The Winston Churchill 'Hero' Myth: The Fanatical White Supremacist is Largely Responsible for Today's Global Mess

“I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.”

“I hate Indians, they are a beastly people with a beastly religion.”

“I am strongly in favor of using gas against uncivilized tribes, it would spread a lively terror.”

"Sir" Winston Churchill
Among his numerous debaucheries, Winston Churchill was literally responsible for deliberately
starving millions of people to death

Among his numerous debaucheries, Winston Churchill promoted eugenics, torture, chemical warfare, and was literally responsible for deliberately starving millions of people to death: "The myth of Churchill is Britain’s greatest propaganda tool because it rewrites Churchill’s true history in order to whitewash Britain’s past imperialist crimes against humanity."

By Garikai Chengu
Sunday marked the anniversary of the death of one of the most lionized leaders in the Western world: Sir Winston Churchill.

The current British Prime Minister, David Cameron, has called Churchill “the greatest ever Prime Minister”, and Britons have recently voted him as the greatest Briton to have ever lived.

The story that British schoolbooks tell children about Churchill is of a British Bulldog, with unprecedented moral bravery and patriotism. He, who defeated the Nazis during World War II and spread civilisation to indigenous people from all corners of the globe. Historically, nothing could be further from the truth.

Noam Chomsky on Winston Churchill and Racism

To the vast majority of the world, where the sun once never set on the British empire, Winston Churchill remains a great symbol of racist Western imperialist tyranny, who stood on the wrong side of history.

The myth of Churchill is Britain’s greatest propaganda tool because it rewrites Churchill’s true history in order to whitewash Britain’s past imperialist crimes against humanity. The Churchill myth also perpetuates Britain’s ongoing neo-colonial and neo-liberal policies, that still, to the is day, hurt the very people around the world that Churchill was alleged to have helped civilize.

The same man whose image is polished and placed on British mantelpieces as a symbol of all that is Great about Britain was an unapologetic racist and white supremacist. “I hate Indians, they are a beastly people with a beastly religion”, he once bellowed. As Churchill put it, Palestinians were simply “barbaric hordes who ate little but camel dung.”

In 1937, he told the Palestine Royal Commission: “I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.”

It is unsurprising that when Barack Obama became President, he returned to Britain a bust of Churchill which he found on his desk in the Oval office. According to historian Johann Hari, Mr. Obama’s Kenyan grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, was imprisoned without trial for two years and was tortured on Churchill’s watch, for daring to resist Churchill’s empire.

Apart from being an unrepentant racist, Churchill was also a staunch proponent of the use of terrorism as a weapon of war.

During the Kurdish rebellion against British dictatorship in 1920, Churchill remarked that he simply did not understand the “squeamishness” surrounding the use of gas by civilized Great Britain as a weapon of terror. “I am strongly in favor of using gas against uncivilized tribes, it would spread a lively terror,” he remarked.

In the same year, as Secretary of State for War, Churchill sent the infamous Black and Tans to Ireland to fight the IRA. The group became known for vicious terrorist attacks on civilians which Churchill condoned and encouraged.

While today Britons celebrate Churchill’s legacy, much of the world outside the West mourns the legacy of a man who insisted that it was the solemn duty of Great Britain to invade and loot foreign lands because in Churchill’s own words Britain’s “Aryan stock is bound to triumph”.

Churchill’s legacy in the Far East, Middle East, South Asia and Africa is certainly not one of an affable British Lionheart, intent on spreading civilization amongst the natives of the world. To people of these regions the imperialism, racism, and fascism of a man like Winston Churchill can be blamed for much of the world’s ongoing conflicts and instability.

As Churchill himself boasted, he “created Jordan with a stroke of a pen one Sunday afternoon,” thereby placing many Jordanians under the brutal thumb of a throneless Hashemite prince, Abdullah. Historian Michael R. Burch recalls how the huge zigzag in Jordan’s eastern border with Saudi Arabia has been called “Winston’s Hiccup” or “Churchill’s Sneeze” because Churchill carelessly drew the expansive boundary after a generous lunch.

Churchill also invented Iraq. After giving Jordan to Prince Abdullah, Churchill, the great believer in democracy that he was, gave Prince Abdullah’s brother Faisal an arbitrary patch of desert that became Iraq. Faisal and Abdullah were war buddies of Churchill’s friend T. E. Lawrence, the famous “Lawrence of Arabia”.

Much like the clumsy actions in Iraq of today’s great Empire, Churchill’s imperial foreign policy caused decades of instability in Iraq by arbitrarily locking together three warring ethnic groups that have been bleeding heavily ever since. In Iraq, Churchill bundled together the three Ottoman vilayets of Basra that was predominantly Shiite, Baghdad that was Sunni, and Mosul that was mainly Kurd.

Ask almost anyone outside of Iraq who is responsible for the unstable mess that Iraq is in today and they are likely to say one word, either “Bush” or “America”. However, if you asked anyone within Iraq who is mainly responsible for Iraq’s problems over the last half century and they are likely to simply say “Churchill”.

Winston Churchill convened the 1912 Conference in Cairo to determine the boundaries of the British Middle Eastern mandate and T.E. Lawrence was the most influential delegate. Churchill did not invite a single Arab to the conference, which is shocking but hardly surprising since in his memoirs Churchill said that he never consulted the Arabs about his plans for them.

The arbitrary lines drawn in Middle Eastern sand by Churchillian imperialism were never going to withstand the test of time. To this day, Churchill’s actions have denied Jordanians, Iraqis, Kurds and Palestinians anything resembling true democracy and national stability.

The intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict can also be traced directly back to Churchill’s door at number 10 Downing Street and his decision to hand over the “Promised Land” to both Arabs and Jews. Churchill gave practical effect to the Balfour declaration of 1917, which expressed Britain’s support for the creation of a Jewish homeland, resulting in the biggest single error of British foreign policy in the Middle East.

Churchill’s legacy in Sub-Saharan Africa and Kenya in particular is also one of deep physical and physiological scars that endure to this day.

Of greater consequence to truth and history should be a man’s actions, not merely his words. Whilst Churchill has become one of the most extensively quoted men in the English speaking world, particularly on issues of democracy and freedom, true history speaks of a man whose actions revolved around, in Churchill’s own words, “a lot of jolly little wars against barbarous peoples”.

One such war was when Kikuyu Kenyans rebelled for their freedom only to have Churchill call them “brutish savage children” and force 150,000 of them into “Britain’s Gulag”.

Pulitzer-prize winning historian, Professor Caroline Elkins, highlights Churchill’s many crimes in Kenya in her book Britain’s Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya. Professor Elkins explains how Churchill’s soldiers “whipped, shot, burned, and mutilated Mau Mau suspects”, all in the name of British “civilization”. It is said that President Obama’s grandfather Hussein Onyango Obama never truly recovered from the torture he endured from Churchill’s men.

The Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen has proved how in Bengal in 1943 Churchill engineered one of the worst famines in human history for profit.

Over three million civilians starved to death whilst Churchill refused to send food aid to India. Instead, Churchill trumpeted that “the famine was their own fault for breeding like rabbits.” Churchill intentionally hoarded grain to sell for profit on the open market after the Second World War instead of diverting it to starving inhabitants of a nation controlled by Britain. Churchill’s actions in India unquestionably constituted a crime against humanity.

Churchill was also one of the greatest advocates of Britain’s disastrous divide-and-rule foreign policy.

Churchill’s administration deliberately created and exacerbated sectarian fissures within India’s independence movement, between Indian Hindus and Muslims that have had devastating effects on the region ever since.

Prior to India’s independence from Britain, Churchill was eager to see bloodshed erupt in India, so as to prove that Britain was the benevolent “glue holding the nation together”. For Churchill, bloodshed also had the added strategic advantage that it would also lead to the partition of India and Pakistan. Churchill’s hope was this partition would result in Pakistan remaining within Britain’s sphere of influence. This, in turn, would enable the Great Game against the Soviet empire to continue, no matter the cost to innocent Indian and Pakistanis. The partition of India with Pakistan caused the death of about 2.5 million people and displaced some 12.5 million others.

According to writer, Ishaan Tharoor, Churchill’s own Secretary of State for India, Leopold Amery, compared his boss’s understanding of India’s problems to King George III’s apathy for the Americas. In his private diaries Amery vented that “on the subject of India, Churchill is not quite sane” and that he didn’t “see much difference between Churchill’s outlook and Hitler’s.”

Churchill shared far more ideologically in common with Hitler than most British historians care to admit. For instance, Churchill was a keen supporter of eugenics, something he shared in common with Germany’s Nazi leadership, who were estimated estimated to have killed 200,000 disabled people and forcibly sterilised twice that number. Churchill drafted a highly controversial piece of legislation, which mandated that the mentally ill be forcibly sterilized. In a memo to the Prime Minister in 1910, Winston Churchill cautioned, “the multiplication of the feeble-minded is a very terrible danger to the race”. He also helped organise the International Eugenics Conference of 1912, which was the largest meeting of proponents of eugenics in history.

Churchill had a long standing belief in racial hierarchies and eugenics. In Churchill’s view, white protestant Christians were at the very top of the pyramid, above white Catholics, while Jews and Indians were only slightly higher than Africans.

Historian, Mr. Hari, rightfully points out, “the fact that we now live in a world where a free and independent India is a superpower eclipsing Britain, and a grandson of the Kikuyu ‘savages’ is the most powerful man in the world, is a repudiation of Churchill at his ugliest – and a sweet, ironic victory for Churchill at his best.”

Amid today’s Churchillian parades and celebratory speeches, British media and schoolbooks may choose to only remember Churchill’s opposition to dictatorship in Europe, but the rest of the world cannot choose to forget Churchill’s imposition of dictatorship on darker skinned people outside of Europe. Far from being the Lionheart of Britain, who stood on the ramparts of civilisation, Winston Churchill, all too often, simply stood on the wrong side of history.

Churchill is indeed the Greatest Briton to have ever lived, because for decades, the myth of Churchill has served as Britain’s greatest propaganda tool to bolster national white pride and glorify British imperial culture.

Copyright © Garikai Chengu, Global Research, 2016
_________________
Garikai Chengu is a scholar at Harvard University. Contact him on garikai.chengu@gmail.com.

Reprinted with permission from Center for Research in Globalization.

The Gates Foundation: Spearheading The Neo-Liberal Plunder of African Agriculture

Bill Gates.

By Colin Todhunter
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) is dangerously and unaccountably distorting the direction of international development, according to a new report by the campaign group Global Justice Now. With assets of $43.5 billion, the BMGF is the largest charitable foundation in the world. It actually distributes more aid for global health than any government. As a result, it has a major influence on issues of global health and agriculture.

‘Gated Development - Is the Gates Foundation always a force for good?’ argues that what BMGF is doing could end up exacerbating global inequality and entrenching corporate power globally. Global Justice Now’s analysis of the BMGF’s programmes shows that the foundation’s senior staff are overwhelmingly drawn from corporate America. As a result, the question is: whose interests are being promoted – those of corporate America or those of ordinary people who seek social and economic justice rather than charity?

According to the report, the foundation’s strategy is intended to deepen the role of multinational companies in global health and agriculture especially, even though these corporations are responsible for much of the poverty and injustice that already plagues the global south. The report concludes that the foundation’s programmes have a specific ideological strategy that promotes neo-liberal economic policies, corporate globalisation, the technology this brings (such as GMOs) and an outdated view of the centrality of aid in ‘helping’ the poor.

The report raises a series criticisms including:

1) The relationship between the foundation and Microsoft’s tax practices. A 2012 report from the US Senate found that Microsoft’s use of offshore subsidiaries enabled it to avoid taxes of $4.5 billion, a sum greater than the BMGF’s annual grant making ($3.6 billion in 2014).

2) The close relationship that BMGF has with many corporations whose role and policies contribute to ongoing poverty. Not only is BMGF profiting from numerous investments in a series of controversial companies which contribute to economic and social injustice, it is also actively supporting a series of those companies, including Monsanto, Dupont and Bayer through a variety of pro-corporate initiatives around the world.

3) The foundation’s promotion of industrial agriculture across Africa, pushing for the adoption of GM, patented seed systems and chemical fertilisers, all of which undermine existing sustainable, small-scale farming that is providing the vast majority of food security across the continent.

4) The foundation’s promotion of projects around the world pushing private healthcare and education. Numerous agencies have raised concerns that such projects exacerbate inequality and undermine the universal provision of such basic human necessities.

5) BMGF’s funding of a series of vaccine programmes that have reportedly lead to illnesses or even deaths with little official or media scrutiny.

Polly Jones the head of campaigns and policy at Global Justice Now says:

“The Gates Foundation has rapidly become the most influential actor in the world of global health and agricultural policies, but there’s no oversight or accountability in how that influence is managed. This concentration of power and influence is even more problematic when you consider that the philanthropic vision of the Gates Foundation seems to be largely based on the values of corporate America. The foundation is relentlessly promoting big business-based initiatives such as industrial agriculture, private health care and education. But these are all potentially exacerbating the problems of poverty and lack of access to basic resources that the foundation is supposed to be alleviating.”

The report states that that Bill Gates has regular access to world leaders and is in effect personally bankrolling hundreds of universities, international organisations, NGOs and media outlets. As the single most influential voice in international development, the foundation’s strategy is a major challenge to progressive development actors and activists around the world who want to see the influence of multinational corporations in global markets reduced or eliminated.

The foundation not only funds projects in which agricultural and pharmaceutical corporations are among the leading beneficiaries, but it often invests in the same companies as it is funding, meaning the foundation has an interest in the ongoing profitability of these corporations. According to the report, this is “a corporate merry-go-round where the BMGF consistently acts in the interests of corporations.”

Uprooting indigenous agriculture for the benefit of global agribusiness


The report notes that the BMGF’s close relationship with seed and chemical giant Monsanto is well known. It previously owned shares in the company and continues to promote several projects in which Monsanto is a beneficiary, not least the wholly inappropriate and fraudulent GMO project which promotes a technical quick-fix ahead of tackling the structural issues that create hunger, poverty and food insecurity But, as the report notes, the BMGF partners with many other multinational agribusiness corporations.

Many examples where this is the case are highlighted by the report. For instance, the foundation is working with US trader Cargill in an $8 million project to “develop the soya value chain” in southern Africa. Cargill is the biggest global player in the production of and trade in soya with heavy investments in South America where GM soya mono-crops have displaced rural populations and caused great environmental damage. According to Global Justice Now, the BMGF-funded project will likely enable Cargill to capture a hitherto untapped African soya market and eventually introduce GM soya onto the continent. The end markets for this soya are companies with relationships with the fast food outlet, KFC, whose expansion in Africa is being aided by the project.

Specific examples are given which highlight how BMGF is also supporting projects involving other chemicals and seed corporations, including DuPont Pioneer, Syngenta and Bayer.

According to the report, the BMGF is promoting a model of industrial agriculture, the increasing use of chemical fertilisers and expensive, patented seeds, the privatisation of extension services and a very large focus on genetically modified seeds. The foundation bankrolls the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) in pushing industrial agriculture.

A key area for AGRA is seed policy. The report notes that currently over 80 per cent of Africa’s seed supply comes from millions of small-scale farmers recycling and exchanging seed from year to year. But AGRA is promoting the commercial production of seed and is thus supporting the introduction of commercial seed systems, which risk enabling a few large companies to control seed research and development, production and distribution.

In order for commercial seed companies to invest in research and development, they first want to protect their ‘intellectual property’. According to the report, this requires a fundamental restructuring of seed laws to allow for certification systems that not only protect certified varieties and royalties derived from them, but which actually criminalise all non-certified seed.

The report notes that over the past two decades a long and slow process of national seed law reviews, sponsored by USAID and the G8 along with the BMGF and others, has opened the door to multinational corporations’ involvement in seed production, including the acquisition of every sizeable seed enterprise on the African continent.

At the same time, AGRA is working to promote costly inputs, notably fertiliser, despite evidence to suggest chemical fertilisers have significant health risks for farm workers, increase soil erosion and can trap small-scale farmers in unsustainable debt. The BMGF, through AGRA, is one of the world’s largest promoters of chemical fertiliser.

Some grants given by the BMGF to AGRA have been specifically intended to “help AGRA build the fertiliser supply chain” in Africa. The report describes how one of the largest of AGRA’s grants, worth $25 million, was used to help establish the African Fertiliser Agribusiness Partnership (AFAP) in 2012, whose very goal is to “at least double total fertiliser use” in Africa. The AFAP project is being pursued in partnership with the International Fertiliser Development Centre, a body which represents the fertiliser industry.

Another of AGRA’s key programmes since its inception has been support to agro-dealer networks – small, private stockists of transnational companies' chemicals and seeds who sell these to farmers in several African countries. This is increasing the reliance of farmers on chemical inputs and marginalising sustainable agriculture alternatives, thereby undermining any notion that farmers are exercising their 'free choice' (as the neo-liberal evangelists are keen to tell everyone) when it comes to adopting certain agricultural practices.

The report concludes that AGRA’s agenda is the biggest direct threat to the growing movement in support of food sovereignty and agroecological farming methods in Africa. This movement opposes reliance on chemicals, expensive seeds and GM and instead promotes an approach which allows communities control over the way food is produced, traded and consumed. It is seeking to create a food system that is designed to help people and the environment rather than make profits for multinational corporations. Priority is given to promoting healthy farming and healthy food by protecting soil, water and climate, and promoting biodiversity.

Recent evidence from Greenpeace and the Oakland Institute shows that in Africa agroecological farming can increase yields significantly (often greater than industrial agriculture), and that it is more profitable for small farmers. In 2011, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food (Olivier de Schutter) called on countries to reorient their agriculture policies to promote sustainable systems - not least agroecology - that realise the right to food. Moreover, the International Assessmentof Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) was the work of over 400 scientists and took four years to complete. It was twice peer reviewed and states we must look to smallholder, traditional farming to deliver food security in third world countries through agri-ecological systems which are sustainable.

In a January 2015 piece in The Guardian, the director of Global Justice Now said that ‘development’ was once regarded as a process of breaking with colonial exploitation and transferring power over resources from the ‘first’ to the ‘third world’, involving a revolutionary struggle over the world’s resources. However, the current paradigm is based on the assumption that developing countries need to adopt neo-liberal policies and that public money in the guise of aid should facilitate this.

If this new report shows anything, it is that the notion of ‘development’ has become hijacked by rich corporations and a super-rich ‘philanthrocapitalist’ (whose own corporate practices have been questionable to say the least, as highlighted by the report). In effect, the model of 'development' being facilitated is married to the ideology and structurally embedded power relations of an exploitative global capitalism.

The BMGF is spearheading the ambitions of corporate America and the scramble for Africa by global agribusiness.

Reprinted with the permission of Colin Todhunter

Bill Gates' Foundation Teams With Monsanto To Push GMO Crops On Kenya (Video)

"The Verge noted in a report that the Gates Foundation Asset Trust, which manages the foundation’s assets, previously held shares of Monsanto. Indeed, in 2010, it was revealed that the Gates Foundation’s investment portfolio held 500,000 shares of Monsanto stock with an estimated worth of $23.1 million."

A poster carried by a protester during an anti-GMO march in Kenya. (Screen capture from YouTube video)

By Lorraine Chow
Kenya is on the verge of reversing its ban on genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The East African country—which has banned the import and planting of GMOs since 2012 due to health concerns—may soon allow the cultivation of GMO maize and cotton after being pushed for approval by pro-GMO organizations including Monsanto, the agribusiness giant and world’s largest seed company.

Kenya close to adopting genetically modified cotton seed https://t.co/Xo7QMfg9j7 pic.twitter.com/lrS5Nmy3wp

— Nation FM (@NationFMKe) January 5, 2016

If it does so, Kenya will become only the fourth African country to allow the cultivation of GMO crops following South Africa, Bukina Faso and Sudan.

Kenyans oppose The lift of the ban on GMO's

According to Mail & Guardian Africa, Kenya’s possible GMO reversal comes after the country’s National Biosafety Authority received one application from the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization and the African Agricultural Technology Foundation to release Bt maize, and another application from Monsanto’s Kenyan subsidiary to release Bt cotton. Bt crops have been bioengineered with the moth- and butterfly-killing bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis.

“We recommend lifting the ban,” National Biosafety Authority CEO Willy Tonui said. “We now have border control, surveillance and a strong regulatory system.”

On Nov. 21, 2012, the Kenyan Ministry of Public Health ordered public health officials to remove all GMO foods on the market and to enforce a ban on GMO imports. The Minister for Public Health, Beth Mugo, presented the concerns about the safety of GMOs during a Kenyan cabinet meeting, citing a (since retracted) French study that linked cancer in rats to the consumption of GMO foods.

The National Biosafety Authority is expected to make its decision on the maize seed Jan. 31 and then on Feb. 28 for the cotton seed, according to Tonui.

Scientists from the Kenya Agriculture and Livestock Research Organization and African Agricultural Technology Foundation want the maize seeds released to farmers for mass production. As Bloomberg described, maize (or corn) is a major dietary staple in Kenya and would benefit from pest-resistant crops:

“Kenya is Africa’s largest per-capita corn consumer and the second-biggest seeds market, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. Annual corn consumption is estimated at 103 kilograms (227 pounds) per person, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO]. In 2011, Kenya became the first African nation to report an outbreak of the Maize Lethal Necrosis Disease, which can wipe out farmers’ entire crops, the FAO says on its website.”

“The industry has been in a sorry state,” Waturu wrote in the paper Bt Cotton Research Progress. “In 1985, we used to produce 70,000 bales of cotton, but in 2013 we could only produce 20,000. In the same year, Tanzania and Uganda produced 700,000 and 400,000 bales respectively.”

Still, the looming approval of GMOs in Kenya has been met with heavy protests by opponents. In September 2015, activists rallied in Nairobi against the lifting of the GMO ban, citing health concerns.

“We need to stand by our country’s economy and fight for the rights of our farmers. Biotechnology is not bad, but the introduction of genetically modified foods is unethical and unsafe,” nutrition expert Hellen Ngema said.

Lifting the ban is also perceived as a play that would benefit large multinationals such as Monsanto and other powerful organizations.

Kenya’s potential GMO reversal comes after “pressure” from Monsanto, the United States Agency for International Development and the Gates Foundation, according to a report by RT.

The report cited Monsanto’s Water Efficient Maize for Africa, a five-year development project led by the Kenyan-based African Agricultural Technology Foundation that aims to develop a variety of drought-tolerant maize seeds. Incidentally, as the website points out, the project receives funding from the Gates Foundation, United States Agency for International Development and Howard G. Buffett Foundation.

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Resisting The World Trade Organization’s Culture of Terror and Impunity

Should Africa expect much from the WTO talks in Nairobi? The WTO political game is played with complete lack of any democratic or moral scruples. The Empire speaks of democracy and good governance, ad infinitum, but there is not a morsel of it within the WTO system of global economic governance. The Empire gets away with total impunity.

Anti-WTO Protesters: Seattle, WA 1999. (Photo by Seattle Municipal Archives)

By Yash Tandon
This article seeks to explain the process leading to WTO’s Tenth Ministerial Conference (WTO MC10). The next (final article in this series) will focus on the substance of negotiations. Of course, you cannot separate the process from the substance. But conceptually and strategically it is important to understand the difference as well as the interaction.

The most significant aspect of the process is its underlying power politics.

The WTO’s Underlying Power Politics

The Nairobi Declaration (if such is the outcome of the MC10) will be a negotiated text. What does that mean? Like in all previous MCs, it means, effectively, that the powerful get what they want and the weak surrender under the threat of sanctions, such as withdrawal of so-called ‘development aid’ and ‘market access’ to poor and weak countries. Yes, indeed, it is that simple. It takes collective efforts of the Global South, and the solidarity voices of the people of the world to beat Empire - as in Seattle in 1999, and Cancun, 2003.

In between the powerful and the weak are countries like BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) that do have some – but limited - negotiating leverage, provided they act in concert. Opposed to BRICS and the Global South is the Empire - a term that is not admissible in diplomatic – including WTO - discourse. But the Empire exists; it is an existential reality. Some readers may want to include China in this category, but in the WTO and broader geopolitical context, the Empire comprises of the USA, Europe and Japan. The WTO was created by the Empire with very little participation from the Global South – including China. The Empire structured well-thought-out built-in rules of the WTO that are lopsidedly pro-Empire. For example, in theory all countries can provide the so-called ‘green subsidies’ to agricultural production, but in practice only the Empire is able to apply this provision; even the BRICS are not able to provide these for various technical reasons.

However, the global geopolitics are shifting rapidly. The chaos in the Middle East is part of this shift. The Empire is in crisis, in decay. This opens the door for an alternative system to emerge. China is beginning to flex its political and financial muscle. It is possible that it will make its weight felt at MC10. This explains why the Empire is in a state of panic and in some urgency to ‘conclude’ the Doha Development Agenda (DDA), and move on to a new pro-imperial agenda.

Why The Doha Development Agenda Is So Significant

When the DDA was launched in November 2001 it was under overbearing pressure from the Empire. Following 9/11 (the terrorist attack on New York), the US had announced that if the Doha Round was not launched, those opposing it would effectively be ‘siding with the terrorists’. The emphasis during the negotiations was largely on market access – primarily for the benefit of the Empire. As a member of the Tanzanian delegation – then negotiating on behalf of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) - I remember how very disappointed we were at the outcome. [1]

However, at the last minute, on the insistence of the Tanzanian Minister of Trade, the word ‘development’ was inserted between ‘Doha’ and ‘Round’ making it the Doha Development Round (DDR) or Doha Development Agenda (DDA). The Empire did not at the time understand the significance of inserting that one word. This word has saved Africa – and the South. One must remember that the WTO is a trade – not ‘development’ - institution. Its ideological assumption is that ‘free market’ promotes development, which we know from hard evidence on the ground that it does not. However, following Doha, the developing countries have been able to use the word ‘development’ to argue for genuine development emerging out of the DDA. In other words, development first, then trade.

In the last 14 years the DDA has not shown much movement. This is the reason the Empire wants to jettison the DDA at the MC10 in Nairobi, to ‘conclude’ it. But for the Global South the DDA is their anchor; remove it and you never know to what destination the Empire might steer the WTO ship... For example, one area where the DDA anchor is not allowing the ship to drift is the so-called Singapore (and other new) issues. It gives the developing countries policy space to determine their own development priorities, to give preferences to local companies over foreign corporations and foreign imports. It is no wonder that the Empire wants to kill the DDA. The corporate interests that sit waiting to take over the helm are now even more powerful - but also more desperate - than they were fourteen years ago.

The Green Room, The Facilitators Summary, And Process

Let us get back to the process. At the apex of the WTO is the Ministerial Conference (MC) which usually meets every two years, often outside Geneva - like this time in Nairobi. In Geneva, however, the highest decision-making body is the General Council (GC) comprising of representatives (usually ambassadors) from all member governments. In between the MCs the GC has the authority to act on behalf of the MCs.

Below the GC, there is an official body called the Trade Negotiating Committee (TNC) chaired by the Director General (DG) of the WTO – presently Roberto Azevêdo. However, most strategic and weighty negotiations take place within the cloistered chambers (called the ‘Green Room’ process). Admission to the Green Room – and the process itself - is wholly non-transparent and undemocratic. Negotiations take place among the Empire and a number of developing countries selected by the Empire. Also, there are a plethora of committees and ‘special sessions’, ad hoc negotiating groups and secret meetings. The Empire manipulates the process inside and outside the Green Room – including all kinds of wheeling and dealing and pressure on governments in Africa and other poor nations - and it gets away with what can only be described as terror and bully tactics. It enjoys unparalleled impunity from responsibility for serious violations of the principles of fairness and justice.

The DGs are not neutral and are appointed at the pleasure of the Empire – just like the Heads of the World Bank and the IMF – together with the WTO, the three primary institutions of global governance. Azevêdo is not neutral. He is a free market fundamentalist and buys into this ‘holy grail’. On 3rd June this year, for example, China and India rebuffed his proposal to change OTDS (Overall Trade Distorting Domestic Support) in favour of the developed countries. He comes from Brazil, which is the coordinator for the G-20 developing country farm coalition. But Brazil remained silent on this issue. [2]

On July 10 Uganda's Ambassador Christopher Onyanga Aparr challenged the DG. He is reported to have asked the DG : ‘We called for a discussion on the nature and scope of the work program, but apparently the call has not yet found a landing zone… what is so wrong with the Doha Work Program?’ [3] Needless to say, he got no response from Azevêdo.

Where We Are Today In The Lead Up To MC10

The MC10 process began - practically speaking – almost immediately after the MC9. The outcome of MC9 was disastrous for Africa.[4] Since Bali, the trade technical experts from the member countries have been negotiating the implementation of the DDA and a possible future work program. After nearly seven months of intensive negotiations, the GC set up a three-person team of ‘facilitators’ - from Colombia, Kenya and Norway - who were asked to summarise the state of the negotiations up to that time and suggest a possible text for the Nairobi Declaration.

When the facilitators presented their report on December 1, it was immediately challenged by the Global South. Briefly, there were two things wrong with their report:

• To start with it said nothing on the DDA; it totally ignored the DDA mandate.
• Then, having claimed that it will not have language on New Issues, it opened the door to these in a roundabout way by, for example, looking at the systemic implications of Regional Trade Agreements s (RTAs) and their coherence with WTO rules.

It was a very serious setback for the South as their demand to continue talks on DDA was simply set aside. On December 2, the report by TNC Chairman, Azevêdo, was postponed. On December 3, the DG was forced by the Global South to insert specific language for DDA continuance post-Nairobi. The South was no longer in a mood to take further beating from the Empire and its agents within the very structure of the WTO.[5]

This is where we stand today. The process in Geneva has more or less reached an impasse and has moved to examining the various possibilities of the format in which the final outcome might be embodied in Nairobi.

VARIOUS POSSIBILITIES OF DECLARATIONS THAT MIGHT COME OUT OF MC10

Several scenarios are possible. I rank them in order from good to bad – that is, from the perspective of Africa and the Global South.

Summary And Conclusions

1. The WTO was created by the Empire and controlled and coordinated by it - like a war machine. There are differences among its constituent members (for example between the US and the EU), but on the DDA they are united – they are bent on killing it.

2. The WTO political game is played with complete lack of any democratic or moral scruples. The Empire speaks of democracy and good governance, ad infinitum, but there is not a morsel of it within the WTO system of global economic governance. And the Empire gets away with total impunity.

3. The WTO’ ideology of ‘free trade’ is a pure fiction. Nothing like that ever existed in history, not even during its ‘high point’ of 19th century English mercantile system.

4. The WTO is not neutral. Its DG - Azevêdo - is not neutral. He is a ‘free market fundamentalist and works for the Empire.

5. The Chairperson of MC10, Ambassador Amina Mohamed, is officially neutral. As the Chair she has to be. But she will be under huge pressure from the Empire, Azevêdo, and the WTO Secretariat to produce an outcome favourable to the Empire.

6. Of the seven possible scenarios presented above, for Africa and the Global South the first is the best; the second is a ‘fall-back’ position; the next two are not ideal but they do not close the door to the DDA; and the last three are where are the ‘no go’ areas.

Africa will be subject to ‘waterboarding’ by the Empire at the MC10 in Nairobi under the WTO process. [6] It is time Africa sits up and gets counted. It must resist the WTO's culture of terror and impunity for the Empire.

* Yash Tandon is a Ugandan policymaker, political activist, professor, author and public intellectual. His latest book, Trade Is War, was published in June 2015.


END NOTES

[1] See: ‘The Three-Layered Reality of the WTO’ in Yash Tandon, Trade is War, OR- Books, 2015.
[2] The best blow-by-blow accounts of these negotiations are given on a daily basis by a Geneva-based ‘third world’ South-North Development Monitor (SUNS) edited by Chakravarthi Raghavan, a doyen of trade negotiations since before the WTO was created. See SUNS #8048, 24 June, 2015.
[3] See: SUNS #8060
[4] See: ‘The long losing fight over S&D in Bali’ in Trade is War, op.cit.
[5] See: SUNS #8148
[6] Waterboarding is a form of torture widely used by the US government in which water is poured over the head of a captive making him feel as if he is drowning.

Reprinted with permission from Pambazuka News.

US Sneakily Expanding Drone Bases in Africa

Satellite Photos show the rapid expansion of a US drone base in Chabelley, Djbouti.

By Nick Turse
VIEWED FROM HIGH ABOVE, Chabelley Airfield is little more than a gray smudge in a tan wasteland. Drop lower and its incongruous features start coming into focus. In the sun-bleached badlands of the tiny impoverished nation of Djibouti — where unemployment hovers at a staggering 60 percent and the per capita gross domestic product is about $3,100 — sits a hive of high-priced, high-tech American hardware.

Satellite imagery tells part of the story. A few years ago, this isolated spot resembled little more than an orphaned strip of tarmac sitting in the middle of this desolate desert. Look closely today, however, and you’ll notice what seems to be a collection of tan clamshell hangars, satellite dishes, and distinctive, thin, gunmetal gray forms — robot planes with wide wingspans.

Unbeknownst to most Americans and without any apparent public announcement, the U.S. has recently taken steps to transform this tiny, out-of-the-way outpost into an “enduring” base, a key hub for its secret war, run by the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), in Africa and the Middle East. The military is tight-lipped about Chabelley, failing to mention its existence in its public list of overseas bases and refusing even to acknowledge questions about it — let alone offer answers. Official documents, satellite imagery, and expert opinion indicate, however, that Chabelley is now essential to secret drone operations throughout the region.

Tim Brown, a senior fellow at GlobalSecurity.org and expert on analyzing satellite imagery, notes that Chabelley Airfield allows U.S. drones to cover Yemen, southwest Saudi Arabia, a large swath of Somalia, and parts of Ethiopia and southern Egypt.

“This base is now very important because it’s a major hub for most drone operations in northwest Africa,” he said. “It’s vital. … We can’t afford to lose it.”


The startling transformation of this little-known garrison in this little-known country is in line with U.S. military activity in Africa where, largely under the radar, the number of missions, special operations deployments, and outposts has grown rapidly and with little outside scrutiny.

The expansion of Chabelley and its consequent rise in importance to the U.S. military began in 2013, when the Pentagon moved its fleet of remotely piloted aircraft from its lone acknowledged “major military facility” in Africa — Camp Lemonnier, in Djibouti’s capital, which shares the country’s name — to this lower-profile airstrip about 10 kilometers away.

Read More

Labeling of 'Blood Diamonds' and Other Conflict Minerals Rejected as Court Sides With Corporations (Video)

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By DemocracyNow

TRANSCRIPT:

Since 1998, more than 5 million people have died in the Democratic Republic of Congo in what has been described as the deadliest documented conflict in African history. Much of the fighting has been over precious minerals including tantalum, tin, tungsten and gold. Tantalum has become a precious commodity in the digital age — it’s found in cellphones, DVD players, laptops and hard drives. Human rights groups have long pushed for mandatory labeling of so-called "conflict minerals" in order to allow consumers and investors to avoid fueling the bloody conflict through the purchase of their products. The mandatory disclosure policy became law as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act. But this week a federal appeals court ruled the Securities and Exchange Commission cannot force companies to disclose whether minerals come from the Democratic Republic of Congo because the mandatory labeling would violate the companies’ freedom of speech. We speak to Zorka Milin, senior legal adviser with Global Witness.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Since 1998, more than 5 million people have died in the Democratic Republic of Congo in what has been described as the deadliest documented conflict in African history. Much of the fighting has been over precious minerals, including tantalum, tin, tungsten and gold. Tantalum has become a precious commodity in the digital age—it’s found in cellphones, DVD players, laptops and hard drives.

Human rights groups have long pushed for mandatory labeling of so-called conflict minerals in order to allow consumers and investors to avoid fueling the bloody conflict through the purchase of their products. The mandatory disclosure policy became law as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act.

AMY GOODMAN: But this week, a federal appeals court has ruled the Securities and Exchange Commission cannot force companies to disclose whether minerals come from the Democratic Republic of Congo because the mandatory labeling would violate the companies’ freedom of speech.

For more, we go directly to Washington, D.C., where we’re joined by Zorka Milin, a senior legal adviser with Global Witness. The group works to improve transparency and accountability in extraction of natural resources.

Welcome to Democracy Now! Why don’t you start off, Zorka, by talking about what the judge has ruled and what exactly are the minerals you’re talking about?

ZORKA MILIN: Thank you, Amy. It’s great to be here on the show. And it’s very fitting, because what’s really at stake in this decision is democracy and transparency. And what we have is renegade judges who have turned the First Amendment on its head and allowed corporations to use it as a deregulatory tool. The decision from this week has sweeping implications for all kinds of important consumer disclosures, ranging from nutrition labeling on foods, country-of-origin labeling, health and safety warnings in products. So it is certainly a very momentous decision and is a continuation and intensification of this trend that we have seen, including with Citizens United, of corporations kind of weaponizing the First Amendment—a provision which was really intended to protect the free speech rights of citizens, of individual citizens, and not corporations.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, what specifically was the provision of the Dodd-Frank Act that was at question here? And could you give a little bit more detail on that?

ZORKA MILIN: Sure. The provision is much broader than the phrase that was challenged here, which is just the use of the phrase, "not found to be conflict-free," which the companies did not want to use in their disclosures. And to be clear, it’s not an issue of labeling on a product; it’s a phrase that appears in a filing that’s made with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The companies did not object to the rest of the law, which really is much broader. And the heart of that law requires companies to engage in due diligence to ensure that their supply chains and the minerals that they’re purchasing are not funding the terrible conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. So the rest of the law still stands, and companies still have to perform those kinds of due-diligence measures.

The phrase, "not found to be conflict-free," was intended to be a spur to companies to ensure that they
have the right processes in place. And it’s really shameful that rather than focusing their energies on that, companies have instead chosen to bring dubious constitutional challenges.

AMY GOODMAN: So, can you name a company and tell us exactly what’s happening in the Democratic Republic of Congo, why you want conflict minerals to be identified?

ZORKA MILIN: Well, it’s an interesting question: Can we name these companies? You know, the lawsuit itself was brought by a group of business lobby associations that include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the Business Roundtable. So, effectively, individual companies are hiding behind these powerful business lobbying groups, and so it makes it difficult to really kind of name and shame individual companies that have been challenging this law. This is, unfortunately, a broader trend that’s not limited to this case, and is something that we see in other cases where business groups are challenging regulations that they don’t like.

When it comes to what we see on the ground, of course, it’s a very complicated conflict, and minerals are one of the factors, certainly a significant contributing factor, to the conflict. But there are numerous other complications with different armed groups and different actors. So it’s really difficult to kind of oversimplify the situation. That said, we firmly believe that this law can contribute to positive change on the ground.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Now, this was a decision in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is known as a very pro-business, conservative circuit of the federal judiciary. What’s the next step here?

ZORKA MILIN: Well, we don’t think that the decision can stand, and we think that the SEC will agree with us. The SEC was the defendant in this case, and so it is up to them to bring further appeals and to make sure that this incredible, misguided and damaging decision is overturned. And we certainly expect to see that, because the sweeping implications that I was describing earlier apply, perhaps especially, to the kinds of disclosures that the—the stock exchange disclosures that the Securities and Exchange Commission routinely requires from its issuers. So, we very much hope and expect to see further review and, you know, this terrible decision to be overturned.

AMY GOODMAN: Zorka, we have less than a minute, but with people increasingly walking around with smartphones, are conflict minerals a growing problem?

ZORKA MILIN: Well, I think that conflict minerals are not a necessary component of the electronics products that we all use. And it is possible to source minerals responsibly, including from the Democratic Republic of Congo. An analysis that our group did of some of the first filings under this law, which were made last year, shows that about 20 percent of companies have complied with the law fully, and so that shows that it’s possible. And we certainly hope that more and more companies will engage with the law in a more positive way and contribute to a responsible sourcing of minerals in the Congo for mines which are not controlled by the armed groups.

AMY GOODMAN: Zorka Milin, we want to thank you for being with us, senior legal adviser with Global Witness, a group that’s working to improve transparency and accountability in the extraction of natural resources.

Canadian Agri-Business Firm That's Financed by US Corporations Is Land Grabbing in the Republic of Congo

Children at the Lokutu landing on the Congo River. (Photo: GRAIN)

The young priest Robert Bolenge* could not have imagined the poverty he would find when he arrived at his new post in Yaligimba in 2002. The district lies at the heart of vast oil palm plantations belonging to Feronia Inc., in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

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"I had never witnessed such suffering before," says Bolenge. "I couldn't have imagined that someone could work so hard with a basket tied to his back, cutting down palm bunches all day, and only take home about $20 a month."

By GRAIN
Under Belgian colonial occupation (1908-1960), land was stolen from communities all along the length of the Congo River to establish oil palm plantations. Now, the communities have launched a determined effort to get their land back. But the company occupying their lands today is expanding its activities with funding from the world's biggest development finance institutions and multilateral banks – despite these agencies' stated commitments to support the rights of local people.

A simmering, 100-year old land conflict in the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is about to boil over.

In the name of "development"

Development finance institutions (DFIs) were created by northern governments to provide financing for high risk projects in so-called developing countries. Their role is to provide public money for private ventures that would otherwise struggle to raise capital for projects where the anticipated returns in terms of poverty alleviation are high.

Today these government-controlled institutions provide upwards of $100 billion to private companies operating in developing countries, which is equivalent to almost two thirds of official development assistance.1 A growing share of these funds are targeted at companies operating in the food and agriculture sector.2

Northern governments equipped their DFIs with codes and standards to guard against corruption and human rights violations in countries where they operate. These policies are meant to prevent DFIs from investing in companies that grab land, violate labour rights or engage in corrupt practices.

So how did several of the world's most prominent DFIs come to own Feronia Inc., a Canadian agribusiness company that people in the DRC say is illegally occupying their land, subjecting them to horrific work in plantations and leaving their communities destitute? There is also evidence that Feronia has engaged in financial practices that violate the anti-corruption policies of its DFI owners.

If the DFIs have a blacklist, Feronia should be on it. Instead, multilateral banks and the development finance arms of the United States, UK, France and Spain have poured millions of dollars into Feronia since 2012. DFIs now own over 70 percent of the company.

Obamba-Clot: He Lectured Kenyans on Civil Rights — Something He'd Never Do in Saudi Arabia

It doesn’t matter if his audience is made up of church congregants, graduating students, or Kenyan dignitaries. Every black person unlucky enough to be in his vicinity risks being treated like a dead beat dad, career criminal or cousin Pookie, Obama’s own imaginary Willie Horton.

The president's visit to East Africa has been the occasion for the same kind of hypocritical finger pointing Barack Obama usually reserves for his frequent hectoring of Black America, this time using "gay rights" as the standard. It's a standard which he would never use to lecture America's other vassals like the bloodstained beheading backward Saudi regime.

Obama’s Africa Hypocrisy


By Margaret Kimberley

“...hypocritical Americans have made gay rights the new measurement of societal well being all over the world ...”

On January 20, 2017 Barack Obama will leave the presidency and those black people capable of critical thought will have many reasons to breathe sighs of relief. They will no longer have to submit to condescending lectures directed exclusively at them. From the moment he ran for president Obama has harangued black people on a wide variety of issues. It doesn’t matter if his audience is made up of church congregants, graduating students, or Kenyan dignitaries. Every black person unlucky enough to be in his vicinity risks being treated like a dead beat dad, career criminal or cousin Pookie, Obama’s own imaginary Willie Horton.

During his trip to east Africa the president chastened Kenyans about gay rights, domestic violence, genital cutting, forced marriage and equal rights for women. He went on and on with no mention of how well his country lives us to any accepted standards of human rights.

American presidents have no business chastising others. The country with the world’s largest prison state, military and history of aggressions is on shaky ground when giving anyone else advice. In the neighboring country of Somalia the United States regularly sends drones intended to kill al-Shabaab fighters but they deliver collateral damage to other people too. The blowback has killed many Kenyans, who are targeted by al-Shabaab because of their country’s role as an American puppet.

Because hypocritical Americans have made gay rights the new measurement of societal well being all over the world, the president took the opportunity to castigate Kenyans about that too. Of course homosexuality is illegal in Saudi Arabia, America’s partner in crime. Yet there is no record of public shaming for any Saudi prince or king on that or any other issue. Their sensibilities are deemed too delicate for tongue lashing. It must be pointed out that Saudis take lashing quite literally.

Those countries that are considered important are never called to account about American concerns du jour. They can even be praised no matter how awful their behavior. The president regularly genuflects to Israel, a country which violates every norm of international law, including the Geneva Conventions prohibitions against collective punishment. In Gaza civilians of every age and gender are massacred and Israel maintains the right to continue the bloodshed, and always with American financial and military support.

Obama even compared the establishment of Israel’s apartheid state to black Americans’ fight for liberation. That statement was a lie, a grotesque distortion of history. The slander is akin to a blood libel but Africans cannot expect the recitation of bizarre statements on their behalf when Obama comes to town.

The recipients of American hypocritical condemnation are many. While Obama was brow beating Africans, Syrian president Bashir al-Assad was telling the world about his nation’s suffering at the hands of the United States. More than 200,000 of his citizens are dead, and up to 9 million are refugees because the United States claims the right to decide who should control that country.

“They [the Western countries] call it terrorism when it hits them, and [they call it] revolution, freedom, democracy and human rights when it hits us.” For four years the United States and allies like Saudi Arabia have waged a terror campaign against Syria. The Islamic State, ISIS, is also part of the terror mix, but it wouldn’t even exist without the United States. Now ISIS is used as a subterfuge in the effort to finish off Assad and what is left of his country.

"...The recipients of American hypocritical condemnation are many...."

In Obama’s finger wagging about the treatment of Kenyan women he made a point that he would do well to remember about himself and the United States. "Every country has traditions that are unique. Just because something is a part of your past doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t mean that it defines your future."

If those words were applied to his country all the jails would be emptied, the banks would be nationalized, and the United States military would start closing up foreign military bases and heading for home. There would be no need for Africom because imperialism would be off the table. Saudi princes would have to look elsewhere to destabilize other nations. Israel would have to free Palestine and Iran could enrich all the uranium it wanted. There would be no income inequality based on race and brutal police would be prosecuted.

Yes Mr. President, the past shouldn’t define the future. You would do well to take those words seriously.

_______________________
Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as athttp://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.

 Reprinted with permission from Black Agenda Report.

African Farmers Sold Out by an African Organization — It Seals Secret Deal on Plant Variety Protection

As was widely feared, the contentious protocol on seed was adopted at the regional meeting in Arusha, Tanzania. The protocol’s underlying imperatives are to increase corporate seed imports, reduce breeding activity at the national level, and facilitate the monopoly by foreign companies of local seed systems and the disruption of traditional farming systems.


By Bernard Guri
On 06 July 2015, in Arusha, Tanzania, a Diplomatic Conference held under the auspices of the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) adopted a harmonized regional legal framework for the protection of plant breeders’ rights—the Arusha Protocol for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (the ‘Arusha PVP Protocol’).

The Arusha PVP Protocol is a slightly revised version of a previous Draft ARIPO Protocol for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (the ‘ARIPO PVP Protocol’). The previous Draft has come under consistent and severe attack by the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) because it is based on a Convention known as UPOV 1991—a restrictive and inflexible international legal precept, totally unsuitable for Africa. Crucially, the ARIPO PVP Protocol proposed extremely strong intellectual property rights to breeders while restricting the age-old practices of African farmers freely to save, use, share and sell seeds and/or propagating material. These practices are the backbone of agricultural systems in Sub-Saharan Africa; they have ensured the production and maintenance of a diverse pool of genetic resources by farmers themselves, and have safe-guarded food and nutrition for tens of millions of Africans in the ARIPO region.

The Arusha PVP Protocol is part of the broader thrust in Africa to ensure regionally seamless and expedited trade in commercially bred seed varieties for the benefit, mainly, of the foreign seed industry. Multinational seed companies intend to lay claim to seed varieties as their private possessions and to prevent others from using these varieties without the payment of royalties.

Germplasm developed by farming households over centuries is increasingly under threat of privatization; and ecologically embedded farming practices risk being destabilized and dislodged. The broader modernization thrust of which the Arusha PVP Protocol is an intrinsic part, is designed to facilitate the transformation of African agriculture from peasant-based production to inherently inequitable, inappropriate and ecologically damaging Green Revolution/industrial agriculture. Such a transformation will lead to many farming households being threatened with marginalization or extinction, without alternative options for survival. It is worthwhile to note that a 2002 Food and Agriculture Organization and World Bank study, the International Assessment of Knowledge, Science and Technology (IAASTD), strongly recommended a complete shift away from the Green Revolution’s industrial agriculture to agroecology.

EXCLUSION OF AFRICAN CIVIL SOCIETY

Despite AFSA’s well-established track record of constructive engagement with ARIPO on the Draft ARIPO PVP Protocol, and despite it being a Pan African network of African regional farmers and NGOs, working with millions of African farmers and consumers, AFSA was purposely excluded from the Arusha deliberations. This restriction stands in sharp contrast to inclusion in the deliberations of the UPOV Secretariat, and other foreign entities, including the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) the European Community Plant Variety Office (CPVO) and the French National Seed and Seedling Association (GNIS). The commercial seed industry (e.g. the African Seed Trade Association (AFSTA)) was particularly well represented.

The Arusha PVP Protocol has major implications for national decision-making. AFSA’s exclusion is a violation of the right of farmers to participate in decision-making on matters related to plant genetic resources for food and agriculture (Article 9.2(c ) of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA).

LEAST DEVELOPED COUNTRIES AND SUI GENERIS OPTIONS

Upon adoption, the Arusha PVP Protocol was immediately signed by representatives of the governments of Ghana, Mozambique, Sao Tome and Principe, and the Gambia. Ironically, Mozambique, the Gambia and Sao Tome and Principe are defined as Least Developed Countries (LDCs), along with a further 10 of the 19 members of ARIPO—some of the poorest countries in the world. LDCs are currently not under any international obligation to provide any form of plant variety protection until 2021, let alone one based on UPOV 1991! In any event, all countries have an option to develop sui generis (i.e. unique) plant variety protection systems that cater for their specific conditions. Acceptance of the Arusha PVP Protocol will eliminate this option. Smaller countries are bullied into accepting their subordination to regional bodies that are dominated by more powerful foreign countries and multinational corporate interests.

NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY AND SLIGHT CHANGES

During the deliberations in Arusha, several delegations raised serious concerns that the Draft ARIPO PVP Protocol eroded national sovereignty because of the extensive decision-making powers vested in the ARIPO Plant Breeders Rights Office (PBRO), which operates at a regional level. The government of Malawi, in particular, said that this would “have a demeaning and nullifying effect”. Consequently, after long hours of negotiation, changes were made that now give Contracting States an explicit right to object to any Plant Breeders’ Right (PBR)—as granted by the ARIPO PBRO, regionally—in which event the PBR will not be awarded national protection. Further, Contracting States and not the ARIPO PBRO will have the right to issue compulsory licenses in the public interest. Notwithstanding these changes, a centralized regional PVP approval system will be established and the ARIPO PBRO will have full authority to grant and administer breeders’ rights on behalf of all Contracting States (e.g. to decide whether or not to grant protection, nullify or cancel PBRs, etc.). These regionally granted PBRs will have a uniform effect in all Contracting States. Expediently, Contracting States will be required to put scarce public resources at the disposal of breeders to enforce breeders’ rights at the national level.

RATIFICATIONS AND JOINING UPOV 1991—SHIRKING THE ITPGRFA

The Arusha PVP Protocol will come into force when four member states of ARIPO ratify it. In April 2014 the UPOV Council, at the cost of breaking its own rules, verified that the Draft ARIPO PVP Protocol conformed to the 1991 Act of the UPOV Convention, allowing ARIPO itself as well as ARIPO Members that ratify the Protocol, to become a Party to the 1991 UPOV Convention. With the new changes, to become a member of UPOV 1991, ARIPO will have to re-submit the Arusha PVP Protocol to the UPOV Council, to reassess its conformity with the 1991 Act.

AFSA calls on UPOV members to reject the Arusha PVP Protocol. On numerous occasions AFSA has challenged the legitimacy of the whole process—leading up to and culminating in the adoption of the Arusha PVP Protocol.

AFSA has also indicated, in many public statements during discussions on the Protocol, that UPOV 1991 restricts farmers’ rights to save, exchange and sell farm-saved-seed and/or the propagating material of protected varieties in their possession. Farmers’ rights are recognised in the ITPGRFA yet this has been ignored by the fourteen member states of ARIPO that are also Parties to the ITPGRFA. By adopting the Arusha PVP Protocol these countries have placed the rights of plant breeders ahead of farmers’ rights.

AFSA VOWS TO CONTINUE STRUGGLE FOR SEED SOVEREIGNTY

AFSA is vehemently opposed to the Arusha PVP Protocol. This Protocol’s underlying imperatives are to increase corporate seed imports, reduce breeding activity at the national level, and facilitate the monopoly by foreign companies of local seed systems and the disruption of traditional farming systems. AFSA remains committed to ensuring that farmers, as breeders and users, remain at the centre of localised seed production systems and continue to exercise their rights freely to save, use, exchange, replant, improve, distribute and sell all the seed in their seed systems.


_____________
CONTACT
Bernard Guri, Chair of AFSA Board: Email:guribern@gmail.com

NOTES TO EDITOR:

1. Eighteen Member States of the Organization were represented at the Diplomatic Conference namely; Botswana, The Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, São Tomé and Príncipe, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Swaziland, United Republic of Tanzania, Uganda Zambia and Zimbabwe.
2. International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV).
3. For more information on AFSA’s detailed position on the Draft ARIPO PVP Protocol, please click here. .
4. UPOV breaking its own rules to tie-in African countrieshttp://www.apbrebes.org/press-release/upov-breaking-its-own-rules-tie-african-countries.

Reprinted with permission from Pambazuka News.

Gene Engineered Cotton In Africa: GMO Cotton Will Harm, Not Help, Africa's Small Farmers

After years of resistance, some governments and local producers appear convinced that GM technology will boost competitiveness of African cotton. But a look at how GM cotton has fared where it has been tried, particularly its socio-economic impact on smallholder farmers, reveals a tragic tale of crippling debt, appalling market prices and a technology prone to failure.

cc AM

By Haidee Swanby

Cotton is cultivated on about 2.5 percent of the world’s arable land across 80 countries making it, after wheat, rice, maize and soybeans, one of the most important global crops in terms of land area. It is grown mainly for lint, which can be spun and woven to make cloth. The seeds also yield edible oil used in a variety of foodstuffs and industrial products. Once the oil is extracted the dry meal is used to produce animal feed. One hundred countries are involved with cotton imports and exports. China, India, the USA and Pakistan are the major global cotton producers, followed by Brazil and Uzbekistan. Together these countries account for 80 percent of the world’s cotton, while 28 African countries contribute about 5 percent to global production. The top five producers on the African continent, between 2007 and 2011, were Burkina Faso, Egypt, Mali, Zimbabwe and Tanzania, who together accounted for 54 percent of Africa’s total production. Most of Africa’s cotton is produced by smallholder farmers for whom the cotton sector is a vital source of employment and income.

Genetically modified (GM) cotton has been produced globally for almost two decades, yet up to the present time only three African countries have grown GM cotton on a commercial basis—South Africa in 1997, Burkina Faso in 2008 and Sudan in 2012. According to unverified industry figures these three countries together grew GM cotton on about 616,000 hectares. African governments have been sceptical of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) for decades and have played a key role historically in ensuring that international law—the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety—takes a precautionary stance towards genetic engineering in food and agriculture. They have also imposed various restrictions and bans on the cultivation and importation of GMOs, including on GM food aid. But now, almost two decades later, this resistance is crumbling as a number of African countries such as Ghana, Malawi, Swaziland and Cameroon seem set to allow the commercial cultivation of their first GM crop—cotton. Nigeria and Ethiopia are planning to follow suit in the next two to three years and further down the line.

Some African governments and local cotton producers have high hopes that GM technology will boost African competitiveness in the dog-eat-dog world that characterizes the global cotton market. At the moment African cotton productivity is declining—it now stands at only half the world average—while global productivity is increasing. The promise of improving productivity and reducing pesticide use through the adoption of GM cotton is compelling. However, our African leaders and cotton producers need to take a close look at how GM cotton has fared in South Africa and Burkina Faso to date, particularly its socio-economic impact on smallholder farmers. Scrutiny of actual experiences reveals a tragic tale of crippling debt, appalling market prices and a technology prone to failure in the absence of very specific and onerous management techniques, which are not suited to smallholder production. As stated by a farmer during a Malian public consultation on GMOs, "What's the point of encouraging us to increase yields with GMOs when we can't get a decent price for what we already produce?"

In Malawi, Monsanto has already applied to the government for a permit to commercialize its GM pest resistant cotton, Bollgard II. There has been a strong reaction from civil society to this development and an alliance of organizations has submitted substantive objections. Even Malawi’s cotton industry, the Cotton Development Trust (CDT), has publicly voiced its concerns over a number of issues, including inadequate field trials, the high cost of GM seed and related inputs, and blurred intellectual property arrangements. In addition, CDT has expressed unease over the development of pest resistance and the inevitable applications of herbicide chemicals.

REGIONAL TRADE BODIES TO OPEN THE WAY FOR GMOS

Regional Economic Communities (RECs), such as the Common Market for East and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the Economic Community for West African States (ECOWAS), are also key players in readying their Member States for the commercialization of and trade in GM cotton, through harmonized biosafety policies. The COMESA Policy on Biotechnology and Biosafety was adopted in February 2014 and Member States validated the implementation plan in March 2015. The ECOWAS Biosafety Policy has been through an arduous process for more than a decade now and pronounced conflicts between trade imperatives and safety checks have stalled agreement between stakeholders. However, recent reports indicate that agreement between the Member States and donor parties has been reached and a final draft of the Biosafety Policy will soon be published. Together COMESA and ECOWAS incorporate 34 countries in Africa.

These regional biosafety policies and laws have been primarily controlled and funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). USAID has financially supported an array of African expert legal and scientific bodies, working in collaboration with American experts to craft harmonised regional policies designed to maximize market size and minimise biosafety regulations, such as case-by-case risk assessments and ‘strict liability’ for producers if the technology goes wrong. Within these policies investor profits are high on the priority list while safeguards for human, environmental and socio-economic well-being are relegated to mere afterthoughts.

GM COTTON IN BURKINA FASO AND SA: CRIPPLING DEBT AND TECHNOLOGICAL GLITCHES

Burkina Faso began cultivating pest resistant cotton (known as ‘Bt’ cotton) in 2008 and the media has since been awash with reports of miraculous performance and increased yields. In reality, the cultivation of Bt cotton has been dogged by technical problems for the short time that it has been in production in that country and in June 2015, media reports announced that GM cotton will be gradually reduced over the next three years and then stopped altogether. After only two seasons of cultivation farmers were up in arms because their cotton harvest was downgraded due to short fibres, causing them to lose out on decent prices while having paid for the more expensive GM technology. Many farmers also reported low yields and, amongst other things, this was ascribed to the need to apply very precise doses of fertilisers and pesticides for good yields, a practice that farmers are not used to.

In 2013/14 Burkina Faso’s largest cotton company, SOFITEX, responsible for the production of about 40 percent of the national cotton seed production in that country, discontinued the use of FK96, one of the two available Bt cotton seed varieties, due to the short fibres it was producing. This created a shortage of Bt seed in the country.

The year 2014 also saw the development in some areas of insect resistance to the Bt toxin expressed in GM cotton. This is very surprising in such a short period and is a serious problem because farmers are led to believe that their crops will be protected against certain pests—and they pay extra for that protection. It is not clear if any compensation was given to farmers who experienced crop losses due to product failure.

The issue of delaying insect resistance in Bt crops is somewhat of a conundrum in smallholder production systems and the biotech industry has yet to develop a workable solution. The standard method over the past 20 years has been to impose a contractual obligation on farmers to plant between 5–20 percent of their field to non-GM cotton, to create what is known as a ‘refuge’. The refuge provides a habitat in which insects can thrive as they are not exposed to the Bt toxin and therefore do not develop resistance to it. Insects feeding on the Bt crop are killed by the pesticide expressed in that cotton, while insects thriving in the refuge dominate season after season, delaying the onset of resistance.

Managing ‘refugia’ can be onerous, and they have been difficult for large scale farmers around the world to implement and just as difficult for government and industry to monitor and enforce. When it comes to smallholder farmers, it is impractical for them to plant up to 20 percent non-GM cotton on small plots and economic losses in these refugia is a worry for them—refugia are cultivated primarily for insect resistance management and can therefore be damaged by pests. GM developers have suggested that in contexts where smallholders dominate, nearby wild vegetation would be sufficient to provide the necessary refugia, but many experts consider this strategy unrealistic.

The introduction of Bt crops, in the absence of a credible system to manage the development of insect resistance, puts farmers at risk of crop failures due to insect damage. In addition, this risk is accompanied by higher seed costs and uncertain global prices.

In May 2015 the Director General of the Gourma Cotton Company (a subsidiary of the French group Geocoton) in Burkina Faso announced that the country would reduce GM cotton production across the country, over the next three years, due to “technical problems”. The final blow to GM cotton in Burkina Faso was announced the following month in the media, when the cotton industry umbrella body, Association Interprofessionnelle du Coton du Burkina (AICB), which includes notably Burkina Faso Textile Fibre Company (SOFITEX), public sector leader, Faso Coton and the Gourma Cotton Company, announced that they would withdraw from their contracts with Monsanto and phase out GM cotton altogether over the 3-year period. Key issues of concern included lower yields than promised and low quality cotton. As they withdraw from their contracts, stakeholders are currently assessing the amount of compensation they will demand for losses related to the cultivation of GM cotton since 2008.

The introduction of GM cotton in Burkina Faso has been made possible by the closed value chain in that country where one parastatal cotton company manages all aspects of production, including credit supply, seed production and distribution, extension support, transport ginning, etc. This arrangement assists farmers to access credit for the substantially more expensive seed—because the institution that gives the farmer credit is the same one to which he or she will sell the product, at which time repayment of the loan can be deducted from the price received for the harvested crop.

In South Africa, Monsanto mounted an aggressive campaign in the late 1990s to introduce GM cotton to smallholders in a poverty-stricken area called the Makhathini Flats, where farmers also operated within such a closed value chain. However, when a competitor moved into the game, farmers chose to sell their GM cotton to the new gin to avoid paying back their loans.

In 2003 the entire system fell like a house of cards, with the local credit institution collapsing under the weight of unpaid debt to the tune of R22 million (approximately US$ 2 million). Without the certainty of using cotton harvests as collateral for loans, credit became unavailable in the area and cotton production dried up. Many farmers were left destitute and with their social relations in tatters due to these unpaid debts.

GM cotton in Sudan is still very new and, for now, the information available on the performance of GM cotton there consists mostly of media reports trumpeting ‘world record breaking’ yield gains. These echo the media reports from South Africa and Burkina Faso over the years. The true story in Sudan has yet to be revealed.

RESISTANCE AND OBSTACLES IN AFRICA

KENYA

In 2012 Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) in partnership with Monsanto was on the brink of commercialising Bt cotton, having concluded field trials and submitted the results to the National Biosafety Authority (NBA). However, in the same year, a Parliamentary Decree that banned the import of GMOs into the country was passed. This caused Monsanto to withdraw its funding and interest in the project, due to the uncertain environment the Decree had created.

In May 2015 a national taskforce, mandated to advise the Kenyan Parliament on how to proceed with the ban, recommended that the ban be lifted on a case-by-case basis but only after new legislation dealing with the health impacts of GMOs has been implemented. The report found that safety data on GMOs and health is completely lacking and that the country has limited capacity to regulate and monitor GMOs. Parliament has yet to announce how it will take up the recommendations of the taskforce, but its decision will have an impact on Monsanto’s willingness to invest further in GMOs in that country.

GHANA

Multi-location field trials with Bt cotton began in 2013 and further trials with herbicide resistant cotton began the following year. Ghanaian authorities have expressed eagerness to commercialise GM cotton in the immediate future. There are plans to expedite the risk assessment and approval process by ‘domesticating’ research results from Burkina Faso, as the two countries share very similar ecological conditions.

However, the biotech industry faces a hostile environment in Ghana. In April 2015 a local activist group, Food Sovereignty Ghana (FSG), sought an injunction against the government in the Ghanian courts to stop the commercial release of GM crops, noting that decisions on GM activities were being made illegally—the National Biosafety Committee had not yet been constituted as required by their Biosafety Act of 2011. A temporary injunction was granted by the court and further proceedings are being delayed due to Ghana’s largest farmer association, Ghana National Association of Farmers and Fisherfolk (GNAFF), having applied to join on the side of the defence.

Prior to these events, a report written in 2014 by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) stated that the US Programme for Biosafety Support (PBS) had sought to neutralise the growing anti-GM campaigns in Ghana by arranging for GNAFF to come out in support of GM crops. The report said that going forward, “PBS in collaboration with the Open Forum on Agricultural Biotechnology (OFAB) and the African Biotechnology Network of Expertise (ABNE) are planning to have other farmer groups come out publicly in support of GM crops in Ghana. They also intend to buy space in key print media to highlight the benefits of GM technology; assist key farmer groups to make positions on the introduction of GM and identify individuals who will promptly respond to issues of GM on radio and in the newspapers”.

UGANDA

In 2009 open field trials on Bt cotton and herbicide resistant cotton were initiated and in 2010 field trials of ‘stacked varieties’ (combining both traits in one plant) were begun. These trials were run by Uganda’s National Agriculture Research Organisation (NARO) and funded by Monsanto and USAID. The trials were supposed to run for three seasons but after just two seasons funding was withdrawn by Monsanto who, instead, concentrated its efforts in Burkina Faso.

Monsanto said that the company withdrew due to the “the lack of a favourable legal environment to protect its interests in the country” but that it would consider returning to Uganda “if the legal environment improves, such as passing the proposed law on regulation of biotechnology”. In May 2015 Uganda’s Parliamentary Caucus gave the green light to the National Biotechnology and Biosafety Bill, signalling that it would soon be adopted. The passage of the Bill has been long, arduous and full of conflict, which no doubt fuelled Monsanto’s discomfit.

Legal issues aside, the trials also did not go well. According to a lead researcher the “results were quite inconclusive; morphologically and chemically the GM plants expressed themselves in unexpected ways. Hence, management became intensive at times, especially due to secondary pests”. (Secondary pests have often been a challenge with Bt crops, where non-target pests that were previously not a problem increase and need chemical applications to control them.)

Recommendations were made that more research be undertaken to determine how to manage Bt crops effectively at the smallholder farmer scale. Other topics of concern included how small scale farmers could manage the onerous insect resistant management strategies that must be employed with Bt crops, plus issues such as the difficulty of small family labour teams handpicking uniform cotton bolls that all ripen at the same time.

CAMEROON

Cameroon began greenhouse experiments on GM cotton in 2012, field trials followed in 2015 and the country hopes to commercialise a crop as early as 2017. However the Managing Director of a local cotton company, Sodecton, has said that the country is “far from the stage of widespread cultivation,” and that much more experimentation is still needed to ascertain safety.

CONCLUSION

Experiments and open field trials with GM cotton have been running for many years in a number of African countries and are increasingly at a stage where applications for commercial release are imminent. However, there are many obstacles to the birth of a new GM era in Africa, chief amongst them being the fact that this high-end technology is simply not appropriate to resource-poor farmers operating on tiny pieces of land, together with fierce opposition from civil society and sometimes also from governments.

Attempts by the biotech industry to impose policies that pander to investors’ desires at the expense of environmental and human safety may be easier to realise at the regional level, through the trade-friendly Regional Economic Communities. This is where many biotech industry resources and efforts are currently being channelled. However, despite whatever legal environments may be implemented to enable the introduction of GM cotton regionally or nationally, the fact remains that Africa’s cotton farmers are operating in a difficult global sector—prices are erratic and distorted by unfair subsidies in the north, institutional support for their activities is often lacking, and high input costs are already annihilating profit margins. Fighting for the introduction of more expensive technologies that have already proven themselves technologically unsound in a smallholder environment is deeply irresponsible and short-sighted.

It is time that African governments turn their resources to improving the local environments in which cotton producers operate, including institutional and infrastructural support that can bring long-term sustainability to the sector, without placing further burdens and vulnerability on some of the most marginalised people in the world. Civil society actions will continue to vehemently oppose and challenge the false solutions promised by Monsanto and its GM cotton and will insist on just trading environments and true and sustainable upliftment for African cotton producers.


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Haidee Swanby is Senior Researcher, African Centre for Biodiversity (ACB).


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Reprinted with permission from Pambazuka News.