"They're in the process of owning food. All food."

"You have to be genetically modified to resist toxic chemicals if you're going to have a hope of survival around here"

"You have to watch this film", Eva said to me the other day. "I've sent you a link. It's almost two hours long, and within ten minutes you'll be engrossed. I'm not saying you have to blog about it...but I bet you'll want to."
Damn woman knows how to hit every button I have.

I carry a huge dose of skepticism into any of these documentaries. I'm acutely aware that many of them are heavily laden with propaganda and spin, that facts are often ignored or distorted. Still, as I get older I'm becoming a little more paranoid, a little more open to the possibility that some conspiracy theories may have a kernel, or more than a kernel, of truth to them.

I opened up the email message and noted the title of this film, which runs 108 minutes. "The World According To Monsanto: A Documentary Americans Won't Ever See". It was originally aired in France. Okay: it's been on television somewhere. That doesn't make it gospel truth, by any means, but it does nudge the credibility-meter a point to the right, at least in my estimation, ahead of something that's only been distributed over the Net. And, hey, cool, it's a National Film Board of Canada co-production. If you're Canadian, you've seen NFB stuff in school. They have a lot of cred.

Interestingly, the link to the actual video led nowhere.

I Googled the title. The first three sites I was directed to didn't have the video either, but I noticed a lot of chatter about how it had been "pulled" from YouTube and various other places. Curiouser and curiouser. I noted it was still available in various other places all over the Net...then further noted that most of those places were either tinhat-Elvis-is-alive-the-aliens-are-among-us sites or places too small for the average Netizen--the kind of person who equates big reach with Big Truth--to put much stock in.
That only made me more interested in watching this film and judging it for myself. And it also gave the video some extra credence: obviously somebody doesn't want to me to watch this. I wonder why?

Now I know.

The fourth link worked. As of this writing it still does...though if it doesn't work by the time you read this, I wouldn't be overly surprised. If that's the case for you, please go out and Google it. If you don't have time to watch almost two hours of video, or if you're on dial-up, here's a review.

Google features prominently in this documentary, so you can follow along with every link. And the stuff contained herein is explosive. It actually re-arranged my head in startling and disturbing ways.

Disturbing because I've always considered myself not a corporate shill, but not reflexively anti-corporation, either. In Canada that makes me a rarity and something of a lunatic: the prevailing attitude in this country is that Government Rules, or ought to, and that profit is a baaaaaaad word. This mindset has been rattled before (Bre-X, Enron, Nortel)...but in the course of 108 minutes, this expose about Monsanto pretty much demolished it.

Monsanto. I'd never heard of them before, and I'm willing to bet most people haven't either...but I think you've heard of their products: PCBs. Agent Orange. Aspartame. Round-Up".
That's just the tip of the iceberg, though. In addition to being a chemical company, Monsanto is the world's largest manufacturer of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). I'm late to the GMO party--chalk it up to my naivete and general belief that Science Is A Good Thing. If you can splice something into a tomato to make it drought-resistant (and if that something doesn't kill people or animals)...why wouldn't you?

It's precisely benefits like this that make GMOs such a two-sided coin. If you go to Monsanto's website you'll find each benefit lovingly described. You'll also get a sense of just how massive this company is. They've insinuated themselves just about everywhere...and, at least in the States, you're not likely to know about it, because it's against the law to label genetically modified organisms as such. That's the end result of a neat bit of two-step perpetrated by Monsanto and the U.S. government, detailed in the video.

Did I say "Monsanto and the U.S. government"? It's getting pretty hard to distinguish the two.

It was this section of the video that disturbed me more than any other. Even the notion that Monsanto is striving to control the world's food supply, while chilling, didn't faze me too much, because surely governments would stop that kind of nonsense before it started? Oh, Ken, you are sooooooooo gullible.

Here's a company to whom "ethics" means "whatever serves our bottom line". They'll seek to advance themselves by any means necessary...and I'd argue their reach is already far too wide.

Now it goes without saying that not every corporation is this Machiavellian. But Monsanto is the goal that other corporations aspire to: total market share, governments in your pocket, profits that are damn near unlimited.

It's got me well on my way to embracing socialism.