Democracy Now - Vandana Shiva - Dec 1, 2019 - Video 3:47
Twenty years ago, tens of thousands of activists gathered in Seattle to protest the World Trade Organization and stop executives from signing a global trade deal that many felt was harmful to environmental and workers’ rights. Indian scholar and environmental activist Vandana Shiva reflects on the WTO’s threats to food sovereignty — stripping farmers of their autonomy through corporate seed patents. The WTO “has given control to the poison cartel over our seed and food.” She also says the WTO has contributed to today’s global wealth inequality, consolidating the power of billionaires. “Bill Gates … got rules written so he would not have to pay taxes in transport or transfer. Jeff Bezos shipping goods around and pay no taxes anywhere — these trillionaires are children of the WTO rules,” Shiva says, arguing that the uprisings against neoliberal austerity all over the world today are a part of the legacy of the WTO protests. “The brutality and limitless greed of the handful of corporations and billionaires is now really reaching ecocidal and genocidal limits.”