{"id":240941,"date":"2023-08-07T12:01:34","date_gmt":"2023-08-07T11:01:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=240941"},"modified":"2023-08-04T06:01:48","modified_gmt":"2023-08-04T05:01:48","slug":"vandana-shiva-bill-gates-and-silicon-valley-behind-push-for-farming-without-farmers-food-without-farms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/08\/vandana-shiva-bill-gates-and-silicon-valley-behind-push-for-farming-without-farmers-food-without-farms\/","title":{"rendered":"Vandana Shiva: Bill Gates and Silicon Valley behind Push for \u2018Farming without Farmers, Food without Farms\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

On this episode of Russell Brand\u2019s \u201c<\/em>Stay Free,\u201d <\/em>TRANSCEND member, scholar, environmental activist and food sovereignty advocate Vandana Shiva, Ph.D., discusses food fascism, the power of \u201cphilanthropy,\u201d digital enslavement and how people can free themselves from this system.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The Defender<\/p><\/div>\n

2 Aug 2023<\/em> – \u201cHuman beings cannot have a relationship with nature, land and one another, it seems increasingly, without the intercedence of this corporate power,\u201d comedian and political commentator Russell Brand told scholar and environmental activist Vandana Shiva, Ph.D.<\/a>, on the latest episode of his \u201cStay Free<\/a>\u201d podcast.<\/p>\n

Brand asked Shiva, a food sovereignty and environmental activist, to explain how this corporate takeover of nature happened.<\/p>\n

Shiva said the privatization of land and resources under colonialism was the first step in transforming nature into \u201ceither a mine or a dump.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, she said, privatization has become so entrenched that mega-corporation Cargill<\/a> can own every chicken, chicken production facility, and every input needed to raise chickens, and then dump all of its waste into public rivers.<\/p>\n

The situation we face today could not have happened, she said, without the criminalization of farmers \u2014 for which she held media organizations like The Guardian<\/a> responsible because they attack farmers instead of the corporations.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the drivers are the corporations,\u201d she said, \u201cyou have to have the guts to bite the corporations. You don\u2019t target the victims. The farmers are victims of this system.\u201d<\/p>\n

Who Are the Real \u2018Food Fascists\u2019?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Brand asked Shiva why the global uprising of farmers \u2014 from Sri Lanka and India to Germany, England and the Netherlands<\/a> \u2014 against the globalization of agriculture had come to be cast as a right-wing idea by the press.<\/p>\n

Shiva said Mussolini himself defined fascism as \u201cthe convergence of economic and political power.\u201d \u201cFood fascism,\u201d she said, \u201cis the recent control over our food systems by giant corporations and the billionaires.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under colonialism, the British controlled the land, she said, but they didn\u2019t control the food. The advent of agricultural industrialization, the green revolution and globalization made it possible for corporations to take control of food<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The call for \u201cfood sovereignty<\/a>,\u201d she said, \u201ccame as the call as opposite to the food dictatorship and food fascism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, she said, those people want to complete the separation of people from the land that began with colonialism.<\/p>\n

Today, they want \u201cfarming without farmers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Being able to plant a seed, input love, knowledge and sun and produce food, \u201cis the only truly independent production system and it\u2019s that freedom they want to attack,\u201d Shiva said, because they are threatened by it.<\/p>\n

So they discredit farmers by calling them \u201cfascists\u201d and \u201cright wing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd anybody who facilitates that is essentially doing the work of these globalists,\u201d she said, \u201cthey\u2019re the fascists.\u201d<\/p>\n

How \u2018Philanthropy\u2019 Buys Control<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today, people who talk about the disproportionate power and influence that billionaires like Bill Gates<\/a> have over global agriculture and health are regarded as \u201cconspiracy theorists,\u201d Brand said.<\/p>\n

He asked Shiva to explain Gates\u2019 rise to power in plain language and with facts.<\/p>\n

Shiva said people like Gates became wealthy through neoliberal trade liberalization, where trade in information, in the software and other forms of data Gates produced, went completely untaxed.<\/p>\n

Then, she said, they used that money \u201cphilanthropically\u201d to gain control of other sectors.<\/p>\n

By donating massive sums of money to the global seed bank<\/a>, to the World Health Organization<\/a> and to media organizations<\/a> such as The Guardian and the BBC, Gates and other billionaires took control of those institutions.<\/p>\n

It even gives them the power to control governments, she said, who have been made desperate for money through indebtedness.<\/p>\n

Gates and Silicon Valley, she said, \u201care very big players in the fake food future<\/a> of farming without farmers, food without farms.\u201d And they get journalists such as The Guardian\u2019s George Monbiot<\/a> to promote it.<\/p>\n

Chasing Enslavement<\/strong><\/p>\n

Shiva said this vision is built on \u201can imagined promise of an imagined future that we are never gonna arrive at. Because when you get there, you\u2019ll find it doesn\u2019t belong to you. It belongs to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The systems that support their vision of the future appear to offer us convenience, but in reality, she said, maintaining them takes all of our time.<\/p>\n

Many indigenous people, she said, still have a lot of time to enjoy life \u201cbecause they\u2019re not chasing enslavement through consumption.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shiva wondered why people would want a \u201csmart home,\u201d where, for example, \u201cthe fridge will tell you your milk is getting old. How dumb are we getting that we can\u2019t open the door of our fridge and know our milk is getting old?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAll that is surveillance data,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

And processing that data takes big servers. \u201cThe tiny bits of enslavement we are getting into is [producing] 4% of greenhouse gases, which is more than the aviation sector,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She added:<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, not only is it a very foolish kind of slavery, it\u2019s a huge ecological footprint on the planet. Yes. And we can\u2019t afford it. So we have to learn to walk lightly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Data Is the New Oil<\/strong><\/p>\n

Brand said he was alarmed at the increasing pace of \u201cdesacralization\u201d where people prioritize materialism over spirituality and lose control over their lives. He asked Shiva how she thought censorship, the inhibition of free speech<\/a> and the ability of the media to shut down dialogue, fed into this process.<\/p>\n

Shiva said it was part of \u201ca system of total control,\u201d that makes that control highly profitable.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s new in this system according to Shoshana Zuboff\u2019s \u201cThe Age of Surveillance Capitalism<\/a>\u201d is that today, human beings themselves have been turned into raw material whose data can be extracted.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is the capital of today. Big data is the new oil, and then it\u2019s used to manipulate us,\u201d she said, adding \u201cAny system that allows you the awareness of your real freedom must be censored.\u201d<\/p>\n

The strange thing, Brand said, is that this system of technological domination was sold to people as a way of empowering them and giving them their freedom.<\/p>\n

Technology<\/a> should be a tool, she said, but it \u201chas been elevated to a god\u201d and those opposed to that transformation are discounted, through Orwellian doublespeak, as \u201cright wing.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, Shiva said, the last few years have shown there are three things people cannot give up:<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst, your ability to know and distinguish between truth and untruth. \u2026 And not allow post-truth to be projected as truth and the truth speakers to be projected as conspirators.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe second is our ability to relate to each other without the intervention of a surveillance state and surveillance corporation.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd third, because food is what makes us, it becomes our blood, ourselves, our brain.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, Brand said:<\/p>\n

\u201cSpeak freely. Tell the truth. Communicate freely. Grow your own food. Don\u2019t eat things grown in labs. Don\u2019t eat bugs<\/a>. And don\u2019t listen to people who want to promote it.\u201d<\/p>\n

___________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for <\/em>The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for ten years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina and a master’s from the University of Texas.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original – childrenshealthdefense.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2 Aug 2023 – On this episode of Russell Brand\u2019s \u201cStay Free,\u201d TRANSCEND member, scholar, environmental activist and food sovereignty advocate Vandana Shiva, Ph.D., discusses food fascism, the power of \u201cphilanthropy,\u201d digital enslavement and how people can free themselves from this system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":240942,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[229,1913,1124,542,1055,1912,1122,2157,2804,1714,1455,2822,1120],"class_list":["post-240941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-activism","tag-bill-gates","tag-ecofeminism","tag-fascism","tag-genetic-manipulation","tag-organic-agriculture","tag-organic-food","tag-philanthropy","tag-philantrocapitalism","tag-right-to-food","tag-seeds","tag-synthetic-food","tag-vandana-shiva"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240941","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=240941"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":240946,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240941\/revisions\/240946"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}