Seeds of freedom

Vandana Shiva

The jurisprudence of intellectual property rights related to life forms is, in fact, a jurisprudence of ‘Bio Nullius’ — life empty of intelligence. The Earth is defined as dead matter.

For thousands of years farmers, especially women, have evolved and bred seed freely with the help of nature to increase the diversity of what nature gave us and adopt it to the needs of different cultures. Biodiversity and cultural diversity have mutually shaped one another.

Every seed is an embodiment of millennia of nature’s evolution and centuries of farmers’ breeding. It is the distilled expression of the intelligence of the earth and intelligence of farming communities. Farmers have bred seeds for diversity, resilience, taste, nutrition, health and to adapt it for local agro-ecosystems.

In times of climate change we need the biodiversity of farmers’ varieties to adapt and evolve. Climate extremes are being experienced through more frequent and intense cyclones that bring salt water to the land. To develop resilience against cyclones, we need salt tolerant varieties of seeds, and we need them in the commons. Along coastal areas, farmers have evolved flood tolerant and salt tolerant varieties of rice such as Bhundi, Kalambank, Lunabakada, Sankarchin, Nalidhulia, Ravana, Seulapuni, Dhosarakhuda.

These seeds have been evolved by farmers and need to stay in the commons to gain resilience against climate change.

After the Orissa Supercyclone, Navdanya could distribute salt tolerant rice to farmers because we had conserved them as a commons in our community seed bank run by Kusum Mishra and Dr Ashok Panigrahi in Balasore, Orissa. Hence we were about to donate two truckloads of salt tolerant seeds to the farmers, who could not grow rice because of the sea salt deposited on their farms.

As I have written in my book Soil, Not Oil, 40 per cent of the greenhouse gases come from an industrialised and globalised model of agriculture. Having created the crisis, corporations, who made profits from industrial agriculture, now want to turn the climate crisis they have contributed to into an opportunity to control climate resilient seeds and climate data.

Corporations like Monsanto have taken 1,500 patents on climate resilient crops. With these very broad patents, Monsanto and other corporations can prevent access to climate resilient seeds after climate disasters since a patent is an exclusive right to produce, distribute and sell the patented product. This implies that the farmers’ right to save and share seed is now defined as “theft”, an “intellectual property crime”.

While nature and farmers have evolved the traits of climate resilience in seeds, corporations claim their role of creator; they declare that seeds are their “invention”, hence their patented property.

In times of climate change, such monopolies aggravate the disaster by blocking farmers’ rights to seeds they have evolved.

Hence, seed as a common good became a commodity of private seed companies, traded on the open market.
For example, on July 5, 2013, Justice Prabha Sridevi, chair of the Intellectual Property Appellate Board of India and D.P.S. Parmar, technical member, dismissed Monsanto’s appeal against the rejection of their patent application to the patent office for “Methods of enhancing stress tolerance in plants and methods thereof”. The title of the patent was later amended to “A method of producing a transgenic plant, with increasing heat tolerance, salt tolerance or drought tolerance”.

Industrial breeding and intellectual property rights including patents on seed fail to recognise nature’s contributions and farmers’ contribution in giving us climate resilient crops. Just as the jurisprudence of Terre Nullius defined the land as empty, and allowed the takeover of territories by the European colonies, the jurisprudence of intellectual property rights related to life forms is, in fact, a jurisprudence of “Bio Nullius” — life empty of intelligence. The Earth is defined as dead matter, so it cannot create. And the farmers have empty heads so they cannot breed seeds.

The door to patents on seed and patents on life was opened by genetic engineering. By adding one new gene to the cell of a plant, corporations claimed they had invented and created the seed, the plant, and all future seeds that were now their property. In other words GMO meant “God Move Over”.

Section 3(j) of the Patents Act, 1970, recognises that life forms are not an invention and hence biological processes cannot be treated as inventions.

Today, this freedom of nature and culture to evolve is under violent and direct threat. The threat to seed freedom impacts the very fabric of human life and the life of the planet.

Not only are corporations like Monsanto claiming patent monopolies on climate resilient seeds, they are also claiming monopoly on climate and weather data. Monsanto has bought the Climate Corporation, which controls vast data on climate for $1 billion.

Not only will Monsanto sell the chemicals and seeds adapted to their chemicals to farmers, they will also sell climate data. This is a strategy for total control of agriculture in times of climate change.

The National Weather Service Duties Act of 2005 was a legislative proposal forwarded in April 2005 by United States Senator Rick Santorum to bar the national weather service from issuing forecasts so that climate and weather services can be privatised. In effect, the knowledge of a cyclone or flood would only be provided to those who could pay.

The vision of the corporations and sadly the US government is to privatise every aspect of life — our seeds and biodiversity, the atmospheric commons, and the knowledge of the climate and weather as a public good.

At a time when the world needs to recognise that life forms, including seeds, are not an invention and the US should correct its laws to be more in alignment with the Rights of the Earth and with human rights, the US government is threatening India with trade retaliation to force us to change our patent laws yet again and introduce the unethical, unscientific and anti-human laws of patent monopolies on seed and medicine.

America’s National Association of Manufacturers — which represents about 50 US business groups — gave the suggestion to the US Trade Representatives’ office to designate India a “Priority Foreign Country”, a tag it gives to worst offenders of intellectual property rights.

This is not just a US-India dispute. It is a fight against corporate enclosures of the commons. If we have to survive as a species, we need to reclaim our commons — of seed, of climate, of knowledge and resist the privatisation of every aspect of life.

We need to create the commons of the seed and cultivate seed freedom through seed saving, seed exchange and participatory breeding.

The writer is the executive director of the Navdanya Trust

http://www.asianage.com/columnists/seeds-freedom-374

America's gun-toting kids

Armed to the milk teeth: America's gun-toting kids

Available in bright blues and hot pinks, rifles for kids sell in their thousands in America. They look like toys – but they're lethal. An-Sofie Kesteleyn travelled to photograph this juvenile army

Sean O'Hagan

Abby, aged 8, from Louisiana, in a detail from a photograph by An-Sofie Kesteleyn, from the series My Little Rifle. Click to enlarge

In May last year, a two-year-old girl was shot dead by her five-year-old brother with a small rifle made specifically for children. The accidental shooting happened in Cumberland County, Kentucky, when the boy was playing with a gun purchased from a company in Pennsylvania called Keystone Sporting Arms, which, in 2008, produced around 80,000 rifles for children. The guns, which sell under the model names Cricket and Chipmunk, were originally advertised on a "Kid's Corner" on the company's website (it has since been removed), which showed children firing them at rifle ranges and on hunting trips. The guns are produced in bright blue, pink and rainbow colours and marketed like toys, under the tag line "My First Rifle".

Benjamin, aged 7, from Louisiana

When the photographer An-Sofie Kesteleyn read about the story in De Volkskrant, the Dutch newspaper she works for, she began making plans for a trip to the American south. "I wanted to go and search for these families who bought guns as presents for their young children," she says. "I began by visiting a rifle range in Ohio, where children are taught to shoot, then travelled down through Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Texas and Louisiana. What I found was that there are loads of children out there in America with their own guns, but not that many parents who are happy to have their kids' portraits taken with those guns."

Kesteleyn's series, My Little Rifle, consists of only 15 portraits, but they provide a powerful and disturbing glimpse of a much bigger gun culture. Last year, the series was chosen for the World Press Photo's prestigious Joop Swart Masterclass.

Hayley, aged 6, from Louisiana

"I went to gun shops and shooting ranges just talking to people," Kesteleyn explains. "What I came away with was the sense that there was a lot of fear and paranoia among the adults, and that fear was handed down to the children along with the guns. The children have childlike imaginations and the usual childhood fears – zombies, monsters and wild beasts. They are not born with these adult fears; they are infected with them."

Kesteleyn photographed the children in their bedrooms, amid dolls' houses and soft toys. Most of them hold the guns casually, but some strike a tough-looking adult pose. Alongside the portraits, Kesteleyn has included drawings the children made of the things they most feared: spidery outlines of werewolves and wild animals. "My biggest fear is a bear," wrote Benjamin, aged seven, "because if you get in their territory, they will chase you for a long time." Eight-year-old Abby wrote: "What I am freaked out by is seeing a dinosaur."

Tatum, aged 6, from Louisiana

On her journey, Kesteleyn encountered "mostly ordinary families who loved their kids and trained them to use the guns safely and responsibly". Nevertheless, she remained bemused and disturbed. "The adults talked about protection all the time. They believe that you have to have guns to protect yourself from the other bad people out there with guns who want to do you harm."

Some encounters have lingered in her head. "I remember this very young girl who was really tired and worn out after her shooting practice, and that just seemed very sad somehow." At another girl's eighth birthday party, which was held at the local shooting range, Kesteleyn even tried out the child's new pink rifle. "They do feel like toys," she says, "and the bullets are really small – but they can kill another child.

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/apr/29/armed-to-the-milk-teeth-america-gun-toting-kids

Russia Doesn’t Want to Take Over East Ukraine

Deputy FM: Russia Doesn’t Want to Take Over East Ukraine

Kerry Declares Russia 'Thugs' Plotting to Take Over Region

by Jason Ditz,

In comments made at the Trilateral Commission last week, Secretary of State John Kerry dubbed Russia a “thug” responsible for stirring unrest in eastern Ukraine, claiming it was a plot to take the region over.

Kerry’s comments echo those of other US and Western officials, who have been claiming Russia is trying to create a pretext for invasion. Yet with Ukraine overtly invading the protester-held east, it seems like Russia has all the excuse it would need, and isn’t acting.

It’s not an oversight, according to Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov, who insists Russia simply doesn’t want to take over the eastern portion of the country, and has no inclination to try to repeat the Crimean annexation there.

It’s not hard to see why. While Russia was eager to retain its naval base in Crimea, it has no such strategic interests in Ukraine’s east. Like Crimea, the area around Donetsk and Luhansk is also extremely poor, and already committed to a pricey set of subsidies in Crimea, there is no reason why Russia might want to start throwing money at cities with crumbling, out-dated industrial bases.

The NATO assumption seems to be that Russia is seeking territory for its own sake, but as the largest country on the planet by far, it isn’t clear why Russia would be looking to absorb neighboring regions.

http://news.antiwar.com/2014/04/29/deputy-fm-russia-doesnt-want-to-take-over-east-ukraine/

US Ambush in Yemen Didn’t Kill al-Qaeda Bombmaker

DNA Test: US Ambush in Yemen Didn’t Kill al-Qaeda Bombmaker

Unclear Who the Slain Actually Were

by Jason Ditz, 

Early last week, US officials began hyping the potential killing of alleged al-Qaeda bombmaking mastermind Ibrahim al-Asiri, who they identified as having been killed in an ambush by US ground troops in Yemen.

At the time, they claimed a sniffer dog was brought in and positively identified one of the corpses as that of Asiri, but Yemen has finally gotten around to conducting anactual DNA test, and the results show it’s not Asiri.

Yemen apparently sent the DNA to Saudi Arabia, where they had the DNA on file of Ibrahim’s brother, who died in a suicide bomb attack. There was no match between the two, however.

Officials say they were unable to get a DNA confirmation of either Asiri or Nasser al-Wuhayshi from any of the scores of slain “suspects” from the US attacks, a disappointment for them. Completely ignored in this is the fact that the US killed those scores of people on the assumption Asiri was one of them, and not a single one has ever been identified.

http://news.antiwar.com/2014/04/29/dna-test-us-ambush-in-yemen-didnt-kill-al-qaeda-bombmaker/

Netanyahu would rather stay in power than pursue a peace deal

Binyamin Netanyahu would rather stay in power than pursue a peace deal

The Israel-Palestine peace talks have collapsed, and Netanyahu's rightwing coalition remains in place. But this is not a long-term solution

Aluf Benn

Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, wants to stay in power for as long as possible. He deploys a zero-risk strategy aimed at keeping his rightwing political base behind him, while convincing the public that he alone could lead the country in times of regional turmoil. This week, Netanyahu overcame a key challenge to his coveted political stasis.The deadline for US-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian talks passed, while Netanyahu's governing coalition remained intact.

Netanyahu missed an opportunity. He could have leveraged his unchallenged leadership to make headway towards peace, freed Israel from the moral and political burden of its endless occupation in the West Bank, and drawn the country's permanent borders. The Israeli public would widely support any peace programme endorsed by Netanyahu. And for the first time in his turbulent 30-year career, Bibi could have been the national hero, leading from the centre, rather than remaining the aloof master of PR.

But Netanyahu wasn't interested. Even when shown polls indicating that a peace breakthrough would make him extremely popular, he shrugged and kept looking to the right, to make sure his base was still there. The scar from his first term – when the left and far-right joined to topple him following the Wye River accord he signed with Yasser Arafat – wouldn't heal.

Recent attempts to make peace faced huge challenges. Since the collapse of talks at Camp David, in 2000, Israeli mainstream opinion has accepted the "no partner" narrative, which holds that the Palestinian leadership is not willing nor able to compromise. This belief has kept Netanyahu's policies unchallenged in Israel.

Two things were different this time. First, there was the unexpected energy and motivation of US secretary of state John Kerry. Second, the threat of boycott and sanctions against Israel moved from the fringe of the western left to the mainstream conversation, following the EU ban on funding for Israeli settlements. This created a potential stick to push Netanyahu toward flexibility.

But it wasn't enough to secure a deal. True to form, Netanyahu smiled at the American initiative, waiting to see whether Kerry carried a big stick or was merely on a freelance fishing expedition. When Kerry announced the resumption of talks in July 2013, the Israeli leader said that the two-state solution was important to prevent a "binational state". But soon enough, Bibi realised that Kerry lacked presidential backing, and Israel launched expanded settlements and launched a smear campaign against Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Netanyahu's demand for Palestinian recognition of Israel "as a Jewish state" appeared to be a non-starter, blocking any progress.

The breaking point came with the issue of Palestinian prisoners, convicted for pre-Oslo terrorist murders, including 14 Israeli citizens. That was Abbas's price for the talks. The far-right party in Netanyahu's coalition threatened to leave if they were released. Theoretically, Netanyahu could have formed a different, pro-peace coalition, but he didn't want to repeat the Wye River experience. So he sided with the far-right and defaulted on the prisoner release, and Abbas responded in kind, by signing a reconciliation deal with Hamas. This prompted Netanyahu to call off the talks – and close ranks in his coalition, where even the moderates preferred to blame Abbas and keep their cabinet seats. President Barack Obama declared a six-month time out. Bibi was off the hook again.

Then came the latest, unexpected act. Following his failure, Kerry was recorded warning that without a two-state solution, Israel risked becoming an "apartheid state". After a day of uproar fuelled by the pro-Israel lobby Kerry issued a mild expression of regret, but it couldn't erase the effect: the dreaded a-word has entered the room, and it's now there to stay.

Netanyahu avoided the political risk of peacemaking, and kept his coalition together. But eventually, he won't escape the deeper strategic question: how to prevent the risk of a binational state, and save Israel's democracy and Jewish character, now that the door of negotiations is shut.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/30/binyamin-netanyahu-power-israel-palestine-peace-deal

homophobia is a legacy of colonialism

Colonialism  left its awful legacy all over the world - Indian included. 

Africa: homophobia is a legacy of colonialism

Anti-gay laws were introduced to Africa by Western colonialists. Now, as former colonisers recognise LGBT rights Africa is still stuck in the past, 

by Val Kalende

At a time when more countries are moving towards inclusive human rights, Africa is taking steps backwards. Backwards, that is, specifically on the issue of gay rights, though sadly not to before colonialism, the era in which anti-gay legislation has its roots.

Most Africans don’t recognise homophobia as a colonial legacy even though before colonialism, many traditional cultures were tolerant of different sexualities and gender relations. For instance, in my tribe, the Ganda or Baganda, (Uganda’s largest ethnic group) women from the royal clan are addressed with male titles and may or may not be required to perform duties expected of women. More broadly, from theAzande of the Congo to the Beti of Cameroon, and from the Pangwe of Gabon to the Nama of Namibia, there is ethnographic evidence of same-sex relationships in pre-colonial Africa.

By preying on African values of inclusive difference, however, Africa’s colonisers rewrote its history, the effects of which haunt Africa to this day. Tribal chiefs and village courts of law which were traditionally the hallmark of conflict resolution were traded for a European Penal Code system which included the criminalisation of homosexuality. It is also important to stress that so-called sodomy laws would not have impacted African sexual politics without the influence of Christianity. Christianity was used to whitewash African culture as primitive and to demonise traditional interpretations of African intimacies. The bible became the credo of African morality, disordering African sexuality to missionary positions of heteronormativity (ie. the idea that heterosexuality is the only 'natural' sexual orientation).

But sexuality is not all that the colonisers rewrote about Africa. European colonies were established through military conquest, perpetuated through the politics of divide and rule, and religion. The colonisers understood that to conquer Africa they had to turn Africans against Africans such that Africans would blame themselves for their divisions, most of which culminated in ethnic hostility. Amongst other things, colonial policies of divide and rule spurred ethnic tensions. For example, by dividing Rwanda along race and class, German imperialists turned the Tutsis against the Hutus. In Sudan meanwhile, British imperialists divided the Northern Muslim region from the Southern Christian region creating divisions that perpetuate ethnic tensions to this day.

American evangelicals

In today's postcolonial world, the influence of US conservative evangelicals on Africa’s sexual politics cannot be understated. They have picked up where their colonial predecessors left off and are providing the propaganda, by way of religious brainwashing, for Africa’s anti-gay campaigners to make the case for harsher laws against LGBT communities. This is why holding American missionaries like Scott Lively and Lou Engle to account is crucial to the protection of LGBT people in countries where they evangelise.

When Africans accuse Western countries of importing homosexuality, LGBT Africans become demonised as social deviants and criminals, and politicians turn to the law as the solution. What needs to happen in Africa is an honest discussion on human sexuality in the African context before, during and after the colonial period. This is a conversation local activists, civil society, academics, and the media should begin to shape.

Africans will have to reclaim their forgotten pasts as peoples who traditionally refused to hate but stood side-by-side and embraced their differences. Although needed and requested by African LGBT activists, outrage towards anti-gay African countries may not solve Africa’s homophobia. The pushback against Western interventions such as aid cuts is usually informed by an African resistan ce against neocolonialism. However, there is no going back. More than ever, what Africa needs is a global uprising for LGBT rights.

It is stories like Binyavanga Wainaina’s, the Kenyan author and journalist, who recently came out that could contribute to meaningful conversations on human sexuality in the African context. Although Wainaina’s story constitutes a personal choice that does not have to be politicised, his story could be the beginning of what is still a long walk to the acceptance of LGBT people on the continent.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/30/africa-homophobia-legacy-colonialism

It's not Russia that's pushed Ukraine to the brink of war

The attempt to lever Kiev into the western camp by ousting an elected leader made conflict certain. It could be a threat to us all

Seumas Milne

The threat of war in Ukraine is growing. As the unelected government in Kiev declares itself unable to control the rebellion in the country's east, John Kerry brands Russia a rogue state. The US and the European Union step up sanctions against the Kremlin, accusing it of destabilising Ukraine. The White House is reported to be set on a new cold war policy with the aim of turning Russia into a "pariah state".

That might be more explicable if what is going on in eastern Ukraine now were not the mirror image of what took place in Kiev a couple of months ago. Then, it was armed protesters in Maidan Square seizing government buildings and demanding a change of government and constitution. US and European leaders championed the "masked militants" and denounced the elected government for its crackdown, just as they now back the unelected government's use of force against rebels occupying police stations and town halls in cities such as Slavyansk and Donetsk.

"America is with you," Senator John McCain told demonstrators then, standing shoulder to shoulder with the leader of the far-right Svoboda party as the US ambassador haggled with the state department over who would make up the new Ukrainian government.

When the Ukrainian president was replaced by a US-selected administration, in an entirely unconstitutional takeover, politicians such as William Hague brazenly misled parliament about the legality of what had taken place: the imposition of a pro-western government on Russia's most neuralgic and politically divided neighbour.

Putin bit back, taking a leaf out of the US street-protest playbook – even though, as in Kiev, the protests that spread from Crimea to eastern Ukraine evidently have mass support. But what had been a glorious cry for freedom in Kiev became infiltration and insatiable aggression in Sevastopol and Luhansk.

After Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to join Russia, the bulk of the western media abandoned any hint of even-handed coverage. So Putin is now routinely compared to Hitler, while the role of the fascistic right on the streets and in the new Ukrainian regime has been airbrushed out of most reporting as Putinist propaganda.

So you don't hear much about the Ukrainian government's veneration of wartime Nazi collaborators and pogromists, or the arson attacks on the homes and offices of elected communist leaders, or the integration ofthe extreme Right Sector into the national guard, while the anti-semitism and white supremacism of the government's ultra-nationalists is assiduously played down, and false identifications of Russian special forces are relayed as fact.

The reality is that, after two decades of eastward Nato expansion, this crisis was triggered by the west's attempt to pull Ukraine decisively into its orbit and defence structure, via an explicitly anti-Moscow EU association agreement. Its rejection led to the Maidan protests and the installation of an anti-Russian administration – rejected by half the country – that went on to sign the EU and International Monetary Fund agreements regardless.

No Russian government could have acquiesced in such a threat from territory that was at the heart of both Russia and the Soviet Union. Putin's absorption of Crimea and support for the rebellion in eastern Ukraine is clearly defensive, and the red line now drawn: the east of Ukraine, at least, is not going to be swallowed up by Nato or the EU.

But the dangers are also multiplying. Ukraine has shown itself to be barely a functioning state: the former government was unable to clear Maidan, and the western-backed regime is "helpless" against the protests in the Soviet-nostalgic industrial east. For all the talk about the paramilitary "green men" (who turn out to be overwhelmingly Ukrainian), the rebellion also has strong social and democratic demands: who would argue against a referendum on autonomy and elected governors?

Meanwhile, the US and its European allies impose sanctions and dictate terms to Russia and its proteges in Kiev, encouraging the military crackdown on protesters after visits from Joe Biden and the CIA director, John Brennan. But by what right is the US involved at all, incorporating under its strategic umbrella a state that has never been a member of Nato, and whose last elected government came to power on a platform of explicit neutrality? It has none, of course – which is why the Ukraine crisis is seen in such a different light across most of the world. There may be few global takers for Putin's oligarchic conservatism and nationalism, but Russia's counterweight to US imperial expansion is welcomed, from China to Brazil.

In fact, one outcome of the crisis is likely to be a closer alliance between China and Russia, as the US continues its anti-Chinese "pivot" to Asia. And despite growing violence, the cost in lives of Russia's arms-length involvement in Ukraine has so far been minimal compared with any significant western intervention you care to think of for decades.

The risk of civil war is nevertheless growing, and with it the chances of outside powers being drawn into the conflict. Barack Obama has already sent token forces to eastern Europe and is under pressure, both from Republicans and Nato hawks such as Poland, to send many more. Both US and British troops are due to take part in Nato military exercises in Ukraine this summer.

The US and EU have already overplayed their hand in Ukraine. Neither Russia nor the western powers may want to intervene directly, and the Ukrainian prime minister's conjuring up of a third world war presumably isn't authorised by his Washington sponsors. But a century after 1914, the risk of unintended consequences should be obvious enough – as the threat of a return of big-power conflict grows. Pressure for a negotiated end to the crisis is essential.

Twitter @SeumasMilne

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/30/russia-ukraine-war-kiev-conflict