Paths To The End Of Work

[Baba Ahmed]

Greetings and hopes for serious eyesights, focused minds, open hearts and determined vows to correct Afrikan people's present social conditions: at home and abroad!

Two posts follow (one today; next one tomorrow) and may appear unrelated. One's regarding MediSin, the other a heavily documented book: THE END OF WORK. Both appear frightening; rightly so for both if unattended lead to the end of many people, especially the Black and Brown people of this planet. However I'm one who believes to be forewarned is to be fore-armed. So this info is also intended to stimulate considered actions. In the old days it'd be seen as reactionary. So be it. Our existence is at stake. We must not leave it totally up to mainly Caucasian/Europeans and their humanized clones with there "modern" Capitalism, crooked politics and power mad driven armed forces. My selections of excerpts will be choppy; a pro editor would not accept'em. But I'm bias and not a pro. I intend to present info to highlight problems of health care and of eating food fit for huemen beings. Come along with me. While we take this brief trip, also consider that some of us believe that the European and those who follow their ways will eventually implode, aided by constant warfares that are sparked by these same nations. So we, if I may boldly say, need to be about working to establish minor phases of intrasturcture for our unoffical, tho sought, nations. Here and abroad. Example: ask yourselves, if need be where will your food come from, when something like Katrina or another 9/11 occurs. Or who will u work for in case of increasing down sizings and outright business failures? Remember that the finacial system ruled by a Central Bank of private shysters has managed American tax payers into the highest indebtedness ever.
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THE END OF WORK, pg 123.


THE END OF OUTDOOR AGRICULTURE.

"The coming together of the computer revolution and the biotechnology revolution into a single technological complex foreshadows a new era of food production---one divorced from land, climate, and changing seasons, long the conditioning agents of agreicultural output. In the coming half century, traditional agriculture is likely to wane,a victim of technological forces that are fast replacing outdoor farming with manipulation of molecules in the laboratory. While the first technological revolution in agriculture replaced animal power and human labor with machinery and chemicals, an emerging biotechnology revolution is son going to replace land cultivation with laboratory cultures, changing forever the way the world views the production of food....

Chemical companies are already investing heavily in indoor tissue-culture production in the hope of removing farming from the soil by early decades of the twenty-first century. Recently, two U.S. based biotechnology firms announced they had successfully produced vanilla from plant-cell cultures in the laboratory. Vanilla is the most popular flavor in America. One third of all the ice cream sold in the United States is vanilla. Over 98 percent of the world's vanilla crop is grown in the small island countries of Madagascar, Reunion and Comoros. In Madagascar alone, which produces more than 70 percent of the world's harvest, 70,000...farmers rely on this single crop for their livelihood.(48) Vanilla...is expensive to produce. The vanilla orchard has to be hand-pollinated and requires special attention in the harvesting and curing process. Now the new gene-splicing technologies allow researchers to produce commercial volumes of vanilla in laboraory vats---by isolating the gene that codes for the vanilla protein and cloning it in a bacterial bath---eliminating the bean, the plant, the soil, the cultivation, the harvest, and the farmer.

Eugenics, a start-up biotechnology company headquartered in San Carlos, California, has produced vanilla in tissue culture at a fraction of the cost of producing natural vanilla. While natural vanilla sells on the world market for about $1,200 per pound, Escagenetics says it can sell its genetically engineered version for less than $25 per pound. The company has recently applied for patent protection on its laboratory-produced vanilla. Withe worldwide market for vanilla approaching $200 million, companies like Escagenetics are eager to bring their product to market, convinced that it will drive farm-grown vanilla out of business.

For the tiny island nations of the Indian Ocean, the indoor farming of vanilla is likely to mean economic catastrophe. The export of vanilla beans accounts for more than 10 percent of the total annual export earnings of Madagascar. In Comoros, vanilla represents two thirds of the country's export earnings. Altogether, more than 100,000 farmers in the three vanilla-producing countries are expected to lose their livelihood over the next several decades.(51)

.....Vanilla is only the beginning. The global market for food flavors is hovering near $3 billion and is expected to grow at a rate of 30 percent or more a year. Eager to cash in on new biotechnologies that promise to greatly reduce operating costs and raise productivity and profits, other companies are looking to tissue-cell-culture food production practices. Several biotechnology firms are currently concentrating on the laboratory production of thaumatin---a sweetener derived from the fruit of the thaumatin plant, grown in West Africa. Thaumatin is the sweetest substance yet discovered in nature, and in its pure form is 100,000 times sweeter than sugar. In the mid-1980's the gene that codes for the thaumatin protein was successfully cloned by scientists at Unilvever in the Netherlands and at Ingene in Santa Monica, California.

.....The laboratory production of thaumatin and other sweeteners is likely to further weaken the worldwide sugar market, which has already been hurt by the introduction of corn sweeteners and sugar substitutes like NutraSweet. Sugar imports to the United States declined from $686 million in 1981 to $250 million in 1985.(55)

.....Scientists are just beginning to explore the great potential of tissue-culture production in the laboratory. Researchers have successfully grown orange and lemon vesicles from tissue culture, and some industry analysts believe that the day is not far off when orange juice will be grown in vats, eliminating the need for planing orange groves.... Tissue culture is seen by many as the inevitable next stage of a process that has continued to reduce the market share of farming in the food production system. For the better part of the twentieth century, farming has declined in importance as an increasing number of its activities have been expropriated by the input sector on the one end and the marketing sector on the other. For example, chemical fertilizers have replaced animal manuring on the farm. Commercial pesticides have replaced crop rotation, mechanical tillage, and hand weeding. Tractors have replaced horses and manual labor. Today only a handful of farmers package their own produce or transport it to retail markets. These functions have been increasingly taken over by agri-business companies....

Now, chemical and pharmaceutical companies hope to use genetic-engineering technologies to eliminate the farmer altogether. The goal is to convert food production into a wholly industrial process by bypassing bothe the organism and the outdoors, and 'farming' at the molecular level in the factory.(58)

.....The era of whole-commodities food production is likely to decline in the decades ahead as chemical, pharmaceutical, and biotech companies are able to increasingly substitute tissue-culture production, significantly lowering the price of food products on world markets. The economic impact on farmers, especially in the third world, could be catastrophic. Many third world nations rely on the sale of one or two key export crops. Tissue culture substitution could mean the near collapse of national economies, unprecedented unemployment, and default on international loars, which, in turn could lead to the de-stabilization of commercial banking and to bank failures in the first-world nations.

.....The recent technological breakthroughs in world agriculture promise increased productivity and reductions in labor requirements more spectacular than any comparable technology revolution in world history. The human price of commercial progress is likely to staggering. Hundreds of millions of farmers across the globe face the prospect of permanent elimination from the economic processs. Their marginalization could lead to social upheaval on a global scale and the reoranization of social and political life along radically new lines in the coming century.... The specter of the world's farmers being made redundant and irrelevant by the computer and biotechnology revolutions is deeply troubling. Even more unsettling, the manufacturing and service sectors, which had traditionally absorbed displaced rural workers, are undergoing their own technology revolution, shedding millions of jobs to make room for re-engineered, highly automated work environments. Transnationals are entering a new era of fast communications, lean production practices, and just-in-time marketing and distribution operations relying increasingly on a new generation of silicon collar workers. Much of the human workforce is being left behind and will likely never cross over into the high-tech global economy."

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Jeremy Fifkin; THE END OF WORK; A Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam Book published by G.P.Putnam's Sons, NY; 1996
55. "Product Substitution Through Biotechnology: Impact on the Third World," Trends in Biotechnology, April 1986, p. 89.
58. Rogoff and Rawlins, "Food Security"; interview, May 11, 1994. Stephen Rawlins says that in the coming era of highly automated laboratory farming, the only part of the process that needs to remain outdoors is capturing the energy of the Sun in biomass plants. 'Your have to capture the energy outdoors because that's where the Sun is. But the rest of the processes, once you have the energy, don't have to be outdoors.' Rawlins adds that 'by bring {farming} indoors...you don't have all of the environmental problems.

[General]

Hetepu, Ahmed, I've read this work. Also Rifkin just came out with another peice something like "The Growing Influence of Europe" in the New World Economy. I'm not sure if that is the correct wording though it speaks about how Europe perhaps is the place where many peoples of the world are going vice the American Dream" Appears to be valueable, haven't totally read all of it yet.

[Baba Ahmed]

Shem hetepu General. Im reading another book now along with this one: MediSin by Dr. Scott Whitaker, ND & Jose Fleming, CN, MH that contradicts The End of Work's glowing, almost god like predictions and claims that automation, biotech and computer tech results in increase productions, & decrease costs plus reduced prices to the consumers. I really didn't need to read a book to know that. Any sensible man and or woman knows that in Capitalism does not decrease prices to consumers.

However the rap about steady reductions of labor forces? Just heard that General Motors set to fire 30,000 workers! That trend is also evident; i.e., fewer and fewer workers from mgmt on down. And u kno the blow 'bout us, historically: last hired; first fired.

Also the promised post to come, if viewed as a related aspect in Euro/Americans steady roll to control the world via manipulating healthcare and controlling population numbers. Remember a goal of 2.5 billion has been long talked about. The post from MediSin is about hydrogenated oils and their effects. What that shit causes plus folk's psychological hang ups that come with losing jobs can be devastating.

Unless we, due to our general weakness as a people, have to start growing our own foods. Hooking up with others. Lemme know whacha think.

Stay BlackNificent!

[General]

I concur, I sold a couple of Medisin books, though I have not read it yet. Folks are really feeling that piece right now though. I'm currently reading "The Coming Race War in America" by Carl Rawan. Now, He is a Negro/Sambo if U will though interestingly he has some insights into this system that someone thats Conscious can use to ensure that we see the global trends. I am aware of the Malthusian theories of Global Reduction. There was a report out Global 2000 that spoke of those that want to reduce several billions of people. I have a video tape called Emerging Viruses. Now, this is by a White boy Leonard Horowitz though certainly valuable. This is why I try to get my hands on some Mariandina Herbs which were created by Dr. Charles Ssali of Uganda. This was a Conscious Afrikan doctor that was making progress in the Medical arena holistically.

[Baba Ahmed]

I think u mean Carl Rowan. Dude leaves a bitter taste in me memories. And about Dr.(?) Leonard Horowitz, if he's the same one who formerly worked with Dr. Boyd Graves, he's shaky. He and another white doctor left the brutha, Boyd Graves, out there ona limb. Although to me their relationship was just one more to show that "alliances" with yt can be a treacherous undertaking.

While u check out herbs, research Sundilanda. Not sure of the spelling; but it was mentioned by VusamaZulu Mutwa late 1990's as cure for AIDS/HIV and other dreaded diseases.