Food crisis Vs Financial crisis

Food giants Mars and Cargill, and the World Wildlife Fund, are partnering with the US Defense Department to role play future food crises.

Participants start off declaring that poverty alleviation is the key to reducing terrorism and war and that the US private sector can provide the technology we need to feed the world.

After a while the executives sound much less concerned with world hunger and terrorism than shareholder value and global markets.

This discussion took place yesterday as part of the the Food Chain Reaction programme.

No such thing as a free gift

Bill Gates is a well known champion of GM food technology in Africa and the Gates Foundation hugely influences global health and agricultural policy.

This Guardian article highlights The Gates Foundation’s investments in global food companies Monsanto and Cargill.

The newspaper in which this article appeared is sponsored by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

GM Food

This Monsanto video is for an initiative that receives funding from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

But not everyone wants GM food in Africa.

WEMA_report_may2015

 

This 2015 Paper on Bill Gates’s Agricultural Neo-Colonialism in Africa is by the African Centre for Biodiversity

Sociologist Linsey McGoey recently wrote No Such Thing as a Free Gift — a book about Bill Gates and Philanthrocapitalism.

Here she discusses her book with the Hudson Institute, an influential US think tank.

 

McGoey’s book builds on the Charles Piller 2007 article on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s finances.

This is a 2014 follow up:

Jo Cox

The recent tragic murder of former Oxfam policy chief and MP, Jo Cox, highlights the fact that the Global Development Agenda at the G8, UN, World Economic Forum, Oxfam and Save the Children is run by people whom the public knows very little about.

According to her LinkedIn profile Cox worked for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for several months before becoming an MP and did several years at Oxfam in the UK, Brussels, and New York.

Although she was one of the MPs to nominate Corbyn, she later admitted she regretted it and eventually voted for the Blairite candidate Liz Kendall.

Her credentials as a right-winger were reinforced when she spoke on BBC Breakfast the day after the recent 2016 local elections to claim that Labour had performed badly.

Even as she spoke the results on the screen said quite clearly that the Labour Party had won more than double the amount of councils in England than the Tories.

TTIP, Syria, GM Food, Blair

Like the other Blairites, Jo Cox was silent on TTIP, which it is feared will allow US firms to sell GM food in the UK. This is consistent with her position of World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, her work with Oxfam and Bill Gates, and with her close relationship with Gordon Brown’s wife Sarah, and fellow MP and former World Economic Forum director, Stephen Kinnock.

In 2010 The World Economic Forum (WEF) produced the Global Redesign Initiative (GRI). The WEF is the place where Public meets Private. GRI is criticised in a Transnational Institute report here.

The WEF was founded in 1971 and calls for more Public Private Partnerships (PPP) — the financing system that has effectively bankrupted the UK’s NHS.

In her favour, Jo Cox was on the Department of Communities and Local Government Select Committee and is the only person to have asked any decent questions during the ongoing inquiry into Local Council Loans also known as LOBOs in which many councils in the UK were missold loans by large banks like Barclays and RBS.

But she did not vote against the UK bombing Syria, instead she abstained.

Her widow Brendan Cox is good friends with Justin Forsyth who is now at UNICEF but was also at Oxfam and Save the Children and is reputed to be close to both Gordon Brown and David Cameron.

Forsyth went from Oxfam to Downing Street in 2004 to organise Make Poverty History for New Labour and portray Blair and Brown  as humanitarians not warmongers.

When Brown lost the election in 2010 Forsyth joined Save the Children.

Forsyth then organised for Bill Gates to take centre stage and talk about feeding the world at Hyde Park during the G8 weekend in 2013 just like he had done in 2005.

Raj Patel said at the time that the 2013 G8’s stance on supplying nutrition to the poor was an example of the depoliticisation of poverty.

This was the same 2013 G8 at which David Cameron and Barack Obama announced the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)

 

Forsyth also appointed former PR man David Cameron’s wife Samantha Cameron as an ambassador of Save the Children in 2011.

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In November 2014 Forsyth controversially allowed Tony Blair to be awarded a Global Legacy Award for his philanthropy work.

Further scandal followed when Brendan Cox was sacked from Save the Children in 2015 after allegations of misconduct.

Like Jo Cox, Brendan Cox is a member of the World Economic Forum Young Leaders Forum and worked as an advisor to Gordon Brown with Justin Forsyth before joining him at Save the Children in 2010.

The thing that becomes clear upon researching these characters is the blurred boundaries between Charity, Philanthropy, Media, PR, Parliamentary Politics, Foreign Policy and Big Business.

Big PR

Save the Children’s Chairman Alan Parker runs PR firm Brunswick and is known to have had clients from Mining, Banking, Defence, Nuclear, Oil, Gas, Coal, Biomass, Fracking, Supermarkets, and Publishing sectors.

Ex PM Gordon Brown’s wife Sarah Brown used to work for Parker at Brunswick and Gordon Brown himself is Godfather to Parker’s son.

Current PM David Cameron attended Parker’s wedding and holidayed with him in South Africa in 2008.

In his book Mad Men & Bad Men: What Happened When British Politics Met Advertising Sam Delaney outlines the effect advertisers Saatchi and Saatchi and PR man Tim Bell had on Tory policy in the 20th Century and the similar techniques that got New Labour in.

If Delaney were to do an up to date version he would have to include Parker’s Brunswick and Mandelson’s friend Roland Rudd’s Finsbury International.

Rudd’s sister Amber happens to be Energy Secretary and appeared in full attack dog mode in the TV debates defending the role of Britain in the EU.

She was also a consultant on the film four weddings and a funeral.

The Freuds

The last piece in the PR jigsaw is the Freuds. The revelations about Clement Freud being a serial paedophile and rapist had minimal impact despite their shocking nature.

Clement Freud’s son Matthew runs a top PR firm and was married to Rupert Murdoch’s daughter for many years.

Matthew’s daughter Emma is married to Richard Curtis who directed four weddings and a funeral and runs comic relief.

Comic relief use Matthew Freud’s agency and bring Bob Geldof and Bill Gates in the picture too.

Bob Geldof