Of Soil, Soul and Society

Last night in Kyoto I had the humble honor of being in the presence of one of the great philosopher-activists of our time, Mr. Satish Kumar of India. He is currently on a speaking tour of Japan, and I was fortunate to have attended his lecture here to several hundred Japanese audience members. It was a real spiritual boost for me, offering much inspirational food for thought and shining a light of hope in these uncertain times.

Kumar, a former monk of the Jain religion in India and follower of the nonviolence teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, is perhaps best known today as a peace activist, ecologist and editor of the magazine Resurgence based in England, where he lives with his family.

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Protecting Mr. Monsanto

As a candidate for president of the United States back in 2007, Barack Obama made a bold promise to the U.S. public about the controversial issue of labeling of food products that have genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in them:

“Here’s what I’ll do as president: I’ll immediately implement ‘country of origin’ labeling because Americans should know where their food comes from. ...We’ll let folks know whether their food has been genetically modified because Americans should know what they’re buying.”

Six years later, not only has Obama as president broken that promise about GM labeling of foods, but he went a step further this week by signing into law a bill with provisions that would allow major legal protection to multinational biotech corporations like Monsanto that deal in controversial GM seeds and crops.

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Green Party in Japan

As a journalist I have always had a natural suspicion and wariness of political parties, and a hesitation to join or outwardly support any one party. Maybe that comes from my education in journalism school while a university student, in which I understood that I was to be an objective third party in reporting politics, not a part of the news story itself.

But that’s the ideal. In reality, journalists on all points of the political spectrum — right, center, left — vote for political parties. They support the party they think will best represent them and other citizens like them. Sure, their news reporting as journalists has to be balanced, fair and held up to high standards of public scrutiny. But when it comes to personal values, is being “objective” really preferable...or even possible?

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