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Post by franklin on Jun 4, 2010 21:10:58 GMT -5
Anyone have any theories about conspiracies that might be behind the following statistics The credibility of the source is very important, but the first article is a .gov site There has been people who thought the less than 3% of world exports statistic to be untrue, that this is missing with numbers or something. In fact business costs tend to be high in Africa with high transportation costs too. Both of these sources agree that Africa has less than 3% of world exports, and I have read some articles that say the same thing. The 2nd source cites The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and says that Africa also has less than 4% of the FDI that exists in the world "Trade Is Key to Africa’s Economic Growth" 07/23/2009 From Office of the United States Trade Representative www.ustr.gov/about-us/press-office/blog/trade-key-africa%E2%80%99s-economic-growth"Globalization, Africa’s foe? Monday, January 18, 2010" . By Emmanuel Martin who is an an economist and Editor of the Francophone project www.africanliberty.org/node/959 I found out that Africa for decades has had a shrinking share of world trade 18th Meeting of Tepcow. Theme: "Accelerating Trade and Investment in Africa" Reference Conference Document: " Promoting Trade and Investment to Accelerate Africa's Development" Addis Ababa, 29 April 1997 www.uneca.org/cfm/23/cm23-thm.htm Statistics: Sub-Saharan Africa in 1997 (time of article)received 3.5 percent of world FDI Sub-Saharan Africa accounted 3.1 percent of world exports in 1955 and declined to 1.2 percent of world exports in 1990. You heard it right it went down that amount during that time period. Major exports fell dramatically, and one problem is that exports were concentrated to certain products. There was also reliance on a limited number of trading partners. There is also a habit of many countries having higher tariffs on goods that are of particular importance to many African countries. Other articles seem to concur with this
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Post by franklin on Jun 4, 2010 23:57:41 GMT -5
These sorts of prohibitions and taxations, I would think, make it so that big corporations have greater control of world trade. "Summary of 2010 Position Papers: Overall Goals" from the The Association of Americans Resident Overseas aaro.org/position-papers-2010 [Overseas Americans are estimated to be similar in number to the population of Minnesota – the 21st most populous state. Easily forgotten because they are scattered across the globe, they face a number of obstacles in what to their counterparts in the U.S. appear to be normal activities like transmitting their nationality and voting. Today, they are increasingly confronted with major challenges in simply earning a living and maintaining a bank account. We urge Congress and the Administration to rethink certain policies that restrict their effectiveness as ambassadors for American services and business abroad. Our most important issues this year are Taxation: If the President’s National Export Initiative is to succeed in doubling exports in 5 years, American citizens must be deployed abroad to secure export sales. A true export policy dictates that tax policy should allow Americans to be fully competitive in business overseas. Today, U.S. tax policy makes U.S. citizens abroad too expensive. It unfairly penalizes Americans living abroad and discourages American companies from sending their top marketing people overseas. Section 911 of the Tax Code must be amended to correspond to economic reality.] "Knowledge Network: Research and Opinions U.S. tax policies hurt global competitiveness, speaker tells graduates" knowledgenetwork.thunderbird.edu/research/2010/05/07/hinrichs/ [“It is my belief that some nations impede the competitiveness of their own citizens by the policies they adopt,” said Hinrichs, a 1965 Thunderbird graduate and Thunderbird Board of Trustees member since 1991. “This is unfortunate and maybe not intentional.”.... Hinrichs said the U.S. government works to keep its exports competitive but falls short when it comes to keeping its citizens competitive overseas He said the United States is the only nation that requires its citizens to comply with a worldwide taxation system, which follows them wherever they go. This means U.S. citizens working abroad must pay income taxes on earnings in the local country and still file tax returns in the United States. Any income above the maximum exclusion of $91,400 is taxed in both countries (see the 2009 Tax Guide for U.S. Citizens and Resident Aliens Abroad, Publication 54). This puts U.S. citizens at a disadvantage in the job market because they must demand higher salaries to compensate for the additional taxes.] "High Corporate Income Tax Rate Driving Jobs Overseas" © 2009, The Heritage Foundation blog.heritage.org/2010/05/05/high-corporate-income-tax-rate-driving-jobs-overseas/
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Post by franklin on Jun 5, 2010 12:45:58 GMT -5
Economic manipulation see the dramatic drop in coffee production World Trade Indicators 2009/10 info.worldbank.org/etools/wti/docs/Gabon_brief.pdf Gabon Trade Brief [ To reduce dependence on food imports, which currently account for about 60 percent of food consumption in Gabon, the government is targeting a 45 percent increase in agricultural production by 2015. To this end, the agricultural sector enjoys relatively high tariff protection of 17.9 percent, compared to 14.3 percent for the non-agricultural sector. The country’s average MFN applied tariff has remained largely unchanged over the past decade and is currently 17.8 percent. Again indicating the level of protection afforded to the agricultural sector, coffee, fruits, and vegetables are among the products subject to Gabon’s maximum MFN applied tariff (excluding alcohol and tobacco) of 30 percent. The government is particularly interested in reviving the coffee sector, for which output reached a peak of about 4,000 tons in 1976 but fell to about 200 tons in 2005. Painting a similar picture, exports from Gabon to the rest of the world face a relatively low weighted average tariff (including preferences) of 0.6 percent, driven largely by the low barrier of 0.6 percent faced by its non-agricultural exports, which include oil. Its agricultural exports face a much higher tariff of 8.7 percent. Gabon’s currency, the CFA franc, which is pegged to the euro, appreciated by 4 percent in real, trade-weighted terms in 2008, making the country’s exports less competitive.]
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Post by anansi on Jun 11, 2010 23:29:05 GMT -5
I have always viewed Alex Jones as interesting but a paranoid loon non the least. however a friend of mine sent me this vid. I am unwilling to accept all that is presented in this video..maybe because some of it if true is too awful to contemplate..I hope he is wrong and just fear mongering and ranting as usual but when one look at some of the actions or in action one has to at-least think that something is up!!it is a full length over an hr..so make sure you schedule some down time.
An even better video imo I am trying not bash Obama or join Obama bashing but???
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Post by franklin on Jun 12, 2010 12:38:05 GMT -5
Thanks for the video. Just a little bit through the bottom video so far, I wonder if the tax on Americans abroad is like the carbon tax. If the United States is really the only country that taxes businesses that exist abroad it suggests that it is a way to control Americans abroad. Perhaps as a way so that only big corporations can control world trade
Maybe high taxes on the rich means you have to be an insider of the NWO in order to stay rich or something like that lol
Edit:
18:00-18:30 from the bottom video
Globalization would do much to help people throughout the world, it will help raise the standard of living of people. It is the very policies going on to "help" them that is ruining their standard of living and the environment
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Post by anansi on Jun 13, 2010 1:43:57 GMT -5
Thanks for the video. Just a little bit through the bottom video so far, I wonder if the tax on Americans abroad is like the carbon tax. If the United States is really the only country that taxes businesses that exist abroad it suggests that it is a way to control Americans abroad. Perhaps as a way so that only big corporations can control world trade Maybe high taxes on the rich means you have to be an insider of the NWO in order to stay rich or something like that lol Edit: 18:00-18:30 from the bottom video Globalization would do much to help people throughout the world, it will help raise the standard of living of people. It is the very policies going on to "help" them that is ruining their standard of living and the environment Here is the problem globalism is not necessarily bad in of it self it depend on who runs it a bunch of extremely greedy,egotistical corporatist elites playing gods wont do.
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Post by franklin on Jun 13, 2010 11:49:17 GMT -5
This is true but right now there are many barriers to world trade. More could be gained through trade than aid. However the governments of Europe and the United States are very protectionist in the very things countries in Africa could trade in
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Post by franklin on Jun 16, 2010 19:26:32 GMT -5
The reason I haven't talked about China suppressing African industries for a while is because I found out that much of the cheap cotton from the United States goes to China. This in turn gives China more capacity to be able to flood African countries with cheap textiles.
See the first link on this thread to the .gov article "Trade Is Key to Africa’s Economic Growth" the article talks about the irony that these Africans have all of this cotton, but so little of apparel trade. Despite all of Africa's resources most of it's exports to the United States is oil. Sounds like Afghanistan
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Post by franklin on Jun 16, 2010 22:43:45 GMT -5
These statistics give another perspective to the nature of the situation. This is exactly the reason that African trade is suppressed so much, by stifling African trade the world economy is slowed down. I mean really Africa has less than 3% of world trade and less than 4% of the FDI that exists in the world! On top of that there is less trade between African countries than on any other continent. Increasing African trade will benefit everyone in the world. All the dormant wealth is seen as a threat “The Mystery of Capital” by Hernando De Soto www.amazon.com/Mystery-Capital-Capitalism-Triumphs-Everywhere/dp/0465016146page 35 [By our calculations, the total value of the real estate held but not legally owned by the poor of the Third World and former communist nations is at least $9.3 Trillion (book has a chart on statistics from deferent continents) This is a number worth pondering: $9.3 trillion is about twice as much as the total circulating U.S. money supply. It is very nearly as much as the total value of all the companies listed on the main stock exchanges of the world’s twenty most developed countries: New York, Tokyo, London, Frankfurt, Toronto, Paris, Milan, the NASDAQ, and a dozen others. It is more than twenty times the total direct foreign investment into all Third World and former communist countries in the ten years after 1989, forty-six times as much as all the World Bank loans of the past three decades, and ninety-three times as much as all the development assistance from all advanced countries to the Third World in the same period.]
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Post by anansi on Jun 18, 2010 2:22:42 GMT -5
Haitian Farmers Commit to Burning Monsanto Hybrid Seeds Tuesday 18 May 2010 by: Beverly Bell, t r u t h o u t | Report Jonas Deronzil from Verrettes has been farming since 1974. Like small producers throughout Haiti, his meager income from corn, rice and beans is threatened by new competition from Monsanto. (Photo: Beverly Bell) "A new earthquake" is what peasant farmer leader Chavannes Jean-Baptiste of the Peasant Movement of Papay (MPP) called the news that Monsanto will be donating 60,000 seed sacks (475 tons) of hybrid corn seeds and vegetable seeds, some of them treated with highly toxic pesticides. The MPP has committed to burning Monsanto's seeds, and has called for a march to protest the corporation's presence in Haiti on June 4, for World Environment Day. In an open letter sent May 14, Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, the executive director of MPP and the spokesperson for the National Peasant Movement of the Congress of Papay (MPNKP), called the entry of Monsanto seeds into Haiti "a very strong attack on small agriculture, on farmers, on biodiversity, on Creole seeds ... and on what is left our environment in Haiti."(1) Haitian social movements have been vocal in their opposition to agribusiness imports of seeds and food, which undermines local production with local seed stocks. They have expressed special concern about the import of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). For now, without a law regulating the use of GMOs in Haiti, the Ministry of Agriculture rejected Monsanto's offer of Roundup Ready GMOs seeds. In an email exchange, a Monsanto representative assured the Ministry of Agriculture that the seeds being donated are not GMOs. Elizabeth Vancil, Monsanto's director of development initiatives, called the news that the Haitian Ministry of Agriculture approved the donation "a fabulous Easter gift" in an April email.(2) Monsanto is known for aggressively pushing seeds, especially GMOs seeds, in both the global North and South, including through highly restrictive technology agreements with farmers who are not always made fully aware of what they are signing. According to interviews by this writer with representatives of Mexican small farmer organizations, they then find themselves forced to buy Monsanto seeds each year, under conditions they find onerous and at costs they sometimes cannot afford. The hybrid corn seeds Monsanto has donated to Haiti are treated with the fungicide Maxim XO, and the calypso tomato seeds are treated with thiram.(3) Thiram belongs to a highly toxic class of chemicals called ethylene bisdithiocarbamates (EBDCs). Results of tests of EBDCs on mice and rats caused concern to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which then ordered a special review. The EPA determined that EBDC-treated plants are so dangerous to agricultural workers that they must wear special protective clothing when handling them. Pesticides containing thiram must contain a special warning label, the EPA ruled. The EPA also barred marketing of the chemicals for many home garden products, because it assumes that most gardeners do not have adequately protective clothing.(4) Monsanto's passing mention of thiram to Ministry of Agriculture officials in an email contained no explanation of the dangers, nor any offer of special clothing or training for those who will be farming with the toxic seeds. Jonas Deronzil from Verrettes has been farming since 1974. Like small producers throughout Haiti, his meager income from corn, rice and beans is threatened by new competition from Monsanto. (Photo: Beverly Bell) Haitian social movements' concern is not just about the dangers of the chemicals and the possibility of future GMOs imports. They claim that the future of Haiti depends on local production with local food for local consumption, in what is called food sovereignty. Monsanto's arrival in Haiti, they say, is a further threat to this. "People in the US need to help us produce, not give us food and seeds. They're ruining our chance to support ourselves," said farmer Jonas Deronzil of a peasant cooperative in the rural region of Verrettes.(5) Monsanto's history has long drawn ire from environmentalists, health advocates and small farmers, going back to its production of Agent Orange during the Vietnam war. Exposure to Agent Orange has caused cancer in an untold number of US veterans, and the Vietnamese government claims that 400,000 Vietnamese people were killed or disabled by Agent Orange, and 500,000 children were born with birth defects as a result of their exposure.(6) Monsanto's former motto, "Without chemicals, life itself would be impossible," has been replaced by "Imagine." Its web site home page claims it "help farmers around the world produce more while conserving more. We help farmers grow yield sustainably so they can be successful, produce healthier foods ... while also reducing agriculture's impact on our environment."(7) The corporation's record does not support the claims.
Together with Syngenta, Dupont and Bayer, Monsanto controls more than half of the world's seeds.(8) The company holds almost 650 seed patents, most of them for cotton, corn and soy, and almost 30 percent of the share of all biotech research and development. Monsanto came to own such a vast supply by buying major seed companies to stifle competition, patenting genetic modifications to plant varieties and suing small farmers. Monsanto is also one of the leading manufacturers of GMOs.
As of 2007, Monsanto had filed 112 lawsuits against US farmers for alleged technology contract violations of GMOs patents, involving 372 farmers and 49 small agricultural businesses in 27 different states. From these, Monsanto has won more than $21.5 million in judgments. The multinational appears to investigate 500 farmers a year, in estimates based on Monsanto's own documents and media reports.(9)
"Farmers have been sued after their field was contaminated by pollen or seed from someone else's genetically engineered crop [or] when genetically engineered seed from a previous year's crop has sprouted, or 'volunteered,' in fields planted with non-genetically engineered varieties the following year," said Andrew Kimbrell and Joseph Mendelson of the Center for Food Safety.(10)
In Colombia, Monsanto has received upwards of $25 million from the US government for providing Roundup Ultra in the antidrug fumigation efforts of Plan Colombia. Roundup Ultra is a highly concentrated version of Monsanto's glyphosate herbicide, with additional ingredients to increase its lethality. Colombian communities and human rights organizations have charged that the herbicide has destroyed food crops, water sources and protected areas, and has led to increased incidents of birth defects and cancers.
Vía Campesina, the world's largest confederation of farmers with member organizations in more than 60 countries, has called Monsanto one of the "principal enemies of peasant sustainable agriculture and food sovereignty for all peoples."(11) They claim that as Monsanto and other multinationals control an ever larger share of land and agriculture, they force small farmers out of their land and jobs. They also claim that the agribusiness giants contribute to climate change and other environmental disasters, an outgrowth of industrial agriculture.(12)
The Vía Campesina coalition launched a global campaign against Monsanto last October 16, on International World Food Day, with protests, land occupations and hunger strikes in more than 20 countries. They carried out a second global day of action against Monsanto on April 17 of this year, in honor of Earth Day.
Nongovernmental organizations in the US are challenging Monsanto's practices, too. The Organic Consumers Association has spearheaded the campaign "Millions Against Monsanto," calling on the company to stop intimidating small family farmers, stop marketing untested and unlabeled genetically engineered foods to consumers and stop using billions of dollars of US taypayers' money to subsidize GMOs crops.(13)
The Center for Food Safety has led a four-year legal challenge to Monsanto that has just made it to the US Supreme Court. After successful litigation against Monsanto and the US Department of Agriculture for illegal promotion of Roundup Ready Alfalfa, the court heard the Center for Food Safety's case on April 27. A decision on this first-ever Supreme Court case about GMOs is now pending.(14)
"Fighting hybrid and GMO seeds is critical to save our diversity and our agriculture," Jean-Baptiste said in an interview in February. "We have the potential to make our lands produce enough to feed the whole population and even to export certain products. The policy we need for this to happen is food sovereignty, where the county has a right to define it own agricultural policies, to grow first for the family and then for local market, to grow healthy food in a way which respects the environment and Mother Earth. www.truth-out.org/haitian-farmers-commit-burning-monsanto-hybrid-seeds59616
I highly recommend the documentary Food I.N.C.. these greedy bastards are screwing independent farmers all over the world including U.S farmers being made into wage slaves.
watch the whole thing pretty disturbing when you check out pt2 see how the company scare the living day-lights out of these American farmers on their own land.
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Post by franklin on Jun 19, 2010 23:12:14 GMT -5
Thanks a lot for the video
Notice on part nine even after talking about cheap food being dumped on nations one guy says the world is running out of food. However recently in some countries in Africa good harvests have been hard on farmers because it creates a glut with a large part of it thrown away. In recent news Russia has had a good harvest also creating a glut however the Russians are looking for foreign markets to dump their grains on
Also on part nine the guy says that the system is efficient but doesn't have the resilience to deal with socks. However these cows are being fed with corn sold at below the cost of production the system is not in danger of collapsing as long as they are subsidized by the government. The spike of food prices was probably just to confuse and scare people.
As long as the government gives Monsanto the exclusive rights to seeds, and other farms can't prevent themselves from being contaminated by this seed, it will be difficult maybe impossible for consumers to change the situation by changing their spending habits. This is especially true because they are guaranteed to be paid a certain amount per bushel by the government. In the United States an insane amount of food is thrown out every day yet despite this production still goes up.
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Post by franklin on Jun 26, 2010 18:33:42 GMT -5
On Food Inc Part 2 of 10 5:40-7:00 www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ1LhU6mG5s&feature=relatedThat is crazy it says a "typical grower with two chicken houses has borrowed over $500,000 and earns about $18,000 a year"Plus the cheap labor that comes because farmers from Mexico were put out of business by cheap corn. Those are two factors that would allow them to produce chickens and other livestock so cheaply because they are able to dump them on developing countries at low enough prices that it devastates their industries. I mean both of those factors had to have been deliberate in a calculated attempt to devastate developing nations I wonder what other factors go into this on top of direct subsidies from the government
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