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Friday, 12 March 2010 22:04 |
AgBioView / AOL News
Steve Pendlebury
March 9, 2010
AgBioView / AOL News
Steve Pendlebury, Editor. AOL News
March 9, 2010
http://www.aolnews.com/
"Crisis" and "garden" are two words that don't normally go together. But this is about Glenn Beck's TV show, where conventional thinking often doesn't apply. His latest advertiser on the Fox News program sells seeds to help people survive impending totalitarianism.
Survival Seed Bank's pitch should be familiar to Beck's viewers -- "Are you worried about the economy?" -- only the product is different. Although the popular program lost sponsors after the host called President Barack Obama a racist, it's held on to those that target people who worry about big government and a financial collapse, such as the gold coin dealer Goldline.
"Are you ever worried that the politicians and the bankers are going to bring the whole thing crashing down?" asks the commercial that first aired on Beck's show Monday. It goes on to explain that "in an economic meltdown, non-hybrid seeds could become more valuable than even silver and gold" and will be "the ultimate barter item."
The ad is mild compared to what's on Survival Seed Bank's Web site. "You don't have to be an Old Testament prophet to see what's going on all around us. A belligerent lower class demanding handouts. A rapidly diminishing middle class crippled by police state bureaucracy. An aloof, ruling elite that has introduced us to an emerging totalitarianism which seeks control over every aspect of our lives. As the meltdown progresses, one of the first things to be affected will be our nation's food supply. If you don't have the ability to grow your own food next year, your life may be in danger."
For $150, the company will sell you packages of 22 varieties of seeds -- enough to plant an acre of beans, tomatoes, corn, lettuce and more in a "crisis garden." And these aren't just any seeds. They are "super seeds, grown by small, fiercely independent farmers" in "remote plots, far from the prying eyes of the big hybrid seed companies," according to Survival Seed Bank. It claims most companies sell only genetically modified "terminator" seeds that won't reproduce themselves.
The company was already advertising on several conservative talk radio shows, as well as the Drudge Report, but the commercial on Beck's TV show fits right in with "the host's apocalyptic visions of the future," observed Oliver Wills of Media Matters for America.
"There's nothing wrong with a business that serves some kind of demand in the marketplace, but it goes without saying that fearmongering about economic collapse followed by food shortages -- is big-time black helicopter stuff," Wills said.
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