Tomorrow a country by the name of South Sudan will be born. For many this is a joyous occasion. According to the prevailing Western paradigm it represents the culmination of decades of war and suffering by mostly non-muslim Sudanese to ‘throw off the yokes of Khartoum’s oppressive Islamic rule’. According to international law, attaining political autonomy is the natural right of any nation. And thus tomorrow should be celebrated by all who respect the legitimate right to self determination of the South Sudanese people.

This is the second formal post colonial birth in Africa. It is interesting to note that it is happening in the same region that gave us the first one. Even though without formal recognition Somaliland represents a third successful launch of the past twenty years. One can possibly attribute this curiosity to the fact that north east Africa was the portion of the continent that most successfully resisted the colonial realities of the 20th century. Therefore it is leading the way in disassembling colonial and neo-colonial boundaries and their political orders.

This direction doesn’t necessarily take the continent away from the vestiges of colonialism since Eritrea, Somaliland and South Sudan are all creations of colonialism in themselves.

Notes and references have been omitted from this abridged version to make it reader-friendly.

For the full article with endnotes, click here

Adam Smith summed up the vile maxim of the elite class as follows (back in 1776): “All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” To be sure, there was only contempt in the US for the “vile maxim” during the 19^th century among industrial workers (including the lively and vibrant working class press), who bitterly condemned the advance of the Industrial Revolution and much of what it entailed, more concisely, the “‘New Spirit of the Age’: gain wealth, forgetting all but self.” This would have been inconceivable under conditions of brotherly love, solidarity and subsequent equality of condition (not just opportunity), which is a democratic imperative.

Even though money-hungry marauders (political and economic masters) know that only very few of the many who seek wealth will find it, still, it is of inestimable importance for them to peddle “rags to riches” stories with great enthusiasm, because they are a useful myth for control.

Originally published on DailyKos, and republished here by permission of the author.

Back in 2008 I wrote two little noticed diaries about speculative buying that helped to drive food prices higher (here and here), and surprise, surprise, our friends from Goldman Sachs are well represented in this mix of global finance companies.

Two years later, the world food market is still seriously exposed to speculators artificially driving up prices and worsening the risks of malnutrition, and according to one of the world’s leading agricultural researchers, Joachim von Braun, the head of the International Food Policy Research Institute (von Brown was one of the first to write about flawed regulatory regimes in banking and finance driving up food prices) an even bigger food crisis is looming, exacerbated as well by climate change. A visit to his site is well worth your time as he speaks eloquently about food and water.

The food crisis of 2007/2008 is now well documented. According to Paul Jay, from 2007 to 2008 the price of maize in Ethiopia went up 141 percent, retail wheat flour in Peshawar, Pakistan, went up 82 percent, rice in Thailand up 73 percent and this had little to do with supply and demand and much more to do with speculation by the usual suspects.

In March of 2008 the price of food commodities hit an all-time high, sending 100 million people into the ranks of the hungry, worldwide.

Part 1

It is rare these days to have successful Hollywood productions that are six hours long. American attention spans are simply not equipped to weather such torture. I was therefore surprised at the success of the movie John Adams. To my relief I later learnt that the six hours were divided into one-hour episodes and shown on HBO before they were sold on CD. It was well worth it. The movie provides wonderful insights into the foundations of the US polity and democratic institutions while telling a personal story. I will not say much about the movie so as not to ruin the experience for those who may choose to watch it.

One of the profound revelations in the movie is how particular to a culture and history the formation of a new state can be. Despite the revolutionary leaders’ identity as aristocratic Englishmen, the system that they founded had very little in common with the governing system in London. But it did closely resemble the aspirational hopes of Britons like John Locke. Puritan discipline combined with economic transformation and cheap firearms allowed revolutionaries to refuse subordination to a foreign power and helped assert democracy. Well sort of.

…a low tolerance for cognitive dissonance leads most propagators of falsehood to self-deception; they tend to say what they believe, having first come to believe what they say.[1]

“Cognitive dissonance is a condition first proposed by the psychologist Leon Festinger in 1956, relating to his hypothesis of cognitive consistency. Cognitive dissonance is a state of opposition between cognitions. Cognitive dissonance is a perceived inconsistency between two cognitions in which the person believes one thing but then acts in a different way from what they believed. For the purpose of cognitive dissonance theory, cognitions are defined as being any element of knowledge, attitude, emotions, belief or value, as well as a goal, plan, or an interest. In brief, the theory of cognitive dissonance holds that contradicting cognitions serve as a driving force that compels the human mind to acquire or invent new thoughts or beliefs, or to modify existing beliefs, so as to minimize the amount of dissonance (conflict) between cognitions,”[2] since it is very hard to live with cognitive dissonance.

Notes and references have been omitted from this version to make it reader-friendly. For the footnoted version, click here(PDF)

Adam Smith summed up the vile maxim of the elite class as follows (back in 1776): “All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” To be sure, there was only contempt in the US for the “vile maxim” during the 19th century among industrial workers (including the lively and vibrant working class press), who bitterly condemned the advance of the Industrial Revolution and much of what it entailed, more concisely, the “‘New Spirit of the Age’: gain wealth, forgetting all but self.” This would have been inconceivable under conditions of brotherly love, solidarity and subsequent equality of condition (not just opportunity), which is a democratic imperative.

Even though money-hungry marauders (political and economic masters) know that only very few of the many who seek wealth will find it, still, it is of inestimable importance for them to instill that value nevertheless, so that by mindlessly and pathologically seeking wealth, forgetting all but self, we destroy our sense of community without which we cannot renew democracy and regain, or gain for the first time, our status as sovereign citizens, hence cannot thrive as a human race, cannot realize our fullest human potentialities.

You can trust neither the rainy season sky nor babies’ bottoms. [Ethiopia] 

Ethiopians have been farming for millennia. They have also faced severe food shortages for about as long. Reliance on natural rainfall for farming is at times similar to gambling in a casino – except with literally deadly consequences when one loses. This begs the question of why these people who have historically innovated in all manners of technology have not been able to simply copy modern agricultural methods from others to achieve food security in recent times. 

If you haven’t heard already they are about to do so. Well sort of; they are going to start by using their land and labor to achieve food security for the Saudi’s first. They are not alone. Since 2004, 2.5 million hectares of African land has been snapped up by the wealthy of our world. That is equivalent to 138 farms the size of the largest one in the world located in north western Canada. The pace of land acquisition is accelerating in 2009 and the scramble is on. But who are the combatants and what do they really want? 

In a community of beggars, stealing and not begging, is considered a crime. [Ghana] 

Kofi Annan has a new job. He is leading AGRA, The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.