In covering the environmental abuses of Monsanto one who is cognizant of the special relationship we have with the Earth cannot help but be repulsed by them. There is not one redeeming quality about them. They are arrogant, heartless, greedy, manipulative power brokers that use people, governments, organizations, consumers, and anyone else who gets in their way of domination. It is a domination of the global seed and pesticide market that is now bringing our Earth to a biodiversity and pollution crisis and a climate change precipice.

No...I am not talking the imported gluten fiasco that is a predictable consequence of the irresponsible Republican attack on government. I am talking about the massive and rapid die off of honeybees, the critter responsible for pollinating about 1/3 of our food supply.

Most of you won't pay much attention to this, unless you are a farmer and then you probably know how important honeybees are to crops. But most people will ignore this crisis until that 1/3 of our food supply fails.

I was a latecomer to eating organic, and even now it is a preference, not an absolute. I favor organic when it isn't TOO expensive. I often found organic advocates ill informed and fanatical. It made me suspicious of the whole thing. But I have been slowly converted, not so much by any strong organic farming advocates, but by realizing on my own that modern agriculture methods are often unsustainable, and often produce food only with marketability in mind, not anything like taste or nutrition or environmental concerns.

This year, there is a sign that many are coming to a practical conclusion that organic farming is sound economically. One sign of this is the fact that in two states not known for their hippie leanings, Montana and Iowa, organic farmers are running for office and may even win.

Born, 2001 in Doha, Qatar.  Died, 2006.  
Cause of death: a thousand bureaucratic paper cuts.

The Doha "growth round" of World Trade Organization talks has officially collapsed, throwing the process back to square one.  If you listen to the US media, the impression of the failure is one of two competing interests: the United States and other highly developed nations wanted developing nations to lift tariffs on machinery, developing nations wanted the developed world to end import taxes on agricultural goods.  Neither side blinked in this game of economic chicken, and now the talks have crashed.

And of course, we were just doing it for the good of those poor folks.  

The collapse of global trade talks was bad news for Africa, condemning the world's poorest continent to an uncertain future of high tariffs and lagging competitiveness, officials and experts said on Monday.

From the US perspective, not having free trade equals a horrible fate.  Would it surprise you to learn that the people "doomed" to this fate think otherwise?