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Michael Pollan, Food Policy and Hegemony

But I also understand that Obama is living in a fantasy world. Power concedes nothing without a demand. And closing ones eyes to enormous problems and the special interests who help create them is no way to bring about fundamental change. So what Obama was up against in this moment was the basic contradiction between the brilliance of his campaign strategy, and it's total inadequacy for addressing a whole range of fundamental problems. Pollan realizes this, of course. He's thought a lot about the power relations involved, and he knows that the powerful entrenched interests cannot simply be wished away or ignored:

BILL MOYERS: What you won't find in his writings is a Shermanesque-like statement saying that if nominated he will not serve. But let's watch my guest Michael Pollan turn pale as I ask him suppose Obama did yield to legions of admirers and name you Secretary of Agriculture instead of yet one more advocate of industrial farming? Where would you start? MICHAEL POLLAN: I'm ready for the Shermanesque statement.
BILL MOYERS: Make it. We'll make some news on this.
MICHAEL POLLAN: It's not from me. It's - this is - I would be so bad at this job.
BILL MOYERS: Why?
MICHAEL POLLAN: I have an understanding of my strengths and limitations. Well, you have to understand that that department of the government, the $90 billion a year behemoth is captive of agri-business. It is owned by agri-business. They're in the room making policy there. When you have a food safety recall over meat, sitting there with the Secretary of Agriculture and her chief of staff or his chief of staff is the head of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association.
It's all worked out together. So, I don't know I mean, I think that the department, in a way, is part of the problem. And they're also very dependent on the legislation that the House and Senate Agricultural Committees cobble together. And so I think you'd get swallowed up there very easily. I think that and I don't want this job either. What Obama needs to do, if he indeed wants to make change in this area and that isn't clear yet that he does at least in his first term I think we need a food policy czar in the White House because the challenge is not just what we do with agriculture, it's connecting the dots between agriculture and public health, between agriculture and energy and climate change, agriculture and education.
So you need someone who can take a kind of more you know, global view of the problem and realize that it's an interdisciplinary problem, if you will. And if you do hope to make progress in all these other areas, you have to make sure that if the Surgeon General is, you know, going on about the epidemic of type 2 diabetes, you don't want to be signing farm bills that subsidize high fructose corn syrup at the same time. So you have to kind of align

Now that's the kind of guy you want in the room when you're trying to create real change. He understands the entrenched forces, he understands the need to do an end run, if any progress is to be made, he understands that the problem is interdisciplinary, he understands, in short, that it's all about strategy, and there's a need to take existing forces and reconfigure them for a unified purpose.
This is the same exact situation with the ongoing economic debates, by the way. It's not that the folks Obama is appointing aren't sincere in the moment or won't willingly carry out his policies. It's that they simply don't see the interconnections that a progressive critic sees. They don't see how responding to the crisis of the moment is intricately interconnected to a dozen different other concerns that need to be coordinated with one another. That's the kind of mentality that Pollan represents with respect to food policy, and how it connects with a myriad other concerns, and the same can be said about the entire policy array, not least, economics.MORE

So finished watching Lord of the Rings again today

So have some soundtrack:

Annie Lennox - Into the West Live at Oscars

Into The West (Full Soundtrack Version)

emiliana torrini - gollum's song

Enya - May It Be

More soundtrack

This is my fav bit of music from LOTR: Teh Fllowship of teh Rings. Its part of the Bridge at Khazad Dum, when Gandalf falls and the fellowship are mourning him. The vocalist is Alex Czerniewska

Interestly enough, I found another song from a film called "Sunshine" on youtube, that sound pretty close to my snippet:


Sunshine Soundtrack "John Murphy - The Surface Of The Sun"

in any case, here's the full Bridge Khazad Dum enjoy the choirs!

Soundtrack: The Bridge Of Khazad Dum (Lord of the Rings)