The 21st-century African land grab by rich countries facing global food and water shortages

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

the-21st-century-african-land-grab-by-rich-countries-faced-by-global-food-and-water-shortages
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.

Read moreThe 21st-century African land grab by rich countries facing global food and water shortages

John Williams of Shadowstats: Prepare For The Hyperinflationary Great Depression

“The US Has No Way of Avoiding a Financial Armageddon,” Says John Williams.

us-hyperinflationary-great-depression

John Williams, who runs the popular counter government data manipulation site Shadowstats, has thrown down the gauntlet to deflationists, and in an extensive report concludes that the probability of a hyperinflationary episode in America over the next year has reached critical levels. While the debate between deflationists and (hyper)inflationists has been a long and painful one, numerous events set off in motion by the Bernanke Fed (as a direct legacy of the Greenspan multi-decade period of cheap and boundless credit) may have well cast America as the unwilling protagonist in the sequel of the failed monetary policy economic experiment better known as Zimbabwe.

Williams does not mince his words:

The U.S. economic and systemic solvency crises of the last two years are just precursors to a Great Collapse: a hyperinflationary great depression. Such will reflect a complete collapse in the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar, a collapse in the normal stream of U.S. commercial and economic activity, a collapse in the U.S. financial system as we know it, and a likely realignment of the U.S. political environment. The current U.S. financial markets, financial system and economy remain highly unstable and vulnerable to unexpected shocks. The Federal Reserve is dedicated to preventing deflation, to debasing the U.S. dollar. The results of those efforts are being seen in tentative selling pressures against the U.S. currency and in the rallying price of gold.

And even as Bernanke continues existing in a factless vacuum where he sees no asset bubbles, Williams takes aim at the one party almost exclusively responsible for the economic carnage that will soon transpire:

The crises have been generated out of and are centered on the United States financial system, triggered by the collapse of debt excesses actively encouraged by the Greenspan Federal Reserve. Recognizing that the U.S. economy was sagging under the weight of structural changes created by government trade, regulatory and social policies — policies that limited real consumer income growth — Mr. Greenspan played along with the political and banking systems. He made policy decisions to steal economic activity from the future, fueling economic growth of the last decade largely through debt expansion.

The Greenspan Fed pushed for ever-greater systemic leverage, including the happy acceptance of new financial products, which included instruments of mis-packaged lending risks, designed for consumption by global entities that openly did not understand the nature of the risks being taken. Complicit in this broad malfeasance was the U.S. government, including both major political parties in successive Administrations and Congresses.
As with consumers, the federal government could not make ends meet while appeasing that portion of the electorate that could be kept docile by ever-expanding government programs and increasing government spending. The solution was ever-expanding federal debt and deficits.

Purportedly, it was Arthur Burns, Fed Chairman under Richard Nixon, who first offered the advice that helped to guide Alan Greenspan and a number of Administrations. The gist of the wisdom imparted was that if you ran into problems, you could ignore the budget deficit and the dollar. Ignoring them did not matter, because doing so would not cost you any votes.
Back in 2005, I raised the issue of a then-inevitable U.S. hyperinflation with an advisor to both the Bush Administration and Fed Chairman Greenspan. I was told simply that “It’s too far into the future to worry about.”

Indeed, pushing the big problems into the future appears to have been the working strategy for both the Fed and recent Administrations. Yet, the U.S. dollar and the budget deficit do matter, and the future is at hand. The day of ultimate financial reckoning has arrived, and it is playing out.

Looking at the events over the past year demonstrates that Williams is not just being a drama queen.

Effective financial impairments and at least partial nationalizations or orchestrated bailouts/takeovers resulted for institutions such as Bear Stearns, Citigroup, Washington Mutual, AIG, General Motors, Chrysler, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, along with a number of further troubled financial institutions. The Fed moved to provide whatever systemic liquidity would be needed, while the federal government moved to finance corporate bailouts and to introduce significant stimulus spending.

Curiously, though, the Fed and the Treasury let Lehman Brothers fail outright, which triggered a foreseeable run on the system and markedly intensified the systemic solvency crisis in September 2008. Whether someone was trying to play political games, with the public and Congress increasingly raising questions of moral hazard issues, or whether the U.S. financial wizards missed what would happen or simply moved to bring the crisis to a head, remains to be seen.

More on the impending timing of the complete economic collapse of the US financial system:

Read moreJohn Williams of Shadowstats: Prepare For The Hyperinflationary Great Depression

US: Hyperinflation Nation

Hyperinflation Nation starring Peter Schiff, Ron Paul, Jim Rogers, Marc Faber, Tom Woods, Gerald Celente, and others.

Prepare now before the US dollar is worthless.

Part 1 :

Read moreUS: Hyperinflation Nation

Zimbabwe ditches the U.S. dollar, chooses rand as reference currency

HARARE, March 20 (Xinhua) — The Zimbabwean government has chosen the rand as the country’s reference currency but will not randify the economy, local media said.

Speaking at the launch of the Short-Term Economic Recovery Program (STERP) on Thursday, Finance Minister Tendai Biti said the government had chosen the rand because South Africa was Zimbabwe’s biggest trading partner and the most competitive country for assessing prices and wages.

“Given the United States dollar price structure we are starting with, and the impossibility of restoring competitiveness through currency devaluation when we are using foreign currencies, it is important that we link ourselves to a currency that is more proximate to us,” said the minister.

Read moreZimbabwe ditches the U.S. dollar, chooses rand as reference currency

The dangers of printing money: four lessons from history

The Bank of England voted today to begin quantitative easing –  printing money to you and me – in a last ditch attempt to save the UK from the twin threats of depression and deflation.

It is a decision that is fraught with risks.

The hope is that the money pumped into the economy will encourage banks to become more relaxed about lending to individuals and businesses.

Flush with extra cash we will all rush out to spend it, kickstarting the economy and dragging it out of recession. Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, will get a well deserved knighthood, and the rest of us will all breathe a sigh of relief and carry on as before, a little poorer, a little wiser, but generally OK.

But, none of the above is certain.

Banks might prefer to sit on the cash resulting in continued gridlock in the borrowing market. Impact: a big fat zero.

If too much money is pumped into the economy inflation or even hyper-inflation becomes a real threat. Impact: an unwelcome return to the 1970s.

Read moreThe dangers of printing money: four lessons from history

Champagne, lobster and caviar: Robert Mugabe plans binge in land of hunger


It is the 85th birthday of President Mugabe this month and the zealots of his Zanu (PF) party are determined that it should be an occasion that their great leader will never forget.

In recent days they have been out soliciting “donations” from corporate Zimbabwe and have drawn up a wish list that is scarcely credible in a land where seven million citizens survive on international food aid, 94 per cent are jobless and cholera rampages through a population debilitated by hunger.

The list includes 2,000 bottles of champagne (Moët & Chandon or ’61 Bollinger preferred); 8,000 lobsters; 100kg of prawns; 4,000 portions of caviar; 8,000 boxes of Ferrero Rocher chocolates; 3,000 ducks; and much else besides. A postscript adds: “No mealie meal” – the ground corn staple on which the vast majority of Zimbabweans survived until the country’s collapse rendered even that a luxury.

Read moreChampagne, lobster and caviar: Robert Mugabe plans binge in land of hunger

Zimbabwe dollar loses 12 zeroes

Zimbabwe’s central bank on Monday cut 12 zeroes off the country’s currency, the third such revaluation in 30 months.

Presenting his 2009 monetary policy statement, Gideon Gono, the reserve bank governor, also announced a huge devaluation of the official exchange rate from Z$12.3 billion to the US dollar to Z$20,000bn.

In the newly revalued currency – with the 12 zeroes lopped off – the exchange rate will be Z$20 to the US dollar. But although the official devaluation is massive it still leaves the exchange rate hugely overvalued. On Monday, one supermarket was selling bread for 80 US cents a loaf or Z$250,000bn in local currency – an implicit exchange rate of Z$312,500bn.

Mr Gono’s 200-page statement was laced with claims that his monetary policies, which have delivered inflation estimated by some economists at trillions of per cent, were now a model for central banks around the world to fight recession. Seemingly unfazed by demands from the opposition Movement for Democratic Change that he be fired when it joins Zimbabwe’s “inclusive” government next week, the Governor’s demeanour suggests he expects to complete his second five-year term, which started only two months ago.

Read moreZimbabwe dollar loses 12 zeroes

Zimbabwe cholera epidemic could top 60,000 – Red Cross


GENEVA, Jan 23 (Reuters) – Zimbabwe’s cholera epidemic is “far from under control” and could exceed 60,000 cases over the next week, the Red Cross warned on Friday.

Torrential rains are expected to spark major flooding and exacerbate the water-borne outbreak that has killed 2,773 people among 50,000 infected since August, the United Nations said.

Related articles:
Zimbabwe slaughters elephants for army (Daily Nation)
Desperate Children Flee Zimbabwe, for Lives Just as Desolate (New York Times)
South Africa: Another Meeting Set on Zimbabwe Crisis
(New York Times)

“The outbreak in Zimbabwe is only increasing in scale, it’s claiming more lives,” Dr. Tammam Aloudat, senior health officer at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, told journalists in Geneva.

The World Health Organisation (WHO), a U.N. agency, warned in December that up to 60,000 people could be infected if the country’s worst cholera epidemic spiralled out of control.

“It is difficult to predict where the outbreak will peak. It might even go beyond that nightmare scenario,” Aloudat said.

Read moreZimbabwe cholera epidemic could top 60,000 – Red Cross

Global Economic Crisis Accelerating

Obama administration considers launch of ‘bad bank’ (Telegraph)

US Initial Jobless Claims Match Highest Since ’82 (Bloomberg)

Barack Obama inauguration: this Emperor has no clothes, it will all end in tears (Telegraph)

Despite billions, banks still teeter on the brink (MSNBC)

Microsoft to shed 5,000 jobs (Financial Times)

Intel to Cut at Least 5000 Jobs (New York Times)

GM Gets $5.4 Billion Loan Installment From Federal Government (CNNMoney)

US jobless claims surge, housing start tumble (Forbes)

Housing Starts, Permits in US Slump to Record Low (Bloomberg)

Banks Foreclose on Builders With Perfect Records (New York Times)

Jim Rogers: Now it’s time to emigrate, says investment guru (Independent)

Saudi prince’s firm loses $8.3B in 4Q (AP)

Investors flee after brutal losses at global markets (Emirates Business)

Indians Flee Dubai as Dreams Crash – Fall out of Economic Crisis (Daijiworld):
It’s the great escape by Indians who’ve hit the dead-end in Dubai.

China growth slows, Bank of Japan sees deflation (Forbes):
(Reuters) – China’s economy slowed sharply in the fourth quarter and Japan’s central bank on Thursday predicted two years of deflation as Asia’s largest economies buckle under the strain of the financial crisis.

Roubini Sees China Recession Despite ‘Massaged’ GDP (Bloomberg)

Asian economic woe grows as China slows and Japanese exports plunge (Telegraph):
China’s economy may have ground to a halt entirely between the third and fourth quarters of last year and Japanese exports plunged 35pc in December, underlining the scale of the slowdown in Asia.

ZIMBABWE: Inflation at 6.5 quindecillion novemdecillion percent (IRIN)

Sony forecasts $2.9bn operating loss (Financial Times)

Hedge funds’ $400bn withdrawals hit (Financial Times)

Google income drops 68% on one-time charges (IHT)

Is Britain facing bankruptcy? (Guardian)

Manufacturing outlook plummets (Financial Times)

Car production plummets as pressure for industry bail-out grows (Telegraph)

London’s Evening Standard sold to ex-KGB agent (Reuters)

AIG starts $20bn auction of Asian unit (Financial Times):
AIG, the stricken insurance giant, on Wednesday kicked off the sale of its Asian life assurance unit – one of its most prized assets – in the hope of raising up to $20bn to help repay the $60bn US government loan that is keeping the group alive.

UBS to Cut Securities Jobs, Close More Debt Units (Bloomberg)

Japanese Housewives Desperate After Currency Scheme Collapses (Bloomberg)

New age of rebellion and riot stalks Europe (Times Online)

Increase in burglaries shows effect of recession (Guardian)

Chinese media issues stinging attack on Barack Obama and George W Bush (Telegraph)

Barclays may lose control to Gulf investors (Telegraph)

Cars to be crushed in insurance crackdown (Scotsman)

Investors say jailed pilot swiped money for years (Washington Post)

Capital One Reports $1.42 Billion Loss on Charges (Bloomberg)

Nokia reports sharp fall in profits (Financial Times)

Zimbabwe to print first $100 trillion note

A boy examines the new $50 billion dollar note issued by Zimbabwe's central bank on January 13, 2009.
A boy examines the new $50 billion dollar note issued by Zimbabwe’s central bank on January 13, 2009.

HARARE, Zimbabwe (CNN) — Zimbabwe’s central bank says it will soon introduce a 100 trillion dollar note as the once prosperous country battles to keep pace with hyperinflation that has caused many to abandon the country’s currency.

The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe said the new notes that includes 50 trillion, 20 trillion and 10 trillion would be released for the “convenience of the public,” according to statement released Thursday.

“In a move meant to ensure that the public has access to their money from banks, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has introduced a new family of bank notes which will gradually come into circulation, starting with the 10 trillion Zimbabwe dollar,” the bank said in its announcement.

The new 100 trillion dollar bill would be worth about $300 in U.S. currency. A loaf of bread in Zimbabwe now costs about 300 billion Zimbabwean dollars — and like most commodities, the price increases every day.

Read moreZimbabwe to print first $100 trillion note

Global Economic Crisis

Economy could lose 2M jobs in ’09 – report (CNN Money)

China’s Exports Decline by Most in Decade on Global Recession (Bloomberg)

Royal Bank of Scotland May Face LyondellBasell Losses (Bloomberg):
Jan. 12 (Bloomberg) — Royal Bank of Scotland Plc is the biggest lender to bankrupt chemical maker Lyondell Chemical Co. and may face losses on its $3.47 billion of loans to the U.S. chemicals company.

Royal Bank of Scotland Selling Bank of China Stake (Bloomberg)

Saab, Volvo Must Be ‘Carved Out’ To Win Aid-Swedish Official (CNN Money)

Commercial property rents collapse in London hedge fund areas (Independent):
Rents for plush offices in Mayfair and St James’s plunged almost 30 per cent last year, hammered by the declining fortunes of many of their hedge funds tenants.

Stephen King: You can’t buy confidence when the economy is in a state of collapse (Independent): Stephen King is managing director of economics at HSBC

German bond sale’s fate signals trouble ahead (Financial Times):
A German sovereign bond auction failed (!!!) on Wednesday as investors shunned one of the most liquid and safe assets in the world in a warning for governments seeking to raise record amounts of debt to stimulate slowing economies.

Bernard Madoff Will Remain Free on Bail, Judge Rules (Bloomberg)

U.K. Slumps Most Since 1989 as Home Sales Drop, Surveys Show (Bloomberg)

Zimbabwe introduces $50 billion note (CNN):
HARARE, Zimbabwe (CNN) — Zimbabwe’s central bank will introduce a $50 billion note — enough to buy just two loaves of bread — as a way of fighting cash shortages amid spiraling inflation.

Taxpayer will own nearly half of super-bank (Independent):
Taxpayers are set to own almost half of the “super-bank” created from Lloyds TSB’s rescue takeover of HBOS, the two banks confirmed today

Job losses accelerating to levels not seen since World War II (Memphis Commercial Appeal):
“There is no indication that the job situation would stabilize anytime soon,” said Sung Won Sohn, economist at the Martin Smith School of Business at California State University.
“This could turn out to be one of the worst economic setbacks since the Great Depression,” he said.

Peter Schiff: US Dollar is on the verge of collapse; This is hyperinflation; This is Zimbabwe (12/17/2008)

Peter Schiff: “I am a 100% convinced that anybody who has their wealth in US Dollars will be just as broke as the people who had their money with Madoff.”

(All 6 parts are a must-see.)

Part 1 of 6

Source: YouTube

Read morePeter Schiff: US Dollar is on the verge of collapse; This is hyperinflation; This is Zimbabwe (12/17/2008)

Zimbabwe: Dead people are better off

Johannesburg – “Dead people are better off. They don’t need water or sadza (maize porridge). They’re just lying there nicely in their graves.”

Sitting on the stone floor of her bare home in Harare, a Zimbabwean woman poignantly expresses the desperation of millions of Zimbabweans stalked by starvation and disease.

Dinner for this woman, whose name is not given in the 15-minute film on Zimbabwe’s humanitarian crisis screened by Solidarity Peace Trust non-governmental organisation in Johannesburg on Tuesday, is a sachet of juice.

In another scene, a mother holds aloft a wailing baby, its eyes swollen shut, the skin peeling off its stubby legs. The baby is severely malnourished.

The images in the film entitled Death of a Nation, which record the slow strangulation of a population by a government hell-bent on retaining power, were taken between September and November this year.

They show a failed state where women in rural areas pick through withered trees for berries to keep their families alive because they can no longer afford a bag of maize meal.

And families telling of how they spent the day holding up a drip in an overcrowded clinic for a relative infected with cholera only to watch them die for lack of medication.

Over half Zimbabwe’s population of 12 million cannot adequately feed itself, stratospheric inflation means a tub of margarine costs US$9.65 and hundreds are dying of cholera, an easily preventable disease.

Read moreZimbabwe: Dead people are better off

Zimbabwe: Civilisation in reverse

Zimbabwe’s tragedy defies the world to look away

The townships of suburban Harare once boasted water and sewage systems that were the envy of Africa. They are now as broken as Zimbabwe itself. Raw sewage spills from manhole covers and is pumped into the city’s main reservoir. Thousands depend on the generosity of “water samaritans” lucky enough to have their own boreholes. Where even the poorest had taps and toilets of their own, people are queueing up at hand pumps, one engineer laments. “Civilisation has gone in reverse.”

People are also dying. A cholera outbreak that has killed more than 500 people could infect 60,000 by March, according to Oxfam. The outbreak is spreading four times faster than usual for want of transport to take victims to hospital, and basic medicines for those who get there. To contain the epidemic the Health Minister has advised Zimbabweans to stop shaking hands, but it has already spread to South Africa.

In Zimbabwe’s rural hinterland five million people will soon need food aid that the World Food Programme cannot afford to distribute. The Government is powerless to count the number dying of hunger, much less hand out food itself. But aid workers have seen children foraging in rubbish dumps alongside wild animals, and in Matabeleland one story encapsulates the despair of a nation – the story of a woman who, unable to feed her children, fed them and herself a fruit that she knew was poisonous. They were buried together.

Such are the tragedies that lend meaning to Zimbabwe’s statistics; to its 90 per cent unemployment, its 230 million per cent inflation and its average life expectancy of barely 40 years. In 1990, Zimbabweans could expect to live to 63.

Read moreZimbabwe: Civilisation in reverse

Mob runs riot as Zimbabwe runs out of water

Children go to fetch water in Harare
The Zimbabwe National Water Authority turned off the pumps in the capital after it ran out of chemicals needed to to purify supplies (Desmond Kwande/AFP/Getty Images)

Water supplies to residents in Harare were cut by the authorities yesterday as Zimbabwe’s cholera epidemic tightened its grip and the city witnessed its worst unrest for a decade.

The Zimbabwe National Water Authority turned off the pumps in the capital after it ran out of purifying chemicals. With cholera cases soaring above 11,000 across the country, and an anthrax outbreak ravaging the the countryside, David Parirenyatwa, the Health Minister, urged Zimbabweans to stop shaking hands to avoid spreading disease.

Companies and government offices, especially those in high-rise buildings, were sending workers home by midday as lavatories became blocked. “My office stinks and the toilet is a disgusting site,” said Mary Sakupwene, a secretary. “I won’t go back until the water’s on again.”

Read moreMob runs riot as Zimbabwe runs out of water

CNN’s Glenn Beck and Peter Schiff: Inflation Nation and Martial Law


Added: Oct. 13, 2008

Source: YouTube

Life in Zimbabwe: Wait for useless money


At a bank in Harare, Zimbabwe, this week, the police directed customers trying to withdraw their nearly worthless savings. (Associated Press)

HARARE, Zimbabwe: Long before the rooster in their dirt yard crowed, Rose Moyo and her husband rolled out of bed. “It is time to get up,” intoned the robotic voice of her cellphone. Its glowing face displayed the time: 2:20 a.m.

They crept past their children sleeping on the floor of the one-room house – Cinderella, 9, and Chrissie, 10 – and took their daily moonlit stroll to the bank. The guard on the graveyard shift gave them a number. They were the 29th to arrive, all hoping for a chance to withdraw the maximum amount of Zimbabwean currency the government allowed last month – the equivalent of just a dollar or two.

Zimbabwe is in the grip of one of the great hyperinflations in world history. The people of this once proud capital have been plunged into a Darwinian struggle to get by. Many have been reduced to peddlers and paupers, hawkers and black-market hustlers, eating just a meal or two a day, their hollowed cheeks a testament to their hunger.

Read moreLife in Zimbabwe: Wait for useless money

Half of Zimbabwe dependent on aid, says UN humanitarian chief

UN calls for increased farming production to prevent an extra 2 million people becoming reliant on food and medical aid

Almost half the population of Zimbabwe could soon be dependent on food and medical aid, the UN’s humanitarian chief said today.

John Holmes, the UN’s under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs, said that around 3 million people were already reliant on aid, and that figure could rise to more than 5 million.

He said it was a critical time because preparations needed to be made now for next year’s harvest to avoid millions more people becoming reliant on aid. The main growing season in Zimbabwe lasts from now until March.

Read moreHalf of Zimbabwe dependent on aid, says UN humanitarian chief

South Africa: 500,000 people die of HIV/AIDS each year now…

A friend who had been in military intelligence many years ago told me that he heard the following on the news yesterday:

According to the IEC (Independent Electoral Commission), 1 million voters “disappeared” from the voters rolls in the period 2004-2006.

Then he saw a news item about new statistics released from Stats SA. (NB: Stats SA is also not shy to hide and downplay figures to some degree – so their figures tend to be very conservative). According to Stats SA 40,000 people between the ages 25-49 die in South Africa per month, MOSTLY FROM HIV/AIDS AND RELATED DISEASES.

So, a quick calculation shows that that means close to 480,000 people die each year in South Africa from AIDS related diseases.

Read moreSouth Africa: 500,000 people die of HIV/AIDS each year now…

Jim Rogers Predicts Bigger Financial Shocks

VANCOUVER, B.C. – The U.S. financial crisis has cut so deep – and the government has taken on so much debt in misguided attempts to bail out such companies as Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) – that even larger financial shocks are still to come, global investing guru Jim Rogers said in an exclusive interview with Money Morning.

Indeed, the U.S. financial debacle is now so ingrained – and a so-called “Super Crash” so likely – that most Americans alive today won’t be around by the time the last of this credit-market mess is finally cleared away – if it ever is, Rogers said.

Read moreJim Rogers Predicts Bigger Financial Shocks

How China’s taking over Africa, and why the West should be VERY worried

This article is also another lesson in racism, which is always a sure sign of absolute ignorance, insecurity and low self-esteem, because racism is attempting to see other people as inferior, so that those “superior” racists can feel better about their wretched, unenlightened little life. ________________________________________________________________________________________

On June 5, 1873, in a letter to The Times, Sir Francis Galton, the cousin of Charles Darwin and a distinguished African explorer in his own right, outlined a daring (if by today’s standards utterly offensive) new method to ‘tame’ and colonise what was then known as the Dark Continent.

‘My proposal is to make the encouragement of Chinese settlements of Africa a part of our national policy, in the belief that the Chinese immigrants would not only maintain their position, but that they would multiply and their descendants supplant the inferior Negro race,’ wrote Galton.

‘I should expect that the African seaboard, now sparsely occupied by lazy, palavering savages, might in a few years be tenanted by industrious, order-loving Chinese, living either as a semidetached dependency of China, or else in perfect freedom under their own law.’


Close relations: Chinese President Hu Jintao accompanies Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe to a ceremony in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing

Read moreHow China’s taking over Africa, and why the West should be VERY worried

Five million face hunger in Zimbabwe, UN says

The United Nations has warned that more than five million Zimbabweans could be threatened by hunger next year due to a steady drop in food production coupled with the world’s highest rate of inflation.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation and the World Food Program said in a joint report that an estimated two million people in Zimbabwe will not have enough to eat in the summer months.

That figure is projected to rise to 3.8 million people after September and to about 5.1 million between January and March 2009, as the impact of President Robert Mugabe’s seizure of land from commercial farmers continues to take its toll. The population is just over 12 million people.

The southern African nation is predicted to produce 575,000 tons of its main seasonal crop of maize, a drop of 28 per cent compared with last year, which was already some 44 per cent below 2006 government figures. Other crops are expected to be similarly dented.

“Poverty has increased for the tenth year in a row and there is an annual inflation estimated at 355,000 percent,” said Kisan Gunjal, an FAO food emergency officer who worked on the report. “That is different than any other period in the history of Zimbabwe.”

Read moreFive million face hunger in Zimbabwe, UN says

Opposing Robert Mugabe is now ‘treason’ in Zimbabwe


Tendai Biti faces the death penalty over the allegations of treason

The crackdown on the Opposition in Zimbabwe intensified yesterday with the arrest of its deputy leader on the charge of treason, as he arrived back in the country from a week-long trip to South Africa.

Tendai Biti, the secretary-general of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), was met at Harare airport by five plainclothes officers who handcuffed him and led him to an unknown police station.

The police said that Mr Biti was to be charged with publishing a “treasonous document” outlining MDC plans to return all land seized from white farmers and to dismiss all members of the military and police service if it won the presidential election at the end of this month. If found guilty, he could be sentenced to death.

The MDC dismissed the letter as a fake manufactured by the Zimbabwe intelligence services, recalling the purported letter between the MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai and Gordon Brown that the British Embassy denounced as a “crude hoax” last month.

Read moreOpposing Robert Mugabe is now ‘treason’ in Zimbabwe

Violence in South Africa spreads to Cape Town

Officials said yesterday that more than 10,000 Mozambicans have fled South Africa to escape the attacks which have killed at least 42 people. More than 500 people have been arrested.
________________________________________________________________________________________

The wave of violence against foreigners in South Africa, which began 12 days ago in Johannesburg, has spread to Cape Town where Somalis and Zimbabweans have been attacked by mobs who have looted their homes and shops overnight, according to police.

Hundreds of African migrants were evacuated yesterday from a squatter camp near Cape Town as Somali-owned shops were looted in the resort town of Knysna, on the south-western coast.

More attacks were expected over the weekend, authorities have warned, adding that additional assistance from the military would be sought if necessary.

“We don’t know the exact number of shops looted and burnt, but it’s a lot,” said Billy Jones, senior superintendent with the Western Cape provincial police.

Read moreViolence in South Africa spreads to Cape Town

Money Raised for Africa ‘Goes to Civil Wars’

Imagine my shock.

Do you really think that anyone who’s ever made a loan or grant to any dictator, anywhere in the world, has any doubt about what is going to happen with the money?

Sure, Bono is an idiot, people will say. Woops. Silly Bono.

While there are lots of idiots in the world, not many of them just happen to be A) responsible for genocide, directly, indirectly or otherwise and B) an honorary Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.

It’s all a coincidence, of course. As usual.

Via: New Zealand Herald:

Billions of dollars raised for African famine relief by celebrities Bono and Bob Geldof have instead funded civil war across the continent, says terrorism expert Dr Loretta Napoleoni.

London-based Napoleoni, in Auckland to appear at the Writers & Readers Festival, has written two books, Terror Inc: Tracing the Money Behind Global Terrorism and Insurgent Iraq: Al-Zarqawi and the New Generation, on the economics of terrorism.

Her latest book, Rogue Economics, studies the destabilising effect of economic globalisation, focusing in part on why more than half a trillion dollars worth of aid sent to Africa since the 1960s failed to reach the intended destination – developing the nations’ economies.

That huge amount of aid, which includes money from the United Nations and donations generated by Live Aid for Ethiopia, organised by Geldof, and the Live 8 concert in 2005, organised by Bono, has instead “served as a rogue force, notably as an important form of terrorist financing” in countries such as Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Kenya. Ethiopia, for example, received $1.8 billion in foreign aid between 1982-85, including a large contribution from Live Aid; $1.6 billion of that, she points out, was spent on buying military equipment.

Research Credit: samadhisoft.com

Source: Cryptogon