Sahara is greening as Grand Solar Minimum cools North; volcanoes erupting!

The Grand Solar Minimum was responsible for the Mini Ice Age in Europe. It's also responsible for the Sahara starting to green. Scientists who are looking at the phenomena expect 13,800,000 square km to green within ten years. I have heard ultra rich people are buying up in this region, which has massive underwater lakes and the remnant of huge surface lakes which are just starting to show and may re-fill.

The Grand Solar Minimum isn't just responsible for the cooling off the north, the danger of the Gulf Stream disappearing and the UK and Nordic lands freezing, and Arctic animals already appearing on Nordic shores. It's also responsible for earthquakes; which we are seeing a lot of. 

See Adapt 2030: https://youtu.be/KgJAxnokk8k

Volcanic activity in Iceland:

https://youtu.be/hDg-sg3myfE

#GrandSolarMinimum #climatechange #volcanoes

Sole Military Super-Bloc: NATO Issues Daily Reprieves To The World

On October 31 North Atlantic Treaty Organization chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen arrived in the Libyan capital of Tripoli at the end of seven full months of the military bloc’s war in the country and effused: “It’s great to be in Libya, free Libya.” Like Scipio Africanus the Younger almost twenty-two centuries earlier in what is now Libya’s western neighbor Tunisia, then Carthage, Rasmussen planted the banner of a conquering power on the soil of North Africa. Perhaps NATO will grant Rasmussen, too, the honorific agnomen Africanus after the military bloc’s first war and first conquest on the continent. While basking in the triumph of what Western commentators have celebrated as NATO’s first complete and uncontested military victory – “the most successful in Nato history” in Rasmussen’s words – in the Libyan capital, the secretary general was questioned by a reporter about plans to replicate the Libyan model in Syria and stated: “My answer is very short. NATO has no intention (to intervene) whatsoever. I can completely rule that out.” However, to belie his claim he immediately added: “Having said that, I strongly condemn the crackdown on the civilian population in Syria. What has happened in Libya sends a clear signal. You cannot neglect the will of the people.” The 227-day war against Libya waged first by U.S. Africa Command from March 19-31 and thereafter by NATO is, according to the NATO chieftain, “a clear signal” to Syria, but “NATO has no intention” to commence military actions against Syria. Scant assurance to the nation’s government and populace alike, to be sure. On the day Muammar Gaddafi was brutally killed, Senator John McCain, ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and presidential candidate in 2008, threatened the president of Syria, the prime minister of Russia and unnamed Chinese leaders with the less than eloquent admonition that they “got a reason to be uneasy” according to one account. He told the BBC on October 20: “I think dictators all over the world, including Bashar al-Assad, maybe even Mr. Putin, maybe some Chinese, maybe all of them, may be a little bit more nervous.” He repeated the parallel between Libya and Syria three days later while in Jordan. Had Rasmussen been someone other than who he is, which is to say an honest individual, his comments in the Libyan capital would have been limited to the line of Tacitus about a Roman campaign in the century following the Third Punic War: Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant. (They plunder, they slaughter, and they steal: this they falsely name Empire, and where they make a wasteland, they call it peace.) Libya has been destroyed. What is left of the city of Sirte presents a vivid image that suits all too well the Roman historian’s words. Back at home in NATO Headquarters in Brussels three days later, Rasmussen gave his latest monthly press briefing, in which he stated: “Let me stress that NATO has no intention whatsoever to intervene in Iran, and NATO is not engaged as an alliance in the Iran question.” He began his comments with this account: “This week I had the privilege to visit Tripoli, the capital of free Libya. It was the first time ever that a NATO Secretary General set foot in the country and something none of us could have imagined only a year ago.” During the question and answer period which succeeded his presentation he responded to a question on Libya by stating: “We would be prepared to offer the same kind of assistance as we have offered to other partners within defence and security sector reforms. That is, overall to help put defence and security agencies under civilian and democratic control. We can also help in organizing a modern defence, modern structures. In more specific terms we can help when it comes to institution-building like the building of a defence ministry, how to organize General Staff of the Armed Forces, just to mention some examples. “NATO has a lot of expertise within defence and security sector reform, and actually a number of our Allies have gone through a similar transition from dictatorship into democracy, so they have a very valuable experience to offer. And I talked with Chairman Jalil and made clear that we are ready to assist Libya within such reform efforts if requested…” Given the alliance’s history over the past twenty years, what he in fact pledged was that NATO will train – from scratch and in English – the armed forces of the new Libyan proxy regime as it has done previously and is still engaged in doing in other nations and provinces it has invaded and in other manners subjugated: Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Libya, which until now has been the only North African nation not to be pulled into NATO’s Mediterranean Dialogue military partnership – Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria are members as are Israel, Jordan and Mauritania – will become the eighth member and a joint asset of NATO and U.S. Africa Command. The chief of what is not only the sole extant military bloc in the world but the largest and longest-lived multinational armed alliance in history may have taken to issuing regular disclaimers concerning attacking new nations well outside the so-called Euro-Atlantic zone, but how much credence the secretary general’s pronouncements should be given is best indicated by how unconscionably NATO lied its way into full-fledged wars in three continents over the past twelve years. With 28 full members at present, after a 75 per cent increase between 1999-2009, and over 40 partners around the world, the North Atlantic bloc has integrated the militaries of a third of the world’s nations for deployments to war and post-war zones in the Balkans and South Asia, with Africa the next destination. Its latest trophy is the battered, bloodied and brutalized body of Muammar Gaddafi, murdered after a U.S. Hellfire missile and French laser-guided bombs struck his convoy outside Sirte on October 20, eight months before what would have been his seventieth birthday. So bereft of the most elementary notions of decency and values, moral and aesthetic, are the governments of the West and the people they deserve (as a British writer a century ago reversed the well-known dictum of Joseph de Maistre), that the only stimulants left to awaken their satiated and dehumanized sensibilities are – as they are inured to violence, even on a mass scale – necrophilia and fiendish, ghoulish Grand Guignol. The lower tier of American culture, mass-market escapist entertainment, is consumed by a fascination with vampires, flesh-eating zombies and the like and graphic depictions of foreign leaders and former leaders being mauled and murdered are simply more lurid diversions for jaded ennuyés. In reference to the murder of Gaddafi and his son Muatassim, the public display of their corpses and the sports enthusiast-like celebration of those gruesome acts by the likes of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Russian representative to NATO Dmitry Rogozin lambasted them as emblematic of sadistic triumphalism, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin denounced them as disgusting and Deputy Speaker of the State Duma Ivan Melnikov characterized the first as “a striking illustration of American and their NATO allies’ policy in the North-African country,” according to Interfax in the third instance. They are in fact grotesque, in the sense that Hegel defined the word, as the idealization of the ugly. In his own words, the last-cited Russian official warned: “I think that the entire world should watch today the published photographs and video records of Gaddafi’s murder. It is not just a dead former leader of Libya. It’s the symbol of the sovereignty of an independent country that was torn to pieces by Americans.” The day after Gaddafi’s murder the same news agency cited another deputy of the lower house of parliament of the same, Communist, party, Vadim Solovyov, as affirming: “The American economy is in need of inexpensive oil, so the U.S. government is even ready to wage wars, if only oil arrives…Any country with large reserves of energy resources – Iran, Syria, Venezuela or Nigeria – could come next.” NATO ground, air and naval forces continue their murderous rampages in Afghanistan, across the border into Pakistan, in Kosovska Mitrovica, in Libya and off the coast of Somalia in the Gulf of Aden and adjoining waters (where NATO killed the captain of a Taiwanese fishing vessel and wounded two Iranian fishermen in separate attacks earlier this year). A Stop NATO feature in August provided an, admittedly incomplete, list of nations that NATO, actuated by its first Strategic Concept for the 21st century adopted at the bloc’s summit in Lisbon last November and its initial implementation in Libya this year, could attack or otherwise intervene in next: Algeria, Belarus, Bolivia, Central African Republic, Chad, Cuba, Democratic Republic of Congo, Cyprus, Ecuador, Eritrea, Iran, Lebanon, Madagascar, Mali, Moldova-Transdniester, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Palestine, Somalia, the South Caucasus (Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia), Sudan-South Sudan, Suriname, Syria, Uganda, Venezuela, Western Sahara, Yemen and Zimbabwe. In the interim the Obama administration announced the deployment of special forces to four of the above nations and on the day of Gaddafi’s murder the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s subcommittee on African affairs, Senator Chris Coons, was reported by Associated Press as asserting that “Moammar Gadhafi’s death and the promise of a new Libyan regime are arguments for the measured U.S. military response in central Africa where the U.S. has sent roughly 100 troops” to Uganda, Congo, the Central African Republic and South Sudan. That the nations of the world require almost daily assurances, however untrustworthy, that they will not be attacked by the mightiest multinational military formation in history is an indictment of the age that submits to living under such ongoing and ubiquitous threats. The time is ripe and in fact long overdue for issuing a call for an international anti-NATO initiative addressed to individuals, organizations, political parties and governments to convene an extraordinary session of the United Nations General Assembly to demand the disbanding of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as a – as the gravest – threat to world peace.

Rick Rozoff is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

source: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27482

Is justice possible in this world? Will it take the return of Christ to put an end to this? Let's hope the international and national courts mentioned below will make Libya's voice heard, cause restoration to be made and cause immense damage to the powers behind NATO.

Steve B

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War Propaganda: Libya and the End of Western Illusions

Five months into the bombing campaign, it is no longer possible to believe the initial official version of the events and the massacres attributed to the "Gaddafi regime". Moreover, it is now essential to take into account Libya’s legal and diplomatic rebuttal, highlighting the crimes against peace committed by television propaganda, the war crimes perpetrated by NATO military forces, and the crimes against humanity sponsored by political leaders of the Atlantic Alliance.
Just under half of Europeans still support the war against Libya. Their position is based on erroneous information. They still believe, in fact, that in February the "Gaddafi regime" crushed the protests in Benghazi with brutal force and bombed civilian districts in Tripoli, while the Colonel himself was warning of "rivers of blood" if his compatriots continued to challenge his authority.

During my two months’ investigation on the ground, I was able to verify that these accusations were pure propaganda intoxication, designed by the NATO powers to create the conditions for war, and relayed around the world by their television media, in particular Al-Jazeera, CNN, BBC and France24.

However, the reader who doesn’t know where he stands on this issue and who - despite the brainwashing of September 11 and Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction - is reluctant to accept that the United States, France, the UK and Qatar were actually capable of fabricating such lies, will be able to forge an opinion over time. NATO, the largest military coalition in history, has failed after five months of bombardments to overthrow the one it designated as a "tyrant." Every Friday, a large demonstration in support of the regime is organized in a different city and all experts are unanimous in considering that Colonel Gaddafi enjoys at least 90% of popular support in Tripolitania and 70% across the entire country, including the "rebel" areas. These are people who every single day put up with the blockade, aerial bombardments and ground fighting. Never would they be defending with their flesh and blood someone who committed against them the crimes of which he has been accused by the "international community." The difference between those in the West who believe that Gaddafi is a tyrant who fired on his own people, and those in Libya who believe that he is a hero of the anti-imperialist struggle, is that the former live in an illusion created by TV propaganda, whereas the others are exposed to the concrete reality on the ground.

That said, there is a second illusion to which the West has succumbed - and in the "Western" camp I now include not only Israel, where it has always claimed to belong, but also the monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council and Turkey which, though of Eastern culture, have chosen to embrace it -, the illusion to think that it is still possible to devastate a country and kill its people without legal consequences. It is true that, until now, international justice has been the justice of the victors or the powerful. One may recall the Nazi official who heckled the judges at Nuremberg telling them that if the Reich had won the war, the judges would have been the Nazis while those held accountable for the war crimes would have been the Allies.

More recently, we saw how NATO used the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia to try to justify post facto that the war in Kosovo was "the first humanitarian war in History," according to the expression employed by Tony Blair. Or again, how the Special Tribunal for Lebanon was used in an attempt to overthrow the Syrian government, then to decapitate the Lebanese Hezbollah, and probably soon to accuse the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Not to mention, the International Criminal Court, the secular arm of the European colonial powers in Africa.

However, the development of instruments and organs of international justice throughout the twentieth century has gradually established an international order with which the superpowers themselves will have to comply or which they will have to sabotage in order to escape their responsibilities. In the case of Libya, the violations of international law are countless. The main ones, presented below, were established by the Provisional Technical Committee, a Libyan ministerial coordination organ, and expounded at various press conferences by the legal adviser to the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, French attorney Marcel Ceccaldi [1].

TV channels which, under the leadership of their respective Governments, have manufactured false information to lead to war, are guilty of "crimes against peace", as defined by the relevant UN General Assembly resolutions in the aftermath of World War II [2]. The journalist-propagandists should be considered even more culpable than the military who perpetrated war crimes or crimes against humanity, to the extent that none of these crimes would have been possible without the one that preceded them: the "crime against peace."

The political leaders of the Atlantic Alliance, who diverted the object and purpose of Resolution 1973 to engage in a war of aggression against a sovereign state, are personally responsible before international justice. Indeed, according to the jurisprudence established by the Tokyo Court following the Second World War, crimes cannot be ascribed to either States or organizations, but to individuals. Plundering the assets of a state, establishing a naval blockade and bombing infrastructure to cause people to suffer, attacking an army inside its barracks and ordering the assassination of enemy leaders or, failing this, terrorizing them by murdering their families, all amount to war crimes. Their systematic perpetration, as is the case today, constitutes a crime against humanity. This crime is imprescriptible, which means that Messrs. Obama, Sarkozy, Cameron and Al-Thani will be pursued by the law for the rest of their lives.

NATO, as an organization, is legally responsible for the material and human damage of this war. The law leaves no room for doubt that the organization must pay, even though it will surely try to invoke a privilege of jurisdiction to dodge its responsibilities. It will be up to the Alliance to decide how the bill for the conflict should be split among Member States, even though some of them may be on the verge of bankruptcy. This will be followed by disastrous economic consequences for their peoples, guilty of having endorsed such crimes. In a democracy, no one can claim to be innocent of the crimes committed in its name.

International justice will have to address more specifically the case of the Sarkozy "administration" - I use this Anglicism here to underscore the fact that the French president has been piloting his Government’s policy directly, without going through his prime minister. Indeed, France has played a central role in preparing for this war since October 2010 by organizing a failed military coup and then, as early as November 2010, by planning with the United Kingdom the bombing of Libya and the landing of ground troops on its soil, which was then believed to be feasible, and finally by actively conspiring in the lethal unrest in Benghazi which led to the war.

In addition, France, more than any other power, has deployed Special Forces on the ground - without uniforms, no doubt - and violated the arms embargo by supplying the insurgents, either directly or through Qatari airplanes. Not to mention that France has violated the UN freeze of Libyan assets, funnelling part of the fabulous cash from the Libyan Sovereign Fund to the CNT puppets, to the detriment of the Libyan people who wanted to guarantee the well-being of their children in the face of oil depletion.

These gentlemen from NATO, who hoped to escape international justice by crushing their victim, Libya, in a few short days so that it would not survive to pursue them, will be disenchanted. Libya is still there. She is filing complaints with the International Criminal Court, the Belgian courts (whose jurisdiction NATO falls under), the European Court of Justice, and the national courts of aggressor states. She is undertaking steps before the Council of Human Rights in Geneva, the Security Council and General Assembly of the United Nations. It will be not be possible for the big powers to extinguish these fires all at once. Worse, the arguments they will use to evade a court will ricochet against them in another court. In a few weeks or months, if they have not succeeded in destroying Tripoli, they will have no other way out to avoid humiliating convictions than to negotiate the withdrawal of the complaints at a very high price.
Notes[1] Putting an end to the confusion that prevailed at the beginning of the war when various departments hired lawyers for different disorderly proceedings, Libya has appointed Marcel Ceccaldi in July to oversee all proceedings.

[2] “Journalists who engage in war propaganda must be held accountable”, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, 16 August 2011

Thierry Meyssan is a frequent contributor to Global Research.  Global Research Articles by Thierry Meyssan

Somalia: the Real Causes of Famine

Once again USA is involved in covert nasties in the name of "NATIONAL SECURITY" and "THE NATIONAL INTEREST". These terms largely mean securing of resources in other parts of the world for the USA military-industrial complex and other USA corporates. There is a very, very long history of this kind of nasty behaviour. USA has repeatedly toppled good (but anti-USA) governments in Central America and South America (see trailer on SuperPower below). It is becoming well apparent to those who are watchful that its neo-colonisation tactics have extended into Africa also for some time now. Somalia is just one of the casualties; yet another country destroyed by the good old USA so they can plunder its resources. Yes folks, it's Vietnam (oil), Iraq (oil), Libya (oil & gas), Afghanistan (could drugs be involved here? YES) and other plundered states all over again. Watch the video then read on...

Steve B

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For the last twenty years, Somalia has been entangled in a "civil war" amidst the destruction of both its rural and urban economies.

The country is now facing widespread famine.  According to reports, tens of thousands of people have died from malnutrition in the last few months. The lives of  several million people are threatened.

The mainstream media casually attributes the famine to a severe drought without examining the broader causes.

An atmosphere of  "lawlessness, gang warfare and anarchy" is also upheld as one of the major causes behind the famine.

But who is behind the lawlessness and armed gangs? 

Somalia is categorized as a "failed state", a country without a government.

But how did it become a "failed state"? There is ample evidence of foreign intervention as well as covert support of armed militia groups. Triggering "failed states" is an integral part of US foreign policy. It is part of a military-intelligence agenda.

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.

The broader question is: What outside forces triggered the destruction of the Somali State in the early 1990s?

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.

In a bitter irony, this open territory encompasses significant oil wealth. Four US oil giants had already positioned themselves prior to the onset of the Somali civil war in 1991:

Far beneath the surface of the tragic drama of Somalia, four major U.S. oil companies are quietly sitting on a prospective fortune in exclusive concessions to explore and exploit tens of millions of acres of the Somali countryside.

According to documents obtained by The Times, nearly two-thirds of Somalia was allocated to the American oil giants Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips in the final years before Somalia's pro-U.S. President Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown and the nation plunged into chaos in January, 1991. ...

Officially, the Administration and the State Department insist that the U.S. military mission in Somalia is strictly humanitarian. Oil industry spokesmen dismissed as "absurd" and "nonsense" allegations by aid experts, veteran East Africa analysts and several prominent Somalis that President Bush [Senior], a former Texas oilman, was moved to act in Somalia, at least in part, by the U.S. corporate oil stake.

But corporate and scientific documents disclosed that the American companies are well positioned to pursue Somalia's most promising potential oil reserves the moment the nation is pacified. And the State Department and U.S. military officials acknowledge that one of those oil companies has done more than simply sit back and hope for peace.

Conoco Inc., the only major multinational corporation to maintain a functioning office in Mogadishu throughout the past two years of nationwide anarchy, has been directly involved in the U.S. government's role in the U.N.-sponsored humanitarian military effort.( The Oil Factor in Somalia : Four American petroleum giants had agreements with the African nation before its civil war began. They could reap big rewards if peace is restored. - Los Angeles Times 1993)

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.

The following article first published in 1993 in Le Monde diplomatique and Third World Resurgence centers on the historical causes of famine in Somalia.

This article was subsequently included as a Chapter in my book The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order,  first edition 1997, second edition, Global Research. Montreal,  2003.  

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Somalia: the Real Causes of Famine

by Michel Chossudovsky

First published in 1993, Third World Resurgence and Le Monde diplomatique

The IMF Intervention in the Early 1980s

Somalia was a pastoral economy based on "exchange" between nomadic herdsmen and small agriculturalists. Nomadic pastoralists accounted for 50 percent of the population. In the 1970s, resettlement programs led to the development of a sizeable sector of commercial pastoralism. Livestock contributed to 80 percent of export earnings until 1983. Despite recurrent droughts, Somalia remained virtually self-sufficient in food until the 1970s.

The IMF-World Bank intervention in the early 1980s contributed to exacerbating the crisis of Somali agriculture. The economic reforms undermined the fragile exchange relationship between the "nomadic economy" and the "sedentary economy" - i.e. between pastoralists and small farmers characterized by money transactions as well as traditional barter. A very tight austerity program was imposed on the government largely to release the funds required to service Somalia's debt with the Paris Club. In fact, a large share of the external debt was held by the Washington-based financial institutions.' According to an ILO mission report:

[T]he Fund alone among Somalia's major recipients of debt service payments, refuses to reschedule. (...) De facto it is helping to finance an adjustment program, one of whose major goals is to repay the IMF itself.

Towards the Destruction of Food Agriculture

The structural adjustment program reinforced Somalia's dependency on imported grain. From the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, food aid increased fifteen-fold, at the rate of 31 percent per annum.' Combined with increased commercial imports, this influx of cheap surplus wheat and rice sold in the domestic market led to the displacement of local producers, as well as to a major shift in food consumption patterns to the detriment of traditional crops (maize and sorghum). The devaluation of the Somali shilling, imposed by the IMF in June 1981, was followed by periodic devaluations, leading to hikes in the prices of fuel, fertilizer and farm inputs. The impact on agricultural producers was immediate particularly in rain-fed agriculture, as well as in the areas of irrigated farming. Urban purchasing power declined dramatically, government extension programs were curtailed, infrastructure collapsed, the deregulation of the grain market and the influx of "food aid" led to the impoverishment of farming communities.'

Also, during this period, much of the best agricultural land was appropriated by bureaucrats, army officers and merchants with connections to the government.' Rather than promoting food production for the domestic market, the donors were encouraging the development of so-called "high value-added" fruits, vegetables, oilseeds and cotton for export on the best irrigated farmland.

Collapse of the Livestock Economy

As of the early 1980s, prices for imported livestock drugs increased as a result of the depreciation of the currency. The World Bank encouraged the exaction of user fees for veterinarian services to the nomadic herdsmen, including the vaccination of animals. A private market for veterinary drugs was promoted. The functions performed by the Ministry of Livestock were phased out, with the Veterinary Laboratory Services of the ministry to be fully financed on a cost-recovery basis. According to the World Bank:
Veterinarian services are essential for livestock development in all areas, and they can be provided mainly by the private sector. (... Since few private veterinarians will choose to practice in the remote pastoral areas, improved livestock care will also depend on "para vets" paid from drug sales.'

The privatization of animal health was combined with the absence of emergency animal feed during periods of drought, the commercialization of water and the neglect of water and rangeland conservation. The results were predictable: the herds were decimated and so were the pastoralists, who represent 50 percent of the country's population. The "hidden objective" of this program was to eliminate the nomadic herdsmen involved in the traditional exchange economy. According to the World Bank, "adjustments" in the size of the herds are, in any event, beneficial because nomadic pastoralists in sub-Saharan Africa are narrowly viewed as a cause of environmental degradation."

The collapse in veterinarian services also indirectly served the interests of the rich countries: in 1984, Somalian cattle exports to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries plummeted as Saudi beef imports were redirected to suppliers from Australia and the European Community. The ban on Somali livestock imposed by Saudi Arabia was not, however, removed once the rinderpest disease epidemic had been eliminated.

Destroying the State

The restructuring of government expenditure under the supervision of the Bretton Woods institutions also played a crucial role in destroying food agriculture. Agricultural infrastructure collapsed and recurrent expenditure in agriculture declined by about 85 percent in relation to the mid-1970s." The Somali government was prevented by the IMF from mobilizing domestic resources. Tight targets for the budget deficit were set. Moreover, the donors increasingly provided "aid", not in the form of imports of capital and equipment, but in the form of "food aid". The latter would in turn be sold by the government on the local market and the proceeds of these sales (i.e. the so-called "counterpart funds") would be used to cover the domestic costs of development projects. As of the early 1980s, "the sale of food aid" became the principal source of revenue for the state, thereby enabling donors to take control of the entire budgetary process."

The economic reforms were marked by the disintegration of health and educational programmes.'3 By 1989, expenditure on health had declined by 78 percent in relation to its 1975 level. According to World Bank figures, the level of recurrent expenditure on education in 1989 was about US$ 4 Per annum per primary school student down from about $ 82 in 1982. From 1981 to 1989, school enrolment declined by 41 percent (despite a sizeable increase in the population of school age), textbooks and school materials disappeared from the class-rooms, school buildings deteriorated and nearly a quarter of the primary schools closed down. Teachers' salaries declined to abysmally low levels.

The IMF-World Bank program has led the Somali economy into a vicious circle: the decimation of the herds pushed the nomadic pastoralists into starvation which in turn backlashes on grain producers who sold or bartered their grain for cattle. The entire social fabric of the pastoralist economy was undone. The collapse in foreign exchange earnings from declining cattle exports and remittances (from Somali workers in the Gulf countries) backlashed on the balance of payments and the state's public finances leading to the breakdown of the government's economic and social programs.

Small farmers were displaced as a result of the dumping of subsidized US grain on the domestic market combined with the hike in the price of farm inputs. The impoverishment of the urban population also led to a contraction of food consumption. In turn, state support in the irrigated areas was frozen and production in the state farms declined. The latter were slated to be closed down or privatized under World Bank supervision.

According to World Bank estimates, real public-sector wages in 1989 had declined by 90 percent in relation to the mid-1970s. Average wages in the public sector had fallen to US$ 3 a month, leading to the inevitable disintegration of the civil administration." A program to rehabilitate civil service wages was proposed by the World Bank (in the context of a reform of the civil service), but this objective was to be achieved within the same budgetary envelope by dismissing some 40 percent of public-sector employees and eliminating salary supplements." Under this plan, the civil service would have been reduced to a mere 25,000 employees by 1995 (in a country of six million people). Several donors indicated keen interest in funding the cost associated with the retrenchment of civil servants."

In the face of impending disaster, no attempt was made by the international donor community to rehabilitate the country's economic and social infrastructure, to restore levels of purchasing power and to rebuild the civil service: the macro-economic adjustment measures proposed by the creditors in the year prior to the collapse of the government of General Siyad Barre in January 1991 (at the height of the civil war) called for a further tightening over public spending, the restructuring of the Central Bank, the liberalization of credit (which virtually thwarted the private sector) and the liquidation and divestiture of most of the state enterprises.

In 1989, debt-servicing obligations represented 194.6 percent of export earnings. The IMF's loan was cancelled because of Somalia's outstanding arrears. The World Bank had approved a structural adjustment loan for US$ 70 million in June 1989 which was frozen a few months later due to Somalia's poor macro-economic performance. '7 Arrears with creditors had to be settled before the granting of new loans and the negotiation of debt rescheduling. Somalia was tangled in the straightjacket of debt servicing and structural adjustment.

Famine Formation in sub-Saharan Africa:  The Lessons of Somalia

Somalia's experience shows how a country can be devastated by the simultaneous application of food "aid" and macro-economic policy. There are many Somalias in the developing world and the economic reform package implemented in Somalia is similar to that applied in more than 100 developing countries. But there is another significant dimension: Somalia is a pastoralist economy, and throughout Africa both nomadic and commercial livestock are being destroyed by the IMF-World Bank program in much the same way as in Somalia. In this context, subsidized beef and dairy products imported (duty free) from the European Union have led to the demise of Africa's pastoral economy. European beef imports to West Africa have increased seven-fold since 1984: "the low quality EC beef sells at half the price of locally produced meat. Sahelian farmers are finding that no-one is prepared to buy their herds"."

The experience of Somalia shows that famine in the late 20th century is not a consequence of a shortage of food. On the contrary, famines are spurred on as a result of a global oversupply of grain staples. Since the 1980s, grain markets have been deregulated under the supervision of the World Bank and US grain surpluses are used systematically as in the case of Somalia to destroy the peasantry and destabilize national food agriculture. The latter becomes, under these circumstances, far more vulnerable to the vagaries of drought and environmental degradation.

Throughout the continent, the pattern of "sectoral adjustment" in agriculture under the custody of the Bretton Woods institutions has been unequivocally towards the destruction of food security. Dependency vis-à-vis the world market has been reinforced, "food aid" to sub-Saharan Africa increased by more than seven times since 1974 and commercial grain imports more than doubled. Grain imports for sub-Saharan Africa expanded from 3.72 million tons in 1974 to 8.47 million tons in 1993. Food aid increased from 910,000 tons in 1974 to 6.64 million tons in l993.

"Food aid", however, was no longer earmarked for the drought-stricken countries of the Sahelian belt; it was also channeled into countries which were, until recently, more or less self-sufficient in food. Zimbabwe (once considered the bread basket of Southern Africa) was severely affected by the famine and drought which swept Southern Africa in 1992. The country experienced a drop of 90 percent in its maize crop, located largely in less productive lands." Yet, ironically, at the height of the drought, tobacco for export (supported by modem irrigation, credit, research, etc.) registered a bumper harvest. While "the famine forces the population to eat termites", much of the export earnings from Zimbabwe's tobacco harvest were used to service the external debt.

Under the structural adjustment program, farmers have increasingly abandoned traditional food crops; in Malawi, which was once a net food exporter, maize production declined by 40 percent in 1992 while tobacco output doubled between 1986 and 1993. One hundred and fifty thousand hectares of the best land was allocated to tobacco .2' Throughout the 1980s, severe austerity measures were imposed on African governments and expenditures on rural development drastically curtailed, leading to the collapse of agricultural infrastructure. Under the World Bank program, water was to become a commodity to be sold on a cost-recovery basis to impoverished farmers. Due to lack of funds, the state was obliged to withdraw from the management and conservation of water resources. Water points and boreholes dried up due to lack of maintenance, or were privatized by local merchants and rich farmers. In the semi-arid regions, this commercialization of water and irrigation leads to the collapse of food security and famine.

Concluding Remarks

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.

Pentagon Plan To Muscle Out China: New Scramble For Africa

An interesting article from Global Resaearch . note the bold emphasis is mine :)

Steve B
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Windhoek: Southern Africa has become the battle ground for a new scramble for resources, with the United States seeking to muscle out Chinese influence so as to secure strategic minerals - mainly for its military.

More frightening is the possibility of the US military itself becoming involved in securing these strategic minerals within the next 20 years.

According to a study by Dr Stephen Burgess, a Zimbabwean-born associate professor at the US Air War College, Washington may have to enlist the services of the Department of Defence, the National Security Agency and the Africa Command (AFRICOM) to secure Southern Africa's resources.

His study, titled 'Sustainability of Strategic Minerals in Southern Africa and Potential Conflicts and Partnerships', says the US should move quickly to secure Southern Africa's uranium, manganese, platinum, chrome, cobalt and rare earth minerals for America's industrial needs and for its military as well as maintenance of weapons systems.

The study focuses on resource accessibility in the DRC, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe and draws parallels with the 1880s scramble for Africa.

To triumph in this new scramble, Burgess notes, 'all instruments of (US) power' must be deployed.

Burgess visited all these countries – except Zimbabwe – and makes recommendations on how the US can muscle out China.

He interviewed mining sector experts, government officials and journalists as part of his research.

There were also consultations with American institutions such as the Defence National Stock Pile Centre, the Defence Logistics Agency and the Marine Corps Command.

A note in the study indicates that it has nothing to do with the US Air War College, raising the possibility that Burgess was working as a consultant for Washington.

'Southern Africa contains strategic minerals, which the USA and its allies require for industrial purposes and that militaries need for production and sustainment of weapons systems.

'The principal sustainability challenge in SADC for the USA and its allies is uncertain access to strategic minerals.

'The cause of this challenge is increasing global demand and supply shortages caused by inadequate infrastructure, politicization of the mining industry and China's aggressive and sometimes monopolistic behaviour in pursuit of minerals.

'The challenge is most acute in two Southern African countries - South Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) – and also growing in Zambia, Zimbabwe and Namibia.

'Of particular concern is possible future conflict between the United States, which needs strategic minerals for national defence and other purposes, and China, which needs an increasing amount of resources to fuel its accelerating industrialization.

'There is a rising scramble for and struggle over resources in Africa, especially in petroleum and mining economies.

'In particular, the US government is concerned about access to 'defence critical resources'. This requires increased levels of engagement with the African countries concerned, using all the instruments of American power and working with American and Western mining companies, as well as engagement with China and Chinese companies.

'In the future, a 'worst-case' scenario might see the United States having to use coercive diplomacy in the not-too-distant future (perhaps in 10-20 years) in order to regain access to vital resources.

'The onset of 'resource wars' has been predicted by a number of scholars and experts. Given the rising level of Chinese demand for resources, the probability of conflict is likely to rise.

'The new scramble for African mineral resources (and petroleum) is most similar to the 19th century European scramble for African minerals and land that contributed to interstate conflict, especially the First World War.'

The ever-strengthening Sino-Africa ties are a major headache for the US and Washington must move quickly or else conflict will become unavoidable.

'The United States produces a range of materials from strategic minerals, including warships, aircraft, and high tech devices and components.

'Thus far, the United States and its allies have relied on free market forces in Southern Africa and elsewhere. However, US and allied industries may not always have access in the future and may have to reduce output or even close. For example, a worrisome problem has been Chinese control of production of more than 90 percent of rare earth minerals.

'Recently, Chinese companies withheld them from Japan over the Senkaku/Daioyu Islands dispute and threatening to withhold them from the United States over arms sales to Taiwan.

'The minerals are the ingredients in key components in communications devices, satellites, and electric fuel cells and batteries that US industry and the military require.'

Burgess says liberation movements (ZANU-PF in Zimbabwe, ANC in South Africa and SWAPO in Namibia) are politicizing the mining sector to the detriment of free marketeering and this will pose a serious challenge to the US. Issues of black economic empowerment and nationalization of mining feature prominently.

'The free market and government taxation of mining profits have tended to provide optimal conditions for states and industry and maintain a steady flow of minerals to meet demand. However politicization has occurred in the form of nationalisation of the mining industry and the intervention of black empowerment companies which have tended to disrupt the market and flow of minerals.'

The DRC, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe all have – or in the process of implementing – policies that will see greater indigenous participation in mining.

• South Africa

South Africa is targeted for its vast platinum resources which stand at about 75 percent of global production, as well as its vast manganese deposits.

'South African President Jacob Zuma and Mineral Resources Minister Susan Shabangu have said that nationalization is not currently part of government policy.

'However, this does not guarantee it will not be part of government policy in the not-too-distant future. The ANC Youth League managed to get nationalization onto the agenda of the governing party's September 2010 meeting, fuelling investor worries.

'Nationalization of South African mines has been given renewed prominence by the ANC Youth League, which in 2009 issued a discussion paper arguing for state control of 60 percent of new mines.'

• Democratic Republic of Congo

The DRC is viewed as a source to quench America's thirst for cobalt, uranium, coltan (columbite and tantalum), tungsten, tin, and rare earth minerals.

The study says Gecamines, the state miner, has too much control of mining and appears to favour dealing with China over the West.

• Zambia

Zambia's cobalt constitutes 20 percent of global deposits and it is second only to the DRC.

Again, emphasis is on Beijing's growing presence in Zambia through integrated firms such as the China Railway Group, SinoHydro and the Metallurgical Group Corporation.

• Namibia

Naturally, America's interest here is in uranium and there is unease about the activities of the recently created state miner, Epangelo.

Namibia's Cabinet recently said all future mining of strategic minerals should be done in partnership with Epangelo.

Namibia is the fourth largest producer of uranium and global demand is rising faster than the demand for gold.

'The recently established state owned mining company, Epangelo has virtually no capital and may look to Russian and Chinese companies for support.

'Kalahari Holdings (a SWAPO firm) are … looking for uranium prospects and joined ventures, possibly with the Chinese and Russian companies.

'In the long run the politisization of the mining sector could divert uranium to China.'

Recommendations

'One measure the United States could take is to assist South Africa in developing beneficiation. US aid could help to develop local mineral processing and metal manufacturing and assist South Africa in developing sufficient electricity to power such ventures.

'In addition, the United States could negotiate off-take agreements with South Africa and provide assistance to benefit local mining communities.

'The United States could encourage American mining companies to reengage in South Africa and work with Australian, Canadian and South African companies that are committed to the free market.

'Also, the US government could step up strategic communications, broadcasting Chinese abuses and dissuading forces in the ANC and SWAPO from moving their governments closer to China.'

Burgess goes further.

'In order to shape the region to maintain the free market, there are a number of actions that the United States and its allies might take. They might use diplomacy to build strategic partnerships with the most important African countries…

'In the case of strategic minerals, special attention must be paid to South Africa and the DRC.

'The United States and its allies could develop military-to-military relationships with a number of strategic African countries. The US National Security Council, DOD (Department of Defence) and (the) US Africa Command might develop contingencies to deal with the eventual prospect of resource cutoffs and the possibility of conflict over strategic minerals. At issue is how US agencies might adjust to the forthcoming challenges.'

The building of strategic partnerships is politically difficult, given the ANC regime's rejection of AFRICOM during the stand-up process in 2007 and 2008.

'South Africa is the hegemon in the region and must fully accept AFRICOM before military-to-military partnerships can be built throughout the region.


'The United States also continues to apply sanctions against President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and his inner circle, which makes building partnerships with the Southern African Development Community difficult.

'In addition, there is some resistance to US foreign policy from the (President Joseph) Kabila regime in the DRC; SWAPO in Namibia; and the (President Eduardo) dos Santos regime in Angola.

'By 2020, US intervention, including AFRICOM, might be needed to ensure sustained US/allied access to strategic minerals, which means that the building of strategic partnerships in the next decade is important.'

Dr Stephen Burgess farmed commercially in Zimbabwe's Masvingo Province and ceded land during the government's agrarian reforms. He left Zimbabwe in 2001 and works for the Air War College in the United States. He is the author of three books; 'South Africa's Weapons of Mass Destruction' (with Helen Purkitt), 'Smallholders and Political Voice in Zimbabwe', and 'The United Nations under Boutros Boutros-Ghali, 1992-97'.

Burgess helped lead in the organization and execution of the Air Force Africa Command Symposium.

He is an associate director of the US Air Force Counterproliferation Centre. Burgess holds a PhD from Michigan State University and has been a faculty member at Vanderbilt University, the University of Zambia, the University of Zimbabwe, and Hofstra University.

The full study can be found on http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/

source: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25014