Media Revolution or Mirage?
By ROBIN BLACKBURN
Perhaps you have to be a visitor, as I am from the UK, to register the astonishing media revolution currently underway in the United States – and the threat it constitutes to the country’s progressive press.
Once upon a time the New York Times backed the Iraq War, published phoney reportage on WMD and supported an [unsuccessful] coup against Venezuela’s elected leader. Some of its star columnists – with super-jingo Thomas Friedman heading the list – purveyed market fundamentalism. As for the US cable networks, their chauvinism and demagogy is a by-word.
Yet suddenly I’m living in a parallel universe where Newsweek’s cover declares ‘We Are All Socialists Now’, and the New York Times outflanks the Nation, the Comedy channel turns deadly serious and MSNBC mocks the consensus.
Instead of neo-liberal triumphalism the New York Times finds space to cover some real issues. Safire and Kristol have been dropped and in their place a steady drumbeat from Krugman and Dowd urges Obama to nationalize the banks and lock up miscreant CEOs. Recently a detailed op-ed explained that the administration’s foreclosure policy – giving tiny loans to help mortgagees make their interest payments – was useless. What had to be done was for Treasury to pony up serious money to pay down principal on mortgage debt. Another outlined ‘How to Leave Afghanistan’. On March 14 Evo Morales explained to Times readers that the campaign to criminalise the chewing of coca, ‘a healthy indigenous past-time’, was cruel and unjust. And in the Business section Gretchen Morgensohn’s exposé of the Pharaonic scale of the public indulgence of AIG and the zombie banks was picked up and endorsed by the main section.
Meanwhile the most circulated item on Facebook is Jon Stewart’s Daily Show interview with Jim Cramer of CNBC’s ‘Mad Money’, in which he took the strident share-booster to the cleaners, complete with deadly clips showing Cramer advocating scams he now claims to disavow. Stewart previously denounced Israeli slaughter in Gaza when the rest of the US media and political world preferred to look the other way.
The new openness of the Times no doubt reflects a new conjuncture – the voters’ pain at depression hits, anger at bail-outs for the rich and greedy, a creeping paralysis which the White House fails to address, and, close to home, the purchase of the paper’s stock by Carlos Slim, the Mexican billionaire – not forgetting the specter of an end to print newspapers. Likewise the Daily Show is occupying new territory at a time when Rachel Maddow of MSNBC is refreshing the tired recipes of cable news by imitating alternative network stars like Amy Goodman and Laura Flanders.
Obama’s Plan A – inviting those who created the catastrophe to fix it – is foundering before our eyes, so it is good that some are working on Plan B. The trouble is Plan B needs a lot of work if it is not to collapse like a credit default swap issued by Lehman Brothers. Indeed what is really needed is Plan C.
Thus nationalizing the banks is a good starting point if the aim is to construct a public utility finance system. But if the aim is simply to return the banks to the private sector as soon as possible – as Krugman urges – their lending policy will not help investment and small businesses on the scale now needed. Likewise ‘withdrawal’ from Iraq and Afghanistan is fine, but should not mean leaving behind huge military bases bulging with US troops.
All those pieces comparing Obama with Roosevelt alert us to a problem. Then the president had to reckon with a surging labor movement. And he could mobilise a strategic detail of red experts when he gave $40 billion to the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to build five hundred giant plants, taking a strategic stake in all the corporations which need these facilities. By 1945 the US government owned large chunks of Lockheed, Boeing and GM, but red scares led to the closing of the RFC.
The TVA and RFC were examples of the sort of bold public enterprise now needed but where are those needed to staff them? Some of those laid-off bankers might serve as useful foot-soldiers but they will need competent commanders and planners.
Of course there is a dream-like quality to media radicalization. Friedman’s effort in the Times of March 18 brought me back to reality. Apparently we all have to rally behind an even larger bail-out of the very same banks that have been rescued at such cost several times before. Forget nationalization. Instead US households who have lost about $12 trillion (so far) must foot the bill for ‘bank healing’ which requires ‘another big, broad taxpayers’ safety net’.
The media revolution may be exhausted but if the president follows this advice it could be street barricades and bank occupations next.
Robin Blackburn writes for New Left Review and is a visiting professor at the New School in New York. He can be reached at robinblackburn68@hotmail.com

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Mental powers start to dwindle at 27 after peaking at 22, marking the start of old age, US research suggests.
Professor Timothy Salthouse of the University of Virginia found reasoning, spatial visualisation and speed of thought all decline in our late 20s.
Therapies designed to stall or reverse the ageing process may need to start much earlier, he said.
His seven-year study of 2,000 healthy people aged 18-60 is published in the journal Neurobiology of Aging.
To test mental agility, the study participants had to solve puzzles, recall words and story details and spot patterns in letters and symbols.
The same tests are already used by doctors to spot signs of dementia.
In nine out of 12 tests the average age at which the top performance was achieved was 22.
The first age at which there was any marked decline was at 27 in tests of brain speed, reasoning and visual puzzle-solving ability.
Things like memory stayed intact until the age of 37, on average, while abilities based on accumulated knowledge, such as performance on tests of vocabulary or general information, increased until the age of 60.
Professor Salthouse said his findings suggested “some aspects of age-related cognitive decline begin in healthy, educated adults when they are in their 20s and 30s.”
Rebecca Wood of the Alzheimer’s Research Trust agreed, saying: “This research suggests that the natural decline of some of our mental abilities as we age starts much earlier than some of us might expect – in our 20s and 30s.
“Understanding more about how healthy brains decline could help us understand what goes wrong in serious diseases like Alzheimer’s.
“Alzheimer’s is not a natural part of getting old; it is a physical disease that kills brain cells, affecting tens of thousands of under 65s too.
“Much more research is urgently needed if we are to offer hope to the 700,000 people in the UK who live with dementia, a currently incurable condition.”
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by Kanaga Raja

The financial crisis with a “made in USA” label on it is now affecting developing countries worldwide including those that had undertaken good financial market regulation as well as good monetary macroeconomic policies, Nobel Laureate Prof. Joseph Stiglitz said on Wednesday.
“In fact, many of the developing-country central banks have policies that are much more prudent and [have] much better regulation than some of the advanced industrial countries that are currently facing a problem,” Stiglitz told a media briefing at the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s office here.
His personal view is that some of the advanced industrial countries should go to the developing countries and study what they did to learn what good regulation entails.
Noting that there are many distortions to the international trade regime such as tariffs and subsidies, Stiglitz said that subsidies provided by the industrial countries to their companies and financial institutions “have totally destroyed the level playing field” for years to come. It means that companies and financial firms in developed countries can undertake risks, knowing that if there is a problem, they may be bailed out.
He called for funds to be provided to the developing countries to offset this distortion in the global economic system.
Speaking briefly on the WTO Doha Round of trade negotiations, Stiglitz said that while it’s not likely that the Doha Round “will reach completion quickly” particularly given the current disturbance to the free market, the developed countries can help the poorest countries by unilaterally opening up their markets to the developing countries.
Stiglitz, who is also a professor of economics at Columbia University, is in Geneva attending meetings of the Commission of Experts on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System, which he chairs. The Commission was formed last November by the President of the UN General Assembly Father Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann of Nicaragua.
While in Geneva, Stiglitz also made a presentation of the Commission’s work at an UNCTAD meeting on Thursday. According to the UNCTAD press office, the meeting was not open to the media, but civil society groups were able to attend.
At the media briefing on Wednesday, Stiglitz explained that the Commission of Experts was set up to look at the impact of the financial crisis on developing countries in order to assess the kinds of reforms needed in the global financial system. The recommendations that the Commission is likely to come up with will serve as a preparation for the discussions that are going on that will lead to the UN high-level conference which will be held at the United Nations headquarters in New York at the beginning of June.
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Watch the trailer of Che

Che is a 2008 biopic about Marxist revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Benicio del Toro as Che. The film is actually a merged version of two films by Soderbergh: The Argentine and Guerrilla. The first part focuses on the Cuban revolution, from the moment Fidel Castro, Guevara and other revolutionaries landed on the Caribbean island, until they toppled the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista two years later. The second part focuses on Che’s attempted revolution and eventual demise in Bolivia.

By Amy Taxin

LOS ANGELES (AP) — When Aditi Mahmud and her family moved from Bangladesh to Los Angeles more than a decade ago, they landed in a gritty neighborhood that has long been a haven for Korean immigrants.
Now, the graduate student and other Bangladeshis want to carve out a special district in Koreatown and name it for their own homeland.
The proposal has shocked and angered Korean-American leaders who have worked for years to turn Koreatown into a Southern California cultural destination.
“There is a pride in calling this Koreatown,” said Chang Lee, chairman of the Korean-American Federation of Los Angeles. “The residents and businesspeople, when they heard the news, they were appalled.”
As first proposed last year, the district would have cut a half-mile swath through the heart of the nation’s largest Korean enclave, a bustling area of Buddhist temples, restaurants and businesses a few miles west of downtown.
Since then, both sides have agreed to create Little Bangladesh on the fringe of Koreatown instead of within its core. But the actual boundaries are still being debated, and a final agreement has yet to be reached.
The turf fight is unusual for Los Angeles, where roughly 40 percent of residents were born abroad.
Over the years, the City Council has granted special district designations to a number of areas, including Chinatown, Thai Town and Little Ethiopia after residents filed petitions seeking the status.
There are no direct financial benefits, but neighborhoods can raise their profiles and perhaps their economic fortunes by being noted on maps and streets signs and getting mentions in the media.
“It’s how the rest of the world sees that area,” said Paul Ong, a professor of urban planning, social welfare and Asian-American studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. “It gives people a sort of mental map.”
Some communities have gone a step further and created assessment districts where merchants agree to tax themselves to fund cleanups, security and cultural events.
Koreatown is already one of the most high-profile areas in the city, but it didn’t seek an official designation from the city until February — after the proposed creation of Little Bangladesh.
“I think it is ridiculous for us not to be recognized by the city when everyone de facto does,” said Grace Yoo, executive director of the Korean American Coalition.
Immigrants from the nation now known as Bangladesh began arriving in Los Angeles in the late 1960s, with the Koreatown neighborhood becoming a first-stop for many who needed help getting a start in the U.S.
In recent years, more Bangladeshis have left the poor nation with the help of a U.S. government green card lottery, said Preeti Sharma, a community advocate with the nonprofit South Asian Network.
The U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey puts the number of Bangladeshis in Los Angeles County at 3,000. Consulate officials say the figure is actually closer to 50,000.
An estimated 200,000 Koreans live in Los Angeles County.
Mohammed Miah said he wrote the proposal to create Little Bangladesh to increase understanding of his country and his culture. Others see it as a way to lure visitors from outside the neighborhood to its shops, restaurants and events.
“It will bring more crowds,” said Majib Siddiquee, chair of the Los Angeles chapter of the Bangladesh Association of California. “The thing we agreed with the Korean community is, this should be an example to see how beautiful the communities can coexist in one little area.”
Mahmud believes Little Bangladesh would be a source of pride for immigrants, including her parents.
“They came here for education, for me, for their only child,” said Mahmud, whose parents still live in the two-bedroom apartment they rented when they arrived. “They need some sort of recognition that they can still be Bangladeshi here and lift their head up high.”
Han Dong-yeop, a Korean sushi chef, just shrugged his shoulders at the prospect of a new name for the neighborhood where he has worked for nearly a decade.
“Why not?” he said. “We live together anyway.”
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
(Submitted by a reader)

By DOUGLAS J. FEITH and JUSTIN POLIN

ON March 5, in the outskirts of Peshawar, Pakistan, forces believed to be affiliated with the Taliban bombed the shrine of Rahman Baba (born around 1650), the most revered Pashtun poet. The attack evokes one of the grosser Taliban outrages from the pre-9/11 era: the dynamiting in 2001 of the enormous stone Buddhas in Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Valley.
This use of bombs as cultural commentary is especially notable in that the shrine was sacred to other Muslims. It reminds the world, and especially complacent Muslims, that the Islamist extremists’ war is a civil war within Islam — and not just a “holy war” against other religions and the United States. It should show American policymakers the wisdom of working to persuade Pashtuns to reject the Taliban.
The bombers took aim at the poet’s shrine because it represented Sufism, the mystical form of Islam that has long been predominant in India and Pakistan. The Sufism of Rahman Baba generally stresses a believer’s personal relationship with God and de-emphasizes the importance of the mosque. It refrains from exalting violence and war and praises such virtues as tolerance, devotion and love. Its practice relies extensively on dance, music and poetry. Some of Sufism’s most esteemed poets and scholars are women.
The extremists are determined to destroy Pakistan’s moderate Sufi tradition — by claiming the exclusive right to fly the banner of Islam and asserting this claim through cultural, educational and violent means. Through intimidation, they silence musicians, still dancers and oppress women. As a result, artists and performers are leaving Pakistan’s Swat Valley and the North-West Frontier Province in droves.
Though the Sufi tradition has been widely followed for centuries in South Asia, its hold is weakening as the extremists flex their muscles. Pakistan’s inability to enforce its laws in the border region with Afghanistan has allowed extremists to threaten dominance in northwestern Pakistan.
The United States may be able to help Pakistan prevent this, however, by supporting Pashtun opposition to the extremists. The Pashtuns who oppose the Taliban need protection. The extremists have gunned down, bombed and hanged those who have worked against them. It would help to improve the government’s schools in the region and thus reduce the appeal and influence of Taliban-run madrassas. And by building roads and creating jobs and business opportunities for the Pashtuns, the Pakistani government, with American help, could counter the money and other material blandishments offered by the extremists.
It is a costly failing that the American government has been unable to communicate quickly with the Pashtun community about the attack on the Rahman Baba shrine. Congress has provided trillions of dollars to support military action in the fight against terrorism, but it has not yet provided resources for a strategic communications capacity that could be the key to victory.
If it had the equipment and personnel for the job, the United States could broadcast radio programs for the Pashtuns commemorating Rahman Baba’s life and poetry, thus helping to revive the collective memory of Sufism and inspiring opposition to the Taliban. Other programs could highlight the cultural and physical devastation wrought by the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
The United States conducted impressive strategic communications during the cold war. Radio Free Europe, Voice of America and other programs conveyed information and ideas that contributed to the discrediting and ultimate defeat of Soviet communism.
Pakistan’s Islamist extremists apparently know the value of strategic communications. They preach and broadcast, understanding that every non-extremist school they close, every artist they force to move, every moderate tribal leader they kill and every Sufi shrine they destroy can increase their powers of intimidation and persuasion.
The problem along the Afghan border is not mass support for Islamist extremism. Rather it is widespread acquiescence by people who are fearful and demoralized. As the extremists work to demonstrate that only they represent the true Islam, Pashtuns can reflect on the warnings against cruelty and violence that Rahman Baba outlined in “Sow Flowers”:

Sow flowers to make a garden bloom around you,
The thorns you sow will prick your own feet.
Arrows shot at others
Will return to hit you as they fall
You yourself will come to teeter on the lip
Of a well dug to undermine another.

Douglas J. Feith, a former under secretary of defense, is a senior fellow and Justin Polin is a research associate at the Hudson Institute.
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(Submitted by a reader with the following comments: “Lo, the bizarre spectacle of neocon Douglas Feith, who Gen. Tommy Franks called ‘the f- stupidest guy on the planet,’ quoting a Pathan poet and talking about Sufism!”

By Asma Jahangir

The heart of Pakistan’s crisis is arbitrary power. The solution is a democratic system founded on the rule of law, says Asma Jahangir.

Pakistan has in the last two years been living through some of the worst moments of its history – as well as its most promising. The relentless violence, assassinations, mass arrests, the imposition of emergency rule and rising militancy have been devastating for the country. At the same time, the people’s resistance to authoritarianism, their rejection through the ballot-box of political forces aligned to the military, and their opposition to undemocratic moves by the civilian government are hopeful signs for democracy.

The extraordinary story of what has happened in the 2007-09 period suggests that the intersection of these trends leaves Pakistan now poised between two very different possible futures.

The inside track
The oppressive regime of General Pervez Musharraf, who had seized power in October 1999, appeared at the start of 2007 to be well entrenched. There was great social discontent, and many Pakistanis were in despair. Then on 9 March 2007 the general-president unceremoniously removed from office Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, the chief justice of Pakistan. This sacking of a popular and independent figure provoked a spontaneous rebellion by the legal fraternity, enthusiastically backed by many sections of society. The army and the president were unprepared for this widespread movement against the military regime. They assumed that as so often before the government would control the situation in characteristic fashion: by brute power or worse (as when political leaders in Balochistan had been hunted down and killed). They also expected that the George W Bush administration would find some way of rescuing Pervez Musharraf.
To an extent, an attempt was made to do precisely that. A plan was hatched in Washington and London to cobble together an alliance between Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto (the exiled leader of the opposition Pakistan People’s Party [PPP]) – that, it was hoped, might defuse the situation. It was a classic “fix” by the foreign allies and spin-masters of the Pakistani state and Bhutto alike, who in their wisdom had carved out a clean and convenient formula of military-civilian partnership to take forward the “war on terror”.
Such plans have a way in Pakistan of being sabotaged by their supposed beneficiaries. In this case, Musharraf did not relent from his authoritarian path, even as he promised fair and free parliamentary elections. He was given another five-year presidential term by national and provincial assemblies on 6 October 2007, then imposed a state of “emergency plus” on 3 November. This compelled Benazir Bhutto to turn to other political forces and Pakistani civil society for support, dismaying those in the west who had promoted her inside track to power. Alas, the process in any case took a violent turn when Benazir Bhutto, two months after her return from exile, was tragically assassinated on 27 December 2007 at a campaign rally. The perpetrators – again, as so often in Pakistan – have so far evaded arrest and justice.

The politics of control
Amid spiralling violence in early 2008, Islamic militants were able to capture the tribal areas of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and other parts of the province too. A combination of financial crisis and energy shortages further worsened the situation. The election, postponed after Benazir Bhutto’s death, was held on 18 February 2008, with the PPP winning a larger number of seats than the other main opposition party, Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (PML [N)]). The return of democracy – marked by a short-lived coalition between the PPP and PML (N), which broke up on 25 August – placed great pressure on Musharraf. He resigned the presidency of Pakistan on 18 August, to be replaced on 6 September by Benazir’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari. Musharraf followed by transferring the leadership of the army to General Ashfaq Kayani on 28 November 2007.
Asif Ali Zardari, the new president, had never been popular among Pakistanis, but was tolerated as an alternative to military rule. He had cleverly used the slogan of national reconciliation to sneak his way into becoming head of state, and once there went back on all the public promises he had made of restoring all the judges and respecting the supremacy of parliament. The much promised “national reconciliation” gave way to nepotism and intrigue.
In these circumstances, the unity and morale of the lawyers’ movement that had demanded the rule of law and energised the public were damaged when a number of deposed judges conditionally agreed to rejoin the judiciary at the PPP’s invitation. Some lawyers were tempted – and bought – by offers of promotion.
The effect of the election had been to focus energy on the high-level political process and away from civil society. But the passing of the presidency to Asif Ali Zardari did not change the fact that the judiciary remained weak and corrupt, and delivered its judgments at the bidding of the head of state. This politicisation of the judiciary again became a key issue when Pakistan’s supreme court passed an order disqualifying from office Nawaz Sharif and his brother Shahbaz, Zardari’s main opponents who were in power in the largest province of the country (Punjab).
On 25 February 2009, as soon as the judgment was made, the president imposed “governor rule” in Punjab and the doors of the provincial parliament were locked so that it could not meet to elect its leader. Moreover, decrees were issued granting amnesty to those accused of corruption and other charges.

The triumphal march
The lawyers had already announced a “long march” to the capital, Islamabad – a last desperate attempt to stage a sit-in outside of parliament until the judges (especially the deposed Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry) were restored. Now they had the backing of the second largest political party in the country, as well as of thousands of outraged citizens who believed that their new president had gone too far.
The government overreacted to the long march. It was a reminder of the Musharraf days and their destructive legacy. The security forces confiscated lorries carrying goods in order to block roads and barricade the capital. Several lawyers and political activists were arrested, beaten, threatened, and locked in their houses. Despite this, more and more people defied the curbs placed on their movement, gathering in Lahore to move on to Islamabad.
As a last resort, the infamous interior ministry warned people that militants were planning an imminent bomb-attack and therefore the long march should be abandoned. But the people called this bluff and joined the march in Lahore. An estimated one million people were on the roads.
The merciless beatings and use of tear-gas did not deter the crowds. Eventually the police chief gave up and Islamabad panicked. The prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and the army chief, with the support of foreign diplomats, won agreement from the president to restore the chief justice and find a way to settle the Punjab dispute.
Thus, in the early hours of 16 March, the prime minister addressed the nation and announced that the demands of the marchers had been accepted, including (with effect from 21 March) the restoration of Chaudhry to his post. The long march – and Pakistani civil society more widely – had won a great victory over arbitrary power.

The top-down failure
But this is far from the end. The president is still in power and retains his capacity to foment trouble. Even as the people’s (and the opposition’s) victory was being celebrated, the presidency was manoeuvring to keep the elected government of Punjab out in the cold, in part by approaching judges who could be “persuaded” to make the right decisions. A meeting between the prime minister and Nawaz Sharif may lead to the restoration of the Punjab government, though this will be only one concession among many infractions.
The way the president exercises power invites a dangerous intervention by the military. It also shifts the focus of governance away from far more pressing issues such as the spread of militancy. Even as the crisis over the judiciary and the rule of law has escalated in Pakistan, Islamic militants in other parts of the country have set up their own lawyer-free judicial system. It perpetrates rough and easy justice, among other things pushing back women behind four walls. The chief justice may have resumed work but the judicial system in Swat and Malakand (to name only those) has been hijacked by religious zealots.
These two years have been tumultuous. Pakistan’s leaders, and their foreign allies, have thought that they could impose top-down solutions and thus secure power and subdue the Pakistani people. The people have proved them wrong. But the crises afflicting the country remain. Pakistan has a long way to go before it can claim to have established a decent democratic system founded on respect for the rule of law.
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(Submitted by a reader)

By Aslam Merchant
(on visiting Mumbai twice in one year)

few more wrinkles on aging faces
few more pimples on blossoming youth
few new ones born
few old ones gone
few more here, a few more there, yet constant
time lay still.

few more smog blotches lining the horizon
few more noise pitches disturbing the city
few more bodies competing for space and jobs
few more vehicles competing for roads with humans and animals
few more here, a few more there, yet constant
but time lay still

little more capitalization
little more westernization
little more urbanization
little more exploitation
little more here, a little more there, yet constant
even so, time lay still

few more dreams
few more nightmares
few more aspirations
few more anguishes.
few more here, a few more there, yet constant.
time did lay still !

does “change,” the law of Nature, stand defied ?

Aslam Merchant

Aslam Merchant can be reached at merchantaslam@hotmail.com

By Davindra Sharma

Lies, damn lies and the Monsanto site. Tell a lie a hundred times, and the chances are that it would appear to be a truth. Monsanto makes that effort, probably for the umpteenth number of time. And the chances are that you too could be duped to accept these distortions as truth.

My attention has been drawn to an article “Do GM crops increase yield?” on Monsanto’s web page. I must confess this is first time I am visiting Monsanto’s site. This is what it says: Recently, there have been a number of claims from anti-biotechnology activists that genetically-modified (GM) crops don’t increase yields. Some have claimed that GM crops actually have lower yields than non-GM crops.

Both claims are simply false.

And then, it goes on to explain what germplasm is, what is breeding, biotechnology, and finally comes to yield. This is what it says:

The introduction of GM traits through biotechnology has led to increased yields independent of breeding. Take for example statistics cited by PG Economics, which annually tallies the benefits of GM crops, taking data from numerous studies around the world:

Mexico – yield increases with herbicide tolerant soybean of 9 percent.

Romania – yield increases with herbicide tolerant soybeans have averaged 31 percent.

Philippines – average yield increase of 15 percent with herbicide tolerant corn.

Philippines – average yield increase of 24 percent with insect resistant corn.

Hawaii – virus resistant papaya has increased yields by an average of 40 percent.

India – insect resistant cotton has led to yield increases on average more than 50 percent.

This is not amusing. It can’t be taken lightly anymore. I am not only shocked but also disgusted at the way corporations try to fabricate and swing the facts, dress them up in a manner that the so-called ‘educated’ of today will accept them without asking any question.

At the outset, Monsanto’s claims are simply flawed. I have seen similar conclusions, at least about Bt cotton yields in India, in an IFPRI study. But then, I have always been saying that IFPRI is one organisation that needs to be shut down. It has done more damage to developing country agriculture and food security than any other academic institution.

Nevertheless, let us first look at Monsanto’s claims.

The increases in crop yields that it has shown in Mexico, Romania, the Philippines, Hawaii and India are actually not yield increases. In scientific terms, these are called crop losses, which have been very cleverly repacked as yield increases. What Monsanto has done is to indulge in a jugglery of scientific terminologies, and taking advantage of your ignorance, to build up on claims that actually do not exist.

As per Monsanto’s article: The most common traits in GM crops are herbicide tolerance (HT) and insect resistance (IR). HT plants contain genetic material from common soil bacteria. IR crops contain genetic material from a bacterium that attacks certain insects.

This is true. And still more, herbicide tolerant plants and insect resistant plants in a way perform the same function that chemical pesticides do. Both the GM plants and the chemical pesticides reduce crop losses. Come to think of it. Doesn’t the GM plants work more or less like a bio-pesticide? The insect feeds on the plant carrying the toxin, and dies. Spraying the chemical pesticide also does the same.

In the case of herbicide tolerant plants, it is much worse. Biotech companies have successfully dove-tailed the trait for herbicide tolerance in the plant to ensure that those who buy the GM seeds have no other option but to also buy the companies own brand of herbicide. Killing two birds with one stone, you would say. Exactly.

GM companies have only used the transgenic technology to remove competition from the herbicide market. Instead of allowing the farmer to choose from different brands of herbicides available in the market, they have now ensured that you are left with only Hobson choice. The use of herbicide therefore does not come down. Several studies have shown conclusively that the use of herbicide in the US for instance actually has gone up.

Now, the question that needs to be asked is that if the chemical herbicide — Roundup Ready –that Monsanto’s herbicide tolerant soybeans use, increases yield than how come the other herbicides available in the market do not increase yield? Since all herbicides do the same job — killing herbs, all herbicides should be therefore increasing crop yields. Am I not correct? Why do then we only think that Rounup Ready soyabean (which is a GM crops) increases yields, whereas other herbicides do not?

When was the last time you were told that herbicides increase crop yields? Chemical herbicides are known to be reducing crop losses. This is what I was taught when I was studying plant breeding. And this is what is still being taught to agricultural science students everywhere in the world.

Similarly for cotton. We all know that cotton consumes about 50 per cent of total pesticides sprayed. These chemical pesticides are known to be reducing crop losses. For the kind information of Monsanto (and I am sure they will agree to it without any question) pesticides do not increase crop yields, and I repeat DO NOT increase cotton yields.

Monsanto’s Bt cotton, which has a gene from a soil bacteria to produce a toxin within the plant that kills certain pests, also does the same. It only kills the insect, which means it does the same job that a chemical pesticide is supposed to perform. The crop losses that a farmer minimises after applying chemical pesticide is never (and has never) been measured in terms of yield increases. It has always been computed as savings from crop losses.

If GM crops increase yields, shouldn’t we therefore say that chemical pesticides (including herbicides) also increase yields? Will the agricultural scientific community accept that pesticides increases crop yields?

That brings me to another relevant question: Why don’t agricultural scientists say that chemical pesticides increase crop yields?

While you ponder over this question (and there are no prizes for getting it right), let me tell you that the last time the world witnessed increases in crop yields was when the high-yielding crop varieties were evolved. That was the time when scientists were able to break through the genetic yield barrier. The double-gene and triple-gene dwarf wheat (and subsequently the same trait was inducted in rice) brought in quantum jumps in the yield potential. That was way back in the late 1960s. Since then, there has been no further genetic break through in crop yields. Let there be no mistake about it.

Monsanto is therefore making faulty claims. None of its GM crop varieties increases yields. They only reduce crop losses. And if Monsanto does not know the difference between crop losses and crop yields, it needs to take lessons again in plant breeding.

But please don’t fool the world. Don’t distort scientific facts.

For the record, let me also state that when Bt cotton was being introduced in India in 2001 (its entry was delayed by another year when I challenged the scientific claims made by Mahyco-Monsanto), the Indian Council for Agriculural Research had also objected to the company’s claim of increasing yield. It is however another matter that ICAR’s objections were simply brushed aside by the Department of Biotechnology, and we all know why.

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