Good People,
This concept is providing for insight why Africans Cannot Run Away from facing Reality for Respect, Honor, Value, Virtue and Justice for the sake of Democracy in the dispensation of Constitutional Rights that makes the world a peaceful and better place to live; and Why Africans with the rest of the world, should Play a Partnership Role with the World in the Emerging Market Place for Long Term Technological Business Transfers with Sustainability and Expansion.
The engineering to destroy African Humanities and values in the transatlantic and trans-Saharan trades face serious challenges in transformational outlook. Africa was the last to free itself from Slave Trade and in Freedom from Colonialism. Today again Africa is coming out last from freeing itself from Land Grabbing. It is a case Africans must unite to free itself in order that life for all human race in the world to be of meaning, since Africa hold the basket for commodities needed in the emerging markets why the world has changed its focus to Africa the reason for the scramble to Africa for Land Grabbing.
Africans Globally cannot sit down and wait for help from the space but must begin to engage themselves to transform what need to be changed to bring forth the desired level playing field conducive for such negotiations.
Show-cases from the Transatlantic and Trans-Saharan Slave Trades provided enough evidence of painful Crime against Humanity, Human Rights Violation, Abuse, careless killings with too much suffering of Africans throughout the journey to Freedom and which, Africans have been affected negatively and adversely by the Corporate Special Business Interest who engineered conflict conspiracies in many ways to their advantage. Africans became victims of circumstances in many ways and forms namely:
a) in social heritage lifestyle Africans are largely affected in their domestic institutions,
b) in political arena, the elite Politicians are heavily corrupted with graft and impunity and the situation became commonplace without redress for facing legal justice
c) African economic distability is dented in many form, where Globalization of the corporate business special interest avoided paying taxes but controlled how business is done in the Government of the people
d) The corporate special business interest engaged in expanding insecurity, pirating, money laundering, illegal trading and terrorism, where militarization conflicts is financed by the Corporate Special Business Interest group that fueled conflicts among nations, regions, and the local groups…….
e) After imposing Structural Adjustments and Privitization, most African Nations collapsed, monopoly took charge targeting Africa resources for free and thus killing Africans in Africa to fall into abject poverty while going after Africans like hunted animals, and destroying their public corporations, livelihood and survival with other chain of income generating means from which to improve livelihood and survival and thereby, affecting Africa's economic standing and relationship amongst the the competitive outside world…….
f) The Special Interest Conspiracy imposed foreign ideologies to change Africans Heritage and destroyed how African cultural heritage united Africans to create rift that divided Africans to conflict amongst themselves in Divide and Rule to penetrate the African modern societies to steal more from Africa's wealth and resources easily……compare with the African Slave Trade in the East and West and why it is relevant today with Re-colonization by the Asianic front (as Corporates Special Business Interest Agents) taking control in Africa through the Scramble to Africa for Africa's Land Grabbing.
We as Africans are left to ask ourselves fundamental pertinent and Essential Questions, comparing notes how others made it to freedom and weighing substances of history. To do this, we must involve, engage and shift Landscaping to navigate how things should be done differently in a manner that brings harmonious good results in a balance. It is because there is no short-cut to demanding respect, honor and generate human dignity and value, and at the same time, one cannot ran away from facing reality for justice. We must all take stock of evaluating the following:
1) What was the reason for taking and selling Africans slaves overseas
2) What is the meaning of transatlantic slave trade with commodity exchange
of goods?
of goods?
3) What is the trans-Saharan slavery of the 21st Century?
4) How should people engage in doing business across transatlantic and in
trans-Sahara under mutually fair and shared responsibility as Business Partners
trans-Sahara under mutually fair and shared responsibility as Business Partners
5) What are the major similarities between the two trades, the transatlantic and
trans-Saharan
trans-Saharan
6) Is Slave Trade still being practiced and if so, how can it be harmonized to
give Africans full human Respect, dignity and value
give Africans full human Respect, dignity and value
It is helpful and important although not necessary, for African Abroad (African Diaspora) to equip themselves with good history and having prior knowledge concerning where they are coming and where they are going and why it is important that all humanity in the urgency of time, be treated equal sharing harmoniously in the Gifts of God's Blessings on earth. We must understand why European and Muslim exploration in Africa, exploitation of Africa's wealth and resources and their expansion in the Scramble to Africa for Land Grabbing shows serious inustices to Africans whereas, they must consider Africans as Partners in Development without hijacking Africa's wealth and resources as legitimate owners……the world should, in fairness take a more friendlier approach to resolve mystery of long lasting Peace, which everyone in the world is in search of.
It is time where Peace must prevail in the World. This will only take place when Africa is completely free from secret domineering, militarization, Slavery and Land Grabbing, but cooperation for business Partnership is made under mutual shared responsibility that are for common good of all for the sake of Peace and harmony.
It is time where Peace must prevail in the World. This will only take place when Africa is completely free from secret domineering, militarization, Slavery and Land Grabbing, but cooperation for business Partnership is made under mutual shared responsibility that are for common good of all for the sake of Peace and harmony.
Judy Miriga
Diaspora Spokesperson
Executive Director
Confederation Council Foundation for Africa Inc.,
USA
http://socioeconomicforum50.blogspot.com
Check It Out challenges with Show-case for Peace
with Land Grabbing in Africa and Colombia and
how Columbian Leaders have to deal with........
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos celebrates with his wife Maria Clemencia, left, and daughter Maria Antonia after winning a second term in June. (Jose Miguel Gomez/Reuters)
By Lally Weymouth August 7
Lally Weymouth is a senior associate editor of The Washington Post.
Bogota, Colombia
Juan Manuel Santos, who was sworn in for a second term as president of Colombia on Thursday, campaigned for reelection on his vision of ending the country's decades-long civil conflict and negotiating peace with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla group. But the country is so divided over the peace talks that Santos actually finished second in the first round of voting. Santos met with The Washington Post's Lally Weymouth just before his inauguration to discuss the prospects for peace and the war on drugs. Excerpts:
You staked your reelection on the peace process.
Yes. Quite frankly, my main reason to seek reelection is the possibility of ending a conflict that has had devastating effects for 50 years.
Former president Álvaro Uribe was attacking you during the campaign, saying you are selling out the country.
The people who — for some reason that I still don't understand — don't want peace managed to sell the idea that we are selling the country to communism, that the FARC would take over. I made a mistake thinking people would not believe that because it was so outrageous, but when I realized that they were believing it, I had to react. Fortunately, we won.
What are the elements of your peace process?
There are five points. One is what we call "rural development." There is land in Colombia, fortunately, for everybody. We don't have to expropriate land from people who are cultivating that land legally. What we are doing is taking the land from the people who grabbed it through violence.
Only 1 percent of the people control most of the land?
There is a lot of inequality in Colombia. We have to correct that. What I am going to do is to give land to peasants who don't own land, because there is still a huge amount of land that has not been cultivated because of the conflict. We have to conquer half of Colombia.
Item number two is political participation.
You are talking about giving the FARC some political participation if they lay down their arms?
Of course. The peace process is precisely to achieve that. Instead of them trying to gain power through the use of violence, they [should be] incorporated into the democratic system and try to persuade people to vote for them. I will allow them to become a political party. They are already convinced that through violence they will never achieve any of the objectives that they have.
But meanwhile, the violence has
escalated.
escalated.
It hasn't escalated. It continues. Because I put a condition when I started this process that there will be no cease-fire until we reach an agreement. In the past, every cease-fire was taken advantage of by the FARC to renew and rearm. We have learned. So we are talking in the middle of the war.
Do you feel you have diminished their strength?
Never in 50 years of the history of the FARC have they been hit so hard as by my government. They used to be between 20,000 and 25,000. Today they are between 7,000 and 8,000.
So the third negotiating point is?
Drugs. I insisted we need the commitment of the FARC to end any relations they have with the cultivation and trafficking of drugs and to help us in our war against drugs. And they accepted. This is remarkable.
They accepted that together we will start a program to eradicate drug trafficking in Colombia. Instead of putting mines around the coca plants that blow up our soldiers and policemen, and instead of having sharpshooters killing the people who eradicate the coca, they will help us in substituting legal crops for illegal drugs.
Colombia has been the most important provider of cocaine to the U.S. for 30 or 40 years. So can you imagine the effect this will have?
Now the talks are on the topic
of victims.
of victims.
We — the government and I — have decided to put the victims at the center of the solution of this conflict. We have more than 6 million victims. Their rights must be respected and taken into account.
What will you pay the victims?
Where do we draw the line between peace and justice?
What is your answer?
We want as much justice as possible that will allow us to reach peace. And this is what we have to negotiate.
If I'm a FARC leader, I'm not going to turn myself in if you're going to put me in jail for the rest of my life.
That's one extreme. The other [is the] victim saying —
"You must go to jail because you killed my father."
Exactly.
So where do you draw the line?
I cannot give you that answer. I have to give this answer to people at the negotiating table.
So a commander might be guilty but not all the FARC?
Exactly. You cannot judge and condemn 8,000 people. It would take you 100 years. So you have to choose the [most] responsible. Those people will be judged and condemned, people who are really at the top and are responsible.
So the people responsible for the very worst crimes?
Yes. That is what we have to negotiate now. . . .
And the [last item] is DDR: demobilization, disarmament and reintegration. That is the point we are negotiating with them. They will have to demobilize. That's a must. They will have to give up their arms. That is a must. And how do they reintegrate into society, into democracy, into a normal life?
And that will be very difficult?
Not so difficult. We have vast experience with that. More than 50,000 armed people have demobilized in Colombia in the last 10 years.
What are you going to do about former president Uribe? Will you have a peace process with him?
I think his attitude is not good for him, it is not good for me, it is not good for the country. But he has been very stubborn and continues to attack me viciously. I hope that now that he is a senator and has a responsibility for the party that he is forming, we can have some kind of responsible relation that will not hurt the country.
You were his minister of defense.
I was the most effective minister of defense against the FARC and the ELN [National Liberation Army] that the country has had since the FARC was created, and he knows it. He thought I was going to be his puppet, and he discovered I have my own way of thinking. And he was very upset, but that's the way the cookie crumbles. . . .
Hopefully Uribe will understand there is no greater objective for any society than to reach peace. He should be the first to understand this because he has been a victim of the FARC. His father was killed.
Do you plan to talk to him?
He doesn't talk to me. If I talk to the FARC, how can I not talk to Uribe? I am more than willing to sit down and straighten things out. So far I haven't received any positive answer.
You have said that if you finalize the peace process, you will hold a referendum to seek the approval of the citizens of this country.
Everything that we negotiate will be put to the people to decide. I'm not going to negotiate something that the people will reject because I would be committing suicide. We will then need to convince the people. We need to have the whole package to appreciate what peace will bring. If you start putting it to the people point by point, they will automatically reject it. But when you have the whole package — this is the cost of peace, and these are the benefits of peace — people will go for the benefits.
What do you think the benefits of peace would be ?
Enormous. One example is our growth rate. Most economists calculate we will grow at least 2 percent more per year forever without the conflict. A society that has been at war for 50 years — can you imagine if we can heal the wounds and work together? Can you imagine what we can do?
You had a high growth rate at the
beginning of this year.
beginning of this year.
We are the country in Latin America that is growing fastest. And in the first quarter, our growth rate was the second in the world after China. We have brought unemployment down for 47 months in a row. And this is in the middle of a war.
I notice the Colombian people are more worried about crime than about the FARC.
Yes. Because in the cities they don't feel directly touched by the war. They think it is something remote, in jungles. They don't realize that all the displaced people come to the cities. When you see someone mugging someone else on the public transport system, it is because he didn't find employment and he is probably a displaced person. But people's lives will definitely improve when we end the war.
I'm going to have to be like a teacher and explain the benefits of peace.
Will the government start talks with the ELN?
I think that the ELN must come into the process. It is one conflict, and we have to end it as one conflict. . . . I want total peace for Colombia.
The FARC is worried that the U.S. Department of Justice is trying to prosecute some of their leaders. What happens if you reach an agreement with the FARC and the Justice Department is still asking Colombia to extradite the FARC leaders?
Of course, no FARC leader will give up their arms to end up in a life sentence in a U.S. prison. But I think the U.S. government will help find a solution. I am very grateful to the U.S. for its support of the peace process.
Direct support or indirect?
Direct in the sense that USAID [the U.S. Agency for International Development] is already helping us plan for the post-conflict. The U.S. has not been directly involved. I decided this peace process will be between Colombians. We don't have mediators.
But you have supporters, like Norway?
We have facilitators and guarantors. They are Cuba and Venezuela because the talks are taking place in Cuba. Venezuela helped a lot, as did Chile and Norway.
Do you want your legacy to be that you ended the conflict?
Peace with social justice. Colombia — four years ago — was the second-most-unequal country in Latin America. Today, we are no longer the second. We are average.
But we have a long way to go. I use President Kennedy's phrase a lot: Nobody can be rich surrounded by extreme poverty.
You want to lift people out of extreme poverty?
Yes. So far we have been quite successful. Two-point-five million people have gone into the middle class. And 1.3 million have been taken out of extreme poverty. My plan is to eradicate extreme poverty in 10 years.
Nine percent of our population is still living in extreme poverty — about 4 million people.
Do you need to raise money for victim compensation?
This is a big challenge. We have already given reparations to 400,000 victims. There are 6 million victims, so we have a long way to go.
You are in favor of the decriminalization of drugs.
I am in favor of something new. What we have been doing for the past 40 years has not worked. I am in favor of finding a more effective way to take drug money out of criminal hands. It may be decriminalizing. It may be more of a health approach. If you find someone with marijuana in the street, instead of putting him in jail, you send him to a rehabilitation center.
In the past 40 years of this war on drugs — quite frankly, we have not won.
lally.weymouth@washpost.com
==================
Can Santos Finally Bring Lasting Peace to Colombia?
Colombian President and presidential candidate Juan Manuel Santos shows the palm of his hand reading "Peace" as he celebrates after knowing the results of the presidential election on June 15, 2014, in Bogotá. Photo by Guillermo Legaria/AFP/Getty Images
Colombia re-elected President Juan Manuel Santos on Sunday, choosing him over former finance minister Óscar Iván Zuluaga in the country's closest elections in 20 years. Santos won with 50.9 percent of the vote, closer than it probably should have been considering that he was running against an unimaginative rehash of his predecessor, Álvaro Uribe Vélez, with none of the former president's charm.
Santos was once Uribe's defense minister, and when he took over in 2010, he was largely expected to oversee a continuation of Uribe's conservative rule and hard-line offensive against the left-wing FARC guerillas, under policies credited by many with bringing the country's once notorious political violence under control. Instead, he's surprised many by pursuing negotiations with the FARC in an effort to finally bring the conflict that has plagued the country since the 1960s to a definitive close.
Zuluaga made the case that Santos' willingness to make concessions to the FARC risks plunging the country back into the lawlessness of the pre-Uribe days.
With his slim mandate, Santos certainly has his work cut out for his second term. In spite of Santos' gains in peace talks, a mortally wounded FARC, and a recovering economy, the armed conflict persists, and Colombia has now one of the largest populations of Internally Displaced People in the world, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, with an estimated 5 million people forced out of their homes at the end of 2013.
And though for the most part Colombians favor peace talks, a significant swath of the population remains skeptical of the guerrillas' good will and of the president's authority. These fears have been partly stoked by ex-President Uribe, who keeps busy these days flinging false accusations at his former protégé Santos on Twitter.
A key question remains: how will his government handle the FARC, the ELN (the second-largest leftist rebel group tht also joined talks), and thorny debates regarding victim reparations and reintegration of militants? In a post-conflict scenario, the main concerns are land property rights, political participation, turning the illegal crops grown in FARC-controlled areas into legal ones, and finding productive occupations for idle former fighters. (Santos is also backing a controversial plan to eliminate the military draft and replace it with a "mandatory social service that rich and poor alike must serve," a bold initiative in a country deeply divided by class distinctions.)
Santos began exploratory talks with the FARC in 2010, and in November 2012 formal discussions took off in Havana. This time they don't include a government ceasefire, in a sharp contrast to talks from a decade ago, which mainly allowed the guerrillas to rearm and regroup. Now even the rebel groups seemed committed, and things stayed on track after November 2011 when the Colombian army killed FARC leader Alfonso Cano. The Cuban and Norwegian governments are acting as guarantors, and a six-point agenda was laid out. Both sides have agreed to create a land bank to reallocate land, which would radically transform the Colombian rural landscape.
A more contentious point is that of disarmament of the rebels and their political participation, since in November 2013 a deal was reached that would allow for the creation of new political parties. Some fear the president will be too lenient toward ex-members of illegal armed groups, who could serve negligible prison terms after which they would be eligible for elected office. This is what happened when the government made a similar deal with the now defunct rebel group M19 back in 1989, whose political party finished third in the 1990 elections and helped reform the Colombian constitution in 1991. It's hard imagining the FARC enjoying a similar popularity.
Last week's elections left no true alternative for Colombia's left or center-left, which ultimately had to side with Santos for what former presidential candidate Antanas Mockus called "an imperfect peace over perpetual war."
Santos' campaign rhetoric focused on moving the country away from what he called "a culture of fear, war … shortcuts" and toward a "culture of fair play, of decency, of respect towards institutions"—a blatant jab at Uribe. The once-popular former president's image has deteriorated with the unearthing of a series of damaging scandals.
Colombian voters—at least a narrow majority of them—have put their faith in Santos' vision of a return to normalcy, though since it's been half a century of violence what that looks like is anyone's guess.
Whether society is ready to conceive of and accept ex-guerrilleros and ex-paramilitaries as fellow Colombians remains the bigger question, and one for every Colombian to answer.
==================
Colombian President Santos: 'Waging War Is More Popular than Negotiating'
Interview Conducted By Juliane von Mittelstaedt and Helene Zuber
Juan Arredondo/ DER SPIEGEL
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos in his office in the presidential house in Bogota: "You can't settle a 50-year conflict in 52 weeks."
In a SPIEGEL interview, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos discusses upcoming elections, his government's peace talks with FARC and his hopes that the 50-year-old armed conflict will end this year.
May 21, 2014 – 05:37 PM
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, 62, is an economist and journalist. Prior to taking office, he worked at his family's daily El Tiempo newspaper in Bogota and held several government cabinet post, including that of defense minister under conservative former President Alvaro Uribe. The two had a falling out after Santos' 2010 election, when he announced that he would conduct peace talks with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the left-wing guerrilla group. Since the end of 2012, the government in Bogota has been negotiating with FARC in Cuba to end the civil war that has been raging in the country since 1964, claiming close to a quarter-million lives and displacing around 6 million people.
ANZEIGE
SPIEGEL: President Santos, you may be on the brink of ending the world's longest conflict. Is a peace deal with FARC imminent?
Santos: Today I'm more optimistic than I was a year ago -- and a year ago I was more confident than the year before. We've made unprecedented advances. But for a conflict that is this complex it is not easy to find a solution. We'll finish this process hopefully within this year.
SPIEGEL: You previously stated that a deal could be possible by the end of last year. Why is it taking longer?
Santos: I've been very careful not to give definite deadlines. I had hoped to finish negotiations before the beginning of the election period, but I was too optimistic. You can't settle a 50-year conflict in 52 weeks.
SPIEGEL: You are negotiating without a lasting cease-fire agreement. Do you worry that a small incident could disrupt the process?
Santos: I made the decision not to accept a cease-fire before signing a peace contract. If we agreed to a cease-fire there would be a reason for FARC to prolong negotiations eternally. And if by any chance those talks fail, I don't want to be seen by history as another president who was naive and stupid and gave the guerrillas all the opportunity to gain strength and keep fighting. I know that a lot of people don't understand how we can be talking in Havana while simultaneously fighting in Colombia. But in that respect, I follow the words of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin: I fight terrorism as if there was no peace process, and I negotiate the peace process as if there was no terrorism.
SPIEGEL: Is Rabin one of your role models?
Santos: We have been preparing this peace process very carefully for more than 20 years. I have been relying on international counselors since the very first day, people who have been very closely involved in the IRA negotiations in Northern Ireland, Israeli-Palestinian talks, the process to end the civil wars in Central America.
SPIEGEL: As a defense minister under your predecessor, Alvaro Uribe, you inflicted serious losses on the guerillas ....
Santos: ... and even more during the last four years as president. But there are times for making war and times for making peace.
SPIEGEL: Has it not been possible to bring down FARC and ELN by military means alone?
Santos: No, it's not possible to exterminate them. If this process fails, we'll have another 20, 30 or 40 years of war.
SPIEGEL: What would happen in that the case?
Santos: I've been careful not to weaken the military. We would continue fighting as we have so far. But I must say that this time I've got the impression that the guerilla leaders are really willing to reach an agreement. If that wasn't clear, I would not continue negotiations.
SPIEGEL: Months ago, you announced an agreement on two of six sections of the negotiations, the question of land and political participation by FARC. Will there be soon a new breakthrough?
Santos: I don't like to generate too many expectations. The logical order dictates that we should finish an agreement on the third point soon. How soon, I cannot tell. It is a very difficult issue that I personally introduced to the agenda: drug-trafficking. If we reach an agreement on this point, for Colombia, for the region and for the whole world, this would be extraordinary. For decades, Colombia has been accused of being the world's principal provider of cocaine. If this comes to an end, it would be a dramatic change for our country -- which has been suffering more than any other from the consequences of drug-trafficking.
SPIEGEL: Do you really believe that FARC will give up this lucrative business?
Santos: They will have to. We have ways of monitoring their crops and their transport lines. Yes, I believe they could commit themselves to cutting off all connections to drug-trafficking.
SPIEGEL: What happens if some forces within FARC don't demobilize and continue as drug-traffickers and extortionists?
Santos: Of course, some of their people might continue the business on their own, because as long as we have people in New York, Berlin and Madrid sniffing coke, drug-trafficking will remain attractive. We have studied the effectiveness of their commando control, and found that it has been maintained to a very high degree. If their leaders commit to abandoning the narco business, then most of them will go along with it.
SPIEGEL: Do you think that 100 percent of the guerillas might go along?
Santos: I don't like to make predictions about that. In every process like this, some people stay behind. But then they would just be criminals, not politically motivated insurgents.
SPIEGEL: Many guerilleras don't have any formal education and have been living in the jungle since childhood. How can they integrate into civil society and find jobs?
Santos: When there is peace, we'll, of course, need a lot of international help. The post-conflict period will be as complicated as the negotiations themselves. But we have been learning how to deal with demobilized organizations. Furthermore, the Colombian economy is very strong. We have one of the highest rates of growth in Latin America. There will be jobs.
SPIEGEL: Another difficult issue is how to address the crimes committed by FARC. The victims are pushing for the perpetrators to be tried in court, but that could take decades and would deter the rebels from laying down their weapons. How do you intend to bring justice to Colombia?
SPIEGEL: ... which means that reconciliation and investigations take place while the justice system concentrates on the most severe crimes.
Santos: Yes. It is necessary, because we can't bring all perpetrators to trial. The key question is: Where do you draw the line between peace and justice? If you ask the victims, they want more justice; if you ask the potential victims, they want more peace.
- Part 1: 'Waging War Is More Popular than Negotiating'
- Colombian President Santos: 'Waging War Is More Popular than Negotiating' - SPIEGEL ONLINE
----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Sulayman Nyang <sulaymann@yahoo.com>
To: Judy Miriga <jbatec@yahoo.com>
Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2014 8:16 AM
Subject: RESEARCH NOTES NUMBER 3
From: Sulayman Nyang <sulaymann@yahoo.com>
To: Judy Miriga <jbatec@yahoo.com>
Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2014 8:16 AM
Subject: RESEARCH NOTES NUMBER 3
RESEARCH NOTES NUMBER 3
1. Washinton Post Newsreports.
Still Life, a review published in the Outlook section of the paper dated Sunday, August 10, 2014, B.1 written by Susan Okie. Note the title of the article : "From defibrillators to suspended animation , it's getting easier for us to cheat death. But should we? This review is based on David Casarett's book, Shocked . Adventures in Bringing Back the Recently Dead, Current. 260pp. $27.95
2. Danielle Dean, "My husband was killed in Egypt. He was just doing his job," Washington Post, August 10,2014, p. B4
3. Adania Shibil, " Palestinians are forgetting how to stand together," Washington Post, August 10, 2014, p. B5
4. Dennis Ross, "How Hamas missed its chance in Gazal," Washington Post, August 10, 2014, p. B1&5
5. H.D.S Greenway, Foreign Correspondent . A Memoir ( Simon & Schuster, 2014), 301pp. $26. This book was reviewed in the Washington Post, August 10, 2014, p. B8., by Jonathan Yardley, under the title: "Witness to failed empire-building ,"
6. Jonathan Yardley, "Transatlantic mates, The Washington Post, August 34, 2014, p. B 8
7. Harold and Jack, The Remarkable Friendship of Prime Minister Macmillan and President Kennedy," written by Christopher Sandford
332pp. $25.95
Please check this footnotes and use them as guides for the perplexed on the questions dealing with legacies.
Professor Sulayman S. Nyang
Howard Universuty
Washington D.C. 20059
Cell: 240-498-8623
Office: 202-238-2311
Names and places 2014 plus
A.
1. Names of persons who are a part of African-American history: Booker T.Washington , Monroe Trotter, W.E.B.Dubois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, chairman of the Anti-Lynching League,
2. The hundredth anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth, February 12, 1909. The White Liberals who participated at that event were the following : Jane Addams, John Dewey, William Dean Howells, Lincoln Steffens , and J.G. Phelps- Stokes.
B. a Bengali freedom movement now remembered as "Mukti Bahini Freedom fighters. A photo of H.D.S. Greenway with the group in July, 1971
2. Birds in the world:
"The death of Martha the passenger pigeon 100 years ago marked the end for a species that had once numbered in the billions." By Matthew Engel, Financial Times, Saturday August 23/ Sunday August 24, 2014, p. 1. According to Engel, "the death of the last passenger pigeon was more consequential than the First World War. For that did not turn out to be the war to end all wars. But Martha was undoubtedly the passenger pigeon to end all passenger pigeons."p.1 Ectopistes migratorius was now extinct. The last passenger pigeon's death can be dated more or less exactly: the afternoon of September 1, 1914.
Data on Appointments.
SprintFreeMsg LABORATORY CORPORATION OF AMERICA
3015921476
11120 NEW HAMPSHIRE AVE SILVER SPRING, MD
SprintFreeMsg NIKHAR NIRJALESHWAR K DR 3012607600, 18111 PRINCE PHILIP DR STE 124 OLNEY, MD
1. Lallly Weymouth interviews Columbian President Juan Manuel Santos : "I want total peace for Colombia" published in Washington Post, August 10,2014, p.B1&4 responding to the question about his peace process, he puts it this way:
" There are five points. One is what we call "rural development." There is land in Columbia; fortunately , for everybody." We don't have to expropriate land from people who are cultivating that land legally. What we are doing is taking the land from the people who grabbed it through violence." Only one percent of the people control most of the land. We have to correct that. What I am going to do is to give land to the peasants who don't own land , because there is still a huge amount of land that has not been cultivated because of the conflict. We have to conquer half of Columbia"
Item Number 2 is political participation. Grant the Guerilla group, FARC, cannot win the conflict militarily. Political reconciliation and political communication with the electorate through elections and balloting are the most avenue to political peace and nation integration.
The third negotiating point is drugs: I insisted we need the commitment of the FARC to end any relations they have with the cultivation and trafficking of drugs and to help us in our war against drugs .And they accepted.This is remarkable.
1.Salla Simukka, a Finnish writer will discuss her young-adult novel, " As Red as Blood," about a teenager who stumbles upon a drug cartel cash pile, and Emmi Itaranta, also a Finnish writer, will discuss her novel " Memory of Warer,"about a Europeunder a Chinese control, where water is a precious commodity."
1. Trans-Siberian Railroad
Christian Wolmar, " To The Edge of The World The Story of the Transfer-Siberian Express, the World's Greatest Railroad, " The Washington Post, August 24, 2014, p. B.6 283pp. $27.99
2. According to Wolmar, American Perry McDonough Colin's, an adventurous New Yorker, set out to cross Siberia in winter, convinced that this could be a new frontier for American traders."He travelled 3545 miles from. St. Petersburg to Irkutsk.
Sent from my iPhone
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washingtonpost.com — Adania Shibli is a visiting professor at Birzeit University's Institute of Women's Studies and Cultural Studies Department. Her latest book is the novel "We Are All Equally Far From Love." When looking at a map of Palestine and Israel, Gaza resembles the little toe of a foot.
Separated by Israel, Palestinians are forgetting how to stand together
By Adania Shibli August 8
Israeli soldiers check the IDs of Palestinian cars as they man a checkpoint on the way into the West Bank town of Hebron on June 14. (Hazem Bader/AFP/Getty Images/AFP/Getty Images)
By Adania Shibli August 8
Adania Shibli is a visiting professor at Birzeit University's Institute of Women's Studies and Cultural Studies Department. Her latest book is the novel "We Are All Equally Far From Love."
When looking at a map of Palestine and Israel, Gaza resembles the little toe of a foot. You hardly pay attention to your little toe, unless it's in pain, of course. When Gaza suffers devastating attacks by the Israeli military, immense sympathy for its people pours in from the outside — but hardly anything more than that.
Oddly enough, this is also how Palestinians in the West Bank often relate to Gaza.
I live in Ramallah, only 60 miles away, but it feels as if Gaza were as far as Berlin, New York, Paris, Istanbul or London. It has been this way since 1994, when control over some Palestinian cities was passed to the Palestinian Authority. As a result, movement of Palestinians to and from Gaza, as well as cities on the West Bank, became very hard, if not impossible.
In recent years, Palestinian society has become trapped in geographic divisions: Gaza vs. the West Bank, but also inside the West Bank. By 1996, the Oslo Accords allowed the Israeli authorities to control Palestinians' lives by controlling their movements — mainly between cities rather than inside cities, as was the case before then. What used to be an open space where people could travel freely between all the Palestinian areas, and even into the Israeli areas, has been divided into four zones, with connections between them controlled by more than 500 checkpoints and roadblocks and a wall 26 feet high. That wall does not so much divide Palestinians from Israelis as Palestinians from each other.
The last time I visited Gaza was in 2000. Before then, I used to visit Gaza City quite often, while working on art and theater projects. With the eruption of the second intifada, or uprising, I could no longer travel there, and my contact with Gazans was reduced to e-mails that vanished with time. I would meet with Gazan writers, artists and intellectuals at events around the world — anywhere but Gaza. It turns out that this geographic division has been the most efficient way to occupy and manage the Palestinians; it has destroyed the idea of a Palestinian culture, of a society with coherent connections.
Consequently, since 2000, the Israeli occupation has felt like an individual, rather than a collective, problem. For instance, when Palestinians cross an Israeli-controlled checkpoint, we go through a revolving gate that allows only one person at a time, or we sit in a line inside a car. Naturally, you want to cross the checkpoint first, before your fellow Palestinians. And it is the other Palestinians in the line who may delay you. They might jump the queue, because they, too, need to get somewhere urgently, while the Israeli soldiers are the ones allowing you to go through. The enmity felt while crossing a checkpoint can thus often be directed more toward Palestinians than the Israeli soldiers.
Every time I return to Ramallah from Berlin, where I live for part of the year, I feel compassion and understanding for the suffering of my fellow Palestinians. Yet once I stand at a checkpoint, I protect my spot and boil with anger at anyone who pushes me in the cramped line. I may even yell at them: You think you are better than me? Or what you're doing is more important than what I need to do, so you want to pass ahead of me?
A few years ago, in fact, a man who worked as a butcher killed another man with a knife when he tried to get ahead of him at the Qalandia checkpoint, between Ramallah and Jerusalem.
Eventually, as it became nearly impossible for Palestinians to move between the West Bank and Gaza, most of us turned into spectators to the destruction inflicted on Gaza. What else can we do but watch? That was the troubling question that many in Ramallah posed every day during the recent attacks on Gaza. Among those asking the question were my students at Birzeit University. Discussions among the students about the situation in Palestine seem unavoidable in my classes focusing on European thinkers such as Immanuel Kant, John Locke and John Stuart Mill who examined notions such as truth, human life, liberty, equality and justice.
In the past decade, the West Bank has been pumped with private and international funds aimed at creating small businesses and building a bureaucratic authority with many employees who are hardly productive. Not much can be done, after all, without full freedom and an end to the Israeli occupation; their work is limited to a few cities and does not exceed what a municipality does in other countries. Still, those funds have created thousands of jobs, whereby employees get salaries in spite of their redundancy and dysfunctionality (or maybe they get such salaries to be dysfunctional). But with salaries, these workers can secure loans to buy cars and flats. These days, you hardly meet someone in the West Bank without a loan tying him or her to a bank for a few years. This is one of the main contributions of the Oslo Accords: the introduction of a neoliberal economy, boosted during the term of former Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad.
Just 20 years ago, buying a car or an apartment was an unnecessary luxury. While this way of life might work better in places where basic rights such as equality and freedom are granted, for Palestinians it has made life under occupation and oppression seem normal. Now these smaller dreams — buying a car and an apartment — have replaced the bigger ones: justice, equality, freedom and social solidarity. And of course, in these flats, the owners have at least one plasma TV screen where they can watch Gaza as it is bombed, and feel helpless. They no longer know how to move from self-interest to mutual care.
During a recent class discussion, one of my students, who's very clever, implored his classmates to resist paralysis and passivity. Before asking others to act, he said, everyone should do something on his own to counteract this gloomy reality.
That student, though, didn't show up for class a few weeks ago. His sister told me that he was in the hospital, after being shot by the Israeli army, with two bullets in his stomach. After a few surgeries, he's now in a wheelchair waiting for another surgery to repair his hip. He was protesting in the Ramallah area against what has happened in Gaza. Following that small demonstration, a huge one erupted, where many people, including other students who had been passive until that point, took part.
Perhaps even the most selfish and passive Palestinians can no longer remain indifferent. Whether or not a cease-fire agreement is reached, the Israeli occupation will continue to divide us from one another. Our main challenge is to find ways to counter that division and the selfishness it inspires.
outlook@washpost.com
==================
Africa Land Grab
Recent articles and Reports on African land grab
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Africa agricultural initiative gets $7 billion boost from private companies
Washington Post | 5 Aug 2014
Africa agricultural initiative gets $7 billion boost from private companies
By Juliet Eilperin
A group of African and U.S. firms on Tuesday will announce an additional $7 billion in spending to promote agricultural development in Africa, nearly doubling an Obama administration initiative aimed at mobilizing private money to ease hunger and poverty on the continent.
The commitments — which are being made as part of this week's U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit and include a $5 billion pledge by Coca-Cola to source more of its products from Africa by the end of the decade — highlight how U.S. food aid policy has shifted under President Obama. Rather than relying primarily on federal funds to support small farmers overseas, the administration has enlisted African companies and major multinationals to help address some of the development challenges Africans still face. http://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/23795-africa-agricultural-initiative-gets-7-billion-boost-from-private-companies
"Land grabs" and responsible agricultural investment in Africa
Triple Crisis | 4 August 2014
"Land grabs" and Responsible Agricultural Investment in Africa Timothy A. Wise Can land grabs by foreign investors in developing countries feed the hungry? So says the press release for a recent, and unfortunate, economic study. It comes just as civil society and government delegates gather in Rome this week to negotiate guidelines for "responsible agricultural investment" (RAI), and as President Obama welcomes African leaders to Washington for a summit on economic development in the region. – See more at: http://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/23794-land-grabs-and-responsible-agricultural-investment-in-africa#sthash.A1GjOYjp.dpuf
Corporate influence through the G8 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition in Africa
Global Policy Forum | 4 August 2014
Corporate influence through the G8 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition in Africa Working Paper In recent times, new partnerships models between governments, business and civil society are increasingly gaining attention. One prominent example is the "New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition" (G8NA), inaugurated at the G8 summit 2012 in the United States. A new working paper published by Global Policy Forum, Brot für die Welt and MISEREOR, puts a spotlight on how business interests are promoted through the G8NA. To that end, the paper shows how the initiative bundles existing policy initiatives and aligns national policies to corporate interests. – See more at: http://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/23793-corporate-influence-through-the-g8-new-alliance-for-food-security-and-nutrition-in-africa#sthash.b6Wf3t99.dpuf
World Bank Turns Its Back on Rights Protections for the Poor
For immediate release July 29, 2014
(New York, London, New Delhi, July 29, 2014) – Civil society organisations around the world are decrying a leaked draft of the World Bank's proposed new policies to avoid harmful impacts from the development projects that it finances. Despite earlier commitments by Bank President Jim Yong Kim that the policies would not be diluted and that safeguards on land rights would be strengthened, the proposed changes have gutted essential requirements that are necessary to prevent displacement, impoverishment, and environmental damage. The draft policies are up for discussion by the Bank's board on July 30 ahead of public consultations.
– See more at: http://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/23775-world-bank-turns-its-back-on-rights-protections-for-the-poor#sthash.dCO2ws5m.dpuf
(New York, London, New Delhi, July 29, 2014) – Civil society organisations around the world are decrying a leaked draft of the World Bank's proposed new policies to avoid harmful impacts from the development projects that it finances. Despite earlier commitments by Bank President Jim Yong Kim that the policies would not be diluted and that safeguards on land rights would be strengthened, the proposed changes have gutted essential requirements that are necessary to prevent displacement, impoverishment, and environmental damage. The draft policies are up for discussion by the Bank's board on July 30 ahead of public consultations.
– See more at: http://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/23775-world-bank-turns-its-back-on-rights-protections-for-the-poor#sthash.dCO2ws5m.dpuf
The land rush doesn't have to end in a poor deal for Africans
Guardian | 17 April 2014 .
Foreign investment has often worked against the interests of African farmers
(Photo: Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters)
The land rush doesn't have to end in a poor deal for Africans by Katie Allen It is not too late for equitable partnerships to flourish between foreign investors and local communities If dodgy emails offering millions in return for your downpayment to repatriate a stranded Nigerian astronaut do not tempt you, then maybe this will appeal to your speculative side. A hectare of fertile African land, a 99-year lease, and all for $1 a year. Think about it: crop prices are soaring, land is appreciating and import-dependent rich nations virtually guarantee you a never-ending export market. It's starting to sound like that Nigerian astronaut deal…
Senegal farmers, pastoralists complain of "land-grabbing"
APA | 14 April 2014
Over nine thousand farmers and pastoralist in St. Louis in the north of Senegal are facing possible evictions from their land as multi-national agro-industries scramble for agricultural land in the region. Speaking to the African Press Agency on Sunday, Fulani cattle herders of the local community in Ross Bethio accused Senhuile â€" Sénéthanol, an Italian multinational company of encroaching on their grazing and farm lands.
They claimed that more than 37 villages are currently deprived of their land thanks to activities by the company which is based in St. Louis. The local population said they have lost over twenty six thousand hectares, leaving them without the means to continue herding cattle and farming their lands.
"We prefer to die than to allow our land to be taken away by a foreign company. We shall not succumb to this new form of colonization" said Gorgui Sow, a member of the youth platform in Ndiael local community to fight the "illegal occupation"….
http://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/23373#sthash.gpHX9iaD.dpuf
http://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/23373#sthash.gpHX9iaD.dpuf
180 Organizations from around the world demand that the World Bank shut down its business rankings & benchmarking
Institute | Thursday, April 10, 2014
Press release
MEDIA CONTACT:
OAKLAND, CA (April 10) – As the spring meetings of the World Bank get underway in Washington, DC, 180 organizations, including NGOs, unions, and farmer and consumer groups from over 80 countries, demand that the World Bank end its Doing Business rankings and its support of the rampant theft of land and resources from some of the world's poorest people — farmers, pastoralists, and indigenous communities, many of whom are essential food producers for the entire planet.
"The World Bank is facilitating land grabs and sowing poverty by putting the interests of foreign investors before those of locals," said Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of the Oakland Institute.
"Smallholder farmers are the first investors and employers in the agricultural sector in developing countries. Instead of supporting them, the World Bank encourages the looting of their resources for the benefit of foreign companies and local businessmen," said Alnoor Ladha, Executive Director of /The Rules…
Is the World Bank enabling agribusiness land grabs?
Al Jazeera | 12 April 2014
Photo: ReutersExperts and government officials from around the world have gathered at the World Bank in Washington, DC to chart a course to help lift the billion people who live on less than $1.25 a day out of extreme poverty within 15 years. A tall order – but one made nearly impossible by the Bank's own practices. The organisation's approach to land rights in the developing world undermines its very mandate to fight poverty – by putting the interests of foreign investors and corporations before those of locals. That must change. The World Bank and its rich-country funders must stop facilitating the theft of land and resources that belong to poor farmers, herders, and Indigenous Peoples. Such exploitation deprives millions of the ability to provide for their families, leads to environmental degradation, and undermines food security for the world's most vulnerable people… – See more at: http://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/23374#sthash.DozwPRo7.dpuf
£600 million UK aid money financing 'corporate scramble for Africa'
Economic Voice | 1 April 2014
£600 million in UK aid money is going to a scheme to help big businesses increase their profits in Africa, a report by the World Development Movement reveals today. The campaign group has slammed the scheme as fuelling a 'corporate scramble for Africa'. The UK government is channelling £600 million in aid to the G8-sponsored 'New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition', claiming it will lift 50 million people out of poverty by 2022. But campaigners say the scheme is set to benefit multinational companies like Monsanto and Unilever at the expense of millions of small-scale farmers, and is likely to increase poverty and inequality on the continent. In return for receiving aid money and corporate investment through the New Alliance, the African countries involved have to change their laws, making it easier for corporations to acquire large tracts of farmland, control the supply of seeds, and ship agricultural produce to other parts of the world. The World Development Movement believes the scheme will lead to increased land-grabbing, higher costs for small-scale farmers, and the prioritisation of crops for export instead of to feed local populations…. http://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/23346#sthash.GwiTwGpe.dpuf
World Bank accused of destroying traditional farming to support corporate land grabs
Oakland Institute and /The Rules | 31 March 2014
MEDIA CONTACT:
Kristen Thomaselli
(202) 471-4228 ext. 101
kristen@keybridge.biz
Kristen Thomaselli
(202) 471-4228 ext. 101
kristen@keybridge.biz
OAKLAND, Calif. (March 31) – Today, the Oakland Institute and /The Rules, along with other NGOs, farmer and consumer organizations from around the world launch a campaign, Our Land Our Business, to hold the World Bank accountable for its role in the rampant theft of land and resources from some of the world's poorest people–farmers, pastoralists, and indigenous communities, many of whom are essential food producers for the entire planet. "The World Bank is facilitating land grabs and sowing poverty by putting the interests of foreign investors before those of locals," said Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of the Oakland Institute. "Smallholder farmers and herders are currently feeding 80 percent of the developing world. Casting them aside in favor of industrial farming corporations from the West betrays the World Bank's reckless and short term approach to development," said Alnoor Ladha, Executive Director of /The Rules……
Large land deals reportedly fruitless
Capital | 26 March 2014
By Muluken Yewondwossen
A new report by the International Institute for Environment and Development entitled "Large-scale land deals In Ethiopia: scale, trends, features and outcomes to date," states that allocating land to investors has not shown a lot of benefits.
"Ethiopian government representatives at both regional and federal level acknowledge that, while considerable amounts of land have been allocated to investors, performance to date in terms of production, employment, and development of land has been disappointing for the most part," the report reads.
A new report by the International Institute for Environment and Development entitled "Large-scale land deals In Ethiopia: scale, trends, features and outcomes to date," states that allocating land to investors has not shown a lot of benefits.
"Ethiopian government representatives at both regional and federal level acknowledge that, while considerable amounts of land have been allocated to investors, performance to date in terms of production, employment, and development of land has been disappointing for the most part," the report reads.
The report states that according to the Ministry of Agriculture, of 2.2 million hectares of land allocated only 17.6 percent has been developed….
http://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/23311#sthash.EPmoAKDj.dpuf
http://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/23311#sthash.EPmoAKDj.dpuf
African govts give away continent's natural heritage, acre by acre
The East African | 21 March 2014
African govts give away continent's natural heritage, acre by acre
By John Mbaria Special Correspondent
A look at recent land deals reveals a trend seen by some land experts and economists as a "dangerous" grab of the basis upon which the continent's people depend for survival.
Latest reports by a US-based think-tank, Oakland Institute, show that Western transnational corporations and Eastern countries such as China and India have played a big role in massive land acquisitions in Africa.
Other experts have underscored the importance of linking people involved in conservation and human rights to government officials so that land-grab schemes that are passed off as poverty reduction ventures would reflect not just the concerns and survival interests of the local people but also their ancestral rights to the lands….
– See more at: http://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/23295#sthash.Qf7oziYI.dpuf
A look at recent land deals reveals a trend seen by some land experts and economists as a "dangerous" grab of the basis upon which the continent's people depend for survival.
Latest reports by a US-based think-tank, Oakland Institute, show that Western transnational corporations and Eastern countries such as China and India have played a big role in massive land acquisitions in Africa.
Other experts have underscored the importance of linking people involved in conservation and human rights to government officials so that land-grab schemes that are passed off as poverty reduction ventures would reflect not just the concerns and survival interests of the local people but also their ancestral rights to the lands….
– See more at: http://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/23295#sthash.Qf7oziYI.dpuf
Wall Street investors take aim at farmland
Mother Jones | 14 March 2014
Where's the money? (Photo: FuzzBones /Shutterstock)
Wall Street investors take aim at farmland
By Tom Philpott
In a couple of posts last fall (here and here), I showed that corporations don't do much actual farming in the US. True, agrichemical companies like Monsanto and Syngenta mint fortunes by selling seeds and chemicals to farmers, and grain processors like Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill reap billions from buying crops cheap and turning them into pricey stuff like livestock feed, sweetener, cooking oil, and ethanol. But the great bulk of US farms—enterprises that generally have razor-thin profit margins—are run by independent operators.
– See more at: http://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/23272#sthash.V0XZ5Ksc.dpuf
By Tom Philpott
In a couple of posts last fall (here and here), I showed that corporations don't do much actual farming in the US. True, agrichemical companies like Monsanto and Syngenta mint fortunes by selling seeds and chemicals to farmers, and grain processors like Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill reap billions from buying crops cheap and turning them into pricey stuff like livestock feed, sweetener, cooking oil, and ethanol. But the great bulk of US farms—enterprises that generally have razor-thin profit margins—are run by independent operators.
– See more at: http://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/23272#sthash.V0XZ5Ksc.dpuf
Geldof and Obasanjo on creating a better harvest for African agriculture
How We Made It in Africa | 13 March 2014
Former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo (shown here sitting to the right of Uk rock star Bob Geldof) is involved in at least two large land grabs in Nigeria, one involving his own company in Cross River State and another involving the US company Dominion Farms in Taraba State.
Geldof and Obasanjo on creating a better harvest for African agriculture
BY BOB GELDOF AND OLUSEGUN OBASANJO
Africa is one of the most fertile regions on earth. Yet, while the continent boasts 60% of the world's uncultivated arable land, one in four Africans still go hungry and Africa still imports 40% of the food it needs.
BY BOB GELDOF AND OLUSEGUN OBASANJO
Africa is one of the most fertile regions on earth. Yet, while the continent boasts 60% of the world's uncultivated arable land, one in four Africans still go hungry and Africa still imports 40% of the food it needs.
While recent developments in African agriculture show tremendous promise, the continent still lacks viable ways of channelling investment money to the millions of dynamic entrepreneurs with viable business ideas in sectors such as farming, aquaculture and agro-processing. Indeed, Africa is losing huge potential investments each year. This loss has effects for jobs and economic growth.
These are a few key changes necessary to make this possible…
– See more at: http://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/23269#sthash.IN4vB4J2.dpuf
– See more at: http://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/23269#sthash.IN4vB4J2.dpuf
The many faces of land grabbing. Cases from Africa and Latin America
EJOLT | 10 March 2014
Ejolt report 10: The many faces of land grabbing. Cases from Africa and Latin America.
The report can be downloaded here.
The report can be downloaded here.
Abstract
The two big global crises that erupted in 2008 – the world food crisis and the broader financial crisis that the food crisis has been part of – are together spawning a new and disturbing trend towards buying up land for outsourced food production. 'Land grabbing' as these acquisitions are now called, is often led by the private sector (with support from governments) that sees opportunities triggered by the global financial, food and energy crisis.
The two big global crises that erupted in 2008 – the world food crisis and the broader financial crisis that the food crisis has been part of – are together spawning a new and disturbing trend towards buying up land for outsourced food production. 'Land grabbing' as these acquisitions are now called, is often led by the private sector (with support from governments) that sees opportunities triggered by the global financial, food and energy crisis.
Characteristics of land grabbing are large scale displacement of the rural poor without proper compensation and the destruction of the local ecology to make space for industrial agriculture and biofuels. Recent studies emphasize the links between land grabbing, biomass extraction, and the interests and needs of the few members of a global class of consumers distributed across an increasingly multi-centric global food system, against the vast majority of the world's population. Thus, the fight against land grabbing currently lies at the interface of the climate debate, food sovereignty, indigenous rights, social and environmental justice….
– See more at: http://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/23268#sthash.9G1LDJuu.dpuf
– See more at: http://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/23268#sthash.9G1LDJuu.dpuf
Senegalese farmers and herders demand shady transnational corporation Senhuile SA get off their land
The Ndiaël Collective, CNCR, ENDA Pronat, ActionAid Senegal, ActionAid Italy, Peuples Solidaires, Re:Common, GRAIN and The Oakland Institute [français] [Español]
Farmers and herders from northwestern Senegal have travelled to Europe to demand the scrapping of a land deal that threatens the lives and livelihoods of some 9,000 people. A murky international conglomerate, Senhuile SA, has leased 20,000 hectares of land in the Ndiaël Reserve, land which has been used for decades by residents of some 40 villages in the area. The villagers want the project stopped, saying it will cut off their access to grazing land, water, food and firewood – ultimately forcing them off their homes and land..
Tanzania: 'large-scale farming turns small farmers into mere labourers'
Tanzania: 'large-scale farming turns small farmers into mere labourers'
Published: 18 Feb 2014
Guardian | 18 February 2014
http://www.farmlandgrab.org/uploads/images/photos/7067/original_MDG--Agriculture-in-Afric-009.jpg?1392742904
Young coffee bushes planted in the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. (Photo: Ulrich Doering/Alamy)
by Claire Provost and Erick Kabendera Zitto Kabwe first heard about the G8 initiative to transform the future of farming and food production in his country when he opened a newspaper in 2012. The chairman of the Tanzanian parliament's public accounts committee says he was critical of the scheme from the start.
"Something like this needs to go through parliament. The executive cannot just commit to these changes," he said, poring over the list of projects and policy changes his government has agreed to as part of the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, launched by Barack Obama two years ago….http://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/23177-tanzania-large-scale-farming-turns-small-farmers-into-mere-labourers#sthash.MaW7S4Ga.dpuf
"Something like this needs to go through parliament. The executive cannot just commit to these changes," he said, poring over the list of projects and policy changes his government has agreed to as part of the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, launched by Barack Obama two years ago….http://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/23177-tanzania-large-scale-farming-turns-small-farmers-into-mere-labourers#sthash.MaW7S4Ga.dpuf
G8 New Alliance condemned as new wave of colonialism in Africa
Published: 18 Feb 2014
Posted in: G8
Small farmers are supposed to be the main beneficiaries of the New Alliance, but they have been shut out of the negotiations. Above: a Kenyan farmer tends newly planted trees (Photo: Tony Karumba/AFP)
G8 New Alliance condemned as new wave of colonialism in Africa
Critics say landmark initiative to boost agriculture and relieve poverty favours big business to the detriment of small farmers
• Interactive: what promises have been made and where?
Claire Provost, Liz Ford and Mark Tran
A landmark G8 initiative to boost agriculture and relieve poverty has been damned as a new form of colonialism after African governments agreed to change seed, land and tax laws to favour private investors over small farmers.
Ten countries made more than 200 policy commitments, including changes to laws and regulations after giant agribusinesses were granted unprecedented access to decision-makers over the past two years…http://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/23176-g8-new-alliance-condemned-as-new-wave-of-colonialism-in-africa#sthash.zYI9Mysw.dpuf
Critics say landmark initiative to boost agriculture and relieve poverty favours big business to the detriment of small farmers
• Interactive: what promises have been made and where?
Claire Provost, Liz Ford and Mark Tran
A landmark G8 initiative to boost agriculture and relieve poverty has been damned as a new form of colonialism after African governments agreed to change seed, land and tax laws to favour private investors over small farmers.
Ten countries made more than 200 policy commitments, including changes to laws and regulations after giant agribusinesses were granted unprecedented access to decision-makers over the past two years…http://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/23176-g8-new-alliance-condemned-as-new-wave-of-colonialism-in-africa#sthash.zYI9Mysw.dpuf
US Congress takes a historic stance against land grabs-related forced evictions in Ethiopia
Published: 27 Jan 2014
The 2014 Omnibus Appropriations Bill contains provisions that ensure that US development funds are not used to support forced evictions in Ethiopia.
MEDIA CONTACT:
Anuradha Mittal, 510-469-5228; amittal@oaklandinstitute.org
Frederic Mousseau, 510-512-5458; fmousseau@oaklandinstitute.org
Oakland, CA – In a historic move, the US Congress has taken a stance on land grabs-related human rights abuses in Ethiopia. The 2014 Omnibus Appropriations Bill contains provisions that ensure that US development funds are not used to support forced evictions in Ethiopia… http://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/23093-us-congress-takes-a-historic-stance-against-land-grabs-related-forced-evictions-in-ethiopia#sthash.VWdcbwLV.dpuf
Anuradha Mittal, 510-469-5228; amittal@oaklandinstitute.org
Frederic Mousseau, 510-512-5458; fmousseau@oaklandinstitute.org
Oakland, CA – In a historic move, the US Congress has taken a stance on land grabs-related human rights abuses in Ethiopia. The 2014 Omnibus Appropriations Bill contains provisions that ensure that US development funds are not used to support forced evictions in Ethiopia… http://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/23093-us-congress-takes-a-historic-stance-against-land-grabs-related-forced-evictions-in-ethiopia#sthash.VWdcbwLV.dpuf
Farming and food in Africa and the mounting battle over land, water and resource rights
Published: 13 Jan 2014
by Ruth Hall
Africa is being heralded as the new frontier for commercial farming but, as governments and investors sign deals, a counter-movement of family farmers is promoting alternative pathways to development. The International Year of Family Farming is now underway, and never before have family farmers in Africa been more under threat.
Africa is being heralded as the new frontier for commercial farming but, as governments and investors sign deals, a counter-movement of family farmers is promoting alternative pathways to development. The International Year of Family Farming is now underway, and never before have family farmers in Africa been more under threat.
Large land deals between African governments and usually foreign (and sometimes domestic) investors have seen swathes of the countryside leased or concessioned, often for as much as 50 to 99 years. From Senegal in West Africa to Ethiopia in the Horn, and down to Mozambique in the South, land considered 'idle' and available has changed hands, with profound implications for local people and the environment.
Peasant farmer in Cameroon: invest in African farmers rather than give away their land,
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