Lettuce Bombs Over America

This is The Zero Hour with Richard R.J. Eskow, produced by the WeAC Radio Network and broadcasting from the banks of the Anacostia directly into the halls of power. And now your host, Richard R.J. Eskow. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the program. As I've mentioned on the program before, in a past life, and we're going back a ways now, I was a data nerd, a computer nerd. I suppose if I'd stuck with it, my life might have been very different, but I missed humanity somehow. Part of my work as a data nerd in the 1990s was evaluating what was then considered the frontiers of artificial intelligence, which is a phrase I hate because it's not intelligence. It's a more, it obscures more than it reveals. But in those days, artificial intelligence consisted of something they called expert systems where you interviewed somebody with expertise, might be a doctor, might be an engineer, whomever, try to extract all their knowledge and put it in a box, as opposed to the sheer brute force. of the large language models we have now, the chat bots, chat GPT, and Anthropic and all of the others that couldn't exist without, first of all, decades of data mining of our internet usage, creating these vast databases about us. And secondly, couldn't exist without the massive brute force of data centers, which they're building right and left. So with that background and now being who I am today, politically, I consider it a worthwhile use of my time, and hopefully yours to keep you updated on what's going on in the world of AI and what it means for the rest of us. as human beings. So let's do a quick update. First of all, although I've been at the forefront of saying that AI is basically derived from the rest of us and that it is not intelligence, I don't want us to underestimate what so-called AI can do. There's been a lot of, you know, I read the engineering journals and other places, as well as the mainstream news about this, It's coming up with some remarkable and sometimes scary things. For example, you may have read about the fact that open AI ran a test on one of its technology's ability to hack other software, and it did the unexpected. It breached a firewall of another company and rated its data to do that while. While news reports in their usual misleading way of describe that as, you know, sort of nefarious or ascribe motives to the software, software doesn't have motives, but it can behave as if it does, and it can do things that are extraordinarily surprising and disturbing. This is the so-called hugging face attack because that's the website that it went after.

This is a sign of things to come and should very much frighten us. It's not the SkyNet scenario from Terminator and that SkyNet comes alive and decides it hates humans or whatever, but it is, it resembles it in some way, even though there is no living consciousness here. And it's something we should pay close attention to. We should also be aware that this technology is. behaving, to use that, even that's a risky word, but it's behaving in striking ways that we need to think carefully about. One of the engineering journals points out that technologists at Anthropic found a space that one of its own clawed chatbot created for itself a kind of internal scratch pad. It calls this spot the J space where it makes notes. in effect as it goes along and you can manipulate that to alter the results but this is just the first of many examples or it's not even the first there have been a number of them but this is one of many examples we're going to continue to see of unexpected behavior uh that should concern us so i don't want us to minimize both the power either the power of this technology or the risks of this technology, much less the promise of this technology, which is another reason why I think it should be publicly owned. This is, again, rather than dismissing it as just a typing machine, as some of us on the left have a tendency to do, we should be asking ourselves as a progressive movement, as a social movement. What can this technology do for us instead of against us? How should we harness it? And who should be in control? Now, as far as that conversation is concerned, I may have also mentioned on the program that back in 2024, which in AI terms is generations ago, I wrote an article saying it should be publicly owned. It should be in effect. socially owned. And I'm glad to see that other commentators all over the place are catching up with it, including the technology news, maven. Jeff Jarvis, who's been around forever, who wrote a piece three days ago as I speak these words called AI Communism, with the subheading, Nerds of the World, Unite Onward to Media Socialism. Well, hello, that's what I've been talking about for a long time. Now, Jeff Jarvis writes, we found ourselves asking, meaning his podcast partner and himself,

What would be so wrong with AI communism? What if there were AI for all? A. Comrades, imagine all that could be created, often for free on top of open AI models, how many universities and researchers, startups and entrepreneurs, artists and students could better afford the technology. Imagine the greater control. In other words, the world is beginning to catch up to this. It's not just a struggle over data centers. although it's certainly that, it's a struggle over classic issues of power, wealth, and control. Now, along those lines, I do also want to add that I agree that progressives are listening to the wrong people about AI, which is a piece of a column that was written an op-ed at the New York Times by Paris Marx. He's somebody who has a lot of good things to say about this. There was also an article in New York Magazine about the lawyers and scientists who are training AI to steal their careers. We've seen that in a number of fields. I myself got... a form letter asking whether as a journalist, I would be willing to accept $25 an hour to train AI to replace journalists. I was tempted to do it and write about it, but this is more sleeping with the enemy than I was willing to do it. I guess before I go, I want to also mention something that, shall we say, is kind of... ironic, which is China came out with a technology called Kimi, K-I-M-I. And this has outperformed Anthropic and the other American technologies at much less cost, open source, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And the Trump administration was enraged by this. They said that they accused it. Moonshot AI is the company that created it in China. They say, first of all, commentators are saying this threatens America's leads. But secondly, the Trump administration was furious because they, along with others, have accused it of distilling. quote-unquote, meaning siphoning off some of the logic from Anthropics chatbot and some of the others for its own purposes. Well, isn't that special? In other words, the AI world is getting a taste of its own medicine since it's been, quote-unquote, distilling us for many years now. We'll be right back after this.

This is The Zero Hour with Richard R.J.S. Gal. Check out our free video archives at YouTube.com slash the Zero Hour. And we are back on the Zero Hour. I'm your host, Richard R.J. Eskow. And joining me once again is Zero Hour Senior Correspondent Sonali called Hotcar. She is also a journalist and author who has a new book coming out will be discussing shortly. And she has her own broadcast. You can find out more about her and her work at Rising Up with Sonali.com. And welcome back to the program, Sonali. Thanks for having me, Richard. So you have a new piece out, and it is about the tainted lettuce story. So give us, if you would, please, the brief overview. So many of your viewers have probably heard about the fact that we're supposed to be avoiding lettuce right now because... thousands of people, largely in the Midwest and Michigan seems to be a major area where people have been affected. Thousands of people, something like 7,000 people have been documented to have been infected by cyclosporiasis, which is a bacterial infection, you know, in the similar class to like E. coli and salmonella, not as fatal as those infections are, but incredibly difficult to, you know, horrible symptoms that have been. described as explosive diarrhea. Nobody wants that. And so has left people debilitated. People who have had that and even recovered from that have been left with weakened immune systems, you know, kind of like COVID where like getting it is terror, you know, is no fun. And generally you recover, but some people remain like impacted for the long term. And so. This is a very serious thing. And the government, the federal government, hasn't quite been able to pin down what the origins of the lettuce, contaminated lettuce are. But right now, all indications point to one of four major providers of fresh cut salad greens in the United States, known as Taylor Farms. Taylor says it's still, you know, in the middle of its investigation, but that seems to be it. And, you know, there's a lot of implications around the story that I discuss in my piece. And I want to talk about them. I want to start with the meta story because not too long ago, as a friend or as an editor reading your piece, I would have said... The phrase, nobody wants explosive diarrhea, which appears in your piece, I would have said, is unnecessary. Sonali, this, but we now live in an invite, you know, this is a given, okay? Normally an editor would say that, but.

We now live the meta story of how much we're dismantling the regulation, how much greed and corporate interests influencing our politics. It has become so, has made all the logical nostrums of the past so hazy that it actually becomes necessary to kind of reiterate, doesn't it? Yes. And the reason I put that in there, and it's interesting that you brought that up. is because we have the implication of our current system is that this is just something we have to live with. We must accept that there will be in the interest of the free market, in the interest of letting big producers and big companies do what they must do to feed us. And of course, their goal is to make a profit. We must bear the, we must pay the price for. their business practices. And if that means 7,000 people getting explosive diarrhea, so be it. And so that's the implication behind it, because these are preventable issues. And they're preventable in ways that I point out in the piece that the main, the three main issues that I sort of was able to identify around this is that we have fewer and fewer food producers. distributors, etc. Food produces processors and distributors. which has big implications for when one company has problems, they are spread out throughout the country because they're so big. We have far too few regulations that are currently being dismantled, and we do not support and sustain small farms. In fact, we are weakening them and making life harder for them. And small farms and farmers are where we ought to be localized food. industry is a lot stronger than a centralized food industry where single bottleneck can cause massive disruptions and supplies. So those are the three issues that are identified. They're not rocket science. It should be something we should take for granted that government regulates our food supply and the safety of our food supply, but it's largely voluntary. And it's shocking that we don't have more infections than we do. And people may minimize the severity of this illness, too. When people think about diarrhea, first of all, this form of it is exceptionally painful. And as you say, can cause long-lasting or permanent damage. This disease I've read can last six weeks or something. I mean, that's horrific. And, okay, I got it. in India 40 years ago, but I did not get it from the people of India or the food of India. I got it my last day in what was then Bombay, when someone took me out for dinner at the Taj Mahal Hotel.

which is, you know, the elite hotel, I guess originally for British, you know, Raj administrators or something. I don't know the history, but I can tell you from personal experience. You don't want it. You really don't want it. Every, you literally spend your time thinking, how am I going to get through the next 30 seconds? And it damaged me for years. Yeah. And so the severity of this. And yet, and no one's going to run for office saying we are, our party is objectively pro explosive diarrhea, right? And this is why I bring it up. And yet. The policies that led to this episode, and will almost certainly lead to more such episodes and breakouts and epidemics and so on, are treated as a given. So as we dive into the specifics of the story, I don't want to bring my bias to your take on the story, but it seems to me that this is a massive failure, even though I think the news media is trying to tell the whole story and I'm not going to wrap them as hard as I might on other kinds of journalism. I still think they're not conveying that this is a straight case of cause and effect. You do ABC and this will happen because I don't think the general public has that. understanding. Am I wrong, you think? I mean, look, we pay taxes in order for the federal government to protect us. And that's the whole point of regulations. It's why we have, you know, laws about the kinds of toys you can sell toddlers. And so we have to have federal regulators ensuring that our food is safe. And currently, our food safety when it comes to bacterial infections is monitored by a very weak monitoring system called FoodNet, which is run under the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that only... 10 states out of 50 participate in. So already extremely weak that are monitoring or were monitoring for something like eight different kinds of infections. And that exactly, almost exactly a year ago, the Trump administration decided to make it voluntary to monitor six out of the eight. And so only two are mandatory, which is E. coli and salmonella. cyclospora, which is the infection that is now spreading, is one of the ones that it's not necessary for FoodNet to monitor anymore. That is the cat.

find the source of this contamination. And it is shocking. We are relying on market forces to keep us safe. The sense that, well, producers aren't going to, you know, want to affect their bottom line because people will stop buying lettuce. So we will leave it up to them to ensure the safety of their produce. Okay. Yes, that may work except. that you first wait for thousands of people to suffer before market forces correct themselves. That is not, I mean, it's different in places like Europe where the regulatory systems are a lot stronger. And we deserve those same protections. But of course, Taylor Farms, like many big corporations, are busy using their profits to lobby the government for fewer regulations. And it turns out that the CEO of Taylor Farms. as a big donor to the Trump administration and Trump adjacent super PACs and has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars directly lobbying government to dismantle regulations. So this is the direct outcome, as you were saying, of the actions that our government has taken in favor of big corporations and against the public and public health. We'll be right back after this with more of my conversation with Sonali called Hotcar. I'm Richard. RJ Eskow, and you're listening to at the Zero Hour. You are listening to the We Act Radio Network produced in Washington, D.C. Visit us online at weactradio.com or at YouTube.com slash WeactRadio, D.C.

And we are back on The Zero Hour. I'm your host, Richard R.J. Escal. We now continue my conversation with Sonali Cole Hotcar. And I'm glad you brought up the issue that's so important what you just said, Senali, and I add this business about corrupting the process through lobbying and the power of these monopolies, near monopolies, I should say, this concentration and in all aspects of food production and distribution. And the other piece of it is this mythology, which I... I can't believe even they give any credence to that the market will take care of it. Because as I mentioned to you, I've been doing a little research on, since I read your piece this morning on Taylor Farms. How can people, how can the market? address a failure of a product when you don't even know when you're buying that product. And what struck me the most in researching Taylor Farms is that, and this took me some digging to get the names of all the final shelf products of packaged lettuce that originate with Taylor Farms. A lot of those are modeled as, or marketed, I should say, Either, well, oh, organics is one of them at Safeway. Signature select is another safe. Greenwise at public supermarkets, simply nature at all these supermarkets. Some of the Crater Joe's bagged salads are from these guys, Taylor Farms, 365, buy whole food. People think they're getting something sort of holistic. And it strikes me that what they're doing is not only subverting market forces by doing this. They're also tricking people into thinking they're buying a healthier product when they're just buying a factory widget like anybody else might sell. Yeah, and what they're also doing is they're kind of giving people the false impression that there is competition and diversity on the shelves. So if you're going to a big supermarket that sells 10 different brands of bagged lettuce, chances are that you're only looking at the products created by one or two companies and just repackaged under different name brands. Some of them are companies that are directly owned by some of these producers. There's no reason for them to have different companies selling, you know, let us under two different labels, but they do it in order to give people the impression that they have a choice. Capitalism is a, you know, this kind of capitalism in particular is, is, is, this is charlatanism, right? This is like, this is a way to play on our sense of agency that we are making these choices. There's no real choice.

And so, you know, what's happening is people are trying to go out of their way because they're trying to choose now. They're realizing that black lettuce from the storm could be dangerous. So they're seeking out. small farmers at farmers markets. And when I looked into the way in which the Trump administration has screwed over small farms just in the past year, I was shocked at something I hadn't really looked at before Trump, you know, wooed small farmers to try to get their vote. And many did go in his way. But basically, he has cut program after program after program under the guise of taking action against DEI initiatives. He has cut programs that benefit all kinds of farmers. He has taken disaster aid programs away. He has cut a program that was matching small farmers produce with food banks so that, you know. low-income people had access to fresh food, and small farmers had a source of stable income. It was a win-win that benefited two really important demographics, and he cut that program. I mean, over and over again, small farmers are going out of business. They are reeling. They can't handle the pressures of facing the competition from these giant producers. And so there are fewer options left for... people who want to eat lettuce, right? Like we were told, we're supposed to eat fresh food. So the government has... fully failed the American people. And you want to know what else I found out about Taylor Foods, Taylor Farms, along that line, by the way. So, Nelly, I think you'll find that it's interesting. Now, I want to go back to your article. In April 2024, Taylor Farms acquired Farm-Wise, which is an agricultural robotics company specializing in precision, weeding and thinning. So here you... The small farmers of America are supposed to compete with this robotic agricultural factory system that cuts corners every way it can, including apparently cleaning fecal matter off its lettuce from time to time, since that was the source of the cyclospora outbreak. And they're supposed to compete. Meanwhile, the inner cities of this country, many of them, including the one where our studio headquarters is located here in D.C. are food deserts. So people there would be desperate for healthy farm grown foods of various kinds. Nope, can't do it. Trump administration and one of the other things you point out in the article that I think is important and goes back to these organic brands, Trader Joe's and Whole Foods and so on. But most of the people buying that stuff don't realize.

they're funding Trump's MAGA super PAC, which is something I learned from your article. Yes. I mean, imagine a bag of lettuce helps the profit margins of a company that directly supports MAGA Inc, which is a Trump-related super PAC. I mean, this is what we have come to, right? There are people struggling with joblessness. an immigrant farmer's working in vulnerable conditions and being scapegoated. But the billionaire owners of these farms are automating jobs and are dismantling the regulatory apparatus that is supposed to keep us safe and are funding using those profits, those same systems to ensure that they get stronger and stronger and richer and richer at the expense of our public health. Something has got to give. We have to. pushback very, very hard against the system. And so that means breaking up food monopolies. It shouldn't be that a handful of food corporations control so much of our food production, distribution. I mean, we can't survive without food, right? It shouldn't be that we rely so much on this. And I point out the analogy. to the war on Iran that resulted in showing us the weakness of a globalized energy system where the majority of oil passes through this geographic area and all it took was one unprovoked war. to choke off and throw global oil supplies into disarray. Similarly, we've got these potential bottlenecks in our food distribution system because there are food monopolies. And we shouldn't be relying on. This is a weak system. It is a weakened system when you have giants controlling so much of what we rely on. All it takes is one of them falling apart or something going wrong with one of them to throw huge chunks of our food system into disarray. So we have to dismantle these monopolies. We have to strengthen small farms and small farmers. We have to strengthen the regulatory apparatus that tracks infections and cuts them off immediately and ensures that we are safe. The solutions are not complicated. They're simple solutions, but they go against the bottom lines of massive... corporations and the MAGA agenda. It's time for us to push back. And you'd think it would be more, that's so well said, and it's so important. And it becomes so I guess I summarize, or as I try to organize that of my head, I think it's fragility because whenever you have a highly centralized system like this with just a few major players, a breakdown in any one of them paralyzes the whole system. I mean, people just aren't buying letters now.

un-democratic exacerbates inequality, encourages political and feeds on political corruption. It makes creative solutions to a variety of problems impossible. It contributes to unemployment. And frankly, reading your article, I was feeling a little nostalgic for these... partially true, partially mythic stories of like ancient honor culture. Bruce Taylor, the CEO, I mean, I'm imagining the world where Bruce Taylor, third generation inheritor of wealth like Donald Trump's CEO of Taylor Farms. I'm imagining a world where he would have no choice but to commit ritual suicide in the face of the harm he's caused this many people. Instead, as you point out, news recently emerged of representatives from Taylor Fons calling the White House to try to delay a recall of their letters. They're trying to sell more of this stuff, even as it's causing this horrific disease outbreak. I mean, what kind of pathological... parts and do you need to be to do that? It's monstrous. And the fact that they feel bold enough to directly call the White House to hold off on a recall shows how broken the system is, the government is supposed to be the watchdog. They're supposed to be ensuring checks and balances on a private producer whose product can impact public health. And they have just... you know, picked up the phone and dialed to Trump, which we shouldn't be surprised by given who Trump is that it would be easy for any power player to call the president directly because he likes to have that kind of power. He likes to have people come and kiss his ring and to ensure that, you know, he alone can determine what goes next. So the fact that they're even, they even feel bold enough to call the White House to ask for this recall to be stopped. shows just the hubris built into our system of these corporate players. It should never have come to those. And they're missing words with the government about the epidemiologists are very clear. It's their, let us, that's the problem. They're still pretending that, no, that's erroneous. So let's conclude with your final paragraph. If that's okay with you, Sunali, it says what will help? prevent future outbreaks, is restoring and preventing regulatory, I'm sorry, is restoring and expanding regulatory agencies in their tracking of infectious outbreaks and breaking up food monopolies while sustaining its strengthening small farms. Then the sentence made confusing, but you had to write it. The sentence, the question is, will the federal government have the guts to do what it takes to protect American people's guts? I kind of think we know the answer to that under current circumstances, don't we? Yes, they do not have the guts to protect our guts. It's we have to have the guts to take them on. And that I think is really, really, it's important for us to understand the power dynamic at work. And the government is supposed to work for us. And so I think that the solutions, as I mentioned earlier, are simple. The importance.

lies in our ability to ensure that government is protecting us through these regulations. You know, every single one, it shouldn't be a partisan issue. Every single one of us, no matter what party we come from, should be able to trust the food on our plate. If we don't trust the food on our plate, we should be asking ourselves the question of whose job is it? to ensure that our food is safe. You know, you have the Uber libertarians, the Anrandians, who think that the best government is no government at all. What are you supposed to set up a chemistry lab at home to check for the bacterial infections in your own lettuce that you buy from the store? Or are you supposed, is everybody supposed to turn into an urban homesteader and grow their own lettuce and grow their own protein and, you know, grow their, I mean. We have to rely on government to, we have to be able to rely on government to keep our food safe. And, you know, the whole thing about small farmers, I didn't even get into the climate impacts of it. Because of the practices, because it was just outside the scope of this piece, the practices of big agribusinesses, fuel climate change, small farmers and a more dispersed food system. is that relies less on fertilizer, which is produced through fossil fuel byproducts. Small farmers would be much more in line with a just climate, with a better climate, better outcomes for our climate. And as our planet warms, parasitic infections are more likely because in a warming climate, these parasites are thriving. So all of these issues are tied up with one another. And the solutions are all to push back against corporatism and big companies and weakened government. And if we don't do something about it, the only survivors left in a few years are going to be Taylor Farms robot workers like Wally, you know, going through the record. I don't think that's the future we want. It's not even the future that the billionaires want. They don't even think it through. I mean, right now, the vineyards of... France are burning dangerously close to Bordeaux, okay? In the billionaire's bunkers, there will be no Bordeaux wine because they have destroyed the climate. I'm sorry, you know, but if you think, like if these people think that they can have a future for their children. continuing the practices that they are engaged in, they've got another thing coming. You can't have robots create for you the future that all of us together can have for one another. No pinot noir. That's hitting them where they hurt. Well, Sonali Cole, Hotcar, as always, thanks for your great reporting and writing. I got a lot out of this. And as always, thanks for coming on the program. Thank you so much, Richard. I'll see you next time. Look forward to it. And we'll be right back after this. I'm Richard R.J. Eskali. This is The Zero Hour. This is The Zero Hour with Richard R.J. Escal. Check out our free video archives at YouTube.com slash The Zero Hour.

DNC can't do that because it's desperate for money and it doesn't know how else to raise it. So leaving inside the immorality of it all, the guy literally has... an impossible job. So the frustration is bound to mount. It's going to continue to mount because there's no way out of it except collapse and of the current structure and replacement with something better. Now, are you going to get the full story on that from your mainstream media? I doubt it. Because here is another article from the New York Times that encapsulates Again, in its subheading, why the mainstream media does not understand what's going on with politics and with the Democratic Party, Democratic Socialist rises in crowded chaotic field for Wisconsin governor as the headline. Subheading, Democrats must decide what brand to put forward. An establishment name or a candidate on the left who is garnered excitement. This isn't about branding knuckleheads. This is about whether or not you stand for things that people believe in and that are going to make their lives better. This branding thing drives me absolutely nuts. And to close it all off, one more story, this one from common dreams, which of course politically much more sympathetic to. It says that the headline slamming Trump's Cuba report is McCarthyite attack on free speech. Look it up. It definitely is a McCarthyite attack on free speech. Dems vow to fight back. But this is not the organized Democratic Party we're talking about. This is people like Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and so on. They know that this is like Joe McCarthy, trying to say that everyone who opposes the military state and corporate state. is a subversive fighting to undermine the country. But mainstream Democrats have been silent about that, which just shows, again, they've learned nothing from recent history because you can bet that the next one to be called subversives and revolutionaries and enemies of the state is them. It doesn't matter that they're not. The fact is our current regime will stop at nothing, and they're too slow to even figure that out. We'll be right back.