As April continues to ramp up astrologically, I hope you have time and energy to savor this meaty, deeply educational Laura Bruno post that was triggered by a presentation in her local area of the Beehive Design Collective. If you follow all the links and videos, you’ll begin to grasp the ongoing diabolical/enlightening systemic interplay between globalization and localization, and might get a hankering to link with friends, “enemies” and neighbors as you put your best foot forward while speaking truth to (faux) power.
You might also want to check out some of the deeply educational images from this wonderful artist/activist group of young people.
I posted on the work of the Beehive Collective here.
The Beehive Collective Came to Elkhart County
Excerpt:
They designed Mesoamerica Resiste as a triptych, which means that the artwork opens up like double doors to reveal what’s inside. The banner on the right shows the front “doors” as “Plan Mesoamerica” while the twice as large banner on the left shows the inner resistance to that corporate plan. I loved that the resistance is twice as large as the plan!
That said, it was a sobering presentation. The plan — run by globalist corporations — aims for nothing less than total control of the region between North and South America. As one of the three “Bees” mentioned, “This area has always been ‘in the way.’ Columbus wanted to get to India, and this region also poses major challenges for globalist corporations who want easy transportation between North and South America.”
Under the guise of “free trade” and sometimes even under the guise of “greenwashing,” these ruthless corporations have staged military coups in sovereign nations, robbed land and water from indigenous people, and have built 8-lane highways and bridges in areas where few to none of the locals drive. They’ve erected police state surveillance to monitor “free trade zones,” which sound positive on paper but really mean that no local laws apply there. No workers’ rights, no environmental protections outside of what the corporations dictate, no local say in construction, and no protection for local economies and culture.
Hydro-electric dams and railroads disrupt entire ecosystems and countries, and Western media gets pumped through airwaves to further undermine local traditions and identity.
NAFTA and its next generation CAFTA have largely accomplished in Latin America what the TPP and TTIP hope to accomplish in North America, Asia and Europe: complete corporate control over all aspects of life. Listeners learned — perhaps for the first time — about the IMF (International Monetary Fund), World Bank, WTO (World Trade Organization), just how bogus the War on Drugs really is, along with the devastating effects of GMO monoculture farming on the local farmers. Very little of the information was new to me, but I appreciated the elaborate illustrations through fable characters representing major players.
I did have one major light bulb moment at the beginning when a representative from the People’s History of Elkhart shared his own family’s story of being corn farmers in Mexico who had lost their land due to the US GMO-corn dominance policies of NAFTA. He described how the consistent price manipulation of the US GMO crops undercut Mexican corn farmers and eventually made it impossible to compete. Mexico used to outlaw GMO corn, but once “free trade” occurred, this young man’s family needed to leave their generations’ old farm and move to America in search of other work. I had not made the connection between our immigration issues and corporate agricultural dominance in the Americas. I knew about the military coups, but I had not extended that awareness to include the stranglehold of corporations like Monsanto and Chiquita. Watching this presentation really brought home the importance of local food — everywhere. The US fetishes for bananas and coffee carry with them tremendous karmic consequences. David tells me similar political outrage happened in the once sovereign kingdom of Hawaii over Dole pineapples.
