Vandana Shiva speaks at Sydney Uni forum

BY PAUL BENEDEK

SYDNEY — Former nuclear physicist and social justice campaigner Dr Vandana Shiva was the guest presenter for a forum at Sydney University on October 20, entitled "Beyond Corporate Globalisation, towards Earth Democracy".

Shiva, who is director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology in India, denounced the way corporate globalisation "has been imposed on us as the ocean we all must swim in".

In particular, Shiva denounced First World corporations' imposition of intellectual property rights, using the example of farmers who, by simply saving their seeds, are breaking interlectual property laws. "Everything is turned into a commodity, even natural reproduction", she said.

Shiva explained how the World Trade Organisation's push for further trade "freedom" at the September WTO summit in Cancun could mean that a Californian company is able to sue the Canadian government for not making Canadian water supplies tradeable.

"People who have researched and started to expose the effects of corporate globalisation end up removed from their positions, from universities", Shiva said, joking that she also would have been eliminated if she hadn't already resigned from her position.

Shiva finished by recounting the moving story of a Korean social justice campaigner who became a martyr at Cancun. "Carrying a sign reading 'WTO kills farmers', he climbed a barricade and stabbed himself. A note found on him read: 'I am taking my life so other farmers may live. Our destinies are out of our control'."

From Green Left Weekly, November 5, 2003.

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From GLW issue 560