Friday 26th of April 2024
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in case of emergency, tell porkies….

Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska has sued opposition activist Aleksey Navalny and his associates over an “investigation” posted on YouTube in 2018 that accused the aluminum tycoon of giving bribes to Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Tweeting about the lawsuit on Wednesday, Navalny called on the US, EU and UK to impose more sanctions on Deripaska and Lavrov.

The opposition blogger is currently in prison for a series of transgressions, from defrauding a French company and donors to his political campaigns, to contempt of court. He claims to be a victim of political persecution by President Vladimir Putin’s government.

“Putin crook is suing,” Navalny tweeted in Russian, posting a redacted photo of the court summons. He said Deripaska was demanding the removal of photos and videos depicting him with Lavrov in Japan, among other things.

Deripaska’s lawyer Alexei Melnikov told the outlet RBK that his client has indeed filed a defamation lawsuit.

“Based on the published photograph of the plaintiff with Foreign Minister Lavrov, completely unacceptable allegations were made about various crimes, in particular, with arguments about corruption, bribery and lobbying,” Melnikov said.

In addition to Navalny, the lawsuit names his associates Georgy Alburov and Maria Pevchikh, as well as The Insider, the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, and Associated Newspapers Limited, the parent company of the Daily Mail.

 

Pevchikh told RBK that Deripaska demanded not only the deletion of their “investigative report,” but also a video rebuttal, saying he would demand 50 million rubles (around $825,000) a day in damages until this is done. She added she did not intend to comply with his demands.

Navalny seemed to suggest that the verdict before the Zelenograd court will be a foregone conclusion, tweeting, “I have no doubts about the ability of Putin's oligarch to convince Putin's court.” He also called on the US, EU and the UK to “introduce really effective sanctions against these thieves and accomplices of war” and make sure they can’t “bribe politicians and journalists” in the West to “launder their image.”

Deripaska has sued Navalny for defamation before, winning a judgment in November 2021. Earlier this week, the aluminum magnate sued another Russian billionaire, banker Oleg Tinkov, demanding  two billion rubles ($35 million) in compensation over an Instagram post in which Tinkov called him “an oligarch and a thief.”

 https://www.rt.com/russia/561058-navalny-deripaska-lavrov-defamation-sanctions/

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This could appear as an innocuous news item. The main point here that Navalny has been trying hard to blacken Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Although we have no deep knowledge of anything, we suspect that Sergey Lavrov is far far more honest than Navalny — and far more effective than say a blinkered Blinken for the USA. 

Navalny has been a product of vague local discontent, then sustained by the West in a view to destabilise the Putin “regime”. Unlike Assange who is in prison in the UK, Navalny NEVER produced any documented proof of anything, only allegations that have proven to be red herrings, like Putin’s “yacht and huge mansion” which make the western media froth up, but have no substance. 

One interesting part of this lawsuit by the Aluminium tycoon is in regard to the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy. 

 

The New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy is a nonpartisan think tank in Washington D.C., working to enhance U.S. foreign policy based on a deep understanding of the geopolitics of the different regions of the world and their value systems.

 

New Lines Institute focuses on issues at the intersection of U.S. foreign policy and global geopolitics with a specialization in Muslim states and societies. Unlike most think tanks, we have established an institutional method for research and analysis. Our innovative approach to policy assessments incorporates best practices from the fields of geopolitics, intelligence analysis, journalism, academia, and the private sector.

 

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So, what’s the beef that Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska has with the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy? Has the institute made some accusations about Oleg Deripaska without any proof? Is this non-partisan think tank yet another front, somewhat far more discreet than the PNAC (Project for the New American Century), in support of a worldwide US hegemony? 

Something is troubling… Why would the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy claim “unlike most think tank”? Does this mean that other think tanks do not have an “institutional method for research and analysis?” What about: “best practices from the fields of geopolitics, intelligence analysis, journalism, academia, and the private sector?”

This seems to be a smartly calculated massage of information. We know how past and present geopolitics have been designed to favour the US Empire. We know that 99 per cent of intelligence is designed to lie and mislead. We know how poor journalism is in the West in regard to non-US Empire view points. We know how some academia has been highjacked by certain strains of conservative politics aligned with capitalist operations. And we know that the “private sector” is principally run for profit making. 

 

“At the intersection of U.S. foreign policy and global geopolitics with a specialization in Muslim states and societies” the Institute would provide a bridge between the religious divide, though one could pose a question about the institute’s possible support for a secret Muslim-development of the world at the expense of Christianity, by using a Jewish shunting line? 

Who knows…

 

Interestingly, the founder and president of the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, Dr Ahmed Alwani, was at one stage an advisor to the United States Africa Command…

 

Of course, we do not suggest that there is a hidden agenda beyond the stated goals of the Institute, but we find it curious that such an institute would have “done something” for Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska to name it in his lawsuit against Navalny.

 

Such things don’t happen willy-nilly….

We are also told:

 

“The Institute does not accept funding from any foreign government or entity and is one of the few think tanks in Washington with no foreign or local agendas…”

 

Gus is dumb. He does not understand the purpose of such an institute with no foreign or local agendas… yet it tells us:

 

“Our purpose is to shape U.S. foreign policy based on a deep understanding of regional geopolitics and the value systems of those regions.”

 

If this is not an agenda of sorts, like promoting the US Empire hegemony, I better go back to bed….

 

 

Free Julian Assange now……

 

Picture at top

 

An in-depth look at the decades-long effort to escalate hostilities with Russia and what it portends for the future. (published 2017...)

 

Since 1945, the US has justified numerous wars, interventions, and military build-ups based on the pretext of the Russian Red Menace, even after the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of 1991 and Russia stopped being Red. In fact, the two biggest post-war American conflicts, the Korean and Vietnam wars, were not, as has been frequently claimed, about stopping Soviet aggression or even influence, but about maintaining old colonial relationships. Similarly, many lesser interventions and conflicts, such as those in Latin America, were also based upon an alleged Soviet threat, which was greatly overblown or nonexistent. And now the specter of a Russian Menace has been raised again in the wake of Donald Trump’s election.

The Plot to Scapegoat Russia examines the recent proliferation of stories, usually sourced from American state actors, blaming and manipulating the threat of Russia, and the long history of which this episode is but the latest chapter. It will show readers two key things: (1) the ways in which the United States has needlessly provoked Russia, especially after the collapse of the USSR, thereby squandering hopes for peace and cooperation; and (2) how Americans have lost out from this missed opportunity, and from decades of conflicts based upon false premises. These revelations, amongst other, make The Plot to Scapegoat Russia one of the timeliest reads of 2017.

 

ALL OF THIS IN RELATION TO THE PLAN OF THE USA TO DESTROY RUSSIA AND CHINA — TO TAKE OVER THE HEARTLAND. 

See also the US plot to “dismember” the Russian state.

 

capitalism = famine…..

Worsening harvests, infertile soil and increasing food poverty are affecting the majority of small farmers across the globe, especially in the Global South. But the climate and food crises are not isolated phenomena. They are the result of a global capitalist system – and a neoliberal agenda – that has prioritised big corporate agricultural profits over people and the planet.

“Most farmers can no longer produce adequate food for their families,” says Vladimir Chilinya. “Profit-making entities control our food systems… including the production and distribution of seed.”

Chilinya is a Zambian coordinator for FIAN International, an organisation that campaigns for the democratisation of food and nutrition.

Worsening harvests, infertile soil and increasing food poverty are affecting the majority of small farmers across the globe, especially in the Global South. Wheat prices have surged by 59% since the start of 2022.

In May, UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres warned that the number of people living in famine conditions has increased by more than 500% since 2016, and more than 270 million people are now living in extreme food insecurity.

While Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has exacerbated this crisis (Russia and Ukraine account for 30% of the world’s wheat exports, constituting 12% of traded calories), climate change and capitalism are the primary engines behind this global food emergency.

The IPCC has estimated that by 2030, global warming will have diminished the world’s average agricultural production by more than a fifth. In Zambia, the maize harvest for 2021/22 is expected to be down by a quarter, thanks to droughts and flash floods between 2019 and 2021, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

Meanwhile, India and Pakistan experienced their highest recorded temperatures in March and April since records began 122 years ago. India has since banned wheat exports (after the government failed to buy enough wheat to cover its food security programme), which has further exacerbated the global wheat shortage and soaring global food prices.

But the climate and food crises are not isolated phenomena. They are the result of a global capitalist system – and a neoliberal agenda – that has prioritised big corporate agricultural profits over people and the planet.

Corporatisation of agriculture

This process really took shape during the so-called “Green Revolution” in India in the late 1960s. This movement was a collaboration between India and the US (with USAID and the Ford Foundation being key actors) and was dependent on agrochemical usage and intensive plant breeding.

High-yielding hybrid crops were introduced – the main one being IR8, a semi-dwarf rice variety – alongside the use of fertilisers, pesticides and lots of groundwater (these high-yielding crops required a lot more water). Calorific food was valued over nutrition, and these foods had costly inputs.

This shift towards big agriculture and more profitable monocultures made small farmers more dependent on expensive chemical fertilisers, forcing them into ever greater levels of debt. In India, 10,677 agricultural workers were reported to have taken their own lives in 2020, many of them farmers trapped by mounting debts resulting from the high costs of these farming inputs.

Unfair terms of trade and global lending – enforced by multilateral financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – are also to blame.

Structural adjustment programmes (SAPs), introduced by the World Bank following the debt crisis across Latin America and Africa after the 1979 oil crisis, coerced poorer countries into privatising their public sectors and reducing their welfare mechanisms.

Adhering to strict policy packages in nearly every key sector – from agriculture to education and healthcare – became compulsory in exchange for any future loans from the bank or the IMF.

SAPs meant indebted countries across the Global South had to convert from prioritising indigenous crops that the local population depended on, to producing cash crops for export. As a result, local populations and farmers became more vulnerable to food scarcity – due to the negative ecological effects and decline in food accessibility.

Zambia: seed privatisation

In Zambia, for example, the structural adjustment agenda included the privatisation and liberalisation of the seed system. It began with the liberalisation and deregulation of ZAMSEED in the mid-1990s, which led to a decline in support for farmer cooperatives. In addition, the priority of maize as a cash crop has led to a decline in crop variety, meaning the local population has fewer food sources available.

“Under recent policy changes, priority is given to maize production. This is one of the key drivers for monocropping, which is responsible for the reduction in varieties of available foods in Zambia,” Chiliniya from FIAN told openDemocracy.

FIAN is documenting how the corporate control of agriculture is weakening food security. Seed systems have gone from being cooperative-led (which gives farmers more agency and fair prices) to being corporate-led (which prioritises profits).

“Farmer-managed seed systems have been replaced by commercial seed systems,” Chilinya said. “Most smallholder farmers are unable to purchase seeds at the commercial price and hence they cannot grow any food.”

These commercial seeds are also more vulnerable to extreme weather conditions. “Most people focus on cash crops at the expense of other crops that are more resilient to extensive weather changes. In the wake of extreme weather changes like those experienced in 2020 and 2021, the country falls into a food shortage,” added Chiliniya. According to the World Food Programme (WPF), 48% of the Zambian population is unable to meet minimum calorie requirements.

Kenya: food crisis

openDemocracy also spoke with food justice activists in Kenya, which is experiencing a severe food crisis. “Land degradation is affecting food production in Kenya because of the overuse of chemical fertilisers,” said Leondia Odongo, co-founder of social justice organisation Haki Nawiri Afrika.

As in Zambia, the disastrous legacy of SAPs is to blame. In 1980, Kenya was one of the first countries to receive a structural adjustment loan from the World Bank. It was conditional on reducing essential subsidies for farmer inputs, such as fertilisers. This process instigated a shift towards farming cash crops for export, such as tea, coffee and tobacco, instead of farming key staples for the local population, such as maize, wheat and rice.

“Agricultural inputs that were previously provided to farmers free of charge went into the hands of private entities under the guise of efficiency,” Odongo explained. “This has resulted in smallholder farmers being abandoned to the mercy of transnational corporations in the seed and agrochemical industry, which dupe farmers with information about seeds and chemicals.”

A recent report by Save the Children and Oxfam found that 3.5 million people in Kenya are already suffering crisis levels of hunger – and this is likely to rise to five million. Meanwhile, only 2% of the $4.4bn required in humanitarian aid (for Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia) has been funded.

Structural adjustment has made Kenya into a food exporter. In the country, malnutrition remains concerningly high, with 29% of children in rural areas and 20% of children in cities being stunted. Despite experiencing deficits which threaten its population’s food security, Kenya remains a vital food exporter, with major exports in tea, coffee, vegetables and cut flowers.

Keep it small and local

Despite occupying less than 25% of the world’s farmland, small-scale farmers provide 70% of the world’s food. In Kenya, Haki Nawiri Afrika is resisting the corporatisation of agriculture by assisting local farmers with technical knowledge. Teaching smallholder farmers practical skills allows them to reclaim agency over their land and crops.

In Zambia, FIAN is helping small farmers return to indigenous farming practices and seeds to build resilience and improve food security. By diversifying food systems and abandoning monocultures, small farmers can continue to provide enough food for their communities, and at lower costs.

These small farmer movements are up against ‘Big Philanthropy’, such as the controversial Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is replicating the Green Revolution corporate-first strategy.

Still, they hope their struggle to decommodify and rebuild a sustainable relationship with the land can help realise the UN’s second sustainable development goal: ending hunger by 2030.

Adele is a freelance writer and content creator specialising in politics, global inequality and culture.

 

 

 

 

READ MORE:

https://progressive.international/wire/2022-08-11-capitalism-is-causing-the-food-crisis-not-war/en

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

GUSNOTE: SOMEWHERE ON THIS SITE, I HAVE ALREADY MENTIONED THAT AFRICA WAS ABLE TO FEED ITSELF until the Americans came in with their CHARITABLE gifts of SURPLUS CORN/wheat/OATS AND unsuitable cultivation techniques for the regions —intensive techniques that demand vast amounts of FERTILISERS....

 

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW......................

 

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW.............