Monsanto and Obama at Chemical War Against Nature

Having decided upon a military attack against Syria, the imperialist allies justify it based on the alleged use of chemical weapons by Assad’s government. For more than a decade, South America has tolerated chemical war against its territories by Monsanto and its cronies — first Bush Jr. and then Obama, with the consent and undeniable complicity of the U.S. government.

In 2010, Obama made a shift in the agricultural development policy of the United States, specifically in its orientation within this sector regarding foreign markets. The appointment that year of “Monsanto Man” Islam Siddiqui as chief agricultural negotiator for the Ministry of Agriculture was the key event that marked this shift. The slogan was changed from “food aid” — imposing the dumping¹ of the United States’ excess agricultural production abroad — to “food security,” which isn’t simply the imposition of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and pesticides under the empty promise to improve food production globally. In reality, the change in Obama’s strategy was the replacement of exported bags of wheat, rice and corn sold at dumping price to local farmers from countries that fell within the skewed Free Trade Agreement with bags of pesticides, fertilizers and genetically modified seeds — a true global assault against the planet and its population.²

The United States fails to provide or promote any kind of “food security.” The majority of the world’s food is not produced by the agricultural industry. One and a half billion family farmers produce more than 70 percent of the world’s food on a small scale. A large part comes from what they consume with limited surpluses, generally traded or exchanged in small markets. This is the reality in large regions of India and China, with more than two-thirds of the world’s population, as well as on the African continent, in regions where the most important input is animal manure. The hunger problem is not due to low yields in family farming. The world has 7 billion people; there is enough food produced for 9 billion. However, there are currently more than 1 billion people in the world who are starving (more than 50 million in the U.S. alone). At the same time, there are more than 1 billion people who are overweight, many of whom are obese and suffer from diseases related to a diet of industrialized food, which can be as fatal as starvation. Starvation and obesity are not a result of low agricultural yields, but derive from the excessive production of toxic foods, from huge quantities of food that are wasted in commercialization and industrialization, from the shortage of healthy organic foods in countries dominated by the agroindustry, from the injustice that governs land ownership and from the inequality in how food is distributed in a capitalist society.

With the false policy of “food security,” the landscape of Obama’s global U.S. strategy was completed. This agricultural policy is complementary to the “war on terror” that extended the U.S. military’s intervention both overtly and covertly in nearly 100 countries, the “war on drugs” that gave the Drug Enforcement Administration the domain of international drug trafficking of addictive substances and the driving of the economy by men on Wall Street who sparked a global socioeconomic crisis — started in 2007 through 2008 and still going — to which the global economy subordinated international financial capital. To the “war on terrorism” and the “war on drugs” they added the “chemical war against nature.”

Transient Failure of the GMO Offensive in Europe

The false “food security” of GMOs and agro-toxins has been faced with some serious difficulties for several months now in Europe. In June of this year, Monsanto had announced in Germany that they were not doing any more work in promoting the crops and that they were not seeking any new approvals for GMOs. This was due to the fact that opposition to the biotech seeds continues to be high in many countries. “We’ve come to the conclusion that this has no broad acceptance at the moment,” declared Ursula Luttmer-Ouazane, Monsanto’s spokesperson in Germany.

The announcement in June was in preparation for a major decision for European health. The transnational [companies that trade in] “biotechnologies” — and other agro-toxins — announced last July 17 that it would remove all applications for permission filed with the European Commission to grow genetically modified corn, soybeans and sugar beets. It only intends to renew the authorization for the MON18 corn crop, although many state members, such as France, Germany and Italy, have banned it at the national level through citizen initiatives against it. Monsanto warned that it does not intend to abandon commercialization of traditional seeds in the EU, with Ukraine as its principal target.

In 2012, the German chemical group BASF withdrew its efforts on the continent, moving its plant biotechnology headquarters to the U.S., accepting that genetic engineering is strongly protested in Europe.

In September 2012, during the first uncontrolled study by the GMO seed industry, the scientist Gilles-Eric Seralini and his team from the University of Caen published a report that showed that rats that were fed a diet containing NK603 (a variety of genetically modified corn seed designed to tolerate the herbicide Roundup) or that were given water with levels containing the product, which is allowed in the U.S., died prematurely to those that followed a diet without these elements. Furthermore, the females with the genetically modified diet developed breast tumors; the males developed severe damages to the liver and kidneys. The study, published in the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology, should have been done in absolute secrecy; the multinationals that own the genetically modified seeds dominate a lobby that has its tentacles in universities and research centers, as well as in agricultural ministries and the governmental institutions that release state permits — and in the case of the European Union, continental authorization as well — for “harmful developments” in biotechnology. Seralini’s findings caused a stir among public opinion in Europe. Despite the instant crackdown of wasteful “publicity” in the media to try to discredit the investigation, the disapproval of GMOs struck a chord for the lobbies of Monsanto, BASF, Du Pont, Syngenta, Bayer and others.

Monsanto’s corporative spokesperson, Thomas Helscher, said that the company wants to make it clear that it will only look for market penetration for its biotech crops in areas with full support. “We’re going to sell the GM seeds only where they enjoy broad farmer support, broad political support and a functioning regulatory system,” Helscher told Reuters.³ “As far as we’re convinced this only applies to a few countries in Europe today, primarily Spain and Portugal.” On July 30 of last year, Greenpeace released information that the current area under GMO cultivation in Spain is about 140,000 acres, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment, representing a 20 percent increase as designated for the area in 2012. As the previous social democratic government did, the current government of Rajoy stands in opposition to these European decisions. It is not hard to conclude that the GMO lobbyists have “lubricated” the gears of approval for their products, in the demonstrably corrupt government of the Popular Party.

Financial Times Environmentalist?

The main European journal of financial capital, the Financial Times of the U.K., editorialized on July 21 that Europe is right to be cautious about transgenic crops. In the electronic version of the article, titled “Seeds of Doubt,” we are reminded that while rare in Europe, genetically modified produce represents about 90 percent of all corn, cotton and soy beans planted in the U.S., where it has been shown that the productive advantages of this technology are transient. Additionally, “Insects are evolving new ways of overcoming the crops’ artificial defenses. As GM crops have become more popular, so has the weed killer they are designed to tolerate, leading to the emergence of resistant weeds. This has forced some farmers to fall back on old methods they thought they were avoiding when they bought expensive GM seed.”

The Financial Times also questioned the promises that Monsanto made to control the resistance of new invasive plant species with the transgenic seeds. “Monsanto used to argue that its original GM crop was unlikely to encourage weed killer resistance, until the weeds proved it wrong. Scientists risk getting into an arms race against nature, for which farmers will be forced to pay without receiving any long-term benefit in return.” This is already happening in Rio Grande do Sul, for example.

FT concludes its editorial by remarking that, “by shunning GM crops, Europe is foregoing gains that U.S. farmers have enjoyed since the 1990s. If this has prevented ecological damage that could permanently depress yields, it will have been a small price to pay.”

The truth is that the Financial Times’ claims aren’t big news for Latin American environmentalists, who have issued similar warnings for over a decade.

Warnings

Undoubtedly, the declarations from Monsanto’s executives and the Financial Times’ editorial come as a direct result of the intense environmentalist activity, especially the March Against Monsanto that took place on May 25, 2013 in 41 countries around the world. The two regions where demonstrations took place were the U.S. and in European countries. In total, there were more than 400 marches in different cities on all continents. This type of response is the only one that is effective against the GMO and agro-toxin multinational companies, since it stirs public opinion and puts pressure on the political class and the countries’ elite.

But activist Gary Cameron issues a warning that such declarations from the inventors of Agent Orange⁴ and other herbicides shouldn’t be trusted. As an example, in 1999 Monsanto made a public offer to Delta & Pine Land Company in Mississippi for the acquisition of their patent for a radical new genetically modified organism technique officially known as GURTS (Genetic Use Restriction Technology), popularly known as Terminator technology, where a plant “commits suicide” after only one harvest, forcing farmers to return to Monsanto every year to buy new seeds regardless of the cost or availability. The bad image of Terminator technology threatened to derail the entire GMO project, which was still in its infancy. Gordon Conway, President of the Rockefeller Foundation and GMO financial sponsor, convinced Monsanto’s board to step back from the negotiations — for the moment — in order to limit damages. Monsanto announced then that it would not buy the Terminator technology. The anti-GMO nongovernmental organizations considered it a huge victory; nothing was heard for seven years, until Monsanto announced it was acquiring Terminator patents, without warning, in 2006. With this maneuver of postponement, Monsanto succeeded in dismantling the environmental battle against Terminator.

The same can happen now after the announcements by Monsanto that it will withdraw its applications for permission for its GMOs in Europe. According to some researchers, the multinational company will from now on apparently include its GMO offensive in ongoing negotiations on Free Trade Agreements between the U.S. and the EU. This is why Obama appointed Islam Siddiqui as Chief Agricultural Negotiator for the ongoing agreement. When Obama nominated him to the staff of the Department of Agriculture in 2010, 98 American organizations that represented family farmers, farmworkers and fishermen, as well as sustainable agriculture, environmental, consumer, anti-hunger and other advocacy groups, expressed their opposition by sending a letter to the senators of Congress to reject the nomination of “Monsanto Man” because he has shown to “consistently favor agribusinesses’ interests over the interests of consumers, the environment and public health.” They affirmed that Siddiqui’s nomination severely weakens the Obama administration’s credibility in promoting healthier and more sustainable local food systems and that his appointment would also send an unfortunate signal to the rest of the world that the United States plans to continue down the failed path of high-input, energy-intensive industrial agriculture by promoting toxic pesticides, inappropriate seed biotechnologies and unfair trade agreements with nations that oppose this strategy. Between 2001 and 2008 in Europe, Siddiqui was a registered lobbyist with CropLife America, whose members included Monsanto, Syngenta, Dupont and Dow — an agriculture industry trade group for producers of pesticides and GMO products.

Legal Immunity for Monsanto

Monsanto is very aware of the fact that its products affect nature’s balance and biodiversity, and cause cancer and other diseases. Monsanto, headquartered in Missouri, used that state’s Republican Senator Roy Blunt, who is head of his party in Congress and the largest recipient of campaign financing from the multinational company, in order to introduce a U.S. appropriations bill exempting Monsanto from being sued for damages that its crops and chemical products may cause. The Monsanto Protection Act, as named by its opponents, was passed by Congress and later signed into law by President Obama, despite the hundreds of thousands of petitions in protest. Monsanto and other providers of GMOs have begun to enjoy legal immunity against the harm done to the U.S. population. The federal courts have no power to stop [the products’] spread, use or sale. The only other corporations that enjoy this indignant legal immunity are the pharmaceutical vaccine manufacturers. The Nobel Peace Prize warmonger, associated with Monsanto and other transnational companies of this sector, grants legal immunity to chemical war against nature in his own country and drives similar attacks on South America.

¹ Dumping is when an industry launches a product at a price below the actual cost of production in order to ruin competition and monopolize the market, or, in foreign trade, a country exports goods at prices below the cost of production to eliminate foreign competitors. The most prominent example of agricultural dumping was perpetrated by the U.S. in Mexico. The entry of grains and meats from the U.S. to Mexico at dumping prices — below the costs of production — caused Mexican farmers to lose over $12.8 billion in income between 1997 and 2005 (an average of $1.5 billion per year). Corn growers were by far the most affected, with losses of $6.6 billion, which led to ruin and loss of lands for many of them. This dumping by the U.S. in Mexico was protected by the enforcement of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Agricultural products were subsidized in the U.S. and supported by policies that encouraged over-production. (SEE HERE)

² (SEE HERE)

³ (SEE HERE)

⁴ Agent Orange was one of the defoliants used by the U.S. military as part of its chemical warfare program during the offensive against Vietnam (1961-1971). The forests were sprayed in order to defoliate them and make the enemy visible; the fields were poisoned so that the Vietcong had no food to eat. Vietnam estimated that 400,000 people were killed or mutilated by the fumigations. In fumigated areas, the number of genetic or physical birth abnormalities increased tenfold. 500,000 children were affected as a result of its use. The Vietnamese Red Cross has calculated that up to 1 million people are disabled or have health problems as a result of Agent Orange. Today, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs acknowledges that a number of diseases affecting Vietnam War veterans originate from exposure to Agent Orange and other herbicides, which gives them the right to receive compensation for illness or survivor benefits. There are around two dozen serious diseases: various respiratory cancers; multiple skin conditions such as leukemias, myelomas, lymphomas (like Hodgkin’s disease) and sarcomas; Parkinson’s and other kinds of neuropathies. (SEE HERE)