HERD ABOUT IT?

by Ana Grarian

This is from a letter I received from a fellow member of a group that tries to help poor women around the world. This member has a Master’s in Social Work, a PhD,  and knows more than a little about how social change is corrupted from its presumed purpose through her work in an NGO that she founded to combat hunger in the US.

Many of us are involved in efforts to help our brothers
and sisters who are facing unmet life-threatening issues in their daily
lives.  We are trying to help with health care, education, home
building, jobs, safe water, money…and more, to improve the quality of
their lives!
Yet, at the same time, hunger, dispossession, and loss of villages is
destroying millions of lives through a movement called ‘Land grab’ of
the most fertile lands by African leaders who sell or lease millions of
acres to agribusiness corporations, foreign hedge funds, and others with
money and sociopathic minds and behavior.
India, China, Saudi Arabia, Europeans and Americans are taking control
of the most fertile African lands with the blessings and invitation of
corrupt national and local leaders who pocket the money.  Investors are
likely to earn 40% on investments in land grabs.  Local tribes who have
no legal leases but have lived and farmed the land for hundreds of years
are dispossessed of everything they thought was theirs – farms, land,
jobs, possessions, homes, cultivated land, water.  They face a future of
homelessness, unemployment, loss of culture, community, support networks
built over hundred of years, greater hunger and starvation.
Why?  The rich countries, particularly China, Arab countries, and India,
are facing greater wealth with the demand for more food, fertile land
and sources of water.
American Hedge funds and other investors are seeking the highest
profits.  The future foretells that countries who need sufficient food
supplies and water must  go outside their country to seek fertile cheap
land, water and cheap labor to grow meat, grains, produce, flowers and
so on. All this will be flown overnight, and be available for purchase
to the countries who own the land. It will not be available to the
countries and their populations in which this “new gold” is grown.
Africa is the “perfect answer” to their dream of sufficient food to feed
their growing populations while, once again, recolonizing, re-enslaving,
and legally stealing the most fertile, productive lands of African
countries with the willing guidance of each country’s leaders, the world
bank and USAID.

The leaders of most African countries promise their citizens that

“development of infrastructure, roads, dams, unsustainable farming,
supermarkets and malls is good for the country and its citizens.  That
more money and wealth will be available to modernize cities,
transportation, roads, housing,  development, and jobs creation”.

They fail to add that it will benefit the leaders with new fortunes at
the expense of the population who will suffer from hunger, sickness
(due to articficial harmful fertilizers and chemicals to short-term
maximize yield),  homelessness and worse, rootlessness.

Chemicals and fertilizers that will be sprayed on these large commercial farms will
harm and pollute the environment, land, air and water supplies. Ultimately, the land and local citizens will be poisoned and farm yields will be diminished from these destructive practices.

Where will our brothers and sister in Africa live, farm, work, and eat?

It is ‘amazing’ that Africa, known for droughts and hunger, slavery,exploitation, colonialization and theft of its rich and precious resources is now the tragic victim of an escalating land grab and catastrophe.

Each of us, in good conscious, must try to stem this stampede.

 

 

Globalization, with the help of the WTO and IMF and other international organizations is spreading the practice of using the planets resources, and its general population as a serfdom of the mega rich industrialists. We are being eaten by the beast we are required to feed, through our work and taxes.  And the hardest part is that we are all being blinded by the fairy tale we are being told.

How do we break the spell? I have a strange feeling that electricity is the key. If we could break our fear of being without electrical power, so that the TV’s and video games and computers would turn off for a considered length of time. We might start talking to each other again. Instead of listening to the talking heads. We might find ourselves trusting the wisdom of the tribe.