Monsanto in the Dock! “Crimes against Nature and
Humanity”. Rolling Back the Destructive Influence of the Global
Agribusiness Cartel
And now for the good news.
As
the rest of the world eats denutrified, poisoned ‘food’ and capitulates
to the criminal cartel of US agribusiness, as India destroys its soils
with petrochemical-monocrop agriculture and looks to GMOs, as corrupt
governments and regulatory bodies do the bidding of Monsanto, Russia is
committed to not selling out the health of millions, the fertility of
the land or the food security of the nation to a handful of criminals in
the West who have destroyed indigenous agriculture across the planet.
Russia
could become the world’s largest supplier of ecologically clean and
high-quality organic food. On Thursday, President Vladimir Putin while
addressing the Russian parliament called on the country to become completely self-sufficient in food production by 2020:
“We are not only able to feed ourselves taking into account our lands, water resources – Russia is able to become the largest world supplier of healthy, ecologically clean and high-quality food which the Western producers have long lost, especially given the fact that demand for such products in the world market is steadily growing.”
Russia is already developing a strategy to build up its domestic food production and is in a good position given its extremely fertile soils.
The government has already banned the import and planting of GM food and crops, and, according to Willian Engdahl,
the language on Russian media news sites that punishment for knowingly
introducing GMO crops into Russia illegally should have a punishment
comparable to that given to terrorists for knowingly hurting people.
The
other good news is that on the same day that Putin made his statement,
the Organic Consumers Association (OCA), IFOAM International Organics,
Navdanya, Regeneration International (RI) and Millions Against Monsanto,
joined by dozens of global food, farming and environmental justice
groups, announced that they would be putting Monsanto on trial for crimes against nature and humanity, and ecocide, in The Hague, the Netherlands, next year on World Food Day, October 16, 2016.
According to the Monsanto Tribunal website, the company promotes an agro-industrial model that:
· contributes at least one third of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions
· is largely responsible for the
depletion of soil and water resources, species extinction and declining
biodiversity and the displacement of millions of small farmers worldwide
· is a model that threatens peoples’ food sovereignty by patenting seeds and privatising life
For many decades, Monsanto has developed
a steady stream of highly toxic products which have permanently damaged
the environment and caused illness or death for thousands of people. It
has indulged in numerous acts of criminality, cover ups and duplicitous practices over the decades.
Relying
on the “Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights” adopted by the
UN in 2011, an international court of lawyers and judges will assess
the potential criminal liability of Monsanto for damages inflicted on
human health and the environment. The court will also rely on the Rome
Statute that created the International Criminal Court in The Hague in
2002, and it will consider whether to reform international criminal law
to include crimes against the environment, or ecocide, as a prosecutable
criminal offense.
The International Criminal Court,
established in 2002 in The Hague, has determined that prosecuting
ecocide as a criminal offence is the only way to guarantee the rights of
humans to a healthy environment and the right of nature to be
protected.
The
announcement was made at a press conference held in conjunction with
the COP21 United Nations Conference on Climate Change, November 30 –
December 11, in Paris.
Speaking at the press conference, Andre Leu, president of IFOAM and a member of the RI Steering Committee, said:
“Monsanto is able to ignore the human and environmental damage caused by its products, and maintain its devastating activities through a strategy of systemic concealment: by lobbying regulatory agencies and governments, by resorting to lying and corruption, by financing fraudulent scientific studies, by pressuring independent scientists, and by manipulating the press and media. Monsanto’s history reads like a text-book case of impunity, benefiting transnational corporations and their executives, whose activities contribute to climate and biosphere crises and threaten the safety of the planet.”
Vandana Shiva, founder of Navdanya (India) added:
“Monsanto has pushed GMOs in order to collect royalties from poor farmers, trapping them in unpayable debt. Monsanto promotes an agro-industrial model that contributes at least 50 percent of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Monsanto is also largely responsible for the depletion of soil and water resources, species extinction and declining biodiversity, and the displacement of millions of small farmers worldwide.”
Visit the Monsanto Tribunal site here
Colin Todhunter is an independent writer – website
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Colin Todhunter, Global Research, 2015
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