I describe what is happening as 'food fascism' because this system can only survive through totalitarian control. With patents on seed, an illegitimate legal system is manipulated to create seed monopolies. Seed laws that require uniformity - which criminalize diversity and the use of open-pollinated seeds - are fascist in nature. Suing farmers after contaminating their crops, [...] is another aspect of this fascism. Pseudo-hygiene laws that criminalize local, artisanal food are food fascism. And attacks on scientists and the silencing of independent research [...] are examples of knowledge fascism.
Vandana ShivaWe have reached a stage where governments and political processes have been hijacked by the corporate world. Corporations can within five hours influence the vote in the U.S. Congress. They can influence the entire voting patterns of the Indian Parliament. Ordinary people who put governments in power might want to go in a different direction. I call this the phenomenon of the inverted state, where the state is no longer accountable to the people. The state only serves the interests of corporations.
Vandana ShivaWe will either defend the rights of people and the earth, and for that we have to dismantle the rights that corporations have assigned to themselves, or corporations will in the next three decades destroy this planet, in terms of human possibilities.
Vandana ShivaWe've moved from wisdom to knowledge, and now we're moving from knowledge to information, and that information is so partial โ that we're creating incomplete human beings.
Vandana ShivaWhenever we engage in consumption or production patterns which take more than we need, we are engaging in violence.
Vandana ShivaThe liberation of the earth, the liberation of women, the liberation of all humanity is the next step of freedom we need to work for, and it's the next step of peace that we need to create.
Vandana ShivaI think the American people should see that the corporations abandoned them long ago. That people will have to build their own economies and rebuild democracy as a living democracy. The corporations belong to no land, no country, no people. They have no loyalty to anything apart from the base-line - their profits. And the profits today are on an unimaginable scale; it has become illegitimate, criminal profit - profits extracted at the cost of life.
Vandana Shiva