Brian’s Column: Meandering Contra Monsanto

Memorial Day Weekend 2014 was upon us. Hearing that a spirited group of people from all political persuasions would be marching in support of the “Agent Orange” Monsanto for its beneficence in altering the genetic composition of such crops formerly known as corn and soybeans, thus to create assorted health challenges for babies and others, I knew I had to check it out. [Darwin and reputable scientists have maintained that selection of the fittest keeps a species on its toes, assuring that only the strong survive. In other words, GMOs are good for you.] So I did. I pointed my vintage Mercury Villager, with the Ron Paul sticker on the front bumper and ‘Snowden-Manning 2016’ on the back, down the road to the environs of Wolverine City.

Memories flooded over me as I walked from the parking structure to my destination. The first LPM official office was located on State street across from the main square where all the antiwar protests took place in the 70s. Indeed, I believe this Wazoo awning covered the actual doorway of address 336, the original headquarters, or close to it for sure. Bringing to mind ghosts of Jim Greenshields, an early secretary or something, but definitely an activist who relished combatting all the leftists at then Commie U. [While many have held that libertarians went awry in not leading the antiwar movement, you had to be there: the legitimate peace people were coopted in a hurry by scary collectivist yingyangs from all corners, and I’m sure floods of agent provocateurs/hard drug pushers from our own neo-Nazi war machine. These young people were NOT generally interested in peace or being led to liberty, at best it was ‘get high and get laid.’ Okay, so some things haven’t changed.]

One of the advantages of being near the standard retirement age as well as an early Libertarian in Michigan is you remember how it was. If you want to know, contact James Hudler, too, who was once a lot younger and at the epicenter of the Way We Were. I lived in the Detroit area and attended Wayne State (sorry I called UofM Commie U above, compared to Wayne State, UofM was like Hillsdale College in those days), so typically when anything of general LPM importance was going on a bunch of us Randian individualist types would climb in a car and barrel westbound on I-94 to get into the action. Once as a dirty trick we rented a van and labeled it Free Haircuts and Fumigation: Ticks, Lice, Fleas; then parked it off the Quad. Priceless to see the expressions. [That’s actually not true, but down at Wayne State some of us braver souls did set up a grape concession in the campus center grounds… DURING THE CESAR CHAVEZ GRAPE BOYCOTT. Let me tell you the peace types were not very peaceful about things like that.]

You get the picture now a little better. [We were all a bit mind controlled in those days, just as today, who were we supposed to believe? As libertarians we just tried to stay the course for doing right by the nonaggression principle where it was most obvious.] So after a long day of handing out libertarian literature or whatever it was, we’d retire to the pub. Ah yes, the Cottage Inn. We’d cram in there in the dark corners. Wow what a claustrophobic death trap it seems to me now. But back then it was new and happening! Beer, pizza. Food pretty good for who it was for, plus no bright lighting to ruin the buzz. There really aren’t too many establishments ANYWHERE that have lasted 40 years. To break me out of the reminisce, Ann Arbor has to be the only city in the world with solar powered parking meters. From our own Emily Salvette who stayed on top of A2 government thru the years, “In Ann Arbor if a street was falling apart the municipal authorities’ idea of a fix was to put up a sign to motorists, ‘Don’t drive here.'”

So finally, to the protest. At least a couple of hundred joined in the march, then gathered in the park at Liberty and Division for some speakers and rousing the cause. Upward of 400 cities world wide are participating in the protest of arguably the world’s most evil corporation since, well, how about our home boys Dow-Corning of Midland, the stellar manufacturer of napalm?! Still if you start investigating the Monsanto crimes, you can’t help but think its motto should be: “Killing is our Business!” It was just the night previous I was sent a link that connected Monsanto’s patents for aluminum resistant crops and the chemtrails that have been cluttering our skies virtually daily now—chemtrails (stratospheric aerosol plumes) are principally aluminum, which is democidal. Fortunately a lot of real people, including a high percentage of mothers with children, have decided to fight back, and globally. We’ll win, but could sure use some help.