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‘Who Do We Think We Are?’ Nationhood is a Changing.

13 Saturday Sep 2014

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Here we are once again writing about a subject that in this part of the world will be put to the test next week – When Scotland goes to the poll – In or out.

What exactly are the Scots being asked to determining.?  Are they being asked as who its citizens are whether modern or traditional, European or non-European.

Or are they having an independent Scotland’s moment, giving concrete form to the tricky question of ‘who are the Scots’?

Or !  If creativity is not grounded in the soul, then reality is reduced only to the quantifiable parameters of markets and money; and with that, politics gets reduced only to the question of whether Scotland will be better or worse off with or without England until the oil runs out.

Now let me say that no writer writes in a vacuum but in this case that is exactly what I am doing because I believe that a nation is a soul of forgotten voices, a spiritual principle.

But in reality nationhood is often defined in terms of commonness of culture, language, history, ethnicity, religion and spirit.

The terms nation, nationhood, nationality seem to have become distant at a time when globalization, multiculturalism, intercultural or cross-cultural communication define the way we live with respect to ourselves, the others and the environment on the whole. This becomes usually more emphatic in times of hardships for a country, especially during foreign invasion.

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori once summoned together people of different age and background to defend one’s country and culture.

So lets ask the question.

In the world as we know it to-day what do you think constitutes a nation or nationhood.? ( If your brave enough lets hear your views)

The world today is demarcated by borders according to the positioning of sovereign states of nations. Despite this, this sense of commonness as defined above is hard to maintain in present day society, when social, economic, demographic, technological and other developments take place in an eye shut.

Thus, in the present society a new feeling of commonness appears to define nation, nationality and nationhood. It is the attempt to balance “civic citizenship” against “cultural citizenship”

Nations are not naturally occurring phenomenon and nationalism pursues a behavioral entity of the nation.

Nations are basically fabrications and constructions perceived in the minds of ‘man’. the nation is an ‘imagined political community.

Another words the nation is now an exchange of cultures, and the erasure of borders and boundaries have given way to a globalized world in which all cultures negotiate.

Cohesive elements are provided by language, religion, shared historical experiences, physical congruity and others.

Nations can exist with or without a distinct political identity, that a ‘nation’ is the product and is born out of the birth of ‘Capitalism’,especially ‘print capitalism’ that enables the dissemination, development and spread of the imagination and subjective awareness in raising the feelings of ‘togetherness’,‘belongingness’ and the inclusive ‘we’, in the bond of world consumerism.

This type of cultures have slowly eroded our Western and Eastern culture in an attempt to fused our culture, to give birth to hybrids and mutants.

We need to start by asking the much deeper question of what we think that life is all about. What is a human being? Are we just egos walking about on legs of meat, here today, gone tomorrow?

While many of the broader discussions of globalization and regionalisation convey an air of inevitability, most neither advocate nor address the vexed issues raised by the free flow of people.

What, then, does the Nation or Nationhood mean to ordinary people?

Nationalism’ is a sentiment of loyalty towards the nation, which is shared by people, inherited blinkers of race and religion, what we call ‘loyalty to truth and beauty, justice and freedom or is the project to make the political unit, the state (or polity) congruent with the cultural unit, the nation.

A good example is the Current state of affairs  in Syria, Iraq with a violent secessionist movements in the form of ISIS trying to create a Muslim State.

Instead of living in harmony as most imagined nations around the world, this Lot of barbaric wankers want to create a nation with its roots in fear, suspicion and hatred of the other.

While in Europe, North America, Soviet Union and the UK there is a growing backlash against immigration and multiculturalism.  Nationalism and its xenophobic correlates continue to flourish to no avail  because flows of transnational migration will unseated the nation-state as the dominant form of political organization in the world today due to Inequality and Poverty, and Greed.

To have common glories in the past and to have a common will in the present; to have performed great deeds together, to wish to perform still more – these are the essential conditions for being a people, a Nation.  Long live free Scotland.

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The greatest instance of market failure in the history of humankind.

10 Wednesday Sep 2014

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The damage done is already beyond repair – Global warming poses a far greater emergency than, say, Islamist terrorism.

It would be reasonable to think that with all the Global Summits, and 97% of climate scientists have reached the conclusion that climate change will strikes to the molecular core of our existence it would be on the top of every countries to do list and world media coverage,

The failure of the climate change catastrophe to ignite wide scale is baffling to say the least.

Virtually no one any longer believes that temperature will be able to be contained to the internationally recognized tipping point of two degrees.

We are fools to underestimate the magnitude of the challenge.

The problem seems to be that the more distance we have between ourselves and the natural world the better. This has created a type of lethargy where we become very disoriented, and we don’t realize the impact our actions are having on the things we actually need in order to survive.

Until our ethics take the form of a living praxis that isn’t just concerned about insular community, that actually is concerned with the whole of humanity, and all of life on the earth we will remain blind to the danger.

Consumerism or no, capitalism or no, charity or no, there is no way to survive unless we do it together.

Seeing that we have the ability to tear things down, that we have the ability to destroy things, we also have the ability to do the opposite.

We can actually engage the problem and reverse the process. Nature has the power to regenerate itself, and if it’s able to do that without any help then what would happen if you actually helped it?.

The condition of the earth global capitalism has made the depletion of resources so rapid, convenient and barrier-free that “earth-human systems” are becoming dangerously unstable in response.

So the problem is consumption it expresses the psychological unwillingness of the character type produced within the consumer society to recognize the necessity for material sacrifice and even the existence of limits.

While capitalism facilitates and demands consumption, some mythical awakening will have to take place.

Once environmental collapse convert fully into economic and societal collapse this awaking will have come too late.

Yet, eyes wide open, shut the nations of the earth to do very little to avert the impending, entirely foreseeable catastrophe.

Why?

As everyone knows, the electoral cycles are systemically biased towards political and policy short-termism.

Because Nations participate in the international system predominantly to safeguard and advance their self-interest – the so-called “national interest”.

Only when they think the national interest is served will they form alliances or involve themselves in broader schemes of international cooperation.

For these reasons, the domestic political systems of the nation states potentially of greatest importance in the struggle against global warming–that is the advanced Western democracies—tend to paralyze the possibility of necessary emergency action. In the way it has evolved, the post-war international “system” of nations is entirely unfitted to the kind of broad-ranging international cooperation now required.

As the problem of global warming is a historical product of the early industrial nations, it is almost impossible to convince the largest newly emerging and fast growing economies—like India or Brazil or South Africa—that their overriding obligation is to act in the interests of the earth and not in the immediate, short-term interests of their own people.

The United Nations is powerless

The cap-and-trade system or a carbon tax and carbon credits is a joke.

Progress in combating climate change requires acts of good global citizenship.

Only a handful of advanced economies—Germany, Denmark, Norway most notably—have acted thus.

To date there is no meaningful action by the two largest economies of the world—the United States and China.

China will for a long-time remain heavily dependent for its energy needs on coal of which it has vast reserves.

Australia is involved in a grotesque scramble to open up vast new coal developments especially in the Hunter Valley and the Galilee Basin in Queensland.

American exceptionalism is now a threat to both the earth and to the future of humankind.

Similarly, it has been, and will continue to prove, impossible to convince the fossil fuel-reliant economies—like Russia and the oil-producing nations of the Middle East—to sacrifice supposed national economic self-interest in favor of the future well-being of human and other species.

Perhaps even more challenging however will be the investigation of the far more common and dangerous pattern, to which almost none of us is immune: namely denialism in everyday life, or the ways in which so many citizens, knowing what they do, manage somehow to live their lives in parallel universes, on one level of existence accepting intellectually that the threat of catastrophic global warming exists, and on another finding ways of living and thinking, calmly and comfortably, as if nothing of great moment was happening that was placing the future of humankind and of other species in gravest peril.

The question was posed.

Could humankind very rapidly wean itself from the source of energy on which its astonishing material well-being had for two centuries been based? We do not yet know what the answer to that question will be.

Some time ago I made a case in a post that if we want it we must pay for it.

( Have a Look)

In the mean time for those of you who walk around looking into your smart phones wondering where you are here are a few Documentaries that might awake you.

 

The Last Man and the First Man.

08 Monday Sep 2014

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This might be too ambitious a subject to tackle but it is certainly a subject that you can let the imagination go wild.

So to read this post you will have to have dispassionate intelligence.

When you ask for opinions about what future humans might look like, you typically get one of two answers.

Some people trot out the old science-fiction vision of a big-brained human with a high forehead and higher intellect. Others say humans are no longer evolving physically—that technology has put an end to the brutal logic of natural selection and that evolution is now purely cultural.

However if you look at present day DNA techniques, which probe genomes both present and past, they have unleashed a revolution in studying evolution.

Since man fell out of a tree and stood up with 99% OF CHIMPANZEE DNA we continue to show genetically induced changes to our physiology and perhaps to our behavior as well.

Until fairly recently in our history, human races in various parts of the world were becoming more rather than less distinct.

The difficulties of the present-day point to a one-lopsidedness in our culture that harms both men and women.

Which of course we being the first man have not quite got the nervous system that is capable of seen so.

Perhaps it is the very reason we have a race of lassitude which will be the one cause of its decay. The conflict between the intransigent loyalty to life and the embattled against death proves this point.

Humans have survived for thousands of years and will most like survive thousands of more but it is becoming hard to remember life before digital news. The two world wars and current conflicts display so tragically the incompetence of us the first man to control our own nature.

We find ourselves swimming in an electronic sea where we could eventually be devoured—or ignored as an unnecessary anachronism.

”Although the last survivor may proclaim himself universal Emperor, his reign will be brief and his subjects will all be corpses.”

Civilization as we know it could probably survive one more world war, provided it occurs fairly soon and does not last long. After which no individual will think, or even feel, for himself, but each will be contentedly a mere unit in the mass.

I am dealing mainly with the gloomy aspects of the present situation of mankind. It is necessary to do so, in order to persuade the world to adopt measures running counter to traditional habits of thought and ingrained prejudices.

If the danger of wars were removed, scientific technique could at last be used to promote human happiness. If wars no longer occupied men’s thoughts and energies, we could, within a generation, put an end to all serious poverty throughout the world.

Unless we can cope with the problem of abolishing war, there is no reason whatever to rejoice in labor saving technique, but quite the reverse.

Owing to the modern impossibility of successful rebellion this is only possible through the creation of a single armed force in control of the whole world that wars will stop.

If you look back across the aeons to the first man you can see that his faith is already woven through spiritual desolation into senility and mutual intolerance.

On the other hand he lived at one with nature and woman.

Future Last man will have to live with eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind all computerized. Even the mind will tie in organically with “know-it-all computer memory banks.  Every one of the six organs will have disposable modules, likes cassettes, and will gain an electric boost. He will also have to have a lot of the opposite sex within him.

How many people would have believed you if five hundred years ago you had said, “In five hundred years, there will be airplanes, television, and radios?” Everyone would have considered you insane.

By the time human genes are grafted onto animal bodies and alter human genes with animals strains, this mutual genetic modification will produces a freakish, mutant, hybrid that resembles neither parent.

So will this be the Last human? It’s not really human. You say it’s an animal? It’s not exactly an animal either.

Lets hear your thoughts.

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WHY NATO ?

06 Saturday Sep 2014

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Is NATO a nuclear-armed alliance that since the end of the Cold War has been in search of a mission.

This might seem like an innocent question.

However we are now faces a world marked by accelerating change, in which everyone is connected but nobody is in charge.

The end of the Cold War, the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, and the collapse of the Soviet Union led the Allies to establish the North Atlantic Cooperation Council in 1991 and the Partnership for Peace in 1994.

Since then the  Alliance has been unable to formulate a concerted strategy of engagement with other international organizations owing in large part to disagreements among the NATO Allies. Intractable obstacles to cooperation rooted in national policies have generally been surmounted only under the compulsion of events like now.

This situation cannot be expected to change owing to their perceptions of the Alliance as a Cold War military organization composed of wealthy “northern” countries and dominated by the United States. It may be impossible to depoliticize firmly held national differences or to avoid stalemate.

According to the UN Charter, the UN Security Council has, primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. But as we all know it is an organisation now paralyzed by lack of funds, handcuffed by its permanent members, turned into a  gossip shop for its 192 members and god knows how many attracted specialized Agencies.

So knowing that NATO is primarily composed of American muscle, is Putin correctly reading their signals not to do anything of great significance.

The strategy of “kicking Putin in the cronies” is not causing many Russians to reach for the vodka bottle so far.

NATO in its recent meeting agreed in principle to a rapid reaction force and agree to reverse the trend of declining defense budgets and aim to increase defense expenditure in real terms as GDP grows;  ” we will direct our defense budgets as efficiently and effectively as possible; we will aim to move towards the existing NATO guideline of spending 2% of GDP on defense within a decade.”   Wow !

The Crimea crisis reveals the complete failure of NATO, the EU and Russia to find a path toward defense and security cooperation in the post-Cold War era.

IS’s successive victories in northern Iraq and their unchecked brutality continue to draw fighters to their ranks from throughout the Middle East, as well as from Western countries like Britain and the U.S.

There is no longer a clear enemy.

The overstepping of any mandate received by NATO may have a negative effect on the credibility of the responsibility to protect in future gross human rights violations.

There is no doubt that prior to Russia’s annexation of Crimea the Wales Summit would have been little more than a glorified photo-op.

It appears reactive, a kind of military tit-for-tat, that in the long run does nothing to reverse Ukraine’s dismemberment.

NATO remains a self destructing nuclear-armed alliance in which all states must accept the principle of nuclear deterrence and being part of the NATO nuclear command and control system.

In light of this the Alliance poses no threat to any country is blowing hot and cold air,  “should the security of any Ally be threatened we will act together and decisively. ”

What it is doing is helping the creation of the Islamic State on NATO’s strategic doorstep and the steady march of the Islamist anti-state, Iran and its nuclear ambitions will continue. It was not just a question of changing weapons, but also changing bureaucracies.

NATO has to work out how it needs to be restructured for the current world.

Nations today use computer network operations to defend sovereignty
and to project power, and cyber conflicts may soon become the rule rather than
the exception. Cyber security will require an international solution.

With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the rapid rise of strategic China, proliferation of destructive technologies across the world and a range of other potential threats it is clear that such self-deluding dogma of NATO must be challenged.

International relations in cyberspace seem closer to Pandemonium than Paradise. European Union and NATO, as the largest and most cohesive political and military alliances in the world, might be the best places to start.

Perhaps bring back the notation of a new European peace force would fit into NATO’S command structure and not the other way around.

At least the image could reflect Peace rather than seeing world leaders on a golf course craning their necks to watch Fighter jets surrounded by Military vehicles.

The US invests roughly €76,000 per soldier per annum, Europeans on average invest only €18,000.

The Disillusionment that we have some privileged position on Earth are challenged by such Alliances.

If you don’t believe me have a look at the below video.

http://www.upworthy.com/it-might-be-the-most-mind-boggling-photograph-humanity-has-ever-taken?c=gasan1

Every which way you look at it our planet looks like a nightmare.

05 Friday Sep 2014

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This is my one hundred post, and it makes sad reading.

It questions why I bother when the problems of the world is us.

The behavioral changes that are required of us are so fundamental that no one wants to make them.

Indeed, our cleverness, our inventiveness and our activities are now the drivers of every global problem we face.

Why are we not doing more about the situation we’re in – given the scale of the problem and the urgency needed – I simply cannot understand.

What, then, are our options?

It looks like to me that our Capitalist Democratic Governments are palatalized by consumer driving economies, and Data.

That our religions and beliefs are superficial when it comes to demands for Food, Water, Clean Air, Life.

In fact, I believe we can rightly call the situation we’re in right now an emergency – an unprecedented planetary emergency.

Earth is home to millions of species. Just one dominates it. Us.

Our activities have modified almost every part of our planet.

In fact, we are having a profound impact on it.

And every one of these problems is accelerating as we continue to grow towards a global population of 10 billion.

By 2050, your children, or your children’s children, will be living on a planet with at least 9 billion other people. Some time towards the end of this century, there will be at least 10 billion of us. Possibly more.

We hear the term “climate” every day, so it is worth thinking about what we actually mean by it. Never mind the sea rising and we all turning brown.

It takes 100 liters of water to produce a cup of coffee. And that’s before any water has actually been added to your coffee.

It takes something like four liters of water to produce a one-liter plastic bottle of water.

Last year, in the UK alone, we bought, drank and threw away nine billion plastic water bottles. That is 36 billion liters of water, used completely unnecessarily.

It takes around 72,000 liters of water to produce one of the ‘chips’ that typically powers your laptop, Sat Nav, phone, iPad and your car.

There were over two billion such chips produced in 2012. That is at least 145 trillion litres of water. On semiconductor chips.

In short, we’re consuming water, like food, at a rate that is completely unsustainable and it is already becoming a weapon of war. 

Demand for land for food is going to double By 2050,

1bn hectares of land is likely to be cleared to meet rising food demands from a growing population. This is an area greater than the US. And accompanying this will be three gigatons per year extra CO2 emissions.

If Siberia does thaw out before we finish our deforestation, it would result in a vast amount of new land being available for agriculture, as well as opening up a very rich source of minerals, metals, oil and gas. In the process this would almost certainly completely change global geopolitics.

By 2050, 70% of us are going to be living in cities.

It’s worth mentioning that of the 19 Brazilian cities that have doubled in population in the past decade, 10 are in the Amazon.

In transporting us and our stuff all over the planet, we are also creating a highly efficient network for the global spread of potentially catastrophic diseases.

To meet expected demand of energy production by the end of this century we will need to build, roughly speaking, something like: 1,800 of the world’s largest dams, or 23,000 nuclear power stations, 14.m wind turbines,  36.bn solar panels, or just keep going with predominantly oil, coal and gas – and build the 36,000 new power stations.

We spent €8bn at Cern to discover evidence of a particle called the Higgs boson.

We urgently need to do – and I mean actually do – something radical to avert a global catastrophe.

Human needs theorists argue that one of the primary causes of protracted or intractable conflict is people’s unyielding drive to meet their unmet needs on the individual, group, and societal level.

Conflicts and violent conflicts are caused by unmet human needs.

Humans need a number of essentials to survive. these essentials go beyond just food, water, and shelter.

They include both physical and non-physical elements needed for human growth and development, as well as all those things humans are innately driven to attain, such as recognition, safety, autonomy, equality, subsistence, respect and consideration, it becomes possible to look at strategies and solutions which may take all needs into account, on both sides.

Providing nothing collides into us we have 6.5 billion years to go before the whole lot goes up in flames in the mean time – if we don’t get a grip and stop being faceless on Facebook teach your son how to use a gun.

As I said this is the hundred post on my blog if it changes just one person it is worth it.

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When you close your eyes and enter the land of sleep it is not the only time in your life that you are content, death awaits us all.

What Sovereign Wealth Funds Think Now: Its Land.

03 Wednesday Sep 2014

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From the beginning of capitalism the drive for profits has been the major force in dispossession peasant and small-scale farmers from the land and water.

While we are all consumed by our daily lives the armies of our greatest enemy Greed in the form of money never sleeps.

Now there are many ways to acquire land as Mr Putin see it and you might think that he is the greatest current threat with nuclear power.

You would be wrong in my opinion.

In more stressful times, expect these land deals to lead to unrest and lay the groundwork for wars and national boundary or ownership changes. Any nation faced with civil disobedience or unrest, for whatever reason, might be subject to regime changes which might quickly change foreign land ownership policy. Moreover, political instability elsewhere in the region is pushing oil prices up, thereby increasing and guaranteeing the main source of income of the oil-rich Persian Gulf states.

The greatest threat is the Privatization of our world resources for the sake of profit which is in the not so distant future is going to come back to haunt us all.

It is an existential struggle for the future of humanity.

Unless the resources of the earth can be utilized in an equitable and sustainable way, then civilization itself is under threat.

The main threat are called Sovereign Wealth Funds that are currently plundering the world. There are about 52 sovereign investors who collectively manage $5.7 trillion in assets

( I have addressed the problem in past posted if your are interested.)

Here I want to highlight two aspects of their current activities that we should all be made aware of.

The first is Land and water.

Land grabbing is directly intertwined with the growing scarcity of fresh water resources around the world.

More than 463 projects covering 116 million acres, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa were acquired in eight months during 2008-9.

Perhaps the most famous example of such privatization of water was the infamous purchase of Bolivia’s water supply by Bechtel and the Abengoa Corporation of Spain in the late 1990s

If one needed more evidence that financial and political elites were consolidating their ownership of global water resources, one needs look no further than the Guarani Aquifer in Paraguay.

One of the world’s largest fresh water aquifers, Guarani is estimated as being larger than the US states of Texas and California combined. Researchers have calculated that Guarani could provide fresh water for the world’s population for at least 200 years. It is precisely atop this aquifer that George Bush and the Bush family have purchased more than 100,000 acres, though many believe the purchase to in fact be much larger.

If ownership of water and the farmland of a nation doesn’t define a nation tell me what does.

It is difficult to obtain accurate figures for the amount of land in the global South that is under the control of foreign and local private capital as well as foreign sovereign wealth funds.

Sovereign wealth funds–charged with preserving the accumulated fortunes of their home nations–are well known for their opaque, tightly guarded investment decisions.

Sovereign wealth funds hold about $5 trillion in assets globally, and many, are food challenged, such as Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, South Korea, and China.

With Climate change the rush for agricultural and water gold is in fully flight. Water “the petroleum for the next century” Future agricultural production will be stressed by climate change and competition for remaining oil and water supplies while population numbers grow will become more intensive.  

A disturbing trend in the water sector is accelerating worldwide. The new “water barons”  — are buying up water all over the world at unprecedented pace. Not only are the mega-banks investing heavily in water, the multimillionaire tycoons are also buying water. 

Unfortunately, the global water and infrastructure-privatization fever is unstoppable:

Here are a few facts that might make you think twice.

There is currently a consolidation of land and resources in ever fewer hands, while the mass of workers and peasants are made dependent on corporations and governments.

Hedge funds, big banks, sovereign wealth funds, are gobbling up the most fertile land around the world, leading many to wonder what the future of food production and land distribution will look like.

By 2020 more that 50 million people will be pushed into poverty because of high food prices, and this speculation will be if not already one of the main causes.

”Today’s emerging new farm owners are private equity fund managers, specialized farmland fund operators, hedge funds, pension funds,big banks and Sovereignty Wealth Funds.”

In Australia more than 800,000ha of prime and fertile land, from Moree in the north to Deniliquin in the south, is foreign owned, with Korea’s Ho Myoung Farm company the largest stakeholder with 500,000ha.  Hassad Australian, a company wholly owned by the Arab state of Qatar, has acquired 730,000ha of farm land in Australia, including 25,245ha in NSW.

There has been more than $1.5 billion in direct investment in Australian agricultural land over the last three years by GLOBAL fund managers and some of the world’s largest pension funds and of course Sovereign Wealth Funds.

The sovereign state of Qatari are on track to acquire a larger area more than the entire Arab state with plans to spend over $350 million on acquisitions. The Qatari government has leased large amounts of land in Kenya. They also have or are working on deals in Brazil, Argentina, Australia, Sudan, and the Ukraine.

They include: Two Swedish pension funds, Första AP-fonden and the Second Swedish National Pension Fund/AP2; the Dutch pension fund Algemene Pensioen Groep; Danish pension fund Danske; Swiss fund Adveq Real Assets Harvested Resources; Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund; and several from Canada including the British Columbia Investment Management Corporation, BNY Mellon, the Ontario Municipal Employee Retirement System, and Quebec’s CDPQ fund, Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec.

As of May 2012, it was estimated that between 32 and 82 million hectares (between approximately 80 and 200 million acres) of global farmland had been brought under foreign control, with the amount constantly increasing.Table A6: Top foreign investors in primary production land in regional NSW

Top Ten Land Grab Targets and Investor Countries

Target Countries
(millions of hectares)

Investor Countries
(millions of hectares)

South Sudan

4.1

United States

8.0

Papua New Guinea

3.9

Malaysia

3.5

Indonesia

3.5

Arab Emirates

2.8

DRC

2.7

UK

2.1

Mozambique

2.2

Singapore

1.9

Sudan

2.0

China

1.6

Liberia

1.4

Saudi Arabia

1.5

Argentina

1.3

South Sudan

1.4

Sierra Leone

1.2

China, Hong Kong

1.3

Madagascar

1.1

India

1.3

It is estimated that the amount of global farmland that has been acquired by foreign entities equals about 198 million acres.

In July 2013 the Colombian ambassador to the United States resigned over his participation in a legally questionable effort to help the U.S. corporation Cargill use shell companies to amass 130,000 acres of land.

Sovereign funds loaded with new capital will continue to pour into real estate and are actively seeking out foreign farmland to purchase.

In this age of global uncertainty in the area of food-producing and wealth preservation, productive farmland around the world has been placed into the spotlight by “guru investors,” wealth management funds, growing mega agri-industries, wealthy sovereign wealth funds.

The Saudi Kingdom is behind a seven-year project of acquiring 1.7 million irrigated rice acres in Senegal and Mali, enough to produce 7 million tonnes of rice. Proposals would allow Saudi business groups to take control of 70% of the rice-growing area of Senegal.

Saudi Arabia has farming interests in Egypt, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Syria, Turkey and the Ukraine.

South Koreans want to produce rice, corn, sugar, fish, and livestock in the Philippines.

Japan is believed to hold three times the amount of its own farmable land outside of its borders.

Argentina and Brazil have acquired land in Uruguay.

South Korea and Russia agreed to create a $500 million joint fund with their sovereign wealth funds, aimed at increasing cross-border investments in various companies and projects.

Egypt leases land in Uganda to produce rice, wheat and beef.

Nigeria is appealing to the Gulf nations to utilize its land. It has 175 million acres and is only farming half of that. It desires investment in that land, it desires employment opportunities, and it claims that it could provide 100% of the Gulf’s food needs.

Chinese investment in Kazakhstan reached $5 billion by the end of last year, slightly less than 4 percent of the country’s total foreign direct investment. They are buying land in Brazil for soybean cultivation, as part of a $3.4 billion plan to build oilseed and rice production bases overseas including bases for rapeseed in Canada and Australia, palm oil in Malaysia and rice in Cambodia. China is by far the largest investor, buying or leasing twice as much as anyone else.

In January 2012, China Investment Corporation has bought 8.68% stakes in Thames Water, the largest water utility in England, which serves parts of the Greater London area, Thames Valley, and Surrey, among other areas.

Foreign firms have invested in dairies, meat processing, crops and others areas in Serbia and other non-European Union members of the Balkans.

67% of Mideast SWFs plan to allocate more funds to Latin America, while half will do the same to Africa and 60% to India.

In November 2012, One of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), also purchased 9.9% stake in Thames Water.

Food insecure nations such as the Gulf States, China, Japan, South Korea and Western Europe are all interested in increasing their farmland holdings.

Countries need to take control of their agriculture away from international and market forces and support the development of national food sovereignty based on family size farms.

And if all of that is not enough sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East expect to receive more funding this year, providing them with extra financial firepower to raise their investments into emerging markets and asset classes such as private equity and real estate. Slightly Ironically, with instability in the region, the oil prices go up and that gives the governments sometimes a little bit more room to maneuver,” 54% of Middle East SWFs expect an increase in new funding in 2014, higher than the 46% average for all funds.

As much as US$70 billion is up for grabs for global hedge funds looking to raise money in Asia over the next few years.

So the next time you walk into any Sainsbury’s across the UK, remember that Qatar is a major investor.

It owns 20 per cent of the London Stock Exchange and, at the other end of the scale, it owns  20 per cent of Camden market, the biggest grunge emporium in the country. Qatari LNG accounted for 85 per cent of Britain’s liquefied natural gas imports, providing power to homes across the land.

QATAR’S STAKE IN BRITAIN

The tiny Gulf state has snapped up a range of famous British assets, which include:

1. Harrods, the upmarket department store former owned by Mohamed al-Fayed.

2. The Shard, soon-to-be Europe’s tallest building.

3. No 1 Hyde Park, the world’s most expensive block of flats.

4. The London Stock Exchange, which they own a 20 per cent stake.

5. Camden Market, which they own a 20 per cent stake.

6. The Olympic Village, once the games are over.

7. Sainsbury’s and Barclays banks – major investors.

8. Liquefield Natural Gas, Britain’s biggest supplier.

It’s no wonder Scotland wants Independence before the Dragon comes.

ALT

The greater their investment, the greater our dependency. The greater the dependency, the greater the risks.

 

 

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Our MR PUTIN is he Good or Bad.

02 Tuesday Sep 2014

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   I have not got a clue and there is no point telling me or you that history will tell as he is writing it at the moment.

He like most of us will be long departed from this world before the truth is revealed.

Who is Vladimir Putin? Why was he chosen as Yeltsin’s heir?

Mr. Putin is a career KGB officer who spent 16 years of his life in the KGB. … He graduated from then Leningrad State University from the law department, that like many things didn’t prepare laws–since law didn’t exist at the time of the Soviet Union–but prepared governmental bureaucrats.

Russia is a very infantile society. it is accustomed to having a state that was responsible for everything — medical care, schools, even the way they made kids.

The State was responsible for everything; the State got involved in everything. So he was well prepared for this job.

I don’t think that’s a good idea to judge Putin just by his KGB past.

He has this image of this big father, who is ready to take care and that’s definitely had and still has a great impact on Russians.

In Russia Putin is viewed as a dynamic, strong, honest, civil, modest and adequate leader, which is everything that Yeltsin wasn’t.

The war in Chechnya created Putin. It proved that there was someone on stage who can be decisive.

He appeals to nostalgia for the past and being from the KGB, means he supports a strong state.

He is against corruption and NATO which he is inadvertently reinventing.

What does Vladimir Putin want in Ukraine?

The fate of eastern Ukraine in the weeks ahead will help to reveal how far Mr Putin is prepared to go in his burning ambition to restore Russia’s greatness.

What exactly are Mr Putin’s long-term goals?

Either this is part of a long-term strategy to partition Ukraine. Or it’s a series of tactical moves designed to leverage influence over Kiev.

We are now embroiled in a full-scale standoff with Russia not seen since the Cold war.

NATO has been expanded to Russia’s borders and the long feared encirclement of Russia by Russians has already occurred.

No matter what Russia does next, we need not concern ourselves with Putin contributing to NATO new headquarters or the sounds coming out of Westminster or Capitol Hill.

The West will declare itself jolly cross while NATO opens its headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, at a construction costs of 750 million Euros  with an overruns that could reach 245 million euros.  

Putin’s theory on Crimea’s place in Russian history makes some sense: The peninsula had been part of Russia from 1783 to 1954, and even under Ukrainian rule housed Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. It’s not always a pretty history, though. For example, the entire Crimean Tatar population was deported from Crimea during World War II, and a huge number are believed to have died.

Correcting the historical mistake from 1954 that saw Crimea end up as part of Ukraine. It has always been a bugbear for Putin “Millions of people went to bed in one country and awoke in different ones,” he said, “overnight becoming ethnic minorities in former Union republics, while the Russian nation became one of the biggest, if not the biggest ethnic group in the world to be divided by borders.”

Putin will ask if the West has a right to preach about not invading foreign countries when it has sent in the tanks to Iraq and Afghanistan. The West’s fantasy of acting as world policeman — striking out dictators and returning countries to democracy — is finished.

Ultimately, Putin’s appeal to history makes sense in two strands of his political thought: the memories of a Russian empire that drive his plans for a Eurasian Union and his argument that the West’s international dominance is decadent and undeserved. Under the cover of the UN’s right to national self-determination, he is endeavoring to reassemble the Russian empire.

Perhaps if the Ukraine had not busied themselves dividing the spoils, instead of building a state they would not be in the position they now find themselves. History is often complicated and incoherent:

Europe’s ever changing borders don’t necessarily justify yet another change.

We the great unwashed will just have to wait and see.


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The Production and Consumer Society cannot be sustained by the Planet

01 Monday Sep 2014

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Some time ago I Posted ” The Scramble has begun- is Sustainability still possible” 08/05/2014

Recently I read a poem by Cicely Herbert.

” Everything changes. We plant

trees for those born later

but what’s happened has happened,

and poisons poured into the seas

cannot be drained out again.

What’s happened has happened

Poisons pour into the seas

cannot be drained out again, but

everything changes. We plant trees

for those born later. “

There is no getting away from it one voice can not have much effect other than planting a tree that might grow into a forest of global voice that will have to be listened to.

You will see from my previous blogs that I believe there is only one solution to resolve our global problems and that is the Capping of Greed at it source so it contribute to a World Aid fund with a perpetual funding at its heart.  (See previous postings)

For what its worth here is another look at the question of Sustainability.

European citizens, the vast majority take the view that the current consumer society can “upgrade” to the future.

Meanwhile, much of the planet’s inhabitants hope to get closer to our levels of material well-being.

However, the level of production and consumption has been achieved at the cost of depleting natural resources and energy, and break the ecological balance of the Earth.

None of this is new.

The researchers and the most brilliant scientists have giving warning signs since the early seventies of the twentieth century, that continuing with current growth trends (economic, demographic, use of resources, generation of pollutants and increased inequalities) the most likely outcome for the XXI century is a civilization collapse. If you open your eyes you can see it taking place all around you.

The decline in the availability of cheap energy, catastrophic climate change scenarios and geopolitical tensions over resources show that the progress of the past trends are breaking.

Faced with this challenges there are not enough cosmetics mantras for sustainable development, or the mere commitment to Eco-efficient technologies, or a supposed “green economy” that conceals the widespread com-modification of natural resources and ecosystem services.

Technological solutions to both the environmental crisis and the energy descent, are insufficient to stop it progress.

The ecological crisis is not a partial topic but determines all aspects of society: power, transport, industry, urbanization, war … It is ultimately the basis of our economy and our lives.

We are caught in the perverse dynamics of a civilization that does not grow if it does not work, and if it grows destroys the natural bases that make it possible.

Our culture, as they say in Spanish mercadólatra tecnólatra, another words forget us, our roots, and our dependent and interdependent ecosystems.

The productiveness and consumerist society can not be sustained by the planet.

We need to build a new civilization capable of ensuring a decent life for a huge, still growing human population (now over 7,200 million), which inhabits a world of dwindling resources.

This will be necessitate radical changes in lifestyles, forms of production, the design of cities and territorial organization and especially the values ​​that guide all of the above.

We need a society that aims to restore balance to the biosphere, and use research, technology, culture, economics and politics to advance toward that end.

We need to do all the political imagination, moral generosity and technical creativity to avoid deploy the inertia of the capitalist way of life and interests of privileged groups.

To avoid chaos and the barbarism to where we are today heading, we need a major political break with the hegemonic force, and an economy that is intended to satisfy social needs within the limits imposed by the biosphere, not the increase in profit private.

All this is easier said than done, but I am sure like me you don’t want  the below.

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THERE IS GOING TO BE A NEW WORLD ORDER.

31 Sunday Aug 2014

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WHY?

Not because there are numerous nuttier’s or religions organizations that say so.

But because of power, which is a zero-sum game that takes no account of past or future history.

While the world is choking in the dust of Iraq International agreements are being robbed of their meaning by Russia takeover of Crimea while sitting on the Security Council of the United Nations vetoing all resolutions.

Throughout the twentieth century, the list of the world’s great powers was predictably short: the United States, the Soviet Union, Japan, and northwestern Europe.

Decades of unchallenged supremacy for the United States is now coming to an end. America now has no stomach to get involved in world policing.

China holds over a trillion dollars in hard currency reserves, India’s high-tech sector is growing by leaps and bounds, and both countries, already recognized nuclear powers, are developing blue-water navies.

While the European Union discusses new sanctions on Russia France is selling it Navy War ships, England is welcoming Russian oligarchs money which is permeating the upper reaches of society buying up London Property and football clubs, all before Russia turns off the gas to the European Economy.

You don’t have to look far to see other signs of change.

The Oceans of the world are in a critical state of health.

The death of the Aral Sea has become a never-ending nightmare.

The Arctic — a once pristine wilderness is under siege.

Google had 2,161,530,000 searches.

More than 3 trillion has being wiped off global share prices since the start of January.

Climate change is the biggest single threat.

More than two decades after the Cold War ended, the world’s combined inventory of nuclear warheads remains at a very high level: more than 16,000.

More than a billion people don’t have access to safe drinking water. 2.6 billion people, almost half the world’s population doesn’t have access to adequate sanitation services.

More than 130 million children who are under the age of five will still remain malnourished by 2020.

More than 130 million children who are under the age of five will still remain malnourished by 2020.

If current trends continue, by 2050 something on the order of a third or 40% of all species will either have become extinct or will be on the threshold of going extinct.

The Earth has been sending us distress signals and the distress signals have to do with the pressures of human population and the pressures of the human economy on the ecosystems.

Incredibly, the world’s population grew more in the past fifty years than in the preceding 4 million years .Today our numbers have surged to nearly six and half billion and our population is increasing by nearly 80 million people each year – 220,000 each day.

In the face of poverty people will tend to utilize whatever they can to survive.

The State of the World Finances is in disarray.

world debt infographic

In the mean time Sovereignty Wealth Funds blunder the earth for profit.

Disregarding the current conflicts there are I am sure hundreds of additional indicators that a New World Order is needed.

We can only hope that Social media is not turning us all into morons blindly asking Google for answers.

We need a new world order that has at its heart the concept of ‘needs’, in particular the essential needs of the world’s poor, to which overriding priority should be given;

That understands the requirement for there to be a re orientation of technology the key link between humans and nature.

That understands in broadest sense, the strategy for sustainable development.

That aims to promote harmony among human beings and between humanity and nature.

  • a political system that secures effective citizen participation in decision-making. Democracy as it stands is now a rhetorical device.
  • an economic system that is able to generate surpluses and technical knowledge on a self-reliant and sustained basis.
  • a social system that provides for solutions for the tensions arising from disharmonious development.
  • a production system that respects the obligation to preserve the ecological base for development.
  • a technological system that can search continuously for new solutions.
  • an international system that fosters sustainable patterns of trade and finance.
  • an administrative system that is flexible and has the capacity for self-correction.
  • a new United Nations with all participants on equal terms.
  • a Cap on Capitalist Greed.
  • a watertight ban on trading of arms.
  • a transitioning to clean energy.
  • a move away from the Production and consumer society which cannot be sustained by the planet.

THE BEADY EYE: Was the Iraq war worth it? ( This is a post from unknown quest writer)

29 Friday Aug 2014

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I am sure you have noticed that the above question is making the rounds.

What a load of codswallop is being spouted and printed on the subject.

Firstly it’s the wrong question as the bullets are still flying.

Till they stop there is no answer, and we all know that history is written by the victors.

But here are some hard facts from Saddam Hussein coming of power to what we have today.

1979 – Saddam Hussein succeeds Al-Bakr as president.

1980-1988- Iran-Iraq war.

1988- Iraq attacks Kurdish town of Halabjah with poison gas.

1981- Israel attacks nuclear research centre near Baghdad.

1990- Iraq invades Kuwait, massive US-led military campaign forces Iraq to withdraw February 1991- The Gulf War.

1991- Iraq subject to weapons inspection program.

1991- Kurdish uprising brutal suppressed. UN safe-haven established in northern Iraq to protect Kurds.

1992 – No-fly zones for Iraqi planes.

1993 – US launch missile attack on Iraqi Headquarters.

1995. UNSC Resolution 986 allows the partial resumption of Iraq’s oil export to buy food and medicine.

1995  Saddam Hussein wins rig elections.

The War started long before the USA/British invasion.

They claimed that the war would be cheap, perhaps even profitable, thanks to lower oil prices.costs:

The costs are, alas, all too evident. Nearly 5,000 dead Americans, another 20,000 or more permanently disabled, and $1 trillion in expenses. At least 100,000 Iraqis dead.

The financial costs, including the cost to service the debt, will likely total nearly $4 trillion.

Estimates of the number of Iraqis killed in the sectarian bloodletting that occurred after the collapse of Saddam’s regime exceed 130,000.

The group that emerged in direct response to our occupation is resurgent, not just inside Iraq but as a regional movement, rebuilding its networks in Syria, Jordan, and Libya.

The Iraqi Christian community has been decimated.

By going to war in Iraq, we set the stage for the emergence of an entirely new branch of al-Qaida—al-Qaida in Iraq.

The imperfect and fragile government that has emerged in Iraq was hardly worth the costs incurred.

If the country has salvaged anything constructive from this war, it seems to be a greater appreciation for war’s unpredictability and the limits of American power. Remains an open question.

Iraq is also, right now, the only authentic democracy in the Arab world — is quite true.

Large portions of Iraq have fallen to the murderous Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham.

Doesn’t matter whether Iraq stands on its own or collapses into a sea of blood and hate most people want to be masters of their own fate.

Goodwill towards America squandered throughout the world.

The benefits are fuzzy and fragile. Millions were displaced, many still have not returned to their homes.

A U.S. administration forever tarred by an unpopular war.

The burden of proof has shifted toward those making the case for war, in Iran, or Syria, or Yemen, or countless other places.

What will remain is that moment in history when a people who had been subjugated by a tyrant’s whims were no longer afraid of him.