just thought i'd post this since it's not getting play in any of the corpMedia events on cable, much less network. but it goes to the heart of why we're in iraq, imho.

from GRAIN:
When former Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) administrator L. Paul Bremer III left Baghdad after the so-called "transfer of sovereignty" in June 2004, he left behind the 100 orders he enacted as chief of the occupation authority in Iraq. Among them is Order 81 on "Patent, Industrial Design, Undisclosed Information, Integrated Circuits and Plant Variety." [1] This order amends Iraq's original patent law of 1970 and unless and until it is revised or repealed by a new Iraqi government, it now has the status and force of a binding law. [2] With important implications for farmers and the future of agriculture in Iraq, this order is yet another important component in the United States' attempts to radically transform Iraq's economy.

...

Reconstruction work, thus, is not necessarily about rebuilding domestic economies and capacities, but about helping corporations approved by the occupying forces to capitalise on market opportunities in Iraq. The legal framework laid down by Bremer ensures that although US troops may leave Iraq in the conceivable future, US domination of Iraq's economy is here to stay.

...

Food sovereignty is the right of people to define their own food and agriculture policies, to protect and regulate domestic agricultural production and trade, to decide the way food should be produced, what should be grown locally and what should be imported. The demand for food sovereignty and the opposition to the patenting of seeds has been central to the small farmers' struggle all over the world over the past decade. By fundamentally altering the IPR regime, the US has ensured that Iraq's agricultural system will remain under "occupation" in Iraq.

Iraq has the potential to feed itself. But instead of developing this capacity, the US has shaped the future of Iraq's food and farming to serve the interests of US corporations. The new IPR regime pays scant respect to Iraqi farmers' contributions to the development of important crops like wheat, barley, date and pulses. Samples of such farmers' varieties were starting to be saved in the 1970s in the country's national gene bank in Abu Ghraib outside Baghdad. It is feared that all these have been lost in the long years of conflict. However, the Syria-based Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) [17] centre - International Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA) still holds accessions of several Iraqi varieties. These collections that are evidence of the Iraqi farmers' knowledge are supposed to be held in trust by the centre. These comprise the agricultural heritage of Iraq belonging to the Iraqi farmers that ought now to be repatriated. There have been situations where germplasm held by an international agricultural research centre has been "leaked out" for research and development to Northern scientists [18]. Such kind of "biopiracy" is fuelled by an IPR regime that ignores the prior art of the farmer and grants rights to a breeder who claims to have created something new from the material and knowledge of the very farmer.