France prints colonial money for Burkina Faso, which is one of the poorest nations in the world, although it has gold and uranium. In return France demands 50% of everything Burkina Faso exports. Burkina Faso's uranium supplies 30% of French nuclear plant needs, but 80% of Burkina Fasoans have no electricity. Gold mined by child-labour mostly ends up in French state coffers. The French government wants the deposed president reinstated. So, is this a coup or a revolution?
The Alliance against fracking in South Africa, AfriForum and Treasure the Karoo Action Group (TKAG), has said that shale gas exploration cannot proceed, following a statement by Trade and Industry Minister, Rob Davies, that Government could authorise shale gas exploration before next year's elections. See also other candobetter articles on fracking here: http://candobetter.net/?q=taxonomy/term/3020
Shale gas exploration in South Africa cannot go ahead
The Alliance states that is most disappointed by Government's stance on shale gas exploration.
"Firstly, we believe that such a decision will have an impact which will endure far beyond the election cycle of the Government. This decision cannot be rushed through before next year's election. It will be completely irresponsible," says Jonathan Deal, Chairperson of TKAG.
"Secondly, Minister Susan Shabangu has promised on various occasions to consult with the public of this country prior to making any decision on shale gas mining. This has not happened, and the people of South Africa - at all levels - are entitled to be heard on an issue of this magnitude."
"We are informed that Government has thus far relied largely on research commissioned by the Department of Minerals - which, in our considered view is singularly inadequate, considering the multidisciplinary nature of mining activity."
South African laws inadequate for this complex problem
The environmental issues, of which water is only one, are complex and varied, and the laws of South Africa are wholly inadequate to control an industry with a severely tarnished reputation and the process of fracking, the Alliance believes.
"Government is selling votes with this move, but it is an empty promise. Even if Government issues the licences, exploration cannot legally proceed. We will not allow our constitutional rights to be breached; the Alliance will appeal against Government," says Julius Kleynhans, Head of Environmental Affairs at AfriForum.
"AfriForum and TKAG are most certainly pro-development, but we cannot endorse a hasty and ill-considered choice that may compromise the prosperity of current and future generations"
"Recent evidence from the United States of America indicated that fracking may contaminate drinking water. A study from Duke University analysed 141 drinking water samples across a gas-rich shale basin in north-eastern Pennsylvania."
"They found that methane concentrations were 6 times higher, ethane concentrations were 23 times higher and propane was detected in 10 samples, all of them from homes within a kilometre of the drilling sites."
Two previous studies by Duke scientists found direct evidence of methane contamination in water wells near shale-gas drilling sites in north-eastern Pennsylvania. The Alliance has said that it does not want this to occur in South Africa, especially not in the sensitive Karoo. It stressed that South Africa is an arid country and must be treated as such.
Hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, has led to a massive expansion of natural gas production in the United States but has been banned in other countries such as France due to environmental concerns.
"The gas is extracted after cracking open hydrocarbon-rich shale by pumping water, sand and chemicals into the deep wells at high pressure. Environmental groups and many scientists believe this technique degrades the land, pollutes ground water and fouls the air," added Kleynhans.
Comment from Candobetter.net editor: Often overlooked as well, and most important of all, is that the energy required to extract fuels by fracking is much greater than in extraction of conventional oils, and must be subtracted from the total haul. The concept involved here is Energy returned on energy invested. This is a key concept for resource depletion and the wider community and the reporting community don't generally know of it.
The source of the above article was from a press release signed by:
The Chinese Government is buying Australian farms to directly feed its population. Farm buy-ups were not referred to the FIRB unless they were worth more than $320 million! So, unless the farm property is under this amount, it just becomes "international" land! Unease about global food shortages in the next 20 years - and long term agricultural market opportunities - have made Australia and areas of South America prized targets for foreign government-aided enterprises and private investor groups.“Racism” is justified sometimes
Now is the time for some real and justified "racism"! The Chinese Government is buying Australian farms to directly feed its population.
The purchases are not monitored by the Foreign Investment Review Board, according to Senator Bill Heffernan. Farm buy-ups were not referred to the FIRB unless they were worth more than $320 million! So, unless the farm property is under this amount, it just becomes "international" land!
The highest bidder should be scrutinised! Any agents for the Chinese government or nationals should be rejected.
Just how many farms are worth more than $320 million anyway? What about our food security in the face of climate change threats, which Kevin Rudd has dismissed?
In March, 2009, visitors on temporary visas, such as business owners and foreign students, were allowed to purchase any home to live in, land to build on or new dwellings for investment purposes.
The change saw Chinese money in particular being poured into blue-ribbon Melbourne real estate, as both a way of safeguarding wealth and advancing hopes of migration. Suburbs such as Elwood, Hawthorn and Caulfield North all returned to the $1 million median price club and experienced quarterly growth in excess of 20 per cent. Although the Government announced in April this year that it would adopt a more stringent approval process, experts claim the latest changes will have little effect on the market. Opposition finance spokesman Joe Hockey said it was clear that foreign investment was having an upward impact on housing prices. The same will happen with farming land prices, and food!
China land grabs
Unease about global food shortages in the next 20 years - and long term agricultural market opportunities - have made Australia and areas of South America prized targets for foreign government-aided enterprises and private investor groups.
Africa has also been the focus of a significant land grab, particularly by overseas government-owned investment corporations from China and the Middle East.
So far there were only anecdotal reports of Chinese agricultural investment but Senator Heffernan quoted research by Professor Zhangyue Zhou of the School of Business at Townsville's James Cook University. He believes the produce would be sent back to China from farms now being purchased.
There are reports of significant Chinese interest in Tasmanian dairy farms. The Chinese would never allow this in their own market!
Japan
The key focus of foreign investment has been China in the past two years, but direct investment from Japan to Australia hit $36 billion in 2008, up more than 50 per on 2006 levels, and is predicted to keep growing. A table of Australian acquisitions by Japanese companies compiled by law firm Blake Dawson lists 25 major plays since the start of 2007, totalling almost $18bn.
The two largest investments were Japanese brewing giant Kirin's takeovers of Lion Nathan ($3.3bn) and National Foods ($2.9bn). (The irony is not lost that our "National Foods" is not owned by our own nation!)
Others in this sector included Asahi's takeover of Schweppes and Suntory's takeover of Frucor.
Corporate heavyweight Mitsui paid $100 million for a 49 per cent stake in Australia's fourth uranium mine. Mitsui also owns the Bald Hills wind farm in Victoria. They are not likely to be concerned about losing Australian wildlife, like the Orange-bellied parrot!
India
In the 1970s, India dramatically increased food production, finally allowing this giant country to feed itself. But government efforts to continue that miracle by encouraging farmers to use fertilisers have backfired, forcing the country to expand its reliance on imported food. The overuse of one type - urea - is so degrading the soil that yields on some crops are falling and import levels are rising.
In Western Australia we've got an Indian-government backed company planning to build a fertiliser plant which will be committed, as part of its financial arrangements, to sending 90pc of its production back to India.
In 2006 India invested $2.2 billion in Australia, up from $1.1 billion in 2005.
Hindalco Minerals, a subsidiary of giant Indian conglomerate Aditya Birla, bought Western Australian copper miner Western Minerals. Aditya Birla Minerals Limited is now listed on the Australian stock market.
Another Indian group, Bhushan Steel, holds a 10 per cent stake and a board seat on Queensland coal miner Bowen Energy.
The difference is that the Indian companies are privately owned while the Chinese investors have a much more opaque relationship with China's government.
Lack of patriotism
This is a direct result of Australians not sticking up for Australians. It is high time we had a more nationalistic agenda. If farms are being sold 'cheap' it is all thanks to the ALP in various states, devaluing the farmers hard work and assets. Add to the fact the total lack of reliable services in rural areas, like water, electricity and health hardly attracts people to the bush. The Chinese take, take, take from the Australians thanks to our weak leaders like Kevin Rudd and now its just like that old adage....give them an inch and they'll take a mile.
The irony is that thousands of farmers are walking off the land, due to financial difficulty because they cannot compete with cheap imported food, so the Chinese buy up our land grow huge amounts of food, ship it off to China and most likely export it back to Australia and in turn more Australian farmers walk off their land and most likely sell it to the Chinese again.
For the first time in history we have a Chinese-Mandarin speaking Prime Minister more focused on helping China's growth and food security than actually helping Australia! Ironically, farmers are also being forced to sell their land due to sky-rocketing rates to make land available for property developers.
Wildlife
'Modern' Australia has the worst record in the world for species extinction. According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, there are more endangered plants and animals in Australia than most of the rest of the world. Records of recently extinct species in Asia show 71 species that have disappeared in the wild. Examples include the Yunnan lake newt (Cynops wolterstorffi) from China, the Bonin thrush (Zoothera terrestris) from Japan, or the redtailed black shark (Epalzeorhynchos bicolor) from Thailand. They are hardly going to have any concern about our so-called "pest" Australian native species!
Looming food crisis
We need to increase food output by 70 per cent by 2050 to meet the global food crisis. There needs to be money for helping farmers to adapt and manage climate change, and for meaningful water initiatives.
Professor Cribb, Science writer and former head of CSIRO media, told a recent Senate enquiry in Canberra that the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation last year revealed investments in the order of $80 billion a year in agriculture were needed to help meet the needs of a global food challenge. By 2050 there will be about 10 billion people on the planet to feed!
We seriously lack patriotism and vision in Australia and we are too willing to the highest bidder - something we will regret! It is time the taboo on "racism" be lifted to protect Australian interests.
Our future?
Population growth is being used as an industry to keep our economy strong through building up the property markets. What happens when all our mining resources finally run out? With almost no manufacturing sector, all our farms foreign-owned, will we turn into a third-world economy overnight.
China will have a perfect pretext to attack and invade Australia in order to allegedly protect its legally purchased acquisitions and the Chinese people who now own them.
Why spend so much on Defence when the potential enemy is already invading by stealth? Australia will become an economic subset of China and Chinese citizens will be given unlimited access to move to Australia to look after their interests and eventually, if Chinese buy even more Australian assets, and they have the money to do so, what is to stop Australia will becoming a Chinese province?
Avatar is a remarkable movie, about a fabulous world and an old story with some great new twists and perspectives. This is an exciting and skilled 3D graphics state of the art creation which puts the viewer on a new planet in the skin of an alien tribe. We discuss this experience and the political message of the movie.
Avatar is a remarkable movie.
It is remarkable for its art and special effects and its ability to make the audience feel a part of the movie and identify viscerally with an alien population of hunters and gatherers. It is remarkable for its creation of a beautiful planet with no machines and a strangely sculpted pastel menagerie.
Most remarkable, perhaps, is how a 20th Century Fox blockbuster exposes the colonial ideology that all undeveloped peoples are crying out to have their environments transformed by 'progress and development' and the capitalist brand of 'democracy'. It tells the truth about deforestation and why it occurs.
Forest warriors, take heart!
Colonisation - the theme
The Masai, the Australian Aborigines, the American Indians, the South American Indians, the Maori, the Zulus, the Fijians, the Hawaiians, the Irish, the Irian Jayans - all these tribal people resisted being 'civilised' by colonials who wanted to expand their empires. Was there ever a people that still had land which was happy to hand it over to the historical waves of expansion by Romans, Normans, Muslims, Hispanic, French, German, British, Indonesian, American, Chinese, Indian colonists?
And yet, to this day, we of the 'developed world' are told that we are paying for the expansion of capitalism to bring 'democracy' to the 'undeveloped' or 'unfree' world. And when everywhere is 'developed', the story goes, there won't be any overpopulation or poverty or injustice ... Unfortunately this isn't true. Development is what starts problems in steady state economies and populations. You wonder why more foreign aid people don't wake up to this.[1] Perhaps many stay in the business to try to make the process less awful or simply because, like most of us, they have no land and therefore need their jobs, however awful.
In this film the indigenous are humanoid and their appearance and rituals are perhaps most reminiscent of Africa - a land of immense abundance and variety with fantastically varied peoples, economies and fauna - attacked mercilessly by colonial processes from the industrial revolution of the 1750s. (Viewers might be interested to know that currently, on Earth, Africa is being subjected - along with other lands - including, possibly, Australia - to yet new waves of colonisation - by Chinese and Indian agricultural corporations this time - which are taking over remaining tribal land and 'remanaging' it. We hear so little of this.) [2]
Resettlement of the indigenous in special areas, where they were put to work, was practised by the Romans and the approach is the same today. Move the indigenous, get rid of their leaders, disorganise them, and make them work in the new economy. The business excuse (typically used against the Arabs by the British who displaced them for the Zionist diaspora) is that the people being displaced don't use the land efficiently, because they don't mine it or farm it. Or, if they do mine and farm it, they don't do it efficiently enough. Or if they do it efficiently, they aren't putting their goods on the international open market, and they have to be made to do so. Mess up a country badly enough and soon you can go in and save the starving and place a military presence there to protect your international charities. Coincidentally the country next door usually turns out to have oil or rare minerals or presents a corridor to oil and rare minerals (Somalia).
Avatar is a story about this process in the future, reaching out now into outer space.
In 3D it is absolutely rivetting, and I found myself ducking when missiles came towards me.
The story
The third world has now extended beyond our solar system as the US mercantile spacefleet tries to keep shareholders happy. This involves negotiating the rape of an incredibly beautiful planet with indigenous people who, like most indigenous people, have everything they want and need and don't want colonisation.
"We don't have anything to offer them," says the hero.
"Just go in and negotiate," he is told.
One author in candobetter pages was struck by the plausible ruthlessness of the conquerers in discussing moving the blue native people on. They agreed with one another in such a "civilised" way. To them - the blue people were just an obstacle to the main game...and one instantly saw that this is how forest people and forest animals are regarded by invaders on Earth- something to be brushed aside or bulldozed.
Another candobetter writer said, "This seems to be what they are doing in Queensland to the ordinary Australians in order to go ahead mining coal in agricultural country."
The armed conflict in the pursuit of greed motif in the film is also reminiscent of the US war on Iraq.
This is a planet filled with fabulous rainforest, not really much different from real old rainforest in Australia, but a bit bigger. The creatures in it are huge, of triceratops size, and the flying animals are reminiscent of pterodactyls. The muscle and organ structure of the animals makes it obvious that they are of a different world.
Every species in this world is connected, as indeed are we on this world, but the phenomenon is more obvious here because different species can physically connect to communicate. The ecology of the world is explained using mystical and religious icons, which stand in quite well for a kind of biological ecology.
It was a psychologically clever thing to make the indigenous people so much taller than the humans. Usually the indigenous people, however patronised in movies, are the same size as us or smaller. To get the superiority of these peoples' ability to live within a naturally integrated environment, instead of one like ours, which is disconnected, you need something to convince the audience immediately. Big is usually read as better and these are very large, therefore superior people, with enormous eyes, which convey intelligence. Whilst incredibly gracile, like the Hereros of Namibia, with somewhat similar hairstyles without the red mud, these people are immensely strong and agile. They use the huge tree trunks as paths for running. They are open to the signs of the environment around them and the expression of all the other living things. This is obviously how hunter-gatherers used to live. The way they would have enjoyed life and the knowledge they would have had in the best of societies and environments is well-conveyed here.
And surely the obese children, teenagers and their parents, who go to see this film will wonder at the strength and fitness of the forest people and want to be more like them.
Technology has solved no social or ecological problems
Although set well into the future, we see that more technology has solved nothing fundamental.
Neither has growth economics and globalism.
The US system still has unaffordable health-care and the crippled marine hero in Avatar cannot afford the medical treatment he needs, even though the technology to make him walk again is available. He also needs a job and is expected to perform as well and work as hard as a person with no handicap.
Presumably the population has continued to grow on earth because there are so many marines available to go to outerspace, who need jobs, and are willing to risk their lives.
Instead of sharing the wealth we find that money is still being spent to keep some shareholders happy. And industry must find new minerals to invest in to keep on growing that bottom line.
The machines look as if they are still being powered by petroleum, so the fossil fuel problem must have been solved, although this is not discussed. In fact humans are never going to go to outer space en masse unless they find something completely new to power their vehicles. (This isn't discussed either, obviously.)
War
It looks like a high-tech oil-war like the one in Iraq is still going, but it has moved into outer space, seeking to expand its influence in the pursuit of materials and energy. Although we only hear what goes on in the colony, one assumes that the folk back on earth are told that this is all to bring democracy and wealth to the undeveloped worlds out there.
The audience
I was interested to observe the faces of the people who live in Melbourne where I saw this film. A lot looked shocked, unused to questioning the whole notion of progress, yet almost certainly emerging from close to three hours of intense identification with a hunter-gatherer tribe, hoping that Earth's progress would be halted.
I hoped that the many people who see this film will actually retain something useful to help them resist the media and government propaganda that are used to destroy forests and people and to grind the rest of us exceedingly small in a vast commercial con-job.
Of course, with every new exploitation, we are always told, "Now we are modern, it will be different."
Great film!
NOTES
[1] On foreign aid, Michael Maren, The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity, Free Press, Simon and Schuster, 1997 ; Graham Hancock, Lords of Poverty, Atlantic Press, 1989
[2] Recolonisation of Africa by China and India: See, for instance: "China and India Battle for Influence in Africa: Part 4" (although this one lets India off lightly); Exploiting Africa [history]. You can also find multiple business and foreign aid articles saying how great it is that foreigners are renting vast terrains in Africa and employing the villagers who once managed them. You have to look quite long and hard to find out that most of the Africans initially resist this loss of power over their own territory. If Africa is to feed China and India, it will be sucked totally dry, but, hey! there will be a few jobs along the line.
Contents:#AidPrograms">Massive aid programs have not ended African poverty, #WarsAndGenocide">Wars and genocide in Africa, #PopulationGrowth">Population growth ignored, #LandGrab">Problems compounded by wealthier nations' land grabs, #Botswana" id="Botswana">Botswana, with its stable population, a model to follow?, #FurtherAid">Can further aid programs solve poverty if population is not stabilised?.
It is 25 years since Ethiopia's globally publicised famine and Bob Geldof's famous 'Feed The World' campaign. In 2005 world leaders and celebrities, stirred again by the plight of Africa, pledged to increase taxpayers' support and cancel debts. Now the aid bucket is rattling again, as east Africa endures its worst hunger crisis in eight years. Will it make any difference?
#AidPrograms" id="AidPrograms">Massive aid programs have not ended African poverty
Africa has had more than ten times the Marshall Aid given to Europe since the Second World War - a trillion dollars, or $5,000 for every African alive today. Yet many African countries are poorer now than in the 1980s.
The UN has admitted that it won't meet its Millennium Development Goals in Africa but fails to explain the underlying causes for pessimism. Commentators point out that Africa has had more than ten times the Marshall Aid given to Europe since the Second World War - a trillion dollars, or $5,000 for every African alive today. Yet many African countries are poorer now than in the 1980s.
Half of Africa's 700 million people live on 40p a day or less. Nigeria has squandered much of its oil wealth and Zimbabwe has moved from a relatively prosperous country to the brink of collapse.
... for every dollar the West lent Africa between 1970 and 2000, eighty cents was recycled back to off-shore bank accounts by African elites, while the World Bank estimated in 2004 that 40 per cent of the world's aid budget was going on paying consultants.
We read that for every dollar the West lent Africa between 1970 and 2000, eighty cents was recycled back to off-shore bank accounts by African elites, while the World Bank estimated in 2004 that 40 per cent of the world's aid budget was going on paying consultants.
#WarsAndGenocide" id="WarsAndGenocide">Wars and genocide in Africa
Much of the continent has staggered from one bloody turf war to the next, whether genocide in Rwanda and Sudan, chopping off arms and legs of children in Sierra Leone or shoot outs in the Congo over control of mineral wealth. It is a testament to the resilience of African people that they manage to pick up their lives and carry on. Now, more and more have Europe in their sights, seeking a better life.
#PopulationGrowth" id="PopulationGrowth">Population growth ignored
Yet one huge issue is largely ignored. In 1950 the population of Ethiopia was just 16 million. By 2005 it had increased to nearly 78 million and is forecast to increase a further 80 million over the next 25 years, confounding the media image of people starving to death, though this is also true.
The country already has massive unemployment and not enough food. How will it provide all the schools, jobs, hospitals and food to feed a population that is set to double in size? Across Africa, similar facts unfold.
UN estimates point out that worldwide food production needs to double by 2020 to feed an estimated global population heading well over eight billion. Nowhere is that pressure felt more keenly than Africa.
... over 80 per cent of Africa's cultivated soils are seriously degraded and risk 'permanent failure' because the rapid increase in population has forced farmers to grow crops on the same fields rather than leave land fallow
The director of Food Security at the Rockefeller Foundation, Gary Toenniessen, warned that over 80 per cent of Africa's cultivated soils are seriously degraded and risk 'permanent failure' because the rapid increase in population has forced farmers to grow crops on the same fields rather than leave land fallow. Even fertiliser no longer helps.
#LandGrab" id="LandGrab">Problems compounded by wealthier nations' land grabs
Lured by cheap labor and untapped potential, desert countries with rapidly rising populations, such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait are snapping up farmland in underdeveloped African nations to grow crops for consumption back home.
Amid this crisis, some of the world's richest nations are coming to Africa to farm. Lured by cheap labor and untapped potential, desert countries with rapidly rising populations, such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait are snapping up farmland in underdeveloped African nations to grow crops for consumption back home. The Emirates government recently signed a deal in Sudan for up to 70,000 acres south of Khartoum.
In June 2008, the depth of environmental devastation across Africa was revealed for the first time by the United Nations Environment Program. Using satellite photos, taken over four decades, geographers constructed an atlas of environmental change. It reveals an image of destruction on a vast scale - of disappearing forests, shrinking lakes, vanishing glaciers and degraded landscapes.
The fact that the Blair/Brown Africa Commission report said almost nothing in its 177 pages about the need to tackle demographic pressures while giving £8 billion of UK taxpayers' money to the continent is astonishing.
In mid-2007, sub-Saharan Africa had 788m people, but will soar to 1.8 billion by 2050 according to the UN's 2006 population projections.
Rapid population growth will fatally jeopardise Africa's development efforts. The large number of young Africans - 2 out of 3 people are under 25 - and persistent high fertility levels imply that high population growth will continue despite the Aids epidemic. In mid-2007, sub-Saharan Africa had 788m people, but will soar to 1.8 billion by 2050 according to the UN's 2006 population projections.
#Obstruction" id="Obstruction">Obstruction of population control programs may cause population to exceed even UN projections
However, all this assumes a decrease in the continent's birth rate to 2.5 children on average, against an average 5.5 today. This rapid decline in fertility levels is far from guaranteed given the lack of recognition of the population issue by both the UN and aid agencies. A population of well over 2 billion in the region by 2050 is plausible if a major food crisis doesn't cause mass starvation first. In its latest 2008 report, the UN admits that its population projections for Africa will likely be subject to future upward revisions if fertility fails to decline.
In March 2008 Nigeria's Catholic dominated Anambra State made it illegal to encourage the use of condoms and other forms of contraceptives. This in a country of 148 million people, set to double by 2050, where the average birth rate is 6 children per woman and its demand on resources is 40% greater than its bio-capacity. More than 3.9 percent of the adult population also have HIV/AIDS, and the rate is rising by around 300,000 a year, according to a 2006 estimate by the UN programme UNAIDS.
Despite the International Conference on Population and Development's call for universal access to reproductive health in 1994, reproductive health and population was omitted from the UN's Millennium Development Goals and remains neglected.
#Botswana" id="Botswana">Botswana, with its stable population, a model to follow?
Botswana is highlighted as a model by the Africa Commission, a country with one of the highest AIDS rates in Africa. It says: "Thirty years ago Botswana was one of the poorest and most aid-dependent countries in the world. Today the landlocked nation is one of Africa's biggest success stories. It has undergone consistent economic growth and is now classified as a 'middle-income' country. But Botswana has diamonds. Look across the continent and it is often precisely those countries with the greatest amounts of mineral riches that are in most trouble. But Botswana bucks the trend...Yet its diamond industry employs only about two per cent of the country's small population."
Perhaps the lesson is that better governance and a population of just 1.8 million has helped to spread prosperity further - a point the Commission seems to miss.
#FurtherAid" id="FurtherAid">Can further aid programs solve poverty if population is not stabilised?
In late 2007, seven major international aid organisations announced a multimillion-dollar Global Water Initiative to tackle declining supplies of fresh water for the world's poorest people in 13 countries – all but four in Africa.
In these same countries, the US-based Population Reference Bureau predicts that between 2005 and 2050, populations will rise from: 13.9 million to 39.5 million in Burkina Faso; 77.4 - 170.2m in Ethiopia; 22- 47.3m in Ghana; 33.8 - 64.8m in Kenya; 13.5 – 42m in Mali; 14.0 - 50.2m in Niger; 11.7 - 23.1m in Senegal; 36.5 - 71.4m in Tanzania; and an astonishing 26.9 - 130.9m in Uganda.
The industrialised nations have promised millions of dollars of taxpayers' money to help Africa tackle AIDS, yet rarely do we ask the complex reasons why nearly two-thirds of the world's 60 million AIDS victims are African – the sexual promiscuity of many adult relationships, prostitution and poverty. AIDS is a tragedy, but unless the huge population growth on the continent is also tackled, spending millions on AIDS prevention will see ever more Africans facing a life of unemployment, poverty and starvation.
With many of the world's poorest countries already suffering huge unemployment and some of the highest birth rates, the potential for fuelling instability, extremism and a global tide of migration will present new security challenges for the world, says CIA Director Michael Hayden.
The UN predicts that to keep up with a rapidly expanding global population, one billion new jobs need to be created over the next decade just to maintain current employment levels. With many of the world's poorest countries already suffering huge unemployment and some of the highest birth rates, the potential for fuelling instability, extremism and a global tide of migration will present new security challenges for the world, says CIA Director Michael Hayden.
With unconscious irony, the Africa Commission says: "We have done our best to be blisteringly honest," quoting an old African Proverb: "Not to know is bad. Not to wish to know is worse."
Unless a real world effort is made to help Africans challenge bad governance, devastating turf wars, corruption and a population explosion, there is no chance of 'making poverty history.'
France prints colonial money for Burkina Faso, which is one of the poorest nations in the world, although it has gold and uranium. In return France demands 50% of everything Burkina Faso exports. Burkina Faso's uranium supplies 30% of French nuclear plant needs, but 80% of Burkina Fasoans have no electricity. Gold mined by child-labour mostly ends up in French state coffers. The French government wants the deposed president reinstated. So, is this a coup or a revolution?
The Alliance against fracking in South Africa, AfriForum and Treasure the Karoo Action Group (TKAG), has said that shale gas exploration cannot proceed, following a statement by Trade and Industry Minister, Rob Davies, that Government could authorise shale gas exploration before next year's elections. See also other candobetter articles on fracking here: 
Avatar is a remarkable movie, about a fabulous world and an old story with some great new twists and perspectives. This is an exciting and skilled 3D graphics state of the art creation which puts the viewer on a new planet in the skin of an alien tribe. We discuss this experience and the political message of the movie.
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