Monsanto’s Controversial Gift to Haiti; Jean-Yves Urfie, Mervyn Claxton,
and Zili Danto
A New Earthquake Hits Haiti: Monsanto's
deadly gift of 475 tons of genetically-modified seeds to Haitian farmers
by Fr. Jean-Yves Urfie, Global Research, May 13, 2010
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19113
Haiti's earthquake on 12 January this year has been a lucky business
break for some. The transnational firm Monsanto is offering the country's
farmers a deadly gift of 475 tonnes of genetically-modified (GM) seeds, along
with associated fertiliser and pesticides, which will be handed out free by the
WINNER project, with the backing of the US embassy in Haiti. Do Haitians know
Monsanto made the "Agent Orange" defoliant sprayed over Vietnam by US
planes during the war there, poisoning both US soldiers and Vietnamese
civilians?
Do Haitians know that these GM seeds have been declared dangerous by many
countries? They often come in kits along with a Monsanto herbicide called
"Roundup," which contains glyphosate. In my native Brittany, it has
already polluted the water table. But Monsanto insists its product is
biodegradable. It is being sued for this by anti-frauid officials in Lyon.
A former employee of Monsanto, Linda Fischer, has just been named to head the
US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which monitors environmental issues.
It's like giving a cat the job of looking after a mouse's welfare.
Monsanto has already begun distributing its GM maize seeds around Gonaïves,
Kenscoff, Pétionville, Cabaret, Arcahaie, Croix-des-Bouquets and Mirebalais.
Soon there will be only Monsanto seeds in Haiti. Then it will be goodbye to
farmers' independence. Monsanto recently invested $550 million in Brazil to
manufacture the Roundup herbicide in the northeastern state of Bahia. But the
country seems to be fighting back against the firm.
Monsanto is publicising the seeds as a generous gift. But Haitian farmers
wishing to use them for future harvests will have to pay royalties to Monsanto.
The Monsanto representative in Haiti is Jean- Robert Estimé, who served as
foreign minister under the Duvalier family's 29-year dictatorship.
Fr. Jean-Yves Urfie is a member of the
Holy Spirit Order and former chemistry teacher at Collège Saint Martial,
Port-au-Prince.
History and Monsanto’s
Honey Trap, Mervyn Claxton
The first
paragaph of this most depressing article (A New Earthquake Hits Haiti: Monsanto's deadly gift
of 475 tons of genetically-modified seeds to Haitian farmers), for which we
must thank Zili Danto, reads: "Haiti's earthquake on 12 January
this year has been a lucky business break for some. The transnational firm
Monsanto is offering the country's farmers a deadly gift of 475 tonnes of
genetically-modified (GM) seeds, along with associated fertiliser and pesticides,
which will be handed out free by the WINNER project, with the backing of the
US embassy in Haiti." (http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19113).
Karl Marx once
declared: "History always repeats itself twice: first time as tragedy,
second time as farce." This gift from Monsanto is a real tragedy for
Haiti. History is replete with accounts of the tragedy that befalls the hapless
recipients of such poisoned gifts. In the following excerpt from an article (Culture,
Trade and Globalization) in my series on Culture and Development, (http://www.normangirvan.info/8-culture-trade-and-globalization-by-mervyn-claxton-2/).
I examined the "altruistic" character of such gifts, in the light of
historical experience:
The vaunted "philantrophy" of
the colonial and imperial enteprise has become the "development
assistance", "aid" programmes, and "concessional"
trade agreements of today. John Stuart Mill denouced the fraudulent character
of the East India Company's claim that its operations in India were
philantrophic (i.e. beneficial to the Indians). The British parliament's Select
Committee has denounced the EU's attitude in EPA negotiations as anything but
beneficial to Caricom and other APC regions, despite claims to the contrary by
the EU and the EPA supporters in the Caribbean. It is in that light that
Caricom should assess whether the "development assistance" in the EPA
package would really compensate the region for the probable negative effect of
further trade liberalization, as the EU and some of its Caribbean supporters
proclaim. In that respect, the Caribbean should bear in mind the advice
Laocoön, the Trojan seer, gave to his fellow Trojans: "timeo Danaos et
dona ferentes" ("I fear the Greeks - even when they bring
gifts").
That very wise advice concerned the wooden horse (the Trojan horse)
which the Greek forces had left behind on the beach after having, apparently,
abandoned their siege of Troy and weighed anchor for home. As both Homer and
Virgil recount, Laocoön's
pemonitory advice was not heeded by his compatriots. The rest is history. Will
the Haitian government learn from Troy's tragic experience and refuse
Monsanto's poisoned gift, or will it accept Monsanto's deceptive generosity and
allow Haiti to fall into a trap that will condemn hapless Haitian farmers to
obligatory annual purchases of GM seeds since, unlike traditional seed
varieties which can be re-sown every year, GM seeds have a genetically programmed
expiry date, beyond which they are so unproductive that they are not worth
sowing. That is the honey trap which allows Monsanto and its fellow
"robber baron" multinational agro-chemical companies to make billions
every year, profiting from the naïveté (?) of governments in the South.
******************************
They Wait Without Hate,
Zili Danto
I wrote this monologue 12-years ago after my first encounter with ‘ol Dixie
Haiti, the poverty pimp NGOs, Haiti's oligarchy and USAID/US Embassy. I knew a
time would come to face the hostility again, head on. Bush’s Jaded Task came in
2004 on the Bicentennial, calling forth Petwo and so Dantò. But I might as well
have written this piece not in 1998, but yesterday... http://bit.ly/a1FDKr
**********************************************
Destroying Haiti’s poor in the name of earthquake
relief, Ezili Dantò
Not satisfied with sexually molesting, raping and abusing Haiti’s
children (http://bit.ly/9nt0Oq
& http://bit.ly/3IOJ0c )
while masking as charity workers or “peacekeepers”…;
Not satisfied with defaming Haiti as the originator of the HIV/AIDs virus http://bit.ly/acYwPX ;
Not satisfied with denying Haitians abroad equal and fair refugee and
immigration treatment ( http://bit.ly/izDkU
& Haiti's neighbors pull back welcome mat http://bit.ly/cTX7eF );
Not satisfied with imposing on poor Haiti wholesale vaccination and testing of
Haiti masses as laboratory rats ( http://bit.ly/azquuQ
& http://bit.ly/bAf1Au )
and with the World Health Organization, their doctors, UN/USAID subcontractors
and other NGOs lining the pockets of greedy pharmaceutical companies by raising
monies to buy vaccination, vitamin supplements, experimental contraceptive (http://bit.ly/b2UE1z) for
Haitians and calling it “foreign aid to Haiti";
Not satisfied with obliging Haiti's poor to take their pharmaceutical
companies' vitamins, their cancer-producing controversial Norplant contraceptives
(for instance http://bit.ly/b2UE1z)
or, toxic vaccines on empty "grangou (hungry)-Clorox" stomachs
because US free trade and Clinton agri-business policies destroyed Haiti’s
agriculture (http://bit.ly/7jxW4n);
Not satisfied with the risk and waste of obliging Haiti's poor to
swallow these pharmaceuticals and other medicines and cocktails down, in the
main, with untreated water;
Not satisfied with
substituting debt, dependency, domination and false NGO charity and false
International benevolence in the place of authentic sustainable development
such as assisting Haiti in food, fuel sovereignty, alternative and green fuel
development, public electricity, running water, sewage, schools,
telecommunication infrastructure, increasing national production while nixing
the failed sweatshop jobs as "investment” or "development." Fair
wage, fair trade, not free trade;
Not satisfied with their mining companies environmental pillages - their air,
ground, water pollution of defenseless Haiti. http://bit.ly/viqxn.
Not satisfied with fleecing Haiti's Riches. (http://bit.ly/bEZSBG; http://bit.ly/a3YMKp ; http://bit.ly/aOHbfX ; http://bit.ly/l960t );
Not satisfied with the UN occupation, Haiti oligarchy, government et al…
tolerating and supporting foreign industries to dump their wastes into
Haiti streams and also damaging mountains and riverbeds with industrial
dredging to extract materials for the foreign construction industry;
Not satisfied with massive applications of agricultural toxins that destroy the
starving masses’ already poor health, such as the application of toxic
pesticides, insecticides and herbicides for their profitable export sugar,
coffee, and mango crops in Haiti's richest agricultural areas;
Now we read about the another Trojan horse. How behind this earthquake
reconstruction, a company named Monsanto is giving Haiti farmers a deadly gift
of 475 tons of genetically modified seeds.
Genetically-modified seeds, it is reported, that "often come in kits along
with a Monsanto herbicide called "Roundup," which contains
glyphosate... and which seeds have been declared dangerous by many
countries." (See details below Global Research article below by Fr.
Jean-Yves Urfie http://bit.ly/cjiVsm
.)
Ezili Dantò/HLLN
May 13, 2010