GMO SCRAPBOOK: RUSSIA, GMO GEOPOLITICS, AND THE EMERGING PATTERN

Over the years as I've been watching the bewildering march of several countries, including the USSA, to pollute the food supply with GMO seeds, to court the favor of various governments to promote them and conversely, to make organic foods cost prohibitive, I've been arguing that eventually we'd see a kind of GMO geopolitics emerge on the global stage, and that Russia would lead it. The playing field, now, is certainly not level. Think about it: on a level playing field, the non-GMO farmer or dairy producer would be able to bring his product to market at more or less the same cost as the farmer raising GMOs or injecting cattle with hormones, if not less. What does one see? The opposite:  article for article and ounce for ounce and pound for pound, the "organic" products cost more. Why? There are many reasons but among them is the reason that most western governments have been bought and paid for by I.G. Farbensanto. The agribusiness cartel gets "breaks" and perks, among which are sheer economies of scale.

What is needed is a similar economy of scale for "organic" products, and someone willing to point out the not only the health dangers of GMOs (there are many in spite of what the FDA is telling you; we like to call it the Food for Disease Administration), but the potential risks to the global food supply, and that can make non-GMOs available and compete on the global market. What is needed is someone willing to speak for those farmers and health experts in the west that have been marginalized for questioning the GMO Gospel of I.G. Farbensanto.  I have called this position "GMO geopolitics", and years ago predicted that Russia, at least, would lead it.

There were a number of indicators - at least to me - that indicated that this was the course that Russia would take both domestically and geopolitically, for there were bans on GMOs in Russia, then there was talk of doing multi-generational, genuinely long term studies of GMOs and their environmental and health consequences. There was something else going on too, but we'll get back to that in our high octane speculation. Meanwhile, it looks like I might be entitled to the "I Told You So" Award, Second class, according to this article from RT shared by Ms. K.M. and Mr. S.D.:

Russia looks to become leading organic food exporter as Europe sees future in GMO

There are several paragraphs at the end of this article that indicate that there is a pattern to watch that has been emerging, which paragraphs are the center of today's high octane speculation:

In 2015, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced plans to make the country the largest supplier of healthy, ecologically clean and high-quality food which Western producers “have long lost.”

While Russia already has a significant share of the European market at around $2 billion, or 11.8 percent of Russia's overall agricultural exports, there are obstacles in increasing that share, admits Kobuta.

“The main obstacles to increasing exports of agri-food goods to the EU market are non-conformity with EU food safety requirements, small tariff import quotas applied by EU for agricultural goods, infrastructural and regulatory issues. With regards to the export of organic products, in Russia there is no official certification system or certifying agency,” the economist said.

Due to lack of proper regulation in Russia, local producers keen to operate in organic food have to obtain official certification from third parties like the United States or the EU, to label their products as officially certified bio or organic, and be able to export them outside Russia, Kobuta said.

The draft law "On the Production of Organic Agricultural Products and Amendments to Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation" has not yet been adopted. However, the situation has improved after Russia adopted the national standard for organic products, she added. (Emphasis in the original)

Assuming the editors at RT are emphasizing the quotation by italics - and I have my doubts, since they seem to think italics should be used for quotations - an important point (and pattern) is emerging. First, Mr. Putin and Russia deliberately have targeted the food market for Russian organic food exports, and are simultaneously playing to growing opposition in the West and elsewhere to these products. They want to make money off of this opposition, and in a certain sense, to feed it, literally. This, presumably, would include the marketing of non-GMO seeds, which when I first proposed the notion of "GMO geopolitics" years ago, was the real centerpiece of my argument.

The problem, as this article points out, is to bring Russian regulation and labeling standards up to par for export-import purposes to those which exist in Europe and, presumably, the Americas. This, the article indicates, the Russian government is apparently trying to do, though we're not informed as to why a draft law has not yet passed the State Duma.

The larger pattern, however, is far more noteworthy, for if one has been following the pronouncements of Mr. Putin and some of his advisors and ministers in the past few years, a pattern and  deliberate strategy of analyzing opposition movements in the West, and then speaking directly to them, is emerging. For example: President Putin has directly spoken to the issue of vaccines and the rise of autism in the West; he has spoken to the issue of making such vaccines mandatory by opposing that measure; he has spoken to the rise of obesity in Western countries and the decline of nutritive value in foods; he has spoken to the loss of traditional Christian virtues and the "progressivization" of churches in the West; he has even spoken on the transgender issue, and so on. When confronted with the hypocrisies of Russian society by Western media, he has responded in kind. Most importantly, he has publicly challenged, in statement after statement, the unipolar order, and the dogmas of Globaloneyism, that the nation-state is obsolete and that the world needs to be run by transnational corporations and trade agreements; he has spoken to the culturally suicidal refugee policies of Europe, and on and on it goes.

This, I suspect in  my high octane speculation of the day, is not accidental, but rather, reflects a genuine pattern,  a pattern that suggests that a great deal of socio-cultural analysis is going on in the various academic and intelligence institutions of that country. and that Russia is playing the soft-power culture card at every opportunity it can. This is a long-term strategy, in other words, and the GMO geopolitics is but one aspect or subset of this larger pattern and strategy. And the problem for the West is that its Mighty Wurlitzer of denunciations of Russia simply isn't gaining traction, and the reason it's not gaining traction is that Mr. Putin - whether one likes it or not, whether one agrees with him or not, whether one thinks he is "sincere" or not - is speaking to various issues where vast swaths of people in the West have been disenfranchised by their own institutions and leadership. The Russian election-hacking meme is another example, for as this continues to be harped upon in the American media, that same media largely continues to ignore the larger issues it raises: Hillary Clinton's own dealings with Russia, for example, or the even larger issue of people with dual citizenships affecting American policy, not to mention American influence on foreign elections and its use of "color revolutions" around the world. Russian policy is living -  and I would argue, thriving - to a certain extent in these systemic hypocrisies.

That, I contend, is a very dangerous course of action for the West to continue over the long-term.

See you on the flip side...