OMG the chickens… THE CHICKENS!!

Thanks to the nudge from Tim (hi Tim!) I decided to take the plunge and rent out “We Feed the World” with The BF yesterday. It’s an Austrian documentary about the food industry and food production in general.

How we produce enough food to feed over 12 billion people, and yet over 800 million people suffer from starvation every year – whatever is overproduced and can’t sell (like two days old bread) just gets dumped. How industrially fished fish has nothing to do with fresh fish. How vegetables that are being grown by the genetically modified “suicide” seeds of Monsanto look like gold but taste like crap. How water is being considered a good that should be privatized – to make money off of – while rainforests are eroded to make room for soy, the cattle feed. And how living beings are being treated like any other massed-produced product – which beings me back to the title of this post: holy fuck the chickens. Those chicken scenes were the most horrible thing I have ever seen in my life. But maybe you’d like to see for your self:

I know people make fun of me when I tell them that organic food tastes better, or that I buy my eggs from “happy chickens”, or that the animals on organic farms are treated a million times better – it makes a difference, people. Seriously. And if it’s too much trouble to change those habits, at least vote for the right people, so that they can make a difference.

Bow your heads, as the corporation will now lead us in prayer

Last week-end, The BF convinced me to watch a movie with him. He really wanted to see it, and although I had a hunch this wouldn’t be good for me, I wanted to spend time with him. I should have thought twice, because halfway through the film – and I’m not exaggerating here – I wanted to shoot myself. And yet, here I am, posting about this very movie – and on top of that, I will urge you to watch it.

It’s called The Corporation (2003) and is a documentary that looks at the concept of the corporation (business, company, whatever) throughout recent history up to its present-day dominance. I found it very interesting and immensely educational to know the legal developments of a corporation. It started out when it became a legal person and therefore acquired the right to own land, to get sued, and so on – yet without having any moral or ethical obligations. The movie then takes us through different stages of the corporation misusing that land, endangering our environment, being legally bound to place profit over everything else, thus creating impossible working conditions in poor countries, manipulating even small children into consuming goods, etc., etc.

It is not just a hate tirade. There are founded contributions of great names like Noam Chomsky, Samuel Epstein, Milton Friedman and Michael Moore. Both sides are depicted: people who want to move against corporations, people who run corporations and people who profit from the whole system. In between the interview takes are footage pieces of the different subjects that are being talked about, so even though it runs for two and a half hours, it never gets boring. On the contrary, it’s more of an edge-of-your-seat movie. All in all, I’m very glad I watched it. And don’t worry too much – although it gets very scary, there is a happy ending, in the sense that there is still hope to change things.

Before the TVs become walls

Or the walls become TVs, and we start calling the people in them our “family”.

I just finished reading Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, and although it took some getting used to, it sure does open the mind to a scary world – in which all books are burned and everyone lives catapulted from one moment to the next, permanently entertained. Thus, feeling inspired, I quote:

 Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away. To hell with that.