We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

The G8′s great land-grab

Click here to access article by Nick Jacobs from EUobserver.

The author explains how the one of the latest Orwellian-named projects put together by the G8 called "New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition" is anything but. Once again, we see our neo-liberal masters branding their theft of property under a benign, even humanitarian sounding name. But, as the writer explains, it is all about theft.
What is striking is how brazen and unapologetic the New Alliance is in its quest to open up African farmland – memorably described by the World Bank as the ‘last frontier’ for multinationals – to an unprecedented wave of industrial-scale investment.