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- Uncivilized Investing
- Investing in Gold as World Economies Falter
- Bracing for a Greek Exit
- Currencies Try to Rebound Today
- Superior Biotechnology Leads to Superior Drugs
- The Delusion of Regulating Risk
- Talk of a Greek Exit Gets Louder
- Doug Casey on Taxes and Freedom, Part II
- Is Facebook the Rusty Hinge of the Stock Market?
UN Guidelines Use Corporations in African “Land Grab”
Whoever controls the land controls the nation.
Corporations and foreign governments have been “ land-grabbing” from third world nations to control agriculture.
“What is missing the most in terms of land grabbing is a clear condemnation of this practice. That was one of the baseline demands of civil society,” Stephane Parmentier from aid agency Oxfam. “It was impossible to include it, because it was too sensitive and too controversial for quite a lot of member states.”
Nations like Ethiopia, South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo and Sierra Leone, in Africa have “voluntarily” signed agreements with multi-national corporations and foreign investors, allowing them to control agricultural land. The nation’s leaders believe that giving access to their resources will benefit their people; however this is just another manipulative ploy to coercively acquire control over land, food production and securitization.
The world’s governments have agreed to follow UN dictated guidelines over land, and who controls the fate of land.
The United Nations (UN) has enacted global guidelines on purchasing agricultural land from developing nations like Africa and Asia.
The UN claims that to secure equality for the poor and disadvantaged, this international body must control their lands through the allowance of mutli-national corporations and governments who will develop the land for agriculture and securitize the crop yields; thereby giving the UN control over the global food supply.
The document entitled “ The UN Global Compact and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises” outlines through “voluntary” means, the UN will implement their international guidelines with respect to corporate conduct, standards and abilities.
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Peak Civilization: MIT Research Team Predicts Global Economic Collapse and Precipitous Population Decline
Researchers at one of the world’s leading think tanks have developed a computing model that predicts serious implications for our way of life as a result of our incessant need to consume resources like oil, food, and fresh water. According to a team of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the breaking point will come no later than 2030, and when it does, we can expect a paradigm shift unlike any we have seen before in human history – one that will not only collapse the economies of the world, but will cause food and energy production to decrease so significantly that it will lead to the deaths of hundreds of millions of people in the process.
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Analysis: Land grab or development opportunity?
With land central to the livelihoods of millions of people in Africa, Lorenzo Cotula of the International Institute for Environment and Development examines the impact of large-scale land acquisitions on the continent’s farmers.
“Land grabs” are now one of the biggest issues in Africa.
Over the past few years, companies and foreign governments have been leasing large areas of land in some of Africa’s poorest countries.
Many commentators have raised concerns that poor villagers will be forced off their land and agribusiness will marginalise family farming.
Others say that foreign investment can help African countries create jobs, increase export earnings and use more advanced technologies.
Three years since media reports started raising public awareness on this issue, evidence has been growing on the scale, geography, players, features and impacts of the land rush. The emerging picture provides ground for concern.
Last year the World Bank documented media reports of land deals over the period between 2008 and 2009.
The deals were for nearly 60 million hectares worldwide, roughly the size of a country like Ukraine – and two-thirds of the land acquired was in Africa.
While new figures continue to emerge, all evidence points to a phenomenon of unprecedented scale.
Also, some individual deals are for very large areas. For example, Liberia recently signed a concession for 220,000 hectares.
Money to be made
Media attention has focused on investments by Middle Eastern and Asian government-backed operators but Western companies have also been heavily involved.
Companies acquire land because they expect world food and commodity prices to increase – so there is money to be made in agriculture.
Some governments have also promoted land acquisitions abroad as a way to secure affordable food for their people.
In many African countries, agriculture has suffered from years of neglect – and investment is needed to improve productivity and market access.
But not all investment is good – and growing evidence strongly indicates that large land deals are not the way to go.
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What is a Debt for Nature Swap?
What is a Debt for Nature Swap?
A debt for nature swap is an agreement between a developing nation in debt and one or more of its creditors. Many developing nations are severely limited by huge debts they have accrued. In a debt for nature swap, creditors agree to forgive debts in return for the promise of environmental protection.
Debt for nature swaps were first established in the 1980s in the attempt of solving two problems with one agreement: 1) minimize the negative effect debt has on developing nations 2) minimize the environmental destruction that developing nations frequently cause.
The environmental promises made in such debt for nature swaps have centered around the promised protection of large areas of land such as tropical rainforests. The first case of this sort of agreement came in 1987 between a conservation group and Bolivia. The conservation group paid some of Bolivia’s debt in return for the creation of a large rainforest preserve.
U.N. Seeks Sweeping Power To Control Food, Water
A new report suggests the United Nations take control of the world’s food and water. We’d write this off as a joke except the Obama administration seems to like the idea of global government.
Putting life’s essentials under the direct control of perhaps the most corrupt organization on earth doesn’t strike us as wise. But that’s what a new U.N. report, “21 Issues for the 21st Century,” would do.
It suggests “international protocols” and a “shared vision” for land and water use that would, essentially, end current national laws and treaties governing their use.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. Just two months ago, the U.N. suggested a “minimum global tax,” and the idea was immediately embraced by some in the Obama administration as a good idea. It’s not.
Still, this utopian notion of “one-world government” dies hard. Even though the United Nations has been found to be financially corrupt and almost entirely ineffective, it continues to seek new, sweeping powers.
The 192 member-countries that make up the U.N. see these sweeping new powers to tax us, tell us what food to grow and whom to sell it to, and to give up our rights to our own water as a way to bring the mighty U.S. under the world’s heel. They envy our wealth and clout.
President Obama has made it clear throughout his presidency that he doesn’t see the U.S. as an exceptional nation, just one of many. That’s where the problem begins, since it emboldens the bureaucrats and thieves who run the U.N. to come up with these kinds of ideas.
World Bank Wants Control Of The High Seas
As a proponent of legitimate free markets, I am always up for a little creative entrepreneurship. However, there is a considerable difference between building productive markets, and engaging in monopolistic piracy. Global conglomerates and the elites that operate them have long been familiar with the pirate’s life, and not the fun filled adventure-time rope swinging swashbuckling brand. In fact, it was elitists like Sir Francis Drake, commissioned by the English monarchy, who embodied this disturbing covert bedlam. We’re talking murder, mayhem, and blood-money, folks! So, it should be of no surprise to anyone that the thieving mercantile swine of our era are returning to the high seas to plunder once again, only in a much more subversive and devious manner.
This past week, World Bank President Robert Zoellick made his organization’s intentions for oceanic regimentation known, at least in a candy coated way, at the Economist World Oceans Summit in Singapore:
Over the last several years, World Bank has seen fit to insinuate itself into the environmental movement as a “bastion” of green ideology. In reality, World Bank has long used the threats of environmental destabilization (some of them real, some of them fake) as tools for the centralization of resources into the hands of mega-corporations. In fact, if one was to attempt to sum up exactly what it is that World Bank actually does in a single phrase, it would probably be “resource domination”. This domination is achieved through the strict lending guidelines that sovereign countries have to commit to in order to attain financing from the supranational entity.
