Israel Sets Tough Demands for Next Round of Iran Talks

By wmw_admin on May 11, 2012

Tony Karon – Time Magazine May 10, 2012

During a visit to Israel on Wednesday, Catherine Ashton, the European diplomat leading nuclear negotiations with Iran, got a reminder of the enormity of the challenge she faces. Ashton met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior cabinet members to brief them on plans for the Baghdad talks scheduled for May 23. Unlike last month’s ice-breaker meeting in Istanbul, in Baghdad, the two sides are required to begin putting cards on the table outlining reciprocal steps each would be willing to take to resolve or ease the dangerous international standoff over Iran’s nuclear program. Netanyahu reportedly delivered a blunt warning: “Iran is trying to gain time through talks with the West, and has no intention of halting its nuclear program,” the Israeli leader told Ashton at the closed meeting, according to Israeli accounts.

Netanyahu warned, according to the AP,  that the talks would be considered a success “only if Iran agrees to halt all uranium enrichment, ship its current stockpile of enriched uranium out of the country and dismantle an underground enrichment facility near the city of Qom” — and that it commit to a timetable for completing those steps. By that benchmark of success, it’s a relatively safe bet that the talks will fail. Iran has made it abundantly clear that it has no intention of heeding all of the demands outlined by Netanyahu.

While Ashton reportedly assured the Israelis that she and her colleagues in the P5+1 group (the U.S., France, Britain, Germany, Russia and China)  will expect Iran to take verifiable, concrete confidence-building steps in short order to ensure that the diplomatic process continues, they’re unlikely to set the bar defining progress as high as the Israelis have. Although Israel is not party to the talks, it remains the proverbial elephant in the room by virtue of its leaders’ threat to  launch military strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities if they conclude that the Western strategy of negotiations backed by escalating sanctions is failing. And Netanyahu, in his meeting with Ashton, appears to have set a prohibitive benchmark for success, precisely to avoid what the Israelis see as the pitfallsof a nuclear compromise.

The Israeli leader is certainly correct that Iran is showing no sign of halting its nuclear program; Iranian leaders continue to insist that they have no intention of suspending, much less abandoning their enrichment of uranium, nor do they intend to close the Fordow plant near Qom. But the demand that Iran abandon all its enrichment of uranium isn’t really on the table in Ashton’s negotiations, whose agreed framework is the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The NPT grants Iran the right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes under international scrutiny once it has taken whatever steps are deemed necessary to satisfy the International Atomic Energy Agency of the peaceful nature of its nuclear work, past and present. Although Iran is obliged under current U.N. Security Council resolutions to suspend enrichment until it has satisfied all concerns raised by the IAEA, Western powers years ago abandoned the insistence that Iran halt enrichment as a precondition for talks. That’s because while Iran has for the past six years consistently refused to heed the U.N. demand, it has lately signaled a renewed willingness to discuss concrete steps it could take to restore international confidence in its intentions by strengthening verifiable safeguards against weaponization of nuclear material

The current talks are aimed at reaching agreement on measures to verifiably limit the scope of Iran’s nuclear activities, rather than to halt its nuclear program. The initial focus, as has been widely reported, is on Iran’s enrichment of uranium to 20% purity, ostensibly for the production of medical isotopes, but which considerably reduces the time required for reprocessing to weapons-grade material than the 3.5% enrichment it had previously undertaken. Iran is reportedly prepared to consider a deal under which it agrees to halt 20% enrichment, and even possibly ship out its 210-pound stockpile of such material, although it has ruled out closing the Fordow facility near Qom. But it would expect, in exchange, a significant easing of the Western sanctions targeting its energy exports and cutting it off from the international financial system. It also wants Western powers accept its right to enrich uranium to 3.5% under NPT, with the possibility of enhancing verifiable safeguards against weaponization by adopting the Treaty’s Additional Protocols which allow for more intrusive inspection.

Iran’s leaders certainly appear to be preparing their own public for compromise, using the time-honored trick of painting it as victory. “The regime’s propaganda machine is already portraying the Istanbul talks as a triumph for the Islamic Republic and a setback for the West,” notes Iran scholar Mehdi Khalaji, at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “Indeed, it is setting the stage for a significant compromise by preparing both the Iranian public and the global community.” A number of regime figures have in recent weeks proclaimed the Istanbul talks as a breakthrough moment in which the West finally recognized Iran’s nuclear rights. But, says Khalaji, while Khamenei may see the need to compromise to avoid confrontation and an economic decline that would threaten his regime, doing so potentially weakens his authority. “To compromise,” Khalaji writes, Khamenei “must save face; but, to save face, he must not compromise.”
Iran analysts suggest that Khamenei’s personal involvement in overseeing this round of negotiations raises the stakes from previous episodes, in which he was able to distance himself from the efforts of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad whom he saw as too inclined to compromise. It gives the talks more legitimacy, but also potentially requires a tougher Iranian stance.   So a compromise, perhaps, but Iran will be expected to drive a hard bargain — possibly harder than the Western political constellation is currently able to accommodate.

Even the best-case deal would in all likelihood require that the U.S. and allies abandon their rejection of all enrichment in Iran, something that is reportedly under considerationin the Obama Administration, with some officials recognizing that low-level uranium enrichment is a fait accompli in Iran. That trend may be  enhanced by the ouster of the leading European hardliner on Iran, President Nicolas Sarkozy, in last weekend’s French election. But any such deal would also require convincing Israel that such a compromise is more beneficial to its security needs than starting a war would be. And Netanyahu’s rhetoric in recent weeks, where he’s likened Iran’s nuclear program to the Nazi plans to exterminate Europe’s Jews, suggest that he’ll look askance at any compromise proposal that leaves that program intact.

Iran Talks ‘Will Fail’; Oil Risk Prevails: Roubini Analyst

By wmw_admin on May 11, 2012

Sri Jegarajah – CNBC April 11, 2012

International talks scheduled later this month aimed at curbing Iran’s nuclear program “will fail”, boosting the risk premium in global oil prices, Roubini Global Economics said this week.

Although public statements from Iran, the second-biggest producer of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, have cooled in recent weeks, and the country appeared willing to engage on its nuclear program at April 14 talks, “we believe this reprieve to be only temporary,” wrote Gary Clark, Commodities Strategist at Roubini Global Economics, co-founded by Nouriel Roubini, the economist who predicted the 2008 financial crisis

Ultimately, the next round of talks “scheduled for May 23 in Baghdad, will fail, as they have over the past nine years, with Iran unwilling to compromise enough and Israel asking for too much: an immediate cessation of enrichment, the removal of enrichment materials and the dismantling of the nuclear facility in Qom,” Clark said.

The U.S. and its allies have held Iran under tightening sanction pressures since 2010 to force the country to abandon its uranium enrichment program which Tehran maintains is being developed for peaceful purposes. The European Union will tighten sanctions further starting July 1 with an embargo of Iranian crude oil.

“The possibility — albeit small — of a military strike” remains on the table, RGE’s Clark said, as sanctions come into effect, which “equates to a large, if not rising, risk premium built into the price of crude.”

Oil sanctions against Iran — when they become effective from July 1 — rather than the risk of war, will be the main driver building the risk premium in the oil price, argues Michael Wittner, Global Head of Oil Research in the Commodities Research team at Societe Generale.

“The U.S. and EU will not easily suspend these sanctions, even if a framework for agreement is reached,” Wittner said in a note on May 8. “The fundamental impact of these sanctions — tighter space capacity, as the Saudis replace Iranian crude — is a key reason for our bullish view on the markets going forward.”

Israel Unity Deal

A study of nearly 800 institutional investors conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit and released this week found the main risk to the global recovery is the threat of an oil price spike, tied in part to tensions over Iran’s nuclear program.

Assuming a military confrontation between Iran, Israel and the U.S. — specifically, an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities — does take place, the EIU forecasts a “severe oil price spike amounting to a 30-50 percent jump in prices in a matter of days or weeks, halting the global economic recovery and threatening another recession.”

However, recent political developments in Israel, which has yet to rule out military action against Iran, suggest tensions may ease. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week formed a broad coalition government with the centrist Kadima party led by former defense chief Shaul Mofaz, in a political surprise that avoided an early election.

The agreement to form an enlarged coalition in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, will “significantly lower the probability of an Israeli strike against Iran this year,” said Alastair Newton, Senior Political Analyst at Nomura International.

Though Mofaz comes from a strong defense background as a former Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) and defense minister, “he also comes with a different view on Iran to that which Mr. Netanyahu has been offering,” Newton wrote in note on May 8.

“Mr. Mofaz has publicly expressed skepticism on more than one occasion over a possible Israeli military strike against Iran’s nuclear program. We therefore believe that Mr. Mofaz is likely to take with him into the security cabinet dissenting opinions to Mr. Netanyahu’s over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, similar to those recently expressed by a number of former senior IDF and security/intelligence staff and, perhaps most tellingly, by the IDF’s current chief of staff, General Benny Gantz.”

Israel’s military chief said he does not believe Iran will decide to build an atomic bomb and called its leaders “very rational” — comments that clashed with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s assessment, in an interview published on April 25 in the left-wing Haaretz newspaper.

Newton described these recent developments in Israel as “consistent with reducing geopolitical tensions around Iran and therefore further easing for now upward pressure on the price of Brent related to perceived geopolitical risk.”

Riccardo Fabiani, Middle East analyst at global political risk research and consulting firm Eurasia Group, agreed that the formation of national unity government in Israel “reaffirms our view that the likelihood of a military strike before the end of 2012 remains low…Iran’s nuclear program has not reached its final stage, which would be a primary trigger of Israeli strikes.”

Terror in Tel Aviv

By wmw_admin on May 8, 2012

Roy Tov – roytov.com May 7, 2012

what international media purposely ignores…

On April 27, 2012, five Molotov Cocktails were thrown in Shapira Neighborhood, a poor area in Tel Aviv’s south. One of them hit a kindergarten, where children were sleeping (see picture); the others hit private homes. In one case, the terrorists opened the window of a house—where people were sleeping—and threw an ignited bottle inside. God’s unsleeping angels made sure nobody was hurt. The event was barely mentioned in the Hebrew media and was completely ignored by the international one. The main report on the event was done by the Israeli website Maavak (“struggle” in Hebrew; www.maavak.org.il). I almost forgot to mention that the victims were black people; the attackers were Jews.

The terror attack followed agitation by a racist Jewish group led by Michael Ben Ari, a Knesset member on behalf of the National Union party. This party is a union of four ultra-nationalist political parties, namely Moledet, Hatikva, Eretz Yisrael Shelanu, and Tkuma. In the current Knesset it has four members, out of the 120. Michael Ben Ari is leader of the Eretz Yisrael Shelanu (“The Land of Israel is Ours” in Hebrew) faction. They are right of Netanyahu’s coalition, and do not form part of the current extremist coalition; simply, they are even more extreme. Michael Ben Ari is the first outspoken disciple of Rabbi Meir Kahane to be elected to the Knesset. Rabbi Meir Kahane was an American-Israeli ultra-nationalist rabbi that founded both the Jewish Defense League (JDL) in the USA, and the Kach (literally “So;” roughly “This is the Way”) political party in Israel. In 1984, Kach gained one seat in parliamentary elections, and Kahane became a member of the Knesset. In 1988, the Israeli government banned Kach as “racist” and “undemocratic” under the terms of an ad hoc law; Kahane was subsequently assassinated in New York, in 1990. In 1994, following the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre perpetrated by Baruch Goldstein, a Kahane follower, Kach was outlawed completely. Following the massacre, the US State Department listed it as a terrorist organization. Recently, Michael Ben Ari was denied a visa to the USA (see USA Denies Visa to Jewish Knesset Member).

The attack was aimed at Sudanese and Eritrean refugees. In Israel there are several thousands (estimations vary between 4,000 and 8,000) refugees who arrived from Sudan and are seeking refuge from the ongoing military conflicts in their home country. Small numbers of Eritrean and Ethiopian refugees can also be found. All of them arrived by land, after a perilous trip across the Sinai and Negev deserts; reports on the horrors faced by them along the way should be enough to grant recognition as refugees to the survivors upon arrival. In order to accomplish the feat, they use the help of local Bedouins, the only masters of the dessert (seeExplosion in Sinai). Israel has formally recognized as refugees only a few hundreds of them; the rest work as illegal workers, hiding in the vast population of foreign workers building up the Zionist dream. They replaced the Palestinians, who are not welcome anymore in Tel Aviv. In this precarious and rather violent conditions, Sudanese workers face deportation back to war and death. Yet, racism in Israel runs deeper.

On the Jewish Heart

Contrary to what one may think, the Jewish state doesn’t show neither compassion nor mercy. In Jewish Compassion I reported the case of Evelyn Belseng, 38, who came to Israel from the Philippines in 2002 to work as a caregiver at Kibbutz Kfar Menachem. After her employer died in 2006, she went to work in Ashdod. In December 2007, she met Michael David, a religious Israeli Jew from Gedera. “We met through a childhood friend of Miki’s,” she said in an interview. “I worked at the time in Ashdod and it was important for me to keep my job, so we met mostly on Saturdays and he would sometimes come visit me. My employers met him and were very supportive of us.” In early May 2009, after living together for two years, Michael went to the Interior Ministry in Rehovot and made residence arrangements for her since her Israeli visa was due to expire later that month. An official recommended that he begin the process of having her recognized as a common-law spouse. But the process of obtaining the necessary documents, mostly from the Philippines, was time-consuming and expensive. It is almost impossible for someone defined as Jew by Israel’s Internal Affairs Ministry to marry somebody defined by that fine and egalitarian institution as a “goy,” a non-Jew. “Meanwhile our son Gilad was born, and Miki assumed that when we registered him, everything would be fine,” she said. After the child was born, David asked the family court in Rishon LeTzion to recognize Belseng as his partner, because he couldn’t legally marry her in Israel; she is a hated goy. Later that year, he became sick with cancer, which drained their energy. They therefore concentrated on trying to settle Gilad’s status. In June 2010, the Family Court recognized David as Gilad’s biological father and ordered the child registered in the population registry, meaning he became an Israeli citizen. Ten days later, David died. Due to David’s death, Belseng’s residency process was halted and in August 2010 she was issued a deportation order, which wasn’t enforced. Israel is about to deport a toddler citizen. Probably they will say he is a potential terrorist.

Are you Falash Mura or Beta Israel?

It is not easy to be a foreign worker or a refugee in Israel, because nobody helps them. Few even report attacks on them. Israel had developed over the years a public image that doesn’t allow the publication of these cases. Yet, reality is different. No better way of reinforcing the new image portrayed here than with the cases of Beta Israel and the Falash Mura, two groups of Ethiopian citizens seeking Israeli citizenship under Law of Return. The Law of Return gives automatic and immediate citizenship to every Jew arriving in Israel. A Jew is defined in that law as a person born Jewish (with a Jewish mother or maternal grandmother), with a Jewish ancestry (with a Jewish father or grandfather) or a convert to Orthodox Judaism (Reform and Conservative converts are recognized only if the rites were performed outside the State of Israel, other groups are rejected). The basis for this racist law is what is known as “Jus Sanguinis” in Latin, namely “Blood Law.” In ancient times, it was used to attribute citizenship on the basis of family relations. However, the Law of Return denies citizenship to Jews who have converted to other religions out of their free will. Did their blood change during the conversion process? (see Is Israel Sovereign? for more on this)

Somehow, Israel’s public image consistently fails to convey the reality of the Zionist state. While asked to link northeast Africa and Israel, most people will immediately mention Beta Israel, a group of Jewish Ethiopian citizens that immigrated to Israel through the Mossad-run Operation Moses (1984), Operation Sheba (1985) and Operation Solomon (1991). According to tradition the name “Beta Israel” originated in the 4th century when the community refused to convert to Christianity during the rule of Abreha and Atsbeha, the monarchs of the Aksumite Empire who embraced Christianity. In 1973, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, then the Chief Sephardic Rabbi of Israel, ruled that the Beta Israel were Jews and should be brought to Israel. That was the foundation for their arrival at Israel according to the Law of Return. Other notable poskim (“deciders” in Jewish Halakha Law), from non-Zionist Ashkenazi circles, placed a Halakhic “safek” (“doubt;” Halakha is the Jewish parallel of the Muslim Sharia) over the Jewishness of the Beta Israel. Such dissenting voices include the notorious rabbis Elazar Shach and Yosef Shalom Eliashiv. Later on, a 1999 study by Lucotte and Smets studied the DNA of 38 unrelated Beta Israel males living in Israel and 104 Ethiopians living in regions located north of Addis Ababa and concluded that “the distinctiveness of the Y-chromosome haplotype distribution of the Beta-Israel from conventional Jewish populations and their relatively greater similarity in haplotype profile to non-Jewish Ethiopians are consistent with the view that the Beta Israel people descended from ancient inhabitants of Ethiopia and not the Levant.” Other studies reached similar conclusions. Despite these, the Halakha ruling issued by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef still holds.

In contrast to the discrepancies regarding their Jewishness, there is no doubt on the link between Beta Israel and the Falash Mura. Both groups acknowledge that Falash Mura were people from Beta Israel who accepted Christianity in various waves of conversion since the 15th century. In comparison to the roughly 130,000 Beta Israel living now in Israel, the number of the Falash Mura is small; apparently less than 10,000 still live in Ethiopia. They are not recognized as Jews by the State of Israel, and thus are not allowed to reach the state under the clauses of the Law of Return applied to their brothers from beta Israel. In February 2003, the Israeli government decided to accept religious conversions of Falash Mura people organized by Israeli rabbis, and that converted Falash Mura can then migrate to Israel as Jewish. Yet, Israeli government continued to limit, from 2003 to 2006, their entry to about 300 Falash Mura immigrants per month. In November 2010 the Israeli cabinet approved a plan to allow 8,000 Falash Mura immigrate to Israel; since then nothing has been done. Due to their Christianity, Falash Mura reaching Israel independently would be treated as illegitimate foreign workers and deported if caught. Meanwhile, their Beta Israel brothers live mainly in “development towns” and are widely discriminated by the Israeli society. As a former IDF officer, I remember IDF pamphlets explaining how to treat Ethiopian soldiers, which included rather racist remarks. Eventually, this discrimination is accepted by the international community. What would be the reaction if Germany was to legislate a law allowing the immigration of Christian Turks to Germany, but denying the immigration of Muslim Turks to its territory? Why is Israel allowed to perpetrate a parallel crime?

It is very difficult to read this. You can’t be only half-racist. You can’t just endorse positive-discrimination towards certain groups. If you do so, violence would appear as it recently did in Tel Aviv. Racism is racism, and Jewish racism is not different from Nazi racism. The State of Israel cannot enjoy immunity for such crimes; sanctioning them is calling for a A New Holocaust.

The multiple ways Monsanto is putting normal seeds out of reach

By Linn Cohen-Cole (about the author)
People say if farmers don't want problems from Monsanto, just don't buy their GMO seeds.

Not so simple.  Where are farmers supposed to get normal seed these days?  How are they supposed to avoid contamination of their fields from GM-crops?  How are they supposed to stop Monsanto detectives from trespassing or Monsanto from using helicopters to fly over spying on them?  

Monsanto contaminates the fields, trespasses onto the land taking samples and if they find any GMO plants growing there (or say they have), they then sue, saying they own the crop.  It's a way to make money since farmers can't fight back and court and they settle because they have no choice. 

.

And they have done and are doing a bucket load of things to keep farmers and everyone else from having any access at all to buying, collecting, and saving of NORMAL seeds.

1.  They've bought up the seed companies across the midwest.

2.  They've written Monsanto seed laws and gotten legislators to put them through, that make cleaning, collecting and storing of seeds so onerous in terms of fees and paperwork and testing and tracking every variety and being subject to fines, that having normal seed becomes almost impossible (an NAIS approach to wiping out normal seeds).  Does your state have such a seed law?  Before they existed, farmers just collected the seeds and put them in sacks in the shed and used them the next year, sharing whatever they wished with friends and neighbors, selling some if they wanted.  That's been killed.

In Illinois which has such a seed law, Madigan, the Speaker of the House, his staff is Monsanto lobbyists.

3.  Monsanto is pushing anti-democracy laws (Vilsack's brainchild, actually) that remove community' control over their own counties so farmers and citizens can't block the planting of GMO crops even if they can contaminate other crops.  So if you don't want a GM-crop that grows industrial chemicals or drugs or a rice growing with human DNA in it, in your area and mixing with your crops, tough luck.

Check the map of just where the Monsanto/Vilsack laws are and see if your state is still a democracy or is Monsanto's.  A farmer in Illinois told me he heard that Bush had pushed through some regulation that made this true in every state.  People need to check on that.

4.  For sure there are Monsanto regulations buried in the FDA right now that make a farmer's seed cleaning equipment illegal (another way to leave nothing but GM-seeds) because it's now considered a "source of seed contamination."  Farmer can still seed clean but the equipment now has to be certified and a farmer said it would require a million to a million and half dollar building and equipment ... for EACH line of seed.  Seed storage facilities are also listed (another million?) and harvesting and transport equipment.  And manure.  Something that can contaminate seed.  Notice that chemical fertilizers and pesticides are not mentioned.  

You could eat manure and be okay (a little grossed out but okay).  Try that with pesticides and fertilizers.  Indian farmers have.  Their top choice for how to commit suicide to escape the debt they have been left in is to drink Monsanto pesticides.5.  Monsanto is picking off seed cleaners across the Midwest.  In  Pilot Grove, Missouri , in Indiana (Maurice Parr ), and now in southern Illinois (Steve Hixon).  And they are using US marshals and state troopers and county police to show up in three cars to serve the poor farmers who had used Hixon as their seed cleaner, telling them that he or their neighbors turned them in, so across that 6 county areas, no one talking to neighbors and people are living in fear and those farming communities are falling apart from the suspicion Monsanto sowed.  Hixon's office got broken into and he thinks someone put a GPS tracking device on his equipment and that's how Monsanto found between 200-400 customers in very scattered and remote areas, and threatened them all and destroyed his business within 2 days.

So, after demanding that seed cleaners somehow be able to tell one seed from another (or be sued to kingdom come) or corrupting legislatures to put in laws about labeling of seeds that are so onerous no one can cope with them, what is Monsanto's attitude about labeling their own stuff?  You guessed it - they're out there pushing laws against ANY labeling of their own GM-food and animals  and of any exports to other countries.  Why?  

We know and they know why.

As Norman Braksick, the president of Asgrow Seed Co. (now owned by Monsanto) predicted in the Kansas City Star (3/7/94) seven years ago, "If you put a label on a genetically engineered food, you might as well put a skull and crossbones on it." 

And they've sued dairy farmers for telling the truth about their milk being rBGH-free, though rBGH is associated with an increased risk of breast, colon and prostate cancers.

I just heard that some seed dealers urge farmers to buy the seed under the seed dealer's name, telling the farmers it helps the dealer get a discount on seed to buy a lot under their own name.  Then Monsanto sues the poor farmer for buying their seed without a contract and extorts huge sums from them.

Here's a youtube video that is worth your time.  Vandana Shiva is one of the leading anti-Monsanto people in the world.  In this video, she says (and this video is old), Monsanto had sued 1500 farmers whose fields had simply been contaminated by GM-crops.  Listen to all the ways Monsanto goes after farmers.

Do you know the story of Gandhi in India and how the British had salt laws that taxed salt?  The British claimed it as theirs.  Gandhi had what was called a Salt Satyagraha, in which people were asked to break the laws and march to the sea  and collect the salt without paying the British.  A kind of Boston tea party, I guess.

  

Thousands of people marched 240 miles to the ocean where the British were waiting.  As people moved forward to collect the salt, the  British soldiers clubbed them but the people kept coming.  The non-violent protest exposed the British behavior which was so revolting to the world that it helped end British control in India.  

Vandana Shiva has started a Seed Satyagraha - nonviolent non-cooperation around seed laws - has gotten millions of farmers to sign a pledge to break those laws.  

American farmers and cattlemen might appreciate what Gandhi fought for and what Shiva is bringing back and how much it is about what we are all so angry about - loss of basic freedoms.  [The highlighting is mine.]

The Seed Satyagraha is the name for the nonviolent, noncooperative movement that Dr. Shiva has organized to stand against seed monopolies. According to Dr. Shiva, the name was inspired by Gandhi’s famous walk to the Dandi Beach, where he picked up salt and said, “You can’t monopolize this which we need for life.” But it’s not just the noncooperation aspect of the movement that is influenced by Gandhi. The creative side saving seeds, trading seeds, farming without corporate dependence-–without their chemicals, without their seed.
“All this is talked about in the language that Gandhi left us as a legacy. We work with three key concepts."
"(One) Swadeshi...which means the capacity to do your own thing--produce your own food, produce your own goods...."
“(Two) Swaraj--to govern yourself. And we fight on three fronts-–water, food, and seed. JalSwaraj is water independence--water freedom and water sovereignty. Anna Swaraj is food freedom, food sovereignty. And Bija Swaraj is seed freedom and seed sovereignty. Swa means self--that which rises from the self and is very, very much a deep notion of freedom.

"I believe that these concepts, which are deep, deep, deep in Indian civilization, Gandhi resurrected them to fight for freedom. They are very important for today’s world because so far what we’ve had is centralized state rule, giving way now to centralized corporate control, and we need a third alternate. That third alternate is, in part, citizens being able to tell their state, 'This is what your function is. This is what your obligations are,' and being able to have their states act on corporations to say, 'This is something you cannot do.'"
“(Three) Satyagraha, non-cooperation, basically saying, 'We will do our thing and any law that tries to say that (our freedom) is illegal… we will have to not cooperate with it. We will defend our freedoms to have access to water, access to seed, access to food, access to medicine.'"