coffee.geek.nz

Corn can't survive without humans. There is no wild corn. Those corn seeds can't get out of the husks. It needs us to do this.

Nobody knows where corn came from. The closest relative is teosinte, a kind of grass. but that's a long way from corn. Corn just appeared as a crop in Mexico. http://www.koshland-science-museum.org/exhibitdna/crops02.jsp

There was once a conference held, where scientists tried to work out where the heck corn came from. "An Origin of Corn Conference". They never published any papers at the end of this conference. They can't work it out. (and there were some ragequits by angry people) http://web.ku.edu/~hoopes/506/Lectures/Maize.html

Nearly all the corn you find is identical - it's a plant with no variation. Every single stalk the same. All noteworthy differences long since bred out. Therefore it is massively vulnerable if a disease appears. We could lose corn, forever, and we have no idea how to breed it back from grasses in the wild.

New Zealand's Ministry of Economic Development have released from documents on the ongoing ACTA negotations.
http://news.business.govt.nz/news/strategic/article/9761

Smarter people than me have read these, and found nothing new revealed.

The last round of negotiations was in Mexico - the next round of talks is right here in New Zealand.

quick recap:

ACTA (anti counterfeiting trade agreement) is a treaty currently being negotiated by the world's weathiest countries, including New Zealand. It is officially about things like stopping the fake prada handbags trade - but there's also been leaked documents showing that big media have been asked for their wishlist such as 3 strikes internet disconnection that we protested so loudly against in NZ's s92a of the Copyright act.

It would be disastrous to have stopped such New Zealand laws that give out punishment (internet termination) without trial or appeal, like the s92a did, only to have it implemented anyway via a treaty that our parliament ratifies. Now is the time to make noise.

This need to stop fake prada is so important, it's been classed as "National Security", so none of us lowly citizens are allowed to know what's actually being negotiated. This also is not standard practice for treaty negotiations to be secret.

All Official information act requests, in several countries, have been unsuccessful in finding out what they're putting into this treaty - cos, you know, national security.

The next talks are in Wellington in April - standby for more info later on citizen action.

EFF:Source: secure.eff.orgIn October 2007 the United States, the European Community, Switzerland and Japan simultaneously announced that they would negotiate a new intellectual property enforcement treaty, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA. Australia, the Republic of Korea, New Zealand and Mexico have joined the negotiations.