Barbara H. Peterson
While we are all looking the other way at this pending disaster and that looming crisis, the march towards food domination by the U.S. biotech juggernaut is rolling along, right on course.
If you want to see the future, look right under your nose at the smallest of things – the seed. Control the seed and you control the source of life. Control the seed supply of another country and you control the source of life for that country.
Encouraged by the U.S. Embassy, the Millennium Challenge Corporation had “granted” El salvador 277 million dollars to “improve El Salvador’s competitiveness and productivity in international markets.” This, however, would not come without certain commitments and obligations, which included a commitment to ensure that the Ministry of Agriculture’s procurement of corn and bean seed would “be consistent with the provisions of the CAFTA-DR( Dominican Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement).”
“We are asking the Government of EL Salvador to implement the procurement program for corn and bean seeds in a competitive, objective, and transparent manner that demonstrates to all stakeholders both EL Salvador’s commitment to the CAFTA-DR, as well as its commitment to good governance. Such principles are inherent in the provisions of the CAFTA-DR.” (1)
Again, without these specific economic reforms the U.S. government will not provide El Salvador with the 277 million dollars in aid money through the MCC.
Yup. Another case of the U.S. pushing GMOs on other countries via “free trade” agreements, which are anything but.
On August 5, 2004, the United States signed the Dominican Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR) with five Central American countries (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua) and the Dominican Republic. The CAFTA-DR is the first free trade agreement between the United States and a group of smaller developing economies. This agreement is creating new economic opportunities by eliminating tariffs, opening markets, reducing barriers to services, and promoting transparency. It is facilitating trade and investment among the seven countries and furthering regional integration.
After all, we all just have to get along, and that means cooperation or you could just find yourself accused of being a “barrier to trade.” So, take our genetically engineered seeds (GMOs) and like it or face punitive actions. And by the way, don’t try to save any of them for next year’s planting, or we’ll sue the pants off you. Better make that Monsanto et. al. – same thing. The way that Monsanto has infiltrated the U.S. government, who can tell the difference anymore?
But this cannot be the impetus behind such agreements, can it? To actually coerce a weaker country into accepting genetically engineered seeds and thereby placing every country that enters into one of these agreements in subjugation to the U.S. dominated biotech industry? Or could it…
You see, the blatant spread of GMOs is not about feeding a starving world at all. It’s about control. Control a country’s food and you control that country. Let’s just take a look at Iraq and Bremer’s Order 81.
‘The reason we are in Iraq is to plant the seeds of democracy so they flourish there and spread to the entire region of authoritarianism.’ – George W. Bush
When George W. Bush spoke of planting the ‘seeds of democracy’ few realized he might have had in mind Monsanto seeds.
Following the US occupation of Iraq in March 2003, the economic and political life of that country changed radically. Iraq is under the complete economic control of the occupying power, the United States…
… As head of the CPA, Bremer moved swiftly to draft a series of laws to govern Iraq, which at the time had no constitution, nor legally-constituted government. The new laws of the US occupation authority numbered 100 in all, and were put into effect in April 2004. One of the Orders mandates that no elected Iraqi government will have the power to alter the US-imposed laws. The new laws, or Orders, as they were called, would insure that the economy of Iraq would be remade along lines of a US-mandated ‘free-market’ economic model…
…Buried deep among the Bremer laws was Order 81, ‘Patent, Industrial Design, Undisclosed Information, Integrated Circuits and Plant Variety Law’.
At the heart of Order 81 was the Plant Variety Protection (PVP) provision. Order 81, states: ‘Farmers shall be prohibited from re-using seeds of protected varieties or any variety mentioned in items 1 and 2 of paragraph (C) of Article 14 of this Chapter.’
In plain English, this gives holders of patents on certain plant varieties, i.e. large foreign multinationals, absolute rights for 20 years over use of their seeds in Iraqi agriculture. The protected plant varieties are Genetically Modified or Gene Manipulated (GM) plants, and an Iraqi farmer who chose to plant such seeds must sign an agreement with the seed company holding the patent that he would pay a ‘technology fee’ and an annual license fee for planting the patented seeds.
Any Iraqi farmer seeking to take a portion of those patented seeds to replant in following harvest years would be subject to heavy fines from the seed supplier. Iraqi farmers would become vassals, not of Saddam Hussein, but of multinational GM seed giants.
Yes, this was a complete takeover of Iraqi agriculture by none other than Monsanto.
For years, the Iraqis had held samples of such precious natural seed varieties in a national seed bank, located, ironically, in Abu Ghraib, the city made infamous as a US military torture prison site in 2004. Following the US occupation and various bombing campaigns, the historic and invaluable seed bank in Abu Ghraib vanished, a possible further casualty of the Iraq war.
Bremer’s Pentagon advisers had very different plans for Iraq’s food future.
Iraqi agriculture was to be ‘modernized,’ industrialized and reoriented away from traditional family multi-crop farming, into US-style agribusiness enterprises, producing for the ‘world market.’ Serving the food security needs of hungry Iraqis would be purely incidental to that plan.
The CPA’s Order 81, behind the cover of complicated legal jargon, in effect, turned the food future of Iraq over to global multinational private companies, hardly the liberation most Iraqis had hoped for.
Order 81 on Intellectual Property Rights, was not negotiated between a sovereign government and the WTO, or another government. It was imposed on Iraq without debate, from Washington. According to informed Washington reports, the specific details of Order 81 on plants were written for the US Government by Monsanto Corporation, the world’s leading purveyor of GMO seeds and crops.
Yes, it’s a war. A war on the world’s food supply for complete control. Don’t let the hype fool you. GMOs are not needed to feed a starving world. When a nation destroys another nation’s agricultural base and leads the people into mass starvation and then forces that nation to accept patented seeds in order to change its economy and demands reliance on technologies controlled by multinational corporations backed by the very same nation that destroyed the agricultural base to begin with, and enters into “free trade” agreements that impose sanctions and fines in order to force acceptance of GMO technology, that, my friends is complete control worthy of any world class genocidal dictator.
©2014 Barbara H. Peterson
Tags: Barbara H. Peterson, el salvador, Farm Wars, farmwars, food control, free trade, genetic engineering, GMO, iraq, monsanto, order 81, seed
We’ve been had, lock, stock and barrel.
To meet this challenge I suggest we all vote against every incumbent to elected and appointed offices.
Interested parties may wish to take a long shot—a long shot indeed—and inquire of http://www.pilgrimsociety.org and/or
Jill Spiller
Executive Director
The Pilgrims of the US
January 2000 – Present (14 years 8 months) 20 West 44th Street #509
As to which of their members are directors and executives of Monsanto, Navistar, and other large interests in Big Agribusiness. Be advised this group does not release membership particulars to nonmembers. However, Charles Allen Thomas surfaced in the leaked list for 1969, at the time he was chairman of Monsanto. This single organization holds the reins of the NWO, which is an important reason it refuses release of rosters.