Rene Riesel, 3 February 1998
The techniques of domination are developing so rapidly -- even more rapidly than the increases in profits and unemployment -- that anyone who doesn't happen to be in the ruling circles is confronted with the question: Is it still possible to make the truth heard when so many political and economic powers are in league to cover it up? How, amid a population that has been turned into deaf-mute spectators, can we thawrt the schemes that the merchants and their lackeys feel free to hatch in broad daylight, knowing that, whether they are right or wrong, no one is in a position to contradict them? Under such conditions, how can we deal with emergencies?
Faced with Novartis's bio-engineered corn and the disgusting irresponsibility with which the French government authorized its sale and cultivation while lying about its own Safety Commission's warning against it . . . my comrades and I felt it was urgent to act before it was too late. . . .
In joining us at this first ever public trial of a bio-engineered plant, the joyous and resolute crowd of demonstrators outside, whose shouts could be heard even here in the courtroom this afternoon, clearly aims at the same time to put on trial a social order that doesn't shrink from announcing that it considers it acceptable to risk poisoning humanity and the entire planet in the name of economic balances and free trade.
