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Free-Market.Net's F r e e d o m A c t i o n o f t h e W e e k ------------------------------------------------------------------ Edited by Thomas L. Knapp. To subscribe or unsubscribe to this and other lists, click to: http://www.free-market.net/features/lists/ ----- Featured Action of the Week ----- First Week of May, 2001: Cinco de Mayo -- it isn't just history On May 5, 1862, the Mexican army beat the French at Puebla. Mexico lost the war, but ever since, Cinco de Mayo has been celebrated as a commemoration of Latin America's will to resist foreign intervention -- from anyone, anywhere. It's time to build on that notion, free-market style. Behind the disturbing headlines -- innocent missionaries blown out of the sky by U.S.-supported Peruvian counter-narcotics planes, a U.S.-Mexican border that is nothing less than a thousand mile long armed camp, high-flown rhetoric about "solving the drug problem" -- is an even more disturbing reality that can be summed up in one word: RoundUp. Yes, I'm referring to the world's most popular herbicide, produced by Monsanto Corporation. You may use it in your garden to control weeds. You almost certainly use -- and benefit from -- other Monsanto products, including genetically engineered crops that make your food more nutritious and less expensive. The U.S. government uses it too. Tons of it, in its most powerful form, RoundUp Ultra. They provide it to Colombia for use in spraying coca and opium poppy crops. This may sound like a minor cog in the war machine. But it isn't. It has a major effect. Because the herbicide is sprayed from aircraft, it doesn't just surgically remove the offending crops. It lays waste to agriculture over a wide area, whether that agriculture is illicit or not. Between the depredations of government troops and rebel guerrilla forces, the farming folk of Colombia are already in a state of continual terror and poverty. Add to that the loss of their crops, and they have a powerful incentive to move. So, moving they are: deeper into ecologically sensitive areas. Let's pause a moment here for a reality break. Some will say that the exploitation of previously virgin areas is an economic plus ... but it isn't, at least not in this context. It's Bastiat's "broken window" fallacy all over again. The new areas aren't being added to productive use, they're just replacing the farms that our drug warriors have "broken." The land they've left ends up either being added to the feudal estates of Colombia's absentee landlords -- history repeating itself in the pattern of the ancient Roman and modern Spanish latifundia -- or it sits idle, stripped bare of the plant life that it used to support. That land becomes, for all intents and purposes, useless desert as the rains erode away soil that was once held together by root systems. Did I mention that coca and opium poppies are increasingly resistant to Roundup Ultra, minimizing even the supposedly "good" results of its use? Did I mention the peasants lying in hospitals, sick and dying because they got caught in the middle of a poison cloud of herbicide? If you oppose the War on Drugs, this is a no-brainer. But even if you don't, it should be obvious that spraying is ineffective, counter-productive, and harmful to people and property more so than to its supposed targets. This week, in celebration, of Cinco de Mayo, I'm asking you to strike one small, free-market blow against U.S. use of herbicides on Colombian crops. And it isn't even a mean blow -- it's a courteous tap on the shoulder. Sometime this week, send Monsanto a message via the company's web contact form. Be nice, be respectful, but be firm: Let them know that you want them to stop supporting the war against Colombia's peasant farmers, and to refuse further sales of RoundUp Ultra to the U.S. government. Specify that you don't condemn profit, but that you do condemn profit at the expense of innocent lives and livelihoods. They just might listen -- as 84 Lumber did when you asked the company to stop contracting for old-growth wood. If they don't listen now, your comment may hasten the day when they start listening. I can't guarantee that your request will succeed. But Monsanto, like all good companies, listens to its customers. You are almost certainly one of those customers. Happy Cinco de Mayo. Contact Monsanto at: http://www.monsanto.com/monsanto/contact_us/default.htm ----- Alternate Actions ----- The Freedom Action of the Week Club: Commit yourself to doing one action per week. If the action above doesn't appeal to you, consider one of the alternate actions at: http://www.free-market.net/features/action/ If you know about another action or organize one of your own, e-mail Tom at tlknapp@free-market.net so we can tell the rest of the group next week. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Please forward and copy freely, and include the following: The Freedom Action of the Week is a feature of Free-Market.Net http://www.free-market.net/features/action/ Opinions expressed are purely those of our writers and editors. To subscribe or unsubscribe to this and other lists, click to: http://www.free-market.net/features/lists/ _________________________________________________________________________ Thomas L. Knapp | "Your genuine action will explain itself, and will Managing Editor | explain your other genuine actions. Your con- Free- Market.Net | formity explains nothing." | --Ralph Waldo Emerson _________________________________________________________________________
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