Infinite Unknown

Highly recommended article.

An Observer investigation reveals how rich countries faced by a global food shortage now farm an area double the size of the UK to guarantee supplies for their citizens

A woman tends vegetables at a giant Saudi-financed farm in Ethiopia.

We turned off the main road to Awassa, talked our way past security guards and drove a mile across empty land before we found what will soon be Ethiopia’s largest greenhouse. Nestling below an escarpment of the Rift Valley, the development is far from finished, but the plastic and steel structure already stretches over 20 hectares - the size of 20 football pitches.

The farm manager shows us millions of tomatoes, peppers and other vegetables being grown in 500m rows in computer controlled conditions. Spanish engineers are building the steel structure, Dutch technology minimises water use from two bore-holes and 1,000 women pick and pack 50 tonnes of food a day. Within 24 hours, it has been driven 200 miles to Addis Ababa and flown 1,000 miles to the shops and restaurants of Dubai, Jeddah and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Ethiopia is one of the hungriest countries in the world with more than 13 million people needing food aid, but paradoxically the government is offering at least 3m hectares of its most fertile land to rich countries and some of the world’s most wealthy individuals to export food for their own populations.

The 1,000 hectares of land which contain the Awassa greenhouses are leased for 99 years to a Saudi billionaire businessman, Ethiopian-born Sheikh Mohammed al-Amoudi, one of the 50 richest men in the world. His Saudi Star company plans to spend up to $2bn acquiring and developing 500,000 hectares of land in Ethiopia in the next few years. So far, it has bought four farms and is already growing wheat, rice, vegetables and flowers for the Saudi market. It expects eventually to employ more than 10,000 people.

But Ethiopia is only one of 20 or more African countries where land is being bought or leased for intensive agriculture on an immense scale in what may be the greatest change of ownership since the colonial era.

An Observer investigation estimates that up to 50m hectares of land - an area more than double the size of the UK - has been acquired in the last few years or is in the process of being negotiated by governments and wealthy investors working with state subsidies. The data used was collected by Grain, the International Institute for Environment and Development, the International Land Coalition, ActionAid and other non-governmental groups.

The land rush, which is still accelerating, has been triggered by the worldwide food shortages which followed the sharp oil price rises in 2008, growing water shortages and the European Union’s insistence that 10% of all transport fuel must come from plant-based biofuels by 2015. Continue reading »

Tags: Abu Dhabi, Africa, biofuel, China, Congo, Corporations, Economy, Environment, Ethiopia, Farmers, farmland, Food, Food shortages, Ghana, Government, India, Kenya, Kuwait, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, Politics, Quatar, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, Society, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Water, Water shortages, Zambia, Zimbabwe

- I: Casualties of of Economic Terrorism, Surveying the Damage

- II: The Rise of the Economic Elite

- III: Exposing Our Enemy: Meet the Economic Elite

- IV: The Financial Coup d’Etat

- V: Overcoming the Divide and Conquer Strategy

- VI: How to Fight Back and Win: Common Ground Issues That Must Be Won

Tags: Banks, Bilderberg, CFR, Corporations, Council on Foreign Relations, Economy, Fed, Federal Reserve, Government, Politics, Society, Trilateral Commission, U.S., Wall Street

Surveillance guide gets Cryptome site into hot water.

The sign at a main entrance to the Microsoft corporate campus. The Redmond Microsoft campus today includes more than 750,000 m² (approx. 8 million square feet) and over 30,000 employees.

The noted government whistleblowing website Cryptome has been taken down after Microsoft saw red over its publication of a top-secret Internet surveillance guide normally shown only to law enforcement agencies.

The 22-page Global Criminal Compliance Handbook contains a reasonably detailed rundown on the information gathered by Microsoft from its various Windows Live operations, including Hotmail, Messenger, MSN Groups, and even the gaming platform, Xbox Live. The guide explains the information that is retained by Microsoft from customer activities, for how long it is saved, and how it can be accessed by police and security services in accordance with US legal requirements.

After discovering the document on the site, Microsoft is reported to have demanded its removal, citing the US Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), a request that was rejected by Cryptome editor and founder, John Young. Microsoft then persuaded domain hoster Network Solutions to pull the site, which remains offline as of the morning of 25 February (GMT).

Microsoft botnet take down will not stop spam, says researchers

Was Microsoft well advised to come down so heavily on a site that has come to be seen in civil liberties circles as an important bulwark against government secrecy? Continue reading »

Tags: Civil liberties, Computer, Corporations, Cryptome, Global News, Government, Internet, Law, Law enforcement, Microsoft, Privacy, Society, Surveillance, Technology, U.S.

The debate on genetically modified (GM) brinjal variety continues to generate heat. Former managing director of Monsanto India, Tiruvadi Jagadisan, is the latest to join the critics of Bt brinjal, perhaps the first industry insider to do so.

Jagadisan, who worked with Monsanto for nearly two decades, including eight years as the managing director of India operations, spoke against the new variety during the public consultation held in Bangalore on Saturday.

On Monday, he elaborated by saying the company “used to fake scientific data” submitted to government regulatory agencies to get commercial approvals for its products in India.

The former Monsanto boss said government regulatory agencies with which the company used to deal with in the 1980s simply depended on data supplied by the company while giving approvals to herbicides.

“The Central Insecticide Board was supposed to give these approvals based on the location and crop-specific data from India. But it simply accepted foreign data supplied by Monsanto. They did not even have a test tube to validate the data and, at times, the data itself was faked,” Jagadisan said. Continue reading »

Tags: Corporations, Environment, Food, Genetically Modified Organisms, Global News, GMO, Government, Herbicides, India, insecticide, Monsanto, Politics, Science

BAE Systems (formerly British Aerospace) is Europe’s largest arms exporter

Where is the outrage?

“BAE’s settlement means that it has not been banned from bidding for government contracts in the US and UK.”

Pay $400m and everything is OK? Business as usual?

Maybe BAE has now bought everybody with prostitutes, sports cars etc.:

- BAE System’s Dirty Dealings (CorpWatch)

- BAE accused of arms deal slush fund (Guardian)

Or BAE is now too important for the New World Order:

- Big Brother: UK Police Plan to Use Military-Style Spy Drones (Guardian)

BAE Systems has agreed to pay a $400m (£257m) fine after admitting to “defrauding the US” over the sale of fighter planes to Saudi Arabia and Eastern Europe.

The sanction came as the UK ended its six-year investigation of the company over allegations of bribery, and dropped charges of conspiracy to corrupt brought last week against an Austrian count accused of being a BAE agent.

The settlement will be seen as a victory for the US authorities, but an embarrassing climbdown for the UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) – which in 2006 was forced by the Government to drop its investigation into BAE in Saudi Arabia.

BAE is charged with conspiracy to “knowingly and wilfully impede” the authorities by making certain false, inaccurate and incomplete statements in relation to compliance with anti-corruption standards, thereby “defrauding the US”.

In a court filing, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) claims that BAE transferred more than £10m and $9m to Swiss bank accounts controlled by an agent with a high probability that a payment would go to a Saudi Arabian official in a position of influence.

It also claims that in the Czech Republic and Hungary, BAE paid more than £19m to an agent to secure leases of Gripen fighter jets, despite a high probability that part of the payments “would be used in the tender process to favour” the company.

The document also says that BAE “took steps to conceal its relationships [with intermediaries] and undisclosed payments to them” by using offshore shell vehicles.

The DoJ estimates that BAE gained more than $200m from various false statements to the US government from 2000 onwards.

Yesterday, Dick Olver, BAE’s chairman, sought to draw a line under the long-running investigation, indicating the company would plead guilty and apologise for past shortcomings. “None of these counts relate to corruption, bribery or conspiracy to corrupt,” he added.

BAE’s settlement means that it has not been banned from bidding for government contracts in the US and UK.

Continue reading »

Tags: BAE Systems, Corporations, Corruption, Economy, Fraud, Global News, Politics

You can trust corporations, because they have only one goal: PROFIT!

Those ’secret’, possibly highly toxic chemicals pose a great threat to public health.

(NaturalNews) The 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) requires that manufacturers of products containing potentially toxic chemicals disclose their ingredients to the federal government, however a loophole in the requirement allows manufacturers to arbitrarily withhold information that they deem sensitive to their business. As a result, over 17,000 product chemicals remain secret not only from the public but from government officials.

Each year, over 700 new chemicals are introduced by manufacturers, many of which do not get disclosed either to the public or to government agencies. About 95 percent of new chemical notices submitted to the government request some kind of secrecy. Critics allege that manufacturers are exploiting the original intent of TSCA, abusing it to hide sensitive information about ingredients that are likely toxic and may otherwise get banned.

For the first time in many years, Congress is addressing the issue of disclosure abuse with promises of reforming the regulatory provisions. Consumer and environmental groups, in conjunction with many government officials, are demanding that all ingredient information be made public with no exceptions.

Mike Walls, vice president of the American Chemistry Council, argues otherwise, insisting that public disclosure would reveal confidential information that could benefit competitors and hurt business. He believes that even the names and addresses of manufacturers should not have to be made public because competitors may trace the information and somehow figure out secret recipes.

According to EPA records, more than half of the 65 “substantial risk” reports submitted to agency last March involved secret chemicals. Of these, 151 of them are produced in quantities over one million tons a year and ten of them are used primarily in children’s products. Continue reading »

Tags: Chemicals, Corporations, EPA, Government, Health, Politics, toxic, toxicity, U.S.

Bush and Blair knew that the war was illegal and that Iraq did not have any WMD’s!

- Tony Blair Was Warned By All 27 Senior Government Lawyers That Iraq War Was Illegal

- Dutch Inquiry: Iraq War Was Illegal, Had ‘No Basis In International Law’

- US and UK knew that Iraq Didn’t Have WMDs

- Tony Blair ‘knew Iraq did not have WMD before war started’

In case you want to know one reason why the ‘real terrorists’ invaded Afghanistan, then read this:

- Former UK ambassador: CIA sent people to Uzbekistan for extreme torture, to be ‘raped with broken bottles,’ ‘boiled alive’ and ‘having their children tortured in front of them’

Almost the entire US government is bought and paid for.

Here is a short video of a speech given by a military soldier explaining the simple truth as to why we are actually in Iraq.

Why are we at war?

War is profitable, that’s way.

It matters not how many die, as long as the warmongers make a profit on it.

Inquiring minds are noting increasing resentment against US militarism in places some might least expect. Please consider Thousands protest in Tokyo against U.S. military presence in Japan

Thousands of protesters from across Japan marched today in Tokyo to protest against U.S. military presence on Okinawa, while a Cabinet minister said she would fight to get rid of a marine base Washington considers crucial.

Some 47,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Japan, with more than half on the southern island of Okinawa. Residents have complained for years about noise, pollution and crime around the bases.

Japan and the U.S. signed a pact in 2006 that called for the realignment of American troops in the country and for a Marine base on the island to be moved to a less populated area.

But the new Tokyo government is re-examining the deal, caught between public opposition to American troops and its crucial military alliance with Washington.

On Saturday, labor unionists, pacifists, environmentalists and students marched through central Tokyo, yelling slogans and calling for an end to the U.S. troop presence.

They gathered for a rally at a park - under a banner that read ‘Change! Japan-U.S. Relations’ - for speeches by civil leaders and politicians. Continue reading »

Tags: Bush administration, Corporations, Global News, Government, Iraq, Military, military-industrial complex, Obama administration, Politics, Society, Terrorism, U.S., War

See also: Roberts Delivers ‘Jolt’ in Overturning Campaign-Finance Rulings (Bloomberg):

“The 5-4 ruling freed corporations, labor unions and advocacy groups to use general treasury funds to buy advertisements that explicitly try to sway voters. The majority said restrictions on corporate spending violated the Constitution’s free-speech guarantee.”

This has nothing to do with constitutional rights, because the ruling that a corporation is legally a ‘person’ was undermining the constitution earlier and was dead wrong.

No political campaign should be funded by corporations, because of manipulation of public opinion.

(In another case (1980 Diamond v. Chakrabarty) those idiot judges ruled that it is OK to patent life forms, were before life forms were considered a part of nature and were not patentable. This ruling lead to corporations patenting the genes of everything they can think of that could later on bring them profit.)

And look who is shouting the loudest:

Obama slams ‘green light to a new stampede of special interest money’ (?)

“Washington lobbyists haven’t funded my campaign, they won’t run my White House, and they will not drown out the voices of working Americans when I am president.”
- Barack Obama

Really?:

- Health Care Statements In Congress Were Ghostwritten By Lobbyists Working For Genentech

- The US Government: Bought and Paid For

- Monsanto lobbyists to be placed in charge of food safety by Obama

- Obama’s Money Cartel

Liar in Chief:

- Barack Obama Lies 7 Times In Under 2 Minutes!!!!!

- Barack Obama’s Health Care Lies And Reversals

The truth is:

- The No.1 Trend Forecaster Gerald Celente: Financial Mafia Controlling US and Wall Street

- George Carlin: The American Dream

Obama slams ‘green light to a new stampede of special interest money’

WASHINGTON - In a landmark ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday struck down laws that banned corporations from using their own money to support or oppose candidates for public office.

By 5-4 vote, the court overturned federal laws, in effect for decades, that prevented corporations from using their profits to buy political campaign ads. The decision, which almost certainly will also allow labor unions to participate more freely in campaigns, threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states.

It leaves in place a ban prohibiting corporations and unions from directly contributing funds to candidates for any use.

In a statement, President Barack Obama said that the decision gives ‘a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics.’ The president pledged to work with Congress to ‘develop a forceful response’ to the court’s ruling. Continue reading »

Tags: Barack Obama, Corporations, Global News, Law, Lobbyists, Obama administration, Politics, Supreme Court

How companies are making the era of the temp more than temporary

(BusinessWeek) — On a recent Tuesday morning, single mom Tammy DePew Smith woke up in her tidy Florida townhouse in time to shuttle her oldest daughter, a high school freshman, to the 6:11 a.m. bus. At 6:40 she was at the desk in her bedroom, starting her first shift of the day with LiveOps, a Santa Clara (Calif.) provider of call-center workers for everyone from Eastman Kodak and Pizza Hut to infomercial behemoth Tristar Products. She’s paid by the minute-25 cents-but only for the time she’s actually on the phone with customers.

By 7:40, Smith had grossed $15. But there wasn’t much time to reflect on her early morning productivity; the next child had to be roused from bed, fed, and put onto the school bus. Somehow she managed to squeeze three more shifts into her day, pausing only to homeschool her 7-year-old son, make dinner, and do the bedtime routine. “I tell my kids, unless somebody is bleeding or dying, don’t mess with me.”

As an independent agent, Smith has no health insurance, no retirement benefits, no sick days, no vacation, no severance, and no access to unemployment insurance. But in recession-ravaged Ormond Beach, she’s considered lucky. She has had more or less steady work since she signed on with LiveOps in October 2006. “LiveOps was a lifesaver for me,” she says.

You know American workers are in bad shape when a low-paying, no-benefits job is considered a sweet deal. Their situation isn’t likely to improve soon; some economists predict it will be years, not months, before employees regain any semblance of bargaining power. That’s because this recession’s unusual ferocity has accelerated trends-including offshoring, automation, the decline of labor unions’ influence, new management techniques, and regulatory changes-that already had been eroding workers’ economic standing.

The forecast for the next five to 10 years: more of the same, with paltry pay gains, worsening working conditions, and little job security. Right on up to the C-suite, more jobs will be freelance and temporary, and even seemingly permanent positions will be at greater risk. “When I hear people talk about temp vs. permanent jobs, I laugh,” says Barry Asin, chief analyst at the Los Altos (Calif.) labor-analysis firm Staffing Industry Analysts. “The idea that any job is permanent has been well proven not to be true.” As Kelly Services CEO Carl Camden puts it: “We’re all temps now.” Continue reading »

Tags: Corporations, Economy, U.S., Unemployment

On Thursday I had posted Bloomberg’s summary on the monthly investment outlook by PIMCO’s Bill Gross:

- PIMCO’s Bill Gross warns on risks of US deficit: ‘Our government doesn’t work anymore, or perhaps more accurately, when it does, it works for special interests and not the American people.’

But that summary missed a lot of important points.

Here is just one excerpt as a starter:

“Here’s the problem that the U.S. Fed’s “exit” poses in simple English: Our fiscal 2009 deficit totaled nearly 12% of GDP and required over $1.5 trillion of new debt to finance it. The Chinese bought a little ($100 billion) of that, other sovereign wealth funds bought some more, but as shown in Chart 2, foreign investors as a group bought only 20% of the total - perhaps $300 billion or so. The balance over the past 12 months was substantially purchased by the Federal Reserve. …”

If that doesn’t bother you, then I do not know what will. The Federal Reserve is creating money out of thin air like there is no tomorrow and the bad news is that that is exactly what the elite that controls the US government and the Federal Reserve has planned for America:

In the next two years (or just a little more than that) we will see hyperinflation in the US, people in America will become desperately poor and the Greatest Depression will turn the US into a Third World country.

(In 2009 Bill Gross was named the world’s 32nd most powerful man by Forbes.)

Now here is the full article by Bill Gross, ‘The King of Bonds’ (Must-Read!):

Let’s Get Fisical

Quixotic journeys often make for great literature, but by definition are rarely productive. I am, after all, referring to windmills here - not their 21st century creation, but their 17th century chasing. Futility, not productivity, was the ultimate fate of Cervantes’ man from La Mancha. So it is with hesitation, although quixotic obsession, that I plunge headlong into a discussion of American politics, healthcare legislation, resultant budget deficits and - finally - their potential effect on financial markets. There will be windmills aplenty in the next few pages and not much good can come of these opinions or my tilting in their direction. Still, I mount my steed, lance in hand, and ride forward.

Question: What has become of the American nation? Conceived with the vision of liberty and justice for all, we have descended in the clutches of corporate and other special interests to a second world state defined by K Street instead of Independence Square. Our government doesn’t work anymore, or perhaps more accurately, when it does, it works for special interests and not the American people. Washington consistently stoops to legislate 10,000-page perversions of healthcare, regulatory reform, defense, and budgetary mandates overflowing with earmarks that serve a monied minority as opposed to an all-too-silent majority. You don’t have to be Don Quixote to believe that legislators - and Presidents - often do not work for the benefit of their constituents: A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll reported that over 65% of Americans trust their government to do the right thing “only some of the time” and a stunning 19% said “never.” What most politicians apparently are working for is to perpetuate their power - first via district gerrymandering, and then second by around-the-clock campaigning financed by special interest groups. If, by chance, they’re ever voted out of office, they have a home just down the street - at K Street - with six-figure incomes as a starting wage.

What amazes me most of all is that politicians can be bought so cheaply. Public records show that combined labor, insurance, big pharma and related corporate interests spent just under $500 million last year on healthcare lobbying (not much of which went to politicians) for what is likely to be a $50-100 billion annual return. The fact is that American citizens have never been as divorced from their representatives - and if that description fits the Democratic Congress now in control - then it applies to Republicans as well - past and present. So you watch Fox, or is it MSNBC? O’Reilly or Olbermann? It doesn’t matter. You’re just being conned into rooting for a team that basically runs the same plays called by lookalike coaches on different sidelines. A “ballot box” pox on all their houses - Senators, Representatives and Presidents alike. There has been no change, there will be no change, until we the American people decide to publicly finance all national and local elections and ban the writing of even a $1 check for our favorite candidates. Undemocratic? Hardly. Get on the internet, use Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter to campaign for your choice. That’s the new democracy. When special interests, even singular citizens write a check, it represents a perversion of democracy not the exercise of the First Amendment. Any chance that any of this will happen? Not one ghost of a chance. Forward Don Quixote, the windmills are in sight.

Distressed as I am about the state of American democracy, a rational money manager cannot afford to get mad or “just get even” when it comes to investing clients’ money. Still, like pilots politely advertise at the end of most flights, “We know you have a choice of airlines and we thank you for flying ‘United’.” Global investment managers likewise have a choice of sovereign credits and risk assets where stable inflation and fiscal conservatism are available. If 2008 was the year of financial crisis and 2009 the year of healing via monetary and fiscal stimulus packages, then 2010 appears likely to be the year of “exit strategies,” during which investors should consider economic fundamentals and asset markets that will soon be priced in a world less dominated by the government sector. If, in 2009, PIMCO recommended shaking hands with the government, we now ponder “which” government, and caution that the days of carefree check writing leading to debt issuance without limit or interest rate consequences may be numbered for all countries.

Continue reading »

Tags: Bank of England, Barack Obama, Bill Gross, Bonds, Central Bank, China, Congress, Corporations, Debt, Depression, Economy, Fed, Federal Reserve, Freedom, G7, GDP, Global News, Government, Great Depression, Healthcare, Keynesianism, Obama administration, PIMCO, Politics, Quantitative Easing, Society, Stock Market, U.K., U.S.