THE TRACES OF BAYER AND MONSANTO IN THE US COUP AGAINST VENEZUELA
Whitney Webb
May 8, 2019 , 11:00 a.m. .
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Venezuelan peasant in the mountains of Carayaca, Venezuela (Photo: Archivo)
Caracas, Venezuela - As the political crisis unfolds in Venezuela, much has been said about the clear interests of the Trump Administration in the privatization and exploitation of the Venezuelan oil reserves, the largest in the world, by giant firms such as Chevron and ExxonMobil
But the influence of another notorious US company, Monsanto - now a subsidiary of Bayer - has not been mentioned.
While numerous Latin American nations have become "save whoever can" for biotech companies and their affiliates, Venezuela has been one of the few countries to fight with Monsanto and other giants of international agrochemicals and win. However, since that victory - which was won under the Chavez mandate - the opposition supported by the United States has been working to reverse it.
Now, with the parallel government of Juan Guaidó trying to take power with the backing of the United States, it is revealing that the highest political contributors pushing for a regime change in Venezuela have close ties to Monsanto and large financial actions in Bayer. .
In recent months, Monsanto's most controversial and notorious product - the pesticide glyphosate, branded Roundup, and linked to cancer in recent rulings in US courts - has threatened Bayer's financial future like never before, like a litany of new legal cases barking at the gates of Bayer. It seems that many of the forces in the United States that now seek to overthrow the Venezuelan government hope that a new government led by Guaidó will provide Bayer with a new and much needed market for its agrochemicals and transgenic seeds, particularly those products that now face vetoes. in countries around the world, including defoliated and still poisoned Vietnam .
THE ANTICHAVISM SEEKS TO REVERSE THE LAW OF SEEDS AND THE VETO OF TRANSGENICS
In 2004, then-President Hugo Chávez surprised many when he announced the cancellation of Monsanto's plans to plant 500,000 acres of genetically modified soybean (SGM) seeds in Venezuelan lands. The termination of the contract led to an ad hoc ban on all SGMs in the country, a move praised by groups of local farmers and environmental activists. In contrast to the anti-transgenic movements that emerged in other countries, Venezuela's resistance to GM crops was based more on concerns about the country's food sovereignty and the protection of farmers' way of life.
Although the veto has failed to keep GM's products away from Venezuela - to the extent that it has imported most of its food, much of it originating in countries that are among the world's largest producers of GM foods - a pristine effect has It has been to prevent companies like Monsanto and other large agrochemical and seed companies from gaining significant ground in the Venezuelan market.
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Hugo Chávez and Lula da Silva greet in a visit to El Tigre, 2009 (Photo: Ariana Cubillos / AP)
In 2013, a new seed law was almost approved that could have allowed SGMs to be sold in Venezuela through a legal vacuum. The law, which was authorized by a member of the chavista United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), was protested by farmers, indigenous activists, environmentalists and eco-socialist groups, which led to its transformation into what was called the "Law of Seeds". from town". That law, passed in 2015, went far beyond the original 2004 ban by vetoing not only the SGM but also many toxic agrochemicals, while strengthening the varied native seeds with the creation of the National Seed Institute.
Immediately after the new seed law was passed in 2015, the pro-US opposition led by the Democratic Unity Table (MUD) - a group made up of numerous parties funded by the United States, including Voluntad Popular de Guaidó - took over of the National Assembly. Until the Supreme Court of Venezuela dissolved parliament in 2017, MUD legislation tried to repeal the seed law on several occasions. Those who were in favor of it called the law "anti-scientific" and damaging the economy.
Despite the decision of the Supreme Court of 2017, the National Assembly has continued its meetings, but the body has no real power under the current Venezuelan government. However, if he is overthrown and Guaidó - the "interim president" who is also president of the dissolved National Assembly - comes to power, it seems almost certain that the "People's Seed Law" will be one of the first pieces of legislation to go up to the scaffold.
THE AEI AXIS
Some of the key figures and noisier voices supporting the Trump Administration's efforts to overthrow the Venezuelan government are well connected with a particular think tank: the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). For example, John Bolton -now national security adviser Trump and an important player aggressive policy against Venezuela was a senior member ( senior fellow ) AEI to his current position. In it, Bolton advises the president on issues of foreign policy and national security while doing the same with the Secretaries of State and Defense. Since then, he has been pushing for military action in Venezuela, according to media reports.
Another key figure in Trump's policy against Venezuela -Elliott Abrams, the special representative of the State Department for Venezuela- has been regularly included in the AEI meetings and as a guest in panels and podcasts. According to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Abrams' current role gives him "the responsibility for all things related to our efforts to restore democracy" in Venezuela. Other top management figures, including Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, were invitedto the "secret" conclave of the AEI in last March. As MintPress and other media have reported, Guaidó proclaimed himself "interim president" of Venezuela at the request of Pence. Pompeo is also intimately involved in the direction of Trump's policy on Venezuela, being the president's chief adviser on foreign affairs.
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Mike Pompeo speaks at the headquarters of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, 2018 (Photo: Susan Walsh / AP)
Other connections of the Trump Administration include the Secretary of Education Betsy De Vos, who was previously on the board of the AEI.
AEI has long been part of the "neoconservative" establishment and employs recognized neoconservatives such as Fred Kagan - the architect of Iraq's "insurgent troops" - and Paul Wolfowitz, the architect of the Iraq war. His connections with the administration of George W. Bush are particularly notable and controversial, while 20 employees of the AEI were put in high positions during that term. Many of them, like Bolton, have enjoyed a new prominence in the Trump Administration.
Other key officials of Bush joined the AEI soon after they left their positions in the administration. One was Roger Noriega, who was a US representative to the Organization of American States (OAS) during the failed coup supported by the United States in 2002 against Hugo Chávez and who had been the Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs. 2003 to 2005, where he was extremely influential in the policies of the administration regarding Venezuela and Cuba.
Since leaving the Bush Administration and joining the AEI promptly, Noriega has been instrumental in promoting unfounded allegations but with the objective of painting the government of President Nicolás Maduro as a threat to national security, for example by stating that Venezuela helps Iran to acquire nuclear weapons and hosts Lebanese Hezbollah soldiers. He also lobbied Congress to support opposition leader Leopoldo López, Guaidó's political mentor and leader of his political party, Voluntad Popular.
Not only that, Noriega also met with Martin Rodil , a Venezuelan exile who worked for the IMF, and José Cardenas, who served in the Bush Administration, to found Vision Americas , a private risk and lobbying firm that was hired to "to support the efforts of the Honduran private sector and thus help consolidate the democratic transition in their country" after the 2009 coup in Honduras. In recent months, Noriega and his associates have been well focused on Venezuela, with Cardenas offering Trump public advice on how to "precipitate Maduro's departure," while Rodil has offered him publicly. "Get a deal" if you have assets from the Venezuelan government.
While the AEI is best known for its hard line, it is also a promoter of great interests in agriculture. Since 2000, he has hosted several conferences auguring the "biotechnology" and the SGM, and has strongly promoted the work of the Monsanto lobbyist, Jon Entine, who was a visiting professor of the AEI for many years. The AEI also has long-standing connections with Dow Chemical.
The most likely reason why the AEI is interested in promoting biotechnology, however, can be found in its links with Monsanto. In 2013, The Nation acquired a document from the 2009 AEI , obtained by an erroneous procedure and that had no intention of publishing, which revealed the biggest contributors of the thought tank. The form, known as the "taxpayer program," revealed that the two largest donors simultaneously were the Donors Capital fund and the billionaire Paul Singer.
The Donors Capital fund, which continues to be a major contributor to the AEI, is linked to the interests of Monsanto through the vice president of its board, Kimberly O. Dennis, who is currently a member of the National Council of the AEI. According to the AEI, the National Council is composed of "community and business leaders from all over the country who are committed to the success of the AEI and serve as ambassadors of the AEI, providing us with advice, perspective and guidance".
Dennis is the long-time president of the Searle Freedom Trust, which was founded in 1988 by Daniel Searle after overseeing the sale of her family's pharmaceutical company - GD Searle and Company - to Monsanto in 1985 for $ 2.7 billion. The money that Searle made with the merger was used to fund the trust that now finances the AEI and other right-wing think tanks. Searle was also close to Donald Rumsfeld, who managed GD Searle and Co. for years and was Secretary of Defense with Gerald Ford and George W. Bush. Searle was also administrator of the Hudson Institute, which once employed Elliott Abrams .
Before the family company-which gained notoriety for falsifying its investigations into the safety of its sweeteners, aspartame or NutraSweet-was sold to Monsanto, GD Searle executives close to Daniel Searle increased its prominence within the firm. Robert Shapiro, who was for a long time the lawyer of GD Searle and head of the NutraSweet division, would become the vice president, president and then CEO of Monsanto. Notably, Daniel Searle's grandson, D. Gideon Searle, was a director of the AEI until recently.
THE RUBIO-SINGER-BAYER RELATIONSHIP
However, it is the largest individual taxpayer of the AEI according to the harsh "taxpayer program" which says more about the private biotechnological interests that guide the Trump Administration's policy against Venezuela. Paul Singer, the controversial billionaire and financial fund manager, has long been the largest donor of neoconservative and Zionist causes, helping to finance the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), successor to the Project for a New American Century (PNAC); and the neoconservative and Islamophobic Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), in addition to the AEI.
Singer is one of the most notable and important political contributors to Senator Marco Rubio (Republican, from Florida) and has been intimately involved in the recent chaos in Venezuela. He has been called as one of the architects of the current administration's regime change policy, and was the largest donor of Rubio's presidential campaign, while he is a key figure behind the controversial "dossier" about Donald Trump compiled by Fusion GPS . In fact, Singer has been the first person to hire to Fusion GPS to make an "opposition research" about Trump, however, Singer has since evaded much scrutiny for his role in the creation of the dossier probably because he became a key contributor to Trump after his presidential election in 2016, giving $ 1 million to the opening fund of his administration.
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Paul Singer has raised millions of dollars for Marco Rubio's campaigns (Photo: Moritz Hager / World Economic Forum)
Singer has a varied history in South America, although it has been relatively silent around Venezuela. However, a long-time executive of Singer's financial fund, Jay Newman, recently told Bloomberg that a Guaidó government would recognize that international creditors "are not the enemy," and implied that Newman himself was pondering whether to join the growing "list of veteran bonds that have already begun to be quoted, anticipating the restructuring of a debt of 60 billion dollars once the one supported by Washington, Guaidó, overthrows President Nicolás Maduro and takes control." In addition, the Washington Free Beacon, which is largely funded by Singer, has been a verbal advocate of regime change in Venezuela by the Trump Administration.
Beyond that, Singer's Elliott Management Corporation gave Roger Noriega $ 60,000 in 2007 to lobby on sovereign debt issues and for "federal promotion on behalf of US investors in Latin America." During the time that Noriega was under Singer's payroll, he wrote articles linking Argentina and Venezuela in Iran's non-existent nuclear program. At that time, Singer was aggressively pursuing the Argentine government in an effort to obtain more money from that country before the default of the sovereign debt.
While Singer has been silent about Venezuela, he has been making business decisions that have raised eyebrows, as he has been increasing his participation in Bayer . This move seems strange because of Bayer's financial problems, a direct result of the turnaround in legal cases regarding its link with glyphosate and Monsanto's cancer. The first decision that caused a problem for Monsanto and its new related company Bayer took place last August, but Singer increased its investment in the company since December , and it was already clear at that time that Bayer's financial problems related to the cases of glyphosate were just beginning.
Since the beginning of 2019, Bayer's problems with the Monsanto merger have only gotten worse, with the CEO of Bayer recently declaring that the lawsuits have "severely affected" stock prices and the company's financial performance.
FORCING THE OPENING OF A NEW MARKET FOR ROUNDUP
Part of Singer's interests in Bayer may be related to Venezuela, given that Juan Guaidó's "Country Plan" to "rescue" the Venezuelan economy includes a focus on the country's agricultural sector. Notably, prior to and under Chavismo, agricultural productivity and investment in that sector have taken a back seat to oil production; as a result, 25% of Venezuelan land is being used for agrarian purposes despite the fact that the nation has a rich arable land. As a consequence, Venezuela needs to import many of its food from abroad, many of them originated in Colombia or the United States.
Under Chávez and his successor Maduro, there has been a new approach to small-scale farming, food sovereignty and organic agriculture. However, if Maduro is overthrown and Guaidó is mobilized to implement his "Plan País," the accommodation of the opposition with foreign corporations, the interests of the American architects of the coup at Bayer / Monsanto, and the past efforts of the opposition to reverse The veto of the SGM suggests that a new market for Bayer / Monsanto products - particularly glyphosate - will open.
South America has long been a key market for Monsanto and -while the company's problems began to accumulate before the merger with Bayer- became vital for the company due to the few environmental and consumer regulations in relation to many Western countries. . In recent years, when South American governments had opened their countries to more "market friendly" policies in their agricultural sectors, Monsanto made millions.
For example, when Brazil sought to expand investment in biotechnology in 2012, Monsanto saw its sales increase by only SGM of corn by 21% , generating additional profits of 1 billion dollars for the company. A similar scenario is needed more than ever for Bayer / Monsanto, while legal problems reduced the company's profits last year.
With countries in the world weighing proscriptions for glyphosate as a result of rising litigation over chemical linkages to cancer, Bayer needs a new market to avoid financial ruin. As Singer now has a significant stake in the company, he - along with the politicians and think tanks he funds - could see promising the end of the EMS veto that a Guaidó government would provide.
Also, given that Guaidó's top adviser wants the Trump Administration to have a direct role in Venezuela's governance if Maduro is overthrown, it seems likely that Singer would leverage its connections to keep Bayer / Monsanto afloat despite the growing controversy that surrounds glyphosate. Such behavior on the part of Singer should not be surprising in light of the international financial means that have characterized him as a "ruthless opportunist" and "too aggressive".
Such an outcome would be to maintain the growth of the profit margins of Monsanto and related companies that have continued their expansion in countries where there were coups backed by the United States. For example, after the coup in Ukraine in 2014, loans given to Ukraine by the IMF and the World Bank forced the country to open and expand the use of "biotechnology" and GM crops in its sectoragrario, and Monsanto, in particular, It made millions while the veto of the SGM and its associated agrochemicals was reversed by the government backed by the United States. If Maduro is overthrown, a similar scenario will probably occur in Venezuela, as the opposition announced its intentions to erase its institutions to a large extent. just a few days after Guaidó proclaimed himself "interim president".
Whitney Webb is an American journalist of MintPress News, based in Chile. He has contributed to several independent media such as Global Research, EcoWatch, Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. In 2019 she won the Serena Shim award for "her uncompromising integrity as a journalist."
This article was published in English on MintPress on May 6, 2019, the translation for Mission Verdad was made by Ernesto Cazal.
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