What is a major driving force behind the so-called global war on “terrorism?” Is it both the need to ensure that petroleum-producing nations sell their oil in the U.S. “Petrodollar” instead of the euro and the need for the United States to establish more influence, and more “free trade markets” for the dollar and genetically engineered foods?

In the article titled “Cost, abuse and danger of the dollar” published on Centre for Research on Globalization’s Web site (www.globalresearch

.ca), Rudo de Ruijter describes why Iraq was attacked: Saddam Hussein switched from selling petroleum in the dollar to the euro on Nov. 6, 2000; in July 2002, the International Monetary Fund warned that the dollar could collapse; days later, plans for an attack on Iraq were discussed at Downing Street in the United Kingdom; in August 2002, Vice President Dick Cheney proclaimed, with certainty, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction; on March 19, 2003, the United States, along with the “coalition” forces, invaded Iraq; and on June 5, 2003, the United States switched the Iraqi petroleum selling currency back to the dollar.

The U.S. occupation of Iraq not only reopened its petroleum funds to the dollar, but it also, through the Coalition Provisional Authority, opened up Iraq’s food markets to genetically engineered seeds, according to an article from the Nov. 15, 2004 issue of the Agribusiness Examiner. This was accomplished through order number 81 — Patent, Industrial Design, Undisclosed Information, Integrated Circuits and Plant Variety Law — issued on April 26, 2004, which makes it illegal for Iraqi farmers to plant and save seeds of any variety registered under the plant variety provisions of that law; it also introduces multinational corporation’s genetically engineered seeds in Iraq, the article said.

Genetically engineered seeds are created under the auspices of ending global hunger and malnutrition; however, just like the Green Revolution that preceded the Biotechnology Revolution, it will not make things better.

Those “revolutions” and the national and international trade laws that have spawned those practices globally have increased the use of petroleum-based inputs in agriculture, thus encouraging more wars for oil and causing people to “eat fossil fuels.”

Through the unfair and unjust international trade policies associated with them, the “revolutions” negatively impacted ecological health, made seed saving and sharing crimes under international patent law due to the use of the “terminator” gene seeds, robbed indigenous people of their intellectual and cultural knowledge through “biopiracy” and replaced biodiversity with monocultures.

We, the people of the world, must reject both the “green” and “biotechnology” revolutions. We must demand an end to those national and international laws that have only hurt our brothers and sisters. We must demand that the sovereign rights of the people of Iraq and every other country, including indigenous nations, are respected. We must demand food, water and resource security.

We must educate ourselves and others about the various worldwide sustainable agriculture movements: organic and biodynamic farming, fair trade, community-supported agriculture, local food economy, seed saving and sharing through local seed banks, slow food, permaculture, composting, green belt, food security, safe food, rain gardens and genetically engineered free zones. We must participate, whenever and however possible, in those transforming movements to bring forth real participatory democracy, justice, food security, trade safety and especially peace.

Irucka Ajani Embry is a graduate student at the University of Tennessee. E-mail [email protected].