Thursday, May 25, 2023

IT'S CLEAR THAT THE CANDIDATES WILL CRITIQUE THE COVID RESPONSE TO SOME VERY PROMISING THREATS, TEASING THE VOTING PUBLIC WITH ACCOUNTABILITY FOR 1.5 YEARS & ULTIMATELY DO NOTHING

Effectively turning the election cycle into one long, extended circus that will be used as cover for the vaccine and pharmaceutical industries. 

"Liver is mostly consumed as Albanian Liver in Türkiye."

I'm not a fan of either Republican candidate. And though I have hope that RFK, Jr. has the power to restore some sound social regeneration, I tend to think that the presidency is powerless

Well, the election cycle is underway, and you can tell by how the Trump and DeSantis campaigns are comparing each other's record on COVID, the lockdown, and adherence to any sound public health policy. They'd better requisition Jay Bhattacharya.

Trump will have to work double time to convince voters that he "did the right thing," which only means that we'll have to listen to all of his justifications again.   Jeffrey Tucker provides us with a good compilation of Trump locking down the economy.  Some will say that he left that decision up to the states.  Perhaps, but probably with the foreknowledge that the states and their little Gestapo would certainly love to be Stalins for a few seasons.  

PUTIN SCORCHES THE WEST'S PATH TOWARD SOCIAL RENEWAL

Wednesday, May 24, 2023

ROBERT F. KENNEDY, JR. ON SMITHFIELD'S HOG PRODUCTION

Here I am in Sherwood, Connecticut on Sherwood Island.  Here's a little woodchuck hole.  

Shirley Troubadour asked a question about why Gates and China are being allowed to buy up all the farmland in our country.  And I am going to tell you something that I had an experience with.  I spent many years, about 20 years, suing the factory farms, the big hog farms, and chicken producers, like Tyson, Bo Pilgrim, and Perdue Frank and Smithfield Foods is the biggest pork producer.  Smithfield Foods, headquartered in Virginia, came into the state in North Carolina and they built a slaughterhouse that killed, that processed 30,000 pigs a day.  And then they had a partner, Wendell Murphy, who was in the state senate, and he passed 28 laws in the North Carolina State Senate, making it illegal to sue a factory farm.  He left and went into partnership with Smithfield and created a way to raise pigs . . . instead of raising them on farms, to raise them in warehouses called Murphy 1100s.  They dropped the price of pork from $.60 a pound to $.02/lb.  They put out of business all 28,000 independent hog farmers in the state of North Carolina, and replaced them with 2200 factories, all of them either owned by Smithfield or contracted by Smithfield.  The only farmers who could stay in business were farmers who signed that contract with Smithfield to mortgage their homes to put those big hog sheds, the Murphy 1100s on their property, and then they lose all control.  They become serfs on their own land, as Smithfield dictates all their farming practices, it gives them their food, telling them, it picks up the piglets, the grown animals, and brings them to slaughter.  Nothing and none of the decisions made on that farm are made by that family farmer.  He's no longer a family farmer working on his own farm.  He's a serf working on his own farm.  They put out of business 28,000 farmers and a control now of 80% of the production in North Carolina because they dropped the price in North Carolina, Iowa had to adopt the same system to cave into Smithfield, taking control of 80% of hog production in our country.  Then they sold themselves in China.  Now China owns all that hog production in America and it controls our landscapes.  And that's the end of Thomas Jefferson's vision of an American democracy rooted in tens of thousands of independent freeholds, each one owned by family farmers, each with a stake in our system of government.  And that's why all of this industrial agriculture not only gives us substandard food, food that is not nutritious, that is filled with chemicals and hormones and antibiotics but they are also taking control of our landscapes, and that is a huge threat to American democracy. I hope you guys have a good day.