Monsanto

Founded in 1901 to make artificial sweeteners, Monsanto has had a long history of controversial products, using litigation and sophisticated lobbying and public relations strategies to battle critics. Many of its products have produced harmful side-effects, including chemicals such as PCBs and dioxin (a by-product of chlorinated herbicides, including Agent Orange), rBGH (bovine growth hormone) and certain herbicides and genetically modified seeds.

Pelao Carvallo

Monsanto brought GM into Paraguay in the same way that it has usually done elsewhere: by smuggling. And smuggling imposed GM soya, Monsanto soon achieved its legalisation by means of a powerful lobbying apparatus. And along with this soya came aerial and ground fumigation of glyphosate, and with that poisonous pesticide came diseases, contamination, malformation and deaths. The parliamentary coup d’etat occurred not long after (15-22 June 2012), effected to a large degree by Monsanto's agents at the Paraguayan parliament.

With this issue we celebrate the first year of the War Profiteers' News - an effort by War Resisters' International to provide resources for and about campaigns against war profiteering. We hope you find it a valuable resource.

One of the main sections of the newsletter is the “War Profiteer of the Month”. In this past year we have profiled:

a company providing services to the military - Sodexho;

Monsanto has been by far the most prominent and controversial corporation promoting the introduction of biotechnology in agriculture. The company has a long and messy history of manufacturing hazardous chemicals. Their products have included chemical warfare agents (Agent Orange), industrial materials (PCBs), food additives (NutraSweet), agrochemicals and pharmaceuticals. Monsanto was the first major agrochemical and pharmaceutical company to pursue the ‘life sciences’ concept.

War profiteers are not only those that benefit from the arms industry, but also those that impulse military action and elaborate strategies to profit from war. Among war profiteers we can include:

Large private corporations

Here we refer to the transnational and multinational corporations that need control over our natural resources and our national territories in order to support their hegemonic project and so that relations of economic and political solidarity cannot be improved (which would permit true development of Latin American countries).