Miracle or Mirage? Manufacturing Hunger and Poverty in Ethiopia
Oakland Institute
As months of protest and civil unrest hurl Ethiopia into a severe political crisis, a new report from the Oakland Institute debunks the myth that the country is the new “African Lion.” Miracle or Mirage? Manufacturing Hunger and Poverty in Ethiopia exposes how authoritarian development schemes have perpetuated cycles of poverty, food insecurity, and marginalized the country’s most vulnerable citizens.
A key government objective is to make Ethiopia one of the largest sugar producers in the world. Several sugar expansion plans are underway, including the colossal Kuraz Project in the Lower Omo Valley, which will include up to five sugar factories and 150,000 hectares of sugarcane plantations that rely on Gibe III Dam for irrigation. Studies show that Gibe III could reduce the Omo River flow by as much as 70 percent, threatening the livelihoods of 200,000 Ethiopians and 300,000 Kenyans who depend on the downstream water flow for herding, fishing, and flood-recession agriculture.
Miracle or Mirage? offers lessons from the deadly impact of sugar and cotton plantations in the Awash Valley in the Afar Region, established in the 1950s. The projects drastically reduced land and water availability for people and cattle, undermined food security, destroyed key drought coping mechanisms, and stirred up violent conflicts between different groups over the remaining resources. The establishment of plantations was a critical factor in the 1972-1973 famine, resulting in the deaths of nearly 200,000 Afar people. These findings raise serious questions about the government’s logic behind sugar expansion, with $11.2 billion to be invested by 2020, and much more for irrigation schemes and dams – Gibe III alone cost Ethiopia $1.8 billion.
Using quantitative evidence, the report also details how plantations established in the Awash Valley have been far less profitable than pastoralist livestock production, while carrying massive environmental costs including the depletion of vital water resources.
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Miracle or Mirage? Manufacturing Hunger and Poverty in Ethiopia
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Book Review
The 7/7 inquest
By Kevin Boyle | October 11, 2010
On BBC Radio 4 this morning John Humphreys was interviewing Reverend Julie Nicholson, who resigned from her church after her daughter was murdered on the morning of 7/7/05.
He asked her, “What do you want from this inquest? We know what the verdict will be, that goes without saying, but what do you want.”
Yes it does go without saying. The narrative is fixed.
There has been no Public Inquiry to disturb this narrative. Nor will any jury be allowed to interject with uncomfortable questions, nor deliberate on the anomalous evidence regarding this great crime.
The J7 website covers all these issues in great detail. An excellent book and four strong films, here, here, here and here, have been made undermining the official story.
Anyone who has read the evidence or watched one of these films MUST have the most serious doubts about the story we have been given re 7/7.
As usual, it is the detailed physical/scientific evidence that poses the greatest threat to the government’s narrative. The witness evidence of the blasts and the ever-changing story re the explosives used are comically incoherent.
Do not expect the Inquest to ask such obvious questions as… continue
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