against vertical enclosure.

    The Shofar

    The Shofar—fashioned from a natural ram’s or goat’s horn—is structurally incapable of being manufactured into a perfect, bloodless corporate uniformity. It retains the raw curve, texture, and organic variation of the animal and the land. In biblical history, the Shofar was the acoustic announcement of an unwritten, horizontal covenant between a people and the Divine. Its specific, trembling and broken notes—the Teru’ah and Shevarim—were designed to shake the human soul out of passive, institutional slumber. The most famous deployment of the Shofar was at the Battle of Jericho, where a wall of pure, synchronized acoustic frequency physically brought down a rigid, stone city fortress.

    The machine rules from a distance with a written decree, but the Shofar requires the physical breath of a living body to vibrate the atmosphere. It reminds the community of a personal, sovereign reality that existed long before the tax man’s ledger arrived.

    The Carnyx

    The Carnyx was not heard at Culloden. It was used by ancient Celtic tribes. It was a towering, six-foot-long bronze war horn specifically engineered to be played vertically. A large bell was sculpted at the top and made to look like a wild boar or serpent. The top with its sculpture extended far above the heads of the warriors and its sound could saturate an entire valley. The Greek historian Polybius, witnessing the Battle of Telamon in 225 BCE, recorded the terrifying, directionless clamor of the instrument. He noted:

    [The Romans] were terrified by the fine order of the Celtic host and the dreadful din, for there were innumerable horn-blowers and trumpeters, and, as the whole army were shouting their war-cries at the same time, there was such a tumult of sound that it seemed that not only the trumpets and the soldiers but all the country round had got a voice and caught up the cry. (Polybius, The Histories, II. 29)

    The Carnyx produced a harsh, low-frequency bestial roar that was structurally designed to mimic the natural world. It acted as an acoustic jammer against the invading Roman machine. The Roman legions operated by the silent, rigid, and visual synchronization of flags and marching drums. The Carnyx completely shattered that mechanical compliance by filling the air with a directionless, overwhelming frequency. It made the landscape itself sound like it was rising up to reject the surveyor’s property lines.

    3. The Chorus of the Glens: The Silenced Frequency of Drummossie Moor

    The most pressing problem at Culloden was hunger. Hunger and exhaustion plagued the Jacobite army because the Prince’s forces were desperately short of supplies. An unfortunate encounter with the Presbyterian MacKays cut off his financing. On March 25, 1746, Lord Reay’s men chased the French ship, Le Prince Charles ashore on the Kyle of Tongue. They confiscated her entire cargo of French gold, which the prince was relying on to pay his army. This was a decisive factor in the failure of the Jacobite rebellion.1 The lack of supplies forced them to fight at a time and in a place not of their choosing.

    The Battle Lines

    Christopher Duffy lists three Divisions in the front line, and they all would have held the unwritten memory of the landscape in their throats. The war cries would have sounded like an acoustic storm.

    But there were deep grudges and toxic divisions splintering the front line, even in this final hour. The elite managers had conditioned the clans to obsess over vertical prestige—mutinying over whether their name stood on the left or right wing rather than forming a unified horizontal wall.

    Duffy does describe this shocking situation, but he doesn’t clearly describe the role of Clan Chattan; perhaps it’s lost in the fine details. The following websites will clarify the clan’s dramatic role: The Clan MacGillivray website; and oldappin.com.

    The British infantry didn’t fire at will; they executed disciplined, rolling volleys. This produced a synchronized, cracking thunder—a mechanical percussion that snapped across the moor like a massive iron loom, designed to enforce total acoustic dominance over the battlefield. The cannister shot unleashed a tearing, hissing roar as canvas cylinders burst open in mid-air, spraying hundreds of lead musket balls like an unnatural, metallic hailstorm that shredded the heather and the flesh of the Jacobite army. 

    The machine won the day, silencing the frontline acoustic chorus and replacing the unwritten Sluagh-ghairm with the cold, silent ledger of the Act of Proscription. Under this new legislative software patch, the state sought to hollow out the Highlands entirely—outlawing the bagpipes as an acoustic weapon of war, stripping the clansmen of their ancestral tartan, and criminalizing the Gaelic tongue to enforce total, uniform administrative sameness across the map.

    4. The Acoustic Clearance: The Statutory Death of the Tongue

    The Act of Proscription (1746) and the subsequent Heritable Jurisdictions Act (1747) created a social void. This was intentional. Calling them punishments helped to hide their real purpose. The British state did not just ban the kilt; it made the public use of the Gaelic language a corporate crime. The enforcers systematically targeted the schools, the local assemblies, and the home hearths.

    Gaelic is an inherently geographic, acoustic tongue—its nouns describe the literal contours, textures, and ecological functions of the hills and valleys. By forcefully silencing the language, the machine stripped the verbal map from the children of the clans. Once a generation forgot the native names of their crags and glens, they would become entirely dependent on the machine’s English real-estate definitions. This would render them completely conditioned and ready for extraction.

    Cutting Down the Trees

    They tell us that Scotland’s ancient woods simply vanished because people needed firewood or timber for iron smelting. The forensic truth is far more sinister. They liquidated the physical canopy. Perhaps it provided too much material infrastructure for resistance. Or perhaps the massive, primeval Caledonian Forest—the ancient oak, birch, and Scots pine canopy—blocked the state’s military grids and surveyor teams. Or maybe the state simply could not abide the forest sharing its acoustic properties with the people.

    Following the ’45 Rising, the Crown and predatory corporate syndicates launched massive, industrial-scale logging operations in the high glens. They did make use of the trees. Denuding the mountainsides fed the British Navy and low-country factories. But again, the extreme and permanent nature of the destruction demands a better reason. The ancient forests were never “unproductive wild waste,” as the victors claimed. They were a vibrant, roaring ecosystem. And they replaced it with a flat, quiet, and barren desert. It’s true that nothing can hide on bare hillsides. But again, these excuses do not justify the extreme measures.

    Clearing the People

    They made the landscape deaf and stripped the mountains bare of their canopy. Now it was time to deploy the final phase of the software update: the Highland Clearances. The Gaelic language could no longer come to their aid; and anyway, no one recognized Dùthchas as a right. Since the forest couldn’t shield them either, they were entirely defenseless. Predatory landlords and factors—operating via low-country feudal charters—systematically burned thousands of families out of their turf huts.

    Then they replaced human communities with massive flocks of commercial Cheviot sheep. The state cold-heartedly dispatched these courageous people who had given everything to their home country. Henceforth, the machine might chose to force the sons and daughters of the old stock into overcrowded, landless coastal strips. Alternatively, it might decide to put them on timber transport ships destined for the global corporate shipping lanes. The clearances transformed a thrumming, resonant sanctuary into a quiet, uniform real-estate monopoly.

    Summation

    The standard military textbooks tell us this paper enclosure was absolute, and that the historic order of the clans was forever broken the moment the ink dried on the official record. But while the top-down leaders fled back to their comfortable Continental exile, the kinship baseline refused to let the horizontal shield die. The Act of Proscription could enforce compliance inside their courts and spreadsheets, but it could never touch the faithful resonance of the land. Right underneath the rubble of the Prince’s collapsed outline, an alternative underground universe was already clicking into place

     

    1. Christopher Duffy, The ’45: Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Untold Story of the Jacobite Rising. Phoenix, an imprint of Orion Books Ltd, 2007. pp. 551-552 [↩]

  • Smoke and Mirrors

    Reading Time: 3 minutes

    Our political situation looks bad, but there is literally nothing of substance behind it. It’s all smoke and mirrors. Whenever the establishment gets in a bind it creates distractions. Well, currently its behavior is the official version of stomping its feet, roaring, and waving its arms around. It’s really quite astonishing to see grown men and women behaving this way. You should all be ashamed of yourselves.

    NAFTA: The Establishment’s Folly

    I have been increasingly astonished at your behavior since 2015. I’m speaking to both parties here. I was amazed, when Hillary called progressives ‘children’ during the 2016 Democratic primary. She and Bill had slit the throat of our Democracy when they were in the White House by signing NAFTA into law among other things. But Hillary blithely expected working class people to vote for her from the depths of a poverty that she helped create. And yet we are children?

    I assume you think we are children because we don’t kowtow to the bosses in the CFR like you do; because we don’t blindly follow the rules of wealthy know-it-alls, like you do. The gall of prancing around on stage like some kind of savior when the voters were cheering for another candidate!

    Ignoring the Signs

    Of course he Republicans were right behind you. They thought they were being all covert, but they were uncovered just the same. There were a few miraculous signs during the 2020 campaign. I didn’t foresee them and I certainly didn’t cause them to happen, but I did appreciate what they revealed. For example, I didn’t know the Mormons were behind the craziness until the earthquake in Utah knocked the trumpet out of the Angel Maroni’s mouth.

    You do love to make mischief in secret and then present a sympathetic face to the voters, don’t you. The earthquake didn’t hurt anyone but how annoyed you were just to be outed. That’s not how you people operate is it? You believe if you can cause fear and pain and death it demonstrates your power.

    Your Crowning Achievement: The Earth’s Destruction

    But the height of my amazement is caused by your plan for our common home, Mother Earth. What great senseless oafs you must be! What resounding bozos! You can’t be serious!

    You have acted as if our suggestions were nothing more than political challenges from your inferiors and therefore meant to be defeated by you, yourselves, with all your clever plans and tricks and money, none of which you created on your own. Our suggestions were not frivolous. They were based on something you know nothing about, common sense. And you call yourselves ‘good’! You give goodness a bad name.

    Your Lack of Belief

    You have taken all your resources from people who believe in you, and from a planet that is defenseless against you. The most glaring flaw in your plan is your failure to recognize real power; a power that heals and comforts and watches over us. This power doesn’t belong to you. It wasn’t invented by your ideologies, and it doesn’t point to your being supreme. You would do well to recognize this important flaw because it demonstrates the lie of your leadership. You are not convincing anyone. We see you.

    Your Tech Lords are Some Kind of Joke

    And then there’s the comical performance of your tech-lords who honestly believe their ideas are the answer to any questions worth asking. Their ideas are cosmic pratfalls. They are not proposals for life. They are proposals for metal and plastic and shiny reflective surfaces–things that can’t speak or breath or talk or think. And yet they use the resources needed for life. These are the fantasies of children who persistently block out the warnings and pleadings of anyone who ever cared for them.

    Come Down From That High Place Where You Don’t Belong

    You are all hot air. There is nothing real or substantial to you. Come down from that high place before you hurt yourselves.

  • Ecological Conversion: Think in a New Way

    Reading Time: 8 minutes

    In Pope Francis’s encyclical, Laudato Si’ there is a section on Ecological Conversion. This section was written to encourage Christians to start thinking of their relationship to the world, to ecology and to the environment in a new way. Francis aims to encourage a new spirituality that can sustain us. In that spirit, Fr Peter Knox SJ is offering a Lenten lecture series on ecological conversion. This article is a summary of the first lecture in the series. Fr Knox wants us to leave these lectures feeling empowered to make a significant contribution in caring for our common home. He begins by quoting Pope Francis.

    I would like to offer Christians a few suggestions for an ecological spirituality grounded in the convictions of our faith, since the teachings of the Gospel have direct consequences for our way of thinking, feeling and living. …I am interested in how such a spirituality can motivate us to a more passionate concern for the protection of our world. A commitment this lofty cannot be sustained by doctrine alone, without an ‘interior impulse which encourages, motivates, nourishes and gives meaning to our individual and communal activity’.

    Pope Francis – Laudato Si’ 216

    Introduction and Definition of terms

    This series was produced by The Social Apostolate desk of the Society of Jesus in South Africa. Fr Knox begins by defining some important terms. These terms include Lent, ecology, and conversion.

    What is Lent?

    What is Lent? Lent is a time of Reflection, Repentance, and Reconciliation. It is a process of connecting ourselves with the Son of God suffering with us, and with the broken world. Catholics traditionally focus on prayer, fasting and almsgiving. This was preached in the Gospel of Ash Wednesday: Mt 6: 1-6… 16-18. But this year, Pope Francis encourages us to ‘listen to the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor’. In that way we participate in an ‘ecological conversion’. The goal is to develop habits that will remain with us through the rest of the year.

    What is Ecology?

    What is ecology? Ecology is everything that surrounds us. We are living organisms–not higher than nature or above nature. Pope Francis uses the term ‘integral ecology’ meaning that everything is inter-connected. This includes urban ecology.

    What is conversion?

    What is conversion? Conversion has an element of repentance. Repentance is being sorry for our actions. There is also the element of making good resolutions to favour a new way of life, with the help of God. Repentance and sorrow is a gift from the Holy Spirit. It is not necessarily a bad thing. We may not feel good, but it is a gift.

    Jesus announced: ‘The reign of God is at hand. Repent and believe the Good News.‘ (Mk 1:15) However, apart from Jesus’ many parables, we don’t know exactly what the reign of God looks like. What we do know is what the reign of God is not. It is not division, pollution, poverty, and struggle.

    What do we have to repent of?

    With this question, what do we have to repent of? Fr Knox addresses Christians in general. He offers a critique of the part Christians and Christian dogma have played in the present crisis. An article by Lynn White: The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis1, accuses Christians of destroying God’s creation. White says this was the result of following the injunction in Genesis 1 to subdue the earth.

    The following is Lynn White’s premise, as related by Fr Knox.

    As we enter the last third of the 20th Century, (he wrote this in 1967) concern for the problem of ecological backlash is mounting feverishly. …Modern science…modern technology is at least partly to be explained as an Occidental, voluntarist realization of the Christian dogma of man’s transcendence of, and rightful mastery over, nature…Christianity bears a huge burden of guilt. …What we do about ecology depends on our ideas of the man-nature relationship. …More science and more technology are not going to get us out of the present ecologic crisis until we find a new religion, or rethink our old one. …[We] shall continue to have a worsening ecologic crisis until we reject the Christian axiom that nature has no reason for existence save to serve man.

    Lynn White

    According to Fr Knox, Pope Francis agrees with with this article. The Pope’s term for this mindset is, ‘excessive anthropocentrism‘, the belief that humans are at the center of creation.

    Pope Benedict, on the other hand was more cautious about White’s article. Benedict argued that this is not the only way of understanding what’s going wrong with the world.

    The World Struggles to Correct Past Mistakes: The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment

    In 1972, the UN had the first conference on the Human Environment, the Stockholm Conference. Since then there have been regular UN conferences and protocols relating to the environment. They include Biological diversity; the Ozone layer; Nuclear waste; POPs (Persistent Organic Pollutants); LOSC (Law of the Seas); UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Control or change; this is probably the most pressing concern); SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals, where we hope to see all of humanity being able to survive in a sustainable way that doesn’t deplete the environment); Hazardous waste; CITES (Convention on the International Trade of Environmental Species); Watercourses (This is aimed at ending pollution and not blocking watercourses, or allowing water to go through and nourish all the people downstream); High Seas; Biosafety (trying to prevent disease crossing from one species to another–this should have prevented Covid19); Pesticides; Migrant species (birds, whales, fish); etc.

    How Bad is it? The Earliest Scientific Analyses

    In 1972, the Club of Rome published a book called The Limits to Growth. The club of Rome was a group of scientists based in Chicago. They used numerical modeling to discover whether the earth can continue to sustain growth. It indicated that the earth can’t handle continued growth of populations and continued growth of economies. Since 1972 this conclusion has only become more evident. The earth has a limit to what it can provide, and to the amount of pollution it can absorb.

    Planetary Boundary Theory

    The year Pope Francis published Laudato Si’, another group of scientists from around the world promoted a theory called Planetary Boundaries. Pope Francis cited at least 6 of these planetary boundaries in Laudato Si’. Much has been written about Planetary Boundary Theory. The basic argument is that the earth can only give so much and absorb so much, and after that point there will be serious problems.

    Fr Knox mentions one disagreement with Pope Francis on the subject of planetary boundaries. Francis has argued that concerns about population growth are the result of the unfair distribution of resources. If we could correct the distribution problem we wouldn’t have to limit population. Fr Knox thinks this is an optimistic assessment, and it may not be entirely accurate. However, he adds that Francis is a scientist and scientists sometime disagree with each other. Pope Francis does acknowledge that many of these boundaries are being exceeded.

    Which Planetary Boundaries are Threatened and Have Any Actions Been Taken?

    The hole in the Ozone layer (Stratospheric Ozone Depletion) was discovered in the 1980s by the Montreal Protocol. In response, countries around the world stopped using chemicals that deplete the Ozone layer. However, there are several other problems that must be dealt with.

    Additional problems include atmosphere aerosol loading (dust storms that blow across the Sahara and carry very small particles that get into human and animals lungs and cover the surfaces of leaves); ocean acidification (the Ph of the ocean is decreasing and the acid is dissolving the coral reefs. This makes them unable to sustain the baby fish); biochemical flows (two chemicals in particular, nitrogen and phosphorus, have been used for chemical fertilizer. We don’t know how much nitrates the atmosphere can absorb, but the nitrogen cycle and the phosphorus cycle appear to be out of balance at this time. Too many nitrates are coming into the atmosphere and too many phosphates are flowing into the water).

    The most concerning issues at this time are: biochemical flows; fresh water change; land system change; biosphere integrity; and climate change.

    Individuals Might Ask, What Can I Do?

    Individuals might ask, What can I do? I’m just one small person, I don’t know how to convince people. Fr Knox recommends Christians ask themselves, What would our Lord’s response be in a situation like this?

    As an example, he recites the parable of the Wedding feast in Cana. Jesus’ mother comes to him and tells him that the hosts have run out of wine. Jesus seems to say that the wine is not his problem–it is the host’s responsibility. But Mary tells the servants at the feast, Just do what he tells you.

    Fr Knox says that’s what we have to try to work out in our ecological conversion. What is Jesus telling us? What do we have to do?

    Christianity’s other-world focus

    Again, an element of the Christian belief system is implicated in the problem. This time, Fr Knox cites, Christianity’s other-world focus, or a focus on the hereafter. St Paul, for example, said that Christians should set their mind on the things that are above, not on the things of this earth (Colossians 3:2). But that can be problematic.

    It’s a problem because we have to live on this earth, to take care of this earth, and to take care of our fellow citizens on this earth. We shouldn’t allow ourselves to be accused of being other-worldly focused. We must take responsibility for what is happening in the environment.

    The Second Vatican Council addressed Christianity’s other-world focus

    This same concern was stated at the Second Vatican Council by over 2,300 bishops from around the world. Christians should not be focused only on eternity. Believers should also be involved in the world order. The bishops urged the Church to promote sustainable development and care for the vulnerable.

    The UN was also a subject of importance at Vatican II. Christians should not see the UN as the enemy of the Church. The Church may be on different track than the UN, but they are working for the same goals. The UN, together with people around the world, is trying to develop a sustainable world where people can live together.

    Today, the Catholic church has membership status in the UN and is allowed to contribute to the discussion.

    Gaudium et Spes, the Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World

    The document Gaudium et Spes was produced at the end of the Second Vatican Council. The title means Joy and Hope, and its focus is the Church in the world. It states that the Church is not living in a bubble or on Planet Mars. Church members should not see themselves as cut off from the world or better than the world. Whoever supports the human community is contributing to the Church.

    Moreover, she gratefully understands that in her community life, no less than her individual sons, she receives a variety of helps from men of every rank and condition, for whoever supports the human community at the family level, culturally, in its economic, social and political dimensions, both nationally and internationally, such a one, according to God’s design is contributing greatly to the church as well, to the extent that she depends on things outside herself. Indeed, the Church admits that she has greatly profited and still profits from the antagonism of those who oppose or who persecute her. (LG 44)

    …Christians should cooperate willingly and wholeheartedly in establishing an international order that includes a genuine respect for all freedoms and amicable brotherhood between all… Those Christians are to be praised and supported, therefore, who volunteer their services to help other men and nations. Indeed, it is the duty of the whole People of God, following the word and example of the Bishops, to alleviate as far as they are able the sufferings of the modern age. (G+8 88)

    Gaudium et Spes
    Laudato Si’

    Laudato Si’ is an encyclical in six chapters. It follows the pastoral circle, meaning that its basic routine is See, Judge, Act. We see what’s going on in the world. Once we see, we make a faith judgment, or a social judgment from Catholic social teaching. And then we take action. We have to be involved–we can’t leave it to others. To this end, we have to educate ourselves and our children.

    We have to change our spirituality. Pope Francis proposes an ecological spirituality. And ecological spirituality will be Fr Knox’s focus in these Lenten lectures. This new spirituality should make practical demands on who we are and how we live in the world.

    At the end of the encyclical there are two prayers: A Prayer for our Earth; and a Christian Prayer in Union with Creation. If nothing else you can take these prayers from this lecture. But, if you want to go further, you can undertake an ecological conversion.

    Anthropocentrism to Cosmocentrism

    Pope Francis is very clear that human beings are at the root of the environmental crisis. And no serious scientist disputes this. It’s true that there are cycles beyond our control, but the present crisis has anthropological roots. We human beings, particularly since the Industrial Revolution, are at the center of the climate change crisis.

    The term Pope Francis uses is anthropocentrism, the belief that humans are somehow at the peak of the world, and everything serves man. Women are included because they are somehow below men. Also included are money, oil, mineral resources, animals, robotics, and anything agricultural. We human beings have to change this belief and the resulting behavior, as much as we are able.

    Umdenken: Think in New Ways

    Instead of anthropocentrism, we have to move to cosmocentrism. Cosmocentrism puts the world at the center of everything–not humans. Human beings are part of a cycle of life. The earth provides for them and they provide for the earth.

    Fr Knox acknowledges that since the damage took place on a global scale over the last two hundred years, any contribution we make will seem minimal. But every effort is significant.

    Germans use the word ‘umdenken’, meaning to rethink or change our mind completely. Fr Knox considers umdenken an element of conversion. We have to think in new ways.

    1. Lynn White, The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis, Science 155 no 3767, 1967 ↩︎

  • Laudato Si’ and Progressivism

    Reading Time: 3 minutes
    Laudato Si' and Progressivism
    Our Season of Creation

    Our environmental problems are the result of 200 years of industrialization. The philosophical and technological developments that enabled the Industrial Revolution were made possible by the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was not only independent of the Catholic Church, it opposed the authority of the Church.  Therefore, the Church is in a unique position to  publish a document like Laudato Si’. Environmental areas of concern form a natural connection between Laudato Si’ and Progressivism.  We should build on this connection.

    Who are progressives?

    But who are progressives?  The 21st century progressive movement is being shaped by environmental concerns, especially concerns about Agricultural Policy and Food Security. Social justice is also a concern of progressives. But it is impossible to separate social justice from environmental concerns. Progressives also oppose war. This opposition is due to the unjust character of war and its destruction of the environment.

    The Enlightenment: Science and progress versus the environment

    Supporters of Enlightenment ideals believed that progress and improvement of the human condition were more important than traditional institutions, and that these institutions could be discarded if necessary.  The French Revolution was one result of this belief, while the Industrial Revolution was the result of the Enlightenment’s scientific advances. The belief in progress has been discredited many times in the last 200 years. Climate change is the final nail in the coffin of this ideology.

    Political Classes and the Environment

    The liberal middle class benefited from the Industrial Revolution. The political left survived it.  Farmland was ‘enclosed’, and the former owners of that land were relocated to factory towns. They became workers. Workers became the political left in the process of surviving the Industrial Revolution. The environmental question never came up.

    What about the other political faction? Conservatives, have changed their character so many times they are no longer recognizable. However, they have never focused on the environment. Conservatives have a history of forming coalitions with the Catholic Church. The Church is a political entity as well as a religion. 

    However, liberals and the business class are also political entities. And they are determined to stay in control. This determination requires them to ignore or downplay the environmental crisis.

    With the publication of Laudato Si’, the Church demonstrates that it has an identity separate from political conservatism. Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’ and his concern for the environment are not unexpected or surprising. What would be surprising is if an American liberal or conservative had written Laudato Si’.

    The following is from pages 6 and 7 of Laudato Si’.

    In 1963, Pope John XXIII addressed the nuclear threat in Pacem in Terris;

    Eight years later, in 1971, Pope Paul VI wrote about his ecological concerns and “the urgent need for a radical change in the conduct of humanity;”

    In 2001, John Paul II called for a “global ecological conversion;”

    In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI proposed “eliminating the structural causes of the dysfunctions of the world economy, and correcting models of growth which have proved incapable of ensuring respect for the environment.”

    …’the book of nature is one and indivisible,’ and includes the environment, life, sexuality, the family, social relations, and so forth.  It follows that ‘the deterioration of nature is closely connected to the culture which shaped human coexistence.’1

    For a leftist take on environmentalism see Alyssa Battistoni’s Review of Naomi Klein’s Book

    1. On Care for Our common Home – Laudato Si’, Pope Francis, pp. 6-7 [↩]

  • Agricultural Policy and Food Security

    Reading Time: 11 minutes

    I supported Bernie Sanders for president largely because of his support of family farms against the abuses of agribusiness.  I believe agricultural policy and food security should be at the center of our plan for the future. It should be an urgent priority because we have a large global population and dwindling resources. However, agricultural policy in the United States is not concerned with a quality life for farmers, promoting food security, or encouraging the responsible use of resources.  Therefore, we must find a way to end the abuses of agribusiness.

    To get a better idea of what this will involve, I want to discuss an article in the February 2016 issue of Harper’s. It’s entitled The Trouble With Iowa. The problems listed in the Harper’s article are not oversights. They are the result a deliberate effort by industrialists to end the political power of small farmers.  Today, although the abuses of agribusiness are obvious, the financial interests behind the abuses resist efforts to correct the problem

    Restore the Political Power of Family Farming

    Back in 2014  I imagined a new kind of community centered around family farms. I said that one of the priorities of this community would be to develop its own candidates for public office. Sadly, that wasn’t a new idea. That is what farm communities in the United States used to do. We’ve actually been moving away from that ideal.

    Today, agribusiness abuses are rampant.  Giant corporations have made the rivers run so thick with animal waste and synthetic fertilizer that everything the river touches dies.  Clearly food security is not the goal of such corporations. The plight of the family farm raises fundamental questions about what kind of society we want to have. We must restore the political power of family farming.

    Farmers and their enemies

    Farmers have been the vanguard of populism since the Civil War.  They have fought abuses by railroads, banks, grain merchants, and food processors, and government allies of agribusiness.  They’ve also fought the main culprits behind American financial crises–hedge funds. 

    Farmers led the populist uprisings of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In that period, unfair economic policies threatened farm family livelihoods. In response, family farmers banded together to form organizations like the Grange, the Farm Alliance, and the National Farmers Union. They also ran candidates and joined with progressive allies in labor and social justice movements. But the result was not what they had hoped. Farmers were systematically run out of business.

    Today hedge funds have become the largest investors in food companies, farmland, and agricultural products. Hedge fund speculation in food commodity markets has contributed to price spikes in corn and soybeans. In addition, hedge funds have been proponents of grabbing land worldwide.  They do this to help their investors speculate on the effects of climate change on agriculture. 1 (Foodopoly, Page 11)  These interests have all worked together to decrease the number of family farms. Farming communities have been destroyed because they are the biggest obstacles to oligarchic pretensions.

    Ezra Taft Benson and the Committee for Economic Development (CED)

    If you’re wondering why you haven’t heard about this struggle, it’s because it’s been erased from history–especially the post-World War II part (Foodopoly, page 13).

    In 1955, Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson moved to reduce crop prices. In response, farmers formed The National Farmers Organization (NFO). Benson was both a Mormon apostle and President Eisenhower’s Secretary of Agriculture at the same time. And he was determined to destroy the New Deal program for agriculture that ensured fair farm prices. As a representative of the ‘captains of industry’, he saw farmers as excess labor. So, he and his cabal organized the Committee for Economic Development (CED) in 1942. (Foodopoly, page 13)

    In the early 1960s the CED released a report stating its intentions for labor. It called for getting farm boys off the farm and into vocational training for industrial skills. Then this labor force would be relocated to where their labor was needed. But at that time, farmers still had the strength to fight back.

    Farmers Fight Back

    By the time of the August 1962 NFO convention in Des Moines, Iowa, farmers had a plan.  At this time the CED was headed by representatives of Ford Motor Company and Sears, so the NFO organized catalogue marches in seven cities.  Protesters dumped Sears catalogs in front of their stores and drove Ford cars and trucks in circles around Ford establishments in several cities. These protests caused the companies to reject the report. 

    The farmers won that battle. House agriculture committees and the U.S. Senate held hearings to discredit the report. (Foodopoly, page 15) Unfortunately, the oligarchs have plenty of time, connections and money. And they had been busy in those years between 1942 and 1962.

    During the CED’s first fifteen years of existence, thirty-eight of its trustees held public office and two served as presidents of the Federal Reserve Bank. The organization maintained strong relationships with the Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy administrations, helping to direct government research dollars as well as to provide funding for academic research. The strong ties to academia resulted in policy prescriptions shrouded in sophisticated economic rhetoric and focused on weakening the reform-liberalism of the New Deal. They couched their proclamations on shrinking the farm population as moving ‘labor and capital where they will be most productive.’

    The CED Influenced President Kennedy to Support a Massive Tax Cut

    In 1962 a CED report called for ‘a prompt, substantial and permanent reduction’ in taxes.  The CED helped organize the Business Committee for Tax Reduction. Kennedy endorsed this effort, and the committee actively lobbied Congress. The result was the passage of legislation in 1964 cutting individual tax rates by 20 percent across the board and reducing corporate tax rates.

    The propaganda arm of the CED aided in these efforts. The CED’s information committee included members of several advertising agencies. They included the editors of the Atlanta Constitution and Look, the publisher of the Washington Post, the head of the Book-of-the-Month Club, the board chairman of Curtis Publishing, and the presidents of Time-Life and the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). The CED’s 1958 pamphlet, ‘Defense Against Inflation,’ was discussed in 354 papers and magazines, reaching 31 million people. Everything was done according to plan.  (Foodopoly, page 15)

    Immediately after its formation in 1942 the CED began creating a postwar program to expand chemical-intensive agriculture and to grant industrial and financial interests more control over it. It worked to create a postwar economy built on massive and profitable industrial growth in the North, which would require an enormous pool of cheap labor.

    Today the industrial cities that were so important to the oligarchs are gone. But family farms and food security are nowhere on the horizon.

    Agribusiness Has Become Too Powerful

    The Harper’s article ends with these words:

    The standoff that results from all of this plays out across our continent. Those endeavors that produce food and energy need scale and landscape and are of necessity rural and are of necessity unspeakably destructive. The industries involved must be free to operate on their own terms in the landscape in the nation’s midsection, where the states are red and square. As Stowe Says, all they have to do is to protect the status quo. To do that, they don’t need to play to checkmate; stalemate and gridlock are success enough. Iowa’s caucuses, and for that matter the whole presidential ritual, will do nothing to change this.

    This quote is a statement by William Stowe, head of the Des Moines Water Works. Mr. Stowe has received death threats from the people he’s trying to serve. But not because of a decrease in water quality. People are upset with him because his department has sued county operators of drainage districts over the fertilizer and hog manure they are dumping into Iowa’s waterways and drinking water. If agribusiness can engender death threats for a public servant, it has become too powerful.

    Obama was not able to Rein in Agribusiness

    In the Fall of 2011 the Republican-controlled House of Representatives denied funding for enforcing regulations at the Departments of Agriculture and Justice. A similar fate befell the post-World War I effort by populists to abolish futures trading. Commodity speculation, one of agribusiness’s most destructive abuses, continued to plague farmers right up to the 1929 stock market crash.

    Today, populists face the same powerful forces. But they have a drastically reduced number of family farms. In addition, labor unions are in a state of dysfunction.  This makes it difficult for politicians to keep campaign promises once they take office. President Obama is one example. In 2008 Obama found he was not able to rein in agribusiness. One of his campaign promises was the reform of industrial agriculture.  That’s why he appointed Tom Vilsack as Agriculture Secretary. Vilsack’s appointment made sense. He had been governor of Iowa and a supporter of reform. But his appointment did not have the hoped-for effect.

    Tyson responded to his efforts by joining with Smithfield and other meat producers to mount a multimillion-dollar lobbying campaign, complete with astroturf opposition and congressional arm-twisting. Big Ag outplayed Vilsack at nearly every turn, and he quickly backpedaled on the new rules. Finally, Congress killed the reform effort late in 2011. Two years later, with the fundamentals of its business plan intact, Smithfield sold itself to the Shuanghui Group, a Chinese company. What Smithfield sold to the Chinese was less its pork production than its control of Iowa’s politics and its landscape. The irony of some of the world’s last remaining Communists taking over from Iowa’s swine capitalists is outdone only by Donald Trump, who spends whatever time he isn’t using to bash immigrants in bashing the Chinese. He offers no hint of course, about how he might best the Shuanghui Group, which, through finely honed contracts, now controls the landscape of all that beautiful corn in the Midwest.

    Agribusiness abuses free enterprise

    So what exactly is this business plan passed on to the Chinese by Smithfield? It is modern-day serfdom.  For example, Iowans say their state has been chickenized. Richard Manning thinks it’s more accurate to say it has been Tysonized. Tyson describes the process as vertical integration.

    Thanks to its efforts over the last 30 years the company owns every step of the process, from producing and delivering feed and hatchlings to slaughter, processing and distribution. During that time, Tyson has even managed to redesign the chicken.  They genetically select for animals that will eat high-energy corn and soy while crammed in windowless, climate-controlled factories.

    The process depended on a networked system of growers and farmers, who became contractors. The network was organized as a tournament. Tyson delivered hatchlings, formulated and supplied the feed and antibiotics, and took away the birds when they were ready for slaughter…Growers in a given region were lumped in a pool and paid on the basis of a competitive scheme that ranked them according to the pounds of chicken produced per pound of feed. Everything was tightly monitored by a flow of data that measured corn and soy in, McNuggets out. A productivity gain of a few percentage points meant the difference between bankruptcy and a paycheck for many growers.

    Agribusiness abuses the environment

    So, Tyson not only reformulated chickens, it domesticated farmers. Naturally the pork processors wanted to get in on the deal. A large part of the pollution in Iowa comes from the manure produced by these operations. It is not regulated because unlike factory waste, farm waste is not considered pollution. Never mind that twenty-one million Hogs produce the waste of about 45 million people. (Iowa has a population of just 3 million.) The chickens likewise produce more manure than all the people in the state and almost none of it passes through a sewage treatment plant or septic tank. Most of it goes into the public waterways and drinking water.

    The financialization of food and farming has wreaked havoc on the natural world. The long list of the consequences of industrialized agriculture includes the polluting of lakes, rivers, streams, and marine ecosystems with agrochemicals, excess fertilizer, and animal waste (Foodopoly, page 11, cited below).

    Agribusiness Causes Obesity and Health Problems

    Meanwhile a diet of corn products and products from soybeans, a companion plant of corn, is changing America’s diet. Eighty-five percent of America’s arable cropland is planted in corn, soybeans, wheat and hay. In Iowa, 23 million of 24 million acres is planted in corn and soybeans. This translates into higher consumption of high-fructose corn syrup as well as products containing soybean oil. From 1909 to 1999 the consumption of soybean oil increased a thousand fold. Linoleic acid found in soybean oil is a culprit in the obesity epidemic, and since livestock feed contains soybeans it is even found in the chicken and pork we eat. It may even be responsible for decreased brain development in the population because it supplants omega-3s in our diets. An unhealthy diet is not food security.

    Parity is What Food Security Looks Like

    By contrast with today’s food system, agricultural policy in the United States fostered food security under FDR’s New Deal.  For example, the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 was intended to achieve parity for farmers. This is how the Adjustment Act worked:

    The act provided for acreage reduction and land set-asides to reduce over-production. In addition, the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) established a price floor by making loans to farmers when the food processors or grain corporations refused to pay farmers a price that covered the cost of production. Farmers pledged their crops to the government as collateral against the loans.  This ensured that they were paid a fair price. The loan rate, set by the CCC and based on parity, acted as a price floor, because a farmer could sell to a national grain reserve that was established as a last-resort market (Foodopoly, page 15).

    The grain reserve was filled when crops were abundant and prices were low; grain was released when crops were scarce. In this way the reserve prevented crop prices from skyrocketing during times of drought or low production. Since this policy stopped products from reaching the market if the price was not fair, prices inevitably returned to a normal level, and farmers could pay off their loans. Together these policies helped keep overproduction in check and reduced commodity price volatility. This meant farmers could make a living without subsidies.

    The parity programs worked so well that there was real prosperity in rural areas during World War II and that postwar period. This was strikingly different from the post-World War I era when, without supply management, farm prices collapsed. The programs also worked for Main Street by reducing price volatility, and the grain reserve actually made a profit of $13 million over twenty years as the crops were sold on the commodity market.

    Food-Processing and grain industries prefer over-production to parity

    The food-processing and grain industries preferred overproduction because it led to cheap prices for the products they needed.  This fact still motivates their propaganda.

    Agribusiness is the anti-Joseph

    The story of the destruction of parity reminds me of the biblical story of Joseph whom his brothers sold into slavery. Joseph ended up in Egypt where he was given the job of telling Pharaoh the meaning of his dream. Joseph told the pharaoh his dream was a warning that a famine was coming. Egypt prepared for this famine by storing grain. When Joseph’s brothers traveled to Egypt for supplies they were saved by Joseph’s wise policies. Our situation is the reverse of the biblical story. Agribusiness is the anti-Joseph.  Agribusiness fights against food security and sound agricultural policy.

    Who Represents Agribusiness Today?

    Today the representatives of agribusiness include the American Farm Bureau Federation, which works in concert with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In the twenties this group worked with members of Congress, ‘the farm bloc’, who feared the Progressive movement. The farm bloc was made up of farm-state legislators who wanted to appear to address the concerns of their constituents without changing the overall economic structure. The 1921 Packers and Stockyards Act passed in spite of their efforts to defeat it but it was poorly designed. Although it did manage to curb excesses through the 70s it has not been seriously enforced since the 80s.

    Can the Effects of Bad Agricultural Policy Be Undone?

    The effects of bad agricultural policy can be undone. But it requires political will. It is possible to remove nitrates from water, for example. The cost-effective way of solving the problem would be to run the drainage pipes into wetlands, plant some permanent pastures, apply less fertilizer and replace much of the corn with other crops. This would be the most effective solution. Unfortunately the government would have to stop subsidizing corn.

    A less effective approach would be to remove nitrates from drinking water. But at this concentration, Des Moines Water Works would need an equipment upgrade costing up to $180 million. And there are 260 cities and towns in Iowa with the same problem. Furthermore, even if they all removed the nutrients from their drinking water it would not help the life of the rivers. Or the ocean. Nitrates traveling from the corn-belt down the Mississippi River have killed ‘a Connecticut-size stretch of the Gulf of Mexico.’

    Hope

    Iowa’s extreme pollution only appeared in the last twenty years. It is getting worse day by day, but we no longer have a coalition that is able to deal with it.  We need a new way of approaching these problems. We need new organizational structures and new ways of thinking. 

    One of the places America went wrong the first time around was in not accepting help from the Native Americans.  We didn’t think we needed help.  Today we know better, and we’re not alone.  People all over the world have suddenly recognized a source of help in their indigenous people.  Who knows what might come of that?  Maybe we’ve been given a second chance. Unfortunately, the fight for indigenous rights faces its own roadblocks. But at least the recognition that indigenous people can offer advice in this matter indicates a change in thinking.

    A 21st century Progressive priority should be agricultural policy and food security.

    1. Wenonah Hauter, Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America, The New Press, 2015. ↩︎ ↩︎

  • Erdogan Defends Gaza

    Reading Time: 4 minutes

    When Recep Tayyip Erdogan defends Gaza, he is one of the few leaders in the Middle East to openly criticize Benjamin Netanyahu for his callous bombing campaign. In addition to providing hope for Gaza in her ongoing trial, Erdogan also reminds us that the Levant has seen better times. Palestine was under Turkish rule for four hundred years prior to the days of the British Mandate of Palestine. Apparently, Erdogan has not forgotten this long-lost child of the Ottoman Empire. On November 29, after Netanyahu continued to spew his vile threats at Gaza, Erdogan called Netanyahu the ‘butcher of Gaza‘.

    During his time as president of Turkey, Erdogan has helped the Palestinians in many ways. His humanitarian relief to Gaza is probably his most important effort. This relief has been desperately important during Israel’s continuing blockade of food, water, medicine and electricity. Without his help and the help of the United Nations, the population of Gaza would have starved to death long ago.

    It is shocking that Netanyahu’s blockade remains in place even during his bombing spree. Erdogan’s courage is all the more admirable because his criticism may have cost him politically and monetarily. He is tied up, with the rest of the world, by the manipulations of dying energy markets. In fact, an energy war surrounds the upcoming climate summit.

    COP28

    It has been reported that the COP28 president secretly used his climate summit role to push oil trade with foreign government officials. The COP28 president is Sultan Al Jaber, chief executive of the national oil company ADNOC and the Chairman of MASDAR, the United Arab Emirates fossil fuel and renewable energy companies. In this article by Rachel Donald of Planet: Critical, she explains that much of the behavior we see in the oil markets is due to the fact that oil is no longer a good investment. The costs are too high for profitability.

    However, gas is another matter. But this only refers to the lower cost of gas compared to oil production. Renewable energy is the obvious way of the future. However, the West is determined that renewables will not prevail. The West claims gas is a transition fossil fuel that will move the world toward renewable energy. But that’s not at all what gas represents.

    The fight to end fossil fuel use threatens the political world order

    The market for both oil and gas have decreased, but gas is still relatively inexpensive to produce. This motivates producers to artificially increase the demand.

    The sheer size of gas reserves would enable another 125 years of burning fossil fuels. For rational people, continuing to use gas in stead of renewables makes no sense as a policy. The motivation for its continued use is that the transition to renewable energy will diminish the power of Western nations.

    Due the high costs of constructing the international infrastructure, developing nations are forced into partnerships with Western countries to exploit these natural resources. Renewables, on the other hand, are within the reach of developing countries. Renewables would give them energy independence from Western countries. But this threatens the political world order. And it is this fact that is missing from the climate energy conversation.

    China has cornered the renewable energy industry, but…

    The energy war is the Global North’s biggest investment. But while the U.S. and its allies have been focused on fossil fuels, China was busy gaining access to precious minerals needed for renewable energy. China has also been expanding supply chains. Under the right circumstances this would assure China’s power over the West. Unfortunately, China still needs energy to supply the world with renewable power.

    China is the biggest customer of ADNOC. If China’s gas supply were cut off for some reason, it would cause an oil crisis for China. But the crisis would spread. In retaliation, China would stop its exports of materials to the allies’ industries. By the time the markets sent their lobbyists to Washington, it would already be too late. The economies of both superpowers would be in free-fall.

    Erdogan’s courage in context

    Turkey had just renewed relations with Israel after a decade-long rupture. The two countries had been discussing developing closer trade relations and working on new energy projects that could have helped build longer-term trust. But as mediators were trying to extend the truce between Israel and Hamas, Netanyahu kept insisting he would eradicate Hamas. Erdogan accused Netanyahu of complicating the process. After Erdogan called him the ‘butcher of Gaza’, Netanyahu recalled all diplomatic staff from Turkey and other regional countries. And Turkey has withdrawn its Tel Aviv envoy. This is an example of the price paid when Erdogan defends Gaza.

    How should the world gage the threat of Benjamin Netanyahu?

    Those of us who can only watch it happen are suffering too. My own opinion is that Netanyahu is more than a threat to Gaza. He seems to take pleasure in broadcasting threats and administering public cruelty to the Palestinians. He has no problem with horrifying observers all over the world. And this is in spite of world-wide calls for a cease-fire. Benjamin Netanyahu is not exhibiting the behavior of a rational person, let alone a prime minister.

    In addition, AIPAC is threatening to run candidates against American representatives who criticize Israel. All things considered, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that Netanyahu, with Western backing, is a threat to the entire world.

    This is the context in which Recep Tayyip Erdogan defends Gaza. It seems to me that he is our only hope for an end to Israel’s hostilities against Gaza and the rest of the world.

  • Bolsonaro Challenges God to Oust Him

    Reading Time: 2 minutesJair Bolsonaro of Brazil is one of the men who have stepped up to bristle and bar their teeth at the new sane direction the world is heading. If saying outrageous things and playing the media were enough to make things go his way he would have already won, but now he feels his hold on power slipping away. To drive his point home (his point of being the boss) he doesn’t hesitate to do real harm by stirring his followers into a frenzy. He will happily damage democratic institutions beyond repair if that’s what it takes. He will even try to destroy the land. As president of Brazil, he has satisfied his ego by destroying the Amazon, the very thing needed for the survival of the human race. He does this I suppose, because he thinks it helps him win reelection. And now, in order to convince voters to support him, Bolsonaro challenges God to “oust” him. To be specific, he challenged God by saying that only God could oust him.

    Bolsonaro Challenges God to Oust Him
    Amazon Rainforest, Brazil

    Maybe he was caught up in some kind of diabolical frenzy when he performed this latest stunt.  Because, considering the worldwide effects of his policies in the Amazon, his presidency has demonstrated sheer evil. Does he think he is waging war against the left, or that he’s making a political statement?  Does he think God approves of such cruelty in the name of right-wing hubris? If Bolsonaro had any self-understanding at all, if he knew God at all, he never would have uttered those words.

  • Agribusiness Meets Reality

    Reading Time: 6 minutesI recently said that the words of those who criticize Laudato Si’ have no substance. Now I’ll try to be more specific.  Laudato Si’ is a rebuke of current practices, including agribusiness, but it is not the only warning voice. In this post, agribusiness meets reality.

    The human population will reach 9 billion people by 2050, even if we manage to slow the birthrate. The world has never had this many people before. We have to plan according to the facts we have. I will argue that if our goal is to support the projected number of people, our first priority should be food and water.  But so far, agricultural policies are not moving in that direction.

    Arable land is decreasing

    Currently, we don’t have enough farm land to feed 9 billion people. It is estimated that we need to increase agricultural land by 65-85 million hectares over the next decade. At 160-210 million acres, this is equivalent to approximately 50% of all U.S. cropland. It may not seem like much compared to the total area being farmed globally, (1,410 million hectares) but arable land is decreasing. We are losing 10-12 million hectares each year to urbanization and desertification. Much of this loss is due to agricultural policies.

    Agribusiness as Economic Warfare

    The United States is operating on an agribusiness model for agriculture. How did this happen? After World War II, Secretary of Agriculture and Mormon apostle, Ezra Benson, wanted to drive young men off of farms and into low-paying industrial jobs in the North. His plan was for the business of agriculture to be carried out by a few big players. In other words, policy-makers used agribusiness as economic warfare. To accomplish these changes, Benson’s faction tore down FDR’s New Deal protections for farmers. One result of their efforts was the disappearance of parity, which assured farmers a living wage.

    What is Parity?

    Under the policy of parity, the U.S. government bought excess crops for a fair price and waited for a shortage, or higher prices. Then the government would sell the excess. This provided a living wage to farmers and also resulted in a profit for the taxpayer. Today, instead of parity we have subsidies, courtesy of the taxpayer. We also have shortages.[mfn]Hauter, Wenonah, Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America, The New Press, 2012.[/mfn]

    According to AEW Capital Management, from 1975 to 2005 major agricultural commodity prices were stable, based on the marginal cost of production. In the event of a poor crop in a particular commodity, buffer inventories could meet demand. In that event a year or two of average crops would replenish inventories. This changed in 2005.

    “In the face of rapid demand growth, global stocks of key crops have been depleted to the point where there is no longer any practical buffer. Globally, stocks of coarse grains and oilseeds have been at historically low levels for the past five to six years. After 2005, if there was a poor crop (or even just an average one), someone somewhere in the world simply did not obtain that commodity. In short, in order to balance supply and demand, demand has to be rationed, and the only way this occurs is through pricing.”

    Seeking Alpha

    The effects of harmful policies on U.S. farmers are now being felt by farmers around the world. This is a problem for many reasons. Small farms improve the land and protect the ecosystem. Agribusiness, on the other hand, depletes the land. And by establishing monocultures it invites new types of pests and diseases. It also destroys the jobs associated with small farms. Finally, agribusiness can be a violent business.

    IMF, World Bank, and Other Culprits in Ukraine

    The fight over agricultural land is acknowledged as a major motivation for the conflict in Ukraine. And the culprits aren’t limited to U.S. companies. Germany is in on it. So is Finland and China. And their questionable activities are promoted by the World Bank and the IMF. But there are those who argue that it’s the other way around; the conflict caused the dispute over farmland. A Reuter’s article implies that military turmoil dictates that governments open farmland to foreign investment:

    “Ukraine, known as Europe’s bread basket, has the eighth largest agricultural area in use globally and is the world’s third largest exporter of corn and sixth largest grain grower, potentially making it a prime target for foreign investment.

    “But the government has been wary of allowing foreign land sales, fearing rural unrest, and the value of its 32 million hectares (79 million acres) of farmland has been limited by its division into small plots with relatively low productivity.

    “However economic turmoil emanating from the conflict between pro-Russia rebels and government forces in the east has intensified the need for change, said Heinz Strubenhoff, agribusiness investment manager for the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation in Ukraine.

    “Opening the farm sector, a key driver of the economy, to outside investors has long been backed by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), and Strubenhoff believes changes will now happen sooner rather than later.

    “’It’s time to think about privatization. They need to prepare everything to allow for farm land sales (to foreign and domestic investors) in three to four years,’ Strubenhoff told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

    “Currently, farm land cannot be bought or sold in Ukraine, but companies can sign onto long-term leases with small holders.”

    The Conflict in Ukraine is a smokescreen for the theft of farmland

    However, the corporate drive for foreign farmland is actually a motivation for conflict rather than an outcome of it. The Oakland Institute  recently reported that German lawmakers are calling the conflict in Ukraine a smokescreen for the seizure of high-quality cropland by foreign firms funded by the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Birgit Bock-Luna, who heads the office of Niema Movassat, told RIA Novosti (Sputnik News) that “a group of representatives had officially inquired with the German government on the actions of Germany’s state-run banking group Bankengruppe KfW. [It is believed that] this banking group is behind the seizure of Ukraine’s arable lands, some of the best in Europe.”

    Ukraine has a temporary ban prohibiting the sale of farmlands to foreign entities until January 2016. But German agricultural concerns – AGRARIUS AG, germanagrar CEE GmbH, KTG Agrar SE, Agroton and Alfred C. Toepfer International (ADM) – seize land using leasing schemes and generous loans from German and global money lenders.

    And according to Bock-Luna, the Ukrainian government that came to power in Kiev after the coup has been actively giving away farmland in return for loans from international creditors.

    “The previous Ukrainian administration was opposed to further relaxation of agricultural laws, but this changed after the coup, with the help of the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development,” she added.

    Governments Buy or Lease Farmland in Other Countries

    There is growing interest in farmland in other parts of the world as well. A 2011 Al Jazeera article cites a 2008 report by Grain, an international non-governmental organization working on behalf of small rural food producers. According to Grain, China, Egypt, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, India, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are all buying or leasing fertile land in other countries where food is not always abundant.

    “Cambodia, which receives aid from the World Food Program, has leased rice fields to Qatar and Kuwait, while Uganda has granted concessions on its wheat and maize fields to Egypt, and interested parties from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are making approaches to the Philippines.”

    In addition, some land purchases in Ukraine, Senegal, Nigeria, Russia, Brazil and Paraguay, by banks and financial institutions, are of a speculative nature.

    It is disturbing that instead of a discussion about the implications of these practices for the future, the critics of Laudato Si’ give us warmed-over economic theory. They would like us to believe they merely object to the degree of agricultural change that has been suggested. However, it’s obvious that their goal is to head off change completely.

    Agribusiness Meets Reality in the 2016 Election

    Animal husbandry is another part of the problem. Livestock competes with humans by consuming a large percentage of the crops humans produce. But the global consumption of meat is increasing due to higher standards of living in developing countries. This must be reversed. If everyone ate as much meat as Americans, we would need several earths to support everyone.

    President Obama was trying to decrease livestock farming recently when he suggested that Americans should eat less meat. This is the kind of change we need. However, the Republicans objected to Obama’s suggestion and the Democrats were not as supportive as they should have been. Hilary Clinton is considered the frontrunner in the upcoming presidential election. However, the Clintons have a poor record in the areas that will be the most sensitive in the future: Bill Clinton signed off on NAFTA and the WTO, and currently the relationship between Hilary Clinton and Monsanto is too close for comfort.

    The foreign agribusiness concerns that support the Clinton foundation are even more worrisome, largely because they are displacing African farmers.[mfn]Pearce, Fred, The Land Grabbers:The New Fight Over Who Owns the Earth, Beacon Press, Boston, 2012[/mfn] We can’t afford eight more years of these policies.

    Conclusion

    Agribusiness is so focused on profit it has created a self-serving loop of cheap commodities for processed food and animal feed. The result is that it produces crops overseas for its own use. The corporate model as we know it won’t solve these problems. It is inefficient, destructive, overindulged, irresponsible, disorganized and stupid. Corporate agriculture helps no one but itself.

    This farming model not only destroys jobs, communities and the land, it pollutes water. If the rivers and oceans are further degraded, we won’t be any better off regardless of the additional crops we are able to grow. Furthermore, putting increased acreage into crops will only increase the possibility of environment degradation. Finally, if the livelihood of millions of people disappears through agribusiness technology and automation, they will starve regardless of corporate schemes to increase yield.

    The next 30 years will demonstrate what the human race is made of. So far, the only course of action our business leaders can think of is to take us to war. Apparently their plan is to fight each other to the death for the last scrap of land. We need planning based on the facts and with the aim of finding a civilized way to cope with a serious problem.

    Gresham College: Food Oppression