Order 81 and The Terminator Gene  

UrukNet (not an impartial source, but of interest if you want to get a sample of one set of anti-American views from the middle east) has an article on the infamous "Order 81" and its impact on Iraqi agriculture - Mutant Seeds for Mesopotamia (via the Ron Paul Forums, of all places). William Engdahl and Naomi Klein have written about this subject before.

One would think that Iraqi farmers, now prospering under "freedom" and "democracy," would be able to plant the seeds of their choosing, but that choice, under little-known Order 81, would be illegal.

But first, it is important to set the context. Most people have never heard of the infamous "100 Orders," but they help explain why the majority of Iraqis remain opposed to foreign occupation. The 100 Orders allow multinational corporations to basically privatize an entire nation, and this degree of foreign and private control has not been witnessed since the days of the British East India Company and its extraterritoriality treaties.

A few examples of the 100 Orders are illuminating:

* Order 39 allows for the tax-free remittance of all corporate profits.

* Order 17 grants foreign contractors, including private security firms, immunity from Iraq's laws.

* Orders 57 and 77 ensure the implementation of the orders by placing U.S.-appointed auditors and inspector general in every government ministry, with five-year terms and with sweeping authority over contracts, programs, employees and regulations. (1)

Back to one of the most blatant orders of all: Order 81. Under this mandate, Iraq's commercial farmers must now buy "registered seeds." These are normally imported by Monsanto, Cargill and the World Wide Wheat Company. Unfortunately, these registered seeds are "terminator" seeds, meaning "sterile." Imagine if all human men were infertile, and in order to reproduce women needed to buy sperm cells at a sperm bank. In agricultural terms, terminator seeds represent the same kind of sterility.

Terminator seeds have no agricultural value other than creating corporate monopolies. The Sierra Club, more of a mainstream "conservation" organization than a radical "environmentalist" one, makes the exact same case:

"This technology would protect the intellectual property interests of the seed company by making the seeds from a genetically engineered crop plant sterile, unable to germinate. Terminator would make it impossible for farmers to save seed from a crop for planting the next year, and would force them to buy seed from the supplier. In the third world, this inability to save seed could be a major, perhaps fatal, burden on poor farmers." (2)

What makes this Order 81 even more outrageous is that Iraqi farmers have been saving wheat and barley seeds since at least 4000 BC, when irrigated agriculture first emerged, and probably even to about 8000 BC, when wheat was first domesticated. Mesopotamia's farmers have now been trumped by white-smocked, corporate bio-engineers from Florida who strive to replace hundreds of natural varieties with a handful of genetically scrambled hybrids.

Where does such hubris come from? It comes from the entire mission surrounding the invasion of Iraq, which, upon closer inspection, had been planned years in advance by a faction of "neo-cons" who adopted Leon Trotsky's glorification of the state, his theory "permanent revolution," and his goal of exporting revolution worldwide. The neo-con revolution aims to alter the economic, political and cultural foundations of nations on the other side of the planet (rejecting old-fashioned notions of self-determination, popular sovereignty and even the nation-state system). This mission includes the transformation of agriculture and the establishment of "food control" over local populations.

Order 81 fits into this revolutionary program, and it is quite diabolical upon closer inspection. First, it forces Iraq's commercial farmers to use registered terminator seeds (the "protected variety"). Then it defines natural seeds as illegal (the "infringing variety"), in a classic Orwellian turn of language.

This is so incredible that it must be re-stated: the exotic genetically scrambled seeds are the "protected variety" and the indigenous seeds are the "infringing variety."

As Jeffrey Smith explains, author of Order 81: Re-Engineering Iraqi Agriculture:

"To qualify for PVP [Plant Variety Protection], seeds have to meet the following criteria: they must be 'new, distinct, uniform and stable'... it is impossible for the seeds developed by the people of Iraq to meet these criteria. Their seeds are not 'new' as they are the product of millennia of development. Nor are they 'distinct'. The free exchange of seeds practiced for centuries ensures that characteristics are spread and shared across local varieties. And they are the opposite of 'uniform' and 'stable' by the very nature of their biodiversity." (3)

Order 81 comes with the Orwellian title of "Plant Variety Protection." Any self-respecting scientist knows, however, that imposing biological standardization accomplishes the exact opposite: It reduces biodiversity and threatens species. So Order 81 comes with an Orwellian title and consists of Orwellian provisions.

While I've got no time for neo-cons, the argument that they are imposing a Trotskyite agenda on the world has always seemed bizarre to me - even allowing for the fact that some of them are apparently unrepentant ex-Trotskyites (though perhaps this is because I've never bothered to understood what Trotsky's version of communism actually is).

Usually this line of argument is confined to some of the more out of the way paleocon and libertarian websites (though I did see it surface once, seemingly ironically, on TomDispatch once as well).

The "terminator gene" objective of corporate dominance over agriculture (and thus entire populations) has always seemed an essentially fascist project to me - and while the neo-cons do have a lot of fascist attitudes, I find it hard to credit that this is a Troskyite objective - aren't they supposed to be at the anarchist end of the communist spectrum ?

The other question that comes to mind is the ability of the Iraqi government to dispense with the orders that were promulgated by proconsul Bremer's provisional authority - you'd hope the "democratically elected" government would be able to override these now. And given that they've waged a semi-successful campaign to avoid handing over ownership of all their oil to the US, you'd think enabling farmers to grow crops from their own seeds wouldn't be too much of a stretch.

So - maybe the whole article is just propaganda, but you never know...