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“But I realize that as long as I bring awareness around the world about Monsanto’s patent — not only Monsanto’s patent, but Bayer, Syngenta, DuPont — what their patents do for the control of the future of our seed and our food supply, and that’s what it was all about. GMOs were never meant to feed a hungry or starving world. They were meant to get control of farmers’ seed supply. That gives them the control of the world food supply.” – Percy Schmeiser

Below is a picture of Canadian farmer, Percy Schmeiser. He stood up to and took on Monsanto in a big way. In 1997, he and his wife Louise won the Right Livelihood Award for their courage in defending biodiversity and farmers’ rights. They have battled the biotech company for years, after Monsanto seeds drifted to his farm land from a neighboring farmer and destroyed his entire crop -- the chemical giant then quickly turned him, the victim, into the culprit.
I recommend the link that I pulled this quote from if you’re a beginner and would like to know what GMOs are, what their purpose is, and what they do.

“All my life I’ve been in agriculture and worked for agricultural policies and laws. And we feel that a farmer should never, ever lose the rights to his seeds or plants, because if we do, we’re going to be back to a serf system, we’re going to be back to a feudal system, that our forefathers, our grandfathers, left countries in Europe many years ago to get away from. Now, in less than — or 100 years, we’ve come full circle, where the control is not by kings or lords or barons, but now it’s corporations.” – Percy Schmeiser

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When the New York Times was reporting that “Global emissions of greenhouse gases jumped 2.3 percent in 2013 to record levels, scientists reported Sunday, it is the latest indication that the world intends to remain far off track in its efforts to curb global warming.”, thousands of hundreds of people were marching in the streets of Manhattan on September 21 to warn of the dire threat of the ongoing ecological destruction of the commons. It has been described as the ‘largest ever’ climate march with ‘record turnout’ but I don't remember the media giving it the due attention and make this event part of our conversation.
Demonstrators filled the streets of Manhattan and other cities around the world to urge policy makers to take action on climate change, rising rents, fracking pollution, and related private misconducts. Those people are not alone.

It is fairly well understood by people that most of the world’s fossil-fuel reserves should remain in the ground if an environmental disaster for humankind can still be averted, but under the logic of state-supported capitalist institutions, the private owners of those reserves are racing to exploit them to the fullest. As Bloomberg Businessweek reported, ExxonMobil Corp. said "that its laserlike focus on fossil fuels is a sound strategy, regardless of climate change.” With climate-change deniers like James Inhofe, Rex Tillerson, Donald Trump, and others like him in positions of power, we can expect more and more assuring news for our grandchildren.

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UN secretary general takes part in mass march over climate change

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New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and former US Vice President Al Gore joined thousands of demonstrators in Manhattan on Sunday, taking part in a global march to urge policy makers to take action on climate change. "Climate change is a defining issue of our time.

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In 2010, the one country governed by an indigenous majority, Bolivia, held a World People’s Conference, with 35,000 participants from 140 countries. It produced a People’s Agreement calling for sharp reductions in emissions, as well as a Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth. These are still key demands of indigenous communities all over the earth against the theft of the commons.

In a way, I am commemorating the forgotten charter after 800 years. The charter’s historical context and content about common protection from arbitrary power is ample reason for reflection and suggestions.

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The thing I will most likely remember is that those of us who are educated, have access to information technology, unlike the indigenous environmental committees of the third world, we can help their struggle by putting out (and share) the knowledge we are acquiring – relevant and complementary information – that, in due time, can toss the official canard that either “women” or “climate change” are not serious enough issues, and fix the planet.

Waste is man made and does not exist in a balanced ecosystem. To close off, I will leave the forum to Dr. Shiva, “None of us are immune from the crisis or the response to it. None of us are bystanders. We are all immersed in the processes that are either threatening the planet and our own future, or finding creative ways to shape a sustainable and a just future. Every day is an earth summit in our lives. And each of us is negotiating our collective fate on earth."

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There seems to be a potent link between women and nature and the natural systems. A historical story with modern implications runs that, in the pursuit of a new palace for a Rajasthani royal, men were sent to fell the forest in the area of Khejedli, Jodhpur. An individual named, Amrita Devi took the stand to protect the trees.

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When I was researching about biodiversity, the things that affect our food, I came across some socially insightful pieces by Dr. Vandana Shiva in her article, “Women Ecowarriors”. The educational purpose of the article can be summed by the lines, “Not only are women experts in the sustenance economy. They are experts in ecological science through their daily participation in processes that provide sustenance.”, and “When the ecological crisis created by an ecologically blind economic paradigm leads to the disappearance of forests and water, spread of diseases because of toxics and poisons, and the consequent threat to life and survival, it is women who rise to wake up the society to the crisis, and to defend the Earth and lives. Women are leading the paradigm shift to align the economy with ecology. After all, both are rooted in the word “oikos” — our home.”
These passages have information that are edifying for your view of life in general but had I come across them earlier, I could have included them in my course work because they complement the course materials well.
I have learned also that “The rise of masculinist science with Rene Descartes, Isaac Newton, Bacon led to the domination of reductionist mechanistic science and a subjugation of knowledge systems based on interconnections and relationships.” This knowledge system has eclipsed all our indigenous knowledge systems which are rooted in lived-in experience and not in abstract and fragmented knowledge that “cannot see through the connectedness of the web of life.”

This image was taken from a webpage titled, "The Original Tree Huggers: Let Us Not Forget Their Sacrifice On Earth Day " from a website called "Women's Earth Alliance".

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The subject is relevant to me because the frozen north of Canada is scheduled for destruction by the extraction industry. Aside from the explosive amount of noxious by-products that will be unleashed to the atmosphere to destabilize habitation and our collective security, it did not make sense to me why they would do it when they surely must know that doing this would send our earth past the tipping point. Despite that, they have decided to continue ahead roughshod over the majority of Canadians who overwhelmingly do care about climate change. Then, I understood that if I was part of an ideological edifice that reared individuals from privileged backgrounds and rewards apathy and self-enrichment, if I worked in an institution that has legally framed this course of conduct, then yes, being an outsider of that system, I can understand why this is rational to the captains of industry who rule our government.
This institutional framework can be uprooted from below and replaced if more and more people are learned on the realities of the world, which is hopeful because the means of uploading and transmitting information are steadily improving.

Below is a map of the October 2016 LOTI (land-ocean temperature index) anomaly, showing that the Arctic region is much warmer than average.

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What surprised me the most from the research

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What surprised me the most from the research

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What surprised me when I was researching this subject was that everything that is going on around us is a continuity of a drive or policy that is more than 800 years old. Like the inhabitant of the islands of Britain who suffered through this, we are suffering though this now, and our successors will be living through it as well. For that, I believe the sources of information that are linked here are not insignificant because I will be returning to them to learn more. I was thinking of what Joseph Atwill had written on the last page of the introduction to Caesar’s Messiah, “By turning this page, readers will enter a new world. I do not know if it is a better world. I only know that I believe it is a truer one.”

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The link above will take you to a book by Naomi Klein that showcases her encyclopaedic knowledge of rapacious and destructive actions for control of other people’s resources and destiny, in modern history. Neocolonialism is basically US imperialism after WW2 from those whose power “is rooted in their ownership and management of the economy.” One of the main concerns of U.S. policymakers is the “protection of our raw materials.” “Our raw materials” refers to the entire world’s resources -- God just happened to put them somewhere else.

Liberalism has been a quasi-religious dictum of the demagogues of U.S. policymakers. What this book does is inform you about the rhetoric used, and the logic and arguments that were and continue to be provided by apostles of the powerful and wealthy elite (like Milton Friedman) so that the social order stays the same and is never levelled. On a personal note this book taught me a lot about the real Milton Friedman in a way that my course material and official sources did not.

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Tribute must be paid to Noam Chomsky’s article “The Great Charter: Its fate and ours”. I first read this article in 2013 after becoming motivated to visit Chomsky.info and read up on his works by finishing a book called “Untold history of the United States”. This is a good article to repeatedly go back to because Noam Chomsky gives concrete form to what has been on a number of people’s minds for some time. Everything that I included on this wall came from gleaning information in that website. In the same article, he touches different but related topics, such as the deliberate atomizing and distraction of individuals in modern society – diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable – and 'why' it is done.

In a way Noam Chomsky’s writing and discussions help you understand the grand policy and mechanism under which we have to navigate, and the actions and untrue arguments of leaders make sense. It certainly helps you narrow down your research path.

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Strictly speaking this video may not belong here but for me it offered interesting context of how women have to navigate their lives in the former dominion and backyard of the vast Spanish Empire, Honduras.

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I initially wanted to include just this video about Berta Caceres. This video is a nice introduction of her and will put you there in her country, on the soil of Honduras. There used to be many farming communes throughout rich and lush Central America.

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Honduras: Blood and the Water | Fault Lines

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In her speech Ms. Ceceres uses many key words that touch on the concept of justice, community and its struggle to protect and appreciate the earth, by being informed in order to offer effective organized resistance.
I chose this speech because after seeing this it is hard for me to see how her own supposedly "constitutional" government forces came to the decision of slaying her.
After the 2009 military and business coup in Honduras, there has been an explosive growth in environmentally destructive megaprojects which would displace indigenous communities. In parallel, there have been a spate of intimidation by paramilitary, security, and hired forces of Honduras targeting activities, educators, and dissenting media.

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Berta Caceres acceptance speech, 2015 Goldman Prize ceremony

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The documentary is about the tactics for mass privatization and national decimation. Its a simplification of Ms. Klein's book, The shock doctrine.
The desperate financial situation in Greece, Spain, and Italy and the historical situations in Chile in the 70s, Britain in the 80s and Russia in the 90s are used in this documentary to show the intent and real target of “deregulation”. "Globalization" and "neoliberalism" are just new words for imperialism and colonialism, which in essence are subjugation and unhampered wealth accumulation by marauding power elites. The idea, as Greg Palast tells, is a vultures' picnic.

Generally speaking, “globalization” has led to nothing but mass unemployment and poverty, mass privatization, migrant labourers and job insecurity, national plunder, ethnic displacement and fragmentation of European society, excuses for imposing more debt to keep the classes in their places and acting accordingly, intimidation and repressive measures, no democracy or democratic freedoms, and general despondency.
As long as the larger mechanism and currents remain intact, the tactics of inflicting mass privatization like trickery, subversion, linguistics, and lies, planned in and paid for by the West but implemented by local oligarchs (financial elites), make it probable that one day the locale outside your window will resemble a gradually slum-ifying third world, populated by robber gangs, where might is the coin of the realm.

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The creators of Debtocracy, a documentary with two million views broadcasted from Japan to Latin America, analyze the shifting of state assets to private hands. They travel round the world gathering data on privatization in developed countries and search for clues on the day after Greece's massive privatization program.

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Stories similar to the one in this video reveal the real face behind the mask that is “globalization”. Their story reveals an important side to globalization which has its foundations in British imperialism, and makes us scrutinize our own country's state of affairs.
If a government can be persuaded to dump cheap GMOs, it could in time help Monsanto gain possession of their lands by displacing the local cotton industry (by ruining it), drive its farmers and government into debt and ultimately to poverty. It would then present the IMF with cause for dictating conditions (such as liberalization, for sending in technocrats, advisors and technicians) to allow private investors gain ownership of all public infrastructures from the public's collective management/control, after they’ve first been all bought up for peanuts by the local wealthy elite (the local rich people).
The real goal of globalization is not to help the poor. It is to win control of the wealth, natural resources, and the man-power of the entire globe by expounding (through the Wall Street-owned media which controls the dominant perception of globalization through visual and published forms) reasons for transgressing boundaries and eroding sovereignty and putting the world's wealth into fewer and fewer hands, “profit-maximization” of private companies and the banks financing those companies, and destroying competitors.

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Indian nightmare: GMO killer-cotton (RT Documentary)

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An estimated 290,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide in 20 years. Small farms used to be the country's economic backbone, but now owners struggle to make even a meager profit and drown in debt. For some, the pressure is too much.

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“Are the tar sands a long-term business prospect, a safe haven in which to sink hundreds of billions of dollars for decades to come? Or was the whole idea of flaying a huge, beautiful swath of this continent to exploit an energy source that is guaranteed to help cook the planet merely a brief folly, a bad dream from which we all must awake?” - N. Klein

According to Environment Defence, one of Canada’s leading environmental actions organizations, Keystone XL is a “gateway to tar sands expansion” and, if built, “tar sands pollution will soar.”
In Copenhagen in 2009, Prime Minster Harper weakened Canada’s international carbon target.
Naomi Klein has brought information and has taken part in organized resistance against the extraction pipelines. Fracking and the tar sands development have caused and portent greater environmental damage by exponentially increasing the destabilizing greenhouse gasses, leaks, accidents, and, in many cases, deliberate burial or discharge of toxic materials.
Klein has revealed that Harper’s unyielding policies are all designed to increase growth, “whether it’s free trade, whether it’s the tar sands.” Activist groups have opposed Harper’s policies on issues, such as oil and gas exploration in the Arctic and pipeline construction. There is no question that more of these pipelines, if built, will contribute significantly to climate pollution “three to four times more greenhouse-gas-intensive than conventional crude”. Because of all the carbon buried beneath Alberta’s boreal forest (the lungs of our planet), these will also be mined and ravaged.

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‘Women have been the primary growers of food and nutrition throughout history,’ writes Dr. Vandana Shiva, ‘but today, food is being taken out of our hands and substituted for toxic commodities controlled by global corporations.’

The agricultural combines are killing our sources of nutrition by destroying biodiversity—and creating vitamin A, iron and other deficiencies. Two great ecological challenges of the times are biodiversity erosion and climate change, and both are interconnected in their causes. Artificial monocultures based on chemical inputs not only destroy plant biodiversity but they have destroyed soil biodiversity, which has lead to the emergence of pathogens, new diseases, and more chemical use.
In regions with intensive use of pesticides and GMOs, bees and butterflies are disappearing.
Because of their colony collapse and climate change, lots of organic bees are dying. "Robo-Bees" and pollinator drones are being offered to pick up the pollinating slack under a cloak of “innovation” without any concession of the companies that something had gone horribly wrong – because bees play a vital role in our ecosystem.
In addition to destroying biodiversity, industrial agriculture is the biggest contributor of greenhouse gases (GHGs) which are leading to climate change and climate chaos. The goal of transnational corporations is to consolidate their domination over the various resources of the entire planet, categorized as land, labour, and resources. For agricultural monopolies, GMOs are a part the strategy. For these specific conglomerates, the plan is to monopolize the world's food supply chain. One of their strategies is by first creating/causing problems and then offer so-called 'innovative' solutions.

Dr. Vandana Shiva’s activism and writings present a view into this activities of this specific culprit of ecological abuse, what they are planning to do, and what they have done thus far. Her writings and contributions also offer genuine solutions – one of which is organic farming.

I’ll let her close this section.

“Biodiverse ecological agriculture in women’s hands is a solution not just to the malnutrition crisis, but also the climate crisis.
Organic farming reduces emissions, and also makes agriculture more resilient to climate change. Because organic farming is based on returning organic matter to the soil, it is the most effective means to remove excess carbon in the air, where it does not belong, and putting it in the soil, where it belongs. Both the crisis of debt leading to climate change and the climate crisis have a common solution – a shift to biodiverse ecological agriculture which is free of high cost chemical inputs and dependence on corporate seeds, hence of debt, and also has climate resilience built into it through biodiversity and organic soils.”

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“In the lead in confronting the crisis, throughout the world, are indigenous communities, those who have always upheld the Charter of the Forests.” -- Noam Chomsky.

Since the 2009 coup, Honduras became victim to an explosive growth of environmentally destructive megaprojects that would coldly displace indigenous communities. Almost 30 percent of the country’s land was earmarked for mining concessions, and created a demand for cheap energy to power future mining operations. To meet this need, the government approved hundreds of dam projects throughout the country which entails privatizing rivers, land, and uprooting communities. The unpopular dam building schemes, funded by the Dutch government and the World Bank, was set to ruin the natural habitats of Honduras’ Lenca tribe, and posed a direct risk to their livelihood as well as their local environment because the dam construction would divert rivers that they had traditionally used, and would privatize a whole community's water source.
Before her death, Cáceres, said that she had been experiencing increasingly heavy harassment from supporters of the dam (Honduran security and hired forces). According to a report, some 40 percent of victims of the post-coup wave of repression are indigenous peoples, protesting against hydropower, mining, logging, water and land grabs.

To counter the increasing popular dissent and activism, the Honduran coup regime unleashed a parallel wave of assassinations, intimidation, and repression. Billy Kyte, campaigner at Global Witness, said: “In Honduras and across the world environmental defenders are being shot dead in broad daylight, kidnapped, threatened, or tried as terrorists for standing in the way of so-called development.” Armando Funez, Maria Enriqueta Matute and Ricardo Soto are also popular leaders who had received death threats and warnings to make them stop their activism.

Pictured here, Berta Cáceres at the Global Greengrants’ Summit on Climate Justice and Women’s Rights in August 2014.

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The commons were the source of free sustenance for the general population: food, fuel, construction materials, and a form of welfare, anything really that was essential for life. The commons were also used by people who lacked arable land. It was carefully nurtured by its users over generations, its riches and reserves were available to all who could and needed to use it.
Today the struggle of the commoner to re-establish and get back what is theirs, continues to be challenged by entrenched agglomerated interests by using legal and judicial tactics to obstruct justice. Violence is used too.

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"Britain" comes from "Britannic" (tin islands or land of tin) because tin could be found there. Ancient merchants interested as they are at finding such places had realized this and from their talk the imperial Greeks, through their explorers and geographers, learned where this place was. Upper class Romans were undoubtedly aware of this information. Britain was said to be a very rich source of minerals that the Roman wanted, such as lead, tin, and iron. As Tacitus tells in chapter 12 of Agricola,  “Britain yields gold, silver, and other metals, to make it worth conquering.  The ocean, too, produces pearls, but of a dusky and bluish hue."
This photo dated circa 2nd century AD, shows native and imported labour being worked by the ruthless occupying forces at a tin mine.

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In pages 302-303 of The Norman impact upon England, is a passage, "By the Conquest he acquired a kingdom which was rich not only in its landed wealth but also in respect of its trade." The true reason Duke William invaded England with his band of insatiable armed thieves, who had descended from banished Scandinavian pirates, was its great resources and bountifulness which he noted during a previous visit. Once he was crowned William, he announced that all the lands of England now belonged to him and what followed after that was a cycle of rebellion, more repression, slavery, impoverishment, famine, and depopulation, and just general misery. The area of land that was allotted to his commanders depended on their importance. To important generals he gave entire counties - the word means 'ruled by or under a count' - the word itself descends from a Roman army title.

The image below is a 14th century portrait of King John (John Lackland) on a hunt in a forest that is on land his predecessors took away from and restricted to the ordinary people. The crowned king sits on a grey horse.  His pack of hounds pursues a stag, while a number of rabbits bolt into their holes and several birds watch the hunt from the safety of the trees. Anyone outside the "nobility" if found inside 'their' lands would be taxed or killed. The master could do what they wished to them to remind them that the land they were on was not theirs and that they were merely born to be used for their enrichment.

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The struggle for environmental protection is rooted in a companion of the Magna Carta which most are unaware of, called the Charter of the Forest. This compromised document is the germ of modern concepts of basic, fundamental and universal human rights, legal rights, judicial objectivity, equality under the eyes of an unbiased natural law, and even the constitutions of many republics and democracies. Justice, basically. But the oft-neglected "forgotten" charter will be my focus due to its context of rapacious control of the common spheres over today's environmental concerns that are being generated by a ravenous and cold-blooded extractive industry, propelled (with no restraining influence) by greed, and consequent environmental and peripheral destruction, and widening social disempowerment.

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I will be focusing on the thoughts and activities of three socially minded women across the globe, individuals who have brought light to particular aspects of climate change. Such individuals are striving to correct dominant ideology and the criminalization of customary land usage, which facilitates a predatory destruction of the global commons and attendant criminal policies, so that they may rightfully be made illegal if humanity is
dedicated to reversing climate change (from anthropogenic global warming and other related problems) and stave off collective doom.
Before writing about those women, I would like to say a bit about the Roman exploitation and later Norman partitioning, rule and ultimate depletion of England's resources (towards them), to provide historical context for what I believe is a continuity -- of monopolization.