Sowing the GMO Seeds of Depopulation?
If physical
violence is to be used only as a final resort, a dominant class must
seek to gain people’s consent if it is to govern and control a
population. It must attempt to legitimize its position in the eyes of
the ruled over by achieving a kind of ‘consented coercion’ that
disguises the true fist of power. This can be achieved by many means and
over the years commentators from Gramsci to Althusser and Chomsky have
described how it may be done.
However, one of the most basic
and arguably effective forms of control is eugenics/ depopulation,
a philosophy that includes reducing the reproductive capacity of the
‘less desirable’ sections of a population.
There is a growing fear that
eugenics is being used to get rid of sections of the world population
that are ‘surplus to requirements’. And it is a legitimate fear, not
least because there is a sordid history of forced/covert sterilizations
carried out on those deemed ‘undesirable’ or ‘surplus to requirements’,
which reflects the concerns of eugenicists who have operated at the
highest levels of policy making. From early 20th century
‘philanthropists’ and the Nazis to the nascent genetics movement and
rich elites, by one means or another ridding the planet of the great
unwanted masses has always been fairly high on the ‘to do’ list (see this informative piece)
Millionaire US media baron Ted Turner believes a global population of two billion would
be ideal, and billionaire Bill Gates has pledged hundreds of millions
of dollars to improve access to contraception in the Global South.
Gates has also purchased shares in Monsanto valued at more than $23
million at the time of purchase. His agenda is to help Monsanto get
their genetically modified organisms (GMOs) into Africa on a grand
scale. In 2001, Monsanto and Du Pont bought a small biotech company
called Epicyte that had created a gene that basically makes the male
sperm sterile and the female egg unreceptive.Bill Gates’ father has long been involved with Planned Parenthood:
“When I was growing up, my parents were always involved in various volunteer things. My dad was head of Planned Parenthood. And it was very controversial to be involved with that.”
The above quotation comes from a 2003 interview with Bill Gates.
Planned Parenthood was founded
on the concept that most human beings are reckless breeders. Gates
senior is co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and a
guiding light behind the vision and direction of the Gates Foundation,
which is heavily focused on promoting GMOs in Africa via its financing
of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).
The Gates Foundation has given at least $264.5 million to AGRA. According to a report published by La Via Campesina in
2010, 70 percent of AGRA’s grantees in Kenya work directly with
Monsanto and nearly 80 percent of the Gates Foundation funding is
devoted to biotechnology. The report also explains that the Gates
Foundation has pledged $880 million to create the Global Agriculture and
Food Security Program (GAFSP), which is a heavy promoter of GMOs.
The issue of genetic engineering cannot be fully understood without
looking at the global spread of US power. The oil-rich Rockefeller
dynasty helped promote the ‘green revolution’, which allowed the US to
colonise indigenous agriculture across large parts of the planet. By
projecting power through the WTO, IMF and World Bank, Washington has
been able to make food and agriculture central to its geopolitical
strategy of securing global dominance.
As with the control of food and agriculture, the US also regards depopulation as a potential geo-strategic tool (see this)
in the quest for control of global resources. What better way to
achieve this via a (GM) tampered-with food system that US agribusiness
has increasingly come to dominate?
What better way to achieve this
than with ‘spermicidal corn’ for example? In Mexico, there is concern
about biopharmaceutical corn. Some years ago, Silvia Ribeiro, of the ETC organization, stated:
“The potential of spermicidal corn as a biological weapon is outrageous, since it easily interbreeds with other varieties, is capable of going undetected and could lodge itself at the very core of indigenous and farming cultures. We have witnessed the execution of repeated sterilization campaigns performed against indigenous communities. This method is certainly much more difficult to trace.”
While most of the literature on
GMOs is concerned with the impacts of crops that have been genetically
modified to deal with pests or herbicide spraying, there are very
worrying trends regarding plants being genetically modified to contain
industrial pharmaceuticals or possess possible contraceptive traits.
The world’s problems are not
being caused by overpopulation, as Turner states, but by greed and a
system of ownership and global power relations that ensures wealth flows from bottom to top.
The issue at hand should not be about stopping population growth in its
tracks but about changing a socially divisive global economic system
and the unsustainable depletion of natural resources.
Millionaires like Ted Turner
believe it should be a case of carry on consuming regardless, as long as
the population is cut. This is the ideology of the rich who regard the
rest of humanity as a problem to be ‘dealt with.’ He says there are ”too many people using too much stuff.” He
couldn’t be more wrong. For instance, developing nations account for
more than 80 percent of world population, but consume only about one third of the world’s energy. US citizens constitute 5 percent of the world’s population but consume 24 percent of the world’s energy.
We should be weary of a
politically and militarily well-connected biotech sector which has
ownership of technology that allows for the genetic engineering of food
and a gene that could be used (or already is) for involuntary
sterilization. From covert vaccination campaigns to germ warfare and geo-engineering,
sections of the population around the world have too often been sprayed
on, injected or exposed to harmful processes to induce sterility,
infertility or to merely see the outcome of exposures to radiation,
bacteria or some virus. It is for good reason some conflate GMOs and bio-terror.
Herbert Marcuse once summed up
the problem facing us by saying that the capabilities — both
intellectual and technological — of contemporary society are
immeasurably greater than before. As a result, the scope of society’s
domination over the individual is also immeasurably greater than ever
before. That domination comes in increasingly sinister forms.
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