GegenStandpunkt: English
Von webmaster • Jan. 10th, 2013 • Kategorie: InternationalGegenStandpunkt: English
“Land Grabbing” — News from International Capitalism States buy up other states’ territories for the cultivation of ‘strategic agricultural goods’ — without being invited by the established global economic powers!
[Translated from Gegenstandpunkt: Politische Vierteljahreszeitschrift 3-2010, Gegenstandpunkt Verlag, Munich]
Political powers and the business people empowered by them “grab land” — this is hardly news. Tapping natural resources in any part of the world is a matter of fact. Developing and exploiting mineral resources requires land rights, on which claims are laid. The cultivation of crops in regions privileged by nature characterizes the modern form of agriculture practiced and propagated by North American and European multinationals. Running plantations requires a sufficient supply of water and extensive land, roads, and ports at one’s disposal. The transportation of liquid and gaseous energy resources to the centers of capitalism, which uses and markets them, requires a global system of pipelines, for which entire states are defined and treated as transit territories. “Land grabbing” takes place all the time for all these cross-border politico-economic needs. And as a further rule, money is paid whenever land under foreign dominion is acquired — proof of a ‘fair deal.’ The current “battle over the Arctic” and over sea beds that have a rich potential in natural resources but no owners also shows that intentions to annex territory politically are not dying out at all — they still belong to the national rights that states both claim and deny each other.
When professional observers of global business practices are currently critically examining the “land grabbing” by some political actors who had previously escaped scrutiny, and feel reminded of a “bygone era of colonialism,” this is, regarded objectively, a bad joke. On the other hand, it is also an index that in our free economic world order not everybody is allowed to do just anything.
What is new about the “new land grabbing”? (…)
1. “Political land acquisition” smacks of “neocolonialism”: nations gain access to foreign production areas for basic agricultural products
2. Nations see themselves confronted with the really existing global market, which refuses them important services: it denies the political powers their fundamental needs for “food and energy security”
3. Acquiring land through purchase meets with exceptionally favorable conditions. There is no shortage of political sellers of large swathes of their national terrain. This, too, is a result of the glorious world market
4. As political activists that are not satisfied with the existing division of the international sources of wealth and power and that call for a change in the balance of power, the leading “land grabbers” are viewed suspiciously by the established world powers
http://www.gegenstandpunkt.com/english/landgrabbing.html
cf:
http://www.gegenstandpunkt.com/gs/10/3/inh103.htm
Democratic clarifications in the U.S. presidential campaign: What an American is, needs, and wants
[Translated from Gegenstandpunkt: Politische Vierteljahreszeitschrift 4-2012]
http://www.gegenstandpunkt.com/english/US-presidential-campaign.html
cf:
