Seeds such as the Basmati seed, the aromatic rice from India, which we have grown for centuries right in my valley, are being claimed as a novel invention by RiceTec. The corporations are stealing the last resources of the poor, their very seeds. What is happening repeatedly is that, just as in the earlier period of colonization, people's knowledge creation and their wealth creation is being negated, even while their knowledge and their wealth is taken over. In my view, it's the workers who create wealth. The corporations who steal from us and those young white fellows on Wall Street who speculate on currencies.
Patents are a replay of colonialism, which is now called globalization and free trade.
Here in the United States, progressives were deeply encouraged to see the outpouring of well-organized and creative opposition to the World Trade Organization's meeting in Seattle. I think two things were accomplished there. The most important thing was that even while the big corporations and the powerful institutions engineer globalization, they keep talking about it as a natural phenomenon. It's an inevitable, natural phenomenon. The exercise of power by ordinary citizens in Seattle to block that round of talks informed the whole world that there's nothing inevitable or natural about it.