Monsanto’s bitter seeds have given another blow to the Mexican honeycreepers that had previously succeeded in stopping short the transnational corporation’s plan to plant 253,000 acres of transgenic soybeans in the Yucatan Peninsula that would have jeopardized beekeeping in the region, the main livelihood more than 25,000 families.
Venezuela’s entry into Mercosur has had interpretations centered on the economic and commercial aspects, but the most important is a geopolitical and geo-energetic matter. The region becomes a food and hydrocarbon power pointing to the Caribbean. On July 31 when the entry of Venezuela into Mercosur was decided in Brasilia, presidents Dilma Rousseff and Cristina Fernández emphasized the importance of the new Mercosur in the framework of the world crisis that is summed up in the birth of a “new pole of power.”
In an era of food crisis, the fight for corn has intensified, and the importance of this grain – a staple of the diet of Mexico and a large part of the world – has been revealed to the fullest extent. The scenario we are faced with is a battle between a culture that revolves around the material and symbolic production of corn, as well as the cultural, social, and historical value placed upon this crop by humankind, and the network of commercial and political interests that sees this prodigious crop simply as another way to increase power and profit by means of plundering its native lands.
The government of President José Mujica achieved its main objective when it proposed legalizing marijuana: to spark a broad national debate regarding drugs, prohibitionist policies, and the repressive measures used to date. The motives set out to explain the proposed legislation criticize prohibitionist policies for aggravating the drug problem and establish assert “users not be stigmatized or treated under penal law, but instead create conditions to work with them and with society as a whole.”
In less than a week the foreign policy of the U.S. suffered two defeats on two closely related issues: the triumph of Hugo Chávez and the failure to impose the Pentagon’s objectives at the Tenth Conference of Ministers of Defense.
It potentially affects half the U.S. population, men and women whose lives could be disrupted forever from one day to the next. It costs billions of dollars, at a time when schools are closing down and essential public services disappearing. It deepens the nation’s racial divide and tears families apart. It kills tens of thousands of people, in the U.S. and abroad.
It’s still hard to believe. After two months and four high profile shootings – commencing with mass killings at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado – neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney has said a word about gun control.
