Help us out by throwing some cash in the bucket:
Click here to read Hightower's personal message about
REAL CHANGE
(not small change)
Hightower Lowdown
"Loyalty to country, always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it." -- Mark Twain
April's Lowdown
The great American medicine show, a spectacle of deceit, manipulation, and flimflammery
Butterflies waft across a beautiful field of spring flowers. A delightful young family bicycles joyously down a country lane. A couple on a park bench leans sensually into each other. A 40-something woman's face radiates with both perfect beauty and internal happiness. "All's right with the world," is the message... as long as you've taken your dosages of Lunesta, Celebrex, Cialis, and Botox.
[read more]
Stay in the Loop
Sign up for email alerts, from breaking news to weekly commentary:
In This Issue
Recent Lowdowns
Subscriber Features
Manage your account by logging in. Don't have an account? Get the Lowdown in the mail every month -- for the unbelievable, ridiculous, low, low price of $15 per year! Save a tree and read it online for just $10 per year!
Dig Deeper
Find more content in these topics: Corporate greed
Search
The General Store
Have a gander at the whole store here...
Home | Contact | RSS | Privacy policy | Copyright Public Intelligence, Inc., all rights reserved 1999-2012
Battling biopiracy
When the poor steal from the rich, it's called crime. When the rich steal from the poor, it's called business.
Monsanto, W.R. Grace, and other global giants are presently engaged in an egregious theft from millions of poor people in India and South America. Citizens there have dubbed it "biopiracy," but these modern-day corporate pirates are too cowardly to confront their victims directly with swords drawn, as the pirates of old did. Instead, they hide behind a batallion of patent lawyers who do their stealing for them.
What they're doing is obtaining patents on indigenous plants that provide food, crops, medicine, and income (among other things) for the people in these impoverished regions.
Basmati rice, the Neem tree, mustard, and the castor plant are among the living things that various corporations now claim "belong" to them, even though the companies did nothing to develop these plants except file the patents.
RiceTec Inc., for example, has grabbed 17 patents on Basmati rice, a variety that was bred over centuries by poor farmers in India. With a patent, RiceTec can claim that farmers who previously were free to plant Basmati rice from saved seeds must now pay the corporation a royalty.
Farmers are uniting to challenge these patents and fight such crass corporate thievery through the Global Campaign Against Biopiracy. To learn more, contact Dr. Vandana Shiva by e-mail: vshiva@vsnl.com.