nettime Biotech Conference Ends After Protests
a follow up story on the gmo protests in Sacramento, as the US/WTO pressure on the EU grows. Have heard of recent greenpeace demos in europe http://www.greenpeace.org/news/details?item_id=290260 does the resistance to US GMOs lie in nation state resistance (ie the EU following consumer demand), or will the EU eventually lean more toward the smooth space as CAE suggests? http://www.nerage.org Posted on Thu, Jun. 26, 2003 Biotech Conference Ends After Protests KIM BACA Associated Press SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Both protesters and proponents claimed success after an international conference on how genetically modified foods can help alleviate poverty in the Third World. Hundreds of demonstrators who rallied against GMOs during the three-day gathering were prevented by a large police presence from causing major disruptions, but leaders said they got their message through. We were also working in concert with organic farmers who were inside. And there was a strong showing out here. We were making a lot of noise, said protester Doyle Canning, from the Institute for Social Ecology in Vermont, as the conference closed Wednesday. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, who hosted the meeting of agriculture ministers, scientists and health experts, said a seed has been planted for advancing cooperation on biotechnology. European Union ministers were notably absent from the talks at a time when the United States is demanding that the World Trade Organization force the EU to end its ban on genetically modified food. The EU's agriculture representative in Washington said EU ministers were invited but canceled because the union is wrapping up talks on agricultural reform. Critics of the U.S. policy of advocating biotechnology as an answer to food shortages say Washington is merely seeking its own economic advantage and pushing risky science on struggling nations. For us in the developing countries, we feel with biotechnology, we should take our time and build the capacity to be able to understand what we're dealing with, said Drinah Nyirenda, a nutritionist in Zambia who works with 200,000 farmers in a food distribution program. In the meantime, we would like to continue with the conventional methods of producing foods, using methods that won't harm the environment. At least 70 demonstrators were taken into custody, but the show went on without problems; a large force of police in riot gear patrolled Sacramento's streets on bikes, horseback and foot. Protest organizers had estimated that there would be 8,000 demonstrators at a march and rally on the opening day, but only about a quarter of those materialized. Since Monday, the activists faded, breaking into groups of 50 to 100 that roved through downtown Sacramento followed by a far greater number of law officers. # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
nettime Manuel Delanda - 1000 Years of War
well..., I'm an editor there... I guess I should pass on stuff every once in a while. Also - if you're looking for a more ummm... abbreviated version of Manuel on this kind of thing, check www.djspooky.com/articles.html Paul 1000 Years of War: CTHEORY Interview with Manuel De Landa Manuel de Landa in conversation with: Don Ihde, Casper Bruun Jensen, Jari Friis Jorgensen, Srikanth Mallavarapu, Eduardo Mendieta, John Mix, John Protevi, and Evan Selinger. Manuel De Landa, distinguished philosopher and principal figure in the new materialism that has been emerging as a result of interest in Deleuze and Guattari, currently teaches at Columbia University. Because his research into morphogenesis -- the production of stable structures out of material flows -- extends into the domains of architecture, biology, economics, history, geology, linguistics, physics, and technology, his outlook has been of great interest to theorists across the disciplines. His latest book on Deleuze's realist ontology, Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy (2002), comes in the wake of best-sellers: War in the Age of Intelligent Machines (1991), where De Landa assumes the persona of the robot historian to bring the natural and social sciences into dialogue vis-a-vis using insights found in nonlinear dynamics to analyze the role of information technology in military history, and A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History (1997), where he carves out a space for geological, organic, and linguistic materials to have their say in narrating the different ways that a single matter-energy undergoes phase transitions of various kinds, resulting in the production of the semi-stable structures that are constitutive of the natural and social worlds. When Evan Selinger gathered together the participants for the following interview, his initial intention was to create an interdisciplinary dialogue about the latest book. In light of current world events -- which have brought about a renewed fascination with De Landa's thoughts on warfare -- and in light of the different participant interests, an unintended outcome came about. A synoptic and fruitful conversation occurred that traverses aspects of De Landa's oeuvre. I. War, Markets Models CTHEORY (Mendieta): In these times of a war against terrorism, and preparing against bioterrorism and germ warfare, do you not find it interesting, telling, and ironic in a dark and cynical way that it is the Western, Industrialized nations that are waging a form of biological terrorism, sanctioned and masked by legal regulations imposed by the WTO and its legal codes, like Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). Would you agree that the imposition of GMO -- genetically modified organism -- through WTO, NAFTA, and IMF, on the so-called developing world is a form of legalized biotech and biological terrorism? And then, as a corollary, what are the prospects for global justice and equity in light precisely of the yawing gap between developed and underdeveloped nations that is further deepened by the asymmetrical access to technologies like genetic engineering and genomic mapping? Manuel De Landa: Though I understand what you are getting at I do not think it is very useful to use this label (biological terrorism) for this phenomenon. The point, however, is well taken. The way in which corporations are encroaching around the most sensitive points of the food chain is dangerous: they direct the evolution of new crops from the processing end, disregarding nutritional properties if they conflict with industrial ones; the same corporations which own oil (and hence fertilizers and herbicides) also own seed companies and other key inputs to farming; and those same corporations are now transferring genes from one species to another in perverse ways (genes for herbicide resistance transferred from weeds to crops). When one couples these kind of facts with the old ones about the link between colonialism and the conversion of many world areas into food supply zones for Europe (from the creation of sugar plantations to the taking over of the photosynthetically most active areas of the world by Europe's ex-colonies) we can realize that this state of affairs does have consequences for equity and justice. The key point is not to oversimplify: the Green Revolution, for example, failed not because of the biological aspect, but because of the economic one: the very real biological benefits (plants bred to have more edible biomass) could only be realized under economies of scale and these have many hidden costs (power concentration, deskilling of workforce) which can offset the purely technical benefits. The question of Intellectual Property rights is also complex. We should be very careful how we deal with this, particularly considering many of us bring old moral clichés (private property is theft) into the debate without being aware of it. I believe this issue needs to be handled case by case (to solve the inherent conflict
nettime baghdad blogger cut-up
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