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Freedom Action of the Week
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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
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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.
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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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