The Cruel Lords of Nature |
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Around 10,000 years ago, after Earth had emerged from 90,000 years of the last ice age, when mammoths roamed and northern humans shivered in caves, the people who lived in the fertile crescent of Mesopotamia, in modern day Iraq, invented agriculture. Guest article from author and broadcaster Guy Dauncey.
Iraq's previous constitution prohibited the private ownership of biological resources. Under Order 81, the only seeds that farmers will be allowed to plant must be "protected" crop varieties brought into Iraq by corporations who own the relevant Plant Variety Protection (PVP) patent. Since Iraqi farmers' seeds cannot meet the requirements, they will not be allowed to use them. That right goes to corporate plant breeders who have the exclusive right to produce, reproduce, sell, export, import and store the protected varieties, including all the harvested material, with a monopoly of 20 years for crop varieties, and 25 years for trees and vines. The new patent law explicitly promotes the commercialization of genetically modified seeds, increasing the use of pesticides, and farmers' dependency on companies such as Monsanto, Bayer and Dow Chemical. How are we supposed to react? The Iraqis have chosen their response: armed resistance, fuelled not by El Qaeda operatives drawn to Iraq to fight the US (making George Bush Osama bin Laden's best recruiting agent), but by their anger at the Bremer laws, which turn their economy over to a bunch of black-suited global pirates. Is that hyperbole, or the extravagant ranting of a liberal whiner? Not if you read the words of John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, currently running at #104 in the Amazon best-seller list. In his book, Perkins describes how, as a highly paid professional in the international banking community, he helped the US cheat poor countries out of trillions of dollars by lending them more money than they could ever repay, and then taking over their economies. He was recruited while in business school in the late '60s by the National Security Agency, one of America's spy agencies, and sent to work for Chas T. Main, in Boston, where he became chief economist. His job was to make deals lending vast sums of money to a country on condition that they gave 90% of it back to a US company to build an electrical system or highway, serving the wealthy people. The country would be stuck with this enormous debt: Ecuador today needs 50% of its national budget just to pay down its debt. When the US wants more oil, it goes to Ecuador and says "Look, you're not able to repay your debts, so give our oil companies your Amazon rain forests, which are filled with oil." When the economic hit men failed, the US would send in the CIA, and when the CIA failed, they'd send in the army. That's basically what has happened in Iraq. John Perkins accepted a half million dollar bribe from a major construction company in the '90s not to write this book, but after September 11th, he had a change of heart. He knew that 9/11 was "a direct result of what the economic hit men are doing ", and "the only way we're going to feel good about ourselves is if we use these systems we've put into place to create positive change around the world. There are 24,000 people starving to death every day. We can change that." We live in an incredible era. All around the world, the ice is breaking, not just in the Arctic and Antarctic, but in people's hearts. Ordinary people are realizing they do not have to wait for someone else, before they stand up, and say "This is enough." You, me, our neighbours: we are all feeling this way. We know things must change. Have heart. We live in an incredible era. Guy Dauncey Addendum:THE LORDS OF NATURE The editorial which EcoNews ran in December 2004, telling how the US Administration in Iraq has created rules which prevent Iraqi farmers from saving their own seed, is a good lesson that "If it seems too good (or too bad) to be true, it may not be". I took the story from GRAIN, a reputable NGO which promotes the sustainable management and use of agricultural biodiversity. (http://www.grain.org). Chris Hemming from UBC dug into Order 81, and his reading is that it only applies to patented plant varieties registered under the Order (ie GM seeds), not to traditional varieties. Shalini Bhutani from GRAIN has acknowledged that this is true in her response to a letter from Chris. What IS still true is that the thrust of agricultural development policy in Iraq under the American occupation is towards more chemically intensive GM crops: just as it is in Canada and the USA.
Guy Dauncey is an author, speaker and consultant who specializes in developing a positive vision of a sustainable future, and translating that vision into action. He is author of the following books available through his web site at http://www.earthfuture.com Stormy Weather: 101 Solutions to Global Climate Change |
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Fast forward 10,000 years to modern day Iraq, under occupation by the US government, as it seeks to extend its global economic empire. When the US Administrator Paul Bremer left Baghdad in June 2004, he left behind 100 orders that he had enacted. Most of the orders concern the re-organization of Iraq's economy, handing control over to global (mostly US) corporations, with the intention of making Iraq the poster-boy for the neo-conservative vision of a free trading economy, where global corporations could roam with as much freedom as the mammoths did during the ice age. Order 81, on "Patent, Industrial Design, Undisclosed Information, Integrated Circuits and Plant Variety" amends Iraq's patent law of 1970, making the practice of saving and exchanging seed in Iraq illegal. Illegal, after 10,000 years.