seed-saving now illegal in iraq

Another presumptuous and childish retort devoid of any substantive facts andrew and once again off the mark. So now you handful of right wing sycophants with whom I take constant issue (for failure to provide actual empirical verification for your claims, or indeed to read carefully that which you believe to be such verification) now constitute "everyone"?

Again, I have little doubt that those who actually use their rational capacities for more than simply adhering to easily generated groupthink will weigh the lack of concrete forensic evidence in conjunction with the body of other long revealed lies and bogus inflated "intelligence" (courtesy of Mr. Chalabi) and will see who is living in denial and who is not.

But you play your silly little schoolboy namecalling games if that helps you to stay smugly detached from reality. It changes the truth of what is transpiring on the international stage and the true causal factors and objectives not one iota.

 

you both disgust me. did either of you read the original post? you're so busy arguing about who's "right" and "wrong" that you've killed any real discussion on this important topic. fuck you both.

 

Yes kitty and in the process of dealing with our resident head in the sand denial artists, I went on to further verify your original post's assertion with reference documented substantiation.

 

As opposed to "wake the fuck up"? Have you got some kind of hypocrite permit?

Here's the bad news. Your linked articles completely and utterly fail to prove your point, both of them said exactly the same thing, making it twice the waste of my time. I said specifically that IF a US corporation introduces a new, patented variety of seed and sells it in Iraq, people who buy it won't be able to save it. Other than that, they can save all the seeds they want. US corporations cannot patent existing varieties of seeds any more than they can patent water. Your links describe the legislation EXACTLY as I did.

That's rather vague. I have specifically explained why the seed-saving story is wrong, yet you carefully avoid saying anything more specific than "PB denies reality", or in your typically long-winded version, "PB denies what is, in fact, documented reality". That suggest you don't really understand the argument and are simply linking to stories instead of making the case yourself.

Now lets talk about the genocide of Iraqi Kurds.

Oh so you're not denying them, just saying that they are not only unsubstantiated, but "woefully" ubsubstantiated, that they do not have enough evidence, or too be more specific "demonstrable documented and or forensic evidence (forensic evidence doesn't have to be documented or demonstrable? etc.), and as you helpfully point out for the ilk, this is just what would be required by any court of law (and as you later elaborated - any prosecutory authority, too). Cutting away all the tedious and pompous blather, I see no distiction between this and denying the genocide.

Governments don't generally carry out genocidal wars against their supporters, so pretending that this somehow invalidates their testimony is beyond stupid. "Well known political opposition to Saddam" is a sign that they should be trusted, not scorned as you are "wont" to do.

Perhaps the most offensive and ludicrous thing you have said so far - rounding up people and shooting them in the back of the head before dumping their bodies in a mass grave is not collateral damage BY ANY STANDARD. How low are you willing to go, Lick?

More bad news, the fact that you have "addressed and cited as hearsay" (oops sorry - "mere hearsay", forgot to add verbiage) something doesn't mean it isn't true. After all me and my ilk could link to websites saying that there was no genocide in Bosnia either, that doesn't mean it didn't happen.

One thing about genocides is that they are not usually spontaneous, in fact they are usually highly organised and require the kind of bureaucracy that any other large government undertaking would require. And bureaucracy produces paper. During the 1991 uprising, thousands of documents detailing the genocidal war against the Kurds were seized and shipped out of the country, in total nearly 18 tons of documents, and on top of this audiotapes and videotapes. These form the basis of many studies of the Anfal campaign and other campaigns against the Kurds.

These documents are discussed all over the web, but specifically here by Human Rights Watch http://www.hrw.org/reports/1994/iraq/ as part of their larger report on the Anfal campaign contained here http://www.hrw.org/reports/1993/iraqanfal/.

But that's all a bit dry, and lets keep in mind just how crude and hateful the argument made my Lick is.

Who said all 100,000 were gassed? Is this "oft made"? Not by me, not by airforcedrew, not by Human Rights Watch. Nobody but you. Only part of the genocide was carried out using chemical weapons. Since when is getting shot in the back of the head with an AK47 and then getting bulldozed into a mass grave NOT GOOD ENOUGH TO COUNT? What the fuck are you talking about?

 

For freak's sake, RELAX.


Anyone who wants to talk about seed saving only (and it still remains part of the debate here) can just go to http://www.hipforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=39237 since you DOUBLE POSTED the topic anyway.

 

Again PB comes to demonstrate his insistance on denial (else perhaps a level of naivete or ignorance of how MNC patenting and monoplisation of bioorganisms, especially in the agriculatural sphere, is achieved). And once again making claims which only highlight that he has neither read nor taken note of the salient aspects of the analyses provided. To disabuse you of your preferred state of denial then, we need begin no further than the first paragraph after the introduction of the article prveiously provided in the first (related) link...

Clearly PB is either a mouthpiece for private corporate profiterring interest and thus seeks to deny what in fact has already achieved precedence in India and Bangladesh regarding the attempt to monopolise agriculatural production with the illegalisation of saved seed and introduction of "patented" privately owned seed varieties (the repeated tactics of Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland and others - certainly not the poor indigenous Iraqi farmer).

But let us read further how this very law imposed by Mr. Bremer and of course duly accepted by Washington's gratefully restored proxies paves the way for the very corporate hegemonic ends for which this invasion was intended...

Just get the WTO involved, as needs must in order to obtain international legitimisation of restored commerce, and the required "conditions" can thus be imposed by a third party, absolving Washington and this admin in particular of engineering the new commercial environment of Iraq on behalf of US corporate interests. The same principle which was used to allow Bechtel to buy up the ownership rights of Cochabamba's (Bolivia) water in 1998 thanks to the "requirement" of the IMF to privatise the water in echange for debt relief.

Now of course the visible imprimatur of the WTO gives a free hand to US trade authorities to henceforth condition all trade arrangments with its new client government with the caveat that this or that crop must be grown with US corporate supplied seed. Of course we can easily recognise the boon this is for the avaricious GM seed producers, which will, naturally, be underpinned with the same sort of mass advertising perpetrated upon US farmers that those who fail to buy from the giants will not compete and face ruin.

But of course, if you listen to the head in the sand bs which PB champions, you can ignore the empricially verifiable truth as repeatedly demonstrated in country after country, region after region, where US conglomerates have sunk their claws and now set and control the conditions for production (with no concern for the maintenance of sustainable biodiversity). Any who actually read the article will also find a wealth of additional annotated references to pursue.

Once again PB is shown to be nothing more than a charlatan and liar, attacking any who dare expose the truth behind his corporate PR-led denials.

{note: and again I truly wonder why you are even here on a site so antithetical to all you represent. Kindly take your trolling elsewhere more suited to corporate propaganda}

 

Im just gonna be honest, Lick I did not even read your last post. Im sure its okay for me to assume that its all a denial, or opposition to what pointbreak said. Which it all made sense.

Have you ever admitted to being wrong? Just curious. Wait you're the type that gives some long explanation if your wrong, that never admits to being wrong, and it's a long explanation that just goes round'n'round the point, and never proving anything.

Its okay to always be right. Maybe one day I might find you in a nice padded room rocking violently.

 

What a cirular logic you evince andrew and even go so far as to admit youd rather simply live in your preferred denial and indeed play echochamber and yes man to PB regardless of how repeatedly he has shown his own willing aversion to the truth.

I would put the same question to you frankly, given that your responses have failed to support your chosen belief.

When youre ready to actually scrutinise the information provided rather than any token glance you might have made, youll find more than enough annotated source references to follow up. Its clear you arent here to gain a clearer understanding beyond the lies and PR, but perhaps when things get bad enough you will finally wake up.

 

I posted under my fiancee's name again... -Drew

 

Funny that it's coming from someone who says that the genocides in Iraq are, "Woefully unsubstantiated"--a true insult to the victims and their famalies. Your trying to split hairs weather they were gassed or shot to death, and it's pathetic. Are you seriously going to tackle on Human Rights Watch? You don't know anything about oppression, Lick, not one thing. I can relate to these people, we are different races and different circumstances, but we both lived under sorry excuses for governments, straight from hell. My family lived under dictorial communism, it kept people poor and kept people slaves to the government. You have a lot of nerve sir denying the deaths of approximently 100,000 innocent people in one single campaign. Pathetic.

You call him a troll just becasue he gets the better of you in debates, and everyone can see it? Get off your high horse, it's sickening. Stop with the insults, cut the bullshit, and actually engage his statements instead all of the name calling. Please prove Human Rights Watch wrong, please do, because it's evident you totally ignored that tiny part in your last post.

 

What all of you Bushies need to do is understand that this administration does not care about the Iraqis. We went into Iraq to "defend ourselves" (and to achieve a foothold in the region to replace Saudi Arabia), not to free Iraqis. This is simply what the neocons in this administration wants to lean on since the original reason for invading has been debunked. I don't necessarily believe that we went to war to make Bush/Cheney's friends richer, it just happens to be a fortunate (for them) side effect of the invasion.

Lick has been trying to argue that our motives for being in Iraq are not as altruistic as Bush and his ilk would have us believe. Please remember that Bush I asked the Iraqis to rise up against Saddam in 1991, then allowed them to be slaughtered by Saddam rather than support them in the fight. In addition, the U.S. also provided satellite images to help Saddam target Iran with the same chemical weapons you criticize Saddam for using, so don't cry crocodile tears about this. Our government has supported Saddam (even when we knew he was a viscious bastard), and then removed him when we wanted to.

By trying to couch this mess of a war as a war against Saddam's cruelty, Bush is trying to deflect the criticism he so richly deserves for messing this up in the first place.

 

I see what your saying here. Im not going to totally disagree, (just hope your not referring to me as a bushie. I may consider that an insult, because im all about not being for bush.) It was private tech companies though, who sold weapons, and high end imagery to china, then later on china donated their "stuff" to iraqi's. Also some US tech companies were selling out to the mideast in the early 90's to the mid 90's. So not our government, our people.
(This time period is what im referring to. The food for oil campaign had alot to do with the blackmarket purchases.)

The government acctually cut contracts with one of these companies.

Dont get me wrong though, our government gave the mid-east some weapons, and a bit of technology. But that was when they had our trust.

I dont think its the government we have to worry about giving away technology, but the private tech companies.

 

Let's keep this simple by only quoting from Lick's own post.

This is exactly how I described it. New varieties of seeds can be patented, and if you buy them, you can't save them. Existing varieties of seeds cannot be patented, so you can save them all you want.

You have completely and utterly failed to address this single, simple point.

 

And once again you have failed to continue reading the remainder of the article in your bid to find one sentence with which to dismiss the very real and very well precedented process by which "existing" seed varieties are forced out of circulation to be replaced by what the hegemonic corporate breeders fraudulently call "new varieties".

And of course your denials also presuppose that our installed puppet regime would represent the rights of small indigenous farmers over the much more profitable interests of US corporate giants for whose access they were installed in the first place.

Moreover, the canadian court case: Schmeiser vs Monsanto further illustrates the process by which small indigenous farmers are forced to take on corporate giants even when they havent planted any of the "patented" seeds.



Face it PB, you deny what is common knowledge in agricultural and biodiversity circles.

The article, in its entirety, makes it perfectly clear how the process of seed monopolisation operates.

Your argument again falls flat in the face of empirical fact.

 

I am referring to anyone who has blind adherence to the so-called Bush doctrine. No offense if you are not one of those people.

 

I did read the rest of the article and it doesn't say that. Furthermore this has nothing to do with the whole topic of this thread - "seed-saving now illegal in Iraq". As usual, having been proved wrong, you try to drag the debate off in a different direction so you can win one of your straw man arguments. Seed saving is not illegal in Iraq unless you are trying to save a patented GM seed. Thus Iraqi farmers can continue doing what they are doing.

Again, regardless of how proud you are of your hatred of the puppet regime, this is irrelevant. Seed saving of existing varieties is legal.

Actually this case proves that if your fields are planted 95% with GM seeds and then you pretend "Oh they just must have blown off the back of a passing truck", you'll get sued and lose. This is no different than trying to say someone broke into your house and left a stolen television in the living room and you never noticed. An alibi of this level of stupidity is unlikely to fool a court, although I guess it has no problem convincing you.

I guess the point was just too simple for you to refute, so you are going to dance around and try to distract us. Sad and pathetic, but not unexpected. Seed saving of existing varieties is still legal in Iraq. Nothing in your article or your posts refutes this, which explains your determination to simply announce yourself correct rather than providing actual facts or arguments.

 

Well it seems that PB truly does have his head up his ass and is incapable of understanding that a legal framework duly accepted by the installed government is a fait accomplis, thus amounting to the illegalisation of saved seed for all practical purposes.

But then in the nuance-laden arena of international policymaking you show yourself repeatedly to have zero comprehension whatsoever. No surprise.

Far easier to pretend it all isnt happening Im sure. Just keep on living in your fantasy world PB.

 

When did I dispute that this legal framework was a fait accompli? (by the way, no 's' on the singular, twit) Never. You may as well have started out your post with "Now that I have proved Hawaii is in the Pacific Ocean...". As I pointed out before, creating fake disputes and then pronouncing yourself victorious is only going to make you look sad and pathetic.

Yeah... that's the part you forgot to prove. About five times already.

Boring us to death, on the other hand, just might work.

 

Here's a suggestion for you if substantive argument and awareness of the actual agendas behind our international policymaking are too boring for you, go retreat to page 3 of The Sun. You might even find more handy Murdoch spin in which to envelop yourself.

As far as "winning" arguments goes, you established that as your end all be all quite some time back so ill leave you to content yourself with point scoring.

[note: How unsurprising once again to see you playing grammar nazi when all else fails].

lol.

 

I am not a, "Bushie.", nor am I neo con. I am a staunch libertarian, so I hate Bush and Kerry just about the same amount.

I never claimed we went to Iraq for altruistic reasons, nor do I beleive that either.