Mexico and drugs liberalization: a dark side?

Drug-takers and principled libertarians have welcomed the news that Mexico is to decriminalise drugs and close down the country's equivalent of the FBI. But behind it there may be more than the desire to reduce the horrifying death toll from gang wars.

There are disquieting rumours about newly-elected President Enrique Peña Nieto's personal life. His alleged gay lover, Agustín Humberto Estrada Negrete, claimed that Peña Nieto murdered his wife Monica Pretelini; her two bodyguards were subsequently killed while escorting the family, who were left unhurt; Negrete claims later to have been threatened, near-fatally assaulted and then fled to San Diego in California, from where he has continued to denounce his alleged former bedmate, as recently as last April.

There are also allegations of Peña Nieto's dealings with organised crime syndicates. It is even claimed that the latter helped fund his election campaign.

The winding-up of Mexico's "FBI" may not be merely a consequence of the drugs decision. Established in 2001, the Agencia Federal de Investigación (AFI) was tasked to fight not only organised crime but corruption. Reorganised in 2009 and renamed the Policía Federal Ministerial (PFM), it is said to have been penetrated by the gangs. But this is a danger for all intelligence organisations and not in itself sufficient reason for dispensing with them.

Is the President closing the PFM because it will no longer be needed, or because its own security is irredeemably compromised, or because if left in place it could eventually mount a full investigation into his own alleged activities?

As to the drug cabals, it remains to be seen whether legalisation stops the violence or instead steps it up as crime syndicates vie for control of the hugely lucrative industry prior to reincarnation as legitimate businesses.

Not so green: "eco" factors behind landgrabbing and food shortages

After Ethiopia (see yesterday's post), here's Friends of the Earth International on Uganda, and how land-grabbing and speculation is driven in part by high-minded attempts to find alternatives to oil, to get carbon credits and to "conserve"the environment. What a mess.

(Highlights in the excerpted text are mine.)

1.2 The demand for land

A number of different factors lie behind this phenomena. Many cash rich and land poor governments are trying to secure food supplies by buying land overseas for domestic supplies. Land and resource rich but cash poor governments are seeking foreign direct investment in land and agriculture. While many of the governments involved are seeking to expand their domestic production of food crops and crops for fuel, agribusiness is seeking to expand its operations and boost profits, growing more, more cheaply; growing new crops for new markets, particularly for agrofuels – as well as gaining access to new markets in rapidly developing economies. Investors and speculators are looking for good investment returns.

Governments and private companies are both keen to gain access to fertile land at a low cost. Rapid increases in the food prices in recent years left many governments aware of their vulnerability to the market and eager to boost domestic food supplies. Countries such as China, India and Egypt want to ensure they have access to rice and grain. Other countries such as Saudi Arabia have recognised that the changing climate and limited water supplies mean that some crops can no longer be grown at home. Instead they are looking to outsource production to areas where fertile land and water are in greater supply.

Land grabbing for food has been recorded across Africa, notably in the Sudan and Uganda; in Pakistan, in Cambodia; in Russia, the Ukraine and Georgia; and in parts of South America, including Paraguay and Brazil. Some of these are countries which struggle to feed their own populations – but which have enough fertile land to attract foreign investors.

The growing demand for vegetable oils in particular, driven by increased human consumption and the promotion of agrofuels, particularly in Europe, has led to expansion of industrial monocultures. The growing market for palm oil has seen companies buying up land in tropical areas of Africa and Asia to establish plantations. Similarly, soy has expanded in South America, and land has been grabbed for jatropha in India, Indonesia and a number of African countries.

High levels of demand for land have pushed up prices, bringing in investors and speculators. With long term forecasts predicting increasing water shortages and other climatic changes to agriculture, few expect the price of land to fall. As a result, the big investment banks have moved into farming, buying up agricultural land, livestock farms and processing plants.

Another driver of land grabbing is particular types of environmental conservation projects such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing countries (REDD) projects that generate carbon credits from plantations. The appropriation of land and resources for environmental ends has been termed as ‘green grabbing’ (Vidal, 2008). In many cases communities that have managed and conserved forests for many generations are locked out of their communal forest lands due to conservation needs. As plantations are accepted as forests in international definitions, forested land is replaced by tree plantations aimed at generating carbon credits for companies (FOEI, 2008).

John Company colonizes Ethiopia

Two recent themes on this blog have been (a) agricultural investment and (b) companies that are as powerful (and possibly as wicked) as governments.

How about the "resettlement" of 1,500,000 Ethiopians to make way for corporate agri-grab?

That story ran in January, but there's lots more on this long-running issue - just Google up "land seizure ethiopia" or similar. And it's happening across Africa.

If you need a current hook to hang it off, here's a Norwegian story reproduced on farmlandgrab.org. Google Translate will give you enough to get the gist, e.g.:

Nykolonialisering in the form of landrov may have different face from country to country. The common denominator is that topsoil has been the hottest investment item, after the housing market broke down. Money pursuit of profit. Investors know that food and topsoil is scarce. It is important to position themselves. Liberti citing an unnamed manager of a South American investment fund. He goes straight to the point at a conference for investors, "We need to stop beating around the bush.

Agroindustrielle big companies take croplands, water and markets away from farmers. We can sell our products at lower prices and undercut peasant family farms. It must make decisions which are also of political nature.The world needs an effective agricultural producing on a large scale.

But it is not possible to promote this model without any loses. "Many believe that everything is taken political decisions. Bond activist Henry Saragih from Indonesia is The Guardian hailed as one of the fifty people who can save the world. He says landrov is part of a agroindustriell model that is being promoted by the World Bank, IMF, FAO and the EU:

"On the basis of vaguely worded principles of" responsible investment in agriculture "legitimize these institutions actually broader violations of farmers' rights."

"... the World Bank, IMF, FAO and the EU": as an idealistic teenager/tweenie, I liked the idea of supranational government. Now, I begin to think that it, and the money-forces to which it allies itself, pave the way for an evil worldwide oligarchy. Just wait till they have no further need for ourselves. Meanwhile, Ethiopians are being turfed off like the Chechens under Stalin.

Big Brother vs Big Company

Lovers of liberty are naturally and rightly suspicious of governments, which, as Charles Lamb said, "are as bad as they dare to be."

But corporations can be just as big and as hard to restrain, especially since they have the money to attract some of the best talent, and can shop around the globe for their preferred legal and tax jurisdictions.

Wikipedia lists 185 companies that have revenue in excess of $50 billion per annum. The CIA World Factbook lists 220 countries and dependant territories, together with their estimated GDP. Combining them into one list of major economic entities (ignoring the EU, which is not a country), we find:

1. Companies represent 40 out of the top 100 entities.
2. Only 23 countries are bigger than Exxon Mobil; and the latter's turnover is bigger than the combined GDP of the 100 smallest nations.
3. Even the smallest company listed here, Best Buy, has revenues higher than 183 nations.
4. BP has more employees than the populations of any one of the smallest 43 countries.
5. The combined revenues of the US housing quangos Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac total $264 billion, more than the GDP of Singapore.
6. The third biggest company, Walmart, is the 30th largest economic entity here and has more turnover than South Africa.
7. The 29 oil-and-gas companies on the list have a combined revenue exceeding $4.5 trillion - more than all but the three highest-GDP countries.
8. UK shoppers will be interested to see that supermarket chain Tesco ties at #100 in the list below - and its position may be strengthened if some of the banks, insurers and car companies suffer a reversal.

As multinational businesses have become larger (and often freer in their financial dealings) than many of the world's nations, our attention must turn to the growing power and potential dangers of corporate enterprises, as well as of the corrupt and tyrannical political regimes which sometimes work in partnership with them.



INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: Mostly in cash (and index-linked National Savings Certificates), but now planning to build up some reserves of physical gold via regular saving.

DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content.

Big Brother vs Big Company

Lovers of liberty are naturally and rightly suspicious of governments, which, as Charles Lamb said, "are as bad as they dare to be."

But corporations can be just as big and as hard to restrain, especially since they have the money to attract some of the best talent, and can shop around the globe for their preferred legal and tax jurisdictions.

Wikipedia lists 185 companies that have revenue in excess of $50 billion per annum. The CIA World Factbook lists 220 countries and dependant territories, together with their estimated GDP. Combining them into one list of major economic entities (ignoring the EU, which is not a country), we find:

1. Companies represent 40 out of the top 100 entities.
2. Only 23 countries are bigger than Exxon Mobil; and the latter's turnover is bigger than the combined GDP of the 100 smallest nations.
3. Even the smallest company listed here, Best Buy, has revenues higher than 183 nations.
4. BP has more employees than the populations of any one of the smallest 43 countries.
5. The combined revenues of the US housing quangos Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac total $264 billion, more than the GDP of Singapore.
6. The third biggest company, Walmart, is the 30th largest economic entity here and has more turnover than South Africa.
7. The 29 oil-and-gas companies on the list have a combined revenue exceeding $4.5 trillion - more than all but the three highest-GDP countries.
8. UK shoppers will be interested to see that supermarket chain Tesco ties at #100 in the list below - and its position may be strengthened if some of the banks, insurers and car companies suffer a reversal.

As multinational businesses have become larger (and often freer in their financial dealings) than many of the world's nations, our attention must turn to the growing power and potential dangers of corporate enterprises, as well as of the corrupt and tyrannical political regimes which sometimes work in partnership with them.



Call to reverse farmland investment

A couple of months ago I said I had moral qualms about the trend towards agricultural investment.

Now there's an article from the same site (farmlandgrab.org), looking at proposals to regulate the process somehow.

The writer doesn't buy it:

... the rules are always about making the project work for the investor. Local communities, soils, watersheds, local labour markets and even the domestic food security situation in the host country are treated as risk factors that need to be mitigated. The objective is to manage costs, including those connected to reputational risks, to ensure an acceptable return. The rules for responsible farmland investment are thus for the investor, for whom taking care of the fallout for local people becomes another cost of doing business -- and one that companies can make profits from to boot.

... Other sectors where this has been tried out -- sustainable cotton, sustainable soy, responsible palm oil, timber, banking and whatnot -- have a profoundly blotted track record.

... What we need is not responsible farmland investment, but divestment. By this we mean that rather than trying to make this new trend of financialising farmland work, these deals need to be stopped and undone, with the lands restituted to the communities that lived from them. And instead of promoting the growth of industrial agriculture, we need to strengthen family- and community-based food sovereignty approaches, across the world. Initiatives are being taken in these directions, aiming to choke capital flows into firms with a history of land grabbing or into funds specifically set up to peddle rights to farmland, bolstered by advocacy and political pressure to support small-scale family-based farming systems and local markets. While it is a huge and uphill battle, it's clear that we need to stop the financing of land grabs, not make it responsible.

Again and again, I feel that Big Corporation is not an alternative to Big Brother. For example, it's not so very long since Monsanto was trying for a scheme that would have economically enslaved farmers across the world: the "terminator gene" project, finally halted (or is it finally?) in 1999.

Lovers of liberty need to look over their right shoulder as well as their left.

INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: Mostly in cash (and index-linked National Savings Certificates), but now planning to build up some reserves of physical gold via regular saving.

DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content.

Call to reverse farmland investment

A couple of months ago I said I had moral qualms about the trend towards agricultural investment.

Now there's an article from the same site (farmlandgrab.org), looking at proposals to regulate the process somehow.

The writer doesn't buy it:

... the rules are always about making the project work for the investor. Local communities, soils, watersheds, local labour markets and even the domestic food security situation in the host country are treated as risk factors that need to be mitigated. The objective is to manage costs, including those connected to reputational risks, to ensure an acceptable return. The rules for responsible farmland investment are thus for the investor, for whom taking care of the fallout for local people becomes another cost of doing business -- and one that companies can make profits from to boot.

... Other sectors where this has been tried out -- sustainable cotton, sustainable soy, responsible palm oil, timber, banking and whatnot -- have a profoundly blotted track record.

... What we need is not responsible farmland investment, but divestment. By this we mean that rather than trying to make this new trend of financialising farmland work, these deals need to be stopped and undone, with the lands restituted to the communities that lived from them. And instead of promoting the growth of industrial agriculture, we need to strengthen family- and community-based food sovereignty approaches, across the world. Initiatives are being taken in these directions, aiming to choke capital flows into firms with a history of land grabbing or into funds specifically set up to peddle rights to farmland, bolstered by advocacy and political pressure to support small-scale family-based farming systems and local markets. While it is a huge and uphill battle, it's clear that we need to stop the financing of land grabs, not make it responsible.

Again and again, I feel that Big Corporation is not an alternative to Big Brother. For example, it's not so very long since Monsanto was trying for a scheme that would have economically enslaved farmers across the world: the "terminator gene" project, finally halted (or is it finally?) in 1999.

Lovers of liberty need to look over their right shoulder as well as their left.

INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: Mostly in cash (and index-linked National Savings Certificates), but now planning to build up some reserves of physical gold via regular saving.

DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content.