MEMBERS & VISITORS
PRISON SENTENCES FOR TANZANIAN SEED VIOLATORS
More than 80 percent of the food in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa is produced by small-scale farmers. If they cannot afford commercial inputs, they can still make progress with agro-ecological methods. The methods are not immediately patentable and therefore the industry treats them shabbily. Tanzanian farmers are facing heavy prison sentences if they continue their traditional seed exchange. An unfortunate consequence of this is that insufficient research is being done into such methods.
in order to get developmental assistance, Tanzania amended its legislation, which should give commercial investors faster and better access to agricultural land as well as a very strong protection of intellectual property rights.
‘If you buy seeds from Syngenta or Monsanto under the new legislation, they will retain the intellectual property rights. If you save seeds from your first harvest, you can use them only on your own piece of land for non-commercial purposes. You’re not allowed to share them with your neighbors or with your sister-in-law in a different village, and you cannot sell them for sure. But that’s the entire foundation of the seed system in Africa’, says Michael Farrelly. In practice, it means that the fifty million people that the New Alliance wants to help can escape from poverty and hunger only if they buy seeds every year from the companies that are standing behind the G8.
Under the new law, Tanzanian farmers risk a prison sentence of at least 12 years or a fine of over €205,300, or both, if they sell seeds that are not certified. ‘As a result, the farmers’ seed system will collapse, because they can’t sell their own seeds”, according to Janet Maro. “Multinationals will provide our country with seeds and all the farmers will have to buy them from them. That means that we will lose biodiversity, because it is impossible for them to investigate and patent all the seeds we need. We’re going to end up with fewer types of seeds.” “I have seeds of my family, because my great-grandmother used them. She gave them to my grandmother, who gave them to my mother and my mother then gave them to me. I’ve planted them here in the demonstration garden in Morogoro and that’s why very rare plants now grow here’, says Janet Maro. ‘Local farmers find it hard to understand the idea that you can patent and own a seed. Seed should simply be something that is easily available”, says Janet Maro.
‘That’s an amount that a Tanzanian farmer cannot even start to imagine. The average wage is still less than 2 US dollars a day’, says Janet Maro, head of Sustainable Agriculture Tanzania (SAT).
Here in Kenya, specifically Tharaka County, groups like SALT are dedicated to legacy seed exchange. SALT would bristle mightily if such measures were imposed in Kenya. There would be rebellion, I’m sure. See “Ancestral Rescue ~ SALT” to learn more about this grassroots organization.
Prof. Oku Singer, Mechanical/Solar Engineer
INVENTION SCHOOL’S SIGNATURE SERIES
The technological progress of Africa and its diasporans was dramatically broken beginning with slavery and later through its colonization by European powers. With the arrival of the 21st century, a new era of an awakened Africa has dawned. In the graphic novel series “Invention School”, curious young African students explore their creative potential for solving everyday problems through a subset of engineering skills under the watchful and loving guidance of an expatriate African American engineering professor. Watch this uplifting graphic novel series. If you find the series and its content useful, please share widely.
GORGING YOUR LEARNING APPETITE
Powerful media giants continue feeding us steady diets of stories, games, music, and images of exploitation, mayhem, helplessness, victimization, sexism, murder, adultery, preposterous wealth, torture, drugs, deceit, vampires, zombies, thuggery, glorified gangsterism, demonic spirits, horror, war, despair, brutality, crime, vengeance, sex, addiction, psychic disorders, occultism, savagery, lust, hate, prejudicial beauty/virtue standards, and stale mind-numbing escapism. Never underestimate the power of the subliminal messaging in this media content to accustom your subconscious to your further takeover and control. The groundwork is being laid and we are being deliberately manipulated for easier subjugation. The “collusion” between Hollywood and complicit agencies like the CIA is clear. Hollywood has played a little known role as a propaganda machine for the US national security apparatus for many years. Carefully look at the proportion (you’ll be shocked) of currently available movie fare that embodies these themes rather than embodying themes that uplift, transform, and inspire. “Just coincidence”, you say? After a steady diet of this psychic fare (garbage in, garbage out), what normal person would ever be in a position or mindset to connect and collaboratively formulate creative solutions and healing to man-made problems that beset humanity, earth lifeforms, and Mother Earth herself? These incapacitating but profitable offerings by these media giants stifle any visions of progress and action we might otherwise take to deliver ourselves out of the quagmires our modern societies have created that affect the entire world. Why do these companies market and sell so much of this awful, depraved content?? Could it be:
- Predictive Programming is aimed at creating “world culture” and has been assigned to Hollywood to carry out. “Predictive Programming” refers to the use of entertainment and other cultural artifacts to introduce us to planned societal changes. As we come to see these potential changes as familiar, we also have an easier time imagining them to be normal, acceptable, and inevitable, no matter how heinous.
- Social engineering by an elite few? (neutralization and control)
- Prophecy?
- Conspiratorial takeover and mind-control through strategically embedded thought police?
- Greed? (whatever sells)
- Cultivated apathy?
- Cloaked suppression of liberating technologies through powerful diversions?
- Rampaging decadence?
- Modern “ divide and conquer” algorithms for fun and profit?
- Conditioned acceptance of streams of manufactured crises?
- Non-disruption of the current order (disorder)?
- Karma?
- Improperly tuned/authored “New World Order”?
- Stupidity?????
BUILD A BETTER DREAM
- Speak your truth or somebody will speak it for you.
- Vote with your feet and/or pocketbook
- Contribute your uplifting stories and discoveries to the global pool
- Never believe that mainstream media corporations will deliver the full truth to you as they have their own agendas
- As a free enlightened agent, regain control/understanding of the narratives affecting your well-being
- Spread awareness (articles, blogs, email, texts, advertisements, social media, art forms, workshops)
- Activist collaborations
- Dump or carefully scrutinize cable/satellite television’s agenda-packed (often subliminal) content
- Values-ladened family time stories and sharing
- Notify content creators & distributors saying what you DO want. Money is sharper than a sword.
- Dinner table/classroom discussions and viewing vetted movies like this one above.
Enjoy!
Prof. Oku Singer, Mechanical/Solar Engineer
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