Unidad versus el 1%

by Vandana Shiva, Kartikey Shiva

La orientación de este libro es sobre todo política -o biopolítica-, y casi programática por su llamado a unirnos entre los que somos víctimas del 1% que domina el planeta. Es también un llamado a unirnos con la Tierra de la cual nunca deberíamos haber sido separados ya que compartimos un presente y un futuro común.

La búsqueda infinita y despiadada de ganancias por parte del 1% dominante, ha impuesto de manera antidemocrática uniformidad y monocultivos, división y separación, monopolios y control sobre finanzas, alimentos, energía, información, atención médica e incluso sobre los humanos y sus relaciones, con su corolario de pobreza y desnutrición, desplazamientos humanos de magnitudes espeluznantes, generando un profundo malestar social, desigualdad y polarización económica.

“La máquina del dinero está pensada para arrasar, destruir, agregar y acumular, externalizar y excavar, como una célula cancerígena que no sabe cuándo parar de crecer”, señalan sus autores. Y esa máquina fue creada y es usada por ese 1% “sin responsabilidad ni rendición de cuentas por sus acciones”. Debemos resistirnos a ella, creando alternativas no violentas de superación de esta manera de concebir nuestra vida juntos.

“Sólo como una comunidad de la Tierra y una humanidad unida en nuestras diversidades podremos mantenernos juntos, salir del precipicio y escapar del imperio destructivo, ecocida y genocida del 1%”.

Este libro ha sido traducido al castellano de manera conjunta y es publicado simultáneamente por varias editoriales en América Latina, todas miembros de la red hispanoamericana de la Alianza Internacional de Editoriales Independientes.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Environment, Ecology, Science, Social Justice, Philosophy

169 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2018

About the author

A major figurehead of the alter-globalization movement as well as a major role player in global Ecofeminism, Dr. Vandana Shiva is recipient to several awards for her services in human rights, ecology and conservation. Receiving her Ph.D in physics at the University of Western Ontario in 1978, Dr. Vandana Shivas attentions were quickly drawn towards ecological concerns.

Reviews

[JC · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had a chance to watch Shiva talk while a student at Guelph. I believe Shiva completed her PhD at Guelph a number of decades ago, so it was neat to watch her speak there, especially at Canada's main agricultural post-secondary institution that has lecture halls named after food and agro-corporations.

This book is a fantastic dismantling of the philanthropy myth. Why so many continue to defend philanthropic billionaires is beyond me. Even criticisms I’ve seen of this book gravitate towards Shiva’s alleged exaggeration regarding billionaires and some sort of misplaced cynicism of hers. I don’t know how people arrive at such places. I suppose this is a deeply religious issue for me. I see billionaire hacks like Richard Branson firing their way through space, at the precipice of a new form of intergalactic privatization, and I see this disturbing lauding of Mammon and wealth. I wonder when he and his ilk will start investing money to start working on the newest frontier of philanthropy: figuring out how to fit a camel through the eye of a needle. All billionaires are evil, and I think if you need it spelled out a little more systematically, Shiva along with her daughter show their readers why they make such assertions. The decayed Capital of billionaires will one day testify against them and eat their flesh like fire. The wages they have expropriated from their workers will cry out against them. They are living on earth in luxury and self-indulgence, fattening themselves in the day of slaughter. Alright then, now that I’m finished paraphrasing the revolutionary terror of James 5, I’ll move on, lol.

So Shiva articulates the way the billionaire class operate in the world of philanthropy:

“The One Economy being built by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett and Big Money, is evidenced by the fact that the largest investment made by the Gates Foundation Trust, worth $11.8 billion in 2014, is in the US conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway, whose Chief Executive Officer Warren Buffett—a trustee of the Gates Foundation—has donated billions to the Foundation Trust. (The BMGF Trust manages ‘the investment assets and transfer[s] proceeds to the Foundation as necessary to achieve the foundation’s charitable goals’. The Trust’s biggest investment stakes are in Berkshire Hathaway.) Bill Gates also serves as a board member of Berkshire Hathaway which has 60 subsidiaries, mainly US-based, in sectors including agriculture, energy, retail, media, transportation, electronics, chemicals, jewellery, furniture and insurance. In our world this would qualify as conflict of interest, but in the world of Big Money it is ‘innovation’.

How did Buffett get so ‘rich’? Warren Buffett did not become rich with Berkshire Hathaway; he accumulated wealth through the Government Employees Insurance Company (GEICO). He sold insurance to government employees, people who do not get to choose their insurance terms and conditions, its their employer who picks from among the choices that Buffett decides to offer. At a price of his choosing. Signed off by the regulator and paid for by the employee. A part of every government salary, automatically diverted as deductable insurance payment into Buffett’s bank—an efficient, self-sustaining model of cash flow to Buffett-Land.”

“We tell the story of the new colonisation by the 1% through the journey of Bill Gates who, in August 2017 had $89 billion in the bank, and has been the richest man in the world since 2013. In 2015, he was worth $81.6 billion which was nearly $6 billion more than the $76 billion he had in March 2014, and the $76 billion was $9 billion more than he was worth in March 2013. He is among the five men who control as much wealth as 50 per cent of humanity. Gates knows how to create and run the money machine.

While presenting himself as a philanthropist who gives away his money, Gates has a personal investment company, Cascade Investment LLC, funded solely by himself and run by Michael Larson, one of the most powerful men in US wealth management. Gates now has vast holdings in real estate and non-tech companies, like the Canadian National Railway Co.; AutoNation Inc., an American automotive retailer; and Republic Services Inc., a waste management company. He is making more money than he is giving away.

We tell the story of Big Wealth and Big Money in our times by focusing on Gates and his role in destroying self-organsation in nature and society to engineer monopolies through mastery, conquest, invasion and dictatorship by the tools he owns and controls for rent collection, which in his double-speak, he calls ‘innovation’.

While he has been central to the establishment of the new civilising mission of technology as a religion, Gates himelf did not invent anything. Microsoft Basic is based on BASIC (an acronym for Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code), designed in 1964 by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College (New Hampshire, USA) to make it easy for non-science, non-math students to use computers. Before the introduction of BASIC, computers required the writing of custom software which only scientists and mathematicians could do. Microsoft BASIC (MBASIC) became one of the leading applications in the world, but even the operating systems were developed by others. Gates made his billions through patent monopolies, by enclosing the commons of software. The open source software movement began as a response to the patent monopoly; the free software movement is to patented propriety software what our seed freedom movement is to seeds.

Gates is now using his economic power to expand his patent empire to the living world, to enclose the biological and knowledge commons through patenting and biopiracy. He is trying to control the seed by controlling the gene banks where the biodiversity of the world is stored; he is trying to pirate and patent climate resilient crops evolved by farmers; he is trying to use digital tools to take genomic patents on biodiversity and agriculture; he is trying to enclose our food commons by imposing GMO foods…

Whereas with the bonus of tax free trade on software, the Microsoft monopoly went global, now, with DivSeek, CRISPR and the genetically engineered mosquitoes in Florida, Gates wants to control our food, our diversity and our heritage. And to top it all, he is financing a most unscientific and irresponsible experiment, that of geoengineering.”

There are a few things worth mentioning about this book. While Shiva is a socialist, she is a particular sort of eco-feminist that the Maoist Anuradha Ghandy (I think) rightly criticized as romanticizing older feudal forms of agrarianism. I don’t think Shiva really does any of that in this book, but I do think she views GMOs differently than most modernist Marxists. The main issue is the way GMO research is so tightly intertwined with the interests of capital that it’s difficult to properly evaluate particular research outcomes. Although this is true of so many aspects of scientific research, and propagandizing certainly has not escaped science under socialism so that is still something to flag. I think Shiva is more dismissive of some GMO technology than I am now, although I used to share her views. She obviously knows more about the science than most people (especially me). Shiva does focus on the issues of enclosure and the coercive aspects of biotechnology companies and I think that should always be the focus of anti-GMO activism. It is the science at the hands of capital that makes it disconcerting.

Secondly, Shiva is obviously influenced by Gandhi enormously. The Met screens a different free opera everyday, which I sometimes watch. Around the time I was finishing up this book, they screened Philip Glass’s Satyagraha. I maybe watched about 40% of it before falling asleep, and never did get around to finishing it. I wouldn’t recommend it. I don’t know how a production like that would go over today. Opera has been so white for so long, how does one stage something like Satyagraha in New York – an Opera in Sanskrit focused on the life of Gandhi. I have no idea. I felt embarrassed watching it haha. Anyway, many people I admire greatly, like MLK, are also very taken by Gandhi. I think there has been a reckoning lately over the racist and sexist legacy of Gandhi’s life. I think one of the most illuminating reflections on this phenomenon is a piece Vijay Prashad wrote in The Print India where he said:

“All these debates are important. No person is saintly. No one should be worshipped. More important than Gandhi were the freedom movement in India and the freedom movement in South Africa and the freedom movement in the United States and elsewhere. Leaders – such as Gandhi – play a key role in these movements, but they do not define them. It would be a pity if in this auto-da-fé of Gandhi’s’ reputation, the complexity of his role is forgotten and the movements that he inspired are set aside. The myth is dangerous if it obscures the important voices that tried to be heard during Gandhi’s lifetime, notably the people who were not content with ‘flag nationalism’, with the replacement of the British flag with the flag of the Indian bourgeoisie.”

Shiva also draws a lot on notions autopoesis and self-organization, which is related to the anti-colonial ideology of Gandhi. I’ve heard Donna Haraway’s criticisms of autopoesis but haven’t taken the time to evaluate them in this context. That would be an interesting exercise.

Finally, I think Shiva makes very important connections between the Nazis and the modern chemical industry:

“Standard Oil and IG Farben founded a company, Standard IG Farben in 1927, and they exchanged patents to control economies on both sides of the Atlantic.4 They joined hands to open up the Auschwitz concentration camp to produce artificial rubber and synthetic gasoline from coal. They provided the capital and technologies, while Hitler provided the labour of the concentration camp.5
Monsanto and Bayer, who are now merging, have a long history. They made explosives and lethally poisonous gases using shared technologies and sold them to both sides, the Allied and the Axis Powers, during the world wars. Bayer was then a part of IG Farben, Hitler’s economic power and pre-war Germany’s highest foreign exchange earner, with offices in the United States and Switzerland. IG Farben was also a foreign intelligence operation. Hermann Schmitz was the President of the company, his nephew Max Ilgner a director, while Ilgner’s brother, Rudolph, handled the New York arm of the VOWI Network, as Vice President of Chemnyco. VOWI was a Nazi foreign intelligence operation. Chemnyco was supported by a retainer fee from IG Farben and it handled the U.S. expenses of the company. The American company was controlled by IG Farben and was a valuable source of information. It was investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice during the war.

Paul Warburg, the brother of Max Warburg, a member of Farben Aufsichtsrat (supervisory board), founded the Federal Reserve System in the United States. The central banking system was created on December 23, 1918, with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act. Walburg, in 1907, had published, ‘A plan for a Modified Central Bank’ in The New York Times Financial Review, which contributed to the creation of the Federal Reserve System.9 Max Warburg and Hermann Schmitz were the central players in the Farben empire. Other ‘guiding hands’ of the FarbenVorstand (executive board) included Carl Bosch, Fritz ter Meer, Kurt Oppenheim and Georg von Schnitzler; each one of them was declared a war criminal after World War II, with the exception of Paul Warburg.

Monsanto and Bayer had a joint venture, MOBAY, in 1954 that was part of the Toxic Cartel of IG Farben. Controlling stakes in both corporations were with the same private equity firms. Their expertise was acquired in the arena of war. Monsanto entered into a partnership with IG Farben, Hitler’s supplier of Zyklon-B, a cyanide based pesticide used in concentration camps during the Holocaust; it was used as evidence in the Nuremberg trials, which found Farben and its partners, which included Bayer, BASF and Hoechst (Aventis), guilty of war crimes.

MOBAY supplied the ingredients for Agent Orange during the Vietnam War (1961-71), too; 20 million gallons of MOBAY defoliants and herbicides were sprayed over South Vietnam. Monsanto and Bayer’s cross-licensed Agent Orange resistance has also been cross-developed for decades. While wars were fought, lives were lost, and countries were carved into holy lands—with artificial boundaries that suit colonisation and resource grab—the two corporations sold chemicals as bombs and poisons.”

This was a very illuminating book and of course Shiva has an axe to grind, but at least she’s clear about it and the reader has no doubts which side she’s on. She’s most definitely not on the side of the ruling class.

postscript: a note to myself: there are some really interesting comments Shiva makes with respect to rivers:
“Recently, the High Court of Uttarakhand in India ruled that Himalayan mountain ranges, glaciers, rivers, streams, rivulets, lakes, jungles, the air, forests, meadows, dales, wetlands, grasslands and springs are living beings and legal entities with rights.9 The legislature in Madhya Pradesh recognised the personhood of the Narmada river in May 2017 to ensure ‘conservation of aquatic biodiversity’."

and also floods and logging:
“While pursuing my PhD, I became involved as a volunteer in the Chipko movement, a nonviolent, peaceful response to the large-scale deforestation that was taking place in the Garhwal Himalaya by peasant women from the region, who came out in defence of the forests. Chipko means ‘to hug’, ‘to embrace’. Women declared that they would hug the trees to protect them—loggers would have to kill them before they felled the trees.

Logging had led to landslides and floods, and to the scarcity of water, fodder and fuel. Since women service these basic needs, scarcity meant longer walks for collecting water and firewood, and a heavier burden to bear. Women knew that the real value of forests was not the timber from a dead tree, but springs and streams, food for their cattle and fuel for their hearths. The folk songs of that period said,

These beautiful oaks and rhododendrons,
They give us cool water.
Don’t cut these trees,
We have to keep them alive.

It took the 1978 Uttarkashi disaster, which created floods all the way to Calcutta in Bengal, for the Indian government to recognise that the women were right because the expenditure on flood relief..."

[Neel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book about philanthropy for corporate profit.

[Nico Jones · Rating 1 out of 5]

Could not get through it. Many points she makes are true, but the way she interprets them are purely false.

For example, Nitrates were made as a weapon during the wars and later have been used to allow for agriculture that is feeding the world (which she explains)... but an illogical conclusion would be to say that Bill Gates is propagating these War Machines to make the world believe that Western Knowledge works and that the ancient wisdom of farmers (undernourished, I hasten to add) is not being respected - even though, she argues, they have been able to "preserve the ecosystem for thousands of years", her point exactly.

[Noel نوال · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The business of grabbing and money-making, through a violent extractive economy that the 1% have built, is burdening the earth and humanity with unbearable and non-sustainable costs, and has brought us to the brink of extinction. We do not have to escape from the earth; we have to escape from the illusions that enslave our minds and make extinction look inevitable.”
~Vandana Shiva, Oneness vs The 1%: Shattering Illusions, Seeding Freedom

This book taught me way more than my white-washed bullshit conservation biology class that blamed BIPOC and countries recovering from colonialism for global warming and earth's demise. As the only woman of color, let alone one of only two people of color, in that class I constantly had to argue points about environmental colonialism and apartheid when the professor and my classmates wanted to pin all of the blame for our world's current environmental state on trafficked people enslaved on shark-finning boats.
I really respect Vandana Shiva for the way she unapologetically stands for the earth, farmers, ecological and agricultural feminism, and indigenous lives with fully grounded strength. She is not afraid to speak up against corrupt billionaires like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk to name a few who have generated their wealth through the exploitation of human labor, natural resources, and the environment. These billionaires that are part of the 1% that possesses half of the world's wealth contribute to so much of the Earth's pollution through their corporations/factories/natural resource harvesting yet they greenwash the crap out of the narratives they present to the world. Tell me why the world's 3rd richest man (Bill Gates) owns the most land in America including a majority of Sioux territory as well as the land of other First Nations tribes?
The people that grow the most produce in the world tend to be poverty-stricken because of how the global economy is set up. They possess the knowledge to grow food for the globe yet the corporations they slave away for overwork them for wages too scarce to feed their families with and that is everything that's wrong with our world. "Oneness versus the 1%" is an excellent book that delves into environmental colonialism, exploitation of natural resources, attacks on indigenous farmers by the 1%, how the 1% got exponentially richer during a global pandemic while the rest of the world suffered while filling the billionaires' wallets, Monsanto, how the corporations that created the gases used in the Holocaust concentration camps and Napalm used in Vietnam never faced consequences and play a large role in global agriculture today, the negligence of prioritizing colonizing Mars due to selfish nihilism when we could invest and work to helping our planet heal and repair, the necessity of oneness in our world, and so much more. I highly recommend this book to everyone; it's highly important and timely.

[Will Hansen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shiva mounts a strong attack against the reductionist logic of Trans-National Corporations, who continue to pollute our environment, destroy agricultural biodiversity and patent the seeds farmers in India and around the world have been planting for generations.

[Shan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Inserisco media, recensione a dopo
image:
Monsanto invasion
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Somministrazione massiva dei pesticidi
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Monocolture
image:
Monocolture

[Rhys · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book with a lot of passion and perspective.

Her evaluation of 'philanthrocapitalism' was prescient, as was her well-articulated evaluation of 'grabbing' - grabbing land, grabbing patents on indigenous seeds and grabbing the well-being of the 99% by converting it into value-accumulation.

"In the face of the hyper anthropocentrism and hyper greed of the 1%, which is exterminating the diversity of species, and rendering the 99% disposable, our power for change comes from being part of the earth family. In the awareness that we are one with the earth and all her beings we become aware that we are one as humanity. The web of life unites us. The power of Big Money and its political machine divides us by locking us in narrow, fragmented, constructed identities, creating the illusion of our separation from the earth, and through that separation, the illusion that it is the money machine that runs our lives. That we will have no food without the Monsantos and Cargills, no water without the Cokes and the Pepsis, no health without Big Pharma, no friends without Facebook, no communication without Twitter, no money without Big Banks, no energy without Big Oil, no knowledge without Big Data" (p.195).

[Bryn Grover · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting work on how the 1% controls the rest of the globe in their own interests and how it affects the other 99%. I'd do five stars except for a couple of things. First, the author spends a lot of time bashing one particular tech mogul. I don't necessarily disagree as I don't have all the research and data to back it up and probably feel similarly in many ways. But it seemed at times like the book was targeted at one person in particular. Second, there is a lot of talk but not a lot of what I considered to be options and plans. It was more of a 'here's where we are' and 'here's where we'd like to be' without as strong a piece in the middle describing how to get from one to the other.

[Sophie McKeand · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vandana Shiva is an intellectual force to be reckoned with. Explosive in her delivery and meticulous in her thinking. A must read.

[Matara Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

cant wait to meet vandana shiva !! what an amazing woman

[Shelly Domitrovich · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would give this more than 5 stars. Excellent!

[Nerea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very dense and intelligent book. I got lost and it was hard to read. Maybe a little too smart for me. Thankyou for the book and hope I can understand and retain more the next time I read.

[tejuina · Rating 3 out of 5]

a good read on some of the major the problems caused by neoliberalism as the continuation of colonial plunder, especially the threat (bio)tech companies and industrial agriculture pose to the environment. perhaps because of the title, I was expecting a more in depth exploration of the resistance movements that have arisen in response to these problems--it is clear shiva is knowledgeable about them, but I was left wanting to know more about their wins (and losses). looking forward to reading more of her work on the green revolution and ecofeminism.

[Aditi Somani · Rating 5 out of 5]

10/10

[Miki · Rating 5 out of 5]

A depressing but necessary read in my humble opinion. What evil we allow to flourish.

[Audiobook, Scribd]

[Bruno Sbille · Rating 4 out of 5]

Très intéressant ce livre, de plus d'une personnalité que j'adore.

Le livre reprend pendant une grande partie comment la pensée mécaniste. Produire plus en ne considérant pas la planète dans son ensemble a conquis notre monde. Elle donne aussi pas mal d'exemples sur comment une minorité des humains s'approprie toutes les richesses et tout le pouvoir.

C'est un livre d'autant plus intéressant qu'il a été publié en 2018, soit avant la crise du covid-19. Elle fait notamment un portrait peu reluisant de Bill Gates et de sa fondation. Ce qui prend tout son sens à l'époque actuelle.

Ensuite à la fin du livre elle propose une approche pour sortir de cet état de fait.

Si je devais donner une critique à ce livre ce serait au niveau de l'équilibre. Sur 180 pages 150 sont dédiées à la description du problème et 30 à la solution. J'aurais aimé plus du côté solution.
Après mon avis est sans dû au fait que je connaissais déjà beaucoup de choses sur la description du problème (biodiversité, Monsanto etc.) via des documentaires que j'ai pu voir.

Chouette lecture donc !

[Ana Silva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everybody should read this, really.
We need to be aware of what’s happening in our world and how we are losing our freedom and our connection with nature thru the ideas and actions of the 1%
There is a lot of things that we kinda imagine but we are far from knowing it.
The 15 companies that rule the world will fucks us over in no time, and the only solution is to unite, follow the nature’s rhythm and try more and more to consume local and small
Try to eat organic and have a small little pot with dirt and vegetables, doesn’t matter if you don’t have a garden, please just try it in your window.
They will kill us, our farmers and our Mother Earth

[Luci · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read the 2020 updated version. Explores interesting concepts and full of interesting data about agriculture amd the economics of the elite. But most of Shiva's solutions are idealistic and not fully formed.

[Marianela · Rating 1 out of 5]

Una terrible traducción pobre Vandana si tu supieras

[Majo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting topic but a little hard to read.

[Shawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read a slightly different title "Oneness vs. 1%", I think it's generally the same as "One Earth, One Humanity..." and the subject matter is clearly an important one. The writing is very Kumbaya, like, if people were just not greedy and insecure then the whole world would be alright. Well, of course, that is true, but the fact is that people ARE greedy and insecure. So, while she rails against corporate greed, and science for profit, and all the Big Money, and the chemical-military-industrial complexes, it still just comes off as, "No duh, but what the heck can we do about it?!"

But Shiva's main case is against the 1% and she articulates a clear argument as to how exactly they are both gaining on and corrupting the world (the planet). She lists companies with conflicts of interest, and her points are never shallow. For instance, she'll talk plainly about how a person or an institution can basically force a new & very lucrative drug or cure on everyone. She explains it well, the sort of the stuff that people dismiss as scary thinking or conspiratorial she lays out quite clearly. She brings up Monsanto, and how they're so powerfully rich that they can invest in all sorts of data mining, and how they can prop themselves up as the champions of science, and how they can dismiss contrary voices. The book's worth something, the message is undeniably important, but this is a book for activists, or, rather, it kinda leaves you feeling like you're not really doing anything to combat the problems that she brings up. But then again, her message is that these 1% uber-rich folks are just too powerful to compete with.

5 stars for content & intent but these thorny human problems are best displayed in movies or documentaries. This stuff needs to be preached to the masses and the masses just don't read (nonfiction) books. For nonfiction, for facts, people just watch the news, and whatever is on the news then becomes facts. We leave the thinking & the reading to the 'experts' who show up on TV and tell us what we need to know without our ever reading up or thinking extra on the matter. The 1% own media, news outlets, corporations, heck--they own what we think and say. Put it on the news, put your special, faithful news editors in position, and the people will parrot it. Lastly, Shiva rocks for bringing up George Orwell!

[Philippa · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incisive and clear-eyed analysis of the current situation, with the dominant forces of extractive and exploitative capitalism being held in fewer and fewer hands - the 1% - while the many are trapped in poverty, paying rents not just on land and housing but on seeds, software etc.
The Oneness is all of us and Mother Earth - all beings and the natural world we are part of - and we need to return to cherishing it and each other in order to bring back balance.
Multinational corporations control people, governments, industry of all kinds including oil, agricultural chemicals, seeds, weapons, medicine and pharmaceuticals to a huge extent - and increasingly so over the years, writing the laws and regulations that benefit them. And all for what? Are they really happy?
Vandana Shiva calls the patenting of plants and other life forms (via genetic engineering for example) biopiracy. For millennia people have selected and co-evolved with plants and animals, and now companies come along and tweak them genetically, then patent them, call them an innovation, and sell them back to people, with often devastating results. Shiva exposes the propaganda machine around this, for example the Cornell Alliance for Science and others who get money from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Philanthrocapitalism is Shiva's name for this kind of investment - the current uber capitalist moguls "donate" money to supposedly good causes - but they're really just feathering their own nests.
It has to change for us and the planet to survive!

[Kael · Rating 1 out of 5]

⭐
❌🪑 Not worth chair time.
This book has some significant issues.

To start, Shiva's assertion that all cells are sentient is blatantly false. Sentience, by definition, requires a nervous system, which individual cells don’t have—a nervous system does not form part of a cell, cells form part of a nervous system.

The text seems to conflate imperial colonisation with settling uninhabited planets. Imperial colonisation was harmful due to the direct impacts on native populations; there’s no parallel on Mars, where there is no native population (afaik).

Shiva’s criticism of wealth extraction is one-sided. While exploitation of natural resources certainly has pitfalls, mineral extraction itself is essential for modern technology and lifting billions out of poverty—you couldn't read this review without it. Dismissing it outright overlooks its critical role in supporting contemporary life.

While Shiva makes some valid points, particularly in her critiques of Monsanto and IG Farben, the arguments feel repetitive and lack depth. Much of the book’s content could just as easily be found in the typical anti-corporate rants on Russell Brand’s YouTube channel. Despite some agreeable commentary, the book comes across as vague and loosely structured.

I’ll likely explore more of Shiva’s work in the future, as this may simply be a weaker entry point. For now, though, Oneness vs. the 1% will remain in the DNF pile.

[Michael Hutchison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting and short book. A few take aways, the author doesn't much care for Bill and Milinda Gates. She doesn't think their philanthropy is all that philanthropic. That they are cutting profits from it or look to profit years down the road. Most of what she cites as examples is in India. Which is fair. The 1% has huge stakes in India. She talks at length about seeds and the alteration of genes in the seeds leading to patents on them and higher prices to farmers for seeds. Also seeds developed by farmers over generations are being pirated by corporations, patented, and laws enacted so the farmers can't use the seeds they developed. We have seen in this country Monsanto sue many farmers because another farm using Monsanto seeds contaminated their field and then Monsanto sues them for patent infringement. It's pretty crazy but we have been watching this happen in this country and attempts in Europe for a couple of decades. We had a seed bank in downtown Petaluma. It is gone now but I remember the sign on the front, "No GMO". The book is very much about the natural way, the organic way and the corporation attack on that way to restrict and control the production of food and there by control the profit on food. The author speaks to many things the Bill and Milinda Gates Foundation are into that contribute to this transfer to the 1%.

[Giorgio Bugnatelli · Rating 3 out of 5]

Vandana Shiva is a world-renowned environmental activist, physicist, and philosopher, celebrated for her leadership in the alter-globalization and ecofeminist movements. This book sits at the intersection of environmental activism, political economy, and social justice. It will appeal to readers interested in critiques of global capitalism, environmental justice, and grassroots movements for change.
This is a compact, impassioned critique of global economic elites and their impact on the planet and its people. Shiva argues that the world’s wealthiest 1%—through monopolistic control over resources, finance, and technology—are driving social division, ecological destruction, and the erosion of democratic values. She exposes the links between these elites, industrial capitalism, and the rise of fundamentalism and violence, particularly against women. Drawing on her activism and experiences from Seattle to Cancun, Shiva outlines principles of inclusion, nonviolence, and reclaiming the commons, calling for a just, sustainable future rooted in “earth democracy,” where resources are freely and fairly shared. At times the book’s tone becomes polemical and its arguments occasionally oversimplified, lacking detailed policy prescriptions for the systemic issues it critiques.
Memorable quote: “People can reclaim their right to live free, think free, breathe free, eat free.”

[Amyiw]

Very hard to find this book as it has an alternate title, One Earth, One Humanity vs. the 1%, and this 'edition' doesn't show at all. This is available at Hoopla for me from both of the libraries I use. I saw it and decided I would read it since I've seen Vandana Shiva speak a few times and what she talks about with food and the corporate food complex (my identification) is pretty scary. That Monsanto can copyright a hybrid seed and when it infects a neighboring independent farmer, can sue him for using their "genetics" and kill the farmer's livelihood. That here in the US we have only a couple of corporations controlling almost all of meat packing facilities, that monopolies are taking over even our foods... scary. I always think of big Banks, big Pharma, big Tech, big Amazon, as the monopolies but even our farms are being bought out and infected by this corporate greed and it is not healthy, not for the planet and not for people.

[Barbara Clarke · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is no need for me to add to the five star reviews - they have captured the disturbing facts and future unless the majority of people around the world wake up and say No More! The way that Bill Gates is plotting OUR future should be a wake up call for everyone - even the rich. They might also run out of safe, unmolested food and starve in their bunkers. He's the most dangerous man in the world and just received billions from Warren Buffet to hopefully sink his rich ship - going so far that he can't be redeemed?

I did notice few people referred to the Gandhian Principles - they are worth a close read and might end reading the book with a bit of hope and direction. What should be simple - they are only 1% - but they own governments (especially the US congress) and are not about to stop unless The People from around the world do the work of stopping them and then remaining ever vigilant - there is no relaxing with the evil that abounds - greed, power, hatred for ordinary human beings, natural world, and nature - oneness.

[Matt Trimble · Rating 5 out of 5]

It appears that I have an updated version, printed by Chelsea Green 2020. One of the most important books I've ever read, giving deep insight to not only the plight of globalism and its catastrophic consequences for Indian farmers, but for the rest of us through Big Agriculture and the elites genetic experiments run amok.
I like attention called to actual numbers concerning investments and stakes in companies; it makes "following the money" a lot easier.

I've always tried to avoid GMOs but after reading this, I will do better than try. I will also pay even closer attention to how and what I consume in general. The only complaint I have is I feel there is an overfocus on women- women are just as much to blame for all of this society as women, but I also try to consider that there is probably a stark cultural difference. I'm sure Indian women have much different priorities than Western women.

[Madras Mama · Rating 1 out of 5]

Regrettably, my engagement with this book left me bewildered and angry. Its contents proved distasteful, lacking scientific rigor, and conveyed in a perplexing and poorly narrated manner, devoid of substantial evidence. Rather than offering constructive discourse, the narrative consistently sought to castigate various entities without a foundation of verifiable support. A cursory examination through a basic fact-finding query would reveal the fragility of the entire argument. Individuals of this mindset appear to stand opposed to progress, technology, and the overall welfare of society, residing in a realm detached from pragmatic realities. The assertion that age inherently imparts maturity and education unequivocally bestows knowledge finds a notable contradiction in the exemplar of this author. This author is a quintessential illustration of the disconnection between age, education, and the demonstrated qualities of maturity and knowledge.

[Vincent D. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book more than I actually did.

First the positives: Pointing out EXACTLY what Bill Gates/Monsanto/Evil Corporationa are doing to destroy the world and take away any chance of freedom.

Now for the cons: In the first few pages of the book she states that autism is caused by eating processed foods. False. No one knows how autism happens and it’s rubs me the wrong way to just blame it on food (comes across as classist). She is very anti technology and while technology isn’t the best thing ever, it can be used for good and to not acknowledge that that is very one sided. She also calls out for being intertwined in communities but then is very anti global economy.

I think there are some good ideas here but ultimately it comes across as just a list of horrible things that we already knew happened and no solutions.