GMW: Monsanto's Fake Parade Hits New York

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GMW: Monsanto's Fake Parade Hits New York

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Mon, 17 Jan 2005 23:49:31 GMT

 

GMW: Monsanto's Fake Parade Hits New York

http://www.gmwatch.org

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1.The Fake Parade hits New York

2.The (original) Fake Parade

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1.The Fake Parade hits New York

by Jonathan Matthews

 

Just over 2 years ago I wrote an article called The Fake Parade which

was all about how Monsanto and their associates were trying to hide the

company's " soapbox behind a black man's face " .

 

The article noted, amongst other things, how 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, Burson-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. "

 

Now Monsanto has gone one better and has signed up its very own black

advocacy group. If you don't believe me, visit the home page of the

Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and beside images of freedom riders

and

civil rights activists murdered by the KKK, you'll see the Monsanto

logo under the legend CORE's " corporate partner " .

http://www.core-online.org

 

Tonight (17th) Monsanto's Chairman and CEO, Hugh Grant is chairing

CORE's celebratory reception in honour of the Martin Luther King National

Holiday.

http://www.core-online.org/events/current_mlk.htm

 

Tomorrow (18th) at CORE's " UN World Conference on Biotechnology "

Monsanto's Executive Vice President will make the closing address.

http://www.core-online.org/events/biotech%20seminar.htm

 

The contributors to the conference, apart from Monsanto, are a mix of

rabidly pro-GM scientists and rightwing lobbyists, like Paul Driessen

CORE's Senior Policy Advisor, who is part of the Wise Use-founding Center

for the Defense of Free Enterprise. The aim of Wise Use was to counter

the environmental movement with a broad-ranging coalition of interest

groups, including industry-funded front groups and 'grassroots groups',

often organised by PR consultants on behalf of corporations or trade

associations.

http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=248

 

Julian Morris who is among the contributors to CORE's " UN World

Conference on Biotechnology " also features in The Fake Parade. Originally

billed as being present was Chengal Reddy who also played a key role

in The

Fake Parade (see below). His Indian Farmers Federation will be

represented.

 

Someone else who is part of the " UN World Conference " is CORE's Niger

Innis. Innis is a protege of black broadcaster Armstrong Williams. Innis

stands in for Williams on the TV show America's Black Forum whenever

Williams is otherwise engaged.

 

Williams was recently revealed as having pocketed $240,000 in federal

taxpayer money for PR promotion of Bush's educational policy. The

journalists who started America's Black Forum , and who now disown it,

describe Williams as " the premiere Black political whore in America " .

http://www.blackcommentator.com/20_commentary_1.html

http://www.suntimes.com/output/mitchell/cst-nws-mitch16.html

 

Tomorrow the stand-in and protege of America's " premiere Black

political whore " will be standing alongside the Executive Vice

President of

CORE's " corporate partner " when he rounds up a day spent considering the

remarkable contribution that GM can make to helping the world's poor and

the evil people who selfishly try and obstruct its global adoption.

http://www.core-online.org/events/biotech%20seminar.htm

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http://www.freezerbox.com/archive/article.asp?id=254

Environment, 3 December 2002

THE FAKE PARADE

Under the banner of populist protest, multinational corporations

manufacture the poor

By Jonathan Matthews

 

" 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, Burson-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 Director " ,

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.

 

....

For further information about citizens‚ juries on GM food and farming

in the Global South see:

the report on Food and Farming Futures for Andhra Pradesh,

http://www.iied.org/pdf/Prajateerpu.pdf,

the press article, " The Locals Know What Aid They Need " ,

http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=276687,

and the website of the development charity, ActionAid,

http://www.actionaid.org/ourpriorities/foodrights/gmtechnology/gmtechnology.shtm\

l

 

For more information about Monsanto's cyberwar against its critics:

http://ngin.tripod.com/deceit_index.html

 

 

 

 

 

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