Corporations, and Serving the Common Weal

I sometimes get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of corporate propaganda that makes its way into the various media. The big drive now is to show how publicly minded various corporations are, by presenting them as major donors to community services groups and charities. Smoke and mirrors, folks.

Edward Abbey stated the problem succinctly when he said, "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell."
Corporations finance the election of governments, and, in turn, those elected serve not the people, but the corporations.
Corporations have decided to put chemicals in our foods so that the foods last longer, improving their bottom line, but playing havoc with the health of the world.
Corporations, once public outcry demanded it, removed DDT from use in the developed world, only to sell it in vast quantities to the developing world.
Corporations, not permitted to sell asbestos in Canada, still sell tonnes of the stuff to the developing world, and the Canadian government supports it.
Our fish stocks are decimated due to "corporate fishing," and our cattle and milk are so full of hormones that our daughters develop years earlier than previously.
Corporations sell us drugs, fast-tracked through the FDA and the oxymoronic "Health Canada" machine, whose lists of side effects are more dangerous than the ills they cure.
Corporations, using the propaganda machine of corporate television, tell us to consume, consume, consume, and never mind fiscal responsibility.
Corporations have left Canada and the USA to produce offshore (read China) where safety, and content, standards are non-existant, and our governments ignore the end products until public outcry forces them to chide, not the corporations, but the Chinese for permitting it. Corporations monopolise third world farming, forcing GM seed stocks upon farmers whose initial seed stocks were diverse and sustainable, resulting in a crop that needs more pesticides, and more chemicals to add to a depleted soil.

Renewal and sustainability is the way, folks, and yes, it is going to be difficult for us all. We will not be able to continue to live simply as consumers: we are too numerous, resources are too limited or dwindling, and we are taking toxic loads of pollutants into our bodies, through food, air, and water. Consider the following article that I lifted from the Web...google it yourselves. --

"What is the average life expectancy of Americans? For a long time it has been the low seventies for men and upper seventies for women. So it comes as a shock to learn that the average life expectancy for Americans has dropped to 69.3 years, according to the America's Health Rankings report, issued at the American Public Health Association's annual meeting.

This figure is exceeded by 28 other countries, including Britain, France and Germany and is about five years less than the life expectancy in Japan. According to Dr. Reed Tuckson, this dismal number reflects increasing obesity, fewer people quitting smoking (although only 20.8 percent of Americans smoke today, down from almost one-third in 1990), and increasing numbers of people without health insurance.

Officials made no mention of the increasing consumption of processed foods containing refined sweeteners, processed vegetable oils and toxic additives, and certainly did not allow even a whisper about the almost complete absence of nutrient-dense foods such as organ meats, shellfish and butterfat and eggs from grass-fed animals from the American diet."

Sigh! Time for the intellectual revolution, people. The industrial revolution has failed, and is killing us all.
Read the labels!
Follow the corporate money trails!
Time for a government of the people, for the people.

All of this is, of course, in the opinion of one tired old man, who regrets that it has taken him so long to read between the lines, to look beyond the advert, and to recognise that what a government does is not measured by what it says, but by what it does.

End of rant. Must adjust my meds.