I hear Irshad loud & clear and I can feel how her experience in the madressa impacted her.
But most young Muslims around the world are not exposed to the type of madressa she attended.
The experience of a young Christian raised in the Bible belt and exposed daily to religious doctrine is going to be different from that of Christian kids raised for example in the North East.

Posted by: jony_b_cool | Aug 26 2006 7:01 utc | 3

Excellent article by John Mueller.
“Is There Still a Terrorist Threat?”

Posted by: Ensley | Aug 26 2006 13:38 utc | 5

Then Juan Cole continues with this juicy morsel:

Then in Ramadi, guerrillas holed up in the Abdul Qadir al-Kailani Mosque attacked US troops. The latter returned fire, and ultimately brought up M1 Abrams tanks and fired at the religious building. It was left with structural damage to its dome and minaret. The guerrillas set the US troops up for a lose/lose situation. By subjecting the mosque to tank fire, they look to Iraqi Muslims like anti-Muslim infidels.
If you thought that attacking a mosque associated with the great Sufi saint Abdul Qadir Gilani (Kailani) might anger members of his Qadiri Sufi order around the world, you’d be right.
Paley also reports:
‘ In other developments, the head of a major Iraqi sect of Sufism, a mystical branch of Islam that had previously rejected violence against U.S.-led coalition forces, declared holy war on American troops. The leader, Sheik Mohammed al-Qadiri, said his sect would form a new group, the Battalions of Sh[e]ikh Abdul Qadir al-Gaillani, and join the insurgency.
“We will not wait for the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade to enter our houses and kill us,” said Ahmed al-Soffi, a Sufi leader in the western city of Fallujah, referring to the country’s major Shiite militias. “We will fight the Americans and the Shiites who are against us.” ‘

Posted by: Malooga | Aug 26 2006 14:35 utc | 7

or, in better words, the last new posting from Billmon on Whiskey Bar that’s showed up on my browser was on 22 August.
Atrios mentioned last week that some people using Firefox weren’t getting the latest postings when accessing his site. I’ve noticed that sometimes I get yesterday’s posting on several sites, and have to hit REFRESH for the new stuff.
Computers.

Posted by: mudduck | Aug 26 2006 16:47 utc | 9

@muddock – there is currently no DNS-Entry available for http://www.bopnews.com – i.e. no server belongs to that name. But the name itself exist and is registered to stirling.newberry_at_xigenics.net. You can probably reach him under that address.
Billmon once in while is just busy, on vacation, exausted or whatever. He’ll be back (I hope).

Posted by: b | Aug 26 2006 17:43 utc | 11

I ask, does this sound like an open and honest government to you?
Senator who put ‘secret hold’ on bill to open federal records is a secret, too

WASHINGTON — In an ironic twist, legislation that would open up the murky world of government contracting to public scrutiny has been derailed by a secret parliamentary maneuver.
An unidentified senator placed a “secret hold” on legislation introduced by Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., that would create a searchable database of government contracts, grants, insurance, loans and financial assistance, worth $2.5 trillion last year. The database would bring transparency to federal spending and be as simple to use as conducting a Google search.

‘Transparency’ is a dirty word to many members of Congress.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 26 2006 18:12 utc | 13

The Cheney presidency

When historians look back on the multiple assaults on our constitutional system of government in this era, Cheney’s unprecedented role will come in for overdue notice. Cheney’s shotgun mishap, when he accidentally sprayed his host with birdshot, has gotten more media attention than has his control of the government.

Intelligence on Iran being “Fixed” by Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld – Just like on Iraq
Cornelius: [reading from the sacred scrolls of the apes] Beware the beast man, for he is the Devil’s pawn. Alone among God’s primates, he kills for sport or lust or greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother’s land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him; drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of death.~Planet of the Apes (1968)

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 26 2006 18:32 utc | 15

Interesting you should bring that up R.L. as I ran across this last week:
Sudden Rash of Diverted Flights
Also see, Rise of the spineless fuckwits
Also of note, Strange airline stocks shorting activities in Europe ahead of terror plot discovery raise doubt about who knew what and when?

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 26 2006 19:18 utc | 17

Cockburn says it all in this morning’s Counterpunch. Here’s a wee teaser from
Israel on the Slide :

Disfigured by its “special relationship” with the US arms industry, of which the US Congress is an integral component, the IDF has been morally corrupted by years of risk-free brutalization of unarmed Palestinians, many of them children. It’s one thing to level an apartment building with a missile from a plane or crush a protester with a bulldozer or lob shells at a Palestinian family having a picnic on a beach or kidnap middle-aged and democratically elected Palestinian politicians. It’s another confront a foe, with modest but effectively deployed weaponry, prepared to fight back.

He also sums up the state of zionism and it’s leadership in Israel and the US pretty succinctly.
From the part on US zionist leaders:

You can read plenty of commentary round the world, most particularly Israel, saying this recent war was a benchmark event, which could conceivably teach Israel that security is not won by unending land grabs, by spouting hokum for US consumption about the “peace process”, and by terror bombing of Lebanon and Gaza. But not in the United States. Open up the Washington Post and the strategic vision on display was an utterly mad piece co-written by one of the big boosters for war on Iraq, Kenneth Pollack, a hack thinker at the Brookings Institution, now an integral part of Israeli territory with its “Saban Center for Middle East Policy” named for the fanatic Zionist billionaire Haim Saban, majority owner of Paramount Pictures, a man who handed the Democratic Party a total of $12.3 million in 2002, a $7 million component of which was the biggest single contribution ever recorded up to that time.
Silent about his own role as war promoter (his speciality was Saddam’s imaginary nuclear threat), oblivious to the lessons of disaster in Iraq, reduplicated in the war in Lebanon, Pollack and Georgetown U’s Daniel Byman called for more US troops to be sent to Iraq, to help set up “refugee collection points” ­ ie concentration camps ­ on Iraq’s eastern border and for tripwires ­ no doubt ultimately nuclear ­ to be established in expectation of war with Iran. You think Republican neocons are the only crazy ones? Not one word of mature reflection about the significance of the war temporarily suspended, against Lebanon and Hezbollah.
Thirty years ago I used to be told that liberal American Jews were aghast at the rise of the ur-neocon fanatics like Norman Podhoretz, at Commentary, whose parent outfit was and is the American Jewish Committee. Soon, such liberals used to say to me off the record, there would be a counter-attack by the forces of reason, as embodied in liberal American Jewry. There never was, at least on any effective scale. The liberal Jewish intelligentsia here has, politically, speaking, sat on its hands for decades, mouths zipped shut, when it comes to criticizing Israel. Even more effectively than America’s defense contractors they have contributed to, and indeed cheered on Israel’s corrupt rejectionism. Will this war make them change their minds? I doubt it.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Aug 26 2006 21:04 utc | 19

Meanwhile the IDF are the real terrorists.

Two missiles fired by Israeli aircraft early Sunday morning hit an armored car belonging to the Reuters news agency, moderately wounding two television cameramen and three bystanders, Palestinian witnesses and hospital officials said.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Aug 26 2006 23:16 utc | 21

What has to be faced in the WOT(War on Terror) is that “If you’re not going to kill them all,you will have to kill them forever”!

Posted by: R.L. | Aug 27 2006 2:05 utc | 23

Someone posted pic of Bu$h fishing boat the other day. We were a little slow on the uptake, or I certainly was. Obviously, once one thinks about it, wouldn’t a boat known as the “ferrari of the high seas” be useful above all for drug smuggling, and there’s some evidence that Daddykins may have bought it from just such a person. (The poor syntax shouldn’t be taken to imply that I think bu$hes themselves stoop to smuggling!)
Fidelity is a class of boat marketed under the brand name of “Cigarette,” a high-priced speedboat dubbed “the Ferrari of the high seas.” This detail should awaken our interest, since Bush’s profile as an Anglo-Saxon aristocrat would normally include a genteel predilection for sailing, rather than a preference for a vulgar hotrod like Fidelity, which evokes the ethos of rum-runners and smugglers.
The Cigarette boat Fidelity was purchased by George Bush from a certain Don Aronow. Bush reportedly met Aronow at a boat show in 1974, and decided to buy one of the Cigarette boats Aronow manufactured. Aronow was one of the most celebrated and successful powerboat racers of the 1960’s, and had then turned his hand to designing and building these boats. But according to at least one published account, there is compelling evidence to conclude that Aronow was a drug smuggler and suspected drug-money launderer linked to the Genovese Purple Gang of New York City within the more general framework of the Meyer Lansky organized crime syndicate. Aronow’s role in marijuana smuggling was reportedly confirmed by Bill Norris, head of the Major Narcotics Unit at the Miami US Attorney’s office and thus the top federal drug prosecution official in south Florida. link

Posted by: jj | Aug 27 2006 2:52 utc | 25

American Coup D’Etat. Will the most powerful and well-funded institution on the planet remain under civilian command indefinitely? As the domestic spying saga unfolds and militarism rises, Harper’s brought four experts – both academics and brass – to discuss the possibilities.
“To subdue America entirely, the only route remaining would be to seize the machinery of state itself, to steer it toward malign ends—to carry out, that is, a coup d’état.”

Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 27 2006 3:43 utc | 27

somehow, while searching for a release date for the next douglas valentine book on the DEA, i ended up perusing thru an issue of small wars journal. some really whack stuff in there. one essay, by a civie no less, posited that guerillas win b/c they are able to politically motivate the masses thru indoctrination, unleashing their violent instincts, whereas conventional forces, counterinsurgents, are made up of apolitical troops and, thus, at a disadvantage. his solution?

The answer to the politically charged guerrilla fighter is the development of a politically charged counter-insurgency fighter, a political warfighter. A political warfighter that understands the political aim and political program of the counter-insurgency campaign. A political warfighter who can galvanize the primordial violence and hateful instincts of the people against the insurgent enemy. A political warfighter that can unlock the political fanaticism of the people just as the French revolutionaries, Napoleon, Mao Tse-Tung and Vo Nguyen Giap did in past wars. The political warfighter is the spark. The political message is the fuel. The people’s hatred and animosity are the fire. The fire that forges a successful war machine.

Posted by: b real | Aug 27 2006 4:04 utc | 29

Ensley,
I agree 200%.
Bernhard has my utmost admiration and respect.
He has been doing a fine job, and if I didn’t see him posting consistently I would be worried also.

Posted by: Rick Happ | Aug 27 2006 4:31 utc | 31

In light of the charges of sexism that get levelled here against anyone who criticises a woman (I think we’re getting a bit lax. Several people have recently mentioned that Joe Lieberman is a turncoat and neocon bootlicker without immediately being branded antisemitic Nazis), I was very careful to look around for the most flattering link in which to be ignored over in regards to Katherine Harris’ latest wacky hijinks.
Then I ran across Wonkette’s coverage of the story, and I am frankly perplexed. Yeah, yeah, I know it’s Wonkette… but… if someone here accused the honorouble batshit-insane Harris of suffering from PMS (as one of the comments over there implied), every bystander here would be rounded up and tried for crimes against the X-chromosome and offered up as sacrifices to Artemis. And for Wonkette herself (or himself… y’know, this could all be a clever misogynist plot!) to have offered Harris an abdominal exerciser to keep her off the streets… well, I just don’t know what this world is coming to.
I just wish a male WASP like the Great Decider had made the identical remarks so I could make some jokes about how fucking stupid they were.

Posted by: Monolycus | Aug 27 2006 12:29 utc | 33

#27 was mine, and I am somewhat astounded that no one has commented on it, or perhaps you are like me, in that I was so totally flabbergasted by it that I could not put together a logical comment.
One thing is clear, we are past the past the Rubicon…
Snip:
LUTTWAK: Such a scenario would probably play out through a multi-stage transformation. After all, take any group of nice people on a trip; if five bad things happen to them in a row, they will end up as cannibals. How many adverse events are needed before a political system, arguably the most firmly rooted constitutional system in the history of the world, becomes uprooted? How many September 11ths, on what scale? How much panic, what kind of leadership?

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 27 2006 13:47 utc | 35

@Uncle – the Harper piece was posted end of June – it was linked here before, so don´t expect too many comments.

Posted by: b | Aug 27 2006 14:53 utc | 37

Chad orders oil giants to leave

Chad has given the oil companies Chevron and Petronas a 24-hour deadline to leave the country for not paying taxes.
The president gave the oil production consortium that is led by Exxon Mobil, a deadline of just 24 hours to start making plans to leave.
Neither Kuala Lumpur-based Petroliam Nasional Berhad (Petronas) nor the California-based Chevron immediately commented on Derby’s declaration.
The decision came a day after Deby ordered his government to take a greater role in the production of oil, which is viewed as a way to improve the country’s ailing economy.
On Friday, Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor, a Chad government spokesman, told reporters that Deby wanted greater profits from oil production.
Chad’s oil revenues will be used
to reduce poverty
Deby has stressed that the country “should fully enjoy its oil, mining and other resources,” Doumgor said.
Chad is in the midst of setting up a national oil company and Deby has said that Chad would take responsibility for the oil fields that the American and Malaysian companies have overseen, which accounts for 60% of the country’s oil production.

this should be interesting

Posted by: annie | Aug 27 2006 14:58 utc | 39

More ruminations on LUTTWAK: (for those whom might find it interesting)
EDWARD N. LUTTWAK is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the author of many books, including Coup D’Etat: A Practical Handbook
Luttwak also has is nose in the Italian CIA/SISMI Abu Omar rendition case related to high-level wiretapping and the “suicide” of Adamo Bove, the wiretapping techie whistleblower. And if he has his nose in the wiretapping and CIA/SISMI doings in Italy, it is likely he is not too far from Ledeen and other neo-gladio P2 machinations.
Regarding the too ‘oft missed significance of the National Security State. Not that it can’t be undone or isn’t undoing itself – either by us or by succumbing to something like RAW’s “optimum fuckup,” or both.
See: Celine’s Law for more on RAW’s “optimum fuckup.”
“…The SISMi scandal continues to unfold. Yesterday it was revealed that Pirelli employed a CIA station chief formerly stationed in Mogadiscio, John Paul Spinelli. Pirelli and Telecom are closely linked through the same ownership. It appears that employees of Pirelli and Telecom may have been involved in the Abu Omar kidnapping, along with employees of Cipriani’s private security companies. Cipriani received regular payments from Telecom for tens of millions of euros through a series of societies abroad.
Excerpts of Pio Pompa’s intercepted phone calls indicate frequent and friendly conversations with Edward Luttwak of the Washington based CSIS. According to reports in the Repubblica, Luttwak was kept abreast of developments and probable disinformation campaigns in the Abu Omar kidnapping case.
Edward Luttwak is a regular fixture on Italian television as some sort of expert. He spent many years of his childhood in Italy as a refugee and speaks fluent Italian.
The CSIS has always been a favoured conduit for undercover operations and disinformation campaigns in Italy as well as South America. A favourite think tank of the Reagan and the Bush père administrations, it earned its brownie points with the Billygate scandal. That scandal tipped the scales in favour of Reagan…..”

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 27 2006 17:13 utc | 41

Meanwhile, a truly precious momemt:
Gorillas Run Amuck in Western Virginia
This is hilarious. Don’t forget your pop corn, milk, and cookies, but also bring a crate of bannanas to keep the gorillas happy.

Posted by: Ms Manners | Aug 27 2006 18:16 utc | 43

GB: Don’t rain on the support/solidarity parade. We are all Hisbolla now! Peoples Revolutionary Fedayin Front, Suburban Mall Branch.

Posted by: citizen k | Aug 27 2006 19:05 utc | 45

WTF? I’m sorry, but give me a break–we’re suppposed to believe that the leak was accidental, the result of gossipyness? From Newsweek:
Richard Armitage, Plame leaker?

A book coauthored by NEWSWEEK’s Michael Isikoff details Richard Armitage’s central role in the Valerie Plame leak.

Snip:

“…Armitage, a well-known gossip who loves to dish and receive juicy tidbits about Washington characters, apparently hadn’t thought through the possible implications of telling Novak about Plame’s identity. “I’m afraid I may be the guy that caused this whole thing,” he later told Carl Ford Jr., State’s intelligence chief. Ford says Armitage admitted to him that he had “slipped up” and told Novak more than he should have. “He was basically beside himself that he was the guy that f—ed up. My sense from Rich is that it was just chitchat,” Ford recalls in “Hubris,” to be published next week by Crown and co-written by the author of this article and David Corn, Washington editor of The Nation magazine.”

I don’t buy it. Something smells fishy here. Is there a conspiracy of modern times that Armitage wasn’t involved in? What’s the deal, does he have cancer or something, and so volunteered to be the foolish, gossipy idiot, as we’re being led to believe? Bullshit…
Armitage is just about the most unlikely of casual gossipers.
He was involved in all sorts of wild stuff from 1973 to 1978, when he is assumed to have been with the CIA. Making arrangements leading up to the fall of Saigon. A DIA consultant in Tehran in 1975-76, when the Shackley/Clines rogue CIA group was moving its arms-drugs-and-assassination operations there. A charter member of the Enterprise, dealing in particular with heroin-smuggling from Thailand and money-laundering of the profits.
(Just for shits and giggles, guess the name of the author of Shackley’s biography. Hint — his initials are DC.)
In the 80’s, became Reagan’s Assistant Secretary of Defense. In charge of coordinating covert military operations, including Ollie North’s aid to the Contras. Also part of the Iran end of Iran-Contra. And helped Bill Casey run the mujahedeen war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
In the 90’s, was a member of the American Turkish Council (the people Sibel Edmonds keeps talking about), the US-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce, and the Aspen Institute.
And in the Bush administration, knew beforehand about the Ledeen-Ghorbanifar meetings in Rome in December 2001, helped keep the Niger claims out of Powell’s UN address, and requested the Ford memo on Wilson.
And we’re expected to believe that this man, who has been involved in virtually every covert and dubious operation over the last 35 years, was just flapping his mouth idly for the fun of it?
Oh, yeah, and mister, will you please sell me that bridge?
It took them three years to get their story straight:
ROBERT NOVAK: MASTER OF HYPOCRISY
“…Incredibly, after all the hoopla and trouble that he’s caused, Novak is now back peddling and squirming.
On July 22, 2003, he told Newsday, regarding his acquisition of Plame’s name and identity, “I didn’t dig it out, it was given to me. They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it.” …
more on Armitage here

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 28 2006 3:09 utc | 47

Uncle:
I understand. But a lot of that can’t be proved.
You know it but you can’t prove it in a court of law.
It tears good prosecutors up every day.
Doubt that arbitrage ratted anyone.
Hard case to prove, any which way.

Posted by: Ms Manners | Aug 28 2006 3:57 utc | 49

Flynt Leverett – ex member of the Bush administration: Illusion and Reality

Three and a half years after the invasion of Iraq and five years after 9-11, the outbreak of armed conflict between Israel and radical groups in the Palestinian territories and Lebanon has revealed how badly the president’s chosen Middle East strategy has damaged the interests of the United States and its allies in the region. The current conflict — which comes alongside a growing likelihood of strategic failure in Iraq — shows the negative consequences of the administration’s disdain for diplomatic engagement with problematic but pivotal players in the region. It is far from clear that the administration or, sadly, opposition Democrats will learn the right lessons from this episode. If they do not, the United States will likely suffer further damage to its position in the Middle East, with dangerous implications for America’s ability to protect its interests and ensure the long-term security of Israel.

Posted by: b | Aug 28 2006 7:20 utc | 51

I agree Monolycus, these fucks are masters at shell games not because they are so cunning and skillful but, mostly due to media compliance and in particular, it’s general strategy of omission.

Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 28 2006 13:21 utc | 53

Didn’t we have some US generals crowing just a few days ago about how we’d tamed the violence of Baghdad with our mighty Stryker vehicles?
Bullshit

Posted by: ran | Aug 28 2006 13:29 utc | 55

interesting. from gilbert achbar on the divide & rule strategy in iraq. repeats what i have been saying here for some time, though i’m more convginced now outright partition would be a mistake, strong regional autonomy could help the occupation play this neoimperial game for a gooid while longer.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 28 2006 15:00 utc | 57

secrecynews: FISA Surveillance Can Target Non-Spies

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) can be used to monitor U.S. persons who engage in unlawful “collection or transmission of information that is not generally available to the public” even if they are not acting on behalf of a foreign power.
That is the upshot of an August 14 ruling (pdf) disclosed last week in the case of two former officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
…
By the Court’s logic, it does not take an big imaginative leap to envision the application of FISA surveillance to members of the press or others who deliberately solicit classified or controlled information or who report on classified programs in willful defiance of official directives to the contrary.
A former FBI official with extensive experience in FISA policy and practice expressed doubt that the FISA could now be easily invoked against the press or the public for ordinary reporting or research activities since, he said, these do not normally involve the requisite intent to violate the law.
“There is quite a bit on the periphery that is not included in this Order,” the official told Secrecy News.
“The judge referred to the information ‘not generally available to the public’ in the context of clandestine activities that are violations of, for example, 18 USC 793 and 794 [the Espionage Act]. These are statutes that require an intent to harm the United States or benefit another power. Judge Ellis may have been parsimonious in his words, but he hasn’t advocated the position that worries you,” he said.
Even so, the FBI FISA expert agreed that the new court order does “make it possible to be ‘an agent of a foreign power’ for FISA surveillance purposes without having any actual connection with a foreign power whatsoever.”

Posted by: b real | Aug 28 2006 15:45 utc | 59

After Greg Palast yet again shows the gentification of New, New Orleans today on Democracy Now, Interstinly enough, I ran across Executive order 12803 in which I suspect covert emanate domain powers were put in place long ago, by Poppy Bush.
There could be a thesis done on this abuse of power, with regards to modern power structure research, e.g. methodical elite systemic nepotism and it’s intracasies and nuances. How one in power can set up and stagecraft economic booty and other rewards for later acquisition either direct or indirect at the stroke of a pen.
Bertrand Russell.said it best yet very simple, and profound:”power is the ability to produce intended effects” (Russell,1938).

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 28 2006 16:54 utc | 61

narco news: Operation “Clean-Up” in Oaxaca Following the CIA’s “Psychological Operations” Manual for the Nicaraguan Contras, the State Government Has Unleashed a Bloody Counterinsurgency Strategy to Eliminate the Social Movement

Posted by: b real | Aug 28 2006 18:48 utc | 63

With regards to b real’s above…
Also see, Diplomatic pouch standoff between US and Venezuela continues

A U.S. envoy was stopped at the airport in Venezuela and charged with violation of diplomatic security because he attempted to bring in several bags loaded with ejector equipment and explosive charges. When questioned, the envoy said the ejector equipment were replacement parts for the Venezuelan air force.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 28 2006 19:16 utc | 65

any revolution is going to have to start at the most basic level – securing our rights to growing our own food & obtaining the land on which to do so
we just took another big hit last week
engdahl: Monsanto Buys ‘Terminator’ Seeds Company

The United States Government has been financing research on a genetic engineering technology which, when commercialized, will give its owners the power to control the food seed of entire nations or regions. The Government has been working quietly on this technology since 1983. Now, the little-known company that has been working in this genetic research with the Government’s US Department of Agriculture– Delta & Pine Land– is about to become part of the world’s largest supplier of patented genetically-modified seeds (GMO), Monsanto Corporation of St. Louis, Missouri.
Relations between Monsanto, Delta & Pine Land and the USDA, on closer scrutiny, show the deep and dark side of the much-heralded genetic revolution in agriculture. It proves deep-held suspicions that the Gene Revolution is not about ‘solving the world hunger problem’ as its advocates claim. It’s about handing over control of the seeds for mankind’s basic food supply—rice, corn, soybeans, wheat, even fruit, vegetables and cotton—to privately owned corporations. Once the seeds and their use are patented and controlled by one or several private agribusiness multinationals, it will be they who can decide whether or not a particular customer—let’s say for argument, China or Brazil or India or Japan—whether they will or won’t get the patented seeds from Monsanto, or from one of its licensee GMO partners like Bayer Crop Sciences, Syngenta or DuPont’s Pioneer Hi-Bred International.
…
In 1983, Delta & Pine Land (D&PL) joined with the US Department of Agriculture in a project to develop Terminator seeds. It was one of the earliest experiments with GMO. It was a long-term project. The US Government has been serious about Terminator beginning more than two decades ago.
In March 1998 the US Patent Office granted Patent No. 5,723,765 to Delta & Pine Land for a patent titled, Control of Plant Gene _Expression. The patent is owned jointly, according to Delta & Pine’s Security & Exchange Commission 10K filing, ‘by D&PL and the United States of America, as represented by the Secretary of Agriculture.’
The patent has global coverage. To quote further from the official D&PL SEC filing, ‘The patent broadly covers all species of plant and seed, both transgenic (GMO-ed) and conventional, for a system designed to allow control of progeny seed viability without harming the crop’(sic).
Then, in a manner reminiscent of Big Brother in George Orwell’s novel, 1984, D&PL claims, ‘One application of the technology could be to control unauthorized planting of seed of proprietary varieties…by making such a practice non-economic since non-authorized saved seed will not germinate, and, therefore, would be useless for planting.’ D&PL calls the thousand-year-old tradition of farmer-saved seed by the pejorative term, ‘brown bagging’ as though it is something dirty and corrupt.
Translated into lay language, D&PL officially declares the purpose of its Patent No. 5,723,765, Control of Plant Gene _Expression, is to prevent farmers who once get trapped into buying transgenic or GMO seeds from a company such as Monsanto or Syngenta, from ‘brown bagging’ or being able to break free of control of their future crops by Monsanto and friends. As D&PL puts it, their patent gives them ‘the prospect of opening significant worldwide seed markets to the sale of transgenic technology in varietal crops in which crop seed currently is saved and used in subsequent seasons as planting seed.’
Instead, the farmer or the country whose farmers depend on Monsanto patented GMO seeds must pay a license fee to Monsanto each year to get new seeds. ‘No tickee, no laundy,’ as the old Brooklyn poet would say.
Terminator is the answer to the agribusiness dream of controlling world food production. No longer would they need to hire expensive detectives to spy on whether farmers were re-using Monsanto or other GMO patented seed. Terminator corn or soybeans or cotton seeds could be genetically modified to ‘commit suicide’ after one harvest season. That would automatically prevent farmers from saving and re-using the seed for the next harvest. The technology would be a means of enforcing Monsanto or other GMO patent rights, and forcing payment of farmer use fees not only in developing economies, where patent rights were, understandably, little respected, but also in industrial OECD countries.
With Terminator patent rights, once a country such as Argentina or Brazil or Iraq or the USA or Canada opened its doors to the spread of GMO patented seeds among its farmers, their food security would be potentially hostage to a private multinational company, a company which, for whatever reasons, especially given its intimate ties to the US Government, might decide to use ‘food as a weapon’ to compel a US-friendly policy from that country or group of countries.
Sound far-fetched? Go back to what then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger did in countries like Allende’s Chile to force a regime change to a ‘US-friendly’ Pinochet dictatorship by withholding USAID and private food exports to Chile. Kissinger dubbed it ‘food as a weapon.’ Terminator is merely the logical next step in food weapon technology.
The role of the US Government in backing and financing Delta & Pine Land’s decades of Terminator research is even more revealing. As Kissinger said back in the 1970’s, ‘Control the oil and you can control entire Continents. Control food and you control people…’

more
Monsanto Acquires Delta & Pine Land and Terminator

Posted by: b real | Aug 29 2006 2:38 utc | 67

oil production is dropping because they can’t or won’t pump it?

Posted by: gmac | Sep 5 2006 21:52 utc | 69