Monsanto's Mad Parade

[Guest guest]

a warning

several words inthis article are not " G " rated

i did not censor them as i thought it would mess up the article

if this one word repeated offends, i apologize....

its a word that describes wot a male cow does when he needs to relive himself of

all that grass he is supposed to be eating....

 

Monsanto's Fake Parade

 

By Jonathan Matthews, Freezerbox

December 12, 2002

 

" Carrying his placard the man in front of me was clearly one

of the poorest of the poor. His shoes were not only

threadbare, they were tattered, merely rags barely being

held together. "

 

So begins a graphic description of a demonstration that took

place at the Earth Summit in Johannesburg ... The protesters

were " mainly poor, virtually all black, and mostly women ...

street traders and farmers " with an unpalatable message. As

an article in a South African periodical put it, " Surely

this must have been the environmentalists' worst nightmare.

Real poor people marching in the streets and demanding

development while opposing the eco-agenda of the Green

Left. "

 

And seldom can the views of the poor, in this case a few

hundred demonstrators, have been paid so much attention.

Articles highlighting the Johannesburg march popped up the

world over, in Africa, North America, India, Australia and

Israel. In Britain even the Times ran a commentary, under

the heading, " I do not need white NGOs to speak for me " .

 

With the summit's passing, the Johannesburg march, far from

fading from view, has taken on a still deeper significance.

In the November issue of the journal Nature Biotechnology,

Val Giddings, the President of the Biotech Industry

Organization (BIO), argues that the event marked " something

new, something very big " that will make us " look back on

Johannesburg as something of a watershed event – a turning

point. " What made the march so pivotal, he said, was that

for the very first time, " real, live, developing-world

farmers " were " speaking for themselves " and challenging the

" empty arguments of the self-appointed individuals who have

professed to speak on their behalf. "

 

To help give them a voice, Giddings singles out the

statement of one of the marchers, Chengal Reddy, leader of

the Indian Farmers Federation. " Traditional organic

farming, " Reddy says, " led to mass starvation in India for

centuries ... Indian farmers need access to new technologies

and especially to biotechnologies. "

 

Giddings also notes that the farmers expressed their

contempt for the " empty arguments " of many of the Earth

Summiteers by honoring them with a " Bullshit Award " made

from two varnished piles of cow dung. The award was given,

in particular, to the Indian environmentalist Vandana Shiva,

for her role in " advancing policies that perpetuate poverty

and hunger "

 

A powerful rebuke, no doubt. But if anyone deserves the cow

dung, it is the President of BIO, for almost every element

of the spectacle he describes has been carefully contrived

and orchestrated. Take, for instance, Chengal Reddy, the

" farmer " that Giddings quotes. Reddy is not a poor farmer,

nor even the representative of poor farmers. Indeed, there

is precious little to suggest he is even well-disposed

towards the poor. The " Indian Farmers Federation " that he

leads is a lobby of big commercial farmers in Andhra

Pradesh. On occasion Reddy has admitted to knowing very

little about farming, having never farmed in his life. He

is, in reality, a politician and businessman whose family

are a prominent right-wing political force in Andhra Pradesh

– his father having coined the saying, " There is only one

thing Dalits (members of the untouchable caste) are good

for, and that is being kicked " .

 

If it seems open to doubt that Reddy was in Johannesburg to

help the poor speak for themselves, the identity of the

march's organizers is also not a source of confidence.

Although the Times' headline said " I do not need white NGOs

to speak for me " , the media contact on the organizers' press

release was " Kendra Okonski " , the daughter of a US lumber

industrialist who has worked for various right wing

anti-regulatory NGOs – all funded and directed, needless to

say, by " whites " . These include the Competitive Enterprise

Institute, a Washington-based " think tank " whose

multi-million dollar budget comes from major US

corporations, among them BIO member Dow Chemicals. Okonski

also runs the website Counterprotest.net, where her

specialty is helping right wing lobbyists take to the

streets in mimicry of popular protesters.

 

Given this, it hardly needs saying that Giddings' " Bullshit

Award " was far from, as he suggests, the imaginative riposte

of impoverished farmers to India's most celebrated

environmentalist. It was, in fact, the creation of another

right-wing pressure group – the Liberty Institute – based in

New Delhi and well known for its fervent support of

deregulation, GM crops and Big Tobacco.

 

The Liberty Institute is part of the same network that

organized the rally: the deceptively-named " Sustainable

Development Network. " In London, the SDN shares offices,

along with many of its key personnel – including Okonski –

with the International Policy Network, a group whose

Washington address just happens to be that of the CEI. The

SDN is run by Julian Morris, its ubiquitous director, who

also claims the title of Environment and Technology

Programme Director for the Institute of Economic Affairs, a

think tank that has advocated, amongst other interesting

ideas, that African countries be sold off to multinational

corporations in the interests of " good government " .

 

The involvement of the likes of Morris, Okonski and Reddy

doesn't mean, of course, that no " real poor people, " were

involved in the Johannesburg march. There were indeed poor

people there. James MacKinnon, who reported on the summit

for the North American magazine Adbusters, witnessed the

march first hand and told of seeing many impoverished street

traders, who seemed genuinely aggrieved with the authorities

for denying them their usual trading places in the streets

around the summit. The flier distributed by the march

organizers to recruit these people played on this grievance,

and presented the march as a chance to demand, " Freedom to

trade " . The flier made no mention of " biotechnology " or

" development " , nor any other issue on the " eco-agenda of the

Green Left " .

 

For all that, there were some real farmers present as well.

Mackinnon says he spotted some wearing anti-environmentalist

t-shirts, with slogans like " Stop Global Whining. " This

aroused his curiousity, since small-scale African farmers

are not normally to be found among those jeering the " bogus

science " of climate change. Yet here they were, with slogans

on placards and T-shirts: " Save the Planet from Sustainable

Development " , " Say No To Eco-Imperialism " , " Greens: Stop

Hurting the Poor " and " Biotechnology for Africa " . On

approaching the protesters, however, Mackinnon discovered

that all of the props had been made available to the

marchers by the organizers. When he tried to converse with

some of the farmers about their pro-GM T-shirts, " They

smiled shyly; none of them could speak or read English. "

 

Another irresistible question is how impoverished farmers –

according to Giddings, there were farmers on the march from

five different countries – afforded the journey to

Johannesburg from lands as far away as the Philippines and

India. Here, too, there is reason for suspicion. In late

1999 the New York Times reported that a street protest

against genetic engineering outside an FDA public hearing in

Washington DC was disrupted by a group of African-Americans

carrying placards such as " Biotech saves children's lives "

and " Biotech equals jobs. " The Times learned that Monsanto's

PR company, Burston-Marsteller, had paid a Baptist Church

from a poor neighborhood to bus in these " demonstrators " as

part of a wider campaign " to get groups of church members,

union workers and the elderly to speak in favor of

genetically engineered foods. "

 

The industry's fingerprints are all over Johannesburg as

well. Chengal Reddy, the " farmer " that the President of BIO

singled out as an example of farmers from the poorer world

" speaking for themselves " , has for at least a decade

featured prominently in Monsanto's promotional work in

India. Other groups represented on the march, including

AfricaBio, have also been closely aligned with Monsanto's

lobbying for its products. Reddy is known to have been

brought to Johannesburg by AfricaBio.

 

And here lies the real key to the President of BIO's account

of the march, and specifically to the attack on Vandana

Shiva. Monsanto and BIO want to project an image of GM crop

acceptance with a Southern face. That's why Monsanto's

Internet homepage used to be adorned with the faces of

smiling Asian children. So when an Indian critic of the

biotech industry gets featured, as Shiva was recently, on

the cover of Time magazine as an environmental hero, the

brand is under attack, and has to be protected.

 

The counterattack takes place via a contrarian lens, one

that projects the attackers' vices onto their target. Thus

the problem becomes not Monsanto using questionable tactics

to push its products onto a wary South, but malevolent

agents of the rich world obstructing Monsanto's acceptance

in a welcoming Third World. For this reason the press

release for the " Bullshit Award " accuses Shiva, amongst

other things, of being " a mouthpiece of western

eco-imperialism " . The media contact for this symbolic

rejection of neocolonialism? The American, Kendra Okonski.

The mouthpiece denouncing an Indian environmentalist as an

agent of the West is a ... Western mouthpiece.

 

The careful framing of the messages and the actors in the

rally in Johannesburg provides but one particularly gaudy

spectacle in a continuing fake parade. In particular, the

Internet provides a perfect medium for such showcases, where

the gap between the virtual and the real is easily erased.

 

Take the South-facing website Foodsecurity.net, which

promotes itself as " the web's most complete source of news

and information about global food security concerns and

sustainable agricultural practices " . Foodsecurity.net claims

to be " an independent, non-profit coalition of people

throughout the world " . Despite its global reach, however,

Foodsecurity.net's only named staff member is its " African " , Dr. Michael Mbwille, a Tanzanian doctor who's

forever penning articles defending Monsanto and attacking

the likes of Greenpeace.

 

The news and information at Foodsecurity.net is largely

pro-GM articles, often vituperative in content and boasting

headlines like " The Villainous Vandana Shiva " or " Altered

Crops Called Boon for Poor " . When one penetrates beyond the

news pages, the content is very limited. A single message

graces the messageboard posted by an

myoung , the domain name of The Bivings

Group, an internet PR company that numbers Monsanto among

its clients. There's also an event posting from an Andura

Smetacek, recently identified in an article in The Guardian

as an e-mail front used by Monsanto to run a campaign of

character assassination against its scientific and

environmental critics.

 

The site is registered to a Graydon Forrer, currently the

managing director of Life Sciences Strategies, a company

that specializes in " communications programmes " for the

bio-science industries. A piece of information that is not

usually disclosed in Graydon Forrer's self-presentation is

that he was previously Monsanto's director of executive

communications. Indeed, he seems to have been working for

the company in 1999 – the same year the site of this

" independent, non-profit coalition of people throughout the

world " was first registered. Foodsecurity's " African " , Dr. Mbwille, is not, incidentally, in Africa at

the moment. He is enjoying a sabbatical observing medical

practice in St. Louis, Missouri – the home town, as it

happens, of the Monsanto Corporation.

 

Foodsecurity.net forms but one of a whole series of websites

with undisclosed links to biotech industry lobbyists or PR

companies, as our previous research has demonstrated. But

despite the virtual circus oscillating about him, if the

President of BIO were really interested in hearing poor

" live, developing-world farmers ... speaking for

themselves " , he need look no further than Chengal Reddy's

home state of Andhra Pradesh. Here small-scale farmers and

landless laborers were consulted as part of a meticulously

conducted " citizens' jury " on World Bank-backed proposals to

industrialize local agriculture and introduce GM crops.

Having heard all sides of the argument, including as it

happens the views of Chengal Reddy, the jury unanimously

rejected these proposals, which are likely to force more

than 100,000 people off the land. Similar citizens' juries

on GM crops in Brazil and in the Indian state of Karnataka

have come to similar conclusions – something that the

President of BIO is almost certainly aware of.

 

But rainchecks on the real views of the poor count for

little in a world where " something new, something very big "

and " a turning point " in the global march towards our

corporate future, turns out to be Monsanto's soapbox behind

a black man's face.

 

Jonathan Matthews is a writer and researcher focusing on the

biotech industry. He co-founded the campaigning news and

research service Norfolk Genetic Information Network, also

known as GM Watch.