We may divide recent world history into three phases of colonization. First, 1500-1920, in which colonization meant physical and military control of territory, and it was characterized by conquest, slavery, and genocide of indigenous peoples; second, 1920-1990, in which rose the Marxist heresy, there was development of new systems of financial control, and unceasing war amongst colonial powers directly or through their proxies; and 1990 onwards, when, with the defeat of Marxism, colonization has come to include new territories inside man, namely body and mind.

The invention of new mechanisms to control production and distribution of commodities and information is a natural outcome of comprehensive industrialization. Since the outer world has been largely conquered, the focus is now on control of material and informational transactions. The individual is the final frontier, and the state as a daemonic force (daemon, meaning machine-like) strives to expand into the mind and body of the individual.

The state (directed by the government and corporations) uses its hegemonic authority to promote capitalism by celebrating it in law, religion, art, science, and cinema and by disparaging alternative ways. The mind is controlled by 'education' in school and university and by corporate advertisement in the media. This creates certain images that, like little deus ex machina, decide for us as to what we should do, robbing us of our individual agency.

Science and medicine have made astonishing progress, but this progress has been used by hegemonic institutions to promote their own agendas. For example, the healthcare industry promotes the lifelong dependency of individuals on medication. The food industry places additives in processed food so that one's hunger is increased, without care for whether it leads to bulimia, anorexia nervosa, or obesity. Processed food and drinks leach calcium causing disease and damage to the system.

Where eating less and exercise would do, individuals are steered by advertisement towards lifelong dependence on expensive drugs or procedures such as heart bypass or stent implantation, even when they are not required. Studies have shown that there is no difference in long-term survivability whether one has heart surgery or one depends on medication alone.

Asuric systems

Asura is a Sanskrit term for a material power. Asuric systems strive for increasing control over the outer and internal environments of man. For the dominated, it leads to a state of emptiness and worthlessness. When things have gone too far, there is revolt and the system collapses. Both communism and radical capitalism are asuric and oppressive systems.

The medical and insurance system in the US has become asuric. FDA, a body that is partly funded by the drug companies decides on what are 'proven' treatments against different maladies. A certified medication need not bring about a general restoration of health; its effectiveness needs to be merely shown for a symptom, without concern for its side effects.

The drive to control production and distribution of all commodities is the beginning of a new colonization. Europe's age of colonization began with letters patent (open letters), which were granted by European monarchs to adventurers to discover and conquer foreign lands on their behalf. Corporations now wish to dominate the inner world of man using modern day patents.

These patents include those on certain life forms, plants, seeds, and medicines. Patents have also become a way to prevent farmers from saving seed, turning the farmer into a kind of a mechanic who has a minor role in the agri-business industry. Contrast this to the farmer of an earlier age who thought he was to protect the earth, maintain its fertility, and contribute to feeding the community.

The freedoms allowed in the radical capitalist system are not as great as one imagines. It is an improvement over communism, because one may not be killed for heretical views, but the system makes dissent pointless by an elaborate system of rules and prohibitions, and monetary penalties.

Genetic control

New intellectual property rights treaties, through the World Trade Organization, are trying to prevent peasants from having free access to their own seed. As even traditional uses of medicinal plants are patented, people will lose the right to grow herbs in their backyards. With giant corporations controlling farming, this will damage the ecology and reduce biodiversity, with serious consequences for the future.

Edwin Black in his 'War against the Weak' (2003) chronicles how American institutions such as Carnegie Institution and the Rockefeller Foundation together with the US Department of Agriculture and the State Department funded scientists from such universities as Harvard, Yale and Princeton, operating out of a complex at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island, to create the pseudoscience of eugenics that institutionalized race politics as national policy.

'Defective' family trees were identified and subjected to legislated segregation and sterilization programs in the first few decades of the 20th century. It is estimated that about 60,000 Americans were coercively sterilized, and the victims included poor people, brown-haired white people, African Americans, immigrants, Indians, Eastern European Jews, the infirm. The idea was to breed a eugenically superior race, just as agronomists would breed better strains of corn, and to reduce the reproductive capability of the weak and inferior.

Those who actively supported eugenics included America's most progressive figures: Woodrow Wilson, Margaret Sanger and Oliver Wendell Holmes. The American eugenic research came to the attention of Adolph Hitler, and it may have partially shaped his ideas on race.

The current genetic engineering is thankfully not focused on people, but its efforts in agriculture come with claims that are reminiscent of the earlier eugenics movement. For example, even though the claim is that genetically modified plants are inherently superior, there is no proof. There may be, on the other hand, great risks associated with it.

Genetic engineering goes beyond the hybridization of conventional crop breeding. In hybridization the farmer selects the two best plants and cross-pollinates them in order to create a better plant. In genetically modified organisms (GMO), on the other hand, the DNA structure of the plant is altered by introducing genes from other species and it can only be triggered by a chemical.

Transgenic organisms are not equivalent to farmers breeding because this manipulation crosses species boundaries. We cannot quite tell the dangers that lie in this process, and it may carry unneeded economic and environmental risks for the public. Genetic engineering uses artificially constructed parasitic genetic elements, including viruses, as vectors to smuggle genes into cells. Critics claim that the insertion of foreign genes into the host genome is likely to lead to harmful and fatal effects including cancer of the organism.

Terminator Technology

A few years ago Monsanto Company developed Terminator Technology to develop seeds that, after one season's growth, do not germinate, forcing farmers to buy their seed for the next year's planting from them, rather than using their saved seed for the next year's planting. There was an international outcry against the new technology, and in 1999, Monsanto backed off, but there are indications that the company may only be using a different strategy for greater acceptance of its technology.

Cross-pollination is causing pure lines to be contaminated with genetically modified DNA. It is being suggested that the contamination is a deliberate ploy, because once genetic contamination reaches a significant level, it would be fait accompli. The total acreage devoted to genetically modified crops around the world is expanding.

Monsanto also offers genetically engineered 'designer' trees and forests. It is the primary global producer of glyphosate, the active ingredient in its best-selling herbicide Roundup. Glyphosate's mode of action is to inhibit an enzyme involved in the synthesis of certain amino acids. It is absorbed through foliage and it is only effective on actively growing plants. Monsanto produces seeds which grow into genetically engineered plants that are tolerant to Roundup. The genes contained in these seeds, although naturally occurring in other species, are patented and protected by intellectual property laws. Current Roundup Ready crops include corn, sorghum, cotton, soy, canola, and alfalfa.

The business model behind the use of GMO crops consists of the following conditions for the farmer:

1. Cannot save and replant Monsanto's genetically engineered seed.
2. Must use Monsanto's proprietary chemicals.
3. Must comply with Monsanto's confidentiality statement.
4. Must pay Monsanto a technology fee of $15 per acre every year.
5. Must allow Monsanto to monitor the entire farm for three years after using patented seeds.

Farmers have been arrested in the US for using seeds from the previous year's crop for the next planting. Manipulation and control of genetic information carries with it the specter of the Brave New World. With corporations controlling not only economic transactions but also the genes of future generations of individuals, fear is created that people will become serfs of the corporate empire.

Drug patents

The pharmaceutical industry sees drug patents as a means to dominate healthcare. The U.S. legal code recognizes that a patent is a type of property, and a drug company has the exclusive right to use, control and profit from a patent for a 20-year-term. Patents make drug companies monopolies. But this has made the price of drugs so high that proven treatment for many diseases is not being provided in the poor countries. High prices are forcing old people to choose between drugs and food.

The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), a coalition of seven powerful US trade associations, was formed in 1984. It pressured the US Government to pass the Special 301 legislation in 1988 which makes countries that do not subscribe to intellectual property protection (IPP) subject to stiff tariffs. Mexico was forced to accept IPP as the condition of entry into NAFTA.

To make drugs affordable for the poor, drug companies could use the strategy of charging more in places that can afford it and less in places that can't. But they are afraid of arbitrage: if a pill costs a dollar in Tanzania but $1,000 in New York City, there's a strong incentive to smuggle it from Tanzania to the US. To make things worse, drug companies are using ploys of ancillary patents to extend the life of the patent beyond its normal period.

Some relief was provided by the 2001 Doha Declaration on the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights according to which a WTO member may infringe on a pharmaceutical patent in case of a 'national emergency' or 'extreme urgency' as in the case of epidemics. The 'least developed' countries were given further relief until 2016.

In 2000, the U.S. Agency for International Development started funding a $1.2 million technical-assistance program administered by the Commerce Department. As part of the program, the Commerce Department sponsored Nigerian officials and lawyers to attend two patent-law writing conferences. The draft legislation that emerged had intellectual-property protections exceeding those required by the World Trade Organization, and critics accuse the US of having influenced the outcome.

The US government is also using bilateral and regional trade agreements outside the WTO to pressure developing countries to implement TRIPS-plus standards. (TRIPS or Trade-Related aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, is an agreement drawn up by the World Trade Organization to ensure intellectual property rights are respected within international trade.)

What happened in Nigeria is being repeated elsewhere. In India, the government just issued a decree changing the rules of the game in a manner that favors international drug companies. The attempt for domination by the drug industry is of historic importance. In an editorial on January 19, 2005, the New York Times expressed dismay at this ordinance that would make cheaper drugs more difficult to produce in India. This is what the paper wrote:

These rules have little to do with free trade and more to do with the lobbying power of the American and European pharmaceutical industries. India's government has issued rules that will effectively end the copycat industry for newer drugs. For the world's poor, this will be a double hit - cutting off the supply of affordable medicines and removing the generic competition that drives down the cost of brand-name drugs.

The Indian ordinance still needs parliamentary approval and, hoping that the decree is not made permanent, The Times adds: 'India's parliamentarians must keep in mind that this arcane dispute is actually a crucial battleground for the health of hundreds of millions of people in India and worldwide.' It is an issue that has the potential of uniting Indians from across the political spectrum. Indian pharmaceutical companies have thrown in their weight behind the rule change because they sense that they have become powerful enough to be partners of the Western drug companies.

But it is not a question of whether this is going to be helpful to Indian pharmaceutical companies. Rather, it is a more basic issue of corporate control over mind and body of people all around the world. As the editorial continues:

Heavily influenced by multinational and Indian drug makers eager to sell patented medicines to India's huge middle class, the decree is so tilted toward the pharmaceutical industry that it does not even take advantage of rights countries enjoy under the W.T.O. to protect public health. In November 2001, members of the World Trade Organization agreed that countries can issue compulsory licenses to permit generic production of patented drugs without the patent holder's agreement in order to protect public health, at home or abroad. But under the Indian decree, getting a compulsory license would be slow and difficult; each application would face a fight from multinational drug firms and the governments that do their bidding. India should adopt laws that expedite compulsory licenses, including allowing challenges to proceed after production begins instead of holding it up. In addition, India must close an important loophole affecting the sick overseas: under the current rules, Malawi, for example, could not import from India an inexpensive version of a medicine that is not under patent in Malawi. This needs to be changed. Industry lobbyists managed to insert two noxious provisions in the decree that go well beyond the W.T.O. rules. The decree would limit efforts to challenge patents before they take effect.

It appears that the extension of the patent protection regime to India will make it cost-attractive for international drug companies to set up shop in India in partnership with Indian companies. But it is naïve to expect monopolistic corporations to act altruistically, whether they are originally from the West or the East.

A wit once remarked that evil is ordinary and banal. The individuals within the drug companies are doing what is rational, and the intentions of particular individuals may in fact be noble. The problem with colonization, whether it be for political control or for control of bodies and minds, is that it creates a command system, and such systems impoverish. The colonization of the 18th and 19th centuries ruined prosperous countries. The system that will emerge if the drug companies are to have their way will force people in the poorer countries to fit in the Western model of a consumer society, which will only lead to destitution, disease, hunger, epidemics, and civil war.

India's technology was flourishing before the British. It has been estimated that India's share of world trade in 1800 was about 20 percent (equal to America's share of world trade in 2000). First, the British cut off India's export markets. Soon the innovations of the dawning industrial revolution gave their products a cost advantage that became permanent in the absence of new investments to upgrade Indian factories. As India became de-industrialized, it turned into a huge monopoly market for British products. British Raj made token investments in science and technology. In 1920, India's scientific services had a total of 213 scientists of whom 195 were British!

A command system is bad because it leaves the decision-making in the hands of a few people at the top of the organization. The leadership suffers information overload, and it cannot respond quickly to changing circumstances. This is the main reason the communist system, a command system par excellence, failed. A command system is also liable to be misused and made an instrument of oppression, and this remains a danger in the drug patenting system.

Given that the present system is not working, the time has come to think of a new system altogether, which would be good both for the rich countries and poor. One idea is to abolish drug patents, and for the creation of a fund to give grants to universities and companies to develop new medicines. But it is not likely that such a radical change will be adopted. Rather, the world will just muddle through by means of a patchwork system that is optimal neither for the companies, nor for the people.