Posts Tagged ‘New York’
Saturday, March 13th, 2010
John Pilger
truthout
Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:00 EST
© (Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: World Economic Forum, vladstudio, GrungeTextures)
Adelaide is Australia’s festival city. Its arts festival is currently in swing. Polite debate, aesthetics and high-octane wine are putting the world to rights. With one exception. Adelaide is where Rupert Murdoch began his empire. The voracious trail starts here. No statue stands; his is a spectral presence, controlling the only daily newspaper, even the printing presses. Across Australia, he owns almost 70 percent of the capital city press and the only national newspaper and Sky Television and much else. Welcome to the world’s first murdochracy.
What is a murdochracy? It is where the fealty and augmentation of Murdoch’s editors and managers are undisguised, an inspiration to his choir on seven continents, where even his competitors sing along, and wise politicians heed the Murdochism: "What’ll it be? A headline a day or a bucket of shit a day?"
While the veracity of this celebrated remark is sometimes disputed, its spirit is not. Stricken with pneumonia, the former Prime Minister John Howard dragged himself out of bed to pay obeisance to the man to whom he owed many empty buckets. His successor, Kevin Rudd, scurried to an obligatory audience with Murdoch in New York prior to his election. This is standard across the planet. Before he took power, Tony Blair was flown to an island off Queensland to stand at the blue Newscorp lectern and pledge Thatcherism and media deregulation to the jowled figure nodding in the front row. The next day, the Sun lauded Blair as one who "has vision [and] speaks our language on morality and family life."
Murdoch knows that little separates the main political parties in Australia, Britain and America. He plays the man. In 1972, he backed Australia’s Gough Whitlam, who revealed a radical reformer, even threatening to expose America’s spy bases. A furious Murdoch swung his newspapers against Whitlam with stories so outrageously skewed that rebellious journalists on The Australian burned their newspaper in the street. That has never been repeated.
Dominant themes in the Australian murdochracy, sport and celebrity gossip aside, are the promotion of war and jingoism, American foreign policy, Israel and a paternalism toward Aborigines, the world’s most impoverished indigenous people, according to the UN. This antiquated cold warring is not due entirely to the Murdoch press, of course, but the agenda is. When the Indonesian tyrant General Suharto was about to be overthrown by his own people, the Editor in Chief of The Australian, Paul Kelly, led a delegation of editors of most of Australia’s principal newspapers to Jakarta. With Kelly at his side, the mass murderer, whom the Murdoch papers promoted as a "moderate," accepted the tribute of each.
Murdoch’s most unabashed, if entertaining retainer is Greg Sheridan, foreign editor of The Australian. On one of his adoring trips to the United States, home of Murdoch HQ, Sheridan wrote, "The US is the greatest possible argument for media deregulation. Every morning, I flick between Fox, CNN and MSNBC as I eat my cereal … why did it take so long for pay TV to get to Australia? …" He was referring, as if instinctively, to his master’s pay TV company, Foxtel. As for terrorism, Sheridan blames "Pilgerist Chomskyism" for "ideologically fuelling the followers of Osama bin Lenin, sorry Laden."
One of the most effective campaigns in the Australian murdochracy has been the whitewashing of a bloody, colonial past, including a series of attacks on the distinguished chronicler of the Aboriginal genocide, Professor Henry Reynolds, and the Director of the National Museum of Australia, Dawn Casey, for having dared to present the truth about indigenous suffering. Australia’s great maverick historian, the late Manning Clark, was smeared by Murdoch’s Courier-Mail as a Red agent, then as a fraud, in much the style that Murdoch’s London Sunday Times smeared the Labour member of Parliament Michael Foot as a Soviet agent.
Something similar awaits those who question the manipulation of the remembrance of Australia’s blood sacrifice for imperialism, old and new. Aimed at the young, a maudlin "new patriotism" reaches an annual climax on April 25, the anniversary of the first world war disaster at Gallipoli known as Anzac Day. The message is undisguised militarism promoting the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Thus, Prime Minister Rudd says, absurdly, that the military is Australia’s highest calling.
Such false flags are flown constantly for Israel, which sees a stream of Australian journalists sponsored and paid for by Zionist groups. The result is apologetic reporting of murderous actions that evokes the great appeasers like Geoffrey Dawson, editor of The Times in the 1930s. The debate about state war crimes has all but bypassed Australia. That a former and current British prime minister have been summoned before the Chilcot inquiry in London is viewed with bemusement as nothing like it would happen here. Yet, John Howard, who also invaded Iraq, holds something of a record for having claimed 30 times in one speech that he knew Saddam Hussein had a "massive programme" of weapons of mass destruction.
The national broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, has long been intimidated by the Murdoch press in the obsessive manner of the campaign waged against the BBC. Funded directly by governments, the ABC has none of the nominal independence and protection of Britain’s system of a TV license fee as the resource for public broadcasting. Last year, HarperCollins, owned by Murdoch, was awarded a lucrative "partnership" with the ABC’s publishing arm, ABC Books.
In 1983, there were 50 major corporations dominating the world’s media. By 2002, this had been reduced to nine. Rupert Murdoch says that eventually there will be three, including his own. If we accept this, media and information control will be the same, and we shall all be citizens of a murdochracy.
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/204533-Welcome-To-The-World-s-First-Murdochracy
Tags: Adelaide, Afghanistan, america, australia, Blair, Britain, City, Clark, Dawn Casey, day, debate, editor, empty buckets, festival, General Suharto, Geoffrey Dawson, gough whitlam, Greg Sheridan, Iraq, Israel, Jakarta, John Pilger, Kevin Rudd, Lance Page, Michael Foot, minister john howard, Murdoch, Murdoch HQ, Murdochracy, New York, newspaper, Paul Kelly, prime minister john, prime minister john howard, Prime Minister Rudd, Professor Henry Reynolds, Quot, radical reformer, Rupert Murdoch, Sheridan, Tony Blair, United States, US, war, world, World Economic Forum Posted in Global governance, The soon to be former USA, bilderburg, mainstream media, mind control and the masses, nation, world | No Comments »
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Saturday, March 13th, 2010
thisistheendoftheworldasweknowit.com
Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:44 EST
© unknown
Once upon a time, the United States was a land of unparalleled freedom. The rest of the world envied the freedom that ordinary Americans had to think, say and do what they wanted. But all of that has changed. Now Americans have to fear that they will be tackled by a squad of security goons and dragged off to a detention facility somewhere if they spill a Pepsi on a flight attendant or take a few too many pictures of a public building. The United States used to be the polar opposite of totalitarian regimes like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, but now America is rapidly becoming very much like them. Due to the fear of a boogeyman living in a cave somewhere or some guy with explosive powder in his underwear we are all being forced to give up our freedoms and learn to live in a Big Brother police state.
But have things really changed so much that we have to give up all of the cherished freedoms that our fathers and grandfathers fought and died for? Haven’t there always been fanatics and crazies and criminals out there? Why do we suddenly have to become so afraid of them?
In the past, Americans would not let anyone make them live in fear. If some unbalanced individual did something bad, it wasn’t the end of the world, was it? No, in the past Americans dusted themselves off and continued to live as free men and women. You see, when we live in fear and radically alter our way of life just to feel a little more secure, we lose. We have let someone else steal our freedom and our dignity.
But now in the name of “security” all kinds of bizarre proposals have been implemented on the local, state and national levels. Somehow we think that if everything that we do is watched, monitored and analyzed we will all be safer somehow.
Maybe we are safer and maybe we aren’t, but we are certainly a whole lot less free.
The following are 20 signs that the United States is rapidly becoming a totalitarian “Big Brother” police state….
#1) A new bill being pushed by Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman would allow the U.S. military to round up large numbers of Americans and detain them indefinitely without a trial if they “pose a threat” or if they have “potential intelligence value” or for any other reason the President of the United States “considers appropriate”.
#2) Lawmakers in Washington D.C. working to create a new immigration bill have decided on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would be required to obtain.
#3) Barack Obama is backing a plan to create a national database to store the DNA of people who have been arrested but not necessarily convicted of a crime.
#4) Just to get on an airplane, Americans will now have to go through new full-body scanners that reveal every detail of our exposed bodies to airport security officials.
#5) If that wasn’t bad enough, the Transportation Security Administration has announced that airport screeners will begin roving through airports randomly taking chemical swabs from passengers and their bags to check for explosives.
#6) Starting this upcoming December, some passengers on Canadian airlines flying to, from or even over the United States without ever landing there, will only be allowed to board their flights once the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has determined they are not terrorists.
#7) Organic milk is such a threat that the FDA has been conducting military style raids on Amish farmers in Pennsylvania.
#8) An NYPD officer has broken his silence and has confessed that innocent citizens are being set up and falsely arrested and ticketed in order to meet quotas.
#9) A growing number of police departments across the U.S. are turning to mobile camera systems in order to fight motor vehicle theft and identify unregistered cars.
#10) For decades, Arizona has been known as “the sunset state”, but lately many frustrated residents have started calling it “the surveillance state”.
#11) Judges and police in Florida have been caught using “secret codes” on tickets in the state of Florida.
#12) An extensive investigation has revealed that between 2003 and 2007, that state of Texas quietly gave hundreds of newborn baby blood samples to a U.S. Armed Forces laboratory for use in a forensics database.
#13) A 6-year-old girl was recently handcuffed and sent to a mental facility after throwing temper tantrums at her elementary school.
#14) One 12-year-old girl in New York was recently arrested and marched out of her school in handcuffs just because she doodled on her desk.
#15) In Florida, students have been arrested by police for things as simple as bringing a plastic butter knife to school, throwing an eraser, and drawing a picture of a gun.
#16) When a mother on a flight to Denver spanked both of her children and cussed out a flight attendant who tried to intervene, she suddenly found herself handcuffed and headed for prison. Why? She was charged with being a domestic terrorist under the Patriot Act.
#17) A new global treaty may force U.S. Internet service providers to spy on what you do online.
#18) A leaked Obama administration memo has revealed plans for the federal government to seize more than 10 million acres of land from Montana to New Mexico.
#19) 56 percent of Americans questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll said that the U.S. government has become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens.
#20) But one other recent poll found that 51 percent of Americans agree with this statement: “It is necessary to give up some civil liberties in order to make the country safe from terrorism.”
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/204637-20-Signs-That-The-United-States-Is-Rapidly-Becoming-A-Totalitarian-Big-Brother-Police-State
Tags: Arizona, attendant, big, Big Brother, Crazies, D.C., Denver, Detention Facility, FACILITY, fear, FLIGHT, flight attendant, Florida, Free Men, FREEDOM, goons, grandfathers, Joe Lieberman, John Mccain, Nazi Germany, New York, Pennsylvania, police, Police State, Quot, security, state, Texas, totalitarian, totalitarian regimes, U S Department, U.S., U.S. Armed, United States, unparalleled freedom, Washington, world Posted in Police State, The soon to be former USA, laws/politics, nation | No Comments »
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Thursday, March 11th, 2010
Mar 11 12:40
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Pratt’s sales tax revenues for January fell a whopping 29.9 percent over the same period in 2009 from $209,260 to $146,645, according to the Kansas Department of Revenue.
Mar 11 12:20
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State spending cuts significantly have worsened the effects of the global economic downturn in the Islands, according to several Hawai’i economists who spoke to more than 150 advocates, lawmakers and others at the state Capitol yesterday.
Webmaster’s Commentary:
Their recommendation: (Like you didn’t see this coming) RAISE TAXES!
Mar 11 10:55
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Mar 11 10:54
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Without regard for the severe economic devastation and loss of life that a war with Iran would create, Israel’s agents in the United States continue to aggressively stoke the fires of anti-Iranian rhetoric and mobilize their minions on the floor of the House. The Brzezinski-Soros machine failed in their attempt to effect regime change in Iran by way of a “color revolution” in the summer of 2009. This has only emboldened the Israeli lobby to pursue more drastic measures. There is only one card left for them to play before provoking conflicts that will most certainly catapult the United States into direct military action against the Islamic State.
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Mar 11 10:09
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Evidence seems to be mounting that we are headed towards some sort of implosion in the paper Gold market, and perhaps the currency/bond markets in general. Let’s take a look:
Webmaster’s Commentary:
The paper gold market is massively shorted, even without the impact of the fake tungsten-filled gold bars.
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Mar 11 10:08
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The Corrie family lawyer, Hussein Abu Hussein, said he would argue that her death was due either to gross negligence by the Israeli military or that it was intended. If the Israeli state were found responsible, the family would press for damages.
Mar 11 10:07
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No sooner had the Obama administration announced the resumption of “indirect” talks between Israel and the PA regime than Israel announced new plans to expand Jewish settlements in occupied East Jerusalem and other parts of the West Bank .
On Tuesday, as visiting US Vice president Joe Biden was showering Israel with the usually excessive praise, the Israeli Interior Ministry, headed by Eli Yeshai, announced plans to build 1600 new settler units in East Jerusalem.
Earlier, Israeli Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, Okayed the construction of 112 additional settler units in the West Bank, effectively terminating an earlier half-hearted decision to partially freeze Jewish settlement expansion for eight months.
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Mar 11 10:06
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On March 9th there was a $1,000 a plate fundraising dinner at New York’s Waldorf Astoria for the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) – the same folks that rained death and destruction on Gaza a little over a year ago. The dinner was sponsored by Friends of the IDF.
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Mar 11 10:05
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Israeli Defense Force chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi, called “The Butcher of Gaza” by Palestinian activists and some of their supporters, spoke at a “Friends of the IDF” fundraising dinner on Tuesday. Outside New York’s well known Waldorf Astoria, protesters let Ashkenazi know how they felt about his presence.
Mar 11 10:01
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The Cell-All initiative may be one such savior. Spearheaded by the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate (S&T), Cell-All aims to equip your cell phone with a sensor capable of detecting deadly chemicals at minimal cost—to the manufacturer (a buck a sensor) and to your phone’s battery life. “Our goal is to create a lightweight, cost-effective, power-efficient solution,” says Stephen Dennis, Cell-All’s program manager.
Webmaster’s Commentary:
Between the chemicals in really cheap cosmetics and methane from body, ummm, "venting" I predict ten million false positives a day on this system.
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Mar 11 09:57
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Perhaps it is only satire that is able to capture so eloquently and succinctly the insanity and truth of our current banking crisis. This for me, from the Daily Mash, is one of the best:
“Banks to Lend You Your Own Money”
THE government is to invest £500bn of your money in British banks so they can lend it back to you with interest.
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Mar 11 09:40
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Mar 11 09:40
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Mar 11 09:34
By: PoliticalTheatrics
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Last week, Toronto District School Board (TDSB) Director of Education Chris Spence announced in a statement that "’Israeli Apartheid Week’ and its activities are not permitted to take place on school or Board property, or as part of any activity under the jurisdiction of the TDSB." Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) considers this announcement a clear attempt to discourage rational discussion of the constellation of issues addressed by Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW), and therefore considers it an unacceptable restriction on the academic freedom that should be enjoyed by the TDSB’s community.
Mar 11 09:28
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News has just reached me that the great Professor Ian Plimer, scourge of climate-fear-promoters everywhere, has been suddenly disinvited by the Royal Society of Artists (RSA) from a lecture he was due to give in May before an audience including the Duke of Edinburgh.
Mar 11 09:22
By: PoliticalTheatrics
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Seven years after Rachel Corrie, a US peace activist, was killed by an Israeli army bulldozer in Gaza, her family was to put the Israeli government in the dock today.
A judge in the northern Israeli city of Haifa was due to be presented with evidence that 23-year-old Corrie was killed unlawfully as she stood in the path of the bulldozer, trying to prevent it from demolishing Palestinian homes in Rafah.
Mar 11 09:18
By: boulderdash
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The other day the Virginia state troopers went out and issued just under 7,000 traffic tickets because of a budget shortfall. I remember a few years ago they came up with a stupendous $2500.00 charge for driving a few miles over the speed limit. They’re pretty serious in Virginia because that’s where most of the DC lawmakers and former intelligence operatives live. It’s a seriously conservative state and I am painfully familiar with it. I got arrested there for violation of the Marijuana Tax Act awhile back and had a few years of ‘the old in and out’. What that means is that when I wasn’t in prison, I was on the run because I refused to cooperate with the law enforcement process when I hadn’t done anything wrong.
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Mar 11 09:16
By: PoliticalTheatrics
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Sixty-five congress members, including 60 Democrats and 5 Republicans, voted to end the occupation of Afghanistan on Wednesday. But 356 congress members, including 189 Democrats and 167 Republicans voted to keep the war going. The vote followed three hours of debate created by Congressman Dennis Kucinich’s introduction of a privileged resolution.
Mar 11 09:16
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Mar 11 09:14
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Declassified files detailing an FBI investigation targeting the American Israel Public Affairs Committee are now available on the Internet. AIPAC was investigated after it acquired and circulated classified government information provided in strict confidence by US industry and worker groups opposed to AIPAC sponsored economic legislation.
The 50 pages now available as portable document files (PDF) include:
FBI reports of Israelis circulating classified documents in the US Congress, "compromising" the authority of the U.S. President. http://irmep.org/ila/economy/06201984.pdf
US Trade Representative concerns that AIPAC was tactically "divulging" classified information supplied by US industries opposed to AIPAC lobbying initiatives. http://irmep.org/ila/economy/06211984.pdf
Webmaster’s Commentary:
"Holocaust. HOLOCAUST! Oh, Holocaust, Holocaust, Holocaust, Holocaust, Holocaust, Holocaust, Holocaust, Holocaust Holocaust Holocaust Holocaust HolocaustHolocaustHoloCAUST!!!!!" — Official Israeli Response
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED | The History The US Government HOPES You Never Learn!
Tags: Chris Spence, Color Revolution, crimes, drastic measures, East Jerusalem, economic devastation, Economic Downturn, Edinburgh, Europe, Gaza, gold market, Haifa, Israel, Israel Palestine, Jeddah, Joe Biden, kansas department of revenue, Mar, Middle East, New York, northern Israeli, Pa., Palestine, paper gold, physical gold, Professor Ian Plimer, Quot, Rachel Corrie, Regime Change In Iran, state, Stephen Dennis, Tags, Toronto, torture, US, Virginia, war, week Posted in headlines | No Comments »
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Thursday, March 11th, 2010
Now go to the USGS website and tell me why they might want to do that,,,,,
Africa has no faultlines and an incredibly stable crust which comes in handy if what?
if the world is affected by a passing celestial body and or pole shift.
Greenland also has no faultlines and a generally thicker avg crust, so why not greenland?
Interestingly enough , its forecast that greenland is headed up under the arctic ice sheet when all is said and done while the projection for Africa is it will mover little.
Add the georgia guidestones commentary
“maintain the population at 500 million”
Why? projections say that we will lose massive amounts of land during the next expected shift.
IS IT ALL TRUE? if you have been keeping apprised of the anomalous activities of the global elite it makes a disturbingly complete picture that could only be explained by an expected EVENT.
Verndewd
Source: Alternet – John Vidal, Mail & Guardian
Awassa, Ethiopia — We turned off the main road to Awassa, talked our way past security guards and drove a mile across empty land before we found what will soon be Ethiopia’s largest greenhouse. Nestling below an escarpment of the Rift Valley, the development is far from finished, but the plastic and steel structure already stretches over 50 acres* — the size of 20 soccer fields.
The farm manager shows us millions of tomatoes, peppers and other vegetables being grown in 1,500 foot rows in computer controlled conditions. Spanish engineers are building the steel structure, Dutch technology minimises water use from two bore-holes and 1,000 women pick and pack 50 tons of food a day. Within 24 hours, it has been driven 200 miles to Addis Ababa and flown 1,000 miles to the shops and restaurants of Dubai, Jeddah and elsewhere in the Middle East.
Ethiopia is one of the hungriest countries in the world with more than 13-million people needing food aid, but paradoxically the government is offering at least 7.5 million acres of its most fertile land to rich countries and some of the world’s most wealthy individuals to export food for their own populations.
The 2,500 acres of land which contain the Awassa greenhouses are leased for 99 years to a Saudi billionaire businessman, Ethiopian-born Sheikh Mohammed al-Amoudi, one of the 50 richest men in the world. His Saudi Star company plans to spend up to $2-billion acquiring and developing 1.25 million acres of land in Ethiopia in the next few years. So far, it has bought four farms and is already growing wheat, rice, vegetables and flowers for the Saudi market. It expects eventually to employ more than 10,000 people.
But Ethiopia is only one of 20 or more African countries where land is being bought or leased for intensive agriculture on an immense scale in what may be the greatest change of ownership since the colonial era.
Land rush
An Observer investigation estimates that up to 125 million acres of land — an area more than double the size of the UK — has been acquired in the last few years or is in the process of being negotiated by governments and wealthy investors working with state subsidies. The data used was collected by Grain, the International Institute for Environment and Development, the International Land Coalition, ActionAid and other non-governmental groups.
The land rush, which is still accelerating, has been triggered by the worldwide food shortages which followed the sharp oil price rises in 2008, growing water shortages and the European Union’s insistence that 10% of all transport fuel must come from plant-based biofuels by 2015.
In many areas the deals have led to evictions, civil unrest and complaints of "land grabbing".
The experience of Nyikaw Ochalla, an indigenous Anuak from the Gambella region of Ethiopia now living in Britain but who is in regular contact with farmers in his region, is typical. He said: "All of the land in the Gambella region is utilised. Each community has and looks after its own territory and the rivers and farmlands within it. It is a myth propagated by the government and investors to say that there is waste land or land that is not utilised in Gambella.
"The foreign companies are arriving in large numbers, depriving people of land they have used for centuries. There is no consultation with the indigenous population. The deals are done secretly. The only thing the local people see is people coming with lots of tractors to invade their lands.
"All the land round my family village of Illia has been taken over and is being cleared. People now have to work for an Indian company. Their land has been compulsorily taken and they have been given no compensation. People cannot believe what is happening. Thousands of people will be affected and people will go hungry."
It is not known if the acquisitions will improve or worsen food security in Africa, or if they will stimulate separatist conflicts, but a major World Bank report due to be published this month is expected to warn of both the potential benefits and the immense dangers they represent to people and nature.
Leading the rush are international agribusinesses, investment banks, hedge funds, commodity traders, sovereign wealth funds as well as UK pension funds, foundations and individuals attracted by some of the world’s cheapest land.
Together they are scouring Sudan, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Malawi, Ethiopia, Congo, Zambia, Uganda, Madagascar, Zimbabwe, Mali, Sierra Leone, Ghana and elsewhere. Ethiopia alone has approved 815 foreign-financed agricultural projects since 2007. Any land there, which investors have not been able to buy, is being leased for approximately $1 per year per 2.5 acres.
Saudi Arabia, along with other Middle Eastern emirate states such as Qatar, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi, is thought to be the biggest buyer. In 2008 the Saudi government, which was one of the Middle East’s largest wheat-growers, announced it was to reduce its domestic cereal production by 12% a year to conserve its water. It earmarked $5-billion to provide loans at preferential rates to Saudi companies which wanted to invest in countries with strong agricultural potential .
Meanwhile, the Saudi investment company Foras, backed by the Islamic Development Bank and wealthy Saudi investors, plans to spend $1-billion buying land and growing seven million tonnes of rice for the Saudi market within seven years. The company says it is investigating buying land in Mali, Senegal, Sudan and Uganda. By turning to Africa to grow its staple crops, Saudi Arabia is not just acquiring Africa’s land but is securing itself the equivalent of hundreds of millions of gallons of scarce water a year. Water, says the UN, will be the defining resource of the next 100 years.
Huge deals
Since 2008 Saudi investors have bought heavily in Sudan, Egypt, Ethiopia and Kenya. Last year the first sacks of wheat grown in Ethiopia for the Saudi market were presented by al-Amoudi to King Abdullah.
Some of the African deals lined up are eye-wateringly large: China has signed a contract with the Democratic Republic of Congo to grow 7-million acres of palm oil for biofuels. Before it fell apart after riots, a proposed 3 million acres deal between Madagascar and the South Korean company Daewoo would have included nearly half of the country’s arable land.
Land to grow biofuel crops is also in demand. "European biofuel companies have acquired or requested about 10 million acres in Africa. This has led to displacement of people, lack of consultation and compensation, broken promises about wages and job opportunities," said Tim Rice, author of an ActionAid report which estimates that the EU needs to grow crops on 43 million acres, well over half the size of Italy, if it is to meet its 10% biofuel target by 2015.
"The biofuel land grab in Africa is already displacing farmers and food production. The number of people going hungry will increase," he said. British firms have secured tracts of land in Angola, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Nigeria and Tanzania to grow flowers and vegetables.
Indian companies, backed by government loans, have bought or leased hundreds of thousands of acres in Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Senegal and Mozambique, where they are growing rice, sugar cane, maize and lentils to feed their domestic market.
Nowhere is now out of bounds. Sudan, emerging from civil war and mostly bereft of development for a generation, is one of the new hot spots. South Korean companies last year bought 1.75 million acres of northern Sudan for wheat cultivation; the United Arab Emirates have acquired 1.875 million acres and Saudi Arabia last month concluded a 100,000 acre deal in Nile province.
The government of southern Sudan says many companies are now trying to acquire land. "We have had many requests from many developers. Negotiations are going on," said Peter Chooli, director of water resources and irrigation, in Juba last week. "A Danish group is in discussions with the state and another wants to use land near the Nile."
In one of the most extraordinary deals, buccaneering New York investment firm Jarch Capital, run by a former commodities trader, Philip Heilberg, has leased 2 million acres in southern Sudan near Darfur. Heilberg has promised not only to create jobs but also to put 10% or more of his profits back into the local community. But he has been accused by Sudanese of "grabbing" communal land and leading an American attempt to fragment Sudan and exploit its resources.
New colonialism
Devlin Kuyek, a Montreal-based researcher with Grain, said investing in Africa was now seen as a new food supply strategy by many governments. "Rich countries are eyeing Africa not just for a healthy return on capital, but also as an insurance policy. Food shortages and riots in 28 countries in 2008, declining water supplies, climate change and huge population growth have together made land attractive. Africa has the most land and, compared with other continents, is cheap," he said.
"Farmland in sub-Saharan Africa is giving 25% returns a year and new technology can treble crop yields in short time frames," said Susan Payne, chief executive of Emergent Asset Management, a UK investment fund seeking to spend $50-million on African land, which, she said, was attracting governments, corporations, multinationals and other investors. "Agricultural development is not only sustainable, it is our future. If we do not pay great care and attention now to increase food production by over 50% before 2050, we will face serious food shortages globally," she said.
But many of the deals are widely condemned by both Western non-government groups and nationals as "new colonialism", driving people off the land and taking scarce resources away from people.
We met Tegenu Morku, a land agent, in a roadside cafe on his way to the region of Oromia in Ethiopia to find 1,250 acresof land for a group of Egyptian investors. They planned to fatten cattle, grow cereals and spices and export as much as possible to Egypt. There had to be water available and he expected the price to be about 15 birr (about $1) per 2.5 acres per year — less than a quarter of the cost of land in Egypt and a tenth of the price of land in Asia.
"The land and labor is cheap and the climate is good here. Everyone — Saudis, Turks, Chinese, Egyptians — is looking. The farmers do not like it because they get displaced, but they can find land elsewhere and, besides, they get compensation, equivalent to about 10 years’ crop yield," he said.
Man-made famine
Oromia is one of the centers of the African land rush. Haile Hirpa, president of the Oromia studies’ association, said last week in a letter of protest to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that India had acquired 2.5 million acres, Djibouti 2,500 acres, Saudi Arabia 250,000 and that Egyptian, South Korean, Chinese, Nigerian and other Arab investors were all active in the state.
"This is the new, 21st-century colonization. The Saudis are enjoying the rice harvest, while the Oromos are dying from man-made famine as we speak," he said.
The Ethiopian government denied the deals were causing hunger and said that the land deals were attracting hundreds of millions of dollars of foreign investments and tens of thousands of jobs. A spokesperson said: "Ethiopia has [187 million acres] of fertile land, of which only 15% is currently in use — mainly by subsistence farmers. Of the remaining land, only a small percentage — 3 to 4% — is offered to foreign investors. Investors are never given land that belongs to Ethiopian farmers. The government also encourages Ethiopians in the diaspora to invest in their homeland. They bring badly needed technology, they offer jobs and training to Ethiopians, they operate in areas where there is suitable land and access to water."
The reality on the ground is different, according to Michael Taylor, a policy specialist at the International Land Coalition. "If land in Africa hasn’t been planted, it’s probably for a reason. Maybe it’s used to graze livestock or deliberately left fallow to prevent nutrient depletion and erosion. Anybody who has seen these areas identified as unused understands that there is no land in Ethiopia that has no owners and users."
Development experts are divided on the benefits of large-scale, intensive farming. Indian ecologist Vandana Shiva said in London last week that large-scale industrial agriculture not only threw people off the land but also required chemicals, pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, intensive water use, and large-scale transport, storage and distribution which together turned landscapes into enormous mono-cultural plantations.
"We are seeing dispossession on a massive scale. It means less food is available and local people will have less. There will be more conflict and political instability and cultures will be uprooted. The small farmers of Africa are the basis of food security. The food availability of the planet will decline," she says. But Rodney Cooke, director at the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development, sees potential benefits. "I would avoid the blanket term ‘land-grabbing’. Done the right way, these deals can bring benefits for all parties and be a tool for development."
Lorenzo Cotula, senior researcher with the International Institute for Environment and Development, who co-authored a report on African land exchanges with the UN fund last year, found that well-structured deals could guarantee employment, better infrastructures and better crop yields. But badly handled they could cause great harm, especially if local people were excluded from decisions about allocating land and if their land rights were not protected.
Water is also controversial. Local government officers in Ethiopia told the Observer that foreign companies that set up flower farms and other large intensive farms were not being charged for water. "We would like to, but the deal is made by central government," said one. In Awassa, the al-Amouni farm uses as much water a year as 100,000 Ethiopians.
*Measurements in the article have been adapted from metric system.
Billionaires and Mega-Corporations Behind Immense Land Grab in Africa – BlackListed News
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Sunday, March 7th, 2010
Socialist Women Declare a Global Feminist Holiday
by Megan Cornish
Global Research, March 8, 2010
Freedom Socialist Party – 2010-02-01
Women are a revolutionary force. That fact shows in their holiday, International Women’s Day (IWD), both its past and present. Because the profit system depends on the second-class status of women, the day that honors them is bound to be connected to momentous happenings.
There were at least 984 events last year in 64 countries. The day is an official holiday in 29 countries — not accidentally, mostly those with an anti-capitalist history. They include China, Cuba, Vietnam, states in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and some in Africa.
The wealthier nations — North American and European countries, Australia — don’t recognize it. It’s notable that both IWD and May Day, the international workers’ holiday, were started to commemorate the struggles of workers in the U.S. — but neither is recognized officially in the heart of Capital.
A militant beginning. The holiday’s roots are in the struggles of working women and their socialist supporters. It’s believed that a mass protest by women garment and textile workers in New York City in 1857 occurred on March 8, and that in March two years later the same women won a drive to unionize. They were fighting against brutal working conditions, low wages, and the 12-hour day.
On March 8, 1908, socialist women organized a demonstration of 15,000 in New York. Their demands were pay raises, shorter hours, the vote, and an end to child labor. After that, the Socialist Party of America decided to celebrate a women’s day in the U.S., the first of which was held in 1909.
International Women’s Day was founded the following year, a century ago, at the Second International Socialist Women’s Conference held alongside the International Socialist Congress in Copenhagen, Denmark. The attendees represented socialist parties, working women’s clubs, and unions, and included the first three women elected to the Finnish parliament, at a time when few women had the right to vote.
U.S. delegates went intending to propose an international women’s day, only to find that German feminist Clara Zetkin had beaten them to it. Zetkin was a prominent member of the German socialist party, which had a strong history of defending women’s rights. Women from 17 countries voted unanimously to create the holiday. The next year, 1911, celebrations started with a bang, with more than a million people demonstrating in Germany, Austria, Denmark and Switzerland.
The need for such a day got a chilling but powerful push from the great Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of March 25, 1911, in New York. Locked exits and poor safety measures caused the deaths of 146 workers, mostly women. It became an international scandal that ignited labor organizing. It helped build the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, which was one of the first primarily female unions and became one of the largest unions in the U.S.
In 1913 and 1914, as the drumbeats for World War I were beginning to sound, major IWD demonstrations calling for peace took place in Europe. World War I began in August 1914. For several years, IWD was suppressed both by capitalist governments and by some socialist parties, those that had betrayed international working-class solidarity by backing their own nations in the war.
A revolutionary spark. But the most momentous IWD so far was in Russia on March 8, 1917. The story is told magnificently in Leon Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution. Women started the insurrection that overthrew the all-powerful czar — and led to the Bolshevik revolution eight months later.
Women textile workers in Petersburg were desperate and angry because of severe food shortages and the slaughter of several million Russian soldiers in the war. They went on strike, and called on other factories to support them. The strike and demonstrations grew from day to day, and five days later, the Russian monarchy was gone for good.
Ongoing insurgency. IWD isn’t just a ceremonial occasion. In Iran in 2007, police violently broke up an IWD protest and arrested dozens of women. The day has a militant history in Iran.
On IWD in 1979, in the midst of the revolution that ousted the U.S.-backed shah, and just after the right-wing Islamic regime of Ayatollah Khomeini came to power, 100,000 women and male supporters rallied at Tehran University. Then 20,000 women, wearing western clothes instead of the mandated full-length veil, marched through the city. Protests were organized in other cities, too. Women demanded equal rights, including the right to dress as they wished. Religious vigilantes dispersed the women, although they fought back over the course of several days. It was the failure of left parties to defend the women that led to the ultimate defeat of the revolution.
Female leadership is a high-water mark in struggles too numerous to count. Women workers were instrumental in nationalizing banks during the uncompleted Portuguese revolution in 1977. Women played a vital role in Latin American upheavals of the 1980s, including Nicaragua’s Sandinista rebellion. Europe in the ’80s saw a huge upsurge of feminism, particularly within socialist and communist parties.
Last year, women played a forefront role in the uprising in Honduras against the coup that ousted the democratically elected president, Manuel Zelaya.
In the U.S., the huge feminist movement launched in the late 1960s began with radical aims. Despite the achievement of some reforms and a sea change in social attitudes, those aims remain to be fulfilled — as they do in the rest of the world.
The dynamism and revolutionary role of women workers that IWD commemorates is a key to understanding our times. Revolts by those on the bottom against the crimes of the profit system spring up continually. And those on the bottom are women, of all colors and nationalities and sexual persuasions, and as the most downtrodden part of every other oppressed group.
In the process of accomplishing their own liberation, women will be essential to the liberation of humanity.
Global Research Articles by Megan Cornish
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17687
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