A Flash of Ethiopian Emotion in the Morning!

Land-Grabbing

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A flash of emotion in the morning!
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By any political standard and perception, is IT not to the point? The following elaboration of what is taking place in the name of development, specially around the phenomena of "land grabbing". With the only correction that the "exploiter of the resources" is the "global finance capital" originating from diverse regions, specially the "new comers" like India, China or the Arab Peninsula!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonialism

"Exploitation colonialism involved fewer colonists, typically interested in extracting resources to export to the metropole. This category includes trading posts, but it applies more to the much larger colonies where the colonists would provide much of the administration and own much of the land and other capital, but rely on indigenous people for labour."
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What a frustrating "irony", that this is in effect a product of a revolution ("Land to the Tiller"/ መሬት ለራሹ!), which began by expropriating the "indigenous" "exploiters" (feudal landlords & a tiny "cherub" of a new bourgeoisie) and ended up by empowering the exogenous "exploiters".

This seems to me without any precedence the best "perverted-revolution" of the century! (remembering Chile and other Latin American regions, ...Indonesia.....or even Russia and some of former East European regions...or if you like Zimbabwe) And one day if the process develops to its completion, we would have the Ethiopian "neo-protectorate" state.
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Mind you! Not "counter-revolution". Counter-revolution is by all standards " healthy" in a way, because it acts in its own interest (of all facets). The "perversion" of a revolution is acting in such an irrational manner, that the promoted interest is that of the "other"/its own "enemy"/ and not the "self".
You know the saying in Amahric! "bere karaju gar tegnto yadral" ..በሬ ካራጁ ጋር ተኝቶ የድራል
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And by the way, an Autocracy is I think in such an environment, the most vulnerable form of Administration. If this happens to be radically "national" and a "nuisance" by hampering the "development" of the exogenous "new Capital", the latter can get rid of the "top man" by the "stroke" of the million dollars it pays to a professional "killer" or its "intelligence headquarters" at the service of the big capital dominating the region.

In contrast to this I would say "neo-colonialism", whose second phase has been inaugurated by the phenomena of "land-grabbing", would just be a footnote in the annals of African-neocolonialism.

This phenomena of land grabbing and "investment", in which the political elite of the relevant nations and states, (though they may happen to get just the "mouse" share of the "benefit") - like the role of the catalyst in a chemical process in nature- are playing a major and crucial role in legalising the "capital flow" to the "global finance-centres", has nothing to do with African development and the so-called "primitive accumulation" of the African continent. In what ever direction the capital would flow it has only been so far, "a flow" to the detriment of the Africans and not in the direction of the African continent, but to the benefit of the old and new "global finance-capital-centres", where-ever they are, be it the classical centres in Western Europe and America or the new-comers like India, Turkey or China.

Along this line I remember, there was a "policy discussion" on "development aid" in Germany, whether the "African States are at all mature enough" for self-administration and is the "protectorate state" not relevant for some regions? And this happened to be not a discussion somewhere in a "rightist corner" but at a relatively "higher and serious" podium, some 20 years back. That is apparently bearing some fruits today.