Anti-Monsanto protest. (photo: Light Brigading/Flickr)
Monsanto
and the Poisonous Cartel of GMOs in India
By Vandana Shiva, EcoWatch
11 September 16
India
is steeped in a synthesized controversy created by Monsanto on the first
GMO crop, supposedly approved for commercialization. Engaged in litigation on
many fronts, Monsanto is trying to subvert our patent laws: Protection of Plant Variety and
Farmers Right Act,Essential Commodities Act and Competition Act. It is behaving as if there is no
Parliament, no democracy, no sovereign laws in India to which it is subject. Or
it simply doesn't have any regard for them.
In
another theatre, Monsanto and Bayer are merging. They were one
as MoBay (MonsantoBayer), part of the poison cartel of I.G. Farben. The
controlling stakes of both corporations lie with the same private equity firms.
The expertise of these firms is in war. I.G. Farben, Adolf Hitler's economic
powerhouse and pre-war Germany's highest foreign exchange earner, was also a
foreign intelligence operation. Hermann Schmitz was president of I.G. Farben,
Schmitz's nephew Max Ilgner was a director of I.G. Farben, while Max's brother
Rudolph Ilgner ran the New York arm as vice-president of Chemnyco.
Paul
Warburg, brother of Max Warburg (board of directors, Farben Aufsichtsrat),
founded the U.S. Federal Reserve System. Max Warburg and Hermann Schmitz played
a central role in the Farben empire. Other "guiding hands" of Farben
Vorstand included Carl Bosch, Fritz ter Meer, Kurt Oppenheim and George von
Schnitzler. Each of them was adjudged a "war criminal" after World
War II, except Paul Warburg.
Monsanto
and Bayer have a long history. They made explosives and lethally poisonous
gases using shared technologies and sold them to both sides in the two world
wars. The same war chemicals were bought by the Allied and Axis powers, from
the same manufacturers, with money borrowed from the same bank.
MoBay
supplied ingredients for Agent Orange in the Vietnam War. Around 20 million
gallons of MoBay defoliants and herbicides were sprayed over South Vietnam.
Children are still being born with birth defects, adults have chronic illnesses
and cancers, due to their exposure to MoBay's chemicals. Monsanto and Bayer's
cross-licensed Agent Orange resistance has also been cross-developed for
decades. Wars were fought, lives lost, nations carved into holy lands — with
artificial boundaries that suit colonization and resource grab — while Bayer and
Monsanto sold chemicals as bombs and poisons and their brothers provided the
loans to buy those bombs.
More
recently, Bayer CropScience AG and Monsanto are believed to have entered into a
long-term business relationship. This gives Monsanto and Bayer free access to
each other's herbicide and paired herbicide resistance technology. Through
cross-licensing agreements, mergers and acquisitions, the biotech industry has
become the I.G. Farben of today, with Monsanto in the cockpit.
The
global chemical and GMO industry—Bayer, Dow Agro, DuPont Pioneer,
Mahyco, Monsanto and Syngenta—have come together to form the Federation of Seed
Industry of India (FSII) to try and become bigger bullies in this assault on
India's farmers, environment and democratically-framed laws that protect the
public and the national interest. This is in addition to Association of
Biotechnology-Led Enterprises (ABLE), which tried to challenge India's seed price
control order issued under the Essential Commodities Act in the Karnataka high
court. The case was dismissed.
The
new group is not "seed industry;" they produce no seeds. They try to
stretch patents on chemicals to claim ownership on seeds, even in countries
where patents on seeds and plants are not allowed. This is the case in India,
Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and many other countries.
All
Monsanto cases in India are related to Monsanto un-scientifically, illegally
and illegitimately claiming patents on seed, in contempt of India's laws, and
trying to collect royalties from the Indian seed industry and farmers. The FSII
is an "I.G. Farben 100-Year Family Reunion," a coming together of
independent and autonomous entities.
The
Farben family chemical cartel was responsible for exterminating people in
concentration camps. It embodies a century of ecocide and genocide, carried out
in the name of scientific experimentation and innovation. Today, the poison
cartel is wearing G-Engineering clothes and citing the mantra of
"innovation" ad nauseam. Hitler's concentration camps were an
"innovation" in killing; and almost a century later, the Farben
family is carrying out the same extermination—silently, globally and
efficiently.
Monsanto's
"innovation" of collecting illegal royalties and pushing Indian farmers to suicide is
also an innovation in killing without liability, indirectly. Just because there
is a new way to kill doesn't make killing right. "Innovation," like
every human activity, has limits—set by ethics, justice, democracy, the rights
of people and of nature.
I.G.
Farben was tried in Nuremberg. We have national laws to protect people, their
right to life and public health, and the environment. India's biosafety and
patent laws and the Plant Variety Act are
designed to regulate greedy owners of corporations with a history of crimes
against nature and humanity.
Industry
is getting ready to push its next "gene," the GMO mustard (DMH-11).
The GMO mustard, being promoted as a public sector "innovation," is
based on barnase/barstar/gene system to create male-sterile plants and a bar
gene for glufosinate resistance. In 2002, Pro-Agro's (Bayer) application for
approval of commercial planting of GM mustard based on the same system was
turned down.
Although
banned in India, Bayer finds ways to sell glufosinate illegally to Assam's tea
gardens and the apple orchards of Himachal Pradesh. Sales agents show the sale
of glufosinate under the "others" category to avoid regulation. These
chemicals are finding their way into the bodies of our children without
government approval. Essentially, all key patents related to the bar gene are
held by Bayer Crop Science, which acquired Aventis Cropscience, which itself
was created out of the genetic engineering divisions of Schering, Rhone Poulenc
and Hoechst. Then Bayer acquired Plant Genetic Systems and entered into
cooperation agreement with Evogene, which has patents on genome mapping.
Before
any approval is granted to genetically-engineered mustard, the issue of limits
to patentability needs to be resolved on the basis of Indian laws and patents
on plants and seeds and methods of agriculture must not be allowed. Deepak
Pental, a retired professor and GMO-Operative, will not commercialize GMO
mustard seed. His officers at Bayer/Monsanto/MoBay will.
Given
our experience with GMO cotton, The Ministry of Environment &
Forests is considering the option of putting in place
guidelines for socio-economic assessment to judge proposed GMO varieties on the
basis of factors such as the economy, health, environment, society and culture.
At the
core of socio-economic assessment is the issue of monopolies and cartels, and
their impact on small farmers. Even though patents on seeds are not allowed,
for more than a decade and a half, Monsanto has extracted illegal royalties
from Indian farmers, trapping them in debt and triggering an epidemic of
farmers' suicides. Monsanto's war on India's foot soldiers—farmers—is a war
being waged by the Farben family, on our Earth family.
C 2015 Reader Supported News
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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