GMOs and the myth of civil society

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A Vision for A Brighter Future and How to Get There Hear Jeff Mackler, national secretary of Socialist Action (U.S.) Stan Meunier, a youth organizer for the Parti Nouveau SOCIALIST ACTION EAST COAST SPEAKING TOUR • Philadelphia: Thursday, May 14, 6:30 p.m. Arch St. Methodist Church, Broad & Arch Sts. With Sharon Gramby-Sobukwe, assoc. professor Eastern Univer­ sity & Tony Monteiro, Black historian and activist. [email protected] • Hartford, Conn: Friday, May 15, 7 p.m. The Carriage House, 360 Farm­ ington Ave. https://www. facebook.com/events/843972089024595/ e-mail VoteSocial­ • New York City: Tuesday, May 19, 6:30 p.m. Manhattan Theatre Club, T funded NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) here are 1.5 million government and corporateregistered in the United States—all non-profits to be sure and all doing good things for civil society every­ where! By definition, and despite their funding sourc­ es, they are all “officially” independent of government and corporate control—and none are allowed to con­ tribute to political parties!

The U.S. government’s OECD (Organization for Eco­ nomic Co-operation and Development) reported that net government disbursements to NGOs reached $30 billion in 2013, as compared to $3 billion in 1970 and $9 billion in 2000. These figures exclude the countless unofficial billions of dollars granted to NGOs operat­ ing “under the radar” via the CIA, the NSA, the U.S. mil­ itary, and other such organizations that aim to achieve U.S. objectives by stealth as well as by the direct use of force and violence.

In Panama on April 10, President Obama addressed the Civil Society Forum, held as a sideshow to the concurrent Summit of the Americas conference. The head of state of the greatest imperial power the world has ever known—with 1100 military bases circling the globe—expounded without a blush the merits of “democracy” and “civil society.” Obama declared that he admired “the ordinary men and women” and “the dreamers—no matter how humble or poor or seem­ ingly powerless—that are able to change the course of human events.”

In truth, however, what is posited as “civil society,” Tony Savino / Socialist Action (Left) The NGO-sponsored march in New York City on Sept. 21 lacked a platform to present real alternatives to the fossil-fuel-based economy.

For the independent organizations of the oppressed and exploited working and unemployed masses, has all but been extinguished in the United States, and largely throughout the world. In its place today we are witness to an un­ precedented morass of government or corporate-funded NGOs, which range from direct front groups for the CIA, NSA, the U.S. State Department, the mil­ itary establishment, the world’s major corporations, and the U.S. government itself, to an infinite number of social justice, civil liberties, environmental defense, and other organizations.

All are financed by the government or corporations, or their associated “char­ itable” foundations, for the purpose of advancing corporate interests as op­ posed to those of civil society.

On the government end, untold bil­ lions are gifted to “civil society” orga­ nizations around the world that spe­ cialize in promoting the overthrow of governments seen as unfriendly to U.S. entrepreneurs, as was the case with the Ukraine, where U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia Victoria Nuland declared, “Since the declara­ tion of Ukrainian independence in 1991, the United States supported the Ukrainians in the development of democratic institutions and skills in promoting civil society and a good form of government. … We have in­ vested more than $5 billion to help Ukraine to achieve these and other goals.”

Among the goals was the U.S.-backing of fascist and NGO-mobilized “mass protests” aimed at establish­ ing U.S. and European Union corporate control over Ukraine’s vast resources. The “democratic institu­ tions” that Nuland later hailed consisted of a coup regime that included top government ministers of the fascist Svoboda and Right Sector parties, whose militias, today being trained by U.S. troops on the ground, are employed to rain death and destruction on Ukraine’s eastern and southern regions.

The promotion of “entrepreneurship” in the Ukraine, as in every other nation, centers on promoting the right of the U.S. corporate elite to extract profits by any means necessary. In the case of Ukraine, the world’s largest reservoir of shale oil and gas, the “democratic” goal is to frack eastern Ukraine and simultaneously substitute U.S. oil corporations for Russian as the chief suppliers of Europe’s fossil fuels.

This same scenario is endlessly repeated, with U.S.funded NGOs mobilizing “mass demonstrations” to challenge and overthrow any regime seen as imped­ ing U.S. investment and control—from the “Color Revolutions” of the 1990s to the “mass” middle-class protests in Venezuela today.

It is not “democracy” that motivates the U.S. in Ven­ ezuela, among the world’s major fossil fuel reser­ voirs, but the U.S. corporate sequestration of these resources. Need we remind our readers that the U.S. was the first, if not only nation that recognized, and likely helped organize and finance, the 2002 military coup that temporarily removed and imprisoned Ven­ ezuela’s elected President Hugo Chavez.

Only the most naive participants in radical and pro­ gressive movements would not think to question any NGO that receives money from U.S. government or corporate interests. All such funds come with strings attached—sometimes very subtle strings, and some­ times ones that directly link the NGO to corporate in­ terests or government policy.

The case of the Nature Conservancy needs little am­ plification. Here we have the world’s largest environ­ mental NGO, whose stated objective is to buy land to preserve nature in its most spectacular and pristine forms. Yet in at least one instance, in Texas, the Con­ (continued on page 8, in “U.S. set back at Panama Summit”)

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