Neureiter comments on a recently published book by Fred Pearce who "examines the dynamics behind large-scale land acquisitions and their social, environmental and developmental effects" around the world.
In the book, the reader is taken on a whirlwind tour around the globe to witness, through Pearce’s eyes, a new kind of colonialism driven not by countries, but by powerful private capitalists. We encounter figures such as George Soros and Richard Branson; we learn about the effects of the conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Liberia; we find out why President Robert Mugabe's land seizures in Zimbabwe were not so bad after all for small-scale farmers; and we see how the global financial crisis and the intricate mechanisms of stock market speculations in commodities exacerbate the problem.
