Needless to say, this mindset will never win the war of attrition it will take to bring down Monsantos

tyranny. Most of all, Id want clarity on the ultimate goals. Do labeling advocates really support Community Food and Food Sovereignty? Do they really oppose food corporatism? Do they really seek to constitute an abolition movement vs. GMOs and industrial ag as such? Nothing short of this will work for humanity. Does labeling have a coherent rationale at all? We mentioned how, in itself, it still rationalizes industrial ag, food commodification, unhealthy processed foods, passive consumerism, and the co-existence scam. In the end, it still rationalizes food corporatism and market solutions. These are all unsustainable evils, politically, morally, and practically. But in itself, the kind of solution labeling purports to be sees these evils as normative. Once again we see how corporatist solutions cannot solve problems generated by corporatism, and are not intended to. If taken as a self-sufficient panacea (and as I said, the evidence is that most of its advocates and organizers see it that way), GMO labeling is part of the same instrumental, non-holistic N-P-K thinking which is destroying humanity. The organic place of labeling activism, as part of a movement to restore the primacy of organic agriculture, would be as a movement-building opportunity. It would provide the occasion and the practice to build a permanent movement structure. It would also provide the forum for movement and public education about not just labeling, and not just the evils of GMOs, but about the evils and unsustainability of the entire corporate food sector. It would bring home the need to build Community Food as a full-scale economic and political movement.

WE NEED
the

ABOLITION
GENETICALLY M O D I F I E D

of

ORGANISMS

G E N E T I C A L LY MODIFIED ORGANISMS

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December 18, 2012

We Need the Abolition of GMOs

1. Did the colonists Ask the British to rescind the Intolerable Acts, lift the Boston Port closure, take back the Coercive Acts? No, it only took them a few years from the mid 1760s to early 70s to comprehend that Asking the British for Better Policy doesnt work, so they stopped doing it. They knew the only options were servitude, or to get the British OUT. 2. Today weve had far more than a few years to comprehend the same fact, that Asking the British doesnt work. (Its a sad fact of history that no one learns lessons from history, but must learn the same lesson from experience, over and over. So be itour own experiential evidence is conclusive.) Weve had over a century of experience with the elemental viciousness of the corporate domination imperative, which is totalitarian in the most basic and literal sense of the termthe corporations will NEVER stop short of total enclosure and total domination. This was common sense from the beginning, and its been proven by the evidence. The evidence of our own lifetimes is the most decisive of all. 3. We know that Asking the British doesnt work. Those who tout modern versions like writing your congressman, petitioning your president, and of course voting (I mean those who tout these as the only, or primary, courses of action1 ), we must classify as modern versions of loyalists. Corporate Loyalists. These include all system NGOs, liberals in general, and conservatives too. 4. GMO labeling, where its seen as the goal rather than a step toward the goal, toward the total abolition of GMOs, falls into this Begging-for-Better-Policy category. 5. In response to the lousy campaign and stolen vote in California, and belated analysis of the inherent flaw of the Labeling idea (as the end goal), some people have moved on to calling for a ban on GMOs. This is a step forward, but is still mired in system consciousness. Even if a legalistic ban were possible
1 The title of an upcoming food book by a leading system liberal: Eat,Drink,Vote. Yes, that sums

the good-civics textbooks tell me), even if the going gets tough. So no matter how one looks at it, these state governments have abdicated, and intend to continue doing so. So it follows that getting legislation introduced, and getting initiatives on the ballot, are just part of the time-dishonored, field-failed, disproven set of within-the-system tactics, alongside petitions, voting etc. The liberals will keep saying, that doesnt work, so lets try it again, and again, and again, and again, forever and ever! The goal is to ensure that nothing is done until were enslaved once and for all. The real answer is that we need to build a true Food Sovereignty movement, which is also an abolition movement. No goal short of the total abolition of GMOs will suffice. We know that GMOs cannot be prevented from contaminating other crops and the environment at large. We know that GMO corporations and their government thugs are totalitarian in intent. Its proven that neither organic agriculture, nor the environment, nor our political and economic freedom, can co-exist with GMOs. But labeling, in itself, is another version of the co-existence scam. Im not saying all this to oppose labeling activism. But I would be suspicious of anyone whos implying that its a panacea. Id say, If we get this passed, then whats next? How will we organize the necessary public education and government pressure work? How do we prevent ourselves from being coopted and corrupted like the anti-tobacco groups? If they have no coherent answer, you know its a scam. In that case the goal is just to go through the motions. Even if the thing passes its meant just to be cosmetic. In that case the corporate liberals would then say indefinitely, we got the law passed, now you have to be patient and give it time to work. Id be suspicious of anyone viewing, running, organizing things like an election campaign. Id say, First of all we need to use actions like this toward movement-building. In what ways are we building permanent organizational and publicity structures? What underlying principles dictate our support for labeling, and how are we working to propagate those principles? If they have no coherent answer, or directly say this isnt movement-building, this is a oneoff campaign, you know its a scam, or at any rate that they have in fact no coherent principle or strategy, just a vague feeling and a handy tactic.

up passive consumerism in its most profound form. A real citizen's book, meanwhile, would be entitled: Eat, Drink, Grow, Organize, Fight. But the job of system reformists is to fence in dissent, keep it domesticated and system-coordinated, and fence out the real time-tested ideas of action.

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doubtful. Just because a labeling initiative or law is passed doesnt mean it will be enforced with any alacrity. Its still the same old pro-Monsanto government which would be in charge of enforcement. Thats why I always said getting the California initiative passed was just the first and easiest step; then the real work of vigilance, forcing the enforcers to follow through, would begin. That, too, was a reason why the campaign needs to be, even more than just an intrinsic campaign, the building ground of a permanent grassroots organization. Then theres the fact that most if not all of these initiatives and laws are riddled with loopholes, categories of food which dont need to be labeled. That almost always includes GMO-fed meat and dairy. Actually, labeling would apply mostly to the same corporate-manufactured processed foods we ought to be getting out of our diets and economies regardless. When we combine the picayune content of these labeling proposals with the fact that their advocates do often call them a self-sufficient panacea, and with the fact that the California effort was designed like a one-off electoral campaign rather than as a process of building a permanent grassroots organization, we gather a sinister picture of whats going on here. Namely, GMO labeling often looks like another kind of liberal fenceline patrolling, meant not so much to fence GMOs out as to fence anti-GMO activism in. States like Vermont and Connecticut have previously been the scenes of a scam. Facing a groundswell of anti-GMO verve among the citizenry, the state government hijacked this groundswell by going through the motions of proposing labeling legislation (which is conceived and drafted in a lame way), then saying, Brer Rabbit fashion, please Monsanto dont sue us! When Monsanto then made this briar-patch threat, the governor, crying crocodile tears all the way, rued how we cant pass this law because mean old Monsanto will sue us. The legislature then quashed the law it had never intended to pass in the first place. The whole thing was just a pantomime. It was the same basic briar-patch scam in both cases. In reality its doubtful that Monsanto, 100% government-dependent, without even the slightest iota of a natural base, would actually sue a government that really intended to make life difficult for it. (Although a lawsuit the government never really intends to fight could be the occasion for a different form of the scam.) Regardless, its the duty of a government to fight for the public good (so 10

(which its not, at the central or at any state level, not right now), it would still be operating within the same corporatized framework where Monsanto operates. By making a fetish of the law and considering it magically endowed with active power, it implicitly concedes the legitimacy of existing law (for example the very intellectual property regime which props up Monsanto) and the central government itself. But we must, as an element of our political education, reject all such alleged legitimacy, in principle. Herere some typical examples of how the law really works: CAFOs, fracking, and mountaintop removal mining are exempt from the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Safe Drinking Water Act. And of course the justpassed (by a bipartisan consensus, as all these examples of corporate lawlessness are held) Monsanto Rider to a typical corporate welfare law would exempt GMOs from all regulatory control or judicial review. Thats the way the law works. Remember that the next time you see anyone blabbering about the law and petitions and voting. 6. Food Sovereignty rejects the notion that an alien central government can ever play any legitimate or constructive role in food production and distribution. The sector is naturally local/regional. The only thing centralized hierarchy can do is use massive top-down power to force agriculture into the commodification strait-jacket. This command economy, and the massive corporate welfare and thug apparatus which props it up, is the basic activity of the US government. It will never do anything significant which runs counter to this corporate commodification imperative. Therefore, the peoples only constructive course of action is to build a grassroots political movement to meld with the Community Food sector which is already surging as a vibrant economic movement. 7. Therefore, the basic nature of the anti-GMO movement, as with the entire liberation movement, has to be direct action, self-management, civil disobedience in our minds, in our words, and as much as possible in our actions. 8. Thats not to say legalistic actions, where immediately possible, arent worth doing. Any town council with the votes to ban GMOs, ban fracking, ban corporate personhood, declare local food sovereignty, should do so. But no such votes exist at the central government level. So those who propose a ban on GMOs are really proposing that we build a political campaign centered on this kind of legalistic advocacy (and without even building an underlying 3

movement structure and culture first). This is as quixotic and utopian as an idea gets. 9. History and todays evidence prove that nothing will work but to relocalize our economies and particularly our food; to build the consciousness of our economic need to do this; to build a cultural and intellectual movement around this new way of life; to build upon this a new democracy consciousness; throughout all these actions to learn from the enemys assaults upon us, the true nature of the corporate tyranny we struggle against; and from there to politically organize to resist, reject and abolish this enemy, through rejecting its legitimacy, refusing to cooperate with it, refusing to participate in its systems, and wherever possible to take local direct action against it. Combined, this movement can preserve itself through the trials ahead, maintain the health and happiness of its people, help bring down the corporate tyranny, and lead humanity to a new freedom and prosperity. 10. As with every other anti-corporate struggle, the struggle vs. GMOs is an abolition movement.

Community Food) completely. An aggressive abolition campaign against GMOs and CAFOs could be part of this movement. Meanwhile, propagating the more revolutionary ideas of Food Sovereignty (as defined by Via Campesina and other Southern indigenous farmer movements; the terms already somewhat obfuscated in North America) might be, for the time being, the province of individual writers or a separate organization. The idea would be that the experience of fighting for Community Food against the corporate states increasing repression would make the CF movement an educational vector of radicalization, in addition to its inherently positive actions and results. This will be the only way to systematically propagate a disciplined set of ideas, truths, and facts about food corporatism and corporatism in general, and about the need to rebuild our polities and economies on a natural, rational, resilient local/regional basis.

February 15, 2013 February 13, 2013

GMO Action Imperatives; Lessons of the Wetteren Case

A judge in Belgium has convicted the Wetteren 11 of charges related to a nonviolent action where they dug up a GMO potato field trial and planted real potatoes. The judge agreed to the prosecutors characterization of the political demonstrators as having formed an illicit conspiracy. The defendants refused to attend the proceedings after the judge refused to convene this as an actual trial, instead letting the prosecutor run it as a purely administrative, technical, civil matter. The public prosecutor and the research consortium (Flemish Institute for Biotechnology, University of Ghent, HoGent and the Flemish Agency for Agriculture and Fishery) chose to have this debate in court via direct summons and civil proceedings.

GMO Labeling and Movement Strategy and Goals

Theres a growing ambivalence among us who oppose GMOs where it comes to GMO labeling. Most obviously, it implies the continuation of industrial agriculture and food commodification, and globalization as such. It merely seeks Better Consumerism within that framework. If people saw labeling as a temporary measure within the framework of an ongoing movement to abolish industrial ag and build Food Sovereignty, that could be good. If people saw the campaign for labeling as primarily a movement-building action, an occasion for public education, for democratic participation in a grassroots action, and to help build a permanent grassroots organization, that would be good. (POE as I call it Participation, Education, Organization.) But many of the advocates seem see it as a panacea. They at least claim to expect miracles from it: Labeling = the end of Monsanto. This is highly 9

(We can say the same of the Rothamstead GM wheat trial in Britaintotally worthless, gratuitously harmful, done only as a corporate welfare handout and as a political exercise in the alleged ubiquity and irresistability of GM crops. These field trials often serve the same purpose as the aimless marching of SA formations in Weimar Germany they usually had no particular destination, but were merely for intimidation and propaganda purposes. So it is with most GM trials today.) It was only when the system made it clear that there was no process, but only the fraudulent simulation of one, and that the system viewed its task as to serve the Monsanto imperative no matter what, that these activists decided their task was to serve the freedom imperative no matter what. So they undertook non-violent direct action and pulled up the crops, in the same way that anti-Nazis in the Weimar time tried directly to challenge the Brownshirt domination of the streets. The message: We reject the legitimacy of Big Ag and GMOs, and we dont believe theres anything necessary, fated, or irresistible about them. Some criminals chose the pro-GMO policy, the people can make the opposite choice, whenever we want. This action was a counter-demonstration on the part of those who value freedom, democracy, and natural economic autonomy, vs. a propaganda event set up by the corporate planned economy and its political Big Government flunkey regime. So we have procedural disenfranchisement, political dispossession, media blackout and slander. Whats left for us to do? What can we do? The primary task is to organize a coordinated Community Food movement, with a generally agreed upon set of principles and strategy, while tactics would be decided upon at the local level. (Operational goals and publicity5 might be partially standardized and partially vary locally.) One advantage such a movement would have over the 19th century Populist movement would be that the Farmers Alliance comprised cotton farmers who were necessarily participants in commodification agriculture (and therefore had no choice but to seek to revolutionize or reform it), while we not only can but must desire to dispense with industrial ag (a completely separate and alien sector from
5 The reproduction of Field Liberations press release at GMWatch is given a headline regurgitating the prosecutors slander. Why anyone would want to do this is a mystery. But its a typical example of the current lameness of our movement. Its a good example of the elements of publicity which will need to be standardized and applied in a disciplined way. You know, NOT regurgitating system propaganda, terminology, framings?

The group of activists had prepared a thorough defence. This was based on calling up expert witnesses, video testimonies from scientists, and video footage from the action in order to prove that 1) the action was covered by the principle of freedom of expression, and 2) that action was necessary in order to protect the precautionary principle. The action in Wetteren was carried out to protect the environment, public health and small-scale farming. Without any further discussion, the judges refused to hear these testimonies or to view the video footage. The testimonies, however, were crucial to emphasise the political nature of the action. The judges therefore denied the defendants their legal right to an appropriate defence, as well as the opportunity to question the use of genetically modified organisms in agriculture.2 This, of course, was tantamount to finding the defendants gulity before the trial began. As the Red Queen put it, Verdict first, trial afterwards!, and if the accused never commit the crime, That would be better! The judge refused to hear evidence on the substance or merits of the issue or of the action, even though its a well-established principle of law that the people mustnt obey unjust laws, and have the right to break the law in extreme circumstances. Thus, in a rare example, an English jury found Greenpeace demonstrators not guilty on the grounds that their illegal action was a necessary response to a clear and present danger. Historically, juries have a good record of acquitting direct actions when the judge informs them of their options. In the Kingsnorth case the judge said the action could be found justified if the trespass on a corporations property was necessary to defend the property of people. Where it comes to GMOs, this imperative couldnt be more clear-cut: The USDA itself admits that once GMOs are in the environment, contamination of related crops, including those of organic farmers, is inevitable. Thats why the USDA promulgated the doctrine that GMO corporations and tenders have a presumptive right to trespass upon and destroy the property of others (organic growers and many others with an interest in not being contaminated), cannot be sued for this or otherwise sanctioned, and that on the contrary the burden

2 https://fieldliberation.wordpress.com/2013/02/12/press-release-gmo-trial-verdict-crimilisation-of-struggle-for-asustainable-agricultural-system/

of the full cost of trying to defend oneself is 100% upon the victim. Indeed, when this inevitable and intentional contamination occurs, Monsanto is allowed to sue the victim for patent infringement. In 2012, when a broad alliance of farmers and Food Freedom groups sued Monsanto and the government to turn this abominable policy right side up, the system judge rejected the suit, ridiculing the damaged plaintiffs in the process. What could be more clear, that we shall never achieve justice, reason, safety, or simple human decency within this system, and shall have to seek it outside? Getting back to the Belgian case, the prosecutor and judge also refused to charge a large number of voluntary defendants comprising a list of civil society organizations from farmer groups to trade unions to consumer and environmental groups to some politicians and professors, who called themselves co-conspirators after the fact and demanded to join the defendants in the dock. The people recognize that the prosecution here was not just of this particular democracy action, but intended to set a precedent vs. all direct expressions of democracy. The defendants have explained (to the people, not to the court, which has refused to listen or to allow any substantive defense) how the secretive and unaccountable machinations of the regulatory system do not serve public health or democratic accountability, but only the corporate imperative. We can add that the mainstream media is in fact a corporate propaganda ministry which systematically propagates Monsantos lies and suppresses the facts and truths about GMOs, and about food corporatism and industrial agriculture in general. It also systematically neglects and, increasingly, slanders organic agriculture, which is the only solution to humanitys artificial food crisis.3 Groups have been calling for a democratic debate about the introduction of genetically modified crops for years. Environmental and agricultural organisations including Friends of the Earth, Landwijzer, Greenpeace and the organic Bioforum have been campaigning constantly for sustainable agriculture and emphasising
3 There is no natural food crisis. Todays agriculture produces far more than enough food for everyone on Earth, although much of it is toxified and of inferior nutritional quality. Meanwhile even today organic agriculture could produce more food than Big Ag, of vastly higher quality, under much healthier physical, environmental, socioeconomic, and political circumstances. This margin shall become infinite with the end of the fossil fuel age, as industrial ag becomes physically impossible.

that GMOs cannot be a part of this. They objected to the potato field trial which they described as unwanted and useless. Above all, they highlighted the environmental risks involved in such an experiment. Three experts from the Biotechnology Safety Council gave negative advice regarding the potato trial. They emphasised the environmental risks linked to the trial and pointed out that it was scientifically ungrounded. In August 2012 a judge in Ghent ruled that the GM field trial itself was actually illegal because there was no justification for the fact that the ministers in charge did not allow for objections or for minority positions on the Biotechnology Safety Council to be considered. The action took place after all these other attempts from people to express their views had been systematically swept aside. The structural problems in agriculture, and the consequences of the use of genetically modified organisms have still not been openly discussed in Flanders, and public debate about the issue is systematically avoided.4 Nor can reform be accomplished within representative electoral channels. We know that our elections are frauds. In the US or Canada, one can vote for Monsanto or Monsanto. (Meanwhile in the Wetteren 11s European Union, theres an elected parliament which is purely advisory with zero actual legislative power. Its more purely cosmetic and fraudulent than the tsars early 20th century Duma, and has far less power than the kaisers Reichstag.) Of course, this case is a good demonstration of what we can usually expect from the system courts, in procedure and outcome. The fact is that the system comprises organized crime, and that corporate and government agencies are criminal gangs. They automatically view any kind of democratic combination as an affront to their sense of entitlement and a threat to their prerogatives. Their goal will always be to use their illegitimate power to criminalize any manifestation of democracy, and of any human value. Conversely, citizens must start by recognizing the elemental illegitimacy and fraudulence of all system institutions, and the folly of trying to achieve real change by working through system channels. As todays defendants pointed out, they and their allies did all they could to get action within the system where it came to the pointlessness and likely harms of this GMO potato trial.
4 https://fieldliberation.wordpress.com/2013/02/12/press-release-gmo-trial-verdict-crimilisation-of-struggle-for-asustainable-agricultural-system/