Today it emerged that world leaders are to discuss what is being described as “land grabbing” or “neo-colonialism” at the G8 meeting next week. A spokesman for Japan’s ministry of foreign affairs confirmed that it would raise the issue: “We feel there should be a code of conduct for investment in farmland that will be a win-win situation for both producing and consuming countries,” he said.
Olivier De Schutter, special envoy for food at the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, said: “[The trend] is accelerating quickly. All countries observe each other and when one sees others buying land it does the same.”
Some of the largest deals include South Korea’s acquisition of 700,000ha in Sudan, and Saudi Arabia’s purchase of 500,000ha in Tanzania. The Democratic Republic of the Congo expects to shortly conclude an 8m-hectare deal with a group of South African businesses to grow maize and soya beans as well as poultry and dairy farming.
Other countries that have acquired land in the last year include the Gulf states, Sweden, China and Libya. Those targeted include not only fertile countries such as Brazil, Russia and Ukraine, but also poor countries like Cameroon, Ethiopia, Madagascar, and Zambia.
De Schutter said that after the food crisis of 2008, many countries found food imports hit their balance of payments, “so now they want to insure themselves”.
Continue Reading Fears For The World’s Poor Countries as The Rich Grab Land to Grow Food
Guy,
I completely agree that they are not all powerful. But to diffuse the power that they do perpetrate it is crucial to properly understand their techniques and goals. To get an understanding of these goals, I suggest beginning with an introduction to Agenda 21. A possible starting point is the following …
Agenda 21, The U.N. Plan for Your “Sustainable” Community
http://www.crossroad.to/text/articles/la21_198.html
“…current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work-place air-conditioning, and suburban housing – are not sustainable. A shift is necessary. which will require a vast strengthening of the multilateral system, including the United Nations…” Maurice Strong , opening speech at the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development
Freedom Advocates
http://www.freedomadvocates.org/
Michael Shaw has done some wonderful work.
Agenda 21 — The Blueprint to Advance Sustainable Development
http://www.freedomadvocates.org/articles/sustainable_development/agenda_21_–_the_blueprint_to_advance_sustainable_development_20040615100/
In this straightforward expose of Agenda 21 — the blueprint to advance Sustainable Development — Beckett examines the notion of “sustainability”. His conclusion: The American people need to be better informed so they understand that Sustainable Development is a pseudonym for centralized control over human life.
Read the “The U.N. Plan for Your “Sustainable” Community,” thanks for sharing it. Seems to me that this perspective is fed by the feeling of lack of control by people who feel marginalized. People who have a certain value system – i.e. middle class Christian & I’m assuming white – that they feel is being forcefully taken away by an agenda run by liberals(feminists, welfare advocates, environmentalists).
What is interesting here is that the groups mentioned that form the “special interest groups that guide this Agenda” – i.e. “Sierra Club, Earthlinks, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Greener Alternatives, Pacific Bell, Peace Child, United Nations Association-USA, Environmental Ecological Services, Change Management System, Countywide Joint Task Force on Sexual Harassment, Prevention and Education, and the Human Care Alliance (about 80 service providers and community groups), and the Welfare and Low-Income Support Network”, besides the Sierra Club, Pacific Bell and the UN association of USA are mostly community organizations run by social workers. If you visit any of their websites, you can see what kind of budget they have to work with, and most of them look like they are just getting by. Most of these community organizations also depend on funding from the federal, state, local governments and private donations for their budgets.
The REALITY of the matter is this – the good intentions that these people have who run these community organizations is SUBSUMED by what they can and cannot do because they suckle at the teat of government and private donations. Once they get into an alliance with a larger group – I.E. the Federal government or corporate sponsors – their agenda becomes subsumed under the stipulations that these organizations carry for funding. All of a sudden for example, the “poor and low income” working groups who are on the ground in the communities and may have a good idea of what SHOULD be done because they are involved with the people are constrained by what the federal government says is appropriate or what the corporate sponsor says, etc. In reality, the corporation, the federal government, etc. thrive in a system which does not ALLOW for real solutions to poverty because doing so would be questioning their whole basis for existence and power/control within the society at large.
Look at the UN – in its founding documents it has some good language. BUT – it was setup after WWII as an instrument for a new world system with the US and its corporate interests and its allies having overwhelming dominance and control over its agenda. This system had a role in facilitating the centralization of wealth and control within certain sectors who now, because of their bargaining position have the ground floor opportunities to dictate and guide crisis management scenarios. It means the same folks who caused the mess are in charge of cleaning it up. The system is trying to adapt to new scenarios, some self created and some dictated by the climate meanwhile maintain the same people at the helm. THAT is the problem. With all the talk about justice, peace and equality it is the same institutions who are controlling the discourse and ALLOWING others to speak. For example the Pope talking about justice and equality in the face of its 2000 year reign of genocide, murder and oppression. Or the US saying its a new day because they have a black president yet the finance/military/industrial complex has an even greater stranglehold over the society and culture. Power is NOT given up freely and any crisis is going to be used and framed under the rubric of protecting certain interests.
Local farming is GOOD, consuming less is good(that’s what our elders taught us – remember? don’t live beyond your means?), being conscious about purchasing decisions is good, building community is good. This is where we need to go. Now, the issue is co-optation. How is goldman sachs or this new world body with private interests trying to maintain control going to try to co-opt it. Is it by controlling the market on carbon credits? Is it through a world currency or local currencies subsumed under a currency controlled by private bankers? THAT is what we have to figure out and INSULATE and CREATE communities that CANNOT be controlled this way – I think that is what the Solari model is about(correct me if I’m wrong). This is about sovereignty and REAL justice and respect for our communities and our planet, something which these power players CANNOT and WILL not grant no matter how much their language changes.
re: Street Farmer.
“In 2005, he received a $100,000 Ford Foundation leadership grant. In 2008, the MacArthur Foundation honored Allen with a $500,000 “genius” award. And in May, the Kellogg Foundation gave Allen $400,000 to create jobs in urban agriculture.”
They didn’t CREATE him, but this is how you would co-opt something like local farming. It’s through the teat of funding.
Yeah Guy, it’s like unity in diversity means support everything openly but cut the legs off it at the same time. I simplify things by remembering the two lies in the garden of Eden. Ye shall not surely die and you shall be as gods. All these movements and organizations to give people a feeling of “empowerment” but they get less and less power over thier own lives. They players play on the imagination. To turn everybody into like obstinate children each thinking they know everything. Right and wrong a matter of opinion that nobody can question. Satanists say the law of Satan is “do what thou will”. That would be fine if everybody was good but not so good when it also applies to thieves and murderers. Unity in diversity. Do what thou will (diversity) fear not that any God will deny you (Unity).
Guy,
Right, small groups are marginalized and the big groups set the agenda. The groups that “guide this agenda” were deliberately manufactured. This is what the work of Herbert Markuse demonstrates. It’s not some “feeling” by white Christians, as you are implying. It’s similar to the pincer techniques used in the former soviet union, where the left is leveraged to apply pressure from the bottom while the right applies it from the top. It’s all designed to co-opt. That is my overarching point.
This push to local farming is part of an overall effort to co-opt… its is inherent in the plan… it is NOT something that might happen later, or be “co-opted” at some future date. Surpra national organizations have been established to govern what we can grow, how much and where. As said in The Blueprint to Advance Sustainable Development article, “Sustainable Development is a pseudonym for centralized control over human life.” Local independent farming is just one part of an overall effort to isolate the individual against large global institutions, whereby they are powerless to fight back. It is quite naive to think that individuals will be allowed to survive independently of vast control systems. Aldous Huxley tells us this. Two distinctly different classes of being are being created, one with all the advantages of modern science and unlimited resources and the other constrained to some form of feudalism. Once in this dialectic, I see no option for the lower class other than total submission, as 4GW (4th Gen. Warfare) will neutralize any meaningful thoughts of rejection.
Your all caps use of the term ‘reality’ in your sentence, “The REALITY of the matter is this…,” was not missed, and neither is the arrogance or naivety behind it. The fact of the matter is, that many of the assumptions that you present have been given to you without sufficient independent analysis. I strongly suggest a re-evaluation of the assumptions themselves and the sources from where they emanate. If your parents handed them down, can you source where they received them from? If not, how do you know that your basis assumptions are not already co-opted? Bottom line, you don’t.
Bert:
I have to ask you – how does the work of Solari fit into all this, because it seems to me that you are saying that all this move towards localization(which Solari indeed is part of) is part of manufactured groups used to fulfill a long held agenda.
Also –
At what point was “the individual” allowed to survive independently of vast control systems or not isolated from fighting back against larger institutions? You have the debt you pay for your car, your house(which are both owned by the bank who gave you the money in the first place), your need to go to the industrialized food chain to get your food, your need(through threat of imprisonment) to pay taxes, government eminent domain, forced conscription into the military should the government decree it so, etc. The individual already hasn’t for years and years lived independently from vast control systems. We already have feudalism – most people don’t own anything they have anyway, whether their homes or cars. You are in debt bondage your whole life and have to work in wage slavery for a good portion of it just to survive.
Could you please share your vision as to an effective course of action.
In a game of chess it’s important to control the center. This allows you to limit the movement of the other player. As long as your making the threats and the other player is reacting to them your in control. Monopolizing the mainstream would be like controlling the center, both colored squares Left (black squares) and right (white squares) but only in the center. The players would be the insiders vs. the outsiders. Localization is like taking a few squares on the edge of the board but if you control enough of those you could make a move on the center….Taxing people and taking what they have limits the opponents ability to make alternatives, all thier resources are spent defending against the center.