To grow food and to kill en masse
The connection between pesticides and chemical weapons.
Note: I wasn’t gonna send this out because…I dunno…what’s the point of constantly bumming people out, especially since no one has any power to change anything? But after a bit of thought I’ve decided to send it along as educational material. Industrial agriculture might be able to feed our overpopulated planet in the short term. But in the longterm this kind of farming — with its deadly chemicals and terraforming — will ultimately denude our planet and kill all life. It’s already happening to a large degree, although we’re mostly in denial. Does it help to hear this when we’re so powerless? When even getting a free bus ride program in NYC is a highly charged political battle? I don’t know. I don’t have any answers.
I was doing some research for a future documentary I’m thinking about making and was digging around various videos declassified by the US military and I stumbled on this unpleasant film from the infamous US Army’s Edgewood Arsenal, which researched, produced, and stockpiled chemical weapons. The video shows a very matter-of-fact sociopathic experiment with weaponized sarin — tested it on unsuspecting animals.
What’s interesting about sarin is that it was developed in the late 1930s in Germany initially as a pesticide.