Iraqi freedom???

[ZombiesAteMyBrain]

http://www.vegsource.com/articles2/iraq_seeds.htm

A new report [1] by GRAIN and Focus on the Global South has found that new legislation in Iraq has been carefully put in place by the US that prevents farmers from saving their seeds and effectively hands over the seed market to transnational corporations. This is a disastrous turn of events for Iraqi farmers, biodiversity and the country’s food security. While political sovereignty remains an illusion, food sovereignty for the Iraqi people has been made near impossible by these new regulations.

“The US has been imposing patents on life around the world through trade deals. In this case, they invaded the country first, then imposed their patents. This is both immoral and unacceptable”, said Shalini Bhutani, one of the report’s authors.

This seems ‘both immoral and unacceptable’ to me, too. Surely this is another example of the sort of ‘non-freedom’ that the USA has brought to Iraq? How can this possibly be legal?

[Waverly]

I’m not sure what to make of this. There isn’t enough information available. Certainly, there were already patents; it’s just that they are now enforceable. These patents would also only apply to seeds that included someone’s intellectual property, and not all seeds. It sounds preposterous on the surface because the report’s authors have an agenda – in reality there is not enough factual information to determine if the farmers are being treated unfairly or not.

[RedFury]

@ZombiesAteMyBrain

This seems ‘both immoral and unacceptable’ to me, too. Surely this is another example of the sort of ‘non-freedom’ that the USA has brought to Iraq? How can this possibly be legal?

This should only come as surprise to those that haven’t been made aware of the fact that Iraq was going to be the testing ground for the neocon Free Market Experiment right from the start. It’s a part of the occupation that has, sadly, gotten very little mainstream press, but it’s an inescapable fact.

Naomi Klein is one of the few journos that has tackled the topic head-on. The following article by her, is an in-depth looks at some of the economic reforms implemented by the US viceroy, Paul Bremer, prior to his departure:

**Baghdad Year Zero – Pillaging Iraq in pursuit of a neocon utopia**

The tone of Bremer’s tenure was set with his first major act on the job: he fired 500,000 state workers, most of them soldiers, but also doctors, nurses, teachers, publishers, and printers. Next, he flung open the country’s borders to absolutely unrestricted imports: no tariffs, no duties, no inspections, no taxes. Iraq, Bremer declared two weeks after he arrived, was “open for business.”

One month later, Bremer unveiled the centerpiece of his reforms. Before the invasion, Iraq’s non-oil-related economy had been dominated by 200 state-owned companies, which produced everything from cement to paper to washing machines. In June, Bremer flew to an economic summit in Jordan and announced that these firms would be privatized immediately. “Getting inefficient state enterprises into private hands,” he said, “is essential for Iraq’s economic recovery.” It would be the largest state liquidation sale since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

But Bremer’s economic engineering had only just begun. In September, to entice foreign investors to come to Iraq, he enacted a radical set of laws unprecedented in their generosity to multinational corporations. There was Order 37, which lowered Iraq’s corporate tax rate from roughly 40 percent to a flat 15 percent. There was Order 39, which allowed foreign companies to own 100 percent of Iraqi assets outside of the natural-resource sector. Even better, investors could take 100 percent of the profits they made in Iraq out of the country; they would not be required to reinvest and they would not be taxed. Under Order 39, they could sign leases and contracts that would last for forty years. Order 40 welcomed foreign banks to Iraq under the same favorable terms. All that remained of Saddam Hussein’s economic policies was a law restricting trade unions and collective bargaining.

If these policies sound familiar, it’s because they are the same ones multinationals around the world lobby for from national governments and in international trade agreements. But while these reforms are only ever enacted in part, or in fits and starts, Bremer delivered them all, all at once. Overnight, Iraq went from being the most isolated country in the world to being, on paper, its widest-open market.

Which is now blowing-up in their collective faces. Much more at source.

[RedFury]

For the OP: Here’s a lenghty and fully sourced discussion on the topic at hand:

Iraq law Requires Seed Licenses

[RickJay]

The claims made in the OP’s link appear to be false. The claim is that saving seeds is now illegal in Iraq. This is clearly not the case. Order 81 states that if the seed is a patented variety, you must have permission of the holder of the registration of that variety.

Therefore, the claim is specifically false in stating that “saving seeds is illegal.” It obviously is not, and one would have to suspect that most Iraqi farmers are not using designer, genetically engineered seeds. The claim is also deliberately deceptie in the sense that it implies saving seeds is now a crime, which is not true at all; it would be a matter for a civil court (Article 78.)

[Mojo]

What RickJay said. FTR here’s the websites of the two groups that published the study:
GRAIN
Focus on the Global South
They both appear to have an axe to grind. I’m willing to bet that Iraqi farmers can save their unpatented non-GM seeds as they’ve always been able to. Anyone willing to take this bet?

[RTFirefly]

Besides, per the Baghdad Year Zero link that RedFury provided, the laws the CPA passed don’t seem to have any legal standing right now:

When Paul Bremer shredded Iraq’s Baathist constitution and replaced it with what The Economist greeted approvingly as “the wish list of foreign investors,” there was one small detail he failed to mention: It was all completely illegal. The CPA derived its legal authority from United Nations Security Council Resolution 1483, passed in May 2003, which recognized the United States and Britain as Iraq’s legitimate occupiers. It was this resolution that empowered Bremer to unilaterally make laws in Iraq. But the resolution also stated that the U.S. and Britain must “comply fully with their obligations under international law including in particular the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the Hague Regulations of 1907.” Both conventions were born as an attempt to curtail the unfortunate historical tendency among occupying powers to rewrite the rules so that they can economically strip the nations they control. With this in mind, the conventions stipulate that an occupier must abide by a country’s existing laws unless “absolutely prevented” from doing so.

But Bremer didn’t give up. International law prohibits occupiers from selling state assets themselves, but it doesn’t say anything about the puppet governments they appoint. Originally, Bremer had pledged to hand over power to a directly elected Iraqi government, but in early November he went to Washington for a private meeting with President Bush and came back with a Plan B. On June 30 the occupation would officially end—but not really. It would be replaced by an appointed government, chosen by Washington. This government would not be bound by the international laws preventing occupiers from selling off state assets, but it would be bound by an “interim constitution,” a document that would protect Bremer’s investment and privatization laws.

The plan was risky. Bremer’s June 30 deadline was awfully close, and it was chosen for a less than ideal reason: so that President Bush could trumpet the end of Iraq’s occupation on the campaign trail. If everything went according to plan, Bremer would succeed in forcing a “sovereign” Iraqi government to carry out his illegal reforms.

The final blow to the neocon dream came in the weeks before the handover. The White House and the CPA were rushing to get the U.N. Security Council to pass a resolution endorsing their handover plan. They had twisted arms to give the top job to former CIA agent Iyad Allawi, a move that will ensure that Iraq becomes, at the very least, the coaling station for U.S. troops that Jay Garner originally envisioned. But if major corporate investors were going to come to Iraq in the future, they would need a stronger guarantee that Bremer’s economic laws would stick. There was only one way of doing that: the Security Council resolution had to ratify the interim constitution, which locked in Bremer’s laws for the duration of the interim government. But al Sistani once again objected, this time unequivocally, saying that the constitution has been “rejected by the majority of the Iraqi people.” On June 8 the Security Council unanimously passed a resolution that endorsed the handover plan but made absolutely no reference to the constitution.

[Kimstu]

RJ: * one would have to suspect that most Iraqi farmers are not using designer, genetically engineered seeds. *

Mojo: * I’m willing to bet that Iraqi farmers can save their unpatented non-GM seeds as they’ve always been able to.*

But did you read the article that RedFury linked to?

The seeds farmers are now allowed to plant - “protected” crop varieties brought into Iraq by transnational corporations in the name of agricultural reconstruction - will be the property of the corporations. […]

Pushing for these “reforms” in Iraq has been the US Agency for International Development, which has been implementing an Agricultural Reconstruction and Development Program for Iraq (ARDI) since October 2003. To carry it out, a one-year US$5 million contract was granted to the US consulting firm Development Alternatives, Inc. with the Texas A&M University as an implementing partner. Part of the work has been sub-contracted to Sagric International of Australia. The goal of ARDI in the name of rebuilding the farming sector is to develop the agribusiness opportunities and thus provide markets for agricultural products and services from overseas.

In other words, patented seeds apparently are being introduced into Iraq under the reconstruction efforts, but with a Trojan Horse in the form of agricultural patents. “Here’s some free seed to rescue your crops and help rebuild your country! Surprise—it’s patented and you have to pay us if you want to keep using it!”

I could see how this might well be putting some farmers between a rock and a hard place, if they lost their original crop from which they would have saved native, non-patented seeds, and now have no alternative to the pay-per-sow commercial seeds.

As RTF points out, though, these laws may not actually stick, so we’ll have to see.