It looks like a grand event. The concept is novel. A group of international judges will sit and hear presentations from a number of International notables, about the crimes of Monsanto. The judges will then pass judgment, even if it is symbolic. At the end of the two day affair, the international participants are supposed to get a sort of legal expertise and guideline on how Monsanto might be legally challenged in different countries, and prevented from further damaging the planet.
The participants are who is who in the global list of folks that one way or another have resisted either Monsanto directly, or the biotech industry, and are sort of well known in the field. Names such as Seralini or Kruger from Europe, Vandana Shiva from India, Shiv Chopra & Percy Schmeiser from Canada, Steve Marsh from Australia, Don Huber & Stephanie Seneff from the US are in the provisional agenda, and are expected to present their evidence to the judges, on Monsanto’s wrongdoings. Even a few ambassadors are to be in attendance.
While I wish this endeavour all success, I could not help notice that the whole thingamajig essentially misses the bus.
Monsanto has been used as a convenient punching bag by all sorts of organizations and people, without much success. To me, targeting Monsanto is what the Biotech Industry would like us to do. Why ? Because such an effort will always be little more than symbolic. Further court cases against Monsanto will only enrich a few legal pockets. Why? Because Monsanto does not necessarily break the law, but rather influences Governments to bend the rules to favour the corporation. In fact, the only legal cases that have sort of succeeded, and thus provided some jurisprudence in the GM technology issue have been against Governments and not against Monsanto.
Monsanto is just a corporation and most Corporations will do whatever it can, to make a profit, irrespective of the human or environmental Cost. In that, it is not very different from the Pharma industry that wishes to push unnecessary vaccines down your throat, or corporations like Nestle that might wish to grab pubic water, oil giants wanting to steal someones fossil fuel reserve, or the military industrial complex pushing armaments across the world and promoting continuous warfare.
The real culprit and the root of all these evils, including that of Monsanto, is political corruption in Government. It might start with Obama downwards in the US, Trudeau down in Canada, and so on. It is our Governments that are suspected of working against the interest of the people, and passing laws that allow free reign to corporations including Monsanto.
Therefore, without any mention at all of Government level political corruption, this entire Tribunal, to me, is a waste of time, and an effort to keep the public barking up the wrong tree.
When a the problem is rooted in political corruption and an onset of fascism, it can only be solved by grabbing this rotten political bull by the horn. It is my belief that ecocide will not be stopped by lawyers targeting Monsanto. It will, if at all, be done by the people going after corrupt Governments.