THE ROOT CAUSES BEHIND THE FAMINE IN THE HORN OF AFRICA: LANDGRAB, AGROFUELS AND THE AFRICAN SO-CALLED “LEADERS” AND GOVERNMENTS AND THEIR COLONIAL MASTERS DISGUISED AS "DEVELOPMENT EXPERTS"
Millions of poor, destitute Africans are yet again facing starvation in several countries in the Horn of Africa (Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somalia, Soudan, Uganda and Kenya.) The official cause attributed to the famine by African governments is drought and the identified culprit is Nature, along with the usual blame-it-on "terrorism/Al Quaida" propaganda...
In a recent article on the causes of famine in Somalia, Michel Chossudovsky writes,
"According to the UN, a situation of famine prevails in southern Bakool and Lower Shabelle, areas in part controlled by Al Shahab, a jihadist militia group affiliated to Al Qaeda. Both the UN and the Obama administration had accused Al Shahab of imposing "a ban on foreign aid agencies in its territories in 2009". What the reports do not mention, however, is that Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen (HSM) ("Movement of Striving Youth") is funded by Saudi Arabia and supported covertly by Western intelligence agencies.The backing of Islamic militia by Western intelligence agencies is part of a broader historical pattern of covert support to Al Qaeda affiliated and jihadist organizations in a number of countries, including, more recently, Libya and Syria."
source: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25725
The REAL terrorists however, are the African so-called "leaders", governments and their white colonial masters (UK/US) and their agents disguised as "development experts" and so-called "aid" organizations (UN, WFP, USAID,DFID, Western NGO's, etc.) and their murderous neo-colonial institutions ( IMF - International Monetary Fraud; World Bank(sters) and the WTO - World Terrorist Organization)- who together, are systematically looting the resources of Africa and exploiting, oppressing and starving millions of Africans in the process.
ETHIOPIA BUYS WAR TANKS WORTH $US 100 MILLION AS MILLIONS STARVE
In Ethiopia, while millions of Ethiopians are facing starvation, the criminal US-backed government of Ethiopia has just purchased 200 war tanks worth US$ 100 millions to crush rising opposition among its own starving population ( using so-called "aid" money from Western/UK taxpayers destined for “emergency food aid donation”)
In an article published online, Thomas Mountain writes:
" Ethiopia is on another arms buying spree as millions of Ethiopians starve due to the worst drought in 60 years. According to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi Ethiopia is purchasing 200 battle tanks from Ukraine for over $100 million.
Was it a coincidence that the day before Meles’ announcement, the British foreign aid office announced a $60 million “emergency food aid donation” to Ethiopia?
One of the primary reasons Ethiopia needs 200 tanks is to conduct its counterinsurgency campaigns against the ethnically based armed uprisings slowly engulfing much of the country. From the Ogaden in the south east, to Tigray in the north to Gambella in the west, and now it is reported, even spreading to much of Oromia in the south west, the Ethiopian regime needs to be able to crush its own people and the latest installment of armor is long over due."
link to the article with full references and links:
http://tesfanews.net/archives/2428
As Obang Metho further explains,
“ As Ethiopians are threatening to rise up against the large-scale robbery of land and resources; accompanied by the widespread perpetration of human rights abuses; the Meles regime just has purchased 200 new tanks for $100 million (USD) rather than meet the growing food needs of the 13 to 16 million Ethiopians who must rely on falling levels of food aid from donor countries in the coming months. Who will these tanks be used against if not Ethiopian citizens who are only wanting to survive in their own land?
Tanks work well against lightly armed guerilla fighters and even better when it comes to crushing civilian uprisings, something those in the western and UN “aid” agencies are fully cognizant of. Now that Ethiopia has become a source of “peacekeepers” in Sudan some of these Ethiopian tanks may be used to uphold Pax Americana on the North-South Sudanese border which includes Sudan’s oil fields.
According to several humanitarian organizations including Human Rights Watch, Ethiopia’s military campaigns have triggered a serious humanitarian crisis. Ethopian military crackdown has led to widespread violence in which entire villages have been destroyed. Citizens also suffer from arbitrary arrests, theft, rape and murder by Ethiopian soldiers. “In October 2007, The Independent reported that the situation in Ogaden had begun to mirror the Darfur conflict, with refugees stating that government troops had burned villages and raped and killed civilians.”
In its report, Human Rights Watch claims that;
“civilians have been killed in what appears to be a deliberate effort to mete out collective punishment against a civilian population suspected of sympathizing with the rebels.”
HRW says it has documented dozens of cases of severe abuse by Ethiopian troops in the Ogaden, including gang rapes, burned villages and what it calls “demonstration killings,” like hanging and beheading of populace, meant to terrorize the population.
We Africans have been the target of colonialization, slavery and exploitation in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries and a target of African dictators and their foreign cronies in the 20th century. We have had enough and will not tolerate this new onslaught of exploitation and dehumanization in the 21st century! Many want to keep us Africans poor, disenfranchised and vulnerable only to more easily take advantage of the pillaging of our continent.” Writes Obang Metho.
You can listen to an audio interview by Obang Metho available online at the following link:
http://afrobeatradio.net/2011/07/13/the-great-ethiopia-land-grab/
For more info on the landgrab on human rights violations in Ethiopia, please contact:
Obang Metho, Executive Director of the SMNE
Phone 202 725-1616. Email: Obang@solidaritymovement.org.
Website: www.solidaritymovement.org
NEW SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA: LANDGRAB, GMO's & AGROFUELS
A century after the infamous Berlin Conference, History tragically repeats itself, this time with the criminal complicity of so-called African "leaders" and governments:
Moreover, while millions starve in the horn of Africa (and throughout the continent), the same so-called African “leaders” are selling and/or leasing millions of hectares of fertile agricultural land to foreign countries and to private foreign companies to grow genetically modified (patented and sterile) GMO so-called “food” crops for export and as raw material to produce agrofuels, animal feed and other industrial and pharmaceutical products for export and consumption in affluent countries.
According to a research paper published by the US based Oakland Institute, in 2009 alone, over 60 million hectares of prime fertile land in Africa ( the size of France) has been leased and/or sold to foreign private companies and/or foreign governments/countries to produce food, agrofuels, animal feed and other raw materials for export and consumption in affluent countries - NOT to feed starving Africans.
“In 2009 alone nearly 60 million ha– an area the size of France – was purchased or leased in comparison to an average annual expansion of global agricultural land of less than 4 million ha before 2008.” writes Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of the Oakland Institute.
The investigative reports on the massive landgrab in Africa can be read at the following link:
http://media.oaklandinstitute.org/sites/oaklandinstitute.org/files/LandGrab_final_web.pdf
TANZANIA: 500,000 REFUGEES REPATRIATED TO "LEASE" LAND TO US AGRIBUSINESS COMPANY TO PRODUCE AGROFUELS...
In Tanzania, over 500,000 Burundian refugees ( fleeing Genocide and their own criminal and oppressive governments in Burundi) have been forcefully repatriated to Burundi and relocated elsewhere in Tanzania and over 300,000 ha of land from the refugee camps has been "leased" to a US agribusiness company – Agrisol Energy – to produce agrofuels, animal feed /livestock and other raw materials for export and consumption in affluent countries – using local food crops.
The report from the Oakland Institute can be read at the following link:
http://media.oaklandinstitute.org/land-deals-africa/agrisol-energy-llc
ETHIOPIA: COUNTRY LAND FOR SALE AT $US 0,99 CENTS FOR 99 YEARS
Hedge funds buy Ethiopian farms at $1 an acre
In Ethiopia, millions of acres of fertile land has been leased and/or sold over to private companies to produce food, agrofuels and other raw materials for export – NOT to feed Ethiopians - while Ethiopians literally starve to death.
In an article published in the UK Sunday Times on July 24, the author writes:
"As Britain prepares to send £38m ($43m) in emergency aid to Ethiopia to fight famine, the Addis Ababa government is selling millions of acres of prime farmland to foreign investors, including British and
American hedge funds.
More than 7 million acres is to be put up for sale, in addition to nearly 7m
acres already sold. The land, which includes arable land, pasture, forests and wetland, goes for as little as $1 (£0.69) an acre on a 100-year lease. Much of it will be irrigated by a network of canals fed by Gibe III, a controversial dam still under construction on the Omo River.
Foreign acquisition is forcing local communities, many of them semi-nomadic, off their traditional lands and depriving them of access to water sources.
Chinese, Indian and Saudi Arabian agribusinesses have all bought land in Africa to protect against future food shortages at home. According to a report by the Oakland Institute, a California-based environmental think tank, British and American hedge funds are behind many of the biggest land purchases.
The report claims many of the deals are unregulated and opaque, and lead to the rights of local farmers and peasants being violated. "Many of the deals will provide few jobs and force many thousands of people off the land," said Anuradha Mittal, Oakland's director.
Human rights groups say the land sales will do nothing to address Ethiopia's long-term food crisis. "No one should believe that these investors are there to feed starving Africans. These deals lead only to dollars in the pockets of corrupt leaders and foreign investors," said Obang Metho, an Ethiopian rights campaigner in America.
Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia's prime minister, has defended overseas investment as the best way to pull the country out of poverty. "Anything from wheat and other cereals up to tea, coffee, palm oil and rubber can grow in the country and they [investors] will be very much welcomed," he said.
Farmers claim investors' interests and rights are being prioritised at the expense of their communities.
Farming minister Abera Deressa said recently that Ethiopia did not need to be agriculturally self-sufficient because it would "become a middle-income country in the next decade and just buy food from the world market". As many as 3.2m Ethiopians rely on foreign aid, making it the world's largest recipient.
Land sales in the Omo River area have been shrouded in secrecy and locals say they have been threatened with arrest if caught speaking to foreigners about the dam project or the resettlement of local farmers.
"Anyone opposing government development projects will be crushed like a person standing in front of a bulldozer," said a police chief.
Aid workers allege that units from Ethiopian special forces have been arresting young men in areas where the land is being cleared for foreign investors.
In Hana, a small settlement in the southeast, a foreign development worker said scores of locals had been badly beaten by Ethiopian special forces, with at least one left in a coma. "The trials of these people were very quick, often on doubtful charges, and the sentences seemed more severe than usual. They are being told if anyone expresses negative opinions about the plantations they will be arrested," he said.
Felix Horne, a consultant for Human Rights Watch, has seen widespread malnutrition in the Gambella region in western Ethiopia, where farmers have been moved off land and left with nowhere to grow their own food.
"I have never seen people so malnourished in this region. The situation is very bad now and everyone fears it will get worse," he said.
Horne says those who have resisted being moved into government villages have been beaten, arrested and in some cases raped. He was also told by locals that the government had been withholding food aid from relocated families."
Please watch this hearbreaking investigative documentary on the massive "langrab" of land in Ethiopia:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/21/ethiopia-centre-global-farmland-rush?CMP=twt_gu.
KENYA AUTHORIZES IMPORTATION & GROWING OF GMO's and OPENS PANDORA's BOX TO MORE POVERTY, HUNGER AND FAMINE...
In Kenya, the country is facing a huge shortage in local maize – the staple food of millions of Kenyans and Africans - as a direct result of the incompetence and corruption of the Kenyan government and so-called "leaders". In response, the Kenyan government has tragically authorized the importation of GM maize from South Africa, thereby opening Pandora’s box to the inevitable and irreversible widespread genetic contamination of local maize crops both in Kenya and throughout the region (borders are porous and GM maize does not require a visa to cross borders!). This, of course, is the REAL (hidden) agenda and objective of Monsanto and the biotech industry - i.e., to contaminate, sterilise and patent all local maize seeds/crops and to take over total control over the agricultural sector in Kenya and in the entire region. Moreover, God only knows what is inside those GM maize seeds…???
Again, the shortage of local maize in Kenya is attributed to "drought" and blamed on Nature. However, the real culprits are none others than the so-called Kenyan “leaders” and the Kenyan government which, over fifty years after so-called “independence” are not even capable of producing maize/food in sufficient quantity to feed their own populations. They are more skilled at exploiting, oppressing and starving their own population while they systematically loot the resources of the country and their people – in complicity with their white colonial masters.
The resulting widespread poverty, hunger, famine, disease, illiteracy, war, etc. in the region and throughout Africa are the “fruits” of over 50 years of systematic exploitation and oppression of African people and looting of African resources by so-called African “leaders”, governments and the so-called African “elite” themselves – in complicity with their white colonial masters disguised as “development experts…”
Indeed, African so-called “leaders” and the so-called “elite” have mastered – nay, have surpassed the “skills” of their colonial masters in exploiting, oppressing and starving their own people and systematically looting the resources of Africa - which makes them the worst and most dangerous ennemies of Africans!
THE ROOT ECONOMIC, POLITICAL and STRUCTURAL CAUSES BEHIND THE FAMINE IN SOMALIA AND IN THE HORN OF AFRICA:
Michel Chossudovsky further explains and exposes the root causes behind the famine in the horn of Africa:
" Somalia remained self-sufficient in food until the late 1970s despite recurrent droughts. As of the early 1980s, its national economy was destabilized and food agriculture was destroyed. The process of economic dislocation preceded the onset of the civil war in 1991. Economic and social chaos resulting from IMF "economic medicine" had set the stage for the launching of a US sponsored "civil war".
An entire country with a rich history of commerce and economic development, was transformed into a territory. Somalia had been a colony of Italy and Britain. In 1969, a post-colonial government was formed under president Mohamed Siad Barre; major social programs in health and education were implemented, rural and urban infrastructure was developed in the course of the 1970s, significant social progress including a mass literacy program was achieved.
The early 1980s marks a major turning point.The IMF-World Bank structural adjustment program (SAP) was imposed on sub-Saharan Africa. The recurrent famines of the 1980s and 1990s are in large part the consequence of IMF-World Bank "economic medicine".
In Somalia, ten years of IMF economic medicine laid the foundations for the country's transition towards economic dislocation and social chaos. By the late 1980s, following recurrent "austerity measures" imposed by the Washington consensus, wages in the public sector had collapsed to three dollars a month.
While "external" climatic variables play a role in triggering off a famine and heightening the social impact of drought, famines in the age of globalization are man-made. They are not the consequence of a scarcity of food but of a structure of global oversupply which undermines food security and destroys national food agriculture. Tightly regulated and controlled by international agri-business, this oversupply is ultimately conducive to the stagnation of both production and consumption of essential food staples and the impoverishment of farmers throughout the world.
Moreover, in the era of globalization, the IMF-World Bank structural adjustment program bears a direct relationship to the process of famine formation because it systematically undermines all categories of economic activity, whether urban or rural, which do not directly serve the interests of the global market system."
source: Somalia: the Real Causes of Famine (excerpts), by Michel Chossudovsky
First published in 1993, Third World Resurgence and Le Monde diplomatique
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25725
THE ROOT ECONOMIC, POLITICAL AND STRUCTURAL CAUSES OF POVERTY AND HUNGER
Hunger - the worst form of violence - is a direct result of unfair global trading rules and exploitative economic practices and suicidal economic policies imposed on Africa by the IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation, blindly followed by so-called african "leaders" and governements which result in abject human poverty and hunger.
There is more than sufficient food to feed everyone in Africa and around the world. The problem lies in its inequitable distribution and in the lack of financial resources required to purchase it by the vast majority of the human population.
Thus, simply increasing food production without addressing the root economic, political and structural causes of poverty and without distributional justice will NOT resolve hunger.
As Mahatma Gandhi rightly stated:
"There is enough food in the world to satisfy everyone's needs but not everyone's greed."
There is obviously no human justice (an oxymoron) in this low-world. However, a Higher Justice awaits all those guilty of this Crime Against Africa, Humanity, Nature and God.
May God protect Africa and feed the millions starving...
Hunger is the WORST form of Violence.
With great sadness and anger,
Arya
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