Sudan and South Sudan have hammered out a deal on how to share their oil wealth, one of a series of disputes that brought the rivals to the brink of all-out war earlier this year, it was announced on Saturday.
“The parties have agreed on all of the financial arrangements regarding oil, so that’s done,” African Union (AU) mediator Thabo Mbeki said early on Saturday after talks in the Ethiopian capital.
The two countries had faced an August 2 deadline set by the United Nations to resolve their differences on oil and borders, and Mbeki said they would meet next month to try to find a compromise on the disputed region of Abyei, whose status was the most sensitive issue left unresolved before South Sudan’s independence.
The former South African leader said a timetable would now be drawn up for the resumption of oil production and exports, which are vital to the economies of both deeply impoverished countries.
“What will remain, given that there is an agreement, is to then discuss the next steps as to when the oil companies should be asked to prepare for resumption of production and export,” he said.
The AU has been mediating long-running talks to try to resolve a series of disputes that have flared since South Sudan became independent in July 2011 following a 2005 peace deal that ended one of Africa’s longest civil wars.
Landlocked South Sudan took with it three-quarters of the oil held by the previously united nation, but the pipelines and processing facilities remained in Sudan.
And the two sides were unable to agree on how much Juba should pay to export its crude through a northern pipeline and port, leading the South to shut down production in January after Khartoum began seizing the oil in lieu of payment.
Oil generates about 98 percent of South Sudan’s revenue and the move crippled the economies of both countries.
Ahead of the agreement announced by Mbeki, Sudan had lowered its demand for oil fees from South Sudan. Sudan had been seeking up to $36 a barrel in fees, but in a position paper released on Thursday said it was proposing $22.20 a barrel, compared with $7.61 offered by South Sudan.
Despite the oil agreement, South Sudan’s chief negotiator Pagan Amum accused Khartoum of violating a peace plan drawn up by the African Union in April urging both sides to reach a comprehensive deal on all outstanding issues.
“The government of Sudan continues to violate the road map and continues to bomb South Sudan,” Amum told reporters.
“The (AU) peace and security council in its road map and resolution decided that they would impose sanctions on Sudan if they fail to comply, Sudan has failed to comply,” he said.
Mbeki’s announcement came hours after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on the two Sudans to strike an urgent compromise on outstanding issues such as oil revenue sharing, security, citizenship and border demarcation, saying the countries “remain inextricably linked”.
Clinton’s comments came after a meeting with South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir in Juba as part of her tour of Africa.
Sudan accuses South Sudan of supporting insurgents on its territory, a charge that analysts believe despite denials by Juba, which in turn accuses Khartoum of backing rebels south of the border.
The two countries fought along their undemarcated frontier in March and April, sparking fears of wider war and leading to a UN Security Council resolution that ordered a ceasefire.
Mbeki said an agreement had also been reached between Sudan, the United Nations, the AU and the Arab League to allow for humanitarian access in the conflict-wracked Blue Nile and South Kordofan states.
Prolonged clashes between Sudanese forces and rebel groups in the two disputed territories have left thousands in a “desperate state” and in need of emergency aid, according to the United Nations.
(AFP, Al-Akhbar)
August 4, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Economics | Africa, African Union, Hillary Rodham Clinton, South Sudan, Sudan, Thabo Mbeki |
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Egyptian and Sudanese policy failures have lead to a looming strategic threat to both countries’ most important resources – the Nile. Israel has now signed an agreement with the South Sudanese authorities over rights to the country’s precious water source.
There was an outcry in Egypt and Sudan over last week’s signing of a cooperation agreement between Israel and South Sudan on water infrastructure and technology development. Warnings abounded that the pact between the government in Juba and Israeli Military Industries Ltd posed a threat to the water security of the two downstream countries and should be countered. Largely overlooked was the fact that their own inaction was mostly to blame for it.
Israeli designs on the waters of the Nile and on the resources of the African continent are hardly new. For years Israel has striven hard to forge ties with a number of African states and strengthen its presence in the continent, for both economic and security reasons.
In South Sudan, Israel has flaunted its ties with the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) – now the new country’s absolute ruler – and other southern faction leaders ever since the first southern rebellion began in Sudan in the 1950s. This was in line with a longstanding strategic doctrine, which was revisited in a 2008 lecture on Israel’s regional strategy by former Israeli security minister Avi Dichter.
This doctrine held, among other things, that Sudan, with its vast resources and economic potential, should not be allowed to become an asset to the power of the Arab world as a whole. As development in a stable Sudan would make it a threat to Israel, despite its geographical distance, Israel and its agencies should actively encourage the destabilization of the country by fueling successive crises until that instability becomes chronic.
The other acknowledged motive for Israeli intervention in Sudan was that the country constitutes the “strategic depth” of Egypt. In this regard, nothing could conceivably pose a greater strategic concern to Egypt and Sudan alike than a potential threat to their supplies of water from the Nile. Israel has succeeded in mounting such a threat with its latest pact with South Sudan and earlier agreements with other Nile littoral states in recent years.
The move comes against a backdrop of tensions over water issues between Egypt and Sudan and the majority of the other Nile Basin countries (the other riparian states are Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Eritrea, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda).
Most of the upstream countries want major changes made to the arrangements that have long governed the management of the Nile’s waters. These include a 1929 agreement which requires Egypt to approve any large-scale water projects in upstream countries that would affect the flow of Nile waters. They also oppose a 1959 pact that allocates an annual 55.5 billion cubic meters of Nile water to Egypt and 18.5 billion cubic meters to Sudan, which they argue is unfair. Six countries have demanded a reallocation under a proposed new Entebbe Agreement, but Egypt and Sudan have rejected it. The pair – especially Egypt, which since ancient times has relied on the Nile for more than 95 percent of its water – would rather keep their historic shares, and insist there can be no new water agreement until contentious issues have been resolved.
Egyptian and Sudanese objections will not, however, stop South Sudan – which with its independence became the Nile’s 11th riparian state – and other countries from proceeding with large-scale water projects to meet their pressing development needs. These are bound to increase their consumption and impede the downstream flow. South Sudan occupies a strategic location in this regard, with about 45 percent of the Nile Basin’s water in its territory, and 28 percent of the river’s water flowing through it to Sudan and Egypt.
Yet both countries could have acted to avoid getting to this point.
Sudan’s relations with South Sudan began deteriorating from the moment the latter seceded, with political, territorial and financial disputes triggering military confrontation within months. The opportunity was missed of holding negotiations prior to independence on what proportion the South would get of Sudan’s water allocation, which would have enabled Khartoum to safeguard its interests. Water issues have since been overshadowed by other quarrels.
For Egypt, the Nile Water question arguably represents the greatest of the country’s many Mubarak-era foreign policy failures. The former regime neglected Africa diplomatically, and failed to sustain Egypt’s once-strong relations with the countries concerned. Its most tangible failure in this regard was its inability to persuade South Sudan to agree to the resumption of work on the long-stalled Jonglei Canal project, designed to save between 40 and 50 billion cubic meters of Nile water annually from evaporation.
Israel was quick to fill the vacuum. It has seized every possible opportunity to offer its backing to water projects in the upstream countries, through which to both put pressure on Egypt and Sudan, and gain leverage to help overcome its own water shortage.
July 30, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Timeless or most popular | Africa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Israel, Nile, South Sudan, Sudan |
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The United States has finally made a token effort towards reining in its central African client state, Rwanda, whose destabilization of neighboring Congo has contributed to the deaths of six million people over the past 16 years. A United Nations panel charged that Rwanda has been supporting a Tutsi tribal rebel group in Congo. Rwanda and another U.S. puppet regime, Uganda, have profited enormously from stealing the mineral resources of eastern Congo, in collaboration with U.S. and European mining companies. At the end of last year, 1.7 million Congolese remained homeless, largely because of Rwanda’s continued interference in Congolese affairs.
Bowing ever so slightly to world opinion, Washington announced that it would cut military assistance to Rwanda. As it turns out, the only money the U.S. is withholding is for an academy for Rwandan non-commissioned officers – a measly $200,000 out of a total Rwandan aid package of $528 million. The gesture is an insult to the millions of Congolese who have been killed or displaced by the U.S. and its Rwandan and Ugandan mercenaries.
The United Nations Refugee Agency reports that the number of Somalis forced to leave their country has reached the one million mark. At root, this is also an American crime against humanity. Somalia ranks behind only Afghanistan, Iraq and Colombia in its number of displaced persons. And, like the other three countries, Somalia’s humanitarian crisis is the result of Washington’s imperial military strategies.
The U.S. dragged Somalia into hell in December of 2006, when it funded and armed an Ethiopia invasion of the country. Tens of thousands were killed outright, and Somalia was robbed of a chance to build peace under a moderately Islamist government. In the capital city, Mogadishu, alone, nearly two million people were forced from their homes, and soon the United Nations declared Somalia “the worst humanitarian crisis in Africa.”
In the ensuing five years, the United States methodically attempted to starve out the Somali Shabaab resistance forces, so that when the worst drought in 60 years struck the region, last year, mass deaths were inevitable. By now, the U.S. had ensnared most of Somalia’s neighbors in its war – Kenya, Ethiopia, and Djibouti, a whole region in flames – in order to facilitate an expansion of U.S. military influence in the region.
Far from playing a humanitarian role in Africa, the United States is the main vector of mass carnage and misery, from Somalia to Libya to Congo and so many points in between. American policy in Africa is to create chaos, and then to present itself as the cure. Economically, the U.S. offers nothing to Africa, except rigged deals and endless debt. Years ago, China eclipsed the U.S. as a trading partner, and now offers Africa more and better quality foreign aid than the Americans. Unable to compete on a level laying field, Washington exports death to Africa, in the form of weapons systems and Green Berets. There is nothing good that the United States can do for Africa, but leave.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
July 25, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Timeless or most popular | Africa, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Somalia, Uganda, United States |
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The United States wants to drag Africa into its drug wars – on top of Washington’s War on Terror. Since drugs always follow American “anti-narcotics” activity in the world, the inevitable result will be an explosion of drug networks in targeted African countries. “Liberia and Ghana will soon emerge as hubs of the African drug trade – just as happened in Colombia and elsewhere in Latin America.”
When a high U.S. government official says Africa is “the new frontier,” it’s time for everyone that cares about the continent to watch out, because something really dangerous is afoot. A top guy in the D.E.A. recently described Africa as the “new frontier” where Washington hopes to embed commando-style teams of specially vetted police for an American-run war on drugs, similar to U.S. operations in El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama, and the Dominican Republic. And we all know how those U.S. so-called anti-drug operations turned out. We should add to the list Colombia and Afghanistan, the world capitals of cocaine and heroin, respectively.
According to mythology, everything King Midas touched turned to gold. It appears the United States has the Narcotics Touch; everything the Americans touch turns to dope. American allies in the developing world quickly become narco-states.
The pattern has not changed in 60 years, since the Italian and French mafias were rewarded with international drug franchises in return for their assistance against socialists and communists. Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle became the center of the global heroin trade during the Vietnam War – a project of the CIA. When the U.S. shifted its focus to suppressing leftist movements in Latin America, cocaine became the region’s biggest export. The United States has never waged war against drugs – quite the opposite. Washington rewards its political friends with drug franchises and monopolies, in return for service to American corporate interests. That’s why most of America’s friends in the developing world are criminal regimes.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is most proud of its work in Honduras, where a U.S.-backed coup overthrew a mildly leftist government during President Obama’s first year in office. The Americans now roam the country like they own it, in joint operations with the same soldiers and national police that continue to kill and brutalize peasant, student and worker organizations. The joint drug operations, which have succeeded in killing at least four innocent Mosquito Indians, including two pregnant women, will undoubtedly result in a march larger drug trade under the tight control of the military, police and wealthy landowners allied with the Americans. That’s how the American Narco Touch works. The endless phony War on Drugs is a tool of U.S. policy, designed to subvert foreign governments and societies. The drug trade never gets smaller.
Now it’s Africa’s turn. Washington has its eyes on Liberia and Ghana, where it plans to train elite police units after first “vetting” their personnel – a euphemism for making sure that the commandos are willing to act as de facto U.S. operatives. You can be sure that Liberia and Ghana will soon emerge as hubs of the African drug trade – just as happened in Colombia and elsewhere in Latin America. With Washington’s “vetted” operatives in charge of the African drug networks, the U.S. will vastly increase its ability to buy influence among the greedy classes all across the continent, both in and out of uniform. Just as in Colombia and Honduras and Panama and Guatemala, the Drug Wars become indistinguishable from the War on Terror, which used to be called the War on Communism. It’s really a war against the poor.
Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
- Our Perverse War on Drugs (alethonews.wordpress.com)
July 25, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Africa, Colombia, Drug Enforcement Administration, Honduras, Latin America, United States, War on Drugs |
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The situation in Mali, the country most closely located to the “zone of stability and security” purportedly created by NATO in Libya, is far from being stable or secure. The international news agencies and world press are reporting horror stories about the rule of terror, established by the jihadist movements in the north-east of this country, previously dominated by the local Tuaregs.
There are two interesting conclusions that the world’s politicians and experts draw from the developments in Mali. First, it is recognized that destabilization of Mali was one of the results of the military intervention of NATO in Libya (the Tuaregs, who in fact unleashed the military action, were armed by weapons from colonel Qaddafi’s ransacked arsenals). Second, the proposed solution to the crisis, heavily lobbied by France, is… another military intervention, this time in Mali. Obviously, the “zone of stability and security” has for some reason got a unique ability to spawn new conflicts.
The only “political heavyweight” on the world stage who predicted undesirable developments in Mali in the immediate aftermath of the Libyan coup was the Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. In April this year, during a visit to Azerbaijan, he sketched the negative scenario which unfortunately proved to be true: “The Libyan story is far from over. We see how the statehood of Mali is being destroyed under our very eyes. What is the reason for that? Besides the unending skirmishes in Libya itself, instability is flowing into neighboring states via arms smuggling, infiltration of fighters. What we see in Mali is just the result of these processes.”
What is indeed astounding is the fact that the NATO countries continue to trumpet their operation in Libya as a great success. State secretary Hillary Clinton, for example, praised the victory of “secular liberals” at recently held elections in Libya (which would indeed be great, if “secularists” had not had a discussion on an innocent point – whether sharia should be the main law of the country or, even better, the only law). In her comments, Mrs. Clinton carefully avoids making a link between the destruction of Qaddafi’s regime and the sudden replenishment of the arsenals of AQMI (the French abbreviation for Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb) and Ansar Dine, the two most violent groups of the jihadist movement in Northern Africa, which ultimately took control of north-eastern Mali.
“During Qaddafi’s rule, we did not know about these groups,” says from Mali’s capital Bamako Caroline Tuina-Ouanre, a journalist from neighboring Burkina Fasso, specializing on covering the developments in Sahel, a region in Africa where both Mali and Burkina Fasso belong. “Obviously, they did not get their arms from nowhere. They got them profiting from the collapse of the Libyan regime, which in itself was a result of the Western intervention. It made AQMI much stronger, this is a proven fact, long reported by the French-language press of Africa, from Morocco to Burkina.”
France, the country that actually engineered the Western intervention in Libya, is now the primary supporter of an intervention in Mali. However, the French president Francois Hollande said that “for obvious reasons” (meaning, obviously, the history of French colonialism in the region) France was unwilling to intervene on its own. “The intervention should take place in the framework of the African Union and under the auspices of the United Nations.” Hollande said.
The irony of the situation is that the African Union was resolutely opposed to the Western intervention in Libya in 2011, saying that such an intervention would undermine regional security. The South African leader Jacob Zuma, a key figure in the AU, and the Algerian president Abdelaziz Buteflica were among the most vocal opponents of the physical destruction of colonel Qaddafi. And now France wants Buteflica’s Algeria to spearhead the eventual intervention in Mali. In 2011, both U.S. and the EU ignored the African Union’s protests, trumpeting the removal of Qaddafi as a 100 percent positive development, a “victory for democracy.” So, now France is asking the African Union to make up for its misdeeds in the area – misdeeds that the AU never approved.
July 19, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | Africa, African Union, François Hollande, France, Jacob Zuma, Libya, Mali, NATO |
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“Imperialist powers have always labeled as terrorists the people who fight for their right. Irishmen were terrorists until they signed an agreement. Abbas was a terrorist. Now, he is a friend,” Mohamed Hassan, former Ethiopian diplomat in Washington, Beijing and Brussels.
“Israel sees Islam as the greatest danger to its dominance over the Middle East, itself built on cruelty, violation and oppression,” – Professor Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi (Haifa University).
The Ethiopian Muslim majority is sick of the US-Israel backed Meles Zenawi crime dynasty and want regime change. Tens of thousands of Muslims and Christians are demonstrating in various cities especially the country’s capital Addis Ababa against the Meles Zenawi regime. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church’s Holy Synod in exile, Archbishop Abune Melketsekik, and other church leaders have called on the people of Ethiopia to boycott all businesses that are affiliated with dictator Meles Zenawi’s ruling party, TPLF.
Meles Zenawi, the chairman of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) militant group, is half Eritrean and naturalized Yemeni. He maintains very close relations with both Tel Aviv and Washington. Meles’ legal adviser, Fasil Nahom is half Eritrean and half Jewish.
Meles Zenawi as country’s prime minister visited the Zionist entity in 2004 where he was praised a “friend of Israel” by then Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon. There is a 125,000-strong Ethiopian Jewish community in Israel whose members are routinely targeted by the racist Jewish majority.
The Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia and several other groups have asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate Meles Zenawi for the 2003 genocide of the Anuak people of the Gambella region in Ethiopia. However, ICC Prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo has refused to take an action in this regard.
The Zionist entity’s collaboration with anti-Muslim Ethiopian regimes goes back to King Haile Selassie rule. Selassie’s 3,100-strong ‘Emergency Police’ was trained and supplied with arms by the Israeli armed forces and Mossad. It was in 1971 when Gen. Haim Bar-Lev visited Ethiopia – two strategic islands (Halep and Fatima) were opened for the Israeli Navy. Late Israeli Gen. Matti Peled had admitted that it was Israeli protection which saved the King from three assassination attempts. When Haile Selassie was overthrown by a Marxist coup lead by Mengistu in 1974 – the Zionist regime changed its loyalties to continue their genocide of Muslims in both Ethiopia and Eritrea. Tel Aviv increased its military and diplomatic links with the new Marxist-Leninist regime. The Israeli cooperation has continued under the Ethiopian prime minister Meles, a horrific human rights abuser, in power since the fall of Marxist-Leninist dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam.
Muslim presence in Abyssinia (currently Ethiopia) goes back to the early 7th century when its powerful Orthodox Christian King Ashama (Nejash in Arabic) converted to Islam during the Prophet Muhammad’s (pbuh) life time (in 616 CE).
Thomas C. Mountain, an independent journalist living in Eriterea, recently wrote an article, entitled ’Islam Ignites in Muslim Majority Ethiopia ‘ exposing Washington’s strategy to maintain dictatorships in the African continent.
While Ethiopia is historically portrayed as a Christian country, in reality, most Ethiopians are of the Islamic faith. Starting with the Oromo people, who make up at least half or more of the Ethiopian population, 40 million or more, and are almost entirely Muslim; and then adding the Afars and Somali people of the Ogaden, it becomes indisputable that Ethiopia is a majority Muslim country.
So when for the first time in modern Ethiopian history the leadership of the Islamic community called for the overthrow of the government, and are joined in this call by the leadership of the Ethiopian Christian Orthodox Church, it means only one thing, that the end of the hated USA backed Meles Zenawi regime is finally in sight.
With insurgencies growing in size and strength throughout Ethiopia, in the east, south, west and north; soaring inflation and economic hardships; and now the unprecedented politicization of the leadership of the Muslim community, the consensus of those in the know in the Horn of Africa is that the foreign funded rule of Meles Zenawi may last a year, a year and a half at best, possibly even less.
And once Meles is driven from power and his military either destroyed or having joined the uprising, who will the USA have left to enforce Pax Americana in the strategically critical Horn of Africa?
July 5, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Addis Ababa, Africa, Ethiopia, Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, Meles Zenawi, Mengistu Haile Mariam, United States |
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Africa is often said to be overpopulated. But it is quite easy to debunk this myth. The continent is a spacious, rich and arable landmass that can support its population well into the foreseeable future.
It should be obvious in this discussion that our goal is definitely not to contribute to the ‘politically correct’ rhetoric bandied about incessantly which calls for some ‘decrease’ in African population because we do not believe that Africa, in the first instance, is overpopulated. We must now examine this issue. The population argument is usually advanced on a number of fronts. First, there is a ‘theory’ that the given landmass which presently defines Africa and its various so-called nation-states cannot sustain the existing populations, but, more critically, the ‘projected populations’ in years to come. We shall examine the degree to which this ‘theory’ is able to stand up to serious scientific scrutiny first by comparing Africa’s landmass vis-à-vis its population and those of some of the countries of the World.
Africa’s population is currently 1 billion (all the statistics here on countries’ population, land mass and the like are derived from The World Bank, World Development Report 2011 and United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2011) covering an incredibly vast landmass (11,668,599 sq miles). Ethiopia’s landmass is 471,775 sq miles, five times the size of Britain’s 94,226 sq miles. Yet Britain’s population of 62 million is three-quarters that of Ethiopia’s at 83 million. As for Somalia, it is 2.6 times the size of Britain but has a population of only 9 million. Sudan and South Sudan provide an even more fascinating comparison. Whilst both countries are 10 times the size of Britain, they support a population of 45 million – about 70 per cent the size of Britain. In fact the Sudans have a landmass equal to that of India which is populated by 1.22 billion people i.e. more than the population of all of Africa! Britain is one-tenth the size of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) which has a landmass of 905,562 sq miles, similar to the Sudans and India. In other words, the DRC is about ten times the size of Britain but with a population of 71 million, just nine million more than the population of the latter.
Second, let us examine similarly sized countries. France has a landmass of 211,206 sq miles close to Somalia’s. However, France’s population of 65 million is about seven times the population of Somalia. Similarly, Botswana is slightly larger than France at 254,968 sq miles but with a population of 2 million, a minuscule proportion of France’s. Uganda’s landmass at 91,135 sq miles is comparable to Britain’s, yet with a population of only 33 million. Similarly, Ghana’s landmass of 92,099 sq miles makes it approximately equal to the size of Britain. Ghana is however populated by only 25 million people, far less than one-half Britain’s population.
Southern World to Southern World comparisons can also prove useful in exposing the fallacy of either Africa’s ‘large population’ or ‘potential explosive population’. Iran’s size of 636,292 sq miles is about the same as Sudan and South Sudan combined. Yet, its population, unlike the Sudans’ 45 million, is at least one and one-half times as large at 75 million. Pakistan’s landmass of 310,402 sq miles is just about Namibia’s 333,702 but Pakistan’s population is 174 million while Namibia’s is 2 million. Even though Bangladesh’s 55,598 sq mile-landmass makes it roughly one-eighth the size of Angola (481,350 sq miles) as well as that of South Africa’s (471, 442 sq miles), Bangladesh’s population at 159 million outstrips Angola’s 13 million and South Africa’s 50 million. If we were to return to our earlier comparisons, Angola and South Africa are about 4-5 times the size of Britain but with one-fifth and four-fifths respectively of the latter’s population.
Finally, we should turn to the question of resource, its availability or lack of it, and therefore its ability or inability to support the African population – another component of Africa’s ‘over-population’ fallacy. Well over 50 per cent of Uganda’s arable land, some of the richest in Africa, remains uncultivated. Were Uganda to expand its current food production significantly, not only would it be completely self-sufficient, but it would be able to feed all the countries contiguous to its territory without difficulty. It must be stressed here that Uganda does not need any GM food technology to acquire this capability. Indeed no African country requires any shred of GM technology to acquire food sufficiency and security. None, whatsoever.
STATISTICS OF TRANSFORMATION
The overall statistics of the African situation is even more revealing as with regards to the continent’s long-term possibilities. Just about a quarter of the potential arable land of Africa is being cultivated presently.[1] Even here, an increasingly high proportion of the cultivated area is assigned to so-called cash-crops (cocoa, coffee, tea, groundnut, sisal, floral cultivation, etc.) for exports at a time when there has been a virtual collapse, across the board, of the price of these crops in international commodity markets. In the past 30 years, the average real price of these African products abroad has been about 20 per cent less than their worth during the 1960s-70s period which was soon after the ‘restoration of independence’. As for the remaining 75 per cent of Africa’s uncultivated land, this represents 66 per cent of the entire world’s potential.[2] The world is aware of the array of strategic minerals such as cobalt, copper, diamonds, gold, industrial diamonds, iron ore, manganese, phosphates, titanium, uranium, and of course petroleum oil found in virtually all regions across the continent.
Despite the ravages of history of foreign conquest and occupation and the virulence of locally-brewed tyranny of genocidal regimes and fellow-travellers, Africa remains one of the world’s most wealthy and potentially one of the world’s wealthiest continents. What is not always or simultaneously associated with the wealth profiles of Africa is that it has vast acreage of rich farmlands with capacity to optimally support the food needs of generations of African peoples indefinitely. In addition, the famous fish industry in Senegal, Angola, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana for instance, Botswana’s rich cattle farms, West Africa’s yam and plantain belts extending from southern Cameroon to the Casamance province of Senegal, the continent’s rich rice production fields, etc., etc., all highlight the potential Africa has for fully providing for all its food needs. Again, without a shred of GM technology needed or emplaced. Thus, what the current African socio-economic situation shows is extraordinarily reassuring, provided the acreage devoted to cultivation is expanded and expressly targeted to address Africa’s own internal consumption needs. Land use directed at agriculture for food output, as opposed to the calamitous waste of cash-crop production for export or the parcelling away of land up and down the continent (the ‘land grab’ that is becoming a designer label all over the place!) must become the focus of agricultural policy in the new Africa.
It is an inexplicable and inexcusable tragedy that any African child, woman, or man could go without food in the light of the staggering endowment of resources in Africa. Africa constitutes a spacious, rich and arable landmass that can support its population, which is still one of the world’s least densely populated and distributed, into the indefinite future. There is only one condition, though, for the realisation of this goal – Africa must utilise these immense resources for the benefit of its own peoples within newly negotiated, radically decentralised socio-political dispensations which must abandon the current murderous ‘nation-states’. We now no longer require any reminders that the primary existence of these states is to destroy or disable as many enterprisingly resourceful and resource-based constituent peoples, nations and publics within the polity that are placed in their genocidal march and sights.
It is abundantly clear that the factors which have contributed to determining the very poor quality of life of Africa’s population presently have to do with the non-use, partial use, or the gross misuse of the continent’s resources year in, year out. This is thanks to an asphyxiating ‘nation-state’ whose strategic resources are used largely to support the Western World and others and an overseer-grouping of local forces which exists solely to police the dire straits of existence that is the lot of the average African. As a result, the broad sectors of African peoples are yet to be placed and involved, centrally, in the entire process of societal reconstruction and transformation. Surely, an urgently restructured, culturally supportive political framework that enhances the quality of life of Africans is really the pressing subject of focus for Africa.
ENDNOTES
1. ‘Africa’s Development Disaster’, Comment, London: Catholic Institute for International Affairs, 1985:19.
2. ibid
* Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is the author of Readings from Reading: Essays on African Politics, Genocide, Literature (Dakar and Reading: African Renaissance, 2011). This article was a discussion paper presented at a youth weekend-school, Stratford, London, 16 June 2012.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.
June 21, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Timeless or most popular | Africa, Angola, South Africa, Uganda |
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According to the Army Times newspaper, the United States will soon deploy a brigade of about 3,000 troops – “and likely more” – for duty “across the continent” of Africa. The “pilot program”has all the markings of a permanent, roving presence, joining the 1,200 U.S. soldiers stationed in Djibouti and the 100-plus Special Forces dispatched to Central Africa by President Obama, last October.
As always and everywhere, the U.S. is looking for bases to occupy – although the U.S. military command in Africa doesn’t call them bases. Rather, “as part of a ‘regionally’ aligned force concept,’ soldiers will live and work among Africans in safe communities approved by the U.S. government,” said AFRICOM’s Maj. Gen. David Hogg.
The First Black U.S. President, who in 2009 lectured Africans that “corruption” and “poor governance,” rather than neocolonialism, were the continent’s biggest problems, has made the U.S. military the primary interlocutor with African states. Functions that were once the purview of the U.S. State Department, such as distribution of economic aid and medical assistance, are now part of AFRICOM’s vast portfolio. In Africa, more than anyplace in the world, U.S. foreign policy wears a uniform – which should leave little doubt as to Washington’s objectives in the region: Africa is to be dominated by military means. Obama’s “good governance” smokescreen for U.S. neocolonialism is embedded in AFRICOM’s stated mission: “to deter and defeat transnational threats and to provide a security environment conducive to good governance and development.” Translation: to bring the so-called war on terror to every corner of the continent and ensure that U.S. corporate interests get favorable treatment from African governments.
AFRICOM’s array of alliances and agreements with African militaries already embraces virtually every nation on the continent except Eritrea and Zimbabwe. All but a handful of Black African states routinely take part in military maneuvers staged by Americans, utilizing U.S. command-and-control equipment and practices. The new, roving U.S. brigade will further institutionalize U.S. ties with the African officer class, part of AFRICOM’s mission to forge deep “soldier-to-soldier” relationships: general-to-general, colonel-to-colonel, and so forth down the line. The proposed network of “safe communities” to accommodate the highly mobile U.S. brigade is a euphemism for joint bases and the most intense U.S. fraternization with local African militaries. Regime change will never be farther away than a drink at the officers club.
According to the Army Times article, the composition of the new brigade, in terms of military skills, is not yet known. However, the brigade is conceived as part of the “new readiness model,” which “affords Army units more time to learn regional cultures and languages and train for specific threats and missions.” This sounds like special ops units – Rangers and Special Forces – which have been vastly expanded under President Obama (and are quite capable of carrying out regime-change operations on their own or in close coordination with their local counterparts).
In most cases, coups will be unnecessary. Regional African “trade” blocs like ECOWAS, the 16-member Economic Community of West African States, and IGAD, the six-nation Intergovernmental Authority on Development, in East Africa, have provided African cover for U.S. and French military/political designs in the Ivory Coast and Somalia, respectively. These blocs will doubtless become even more useful and compliant, as U.S. military commanders and their African counterparts get cozier in those “safe communities.”
Americans, no matter how bloody their hands, have always liked to think of themselves as “innocents abroad.” “As far as our mission goes, it’s uncharted territory,” said AFRICOM’s Gen. Hogg. Not really. The Americans are following a European chart in Africa that goes back centuries, and their own long experience in the serial rape of Latin America, where the close fraternization of U.S. and Latin American militaries in recent decades smothered the region in juntas, dirty wars, torture-based states, and outright genocide.
The U.S. and its African allies perpetrated of the worst genocide since World War Two: the death of six million in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Uganda, which acts as a mercenary for the U.S. in Africa, is complicit in mega-death in Congo and Somalia. As Milton Allimadi, publisher of Black Star News, reported: “In 2005 The International Court of Justice (ICJ) found Uganda liable for the Congo crimes. The court awarded Congo $10 billion in reparations. Uganda’s army plundered Congo’s wealth and committed: mass rapes of both women and men; disemboweled pregnant women; burned people inside their homes alive; and, massacred innocents.”
Naturally, as a henchman of the United States, Uganda has not paid the $10 billion it owes Congo. Ugandan leader Yoweria Museveni, who became Ronald Reagan’s favorite African after seizing power in 1986 with a guerilla army packed with child soldiers, and who for decades waged genocidal war against the Acholi people of his country, now plays host to the Special Forces continent sent by President Obama, ostensibly to fight the child soldier-abusing Joseph Kony and his nearly nonexistent Lord’s Resistance Army.
Rwanda, the Pentagon’s other hit man on the continent, has been cited by a United Nations report as bearing responsibility for some of the millions slaughtered in Congo, as part of its ongoing rape and plunder of its neighbor.
Gen. Hogg says AFRICOM’s mission is to combat famine and disease. Yet, the AFRICOM-assisted Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in late 2006 led to “the worst humanitarian crisis in Africa – worse than Darfur,” according to United Nations observers. The 2007 humanitarian crisis and the escalating U.S.-directed war against Somalia made the 2010 famine all but inevitable.
Ugandan soldiers, nominally working for the African Union but in the pay of the Pentagon, kept watch over western interests in the starving country, as did the 1,200 soldiers stationed at the U.S. base in neighboring Djibouti – a permanent presence, along with the French garrison.
There’s nothing “uncharted” or mysterious about AFRICOM’s mission. The introduction of the 3,000-strong mobile brigade and a network of supporting bases prepares the way for the arrival of much larger U.S. and NATO forces – the recolonization of Africa. Gen. Hogg swears up and down there are no such plans. “For all the challenges that happen and sprout up across Africa, it really comes down to, it has to be an African solution,” he said.
That’s exactly the same thing they said in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya.
Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
- Libya, Africa and Africom (alethonews.wordpress.com)
June 14, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | Africa, AFRICOM, Army Times, David Hogg, Obama, United States, United States Africa Command, United States Armed Forces |
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This scathing indictment tracks the predatory career of Bill Gates and paints his high-profile philanthropy as capitalist adventurism that further impoverishes Africa.
WHO IS THE MAN?
Bill Gates is a walking talking Bill Gates commercial. It matters not that he retired from Microsoft. The Bill Gates image is still very serious business. Arguably his most famous quote is “Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.” He dresses the part: very casual with the preppy uniform of khakis and blue. His prepiness and nerdiness follow from his prep school background. But not too many nerds drop out of college, as Gates did. College is the place to find nerds; that’s where nerds get their revenge. Gates constructed the Microsoft company environment like a college campus. It’s part of the myth of that gentle, coed, carefree, nurturing, professorial and now the giving, philanthropist Bill Gates. It’s all very disarming.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) leads the push to bring nutrition and health to Africa. But this move requires some scrutiny and a determination as to whether this is another image builder or worse: an attack by a modern day missionary on another unsuspecting indigenous population. Yes, some Africans are an indigenous population too.
Gates’ retirement [1] from Microsoft allows him time to focus more intently on his image, his sales pitch and Africa. By contrast, the ‘Red’ campaign of Gap, Apple and a few other retailers, requires you buy the product to contribute to fighting AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in Africa. The emphasis is always on buying and selling, not on the disease. So, if you buy a pair of Gap jeans with the red label, a portion of that money goes to the fund. The project, founded by U2’s Bono, is intended to capitalize on what we do anyway – buy stuff. Generally, no one argues against helping Africa, right? But with all the riches these corporations and individuals earn, why do we still have to buy something before they give something? Much of these earnings were as a result of raw materials sourced in Africa: even its music. Unlike Red, Gates requires no purchase from Microsoft, at least not directly. But we can’t separate Gates from Microsoft and its products. Moreover, Microsoft’s operating system is still the most popular, and for good reason, so we don’t have as much choice as we think. We are locked into buying MS DOS. It’s like English in the business world: the official language. Bill Gates knows this. He ‘engineered’ it.
In Africa, there is no need to buy raw material. You simply dig it up, add value, and sell it. This was once done to its indigenous inhabitants. As Arundhati Roy assessed foundations,
“Their enthralling history, which has faded from contemporary memory, began in the US in the early 20th century when, kitted out legally in the form of endowed foundations, corporate philanthropy began to replace missionary activity as Capitalism’s (and Imperialism’s) road opening and systems maintenance patrol.” [2]
Of note, Gap, like Apple, has been under scrutiny for its use of sweatshop labour. However, it has been reported that the clothing used in Gap’s Red promotion is now made in Lesotho (Africa) and not the cheaper China. Gates seems to want to distance his image from the carnage of capital greed by insightfully focusing on software. Perhaps his reasoning was that he would not be responsible for the slave-like exploitation of mostly women and sometimes children, who build hardware for Apple and others in China, or those children digging for gold and coltan in central Africa. The latter two are essential metals used in circuit boards for hardware. This is misguided. Neither a focus on software nor resignation from his baby, Microsoft, could cover the trail. Like banks and insurance companies that financed the flow of human cargo from Africa and claim they did nothing wrong, the builder of operating system software that drives the machines that use our exploited resources and now track our movements and speeches of dissent should not be allowed to claim innocence.
Bill Gates should not be allowed to say he only builds operating systems. In a racist criminal justice system, the legislators who passed the laws, the police who make the arrest, the prosecutors who make the charges stick and even the defense attorneys who seem not to care, need to acknowledge culpability in a system out of control. All actors mentioned purport to do good, as Bill Gates now promises. They all claim to fight evil: crime on one hand, starvation and disease on the other.
Africa does not need this kind of charity. It needs equality in trade and the exchange of leading technology. Instead, Gates, the world’s foremost technologist, brings experts on seeds and vaccines.
Contrary to popular belief, Bill Gates never invented anything. The real invention is the public belief in Bill Gates as the self-made mogul. He started with a ‘gift’ from IBM of the DOS platform. For that platform he adapted the MS-DOS system that operates all personal computers (PCs). Even the term personal computer really means operated by Microsoft DOS. This is so even if your ‘personal’ computer happens to be an Apple or using another operating system like Linux. Unless it’s Microsoft, it is not personal. To be a personal computer, a PC, it has to have a Microsoft DOS operating system. It’s not only the most widely used system, its personal.
It’s important to understand how these systems work before we look at what he is doing in Africa. Of course, Bill Gates is not alone. It’s a scorched earth policy, from the business culture that dominates the US landscape. It’s like the use of napalm and Agent Orange in Vietnam, when the intent was mass defoliation of all flora, including food crops, Microsoft used all kinds of tactics, some unlawful, to grab its market share at the expense of any other competitor irrespective of any benefit to the consumer. In Vietnam, Agent Orange led to deforestation; the loss of crops led to losses in wildlife and livestock and an environmental disaster. Eventually, a literally scorched earth would result and starvation, death; victory would follow. Naturally, if you destroyed everything, survivors would need you to rebuild. This is the plan of an empire.
COMING TO A COURTROOM NEAR YOU, THE WAR FOR THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION
Gates’ victories were not a war of nerds but one of lawyers. Gates in a 1994 Playboy [3] interview explained,
“Our restricting IBM’s ability to compete with us in licensing MS-DOS to other computer makers was the key point of the negotiation. We wanted to make sure only we could license it. We did the deal with them at a fairly low price, hoping that would help popularize it. Then we could make our move because we insisted that all other business stay with us. We knew that good IBM products are usually cloned, so it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that eventually we could license DOS to others. We knew that if we were ever going to make a lot of money on DOS it was going to come from the compatible guys, not from IBM. They paid us a fixed fee for DOS. We didn’t get a royalty, even though we did make some money on the deal. Other people paid a royalty. So it was always advantageous to us, the market grew and other hardware guys were able to sell units.”
Part of this revelation is the importance of hardware ‘guys’ to the operation. It is not a separate exercise. What he neglected to explain was the enormous amount of litigation that accompanied and solidified this position and the almost continuous war that has followed this policy.
The Federal Trade Commission launched an investigation into Microsoft’s antitrust violations, only to seemingly lose steam and give up. Antitrust claims are simply claims that one company is attempting to kill off the competition. The Department of Justice, no less, then took up the fight and eventually settled for several hundred million dollars in fines. All during this time there were numerous lawsuits from wronged developers to burned competitors and even employees. This was some potent napalm. In Vizcaino v. Microsoft, 97 F.3d 1187 (9th Cir.1996), the court ruled against Microsoft and ordered it to pay benefits to workers who were denied benefits on account of their incorrect classification as independent contractors as opposed to employees. Welcome to our world.
i4i, of all the names, a software developer, filed a patent infringement suit and won against Microsoft. Microsoft refused to pay. Meanwhile, based on the stolen patents, Microsoft developed a replacement. Microsoft appealed to the highest court in the land. The United States Supreme Court ruled against Microsoft and ordered it pay the developer. Uniloc, Alcatel, and The Commonwealth of Massachusetts are just some of winners against Microsoft and its intent on domination. But they are still too few. Meanwhile, numerous claims have been buried under the costs of litigation and never came to light. I could go on forever listing claims against Microsoft for patent and business infringement, but you can use its search engine to find more. Of note the European Union (EU) fined Microsoft $1.4 billion for its anti-competitive practices. But these fines amounted to slaps on the wrist, as Microsoft continues in its scorched earth policy and more suits are being filed as well as patents being bought as we write.
In a practice known as defensive patenting [4], large companies like Microsoft are buying-up existing patents and seeking new ones to use as a basis to defend or attack in the event of war against their competitors. These patents serve no other useful purpose. The design is rarely manufactured. These patents, some ancient, are bought or brought with the idea that something in their intended use might resemble that of a new patent or one in the future and therefore form a basis to make a claim that it is stolen from Microsoft. If you develop a computer related patent, it is very likely that Microsoft owns one just like it, or partially like it, and can mount an attack against you based on that patent.
COMING TO AFRICA IN A TEST TUBE
It is with this background to his rise in wealth that Bill Gates launched the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, with its focus on Africa. Like a good missionary, he does not come empty-handed. He has brought experts and seeds. It’s worth noting that the man Gates hired to help oversee his Africa sojourn is former Monsanto Vice President, Robert Horsch. Gates has invested heavily in Monsanto [5]. It would be an irony, except it is so serious that Monsanto was the company that developed Agent Orange. The effect of that deadly chemical is still affecting Vietnamese people and American soldiers forty years later. It is the progeny of that science that led to Roundup [6], Monsanto’s world-renowned weed killer and killer of several other things. Horsch was a leading figure in developing Monsanto’s genetically modified seeds that were resistant to its own herbicide and pesticides and are now earning Monsanto billions in royalties. They have patented these seeds, which can cross pollinate and colonize existing seed and farms. In America’s Midwest, farmers find their fields filled with a corn they did not plant. […]
We know what happened in Vietnam. The people resisted imperialism and drove the French, first, and then the full might of the US military out of their country. So it is in this context that you must view Gates’ approach to spreading his software and now his seed money in Africa. Like Monsanto’s plan to use genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and pesticides to become the dominant if not the sole producer of seed and food, Gates routinely violated antitrust and patent and other laws to achieve the goal of destroying all weeds (all rival software). His new hire, Horsch, will serve as senior program officer and will apply the GMO technology toward improving crop yields in regions including sub-Saharan Africa, where the foundation recently launched a major drive in collaboration with the Rockefeller Foundation.
Equally misguided is the Foundation’s approach to disease. Malaria and HIV appear to be its focus in the development of vaccines. A cursory look at the history of vaccines will reveal its inherent volatility and high rates of failure. Many of these health issues are really wealth issues. By wealth I mean the means to eat a balanced diet. I maintain that Africa’s problem is one of poverty: its inability to provide regular balanced meals to all of its people. Its greatest epidemic is poverty. Find a vaccine for that. How is it that the near richest man, and the smartest nerd, on the planet cannot see the need for an infrastructure that would lead to adequate supplies of food and water? Instead, he focuses on experimenting with dangerous chemicals and more dangerous genes, purportedly to increase yield.
Out of the other side of his mouth he’s decreasing population. F. William Engdahl quotes Gates’ 2010 TED speech where Gates declares, “First we got population. The world today has 6.8 billion people. That’s headed up to about 9 billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent” [7]. Engdahl asserts that studies show that the chemicals used in the plan reflect reduction birth rates and that the Rockefeller Foundation has been involved with eugenics for some time. Its partnership with Gates and AGRA [8] is precisely for that stated purpose.
Gates sees the need, but the way he wants to fill it is in the mistaken belief that GMOs will provide the high yields to feed Africa and in the meantime he would vaccinate against diseases. Simultaneously, corporations like Monsanto and investors like Gates would reap billions in royalties from the use of its seed. The same GMOs banned by the European Union are acceptable in Africa. The result would be a monoculture that would eliminate centuries of farm practices and seed diversity that date back before the Bible and was partially disrupted by that other foreign intervention: the slave trade. Moreover, the colonialism that followed wanted cocoa, coffee, and cotton. These are not products that find their ways onto the plates of Africans. Stolen human resources along with forced agriculture for the European market set the stage for the shortages we find today.
Jonas Salk, credited with developing the Polio vaccine, when asked who owned the patent, is said to have responded, “There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?” [9] Gates and Monsanto have succeeded where others have failed. If you agree that the seed requires light to grow, preferably sunlight, likewise GMO seed, requires Monsanto’s permission and conditions for use; therefore, they control seed. They are the sun. They may not have patented the sun, but they patented the next best thing: control of the rights to whom, and in what conditions, their seed will access the energy of sun in order to grow. Vandana Shiva [10] refers to Monsanto’s actions as the colonization of seed.
I am no defender of patents and copyright. It’s just another tool to consolidate creativity in the hands of a few. But that is another blog. These empires, like Microsoft and Monsanto, are built on patents: on ownership, including ownership of the means of production. They no longer need to own factories. They only need to own the rights to what the factories produce. Observers like F. William Engdahl have noted that vaccinated children who drink water contaminated by feces are no healthier than they were before the vaccine. Providing that these untested vaccines are safe. Instead of cleaning up the water and sewage systems, they seek to compromise them even more by the use of pesticides and fertilizer needed for their push in agriculture.
“Life is not fair; get used to it.” Bill gates
As if Gates and Monsanto are not sufficient adversaries, President Obama recently appointed a former Monsanto CEO as senior advisor to the Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Michael Taylor’s addition is in the context of the US governments plan Via AGRA (two words) to push its policies in Africa. Of course the FDA has refused to ban GMOs in the US and has refused to require foods be labeled, if containing GMOs. Gates is indeed visionary. He has singlehandedly determined the importance of food. It matters not that he could have asked any African child.
But this is a warning to the rest of us. The only other land and space available for full colonization is the Amazon rainforest. It won’t be around for long. But that is another blog. There is the Canadian Tundra and Mars, but first things first. Given the bad press and attention directed at the Amazon, Africa seemed the place with the most land lying seemingly unused. Governments have launched a campaign of terror to remove residents from lands they have occupied since before Columbus was conceived, let alone Microsoft. Though I do not hold Gates responsible for every peasant chased off land farmed for countless moons, I do blame him for adding to the hysteria of the land grab. His mere presence forces up the price of land. What one once farmed for free, soon one will not be able to farm for any money. But if you desire, there will be jobs on the new farm.
AN ALTERNATE CHEMICAL SOLUTION
Guyanese author Harry Narain wrote about high yield imported paddy rice in his collection of short stories, “Grass Roots People” [11], set in 1970s Guyana. The yield was so high that it bent the stalks lower to the ground than normal and ripened faster. The paddy was too heavy. Any rain would mean the end. It ripened so fast that there was not enough time to wait for the government loaned combines to get to his farm. Without money to hire a private combine, the rice crop would die in the field along with the farmer’s dreams of a pair of track shoes for his boy to play sports, earrings his little girl begged for, and a fridge for his wife. The yield was never so high again.
Despite and in spite of all the history and facts on Gates, there are still people who are going to say that Africa is in need and if Gates wants to contribute he should be allowed to do so. They will add that it’s people like this writer who have no money to contribute who are always trying to stop well-meaning people; and finally, Africa is on the rise as a result and here comes another no gooder, a crab, to pull the beneficiaries back down. It’s always the same arguments, on both sides. But facts are difficult to controvert. Denial is a sweet space to reside. No one comes to kick you out of there.
Under the cover of the foundation, Gates moved from paying little tax to paying no tax. That notwithstanding, there are a few things he can do for me. He must relinquish all his shares in Microsoft and donate half to Wangari Maathai’s Green Belt Movement. He must remove his two executives from AGRA’s board. He must distribute the rest of the shares among those families in China whose children jumped to their deaths from the Foxconn [12] factory dorm while employed in making things for us that included his friend Steve Jobs’, ‘I’ stuff. He must denounce child labour. He must lobby Microsoft to withhold software from companies who use slave-like and sweatshop labor for their products. He must divest from Monsanto. Oh! And endorse the Buffet Plan to pay more taxes for himself and Microsoft before he divests his shares and Buffet transfers all his shares to the BMGF. Even Buffet has said that 30 percent is not enough. I’ll stop there for now. I shouldn’t have to tell him everything. He should be thinking for his damn self.
On Buffet, the New York Times [13] recently reported Buffet’s increased stake in Wal-Mart and that it came just before the same paper published detailed allegations that Wal-Mart executives bribed retailers in Mexico to facilitate its expansion there. Was this mission Wal-Mart’s or Buffett’s or Berkshire Hathaway’s? In 2011, he gave $1.5 billion of his BerkshireHathaway [14] stock to the BMGF as part of a plan to transfer the majority his wealth to the foundation. This means little or no taxes.
Oh, Bill! When you talk to Buffet tell him that giving his wealth to your Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will not absolve him, either. Tell him he would not be able to hide behind Berkshire Hathaway, Inc., the hedge fund he presides over. Smaller investors pool resources in a hedge fund for larger and more lucrative investments. However, as its name suggest, the Hedge fund is simply a hedge, a fence, between the money and the exploitation. Capitalism has not yet found a way to increase earnings without exploiting free or near free labour [15]. Wal-Mart’s record on wages and union busting is notorious. [16] It does not matter how prestigious sounding the name of the high and growing hedge between money and poverty. What Africa needs, finally, Brother Bill, is for you to get us some agent orange from your friends at Monsanto. So we can take care of the hedges ourselves.
* Clairmont Chung is a lawyer, consultant, filmmaker and arts critic. His latest film is a documentary, ‘W.A.R. Stories: Walter Anthony Rodney’. He edited a book of the interviews done in making the film, which is due out in October 2012 from Monthly Review Press entitled, ‘Walter Rodney: A Promise of Revolution’. Chung tours with his film and maintains a small practice in New York and New Jersey. He is writing a book on the legal history of Africans in the ‘New’ World up until the Wars on Drugs and Terror.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.
END NOTES
[1] Gates retired as CEO in 2008. He has not sold his shares in the company and until that happens he has more than a nominal interest in Microsoft. The continued association with him and the brand is as strong as ever. When you see him, you don’t think foundation. You think Microsoft. His transition from Microsoft to the Foundation may seem as a sudden change to some. But if you understand Gates, and the really wealthy, nothing is sudden and rarely anything changes except the increase in wealth. It’s always about the sales plan which is to get it for free, or close, and sell high.
[2] Arundhati Roy, “Capitalism: A Ghost Story: (Rockefeller to Mandela, Vedanta to Anna Hazare…. How long can the cardinals of corporate gospel buy up our protests?)” Outlook India, March 26, 2012
[3] The Bill Gates Interview, 1994, Playboy reprinted on About.com
[4] Defensive patenting is not a practice limited to Microsoft. But they have been one of the most ardent collectors. The Rt. Hon. Lord Justice Jacob in a 2006, UK Court of Appeal, case, Aerotel v. Telco, likened defensive patenting to an arms race that has spread worldwide.
[5] Maureen O’Hagan and Kristi Heim of The Seattle Times, Gates Foundation ties with Monsanto Under Fire from Activists, lists the investment as $US27.6 million.Though a small fraction of the BMGF’s $33 Billion endowment, it’s part of a plan to eventually transfer close to $US40 billion to the BMGF.
[6] Roundup is a widely distributed weedicide and herbicide against which Monsanto has developed GMO seeds that would resist Roundup and grow while weeds and non-Monsanto seed die. They went further and developed seed that would not grow unless sprayed with roundup. No one knows to what extent these seeds are distributed but Africa is being primed.
[7] F. William Engdahl ‘Bill Gates talks about ‘vaccines to reduce population” March 4,2010 Geopolitics and Geonomics
[8] Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) describes itself as working on “integrated programs in seeds, soils, market access, policy and partnerships and innovative finance work to trigger comprehensive changes across the agricultural system” its Board includes two executives from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and two from the Rockefeller Foundation as well as an assortment of dignitaries from the continent. It has a reputed budget of over US$400 million and has been operational since 2009.
[9] Johnson, George (November 25, 1990). “Once Again, A Man With A Mission”. The New York Times. Retrieved August 5, 2011
[10] Vandana Shiva has equated the colonization of the seed with the colonization of the future. She does not mean future colonization. She means your future is being colonized now.
[11] Narain, Harry, Grass Roots People, “A letter to the Prime Minister” (Casa de las Américas, Cuba 1981)
[12] The UK Guardian reported employees jumping from their dorm windows to their deaths rather than continue under the conditions in the Foxconn factories. Foxconn assembled goods for Apple and other prominent US companies. The owners placed nets around the building and had employees sign no-suicide clauses that absolved the company from suits filed by family members if anyone managed to succeed in killing themselves.
[13] David Barstow, The New York Times, April 12, 2012, Vast Mexico Bribery Case Hushed Up by Wal-Mart After Top-Level Struggle
[14] The Christian Science Monitor, July 8, 2011, Warren Buffett gives $1.5B in stock to Gates Foundation. The report described the gift as a plan to transfer the majority of his wealth to the BMGF. Buffet serves as trustee on the Board of the BMGF. Gates serves on the Board of Berkshire Hathaway. A real love affair has developed between the two.
[15] To be fair, neither has socialism found a way around cheap labor. Socialist governments have been as confrontational with unions as have capitalist, corporate, dominant governments. However, The basic needs of citizens appear best met through a socialist approach, while a market approach drives-up the cost of everything after forcing consolidation.
[16] See Huffington Post-Chicago Wal-Mart’s Union-Busting, ‘Preference For Poverty’ Described In Reader Interview, Updated May 25, 2011.
May 27, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Economics, Timeless or most popular | Africa, Apple, Bill Gates, DOS, IBM, Microsoft, MS-DOS |
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An Ongoing Disaster
The scale of the ongoing tragedy visited on Libya by NATO and its allies is becoming horribly clearer with each passing day. Estimates of those killed so far vary, but 50,000 seems like a low estimate; indeed the British Ministry of Defence was boasting that the onslaught had killed 35,000 as early as last May. But this number is constantly growing. The destruction of the state’s forces by British, French and American blitzkrieg has left the country in a state of total anarchy – in the worst possible sense of the word. Having had nothing to unite them other than a temporary willingness to act as NATO’s foot soldiers, the former ‘rebels’ are now turning on each other. 147 were killed in in-fighting in Southern Libya in a single week earlier this year, and in recent weeks government buildings – including the Prime Ministerial compound – have come under fire by ‘rebels’ demanding cash payment for their services. $1.4billion has been paid out already – demonstrating once again that it was the forces of NATO colonialism, not Gaddafi, who were reliant on ‘mercenaries’- but payments were suspended last month due to widespread nepotism. Corruption is becoming endemic – a further $2.5billion in oil revenues that was supposed to have been transferred to the national treasury remains unaccounted for. Libyan resources are now being jointly plundered by the oil multinationals and a handful of chosen families from amongst the country’s new elites; a classic neo-colonial stitch-up. The use of these resources for giant infrastructure projects such as the Great Manmade River, and the massive raising of living standards over the past four decades (Libyan life expectancy rose from 51 to 77 since Gaddafi came to power in 1969) sadly looks to have already become a thing of the past.
But woe betide anyone who mentions that now. It was decided long ago that no supporters of Gaddafi would be allowed to stand in the upcoming elections, but recent changes have gone even further. Law 37, passed by the new NATO-imposed government last month, has created a new crime of ‘glorifying’ the former government or its leader – subject to a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. Would this include a passing comment that things were better under Gaddafi? The law is cleverly vague enough to be open to interpretation. It is a recipe for institutionalised political persecution.
Even more indicative of the contempt for the rule of law amongst the new government – a government, remember, which has yet to receive any semblance of popular mandate, and whose only power base remains the colonial armed forces – is Law 38. This law has now guaranteed immunity from prosecution for anyone who committed crimes aimed at “promoting or protecting the revolution”. Those responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Tawergha – such as Misrata’s self-proclaimed “brigade for the purging of black skins” – can continue their hunting down of that cities’ refugees in the full knowledge that they have the new ‘law’ on their side. Those responsible for the massacres in Sirte and elsewhere have nothing to fear. Those involved in the widespread torture of detainees can continue without repercussions – so long as it is aimed at “protecting the revolution” – i.e. maintaining NATO-TNC dictatorship.
This is the reality of the new Libya: civil war, squandered resources, and societal collapse, where voicing preference for the days when Libya was prosperous and at peace is a crime, but lynching and torture is not only permitted but encouraged.
Nor has the disaster remained a national one. Libya’s destabilisation has already spread to Mali, prompting a coup, and huge numbers of refugees – especially amongst Libya’s large black migrant population – have fled to neighbouring countries in a desperate attempt to escape both aerial destruction and lynch mob rampage, putting further pressure on resources elsewhere. Many Libyan fighters, their work done in Libya, have now been shipped by their imperial masters to Syria to spread their sectarian violence there too.
Most worrying for the African continent, however, is the forward march of AFRICOM – the US military’s African command – in the wake of the aggression against Libya. It is no coincidence that barely a month after the fall of Tripoli – and in the same month Gaddafi was murdered (October 2011) – the US announced it was sending troops to no less than four more African countries – the Central African Republic, Uganda, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. AFRICOM have now announced an unprecedented fourteen major joint military exercises in African countries for 2012. The military re-conquest of Africa is rolling steadily on.
None of this would have been possible whilst Gaddafi was still in power. As founder of the African Union, its biggest donor, and its one-time elected Chairman, he wielded serious influence on the continent. It was partly thanks to him that the US was forced to establish AFRICOM’s HQ in Stuttgart in Germany when it was established in February 2008, rather than in Africa itself; he offered cash and investments to African governments who rejected US requests for bases. Libya under his leadership had an estimated $150 billion of investments in Africa, and the Libyan proposal, backed with £30billion cash, for an African Union Development Bank would have seriously reduced African financial dependence on the West. In short, Gaddafi’s Libya was the single biggest obstacle to AFRICOM penetration of the continent.
Now he has gone, AFRICOM is stepping up its work. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan showed the West that wars in which their own citizens get killed are not popular; AFRICOM is designed to ensure that in the coming colonial wars against Africa, it will be Africans who do the fighting and dying, not Westerners. The forces of the African Union are to become integrated into AFRICOM under a US-led chain of command. Gaddafi would never have stood for it; that is why he had to go.
And if you want a vision of Africa under AFRICOM tutelage, look no further than Libya, NATO’s model of an African state: condemned to decades of violence and trauma, and utterly incapable of either providing for its people, or contributing to regional or continental independence. The new military colonialism in Africa must not be allowed to advance another inch.
DAN GLAZEBROOK writes for the Morning Star newspaper and is one of the co-ordinators for the British branch of the International Union of Parliamentarians for Palestine. He can be contacted at danglazebrook2000@yahoo.co.uk
May 25, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Africa, Gaddafi, Great Manmade River, Libya, Muammar Gaddafi, NATO, Tripoli |
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President Barack Obama is expected to unveil a $6 billion international public-private partnership to extend the Green Revolution to Africa.
The initiative, which is linked to this weekend’s G-8 summit, aims to lift 50 million people out of hunger and poverty within a decade by investing in modern agricultural methods and technologies. Rich countries are expected to commit to spending $3 billion – the U.S. share is around $850 million over three years – while three dozen international and African companies will pledge a similar amount in investments such as fertilizer production, grain silos and new food products.
“We’re now putting together a fundamentally new approach to tackling hunger and poverty in sub-Saharan Africa,” said Rajiv Shah, administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
Shah said the effort was a continuation of the Green Revolution of the 1970s and 80s, which saved countless lives in Latin American and Asian countries that were facing widespread starvation.
“The effort never made it to Africa, for a broad set of reasons,” Shah said. “Private companies never really invested in Africa in this sector. Public partners abandoned Africa in this sector. And African leaders themselves stopped thinking of agriculture as the solution. This really represents a change in that mindset.”
African heads of state from Ethiopia, Ghana, Tanzania and Benin will participate in the announcement, as well as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U2’s Bono, U.S. Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and officials from the UN World Food Programme and other international organizations. And three dozen companies – including U.S. giants Cargill, DuPont and Monsanto – will pledge to invest millions of dollars in African agriculture.
Such investments, Shah said, will provide long-term savings for donor nations.
“Across the board, countries view their investments in development – especially around food security – as being in the long-term defense of their national interests,” he said. “It is much cheaper to invest in agricultural development in the Horn of Africa than it is to provide food aid in a time of crisis, as we’ve had to do last year.”
The partnership does raise some concerns, however.
One is whether donor countries will stick to their promises.
“Significant progress was made at the G-8 summit in L’Aquila, Italy, in 2009,” World Vision U.S. President Richard Stearns wrote in an op-ed submitted to The Hill on Thursday. “Global leaders committed to provide $20 billion over three years to help farmers in the poorest countries grow the food those countries need. However the 2011 G8 accountability report found that only 22 percent of funds have been disbursed and the majority of countries have not fulfilled their commitments.”
Another is the African partner nations’ ability to make the reforms necessary to make the private sector investments work.
Ethiopia, in particular, has been under fire for years for its human rights record. This week, Amnesty International urged Obama to use the G-8 summit to press Ethiopian leader Meles Zenawi on his government’s crackdown on critics.
“Prime Minister Zenawi is greeted with open arms around the world for the progress his government claims they have made on economic growth, development and counter-terrorism,” Washington office head Frank Jannuzi said in a statement. “But while he is warmly welcomed in his travels, at home the people of Ethiopia are subjected to ever increasing restrictions on their basic rights.”
Shah said U.S. aid is conditioned on every partner living up to their end of the bargain.
African leaders, he said, “will make public a set of policy reform commitments that will tackle corruption in their bureaucracies, that will create a more open business climate for companies, that will change some of their policies on price-setting and export restrictions that will allow for us to be successful together tackling this issue.
“We’re very results-oriented in how we do this work,” he said. “So if the conditions are not in place for the private investments to happen and for our investments to work, then we won’t make them. And neither will the private companies. So it’s a collective action challenge.”
In the end, he said, Africans are the ones who want the partnership to succeed most of all.
“Nobody wants to be receiving a hand-out when they could be investing in their capacity to grow themselves out of poverty and hunger,” Shah said. “We talk about it in terms of saving money, but it really speaks to a far more aspirational concept of human dignity. Everybody wants to be proud of their ability to feed their children and feed their families.”
May 18, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Economics | Africa, DuPont, Rajiv Shah, United States, United States Agency for International Development |
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After three years of discussions, the UN has agreed a document meant to protect local populations against land grabbing. It should help ensure the right to food.
When big investors buy up land, small farmers are often driven from the land that feeds them. On Friday (11.05.2012) the 128 countries in the UN Committee on World Food Security unanimously adopted policies to protect the local population.
The voluntary guidelines specify how soil and land use rights, fisheries and forests should be handled. They are intended to increase transparency in land investment, give residents a greater say and especially to strengthen the position of the local small farmers. Often, they have only informal land rights – and no official land titles.
“The key point is that all rights for people to use land and other resources should be recognized, and that these people have proof. And they cannot easily lose these rights overnight because someone else may have more money or more influence,” said Babette Wehrmann, responsible for climate, energy use and rights at the FAO.
Up to 83 million hectares of land have been sold or leased to investors since 2000 – especially in Africa. The International Land Coalition, an alliance of non-governmental and intergovernmental organizations, operates a website on which land investments can be followed. However, because many deals are not disclosed, the land-matrix database is far from complete, the ILC’s Michael Taylor says. Even so, some trends can be identified: African countries are of particular concern, including Sudan, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Tanzania, Madagascar, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Targeted investments in countries with weak legislation
These countries are particularly vulnerable “because they have weak policies and weak land ownership legislation. The international investors sought out the most vulnerable countries where it was worthwhile to invest because of the fertile ground,” says Frank Brassel, rural development expert at Oxfam.
According to the country matrix the major investors include India, China and the United States, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Even these countries have now agreed to the voluntary guidelines.
The ILC sees more risks than opportunities for local people in the land deals that are currently being negotiated, Taylor said. It would make most sense for investors to work with small farmers. Many countries are now worrying about new approaches to strengthen farmers’ rights, Taylor says.
“Countries such as Madagascar and Ethiopia have begun to issue certificates to confirm the ownership of land, and while they are not the same as a (legal ownership) title, they still ensure ownership of the land and only cost a fraction of the price,” says Taylor. “In Madagascar, the cost for a small farmer who wants to certify his land has fallen from 600 dollars to 15 dollars, or about 12 euros.”
This certificate assures the farmers that they can continue to cultivate “their” land. Because if big investors oust the local population, they lose twice: First, they can no longer grow anything, and second, the products are then mostly exported. So-called “flex crops” are especially popular – plants such as palm oil, soya beans and sugar cane – that can be sold according to market demand as a biofuel or food, says Taylor.
Local farmers are often forced off their land
And it would be a mistake to think that investors are looking for idle land, says Kerstin Nolte, an expert on land grabbing at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA).
“Investors are, of course, looking for land that is very fertile and is close to infrastructure. And that is usually populated,” says Nolte. “This means that it often involves expulsions.”
Nolte traveled to Zambia, Kenya and Ghana for field studies. In Zambia, traditional local authorities decide which family cultivates which piece of land.
“When the chief performs his role well in the traditional sense, then he will negotiate with the investor and consult with his people. These chiefs are only slightly better off, which means they do not have very much money, property or land” Nolte said. “That means the system is very susceptible to corruption, both because there’s no one monitoring the chief and because there are a lot of money or valuables coming in from the outside.” Nolte says that this has led to much communal land in Zambia being transferred to commercial agriculture.
The rapid growth of land grabbing in recent years has depended in particular on the fact that food prices have risen dramatically since 2007. “This has led to two major groups seeing that it pays to invest in land: the first are the Gulf countries and emerging economies such as China and India. They want to secure their future food supply by buying or leasing huge areas of land in weaker countries,” Brassel said.
“The other group is traditional investors, who have also seen that it pays to invest in land, for food and for biofuel, as both promise to be lucrative businesses for the future.”
The largest land grabbers are not necessarily foreign investors. “We hear from our member organizations working in countries such as these it is the local elites who are responsible for the largest land scarcity. The cumulative effect of many people acquiring small plots of land for speculative purposes may be greater than that of two investors who purchase vast areas of land,” Taylor said.
More transparency?
The experts agree the voluntary guidelines of the UN member states are now an important first step to strengthen the situation of the local population and create more transparency. The guidelines can help to set a certain standard for the local population.
Although they are voluntary, the guidelines could put a lot of positive developments into motion, Brassel says. Oxfam has seen positive effects of the 2004 voluntary guidelines for the human right to food, he says. Even so, Oxfam would have liked to expand the newly adopted guidelines against land grabbing. “We should have not only applied the guidelines to land, but also to water resources,” he said.
“We would have liked a statement at the beginning that says, in the next three years we will have a moratorium on large land investments to be able to apply these guidelines on-site in the most affected countries first.”
The protection of small farmers now depends on the extent to which the individual states consider the voluntary guidelines to be binding.
May 13, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Economics | Africa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Land grabbing, United Nations, Zambia |
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