{"id":111825,"date":"2018-05-28T12:00:55","date_gmt":"2018-05-28T11:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=111825"},"modified":"2018-05-22T14:32:33","modified_gmt":"2018-05-22T13:32:33","slug":"the-bayer-monsanto-merger-empowering-a-life-destroying-cartel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/05\/the-bayer-monsanto-merger-empowering-a-life-destroying-cartel\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bayer-Monsanto Merger: Empowering a Life-Destroying Cartel"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><em>\u201cThe merger is more power in the hands of criminal corporations. To not just push the agenda, but corrupt governments, subvert democracy.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0<\/em><br \/>\n\u2013 Vandana Shiva<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Bayer-Monsanto Merger: Empowering a Life-Destroying Cartel by Global Research News Hour\" width=\"500\" height=\"400\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?visual=true&#038;url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F445862526&#038;show_artwork=true&#038;maxheight=750&#038;maxwidth=500\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>20 May 2018 &#8211; <\/em>As much of the world and the media focuses on\u00a0the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, another \u2018royal couple\u2019 is on the verge of completing its own matrimonial arrangement after a 21 month engagement.<\/p>\n<p>The U.S. Department of Justice recently <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/bayer-monsanto-merger-has-farmers-worried-2018-4\" >cleared the path <\/a>for the German pharmaceutical and chemical company Bayer to merge with U.S. based agricultural giant Monsanto in a take-over deal worth more than $60 billion.<\/p>\n<p>Once the partnership attains U.S. anti-trust approval, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-monsanto-m-a-bayer\/bayer-monsanto-deal-on-track-for-u-s-approval-by-end-of-may-source-idUSKBN1HX1UX\" >likely within days<\/a>, a new entity will emerge, commanding more than a quarter of the combined world market for seeds and pesticides.<\/p>\n<p>Would that this were a traditional wedding ceremony! With profound reasons for opposing this marriage, a robust crop of hands would spring up when prompted to \u2018speak now or forever hold your peace!\u2019<\/p>\n<p>According to<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/1bps6437gg8c169i0y1drtgz-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/2018-FINAL-White-Paper-with-PAN-3-7-2018.pdf\" > a recent poll<\/a> of 48 U.S. States, 94 percent of farmers are concerned about the merger, with 83 percent being very concerned. Their top three concerns: market dominance to push other products, control over farmers\u2019 data, and increased pressure to rely on chemical based farming practices.<\/p>\n<p>This merger has implications not only for what goes on our dinner plate. There are questions of economic and political control that need to be addressed. Critics argue that the power of these economic giants is such that they have <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.globalresearch.ca\/monsanto-controls-both-the-white-house-and-the-us-congress\/5336422\" >\u2018captured\u2019 regulatory agencies<\/a>. Limitless financial resources permit these and similar companies to <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.globalresearch.ca\/bayer-monsanto-a-match-made-in-hell-six-reasons-why-bayer-monsanto-merger-threatens-people-and-planet\/5587910\" >buy off <\/a>academics, media and politicians.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/radio4all.net\/responder.php\/download\/97561\/107172\/119138\/?url=http:\/\/www.radio4all.net\/files\/scottprice666@hotmail.com\/4319-1-GRNH_may_18_2018_Episode_221_mixdown.mp3\" >Click to download the audio (MP3 format)<\/a><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/merger-company-monsanto-bayer-735-350-400x190.jpg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-111830\" src=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/merger-company-monsanto-bayer-735-350-400x190.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"190\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/merger-company-monsanto-bayer-735-350-400x190.jpg 400w, https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/merger-company-monsanto-bayer-735-350-400x190-300x143.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>***************************<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>Transcript-Interview with Vandana Shiva<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><strong>Global Research:<\/strong> Dr. Shiva, I\u2019m very interested in a lot of what you had to say in your recent talk and in your writings about this interface between the corporate for-profit model and how it intersects with this need to provide for our basic food needs and basic energy needs. I guess it just\u2026bringing in something that\u2019s fairly timely, this merger between Monsanto, who you\u2019ve been very outspoken against, and Bayer.<\/p>\n<p>Could you maybe quantify exactly how you see that merger making the situation worse, going from the frying pan to the fire? What, in particular, do you think that those \u2026 is a concern for farmers and for food security generally?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/05\/bayer-and-monsanto-a-marriage-made-in-hell\/\" ><strong><em>GR Weekend Reader: Bayer and Monsanto: A Marriage Made in Hell<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Vandana Shiva:<\/strong> First thing that people should remember is Monsanto and Bayer were one during the war. They were called Mobay. They worked together to sell poisons on both sides of the war. It\u2019s only after the IG Farben trial at Nuremberg that the separation took place. So, in a way, the Bayer-Monsanto merger of the contemporary times is just a coming together in an open way of a hidden marriage that always was there. Second, even if you look at cross licensing arrangements, they\u2019ve been working together.<\/p>\n<p>When the BT Cotton of Monsanto failed in India in 2015-16 of the states of Punjab, 80% of the cotton was hit by White Fly. Who sold the pesticides? Bayer. So they work as one. As a poison cartel. Right now, buyers trying to push a GMO mustard. At the same time, Monsanto is trying to dismantle our patent laws which say we cannot allow patents and seeds, plants, animals, because these are not human inventions. They have their own self-organizing capacity to organize life, regulate life reproduce life, multiply seeds. What will this new open merger mean?<\/p>\n<p>First is, I think the numbers like 66 billion are just games for the public. I\u2019ve done an analysis. It will be out in my new book on the resurgence of the rial. The true owners of all of these corporations, down to the Coca Colas and Pepsis, all of them are the new investment giants, which are the cartel of the rich men, who have now designed ways of using their money to basically control the future of humanity.<\/p>\n<p>And, for them, there is more future in collecting rents from seeds which they never invented, from selling more poisons, including corrupting governments, including denying the fact that even the W.H.O. said glyphosate is a carcinogen, so they\u2019re putting their money to tell lies to defend killing and destroy democracy.<\/p>\n<p>So, in effect, actually, the merger is more power in the hands of criminal corporations. To not just push the agenda, but corrupt governments, subvert democracy. We are witnessing it right now in India with the GM mustard case. Destroy science, and in the name of science, they say science requires GMOs, but they are knocking out any scientist who does real research on A] the fact that GMOs don\u2019t produce more and B] that they haven\u2019t controlled pests or weeds, they have created super pests and superweeds, C] that they have better ways through biodiversity, through agroecology, to actually produce enough food for people and have enough for other species, which is what the food system is about.<\/p>\n<p>So, I see the merger of Bayer and Monsanto as, in a way, the peak of a contest between a century of ecocide and genocide with no stopping, versus Earth democracy where all species have their rights recognized, and they act. Because most of the subversion of the Monsanto agenda hasn\u2019t taken place because people marched into the fields of Round-Up Ready soya, but the Palmer amaranth rose and defeated the project and that\u2019s why I insist 300 million species and if you assume that even half of humanity will keep thinking and defending their freedom which would mean 3.5 billion people that\u2019s a lot of intelligence against the criminality of a cartel of Bayer-Monsanto, Dow-Dupont, Syngenta-ChemChina all working together with a failed agenda of pushing GMOs.<\/p>\n<p><strong>GR:<\/strong> I find that there\u2019s a sort of a parallel development perhaps \u2013 you\u2019re talking about the food system, but there\u2019s also the energy economy. And I noticed that there\u2019s a lot of talk about transition, and about time, transition away from fossil fuel, but I noticed that a lot of investment, corruption, subversion, perhaps, is taking place in the guise of major investors like the Rockefellers and Warren Buffett and all of these major players. They are trying to invest, the Bill Gates Mission Innovation, they\u2019re all trying to invest, get in on this renewable economy, but they\u2019re not seeing the renewable economy as a\u2026 well, it seems as if their larger objective is finding a new frontier for capitalistic expansion.<\/p>\n<p>And so, if I look at those sorts of developments when you see major donations to major environmental NGOs and so on, I\u2019m wondering if we aren\u2019t similarly seeing if this is something that we need to be on guard against. To prevent this kind of poison pill, another kind of poisonous cartel, from moving so that the renewable economy is in fact something that\u2019s aligned with natural systems and natural intelligence and not simply another mechanism for for-profit growth and capitalist expansion. Could you address those concerns?<\/p>\n<p><strong>VS:<\/strong> First thing is, food is energy. It gives us energy when we eat nourishing food. Sadly, food itself has become the source of major confidence of a non-sustainable energy model. 90% of the corn in the soil, grown in the world right now, is going for biofuel. So we already have food diverted into a non-sustainable energy model. When it comes to renewable energy, which really began as small initiatives trying to build energy alternatives to fossil fuel, it was so clear in the Paris meetings that this would be the next platform for the Gates of the world and the Buffets of the world.<\/p>\n<p>And do they make windmills? No, they don\u2019t. He just keeps his hands in his pockets and eats hamburgers. Do they make solar panels? No. What do they run for? What is their innovation? Grabbing the patents. So, they are looking for a future where there will be a lot of renewable energy in the world but they will collect rents from the expansion of renewable energy like they seek to collect rents from seed, which is the only agenda for GMOs and the patents of seed.<\/p>\n<p>What we are seeing is the emergence of a new economy that\u2019s a rental economy based on intellectual property, and people who don\u2019t work making the huge money and becoming the 1%, and the people who work and slog and are creative and are innovative punished just because they are hard-working human beings. It\u2019s that \u2013 not just \u2013 I don\u2019t call it inequality because it is worse than inequality. It is a lie, it is a brutalization, it is a dehumanization. It is a dehumanization of those that are robbed of their share of this Earth and the well-being of the Earth, but it\u2019s a brutalization of those few who think being lords and masters of the universe at this critical time with a very survival of our species is at stake, that their profits come first not the humanity of the planet.<\/p>\n<p><strong>GR:<\/strong> You brought up the term anthropocentrism early in your talk, and that\u2019s a serious concern insofar as it\u2019s something that we just sort of don\u2019t really pay attention or think about, it\u2019s part of like the water that we swim in. And I\u2019m finding that a lot of those technologies has that sort of anthropocentric veneer to it. Could you address the technologies, another vista, the digital technology that we mentioned, spyware, Edward Snowden talks about surveillance\u2026 I\u2019m wondering if these technologies are irredeemably anthropocentric, or can we find some aspect to them where we can continue to utilize them?<\/p>\n<p><strong>VS:<\/strong> You know, for me, technologies are not some magical phenomenon that gets sent from the skies to a few privileged men, which is how Bacon used to think of the new technologies, and the new science, and the new Atlantis, and superheroes, etc. That\u2019s not the way the world works. The way the world works is, people are creative and innovative, and they evolved tools.<\/p>\n<p>The problem with the tools that have come from the commons\u2026 Microsoft is not the inventor of software. It\u2019s the patenter of software. Monsanto is not the inventor of seed and definitely even not of recombinant DNA. It\u2019s the patenter, and it\u2019s the buyer of others who might have had the patent before them. So, it\u2019s really a race for ownership through any means whatsoever. And the reason I worry about digital technologies is not that humans have worked out ways to deal with digital technologies, but that those who control digital technologies want to use it as an instrument of control.<\/p>\n<p>For example, all of India\u2019s economy was shut down on the 8th of November 2016, for a digital economy. Big cash notes were banned. All the savings of millions and billions of people were wiped out. This privileging of digital basically means that the global financial system where money runs to the U.S. to Wall Street, to these investment funds, that those people get your 6% rental with every transaction, and the hard-working person, through exchange, loses out. Has to pay more.<\/p>\n<p>The second reason why the digital economy is being used as a new digital dictatorship, and I\u2019ve written about this, is the new merger between digital technologies and information technologies on the one hand, and agriculture and biotechnologies on the other, but also digital technologies and finance. Right now, finance economy has nothing to do with money. It has nothing to do with wealth. It has everything to do with speculation, wire, rapid algorithms.<\/p>\n<p>And I think it is narrowing our possibilities by not allowing the wide intelligences which are not one-dimensional, which are not linear, which play out in all kinds of combinations of hearts and heads and hands working as one to guide us out of crisis. At this moment of crisis, to put your fate of humanity in combinations of zeros and ones, and machines owned and patented, and algorithms owned and a handful of men who have zero real experience of what life is about is a very, very dangerous.<\/p>\n<p><strong>GR:<\/strong> And you also mention the term Terra Nullius, the second coming of Christopher Columbus and that whole mentality that seems to infect so much of our culture including the sciences. I mean, you come from a scientific background, and the way that we approach things, and you had to relearn from meeting with women and peasant folk a different understanding of this. So, could you maybe help us, those of us who wish to relieve ourselves of this infection, what we could do to not unknowingly or instinctively duplicate and replicate these same patterns?<\/p>\n<p><strong>VS:<\/strong> There are no empty lands; there are no empty minds, and the very idea that knowledge starts when someone gets the idea of conquest or extermination is the illusion born of colonialism, it\u2019s the illusion born of fossil fuel age it\u2019s the illusion born the concentration camps of Hitler and those are the kind of sciences that are dominating today especially in agriculture.<\/p>\n<p>I think it is really time for us to recognize that we\u2019ve done agriculture for 10,000 years. And there\u2019s 10,000 years of knowledges, not one but many. It takes a different kind of ability to be able to live on fish in the Arctic in Greenland, and a totally different kind of ability to harvest your food from the Amazon rainforest. Each of these interactions generates its own knowledge, so the idea of one agriculture, one science that Bill Gates is trying to propose is absolutely against the diversity and vitality of the world.<\/p>\n<p>The second thing we need to know and remember now is something \u2013 indigenous people never separated themselves from other species, never had an anthropocentric hierarchy, and realized that every plant, every microbe, every animal, was an intelligent and sentient being.<\/p>\n<p>Science is finally waking up to this. The science not controlled by the poison cartel. And I think we need a new alliance of the ability to look through new eyes like microscopes. And the old eyes of wisdom, and join those in a resurgence of the real which is what my new book is about.<\/p>\n<p>__________________________________________________<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/vandana-shiva.jpeg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-39957 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/vandana-shiva-e1526995379224.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"100\" height=\"98\" \/><\/a><\/em><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/\" >TRANSCEND Member<\/a> Prof. Vandana Shiva is a physicist, ecofeminist, philosopher, activist, and author of more than 20 books and 500 papers. She is the founder of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, and has campaigned for biodiversity, conservation and farmers\u2019 rights, winning the Right Livelihood Award [Alternative Nobel Prize] in 1993. She is executive director of the Navdanya Trust.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/Ellen-Brown-e1515845958117.jpg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-104717 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/Ellen-Brown-e1515845958117.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"100\" height=\"141\" \/><\/a><\/em><em>Ellen Brown <\/em><em>is a member of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/\" >TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>,<\/em><em> an attorney, founder\/chairperson of the\u00a0<\/em><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/publicbankinginstitute.org\/\" >Public Banking Institute<\/a><em>, and author of twelve books including <\/em><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/webofdebt.com\/\" >Web of Debt<\/a><em> and\u00a0<\/em><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/publicbanksolution.com\/\" >The Public Bank Solution<\/a><em>, which explores successful public banking models historically and globally. Her 300+ blog articles are at\u00a0<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/ellenbrown.com\/\" >EllenBrown.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>Nick Meyer<\/em><em> is a writer with the site <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/March-Against-Monsanto.com\" >March-Against-Monsanto.com<\/a>. Meyer briefly lays out some of the history and rationale behind the resistance to Monsanto, and gives us some details about the priorities underlying the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.march-against-monsanto.com\/press-release\/\" >May 19, 2018 march.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>Dr. Stephen Frantz<\/em><em> is the Principal with Global Environmental Options, LLC, which specializes in the management of environmental toxicants through sustainable , ecologically sound intervention strategies. He holds a PhD in pathobiology from John Hopkins University and helped pioneer the concept of Integrated Pest Management. He has done extensive research into the effects of glyphosate and similar pesticides over the course of his work. Dr. Frantz confronts some of the misinformation and disinformation coming from Monsanto and its defenders about the safety of its products.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.globalresearch.ca\/the-bayer-monsanto-merger-empowering-a-life-destroying-cartel\/5641082\" >Go to Original \u2013 globalresearch.ca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>20 May 2018 &#8211; This merger has implications not only for what goes on our dinner plate. There are questions of economic and political control that need to be addressed. Critics argue that the power of these economic giants is such that they have \u2018captured\u2019 regulatory agencies. Limitless financial resources permit these and similar companies to buy off academics, media and politicians.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":74357,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111825\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}