BS: Africa

Subject: BS: Africa
From: Thompson
Date: 08 Oct 24 - 03:27 PM

Africa, let us help – just like in 1884 by George Monbiot in The Guardian.

Quote: David Cameron's purpose at the G8, as he put it last month, is to advance "the good of people around the world". Or, as Rudyard Kipling expressed it during the previous scramble for Africa: "To seek another's profit, / And work another's gain ... / Fill full the mouth of Famine / And bid the sickness cease". Who could doubt that the best means of doing this is to cajole African countries into a new set of agreements that allow foreign companies to grab their land, patent their seeds and monopolise their food markets?

A shocking piece about the agreements African governments are being forced into to "lift people out of poverty" with the help of such ravening corporate partners as "Monsanto, Cargill, Dupont, Syngenta, Nestlé, Unilever, Itochu, Yara International and others".
Mozambique is now obliged to "systematically cease distribution of free and unimproved seeds", while drawing up new laws granting intellectual property rights in seeds that will "promote private sector investment", Monbiot writes.
"Strangely missing from New Alliance agreements is any commitment on the part of G8 nations to change their own domestic policies. These could have included farm subsidies in Europe and the US, which undermine the markets for African produce; or biofuel quotas, which promote world hunger by turning food into fuel. Any constraints on the behaviour of corporate investors in Africa (such as the Committee on World Food Security's guidelines on land tenure) remain voluntary, while the constraints on host nations become compulsory. As in 1884, powerful nations make the rules and weak ones ones abide by them: for their own good, of course."

Subject: RE: BS: Africa
From: Thompson
Date: 08 Oct 24 - 03:45 PM

I might add that this article is an old one. Still sadly true.