Naomi Klein: Yes, you must pull out - but also pay for the damage

[Jack Rabbit]

From the Guardian Unlimited (UK)
Dated Monday December 27

Yes, you must pull out - but also pay for the damage
The US isn't protecting or feeding Iraqis, it's stoking violence and hardship
By Naomi Klein

Colin Powell invoked it before the invasion, telling aides that if the US went into Iraq "you're going to be owning this place". John Kerry pledged his allegiance to it during the first presidential debate, saying: "Now, if you break it, you made a mistake. It's the wrong thing to do. But you own it."
It's the so-called Pottery Barn rule: "You break it, you own it." Pottery Barn, a chain of stores that sells upmarket home furnishings in shopping malls across America, apparently has an in-store policy that if you shatter anything while shopping, you have to pay for it, because "you own it".

In US foreign policy, this little dictate has come to wield more influence than the Geneva conventions and the US army's law of land warfare combined - except it turns out that the rule doesn't even exist. "In the rare instance that something is broken in the store, it's written off as a loss," an exasperated company spokesperson recently told a journalist.

Never mind that. The imaginary policy of a store selling $80 corkscrews continues to be the favoured blunt instrument with which to whack anyone who dares to suggest that the time has come to withdraw troops from Iraq: sure the war was wrong, the argument goes, but we can't stop now - you break it, you own it.

Read more.

[NMDemDist2]

1. but first we need to make sure the Iraqi's can save seed to plant

As part of sweeping "economic restructuring" implemented by the Bush Administration in Iraq, Iraqi farmers will no longer be permitted to save their seeds. Instead, they will be forced to buy seeds from US corporations — including seeds the Iraqis themselves developed over hundreds of years. That is because in recent years, transnational corporations have patented and now own many seed varieties originated or developed by indigenous peoples. In a short time, Iraq will be living under the new American credo: Pay Monsanto, or starve.


When the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) celebrated biodiversity on World Food Day on October 16, Iraqi farmers were mourning its loss.

A new report <1> by GRAIN and Focus on the Global South has found that new legislation in Iraq has been carefully put in place by the US that prevents farmers from saving their seeds and effectively hands over the seed market to transnational corporations. This is a disastrous turn of events for Iraqi farmers, biodiversity and the country's food security. While political sovereignty remains an illusion, food sovereignty for the Iraqi people has been made near impossible by these new regulations.

"The US has been imposing patents on life around the world through trade deals. In this case, they invaded the country first, then imposed their patents. This is both immoral and unacceptable", said Shalini Bhutani, one of the report's authors.


Becoming Monsanto customers at the barrel of a US gun.
The new law in question <2> heralds the entry into Iraqi law of patents on life forms - this first one affecting plants and seeds. This law fits in neatly into the US vision of Iraqi agriculture in the future - that of an industrial agricultural system dependent on large corporations providing inputs and seeds.

In 2002, FAO estimated that 97 percent of Iraqi farmers used saved seed from their own stocks from last year's harvest or purchased from local markets. When the new law - on plant variety protection (PVP) - is put into effect, seed saving will be illegal and the market will only offer proprietary "PVP-protected" planting material "invented" by transnational agribusiness corporations. The new law totally ignores all the contributions Iraqi farmers have made to development of important crops like wheat, barley, date and pulses. Its consequences are the loss of farmers' freedoms and a grave threat to food sovereignty in Iraq. In this way, the US has declared a new war against the Iraqi farmer.

http://www.khilafah.com/home/lographics/category.php?DocumentID=10464&TagID=2

[bemildred]

3. If they cannot secure the Baghdad Airport road,

I don't see how they are going to enforce this stupid law.
And no stooge government that tries to enforce it will ever
maintain political legitimacy.

Nevertheless, it is a good thing to keep bringing it up as
an example of the feckless incompetence of occupation "rule".

[Lisaben2619]

8. I want to thank you AZ Dem for educating me about this farming issue

I find this utterly appalling. I also feel like there's so much I don't know and I try to keep "informed." I'm guessing, though, that if I knew all the things my country was doing in my name around the world, I wouldn't be able to handle it emotionally.

[NMDemDist2]

9. probably not, it's mighty depressing

Mansanto did the same thing in India and it has decimated the farmers there

[Jack Rabbit]

11. I believe Monsanto did it in Canada first

Monsanto is another multinational on my boycott-em-into-bankruptcy lsit.

[soothsayer]

2. silly Guardian doesn't know Franken debunked that so-called

Pottery Barn policy? (they don't have one like that)

[JohnyCanuck]

4. I don't think that is quite the case.

The Guardian is just reprinting as an op-ed a piece published earlier in the Nation, and in the article itself the author, Naomi Klein, states the "You break it, you buy it" rule is not really an official policy of the Pottery Barn chain.

In US foreign policy, this little dictate has come to wield more influence than the Geneva conventions and the US army's law of land warfare combined - except it turns out that the rule doesn't even exist. "In the rare instance that something is broken in the store, it's written off as a loss," an exasperated company spokesperson recently told a journalist.

I took the "company

[starroute]

7. But there are places that do have such a policy

I'm sure that as much as twenty years ago, I was in places with "You break it, you bought it" signs on the wall. Mostly it was stories with merchandise that couldn't be returned to a manufacturer, like antiques or those unpainted pottery figurines some places sell to hobbyists.

I had a friend who ended up owning a broken antique merry-go-round horse because her little girl spotted it in the store and thought it would be a cool idea to sit on it.

[justinsb]

5. Part of the problem is that

if the US pulls out now they will likely invite civil and then regional war - it could quickly become a war that involves most of the Middle East, North Africa and Southern Europe. This was not a mistake that can be easily fixed but yes, ultimately the US will have to pay Iraq hundreds of billions of dollars - possibly trillions in reperations. Personally, I hope that Iraq wins this in court because that would clear the way for suits from Veitnam, Panama, Nicaragua etc, etc, etc.

[bemildred]

6. The problem is that by staying we also

"invite civil and then regional war", things are not getting
better, and we have no clue as to how to change that. By getting
out now, we at least remove the thorn from the wound.

[indepat]

10. Would that include damage to people and infrastructure caused by DU?