From Now Magazine.
Ah, neoliberalism and economic colonialism rear their ugly heads yet again!
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| When demonstrators lay down the unwelcome mat for George W. Bush next week in Ottawa, they might scrawl some Hands Off Our Food, Dude slogans alongside the usual offerings on the U.S. oil grab in Iraq. How strange that Bush fundamentalists who believe the world was made in seven days think nothing of tinkering with the genetic mysteries of life that evolved over 4 billion years. It's not just the crude, dude, say those who see the occupation of Iraq as a product of an agribusiness drive to patent and monopolize the means of life itself. Info just brought to light by a respected but little-known Bangkok-based think tank, Focus on the Global South, highlights the quiet but decisive behind-the-scenes power exercised by the genetic engineering industry in the U.S. administration of Iraq. Focus on the Global South has highlighted the fine print in the 27-page Order 81, one among a hundred orders signed into Iraqi law last spring by then-U.S. chief administrator Paul Bremer. Order 81 covers Patent, Industrial Design, Integrated Circuits and Plant Variety Law, a run-on phrase that tips us off that biology and plant life in the new Iraq are to be governed and owned as if they were industrial widgets. The intro to the order says such patent protection is needed if Iraq is to become a member of the World Trade Organization, consistent with its "transition from a non-transparent centrally planned economy to a free market economy." The specifics of the order read as if they were inspired by an obsession to leave no biotech patent behind. Among other details, the order prohibits farmers' age-old practice of saving seeds of any plant variety registered by a corporation. The order is remarkable for its comprehensive treatment of what might seem minor details of patent law, given conditions of violent civil war that you'd think would preoccupy U.S. administrators. The precision given to legal wordings seems completely at odds with the U.S. administration's chaotic lack of planning around such mainstays of everyday Iraqi life as electrical power, water provision and hospital equipment. Following the trail back to Washington gives some background to this apparently obsessive concern for patents. The U.S. investigative journalist Greg Palast, author of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, has recently discovered a 101-page U.S. State Department document on the need to transform Iraq's economy. The document was produced in February 2003, just prior to the U.S. invasion, but due to the slowness with which secret government documents are leaked in the information age, was only brought to public attention a few weeks ago. It seems that Bremer's Order 81 was in the legislative pipeline for at least a year. "This is likely history's first military assault plan appended to a program for toughening the target nation's copyright laws," Palast writes of the U.S. State Department report. |
