> Bove (who was on my side of the tear gas at
>Seattle) is very likely an old-fashioned French rural chauvinist and
>champion of petit bourgeous small producers...
Nothing of the sort! José Bové is a leftist, antimilitarist, and agricultural unionist of long and unimpeachable standing, in addition to having now become by far the most popular figure in French public life. For those who would like to know what they are talking about before McLibeling such a person, here is a (unpolished) translation of the Canard Enchaîné's review of his recent book:
"The World is not a Commodity"
("Le monde n'est pas une marchandise")
by José Bové and François Dufour
(La Découverte, 238p. 95FF)
The best proof that José Bové is not the "media hobgoblin" that some claim is destined for rapid oblivion after a distracting turn around the track is this book of dense and fortifying conversations which will give pleasure to all those who despair at the bad
food on their plate and who are overwhelmed by the galloping pace of globalization. In response to questions from Gilles Luneau, the dissector of McDo, together with his comrade-in-arms François Dufour, the spokesman for the Peasant Confederation, expounds here a solid body of thought nourished by multiple influences ( including that of Jacques Ellul, the antitechnologist) and rooted in twenty years of collective militant (Larzac [the occupation and farming of a plateau that the French Army had sought to turn into an artillery test range]) and unionist (the history of The Peasant Confederation, formally established in 1987, actually begins in 1980 with the boycott of hormone-fed veal initiated by Bernard Lambert and the worker-peasants) experiences.
The book takes off with the trashing of the Millau McDo and goes through to the anti-WTO demonstrations in Seattle. In between, the authors review in detail the postwar evolution of French agriculture--its control by the FNSEA (Syndicat of Farm Operators) and the dark balance sheet resulting from it: ten times fewer farmers today than in 1950, constantly repeated health-threatening crises, pollution in every corner, pervasive bad food (one example among thousands: manufacturers transform 100 kg of raw ham into 120kg of cooked ham through injections of polyphosphates and other colloids) and an adulterated cocks-crow ("We are Europe's biggest food exporter!") which passes silently over the 100 billion frances of annual public subsidy to French agriculture (of which 70 billion are direct grants to farmers), etc.
For our two peasants, this productivist option was not (and still is not) unavoidable. Often technical, but overflowing with enlightening syntheses (on the mad cow crisis, on genetically modified organisms and the runaway patenting of life-forms, the wrong directions taken by agronomic research, the role of the WTO, etc.,) sometimes rough when it indulges in unionist rhetoric, this book does not let itself get stuck in the food on our plate, but goes right back up the food-production chain and puts forward a credible alternative. A peasant thought which doesn't have both feet in one shoe, that's quite a change from what we're accustomed to!
Jean-Luc Porquet (Le Canard Enchaîné, 22 March, 2000)
You all should know, incidentally, that Le Canard Enchaîné was founded in 1916 as a voice of opposition to the Imperialist War. It has been published continually since then (except for a brief interruption during WW II), remaining always true to its founding principles, and never has it accepted a line of paid advertising or a franc of subsidy. Just about every scandal of the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Republics has been exposed first in its pages.
Shane Mage (who has been inside a McDonalds a few times, but only to excrete, never to ingest).
"Thunderbolt steers all things."
Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64
Shane Mage
"immortal mortals, mortal immortals, living their deaths, dying their lives"
Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 62
Shane Mage
"When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly.
When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true." (N. Weiner)
Shane Mage
"Thunderbolt steers all things."
Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64