In this new age of globalization, the world is increasingly being drawn into new kinds of wars which are far removed from nuclear weapons and mass destruction. These wars have to do with ecology and the ethical limits to profit; the enemies are coercive free trade treaties, technologies of production based on violence, genetic engineering and nano-technologies.
Seed wars, or the control of foodgrains, are being fought through Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) which impose new property rights over seeds, thus taking them beyond the reach of farmers. Water monopolies, sought by multinationals like Coke and Pepsi deny people access to water, both by carving out private property within public water range, and by privatizing public services, increasing the cost of water by 200-300 per cent. Sharing and exchanging biodiversity and its knowledge often gets converted to piracy through process patents by individuals or organizations, who freely appropriate biodiversity knowledge or practice from indigenous communities.
This major new work by the author of the best-selling Staying Alive, and winner of the Alternative Nobel Prize, 1993, forcefully establishes the relationship between globalization as an economic war, and militarism and fundamentalisms as political and cultural wars in the project of global hegemony.
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