Trump Has Revolutionized Executive Power

As we move toward the end of the Trump era, we need to reckon with the changes his administration has wrought in the American system of government. The most significant is the enormous concentration of power, not just in the executive branch as a whole, but in the office of the president. Any successor administration, Republican or Democratic, will inherit these powers, and will have to decide how it wants to define the limits of executive authority in the future.

The U.S. Constitution limits presidential power in a number of ways. Article I says that laws and budgets are made by Congress, and Article II says the president’s chief duty is to see that the laws are “faithfully executed.” He can choose his own cabinet officers, but they must be confirmed by the Senate. The president has more discretionary authority with regard to foreign policy and national security, where he is designated commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Yet even in this sphere, the right to declare war and ratify treaties is given to Congress.

Donald Trump has tried to expand executive authority in any number of ways. From Day One of his second administration, he has issued a blizzard of executive orders that have in effect usurped Congress’s legislative powers. In some cases he has acted under obscure legal powers, many of which were later found by the courts to be inappropriate. In other cases he has simply acted illegally or unconstitutionally. Among the many examples are:

1. Ending birthright citizenship;
2. His failure to spend money appropriated by Congress;
3. The closing of entire departments, such as the U.S. Agency for International Development, that had been established by Congress;
4. Attempting to assert federal authority over election administration;
5. Using emergency powers to impose tariffs in an arbitrary and discretionary manner;
6. Firing federal employees protected by statute;
7. Launching a major war without seeking authorization from Congress.

The lower courts have blocked many of these initiatives, and the Supreme Court has reversed both the birthright citizenship order and the tariffs imposed last year under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).

However, the Supreme Court has not yet ruled on many of the other cases, and in one case clearly ruled in favor of the administration. That was Trump v. Slaughter, decided last month, which overturned an earlier Supreme Court decision called Humphrey’s Executor. That precedent, set in 1935, upheld the right of Congress to impose limits on the president’s power to change the composition of the boards of supposedly “independent” multi-member regulatory agencies like the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission.

The Slaughter decision may seem technical, and has received relatively little public attention. The one multi-member federal agency that the public (and more importantly the markets) care about is the Federal Reserve Board, where Trump had already tried to fire one member, Lisa Cook. The Supreme Court exempted the Fed from its general evisceration of Humphrey’s Executor, arguing somewhat speciously that the Fed has a different historical status from other agencies and therefore its board could remain protected from political interference.

The Slaughter decision, however, has huge implications for the way America will be governed in the future, and it is only the first shoe to drop in a long-term conservative effort to remake the federal executive. Humphrey’s Executor had been the long-term target of conservatives under a doctrine of the “unitary executive.” They argued on originalist grounds that the Constitution gave executive authority to the president alone, who, as a democratically legitimated official, could not be restricted by Congress in his control over the executive branch.

There is a certain logic to this position, one that has been supported not just by conservatives but by certain progressives as well. Most prominent in the latter camp was President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who in the 1930s sought to remove William Humphrey (who was accused of blocking FDR’s legislative agenda) as a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission. Humphrey’s removal was overturned by a conservative Supreme Court.

To this one could add the following argument. No one questions the right of the president to appoint, with the Senate’s approval, Cabinet secretaries and other senior officials, or to unilaterally remove them. The president’s right to appoint or remove the heads of agencies led by a single individual, like the CDC or NASA, is not contested. So why should those with multi-member boards be treated differently?

The argument I would make against the theory of the unitary executive is not based on any originalist reading of the Constitution. It is rather based on a pragmatic observation. Today’s executive branch is so large, sprawling, and powerful that there needs to be a separation of powers within the executive, and not simply between the executive and the other two branches of government. The chief argument in favor of such a separation has to do with the preservation of the expertise that is necessary to run a modern state.

We see this most clearly in the case of the Federal Reserve, which in the Slaughter decision was somehow exempted from political control. Painful experience with inflation has taught the United States and other countries around the world that central banks must be made independent. The incentives of politicians are almost always short-term and aimed at their political self-interest. The independent structure of the Fed and its multi-member board protects it from politicization and enhances its ability to operate according to the judgment of the experienced professionals who run it-i.e. PhD economists and practitioners with deep experience with financial markets.

Quite apart from the illegality and unconstitutionality of many of the Trump administration’s actions, there is also its incompetence.

That incompetence has been on display since the beginning of the second term, when Trump appointed a series of individuals with no expertise in the agencies they were to run: Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, TV commentator Pete Hegseth as Defense Secretary, vaccine denier Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services, and podcaster Kash Patel as head of the FBI.

The consequences are clear: by sidelining regional experts throughout State, Defense, and the intelligence community, for example, there was no one to warn the president that launching a massive air assault on Iran might lead to the closing of the Strait of Hormuz.

The Justice Department likewise has been diverted from its role as impartial enforcer of the law to being an instrument for Donald Trump’s personal revenge campaign. By forcing out career prosecutors, the department found its cases susceptible to being overturned by the courts and indictments rejected by grand juries across the country.

Underlying the theory of the unitary executive is a flawed concept of hierarchical organization that is as incorrect as it is widespread. “Principal-agent theory” is commonly used by economists and other social scientists to understand the dysfunctions of hierarchies. All authority lies with the principal; agents are simply expected to carry out the wishes of the principal and problems arise only when the agents follow their own agenda.

As Nobel laureate Herbert Simon pointed out many years ago, this is not how real-world organizations work. Agents, including front-line workers at the bottom of hierarchies, often have more expertise and local knowledge than the principals who give them orders. As a result, authority in many organizations flows from the agents to the principal. This is a truth understood in well-functioning militaries, which give their junior officers substantial authority and advise senior commanders not to micro-manage.

So too in the U.S. government. The knowledge of how to deal with an airline accident, or a sudden disease outbreak, or indeed a financial crisis, will not lie with the democratically-elected politician at the top of the hierarchy, but rather with the experts who have the training and experience to act. A well-designed government needs to have mechanisms for protecting that expertise.

Multi-member commissions are a very imperfect means of doing this, but they do at least make it more difficult for an incompetent president to do his destructive work. There are other important protections for expertise as well, such as requirements for “for cause” removals, which protect officials from arbitrary firing. Such constraints have been a clear target of the Trump administration.

Another critical protection for expertise lies in Senate confirmation: in most administrations, the Senate will simply not confirm blatantly unqualified people for senior positions. One of the greatest failures of the current Congress is its unwillingness to exert this authority in so many prominent cases.

The Trump administration’s war on expertise has only just begun. Greater political control over senior officials in multi-member commissions will have limited day-to-day impact on most citizens. But believers in the unitary executive want to extend that control to the whole of the federal government, such that every government worker, down to your local postmaster, will be subject to removal by a political boss.

This assertion of executive authority was attempted at the end of the first Trump administration with an executive order creating a new “Schedule F” employment designation into which the whole of the civil service could be moved, and then fired or replaced at will. Schedule F was rescinded by the Biden administration, but has re-emerged in the second Trump term as “Schedule P/C.”

This is not a casual innovation off the top of Donald Trump’s head. The authors of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 spent their four years out of office designing a policy that would allow them to radically reshape the entire federal bureaucracy, and to eliminate the checks and balances that Congress had inserted over the years to limit the president’s power. The overturning of Humphrey’s Executor is only part one of this plan; the administration’s war against the “deep state” also seeks to invalidate the 1883 Pendleton Act, which first created a merit-based civil service. This will return the United States to the 19th-century spoils (or patronage) system, whereby not just top policy-makers but all government officials were put in place by a politician in return for political loyalty.

The spoils system was known for its corruption at all levels of government, from Credit Mobilier to Tammany Hall. Today we have massive corruption at the top levels of government, beginning with Donald Trump and his friends and family. But the elimination of a professional civil service will open up vast new areas for corrupt behavior in every city and county in the United States. Project 2025 is unapologetic about this, arguing that the patronage system was unfairly criticized.

The next president - and there will be a next president- will have to confront the question of how much of the authority claimed by Donald Trump he or she will want to retain. This is a complicated question, because the status quo ante was very problematic. As I’ve argued in previous articles, the government really has become over-constrained in its ability to take action. A new president will face many obstacles to implementing their desired agenda, and will be strongly tempted to use the kind of executive power claimed by Donald Trump. The next president needs to come into office not just with new policies, but with clear plans for how to use the mechanisms of government to get them done.

The time to start thinking about these questions is now: we cannot put this off until January 20, 2029, when a new president will be facing immediate political pressures to act. The Republicans spent their four years out of power coming up with clever strategies to get their way, which they have been implementing in the second term. Those backing a post-Trump administration need to do the same.

I hope to be able to outline some of the ways that authority can be structured in future articles.

Robert Reich - Trump cumpriu as suas promessas?

A administração Trump começou a semana a contar mentiras sobre o assassinato de Alex Pretti. Agora, Trump voltou a mentir sobre a economia para mudar de assunto. Trump mente como qualquer outro ser humano respira.
O primeiro ano de Trump no cargo tem sido repleto de mentiras e promessas quebradas. Estamos no auge das eleições intercalares, pelo que não é demasiado cedo para examinar o que prometeu e como cumpriu as suas promessas.
No vídeo desta semana, analiso as 10 maiores promessas de campanha de Trump e o que aconteceu desde que assumiu o cargo.
Duvido que precise de ser convencido, mas talvez queira partilhar o vídeo com o seu "Tio Bob" trumpista ou com qualquer outra pessoa que ainda acredite que ele está a fazer o que prometeu.
Está a sentir a "Nova Era de Ouro"? Está a gostar dos preços dos imóveis e da energia "reduzidos para metade"? E a satisfação de ter paz em todo o mundo? E quanto à promessa de divulgar TODOS os arquivos de Epstein?
São tantas as promessas para referir que nunca adivinharia qual é que ele de facto cumpriu.

Freedom of the Press Worldwide 2025

The ongoing wave of media shutdowns

1. According to data collected by RSF for the 2025 World Press Freedom Index, in 160 out of the 180 countries assessed, media outlets achieve financial stability “with difficulty” — or “not at all.”
2. Worse, news outlets are shutting down due to economic hardship in nearly a third of countries globally. This is the case in the United States (57th, down 2 places) Tunisia (129th, down 11 places) and Argentina (87th, down 21 places).
3. The situation in Palestine (163rd) is disastrous. In Gaza, the Israeli army has destroyed newsrooms, killed nearly 200 journalists and imposed a total blockade on the strip for over 18 months. In Haiti (112th, down 18 places), the lack of political stability has also plunged the media economy into chaos.
4. Even relatively well-ranked countries such as South Africa (27th) and New Zealand (16th) are not immune to such challenges.
5. Thirty-four countries stand out for the mass closures of their media outlets, which has led to the exile of journalists in recent years. This is especially true in Nicaragua (172nd, down 9 places), Belarus (166th), Iran (176th), Myanmar (169th), Sudan (156th), Azerbaijan (167th) and Afghanistan (175th), where economic difficulties compound the effects of political pressure.

The United States: leader of the economic depression

In the United States (57th, down 2 places), where the economic indicator has dropped by more than 14 points in two years, vast regions are turning into news deserts. Local journalism is bearing the brunt of the economic downturn: over 60 per cent of journalists and media experts surveyed by RSF in Arizona, Florida, Nevada and Pennsylvania agree that it is “difficult to earn a living wage as a journalist,” and 75 per cent believe that “the average media outlet struggles for economic viability.” The country’s 28-place drop in the social indicator reveals that the press operates in an increasingly hostile environment.

President Donald Trump’s second term has already intensified this trend as false economic pretexts are used to bring the press into line. This led to the abrupt end to funding for the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which affected several newsrooms — including Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty — and, as a result, over 400 million citizens worldwide were suddenly deprived of access to reliable information. Similarly, the freeze on funding for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) halted US international aid, throwing hundreds of news outlets into a critical state of economic instability and forcing some to shut down — particularly in Ukraine (62nd).

Media concentration and the dominance of online platforms

These serious funding cuts are an additional blow to a media economy already weakened by the dominance that tech giants such as Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft have over the dissemination of information. These largely unregulated platforms are absorbing an ever-growing share of advertising revenues that would usually support journalism. Total spending on advertising through social media reached 247.3 billion USD in 2024, a 14 per cent increase compared to 2023. These online platforms further hamper the information space by contributing to the spread of manipulated and misleading content, amplifying disinformation.

In addition to the loss of advertising revenue, which has severely disrupted and constrained the media economy, media ownership concentration is another key factor in the deterioration of the Index’s economic indicator and poses a serious threat to media plurality. Data from the Index shows that media ownership is highly concentrated in 46 countries and, in some cases, entirely controlled by the state.

This is evident in Russia (171st, down 9 places), where the press is dominated by the state or Kremlin-linked oligarchs, and in Hungary (68th), where the government stifles outlets critical of its policies through the unequal distribution of state advertising. It is also apparent in countries where “foreign influence” laws are used to repress independent journalism, such as Georgia (114th, down 11 places). In Tunisia (129th, down 11 places), Peru (130th) and Hong Kong (140th), where public subsidies are now directed toward pro-government media.

Even in highly ranked countries like Australia (29th), Canada (21st) and Czechia (10th), media concentration is cause for concern. In France (25th, down 4 places), a significant share of the national press is controlled by a few wealthy owners. This growing concentration restricts editorial diversity, increases the risk of self-censorship and raises serious concerns about newsrooms’ independence from the economic and political interests of their shareholders.

The Index’s survey shows that editorial interference is indeed compounding the problem. In over half of the countries and territories evaluated by the Index (92 out of 180), a majority of respondents reported that media owners “always” or “often” limited their outlet’s editorial independence. In Lebanon (132nd), India (151st), Armenia (34th) and Bulgaria (70th, down 11 places), many outlets owe their survival to conditional financing from individuals close to the political or business worlds. The majority of respondents in 21 countries, including Rwanda (146th), the United Arab Emirates (164th) and Vietnam (173rd), said media owners “always” interfered editorially.

Global state of press freedom is "difficult," a historical first

For over ten years, the Index’s results have warned of a worldwide decline in press freedom. In 2025, a new low point emerged: the average score of all assessed countries fell below 55 points, falling into the category of a “difficult situation.” More than six out of ten countries (112 in total) saw their overall scores decline in the Index.

For the first time in the history of the Index, the conditions for practising journalism are “difficult” or “very serious” in over half of the world’s countries and satisfactory in fewer than one in four.

An increasingly red map

In 42 countries — harbouring over half of the world’s population — the situation is classified as “very serious.” In these zones, press freedom is entirely absent and practising journalism is particularly dangerous. This is the case in Palestine (163rd), where the Israeli army has been annihilating journalism for over 18 months, killing nearly 200 media professionals — including at least 43 murdered while working — and imposing a blackout on the besieged strip. Israel (112th) continued its decline in the Index, dropping 11 places.

Three East African countries — Uganda (143rd), Ethiopia (145th), and Rwanda (146th) — entered the “very serious” category this year. Hong Kong (140th) also moved into the red zone for the first time, and is now the same colour as China (178th, down 6 places), which has joined the bottom three countries, alongside North Korea (179th) and Eritrea (180th). In Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan (144th) and Kazakhstan (141st) have darkened the region. In the Middle East, Jordan (147th) plummeted 15 places, largely due to repressive legislation used against the press.

The Index by region: the gap widens between the European Union and other zones

The Middle East-North Africa region remains the most dangerous in the world for journalists, harbouring the mass destruction of journalism in Gaza by the Israeli army. Every country in the region is in a “difficult” or “very serious” press freedom situation, except Qatar (79th). The press is caught between crackdowns from authoritarian regimes and persistent economic precariousness. Tunisia (129th, down 11 places), the only North African country to fall this year, recorded the sharpest drop in the region’s economic indicator (down 7.97 points, down 30 places), due to a political crisis where independent outlets are under direct threat. Iran (176th), where journalists are gagged and all critical viewpoints are suppressed, remains near the bottom of the Index, alongside Syria (177th), which is still awaiting a profound transformation of its media landscape post-Bachar al-Assad.

Out of the 32 countries and territories in the Asia-Pacific region, 20 have seen their economic score decline in the 2025 World Press Freedom Index. The systemic media control in authoritarian regimes is often inspired by China’s propaganda model. China (178th) remains the world’s largest jail for journalists and reentered the bottom trio of the Index, coming just ahead of North Korea (179th). Meanwhile, the concentration of media ownership in the hands of influential groups linked to those in power — as seen in India (151st) — combined with growing economic pressures even in established democracies, means that press freedom in the region faces mounting repression and increasing uncertainty.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, press freedom is experiencing a worrying decline. Eritrea (180th) retained its position as the worst-ranking country in the Index. The economic score deteriorated in 80 per cent of the region’s countries. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (133rd, down 10 places), where the economic indicator plummeted, the media landscape is hampered by persistent polarisation and repression in the east of the country. Similar patterns appeared in other conflict zones, such as Burkina Faso (105th, down 19 places), Sudan (156th, down 7 places), and Mali (199th, down 5 places). In these situations, newsrooms are forced to self-censor, close or go into exile. The hyper-concentration of media ownership in the hands of political figures or business elites without safeguards for editorial independence remains a recurring problem, as seen in Cameroon (131st), Nigeria (122nd, down 10) and Rwanda (146th). By contrast, Senegal (74th) moved up 20 places as its authorities launched economic reform initiatives, which still need to be implemented and carried out in a consultative manner.

In the Americas, the vast majority of countries (22 out of 28) have seen their economic indicators decline. In the United States (57th), Donald Trump’s second term as president has brought a troubling deterioration in press freedom. In Argentina (87th), President Javier Milei has stigmatised journalists and dismantled public media. Press freedom has been weakened in Peru (130th) and El Salvador (135th), undermined by propaganda and attacks on outlets critical of those in power. Mexico (124th), the most dangerous country for journalists in the region, has also seen a sharp decline in its economic score. Nicaragua (172nd) comes in last in the region and sits at the bottom of the Index, as the Ortega-Murillo regime has dismantled the independent media. In contrast, Brazil (63rd) has continued its recovery after the Bolsonaro era.

Europe still leads the regional rankings but is increasingly divided. 

The Eastern Europe- Central Asia (EEAC) region has experienced the steepest overall decline worldwide, while the European Union (EU)-Balkans zone has the highest overall score globally, and its gap with the rest of the world continues to grow. However, even the EU-Balkans zone is hurt by the media’s economic crisis, as seven in 10 countries (28 out of 40) have seen their economic score decline. What’s more, the implementation of the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA) — which could benefit the media economy — is still pending. The situation is worsening in Portugal (8th), Croatia (60th), and Kosovo (99th). Norway (1st) remains the only country in the world to enjoy a “good” rating across all five indicators of the Index. It held on to its top spot for the ninth consecutive year, increasing its lead over other countries. Estonia (2nd) moved up to second place, closely followed by the Netherlands (3rd), which overtook Sweden (4th) in the world’s top three.

Relatório completo aqui

Where Are the People?

On October 23, 2025, Donald Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao — better known as CZ — the billionaire founder of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. The move barely registered as a blip in most mainstream coverage. After all, Zhao had already served his four-month federal sentence in 2024 for violating U.S. anti–money laundering laws. The crime had been acknowledged. The punishment, while minimal, had been carried out. Case closed.

Except it wasn’t.

Because this was no random act of mercy. It was a strategic cleansing of a criminal record for a man whose company had reportedly helped facilitate one of the Trump family’s most lucrative ventures: World Liberty Financial, the crypto project that launched Trump 2.0 into the digital finance stratosphere.

The pardon wasn’t just leniency. It was erasure, a clearing of the books for someone whose proximity to Trump’s personal wealth couldn’t be ignored.

This wasn’t justice. It was consolidation. And it was just one chapter in a larger story of how American democracy is being quietly rewritten — not by legislation or voters, but by tech magnates and their political patrons.

The president’s crypto empire

By mid-2025, Trump’s family-linked crypto venture had reportedly generated over $800 million in revenue, primarily from token sales and international transactions. World Liberty Financial didn’t just launch a coin. It launched an infrastructure —wallets, stablecoins, partnerships, and exchange relationships — that made it a central player in the new digital financial order the Trump administration is actively championing.

Binance, the company CZ founded, played a key role in powering parts of that infrastructure, including early liquidity and backend support.

So when Trump wiped Zhao’s record clean, more than a year after his sentence had ended, it didn’t look like forgiveness. It looked like gratitude, or worse, repayment.

And if that’s the case, then this wasn’t just a pardon. It was a payoff.

Where are the people?

This democracy was designed — at least in theory — to be governed by the people, for the people. But in this new era of tech-driven, personality-fueled policymaking, one has to ask: where are the people now?

They’re not present when billionaires are pardoned by the very politicians whose platforms they help enrich. They’re not consulted when experimental economic systems are fused with national policy. They’re certainly not included when those same systems are promoted by unelected private actors whose incentives are profit, not public service.

Crypto is being positioned as an essential pillar of the U.S. economy. AI is being integrated into federal workflows, hiring, benefits administration, and even defense. Both are actively being deregulated. But who asked for this? Who consented?

There was no referendum, no public debate, and no national reckoning.

There was only the quiet shifting of power and the vanishing of the public from the equation.

Probabilidades para futuras pandemias- artigo da Science

Long before COVID-19, scientists had been working to identify animal viruses that could potentially jump to people. These efforts have led to a Web-based platform called SpillOver, which ranks the risk that various viruses will make the leap. Developers hope the new tool will help public health experts and policymakers avoid future outbreaks.

Jonna Mazet, an epidemiologist and disease ecologist at the University of California, Davis, has led this work for more than a decade. It began with the USAID PREDICT project, which sought to go beyond well-tracked influenza viruses and identify other emerging pathogens that pose a risk to humans. Thousands of scientists scoured more than 30 countries to locate and identify animal viruses, discovering many new ones in the process. But not every virus is equally threatening. So Mazet and her colleagues decided to create a framework to interpret their findings. “We wanted to move beyond scientific stamp collecting [simply finding viruses] to actual risk evaluation and reduction,” she says.

Credit: Amanda Montañez; Source: SpillOver (https://spillover.global); data as of April 7, 2021

The team was surprised to find very little existing research on categorizing threats from viruses that are currently found only in animals but are in viral families that can likely cause disease in people. So the researchers started from scratch, identifying 31 factors pertaining to animal viruses (such as how they are transmitted), to their hosts (such as how many and varied they are), and to the environment (human population density, frequency of interaction with hosts, and more). These are summed up in a risk score out of 155; the higher the score, the more likelihood of spillover.

Cornell University virologist Colin Parrish, who was not involved in the study, says the factors examined were important in previous spillovers. But he notes that other viruses' crossover risk may be heightened by unforeseeable factors that crop up later. “It's a bit like the stock market,” he says.

The new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, ranks 887 animal-borne viruses. Twelve known human pathogens scored at the top—with the virus that causes COVID-19 in second place, just under the rat-carried Lassa virus. (Influenza would have topped the list if included, Mazet says, but flu variants are already tracked elsewhere.) Parrish notes that the list also omits insect-borne viruses and those from domesticated animals. “This is a work in progress,” he says. “I'm sure it will be iterated into a more powerful tool as more information and data become available.

SpillOver is publicly editable, and scientists around the world are already contributing their own findings. Mazet hopes it catches the attention of public health practitioners and leaders, too. With targeted action, Mazet says, “we can ensure that we don't have these spillovers at all. Or if we do, we're ready for them—because we're watching.”

Fonte: aqui

Onward Corporate Food Crusaders! por Eric Holt Gimenez

Uma crónica bem crítica, bem fundamentada por Eric Gimenez, nada mais nada menos que o Director do Food First e do Institute for Food and Development Policy acerca da última reunião da Davos, 2011.Manter os pobres mais pobres, para o Bem das "multinacionais" e governança mundial....Amén. Três gerações entaladas em apenas 30 anos de globalização...como foi possível? Como está a ser possível?

The illustration below, provided by The Ecologist, shows how five biotech giants have gobbled up seed companies, large and small alike, across the world, with Monsanto clearly leading the pack.

 

Crónica de Eric Holt Gimenez
February 7, 2011

A passage from the late James Michener's historical novel The Source, dramatizes the Fourth Crusade in which Christian armies from Europe invade the Holy Land. One of Michener's protagonists is an ambitious nobleman whose main religious motivation is the acquisition of a fiefdom for himself (It seems there were no more to go around in Europe.) In his zeal for empire, he massacres thousands of native eastern Christians (as Crusaders actually did in their siege on Jerusalem). So much for the noble goals of crusades...

History has many ways of repeating itself. Last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the business leaders of the global corporate food regime announced a new Corporate Food Crusade.

Seventeen agrifood monopolies (ADM, BASF, Bunge, Cargill, The Coca-Cola Company, DuPont, General Mills, Kraft Foods, Metro, Monsanto Company, Nestlé, PepsiCo, SABMiller, Syngenta, Unilever, Wal-Mart Stores and Yara International) rolled out a new report financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation entitled "Realizing a New Vision for Agriculture."

The monopolies propose "mobilizing the private sector through market-based solutions... to empower farmers and entrepreneurs to reach their full potential." The report invites governments and civil society to join them in decreasing the portion of rural inhabitants living on less than $1.25 a day by 20% over each of the next two decades. (This admirable goal is considerably less ambitious than the Millennium Development goal of halving, the proportion of people whose income is less than $1 a day by 2015).

A companion report (also financed by Bill Gates) announces the Business Alliance Against Chronic Hunger (BAACH), an offshoot of the Davos group called the Global Agenda Council on Food Security. BAACH calls for business-led solutions to global hunger by expanding markets in agricultural inputs, retail outlets, and sourcing and production of high-value crops.

The question is, why should the private sector invest in global hunger?
"The Next Billions: Business Strategies to Enhance Food Values Chains and Empower the Poor" financed by (you guessed it) Bill Gates comes right out and says it:

Globally, 3.7 billion people are largely excluded from formal markets. This group, earning US$8 a day or less, comprises the 'base of the pyramid' (BOP) in terms of economic levels. With an annual income of US$2.3 trillion a year that has grown at 8% in recent years, this market spends US$1.3 trillion a year on food. Around 70% of the BOP (2.5 billion people) depends on the food value chain for their incomes, either directly as small scale farmers and farm laborers, or indirectly as small scale entrepreneurs... The BOP represents a fast-growing consumer market.

The poor may not have much money, but since they are the fastest growing sector of the sagging global economy, they represent an important new market for the monopolies of the corporate food regime. Claims of "farmer and entrepreneur empowerment" need to be balanced with how well agribusiness and giant retail have "empowered" family farmers and local businesses in the US and around the world... Sooner or later, just about everyone ends up going out of business in the corporate race to the bottom line.

The flurry of reports coming out of Davos should come as no surprise. A new wave of global food riots has sparked serious rebellions in the autocratic regimes of Tunisia and Egypt. World leaders are worried that more food riots could lead to more political crises. After three years of failed "food summits" held by governments, the World Bank, FAO and UN, the World Economic Forum had to come up with something to offer the world. They invented the Corporate Food Crusade.

The problem is that the world's big banks, financial houses and agrifood monopolies thrive on the very price volatility that brings about food rebellions. While these corporations talk a well-financed line about serving the poor, they need the poor (and lots of them) in order to help them out of their own crisis of accumulation. Thirty years of globalization has concentrated so much wealth at the top, corporations are having a hard time finding places to reinvest. Poverty (and speculation) is their last frontier. There is little historical evidence that this kind of colonization actually helps the poor in question.

The US government is hitching their wagon to the corporations. Rajiv Shah -- yes, Bill Gates' former employee and the head of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) --returned from Davos gushing:

We are witnessing an unparalleled opportunity right now for innovative, large-scale private sector partnerships to achieve significant impact on global hunger and nutrition. USAID is committed to creating new public-private partnerships in Feed the Future focus countries to advance their national investment plans.

Shaw is desperate. His Feed the Future Initiative that hoped to commit $22 billion in public funds is hopelessly underfunded with only $925 million reportedly pledged in the World Bank's intermediary fund (Global Agriculture and Food Security Program). The real agenda is, of course, how to mobilize taxpayer support for public programs like Feed the Future and the Global Food Security Act to provide the infrastructure, consumer subsidies and extension services that the monopolies demand before making any real investments.

The sad irony is that over the last thirty years, farmers movements civil society in Asia, Latin America and Africa have built up solid agroecological alternatives to counter the expensive seed and fertilizer inputs being offered by agribusiness based on the concept of "food sovereignty"-- the right of people to determine their own food and agricultural systems. These methods are effectively resistant to climate change and are efficiently passed farmer-to-farmer with the help of NGOs, farmer organizations and sometimes, enlightened governments. Unfortunately even productive, sustainable farmers can't stand up to the juggernaut of "free trade" in which subsidized grains are sold at below the cost of production by monopolies like Cargill and ADM. The vast, diversified seed and cultivation systems in the hands of the world's small farmers already produce half of the world's food.

The problem is these farmers -- mostly women -- don't have enough land and don't get paid enough at the time of harvest to make a good living. They end up selling their grains cheap, then buying them back at higher prices -- that's when they go hungry. They don't need more of corporate colonizing, they need more land and protection from dumping, land grabs and market monopolization.

Big business is on its way to the lands of the poor save small farmers. Like the crusaders of the 11th-13th centuries, the CEO noblepeople of the corporate food regime are searching for the new market fiefdoms they believe are rightfully theirs. Like the original Crusades (that among other things impoverished much of rural Europe) the consequences of the Corporate Food Crusade will stretch far beyond sub-Saharan Africa or Southeast Asia.

The Corporate Food Crusade has an Achilles' heel. Without the public subsidy to market expansion, corporations simply won't invest (That's why they sat on their laurels over the last three decades while hunger ballooned to 1 billion people... they were so busy dismantling the public sector they forgot they needed its taxpayer money). Whether or not the Crusade moves forward -- or whether truly equitable and sustainable alternatives are supported -- ultimately depends not on Bill Gates or the Davos crowd, but on people. Had the peasantry of Europe refused to walk to the Holy Land, the Crusades would never have happened. If the US taxpayers refuse to finance the Corporate Food Crusade, it won't happen at all.

Ler ainda: 
How Monsanto Controls the Future of Food
Biografia e site pessoal de Eric Holt Gimenez
Food First

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Agricultura Sustentável
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Fundação Gates investe na Monsanto

No Huffington Post  de hoje.
Destaco este trecho e os meus sublinhados:

Under the guise of "sustainability" the Foundation has been spearheading a multi-billion dollar effort to transform African into a GMO-friendly continent. The public relations flagship for this effort is the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), a massive Green Revolution project. Up to now AGRA spokespeople have been slippery, and frankly, contradictory about their stance on GMOs.

The first Director of AGRA was Gary Toenniessen, a career program officer for Rockefeller Foundation. He said AGRA was not ruling out GMOs and if and when they were introduced it would be with all the appropriate "safeguards." After AGRA was criticized for not having any Africans, Kofi Anan was named Chairman in 2007. He first said GMOs were out of the picture, the next day he recapitulated. Last Spring, Joe DeVries, who runs the AGRA seed program was asked by a Worldwatch blogger if they were engaging in genetic engineering. "Read our lips," said Joe DeVries. "We are not promoting or funding research for GMOs (genetically modified organisms)..." In fact, in Kenya alone AGRA has used funds from the Gates Foundation to write grants for research in genetically modified agriculture. Nearly 80% of Gates' funding in Kenya involves biotech and there have been over $100 million in grants to organizations connected to Monsanto. In 2008, some 30% of the Foundation's agricultural development funds went to promoting or developing genetically modified seeds (See Ending Africa's Hunger)..

More to the point is that--as Monsanto and Gates are fully aware--to establish a healthy GMO industry one first needs a strong conventional breeding program in place: labs, experiment stations, agronomists, extensionists, molecular biologists... and farmer's seeds. All of which Gates, Rockefeller, Monsanto and AGRA are actively lining up.

They also need the power of U.S. government funding. That is where the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Casey-Lugar come in. USAID is now headed up by former Gates employee Rajiv Shah. The Casey-Lugar Global Food Security act ties foreign aid to GMOs. When the Gates Foundation places a bet, they like to hold all the cards.

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