More "Freedom and Democracy" for Iraq

[Big Kahuna]

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/13/2023220

The American Administrator of the Iraqi CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) government, Paul Bremer, updated Iraq's intellectual property law to 'meet current internationally-recognized standards of protection.' The updated law makes saving seeds for next year's harvest, practiced by 97% of Iraqi farmers in 2002, the standard farming practice for thousands of years across human civilizations, newly illegal. Instead, farmers will have to obtain a yearly license for genetically modified seeds from American corporations.

:grr:

[Darranar]

1. One of many ways they are making the Iraqis dependent on the US...

they want the oil, such worthless ideas as "self-government" can't be allowed to get in the way.

[Crunchy Frog]

2. That policy will be guaranteed

to keep the insurgency fuelled. Those people won't stand for total strangers showing up at their doorstep and demanding that they abandon the way of life their families have practiced going back thousands of years.

Imagine the way that bootleggers dealt with "revenooers" back during Prohibition and multiply by a thousand.

[Nordic]

3. Good God. This is a bureaucratic war crime

Most people don't realize the Geneva Convention doesn't only cover the treatment of POW's and the like, it also covers how an occupying nation can do BUSINESS in the country it occupies.

Bushco broke pretty much every one of these Geneva Conventions when it set up shop in Iraq.

This is the reason they rushed in the provisional government, because American companies' lawyers were reluctant to commit to Iraq because of this. With the puppet government in place, they created a loophole by which the corporate looting of the country could take hold.

This article explains it all very well:

http://www.harpers.org/BaghdadYearZero.html

[Deja Q]

4. That makes no sense whatsoever! WTF do their own seeds have to do w/IP?!

Intellectual property is the diarrhea Britney spews out of her mouth that she thinks is a song.

Food is not intellectual property.

And a YEARLY LICENSE? I can see people doing that for an antivirus program, but sure as hell NOT for food.

The cost of living in our "culture of life". Forgive me, but our "culture" is starting to look like bacteria. :cry: Bacteria that's bought and paid for to the lowest bidder.

Still, when peak oil subsides, it just means a greater chance of humanity snuffing it for good. How many of us know how to crop and farm? Most of our forefathers did 100 years ago. Pity they're all dead as we could have learned from them. Relying on somebody else's technology will be their/our undoing.

While IP has its place and space, to impose it on the bare essentials is beyond disgusting. Assuming that article is true.