[Guardian] The Tanzanian government is putting foreign safari companies ahead of Maasai herding communities as environmental tensions grow on the fringes of the Serengeti national park, according to a new investigation.
Hundreds of homes have been burned and tens of thousands of people driven from ancestral land in Loliondo in the Ngorongoro district in recent years to benefit high-end tourists and a Middle Eastern royal family, says the report by the California-based thinktank the Oakland Institute.
Although carried out in the name of conservation, these measures enable wealthy foreigners to watch or hunt lions, zebra, wildebeest, giraffes and other wildlife, while the authorities exclude local people and their cattle from watering holes and arable land, the institute says.
The report, released on Thursday highlights the famine and fear caused by biodiversity loss, climate change, inequality and discrimination towards indigenous groups.
Losing the Serengeti: The Maasai Land that was to Run Forever uses previously unpublished correspondence, official documents, court testimonies and first-person testimony to examine the impact of two firms: Thomson Safaris based in the United States, and Otterlo Business Corporation based in the United Arab Emirates.
#1
Not exactly 'breaking' news. 'Eminent Domain' was invented in Subsaharan Africa. The 'back story' of where the game farm, safari, and mining dollars go is much more revealing, but we really don't need another Bob Mugabe or Jacob Zuma story.
[Hot Air] Well, this is a little awkward, isn’t it? Not long after it became clear that Gina Haspel has the votes to win confirmation as CIA director, John McCain has decided to throw a wrench in the works. Haspel may be a patriot, the sidelined Senator writes, but her connection to torture makes her unfit to run the agency:
#4
Khan: [quoting from Melville's Moby Dick] To the last, I will grapple with thee... from Hell's heart, I stab at thee! For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee!
#9
P@K I'll see your Melville and raise you a Shakespeare: "With carrion men, groaning for burial."
Posted by: regular joe ||
05/10/2018 10:27 Comments ||
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#10
Pavlov'a Dog one more time, ad nauseum, when you mention:
♫Russia♫ McCain barks and drools uncontrollably.
♫Torture♫ McCain barks and drools uncontrollably.
[DAWN] FORMER prime minister Nawaz Sharif ... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf, then by the courts... claims he is up against an extraterrestrial species or aliens (khalai makhlooq). He is certainly not alluding to a character in Steven Spielberg’s epic thriller E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The ousted leader would not elaborate on what he really meant. But it is too obvious to miss.
It is the ubiquitous ’security establishment’ that Sharif seems to be blaming his predicament on; the same ’invisible forces’ that are believed to have initially propelled him to power three decades ago and that were also responsible for the overthrow of his second government. It all may sound a bit disconcerting yet it does illustrate the political game of chess we have been witnessing.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
05/10/2018 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11128 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
[PJMedia] President Trump was good to his word, dumping the rotten Iran deal in the toughest possible way. First, he stated in so many words that the United States wanted regime change, not just a revised deal with the mullahs. Second, he warned that any nation assisting Iran's nuclear program also would face sanctions (it's not clear what would trigger such sanctions, which is going to worry the Europeans). Third, he showed contempt for European diplomacy by hailing Israel's acquisition of Iranian nuclear-weapons plans, something that the Europeans insisted had no bearing on the present deal.
You don't get tougher than that. Ronald Reagan must be opening champagne in heaven.
Now comes the tough part.
Iran's economy is a catastrophe, as I wrote more than a year ago--despite higher oil prices and despite the lifting of sanctions under the Obama deal. The Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) runs the country the way Al Capone ran Cicero, Illinois, and has left the banking and pension system bankrupt. There are frequent strikes, demonstrations, riots and other expressions of popular disgust at the regime. But the IRGC won't give up. If the domestic opposition gains power, they'll be hanged, and they can't flee the country, because they have no place to go.
Iran's massive campaign of ethnic cleansing in Syria is proceeding, after nearly half the population was driven from its homes, to be replaced by Shi'ite mercenaries imported by Iran. Russia isn't particularly committed to Iran's imperial ambitions but has no reason to interfere. That sets up a prospective war between Iran and Israel.
China, Russia, and Turkey (with some European collusion) will use the return to sanctions to put alternative currency and financing mechanisms into place, free from American interference. That's a lot harder than it sounds, but it represents a long-term threat to American power.
Iran doesn't want a real fight with Israel any time soon, as I explained this morning in Asia Times:
An Israeli-Iran war would not be a limited conflict. Both sides would attempt to destroy the other’s capacity to fight, and the odds for the moment favor Israel.
Two dozen Israeli missiles or bomber sorties could wipe out Iran’s economy in a matter of hours, and that makes a war unlikely for the time being. Fewer than a dozen power plants generate 60% of Iran’s electricity, and eight refineries produce 80% of its distillates. A single missile strike could disable each of these facilities, and bunker-buster bombs of the kind that Israel used last month in Lebanon would entirely destroy them. And as Hillel Frisch points out in the Jerusalem Post, with a bit more effort Israel could eliminate the Port of Kharg from which Iran exports 90% of its hydrocarbons.
Russia would be the biggest beneficiary of such a war, which would send the price oil flying. A Russian opposition leader suggested on background that Putin may help Israel attack Iran, for example by helping Israeli planes bypass Iran's Russian-built air defense system.
For the time being, nothing will happen. Iran will be cautious and look for leverage in Europe, Russia and China, avoiding a near-term military confrontation. Meanwhile the Revolutionary Guard will circle the wagons at home. President Rouhani warned that Iran could be ready to start enriching uranium again within three weeks if the deal fell apart. National Security Adviser John Bolton warned today that additional sanctions on Iran my follow the restoration of the present round. Sanctions, though, will not dissuade the Iranian regime from trying to build nuclear weapons.
If Iran attempts to build nuclear weapons or their components, the next step may be a surgical strike on its enrichment facilities. Of course, Goldman assumes that the Mullahs are sane
Posted yesterday at 17:54 p.m. ET, so I pulled it back for today. This did not merit breaking the 2 p.m. rule.
— trailing wife
Posted by: g(r)omgoru ||
05/10/2018 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11130 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
Well, look at the clock for Kooba, NKor, Venerealzuela, Nicaragua and so on, and do the math...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/10/2018 11:14 Comments ||
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#2
Spengler is way glib. If I had a nickel for every time he forecasted Turkey's impending economic collapse, I'd have - a lot of nickels.
[CNN] Phil Mudd slams senators for "selective amnesia" when grilling CIA Director nominee Gina Haspel over interrogation techniques that were legal; "We didn’t do it, America did it."
#5
Trump should just say "give me this nominee or I'll nominate someone to shut the CIA down and make a recess appointment to do it."
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/10/2018 11:32 Comments ||
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#6
Congress is free at any time to change laws, repeal laws & modify laws governing many aspects of the government operations. They generally don't do this in a productive way. So we have the grotesque spectacle of Congresscritters behaving this way, as if they had no self-awareness.
[PJMedia] The President is not your daddy. Do I really have to say this? To supposed adults? To people qualified to vote in a democratic republic? There are two items I came across this week that seem to indicate that indeed I do. No one ever taught these people to reason their way out of a paper bag, or even told them why they should.
Instead, they were given a set of beliefs that define "good people" and if they stop believing in those things, they are "bad people."
I’d say these are not adults in any sense of the word, but that’s not exactly true. Throughout most of the history of our species, adults had a set of beliefs it was best not to question, whether it be "our tribe is better than the next tribe" or "we have to eliminate all the suede-eaters" or even "this is how we tie our glurk and display our brek" because humans are tribal, and displaying your tribal loyalty has been way more important than actually being, you know, rational and asking if things really work that way for... most of history.
The problem is that we’re not in a society (or societies if you extend this to all of Western civilization) that can survive this kind of quasi-religious denial of logical thought. We’re not in a society (or societies) that can hold on tight to the idea that all cultures are the same, when, say, the Oktoberfest is being cancelled throughout many cities in Germany because migrants can’t get it across their heads that a woman not covered like a sofa is NOT, in fact, asking to be raped. We’re not in a society that can survive voters being misinformed by the high priests of the leftist religion on the nature of good and evil either, or the nature of the presidency. But that is the society we live in and misinformation is rife.
See, when you remove rationality and true research and information as a way of forming your opinion, and instead you know in your heart of hearts you have to believe a set of precepts to be a "good person," you are not fit to live in a representative republic, or to have your vote counted.
But in our society, your vote does count. And chances are you’re not shy about displaying your infantilization on Twitter either. Note this, with name not removed because this person tweeted it for all the world to see.
h/t Instapundit
[NYTimes] It hurts the most when it’s one of the "good" ones. The latest man to torpedo his own career is Eric Schneiderman, who resigned Monday evening from his position as New York State attorney general just hours after The New Yorker published a long piece detailing the myriad ways he is alleged to have abused some of the women in his life: hitting them, choking them, sexually degrading them, psychologically mistreating them and verbally undermining their work and their sense of self.
At home, it seems, Mr. Schneiderman was a sexual sadist and manipulative misogynist. At work, he was a champion of women’s rights, investigating potential charges against Harvey Weinstein, appearing at events supporting reproductive freedom, and even writing a bill specifically to punish the same kind of strangulation he is said to have forced on some of his partners.
How do we reconcile these two versions of a single man? We don't, you stu, ahem, dear young lady - because most of us learned by the time we were your age that virtuous people don't wave their virtue around.
Posted yesterday at 17:38 p.m. ET, so I pulled it back for today. This did not merit breaking the 2 p.m. rule.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
05/10/2018 10:10 Comments ||
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#4
I think soon you will see people convicted accused of crimes that bother virtue signalers will have their registration switched to Republican automatically, like motor voter...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/10/2018 11:24 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Hot Air] Well, this is a little awkward, isn’t it? Not long after it became clear that Gina Haspel has the votes to win confirmation as CIA director, John McCain has decided to throw a wrench in the works. Haspel may be a patriot, the sidelined Senator writes, but her connection to torture makes her unfit to run the agency:
... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf, then by the courts...
