This is a public service announcement — with dubstep!
On a way-too-hot Sunday afternoon, a DC contingent in solidarity with Occupy Monsanto paid a surprise visit to the Trader Joe’s on 25th Street NW in Foggy Bottom, “shopping for truth” as they entered the store in a hazmat-suit-wearing conga line. Meanwhile, outside, a spirited dubstep picket educated and entertained paasersby and Trader Joe’s customers on mass-produced foods made with ingredients based on genetically-modified organisms (GMOs), and the influence of corporations like Monsanto on US policy and legislation on the labeling of GMO-based food items.
Yesterday morning at Lafayette Square across from the White House, David Bronner, president of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, locked himself into a cage in a civil disobedience protest against US policies on the cultivation of industrial-grade hemp for use in food and fibers.
Bronner notes that the US is the biggest market on Earth for industrial hemp products, and yet US farmers are cut out of the market; as a result, his company is forced to buy hemp oil from Canadian outfits to the tune of $100,000 per year. Bronner also pointed out the hypocrisy of the Obama government in that as an Illinois state senator, Obama voted twice in support of industrial hemp cultivation, but as El Presidente, he has actively interfered in the rights of states to legalize the growing of industrial hemp, including his refusal to to meet with a delegation from North Dakota, whose government — from the Governor on down — has signaled its wishes to allow its farmers to cultivate industrial hemp.
From about 8am until the DC Fire Department arrived to cut the locks and bolts holding the cage closed, Bronner harvested some of the half-dozen or so industrial-grade hemp plants he had on hand — at .06% THC, smoking it would give you nothing but a headache — sifted the seeds, and used them to demonstrate a hand-cranked seed-oil press.
(Note: Owing to currently-insoluble issues with Vimeo’s new uploading system, I’m forced to revert back to YouTube for the foreseeable future… and yeah, it kinda sucks. Apologies.)
So, here we are two years after the massive oil spill from BP’s Deepwater Horizon offshore rig which devestated ecosystems, fisheries and tourism along the US Gulf Coast. Our Exalted Boy Emperor and Nobel Laureate, Barack Drone Strike Obama, responded by sitting around saying nothing for a couple of weeks before giving a speech so empty and loaded with blue-sky platitudes about our wonderful energy future that he should’ve been wearing a cardigan.
Meanwhile, large numbers of eyeless shrimp and mutated fish are being caught by Gulf Coast fishing boats, Gulf fisheries are in deep decline, and not a single BP executive has served so much as a day of prison time for this crime.
…and for those of you with long-term memory issues — or, “looking forward”, as your average Democrat would say — here’s a quick recap of the Gulf Coast oil disaster:
After a decade of observing police thuggery against protests in Los Angeles, Seattle, and New York City along with the recent police attacks on unarmed protesters at Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Oakland, and comparing it against similar scenes I witnessed in video from Athens, Bahrain and Cairo, I can’t help but conclude that Nonviolence™ is an ideological luxury affordable only to the cushy-living white middle-class activists of the United States.
Recent Comments