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Sweat Shops, GMOs and Neoliberal Fundamentalism: The Agroecological Alternative to Global Capitalism

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By Colin Todhunter

Source: Global Research

Much of the argument in favour of GM agriculture involves little more than misrepresentations and un scrupulous attacks on those who express concerns about the technology and its impacts. These attacks are in part designed to whip up populist sentiment and denigrate critics so that corporate interests can secure further control over agriculture. They also serve to divert attention from the underlying issues pertaining to hunger and poverty and genuine solutions, as well as the self-interest of the pro-GMO lobby itself.

The very foundation of the GMO agritech sector is based on a fraud. The sector and the wider transnational agribusiness cartel to which it belongs have also successfully captured for their own interests many international and national bodies and policies, including the WTO, various trade deals, governments institutions and regulators. From fraud to duplicity, little wonder then the sector is ridden with fear and paranoia.

“They are scared to death,” says Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University and author of several books on food policy. She adds: “They have an industry to defend and are attacking in the hope that they’ll neutralize critics … It’s a paranoid industry and has been from the beginning.”

War against reason

Global corporations like Monsanto are waging an ideological war against not only critics but the public too. For instance, consider that the majority of the British public and the Canadian public have valid concerns about GM food and do not want them. However, the British government was found to have been secretly colluding with the industry and the Canadian government is attempting to soften up the public to try to get people to change their opinions.

Instead of respecting public opinion and serving the public interest by holding powerful corporations to account, officials seem more inclined to serve the interests of the sector, regardless of genuine concerns about GM that, despite what the industry would like to have believe, are grounded in facts and involve rational discourse.

Whether via the roll-out of GMOs or an associated chemical-intensive industrialised monocrop system of agriculture, the agritech/agribusiness sector wants to further expand its influence throughout the globe. Beneath the superficial façade of working in the interest of humanity, however, the sector is driven by a neoliberal fundamentalism which demands the entrenchment of capitalist agriculture via deregulation and the corporate control of seeds, land, fertilisers, water, pesticides and food processing.

If anything matters to the corporate agribusiness/agritech industry, contrary to the public image it tries to convey, it clearly has little to do with ‘choice’, ‘democracy’ or objective science. It has more to do with undermining and debasing these concepts and displacing existing systems of production: economies are “opened up through the concurrent displacement of a pre-existing productive system. Small and medium-sized enterprises are pushed into bankruptcy or obliged to produce for a global distributor, state enterprises are privatised or closed down, independent agricultural producers are impoverished” (Michel Chossudovsky in The Globalization of Poverty, p16).

Critics are highlighting not only how the industry has subverted and debased science and has infiltrated key public institutions and regulatory bodies, but they are also showing how trade and aid is used to subjugate regions and the most productive components of global agriculture – the small/peasant farmer – to the needs of powerful commercial entities.

Critics stab at the heart of neoliberalism

By doing this, critics stab hard at the heart such corporate interests and their neoliberal agenda.

According to Eric Holt-Giménez:

“The World Bank, the World Trade Organization, the World Food Program, the Millennium Challenge, The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and industrial giants like Yara Fertilizer, Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, Syngenta, DuPont, and Monsanto, carefully avoid addressing the root causes of the food crisis. The ‘solutions’ they prescribe are rooted in the same policies and technologies that created the problem in the first place: increased food aid, de-regulated global trade in agricultural commodities, and more technological and genetic fixes. These measures only strengthen the corporate status quo controlling the world’s food… The future of our food-and fuel-systems are being decided de facto by unregulated global markets, financial speculators, and global monopolies.”

The geopolitics of food and agriculture has played a significant role in creating food-deficit regions. For instance, African agriculture has been reshaped on behalf of the interests described in the above extract. The Gates Foundation is currently spearheading the ambitions of corporate America and the scramble for Africa by global agribusiness. And in India, there has been an ongoing attempt to do the same: a project that is now reaching a critical phase as the motives of the state acting on behalf of private (foreign) capital are laid bare and the devastating effects on health, environment and social conditions are clear for all to see.

Any serious commitment to feeding the world sustainably and equitably must work to challenge a globalised system of capitalism that has produced structural inequality and poverty; a system which fuels the marginalisation of small-scale farms and their vitally important cropping systems and is responsible for the devastating impacts of food commodity speculation, land takeovers, rigged trade and an industrial system of agriculture.

And embedded within the system is a certain mentality. Whether it is the likes of Monsanto’s High Grant, Robb Fraley or Bill Gates, highly paid (multi-millionaire) white men with an ideological commitment to corporate power are trying to force a profitable but bogus model of food production on the world.

They do so while conveniently ignoring the effects of a system of capitalism that they so clearly promote and have financially profited from.

It is a capitalism and a system of agriculture propped up by the blood money of militarism (Ukraine and Iraq), ‘structural adjustment’ and strings-attached loans (Africa) or slanted trade deals (India) whereby transnational agribusiness drives a global agenda to suit its interests and eradicate impediments to profit. And it doesn’t matter how much devastation ensues or how unsustainable their model is, ‘crisis management’ and ‘innovation’ fuel the corporate-controlled treadmill they seek to impose.

Genuine solutions: agroecology, decentralisation and localism

However, what really irks the corporate interests which fuel the current GMO/chemical-intensive industrialised model of agriculture is that critics are offering genuine alternatives and solutions. They advocate a shift towards more organic-based systems of agriculture, which includes providing support to small farms and an agroecology movement that is empowering to people politically, socially and economically.

This represents a challenge to all good neoliberal evangelists (and outright hypocrites) with a stake in corporate agriculture who rely on smears to attack those who advocate for such things.

To understand what agroecology involves, let us turn to Raj Patel:

“To understand what agro-ecology is, it helps first to understand why today’s agriculture is called “industrial.” Modern farming turns fields into factories. Inorganic fertilizer adds nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorous to the soil; pesticides kill anything that crawls; herbicides nuke anything green and unwanted—all to create an assembly line that spits out a single crop… Agro-ecology uses nature’s far more complex systems to do the same thing more efficiently and without the chemistry set. Nitrogen-fixing beans are grown instead of inorganic fertilizer; flowers are used to attract beneficial insects to manage pests; weeds are crowded out with more intensive planting. The result is a sophisticated polyculture—that is, it produces many crops simultaneously, instead of just one.”

And it works. Look no further than what Cuba has achieved and the successes outlined in this article. Indeed, much has been written about agroecology and its potential for radical social change, its successes and the challenges it faces (see this, this and this). And now there a major new book from Food First and Groundswell International: Fertile Ground: Scaling agroecology from the ground up.

Executive Director of Food First Eric Holtz-Gimenez argues that agroecology offers concrete, practical solutions to many of the world’s problems that move beyond (but which are linked to) agriculture. In doing so, it challenges – and offers alternatives to – the prevailing moribund doctrinaire economics of a neoliberalism that drives a failing system (also see this and this) of GM/chemical-intensive industrial agriculture.

He adds that the scaling up of agroecology can tackle hunger, malnutrition, environmental degradation and climate change. By creating securely paid labour-intensive agricultural work, it can also address the interrelated links between labour offshoring by rich countries and the removal of rural populations elsewhere who end up in sweat shops to carry out the outsourced jobs: the two-pronged process of neoliberal globalisation that has devastated the economies of the US and UK and which is displacing existing indigenous food production systems and undermining the rural infrastructure in places like India to produce a reserve army of cheap labour.

When you fail to understand capitalism and the central importance of agriculture, you fail to grasp many of the issues currently affecting humanity. At the same time, when you are part of the problem and fuel and benefit from it, you will do your best to attack and denigrate anything or anyone that challenges your interests.

Former World Bank Staffer Explains How Neoliberalism Is Destroying The World

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By Dylan Charles

Source: Waking Times

More destructive than bombs, money has become the weapon of choice for the global elite, for the hidden hand of finance can plunder and conquer entire nations, assimilate whole cultures, exploit resources and rape the earth while forcing billions into poverty, all with the surprising stealth of pen-strokes and business contracts.

Neoliberalism is the economic and political philosophic driving force in the world today. It suggests that human progress is the result of competition, best expressed by an extremist version of unfettered capitalism, where privatization of profits and socialization of losses are acceptable ethics, regardless of human and environmental costs incurred along the way.

Neoliberalism is the killer plague of the 21st century. Neoliberalism is economic fascism. It is a criminal doctrine. Globalized neoliberalism privatizes public goods for private profit. Neoliberalism led by Washington with the shameful complicity of Europe has in the last fifteen years killed between 12 and 15 million people by wars, famine, deprived health services… forced refugees. Today a small world elite of corporate and Wall Street CEOs and selected politicians call the shots. ~Peter Koenig

First defined in 1938, its global implementation today is the product of the Washington Consensus of 1989 which describes a set of economic prescriptions for developing and crisis-wracked nations created by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the U.S. Treasury Department. It is a policy which relies on the creation of social and financial crises to distract and soften target nations and peoples, creating problems while providing the ‘solutions.’

At present, Mexico is on the brink of revolution, a direct result of the fallout of three decades of neoliberal policy.

It [Neoliberalism] finds that representative democracy has been perverted through fear, putting central political decisions in the hands of power groups with special interests.The social impact of this process has been devastating, with a polarized income distribution, falling wages, increased precarious jobs, rising inequality, and extreme violence. Health conditions have also deteriorated and disorders associated with violence, chronic stress, and a changing nutritional culture have become dominating. [Source]

Journalist George Monbiot describes neoliberalism as follows:

Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that “the market” delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.

Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimised, public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve. ~[Source]

Economic hitman turned whistleblower, John Perkins, wrote in detail of his ‘boots-on-the-ground’ experiences in conquering third-world nations through economic aid and infrastructure financing in his seminal classic, Confessions of an Economic Hitman. He’s since been on a world crusade to expose the madness of neoliberalism, seeking redemption by connecting with many of the indigenous cultures he previously had worked to enslave and oppress.

In recent years, Greece has become a more visible victim of this policy as the IMF and the European Union have forced the people of this ancient culture into austerity and starvation as part of a plan of economic restructuring to force repayment of illegitimate debts to international bankers.

Speaking at The Delphi Initiative in 2015, economist, geopolitical analyst, and former World Bank staffer, Peter Koenig, explained the scourge of this political and economic philosophy and how it is destroying our world today.

What we are confronted with today is the globalization, and the globalization basically that we are living is like a fetish of the neoliberals. The neoliberals who want to reduce the world to one culture, to one set of values, all based on greed consumption and maximizing profits. ~Peter Koenig

Koenig also speaks of neoliberalism as the root of the type of endless global conflict we see today, including wars of occupation and their resulting terrorism, noting that the U.S. economy is now so dependent on military spending that if peace were to break out, our economy would collapse.

Although from 2015, Koenig’s message is critically important today as the world continues to wake up to the reality that our lives are in the hands of a small exploitative group of inhumane corporations and governments who will stop at nothing to control the resources which make life possible, including water, destroying any civilization that stands in its way.

 

Neoliberalism and The Globalization of War: America’s Hegemonic Project

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By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

Source: GlobalResearch.ca

The world is at a dangerous crossroads.  The United States and its allies have launched a military adventure which threatens the future of humanity. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The US-NATO military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.

America’s hegemonic project is to destabilize and destroy countries through acts of war, covert operations in support of terrorist organizations, regime change and economic warfare. The latter includes the imposition of deadly macro-economic reforms on indebted countries as well the manipulation of financial markets, the engineered  collapse of national currencies, the privatization of State property, the imposition of economic sanctions, the triggering of inflation and black markets.

The economic dimensions of  this military agenda must be clearly understood. War and Globalization are intimately related. These military and intelligence operations are implemented alongside a process of economic and political destabilization targeting specific countries in all major regions of World.

Neoliberalism is an integral part of this foreign policy agenda. It constitutes an all encompassing mechanism of  economic destabilization. Since the 1997 Asian crisis, the IMF-World Bank structural adjustment program (SAP) has evolved towards a broader framework which consists in ultimately undermining national governments’ ability to formulate and implement national economic and social policies.

In turn, the demise of national sovereignty was also facilitated by the instatement of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995, evolving towards the global trading agreements (TTIP and TPP) which (if adopted) would essentially transfer state policy entirely into the hands of corporations. In recent years, neoliberalism has extend its grip from the so-called developing countries to the developed countries of both Eastern and Western Europe. Bankruptcy programs have been set in motion. Island, Portugal, Greece, Ireland, etc, have been the target of  sweeping austerity measures coupled with the privatization of key sectors of the national economy.

The global economic crisis is intimately related to America’s hegemonic agenda. In the US and the EU, a  spiralling defense budget backlashes on the civilian sectors of economic activity. “War is Good for Business”: the powerful financial groups which routinely manipulate stock markets, currency and commodity markets, are also promoting the continuation and escalation of the Middle East war. A worldwide process of impoverishment is an integral part of the New World Order agenda.

Beyond the Globalization of Poverty 

Historically, impoverishment of large sectors of the World population has been engineered through the imposition of IMF-style macro-economic reforms. Yet, in the course of the last 15 years, a new destructive phase has been set in motion. The World has moved beyond the “globalization of poverty”: countries are transformed in open territories,

State institutions collapse, schools and hospitals are closed down, the legal system disintegrates, borders are redefined, broad sectors of economic activity including agriculture and manufacturing are precipitated into bankruptcy,  all of which ultimately leads to a process of social collapse, exclusion and destruction of human life including the outbreak of famines, the displacement of entire populations (refugee crisis).

This “second stage” goes beyond the process of impoverishment instigated in the early 1980s by creditors and international financial institutions. In this regard, mass poverty resulting from macro-economic reform sets the stage of  a process of outright destruction of human life.

In turn, under conditions of widespread unemployment, the costs of labor in developing countries has plummeted. The driving force of the global economy is luxury consumption and the weapons industry.

The New World Order

Broadly speaking, the main corporate actors of the New World Order are

• Wall Street and the Western banking conglomerates including its offshore money laundering facilities, tax havens, hedge funds and secret accounts,

• the Military Industrial Complex regrouping major “defense contractors”, security and mercenary companies, intelligence outfits, on contract to the Pentagon;

• the Anglo-American Oil and Energy Giants,

• The Biotech Conglomerates, which increasingly control agriculture and the food chain;

• Big Pharma,

• The Communication Giants  and Media conglomerates, which constitute the propaganda arm of the New World Order.

There is of course overlap, between Big Pharma and the Weapons industry, the oil conglomerates and Wall Street, etc.

These various corporate entities interact with government bodies, international financial institutions, US intelligence.  The state structure has evolved towards what Peter Dale Scott calls the “Deep State”, integrated by covert intelligence bodies, think tanks, secret councils and consultative bodies, where important New World Order decisions are ultimately reached on behalf of powerful corporate interests.

In turn, intelligence operatives increasingly permeate the United Nations including its specialized agencies, nongovernmental organizations, trade unions, political parties.

What this means is that the executive and legislature constitute a smokescreen, a mechanism for providing political legitimacy to decisions taken by the corporate establishment behind closed doors.

Media Propaganda

The corporate  media, which constitutes the propaganda arm of the New World Order, has a long history whereby intelligence ops oversee the news chain. In turn, the corporate media serves the useful purpose of obfuscating war crimes, of presenting a humanitarian narrative which upholds the legitimacy of politicians in high office.

Acts of war and economic destabilization are granted legitimacy. War is presented as a peace-keeping undertaking.

Both the global economy as well as the political fabric of Western capitalism have become criminalized. The judicial apparatus at a national level as well the various international human rights tribunals and criminal courts serve the useful function of upholding the legitimacy of US-NATO led wars and human rights violations.

Destabilizing Competing Poles of Capitalist Development

There are of course significant divisions and capitalist rivalry within the corporate establishment. In the post Cold War era, the US hegemonic project consists in destabilizing competing poles of capitalist development including China, Russia and Iran as well as countries such as India, Brazil and Argentina.

In recent developments, the US has also exerted pressure on the capitalist structures of the member states of the European Union. Washington exerts influence in the election of heads of State including Germany and France, which are increasingly aligned with Washington.

The monetary dimensions are crucial. The international financial system established under Bretton Woods prevails. The global financial apparatus is dollarized. The powers of money creation are used as a mechanism to appropriate real economy assets. Speculative financial trade has become an instrument of enrichment at the expense of the real economy. Excess corporate profits and multibillion dollar speculative earnings (deposited in tax free corporate charities) are also recycled towards the corporate control of politicians, civil society organizations, not to mention scientists and intellectuals. It’s called corruption, co-optation, fraud.

Latin America: The Transition towards a “Democratic Dictatorship”

In Latin America, the military dictatorships of the 1960s and 1970s have in large part been replaced by US proxy regimes, i.e. a democratic dictatorship has been installed which ensures continuity. At the same time the ruling elites in Latin America have remoulded. They have become increasingly integrated into the logic of global capitalism, requiring an acceptance of the US hegemonic project.

Macro-economic reform has been conducive to the impoverishment of  the entire Latin america region.

In the course of the last 40 years, impoverishment has been triggered by hyperinflation, starting with the 1973 military coup in Chile and the devastating reforms of the 1980s and early 1990s.

The implementation of these deadly economic reforms including sweeping privatization, trade deregulation, etc. is coordinated in liaison with US intelligence ops, including the “Dirty war” and Operation Condor, the Contra insurrection in Nicaragua, etc.

The development of a new and privileged elite integrated into the structures of Western investment and consumerism has emerged. Regime change has been launched against a number of Latin American countries.

Any attempt to introduce reforms which departs from the neoliberal consensus is the object of “dirty tricks” including acts of infiltration, smear campaigns, political assassinations, interference in national elections and covert operations to foment social divisions. This process inevitably requires corruption and cooptation at the highest levels of government as well as within the corporate and financial establishment. In some countries of the region it hinges on the criminalization of the state, the legitimacy of money laundering and the protection of the drug trade.

 

The above text is an English summary of Prof. Michel Chossudovsky’s Presentation, National Autonomous University of Nicaragua, May 17, 2016. This presentation took place following the granting of a Doctor Honoris Causa in Humanities to Professor Chossudovsky by the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua (UNAN)

Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO): Profit, Power and Geopolitics

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By Colin Todhunter

Source: GlobalResearch.ca

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are not essential for feeding the world [1,2], but if they were to lead to increased productivity, did not harm the environment and did not negatively impact biodiversity and human health, would we be wise to embrace them anyhow?

The fact is that GMO technology would still be owned and controlled by certain very powerful interests. In their hands, this technology is first and foremost an instrument of corporate power, a tool to ensure profit. Beyond that, it is intended to serve US global geopolitical interests. Indeed, agriculture has for a long time been central to US foreign policy.

“American foreign policy has almost always been based on agricultural exports, not on industrial exports as people might think. It’s by agriculture and control of the food supply that American diplomacy has been able to control most of the Third World. The World Bank’s geopolitical lending strategy has been to turn countries into food deficit areas by convincing them to grow cash crops – plantation export crops – not to feed themselves with their own food crops.” Professor Michael Hudson [3].

The Project for a New American Century and the Wolfowitz Doctrine show that US foreign policy is about power, control and ensuring global supremacy at any cost [4,5]. Part of the plan for attaining world domination rests on the US controlling agriculture and hijacking food sovereignty and nations’ food security.

In his book ‘Seeds of Destruction’, William Engdahl traces how the oil-rich Rockefeller family translated its massive wealth into political clout and set out to capture agriculture in the US and then globally via the ‘green revolution’ [6]. Along with its big-dam, water-intensive infrastructure requirements, this form of agriculture made farmers dependent on corporate-controlled petroproducts and entrapped them and nations into dollar dependency and debt. GMOs represent more of the same due to the patenting and the increasing monopolization of seeds by a handful of mainly US companies, such as Monsanto, DuPont and Bayer.

In India, Monsanto has sucked millions from agriculture in recent years via royalties, and farmers have been compelled to spend beyond their means to purchase seeds and chemical inputs [7]. A combination of debt, economic liberalization and a shift to (GMO) cash crops (cotton) has caused hundreds of thousands of farmers to experience economic distress, while corporations have extracted huge profits [8]. Over 270,000 farmers in India have committed suicide since the mid to late nineties [9].

In South America, there are similar stories of farmers and indigenous peoples being forced from their lands and experiencing violent repression as GMOs and industrial-scale farming take hold [10]. It is similar in Africa, where Monsanto and The Gates Foundation are seeking to further transform small-scale farming into a corporate controlled model. They call it ‘investing’ in agriculture as if this were an act of benevolence.

Agriculture is the bedrock of many societies, yet it is being recast for the benefit of rich agritech, retail and food processing concerns. Small farms are under immense pressure and food security is being undermined, not least because the small farm produces most of the world’s food [11]. Whether through land grabs and takeovers, the production of (non-food) cash crops for export, greater chemical inputs or seed patenting and the eradication of seed sharing among farmers, profits are guaranteed for agritech corporations and institutional land investors.

The recasting of agriculture in the image of big agribusiness continues across the globe despite researchers saying that this chemical-intensive, high-energy consuming model means Britain only has 100 harvests left because of soil degradation [12]. In Punjab, the ‘green revolution’ model of industrial scale, corporate dominated agriculture has led to a crisis in terms of severe water shortages, increasing human cancers and falling productivity [13]. There is a global agrarian crisis. The increasingly dominant corporate-driven model is unsustainable.

More ecological forms of agriculture are being called for that, through intelligent crop management and decreased use of chemical inputs, would be able to not only feed the world but also work sustainably with the natural environment. Numerous official reports and scientific studies have suggested that such policies would be more appropriate, especially for poorer countries [14-16].

When on occasion the chemical-industrial model indicates that it does deliver better yields than more traditional methods (a generalization and often overstated [17]), even this is a misrepresentation. Better yields but only with massive chemical inputs from corporations and huge damage to health and the environment as well as ever more resource-driven conflicts to grab the oil that fuels this model. Like the erroneous belief that economic ‘growth’ (GDP) is stimulated just because there becomes greater levels of cash flows in an economy (and corporate profits are boosted), the notion of improved agricultural ‘productivity’ also stems from a set of narrowly defined criteria.

The dominant notions that underpin economic ‘growth’, modern agriculture and ‘development’ are based on a series of assumption that betray a mindset steeped in arrogance and contempt: the planet should be cast in an urban-centic, ethnocentric model whereby the rural is to be looked down on, nature must be dominated, farmers are a problem to be removed from the land and traditional ways are backward and in need of remedy.

“People are perceived as ‘poor’ if they eat food they have grown rather than commercially distributed junk foods sold by global agri-business. They are seen as poor if they live in self-built housing made from ecologically well-adapted materials like bamboo and mud rather than in cinder block or cement houses. They are seen as poor if they wear garments manufactured from handmade natural fibres rather than synthetics.” Vandana Shiva [18]

Western corporations are to implement the remedy by determining policies at the World Trade Organization, IMF and World Bank (with help from compliant politicians and officials) in order to  depopulate rural areas and drive folk to live in cities to then strive for a totally unsustainable, undeliverable, environment-destroying, conflict-driving, consumerist version of the American Dream [19,20].

It is interesting (and disturbing) to note that ‘developing’ nations account for more than 80% of world population, but consume only about a third of the world’s energy. US citizens constitute 5% of the world’s population, but consume 24% of the world’s energy. On average, one American consumes as much energy as two Japanese, six Mexicans, 13 Chinese, 31 Indians, 128 Bangladeshis, 307 Tanzanians and 370 Ethiopians [21].

Despite the environmental and social devastation caused, the outcome is regarded as successful just because business interests that benefit from this point to a growth in GDP. Chopping down an entire forest that people had made a living sustainably from for centuries and selling the timber, selling more poisons to spray on soil or selling pharmaceuticals to address the health impacts of the petrochemical food production model would indeed increase GDP, wouldn’t it? It’s all good for business. And what is good for business is good for everyone else, or so the lie goes.

“Corporations as the dominant institution shaped by capitalist patriarchy thrive on eco-apartheid. They thrive on the Cartesian legacy of dualism which puts nature against humans. It defines nature as female and passively subjugated. Corporatocentrism is thus also androcentric – a patriarchal construction. The false universalism of man as conqueror and owner of the Earth has led to the technological hubris of geo-engineering, genetic engineering, and nuclear energy. It has led to the ethical outrage of owning life forms through patents, water through privatization, the air through carbon trading. It is leading to appropriation of the biodiversity that serves the poor.” [22]

The ‘green revolution’ and now GMOs are ultimately not concerned with feeding the world, securing well-rounded nutritious diets or ensuring health and environmental safety. (In fact, India now imports foods that it used to grow but no longer does [23]; in Africa too, local diets are becoming less diverse and less healthy [24].) Such notions are based on propaganda or stem from well-meaning sentiments that have been pressed into the service of corporate interests.

Biotechnological innovations have always had a role to play in improving agriculture, but the post-1945 model of agriculture has been driven by powerful corporations like Monsanto, which are firmly linked to Pentagon and Wall Street interests [25]. Motivated by self-interest but wrapped up in trendy PR about ‘feeding the world’ or imposing austerity to ensure prosperity, the publicly stated intentions of the US state-corporate cabal should never be taken at face value [26,27].

In India, Monsanto and Walmart had a major role in drawing up the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture [28]. Monsanto now funds research in public institutions and its presence and influence compromises what should in fact be independent decision and policy making bodies [29,30]. Monsanto is a driving force behind what could eventually lead to the  restructuring and subjugation of India by the US [31]. The IMF and Monsanto are also working to ensure Ukraine’s subservience to US geopolitical aims via the capture of land and agriculture [32]. The capture of agriculture (and societies) by rich interests is a global phenomenon.

Only the completely naive would believe that rich institutional investors in land and big agribusiness and its backers in the US State Department have humanity’s interests at heart. At the very least, their collective aim is profit. Beyond that and to facilitate it, the need to secure US global hegemony is paramount.

The science surrounding GMOs is becoming increasingly politicized and bogged down in detailed arguments about whose methodologies, results, conclusions and science show what and why. The bigger picture however is often in danger of being overlooked. GMO is not just about ‘science’. As an issue, GMO and the chemical-industrial model it is linked to is ultimately a geopolitical one driven by power and profit.

Notes

1] This report indicates the root causes for global food shortages:  http://www.cban.ca/Resources/Topics/Feeding-the-World/Will-GM-Crops-Feed-the-World

2] Citing official reports and data sources, references in this article indicate agricultural productivity in India was better in 1760 and 1890 and that India does not require chemical-industrial agriculture let alone GMOs: http://www.globalresearch.ca/india-genetically-modified-seeds-agricultural-productivity-and-political-fraud/5328227

3] http://michael-hudson.com/2014/10/think-tank-memories/

4] http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1665.htm

5] http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40093.htm

6] Arun Shrivastava reviews and summarizes Engdahl’s book here: http://www.globalresearch.ca/seeds-of-destruction-the-hidden-agenda-of-genetic-manipulation-2/9379

7] http://www.countercurrents.org/shiva180614.htm

8]  Based on the findings of a report by researchers at Cambridge University in the UK: http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/new-evidence-of-suicide-epidemic-among-indias-marginalised-farmers

9] Official figure quoted by the BBC as of 2013: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21077458

10]http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2267255/gm_crops_are_driving_genocide_and_ecocide_keep_them_out_of_the_eu.html

11] Official report released by GRAIN: http://www.grain.org/article/entries/4929-hungry-for-land-small-farmers-feed-the-world-with-less-than-a-quarter-of-all-farmland

12] Farmers Weekly quotes a report by researchers at the University of Sheffield in the UK: http://www.fwi.co.uk/news/only-100-harvests-left-in-uk-farm-soils-scientists-warn.htm

13] Newspaper report quoting official statistics and research findings: http://www.deccanherald.com/content/337124/punjab-india039s-grain-bowl-now.html

14] Official UN report: http://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/tdr2013_en.pdf

15]http://www.srfood.org/en/official-reports# and http://www.plantpartners.org/agroecology-reports.html

16] http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14735903.2013.806408#tabModule

17] http://phys.org/news/2014-12-crops-industrial-agriculture.html

18] http://www.organicconsumers.org/btc/shiva112305.cfm

19] Food policy analyst Devinder Sharma outlines the motives of Western corporations in India: http://www.bhoomimagazine.org/article/cash-food-will-strike-very-foundation-economy

20] Arundhati Roy discusses the erroneous notion of ‘progress’ being applied in India and the conflict and violence that has followed: http://www.guernicamag.com/features/we-call-this-progress/

21] http://public.wsu.edu/~mreed/380American%20Consumption.htm

22] http://www.spaziofilosofico.it/numero-07/2959/economy-revisited-will-green-be-the-colour-of-money-or-life/

23] Vandana Shiva describes how the ‘green revolution’ and ‘free trade’ have turned India into a net importer of foods it used to be self sufficient in: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/09/201398122228705617.html

24] Article describing the plight of agriculture in Africa: http://www.globalresearch.ca/behind-the-mask-of-altruism-imperialism-monsanto-and-the-gates-foundation-in-africa/5408242

25] http://www.globalresearch.ca/monsantos-gmo-food-and-its-dark-connections-to-the-military-industrial-complex/5389708

26] Article providing factual historical insight into Monsanto and its wrongdoings: http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-complete-history-of-monsanto-the-worlds-most-evil-corporation/5387964

27] Analysis of Wall Street’s fraudulent practices in recent times and the complicity of the entire political and economic system: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2012/03/pers-m15.html

28]http://www.democracynow.org/2006/12/13/vandana_shiva_on_farmer_suicides_the

29]  http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/07/monsanto-a-contemporary-east-india-company-and-corporate-knowledge-in-india/

30] http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/nip-this-in-the-bud/article5012989.ece

31] http://www.countercurrents.org/todhunter031114.htm

32] http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/food-security-hostage-wall-street-and-us-global-hegemony

Fighting Back Against Western Sanction

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President Zuma meeting with BRICS in Mexico

By Ulson Gunnar

Source: NEO

While the impact of sanctions leveled against Russia is being debated, one fact is perfectly clear; the dangerous interdependence cultivated by the concept of “globalization” leaves nations vulnerable amid a global order dominated by hegemonic special interests that use such interdependence as a weapon.

Two rounds of sanctions have been leveled against Russia targeting Russian banking, arms manufacturing, and oil industries. Even as the sanctions are marketed to the world as Russia “paying a price” for its role in “destabilizing” Ukraine, Russia has been busy cultivating ties and expanding markets that are increasingly found outside the West’s spheres of influence and therefore, beyond the reach of these sanctions. Russia is also looking inward to diversify its markets and seek socioeconomic independence.

Instead of viewing the sanctions as an impassable obstacle requiring capitulation to Wall Street and London, Russia has viewed them as a challenge to sever reliance on unstable markets. More so, Russia’s quest for alternative markets is a means of applying its own form of pressure back upon the West. While the West attempts to portray the sanctions as “cutting off Russia,” the restrictions do at least as much to isolate the West itself.

Multipolar World Vs Western Hegemony

In a unipolar world, supranational geopolitical blocs like the EU (European Union), the African Union, ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), and regional free trade agreements serve to consolidate and open up the collective socioeconomic potential of the planet to those at the top of this international order. Currently, this constitutes the special interests on Wall Street, in the city of London, and among the special interests converging in Brussels. Interdependence is intentionally cultivated among the various members of individual blocs and between supranational blocs themselves. This ensures that leverage is constantly maintained over each individual national entity, making individual nations incapable of sidestepping collective initiatives of the blocs they are a part of.

In the European Union, this can be clearly seen as individual nations benefiting from ties with Moscow are attempting with limited success to rebel against broader EU sanctions against Russian industries.

The use of sanctions across several supranational blocs, including North America, the EU, and to a lesser extent, the West’s proxies in nations like East Asia’s Japan, had at one point critically threatened those nations targeted by them. Nations like Iran or Cuba who have suffered under Western sanctions for decades are clearly behind because of them. Behind, but not out.

As technology enables each individual nation to procure wealth on its own it once depended on trade with other nations for, the impact of sanctions is diminishing. The impact of sanctions is also undermined by a growing alternative international order outside of the West’s unipolar paradigm. BRICS, the nations of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, constitute the leading edge of the rise of the developing world. No longer satisfied with subservience to the Wall Street-London global order, nor eager to find themselves entangled beneath another global empire led by another global superpower, these nations are attempting to redefine international relations in more traditional, multilateral terms.

Becoming self-sufficient economically while redefining international ties in a less interdependent manner, appears to be the defining aspect of the emerging multipolar world BRICS is attempting to create. The creation of international trade outside the traditional framework of the IMF, the World Trade Organization, and other institutions created by the West, for the West, has gradually eroded the impact of sanctions, penalties, and monopolies empowered by Western domination over international finance and global trade.

More to Do

While Russia seems to be taking Western sanctions in stride, the fact that the United States and Europe are targeting Russia in the first place is a warning to all members of BRICS as well as to developing nations around the world. In the capitals of nations residing outside the Wall Street-London international order, the possibility that any one of them could be next should be at the center of economic planning and the future of their respective foreign policy.

Creating alternative markets outside this international order could be a short-term stop gap. In Russia’s case, growing ties with China in terms of energy exports ensures a lasting alternative market for Russian natural gas that is set only to grow in the future as the West attempts to cutoff and isolate both Moscow and Beijing.

Seeking to create economic opportunities and progress domestically could be a more long-term and lasting solution. Russia’s decision to ban the import of food products from nations targeting it with recent sanctions gives BRICS an opportunity to expand in the void left by European, American, and Australian agricultural industries. It also gives an opportunity for Russian producers to expand their operations domestically. In the immediate aftermath of Russia banning imports from the West, stocks in Russia’s agricultural industry soared. While such spikes are more due to speculation than an actual jump in value, the fact that these producers now have an incentive to expand may create long-term value to justify investor confidence today.

But rather than waiting for sanctions to begin disrupting the socioeconomic status quo of a nation residing outside Western hegemony, a disruption the sanctions are designed specifically to create, why shouldn’t BRICS and other developing nations begin the process of developing their domestic markets and alternative international trading regimes beforehand?

If Russia, the largest nation geographically, the ninth most populous, and with one of the most formidable conventional and nuclear military forces on Earth, can be targeted for sanctions aimed to cripple its economy, then any nation can be targeted. Russia, with its resources and leadership is able to cope and adapt to these sanctions and even perhaps come out stronger in spite of them. Other nations might not weather such adversity so gracefully. Across BRICS and other nations in the developing world, a concerted effort must be made to move away from the interdependence of globalization and back toward greater multilateral trade regimes and greater domestic economic self-sufficiency.

Ulson Gunnar is a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”