Why Iraqi Farmers Might Prefer Death to Paul Bremer's Order 81

[nosmokes]

Paul Bremer and order81. What a moral outrage. Insisting on introducing GMOs into the place where agriculture was likely invented. And why was this such a priority? I wonder just how much Bremer's bank account was enriched by Monsanto dollars.
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original-alternet

Why Iraqi Farmers Might Prefer Death to Paul Bremer's Order 81

By Nancy Scola, AlterNet. Posted September 19, 2007.

Heard about the thousands of farmer suicides in India? Well, Iraqi farmers may be next thanks to the work of U.S. diplomat Paul Bremer and his Monsanto friends.

Anyone hearing about central India's ongoing epidemic of farmer suicides, where growers are killing themselves at a terrifying clip, has to be horrified. But among the more disturbed must be the once-grand poobah of post-invasion Iraq, U.S. diplomat L. Paul Bremer.

Why Bremer? Because Indian farmers are choosing death after finding themselves caught in a loop of crop failure and debt rooted in genetically modified and patented agriculture -- the same farming model that Bremer introduced to Iraq during his tenure as administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the American body that ruled the "new Iraq" in its chaotic early days.

In his 400 days of service as CPA administrator, Bremer issued a series of directives known collectively as the "100 Orders." Bremer's orders set up the building blocks of the new Iraq, and among them is Order 81 , officially titled Amendments to Patent, Industrial Design, Undisclosed Information, Integrated Circuits and Plant Variety Law, enacted by Bremer on April 26, 2004.

Order 81 generated very little press attention when it was issued. And what coverage it did spark tended to get the details wrong. Reports claimed that what the United States' man in Iraq had done was no less than tell each and every Iraqi farmer -- growers who had been tilling the soil of Mesopotamia for thousands of years -- that from here on out they could not reuse seeds from their fields or trade seeds with their neighbors, but instead they would be required to purchase all of their seeds from the likes of U.S. agriculture conglomerates like Monsanto.

That's not quite right. Order 81 wasn't that draconian, and it was not so clearly a colonial mandate. In fact, the edict was more or less a legal tweak.

What Order 81 did was to establish the strong intellectual property protections on seed and plant products that a company like the St. Louis-based Monsanto -- purveyors of genetically modified (GM) seeds and other patented agricultural goods -- requires before they'll set up shop in a new market like the new Iraq. With these new protections, Iraq was open for business. In short, Order 81 was Bremer's way of telling Monsanto that the same conditions had been created in Iraq that had led to the company's stunning successes in India.

In issuing Order 81, Bremer didn't order Iraqi farmers to march over to the closest Monsanto-supplied shop and stock up. But if Monsanto's experience in India is any guide, he didn't need to.

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complete article including links to related sources here

[Steve_in_California]

1. We're doing the same thing in Mexico--agra-warfare!

This shit has to stop.