CHINA CONFIDENTIAL
Friday, December 05, 2008
New Land Grab Could Send Food Prices Soaring
By Deborah Mackenzie
History may be repeating itself. Until the mid-20th century, many European countries grew rich on the resources of their colonies. Now, countries including China, Kuwait and Sweden are snapping up vast tracts of agricultural land in poorer nations, especially in Africa, to grow biofuels and food for themselves.
The land grabs have sparked accusations of neocolonialism and fears that the practice could worsen poverty. Yet some organisations think this could be a chance for poor countries to trade land and labour for the technology and investment vital for developing their own food and energy production.
The rush for land was triggered by this year's food crisis and the European push for biofuels. The South Korean firm Daewoo made headlines last week when it sought a 99-year lease on 1.3 million hectares of Madagascar to grow maize and oil palm. The deal is far from unusual.
A number of companies are growing sugar cane in Tanzania, for example, to make bioethanol for European countries to meet European Union targets. This year, investors from Gulf states initiated so many farm projects in Africa and south-east Asia that the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) urged caution to prevent a political backlash.
"Egypt is investing in Sudan; Libya in Ukraine; Saudi Arabia in Thailand; China in Africa, the Philippines and Russia," says Joachim von Braun, head of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington DC.
As population growth and dwindling oil supplies make farmland the strategic resource that oilfields are now, the hunger for land looks set to increase. China has 20 per cent of the world's people and only 9 per cent of the farmland, and that is dwindling. According to a detailed analysis by the NGO Grain, Chinese companies and the government have since 2007 leased or purchased 2 million hectares of foreign farmland.
Financial firms have been quick to get in on the act too, and are moving their money from food to the land that produces it. The British hedge fund manager Dexion Capital, for instance, plans to invest $270 million in 1.2 million hectares in Australia, Russia and South America....
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The Moscow Plan: Now It Can be Told
Foreign Confidential....
Moscow's residents are learning more and more about the Moscow Plan.
It was developed in the autumn of 1941, when German forces came within 30 kilometres of the Soviet capital. Hundreds of Soviet intelligence officers were told to stay behind in Moscow with orders to attack German officers and destroy key buildings and infrastructure sites to prevent them from falling into Nazi hands.
More than 1,100 targets in and around Moscow were rigged with explosives.
The Bolshoi Theatre and the iconic St Basil's Cathedral on Red Square were among the buildings to be blown up, according to documents that have come to light.
A document, from October 1941, orders a group called Detachment 3R to stay in occupied Moscow and "carry out terrorist attacks against high-ranking German commanders, occupying authorities and traitors to the motherland".
The plan reflected the panic that gripped Soviet leaders as the invading forces approached.Detroit Bailout Reflects Double Standard
Dateline USA....
As Congress closes in on an aid deal to save the domestic automobile industry, ugly fault lines in American society are increasingly revealed.
On the one hand, hypocritical politicians and pundits delight in criticizing the country's unionized auto workers while forgiving the greedy and incompetent executives of the so-called Big Three--Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors.
On the other hand, even in the wake of the controversial bailout of the money-hoarding, people-crushing big banks, few, if any, observers question the pay scales of ordinary workers, let alone senior managers, of the failed financial services sector.
The double standard is illogical and dangerous. Detroit's blue collar laborers have worked harder and produced more value than Wall Street's white collar workers. But America, apparently, hates men and women who work with their hands in order to make real things that real people really use--like cars and trucks--in contrast with so-called financial products, including the toxic derivatives that defy description.Ghana Threatened by Cocaine Traffic
Ahead of Ghana's presidential elections, Tristan McConnell reports from Accra:As Ghanaians prepare to go to the polls this weekend to choose a new president, there are concerns that the enormous and growing quantities of cocaine trafficked through the country pose a threat to one of Africa's rare success stories.
The sweltering, coastal West African state has, since the 1990s, been an oasis of stability in a notoriously volatile region. While its neighbors suffered civil wars and unrest, Ghana replaced military rule with multiparty democracy, and its economy – based largely on the export of gold and cocoa – has been growing steadily in recent years, at around 6 percent annually.
Ghana might be among the best-governed states in West Africa, but according to a recent United Nations report, it's also one of the two leading shipping points for drugs trafficked between South America and Europe (the other is Guinea-Bissau). International drug enforcement officials estimate that as much as $2 billion worth of cocaine is trafficked via West Africa each year, which represents roughly a quarter of all the cocaine imported into Europe.
Officials at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime talk of West Africa as being "under attack" and facing "a crisis of epic proportions."
Click here to continue.Flake or Faker? US Commerce Secretary Gutierrez
Dateline USA....
Turns out, the U.S. Commerce Secretary, Carlos Gutierrez, is incredibly dumb. Either that, or incredibly cruel and insensitive.
Every time the former chairman and CEO of Kellogg Company (NYSE:K) appears on the so-called business news network CNBC (itself an offense to thinking Americans) he says something stupid. Today's pearls of wisdom, on the occasion of news of America's worst-ever job-loss report: government should focus only on the liquidity crisis and forget about economic stimulus and job creation.
By the time this moron leaves office, millions of Americans will be lucky if they can afford to buy his old company's best known product, Kellogg's Corn Flakes--for dinner.
The CNBC anchors, who seem blissfully unaware of how fragile their own jobs are, could barely bring themselves to challenge the Commerce Secretary's scary argument. Recall that these are the same clowns who have acted as cheerleaders for the hollowed-out, outsourced and offshored shell of an economy that was leveraged in ways and to degrees no sane or honest person could have possibly imagined.
Influenced by CNBC, many hard-working, decent people lost their life savings.
That's a fact, not an opinion.China to American Consumers: Drop Dead
As the United States tries to avoid a new great depression, Chinese officials, China Confidential sources say, sound more like 1930s Republicans than pseudo-socialists or state capitalists--at least, when it comes to pressuring and lecturing Washington.
Even as China prepares to massively stimulate its own economy--knowing that the ruling Communist Party's legitimacy and survival rest on its ability to continue raising people out of poverty--Beijing is urging the U.S. to avoid too much spending and instead focus on so-called fiscal responsibility.
In other words, China seems to care more about protecting its dollar reserve holdings than recharging the U.S. consumer economy that fueled China's export-driven ascent.
Having built its own domestic market, China doesn't really care if millions of Americans are pauperized. Bread lines in Beijing would mean revolution; in American cities, no problem. That's Washington's problem.
Li Yanping and Rebecca Christie report from Beijing:The U.S. agreed to speed up approvals for Chinese financial institutions seeking to invest in the country, as Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson tries to find ways to unlock frozen credit markets and stabilize banks.
The announcement was made in a joint statement at the close of two days of bilateral talks between China and the U.S. in Beijing. The U.S. also welcomed “commercially based” investments by China’s sovereign wealth fund and the foreign- exchange administration in industries including financials.
The U.S. has pledged more than $8.5 trillion to rescue its financial system after credit markets seized up 15 months ago. The head of China’s $200 billion sovereign fund this week said he wouldn’t “dare” invest in overseas financial firms, and Vice Premier Wang Qishan yesterday called on the U.S. to “ensure the safety of China’s assets and investments in the country.”
“‘We are going to open up approval for you to buy something that’s not worth buying,’ that’s basically what the U.S. is saying,” said Craig Russell, Beijing-based chief China market strategist at Saxo Bank A/S, in a Bloomberg Television interview. “It seems like the U.S. has no cards to play; China has all the cards. It rings very hollow.”
Click here to continue.Kabul on Verge of Collapsing
Foreign Confidential....
The security situation in Afghanistan is worsening every day. The corrupt central government is rapidly losing control of the capital. The resurgent Taliban have infiltrated Kabul and penetrated key government agencies. It is too late--way too late--for an Iraq-style troop surge (the effectiveness of which was significantly enhanced by a secret understanding between the United States and Iran that it would rein in its sponsored Shiite militias).
Nobody is safe in Kabul, as shown by Denmark's decision to "temporarily"--code for indefinitely--shut its embassy and go underground.
The Embassy has been relocated to an undisclosed location in Kabul for security reasons, according to a Foreign Ministry spokesman.
Klavs A. Holm says "the security level is such that the embassy has to work from another location."
Holm said Friday that the threat against Danish interests remains high. He declined to say whether a newly discovered risk for the embassy in Kabul had led to the relocation.
Last month, Denmark's intelligence service said there is still a considerable threat from Islamic extremists against Danes and Danish interests abroad because of the Feb. 13 reprinting of a cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad.
China Confidential analysts say the cartoon angle is real but exaggerated. Every Western embassy is a Taliban target.
The war has gone very badly wrong.Breathless Heist: Jewel Robbers in Drag Raid Paris Harry Winston, Escape with $100 Million in Loot
Foreign Confidential....
With the global economy at breath's end, a new wave of crime has hit Europe.
Michel would be envious....
Jean-Pierre Verges reports from Paris:Armed robbers — some dressed in drag — made off with euro80 million ($100 million) in loot from a lightning-fast jewelry store theft in central Paris, in what police Friday called one of France's costliest jewel heists.
Three or four thieves swiped rings, necklaces and luxury watches from display cases at the Harry Winston store near the Champs-Elysees, a police official said. They brandished handguns and threatened about 15 employees, hitting some on the head with guns, the official said.
At least two of the bandits were men wearing wigs and dressed as women, at times spoke a foreign language, and knew employees' names, the official said. After the theft, the robbers fled.
The official, who was not authorized to be publicly named according to agency policy, said it was among France's biggest-ever jewel thefts.
Continue here. The article says the French jewelry industry has reported "a 20 percent rise in armed robberies this year over last, with 132 incidents in the first 11 months of 2008."
In London, police have reported a recent rise in holdups of security vans; and, in other jewel theft news, police in Italy this week said they arrested nine suspects in the dramatic daytime robbery of a Milan jewelry showroom.
Investigators said nine Italian men were picked up in Milan and Sicily in their investigation of the theft in February at a Damiani jewelry store.
Company chief Guido Damiani thanked police for tracking down the suspects, who were arrested late Monday and early Tuesday. Damiani said police are still looking for the jewels.
Italian news reports said some of the suspects have links to Sicilian Mafia bosses.
Masked thieves drilled a tunnel into a Damiani showroom as employees were preparing for a VIP showing, making off with gold, diamonds and rubies. Damiani never publicly placed a value on the stolen items.
Saturday, 6 December 2008
Foreign Confidential....
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