Free Censored 2012 by Mickey Huff Page A

Farmlandgrab.org . The site—created by GRAIN, a small international NGO—is an open project that encourages readers to post any articles or media coverage of these massive land grabs, and has posted research from their October 2008 report titled “Seized: The 2008 Land Grab for Food and Financial Security.”
    Furthermore, WikiLeaks released a cable explaining investments and land purchases made by a handful of African leaders, including investments and plans to develop agricultural projects or tourism resorts in Ethiopia, and an evasion of a 2007 ban on export of cereals. Finally, on May 5, 2011, an article was published in
The Economist
giving a run through of the more recent data about the massive land grabs in Africa which concluded: “Evidence is piling up against acquisitions of farmland in poor countries.”
    Sources: William Davison, “Saudi Billionaire’s Company Will Invest $2.5 Billion in Ethiopia Rice Farm,” Bloomberg, March 22, 2011, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-23/saudi-billionaire-s-company-will-invest-2-5-billion-in-ethiopia-rice-farm.html ;Madeleine Bunting, “How Land Grabs in Africa Could Herald a New Dystopian Age of Hunger,”
Guardian
, Poverty Matters Blog, January 28, 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/jan/28/africa-land-grabs-food-security ; Madeleine Bunting, “Guardian Focus Podcast: Land Grabs in Africa”
Guardian
, Guardian Focus Podcast, produced by Peter Sale, January 28, 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/audio/2011/jan/28/guardian-focus-podcast-land-grabs ; “Libya could Provide 60,000 Hectares of field for Turkish Investors,”
Tripoli Post
, January 4, 2011, http://tripoli-post.com/articledetail.asp?c=1&i=5285 , Staff Reporter; “Australian firms eye investment in food processing sector,”
Pakistan Observer
, March 12, 2011, http://pakobserver.net/detail-news.asp?id=80667 ; “The Surge in Land Deals: When Others Are Grabbing Their Land”
Economist
, May 5, 2011, http://www.economist.com/node/18648855?story_id=18648855 ; “Cable 10ADDISABABA247, FOREIGN INVESTORS GRAB UP MORE LAND IN ETHIOPIA,” WikiLeaks, released January 28, 2011, http://wikileaks.ch/cable/2010/02/10ADDISABABA247.html .
    The following is a special update by Justice in Nigeria Now, which won a Project Censored Award for this particular story last year
.
    The Niger Delta is unfortunately known worldwide as a region where oil production comes first and human rights a distant second. For well over fifty years, oil operations in the Niger Delta have economically marginalized local villagers, while giving them virtually no control over their own livelihood, land, or resources.
    In the spring of 2009 in Nigeria’s oil-rich Delta State, oil operations were responsible for a series of brutal attacks perpetrated against thousands of innocent civilians by the military’s Joint Task Force (JTF). As Nigerians gathered on May 14th in Oporoza—the region’s major town—to celebrate the Gbaramatu Kingdom’s hereditary ruler, without warning, the JTF commenced attacks on the festive crowd. JTF helicopter gunships indiscriminately opened fire, targeting children, the elderly, the monarch himself, and anyone else in the crowd. These gunships were quickly followed by ground assault troops, carried by naval warships, in what was obviously a substantial military campaign.
    College student Peres Popo noted that “most of the students like me who tried to escape during the deadly incident are dead. Some in the streets, forests … they were killed by the bombs. I lost my mother and six of my brothers in the incident. Two of my three sisters are still trapped in the forest. The place is too dangerous for them to come out now. They can’t cross with boat and they can’t risk swimming. The JTFpeople have blocked the waterways. One of my sisters has been missing. Nobody seems to know her whereabouts.
    “The military people were using their helicopter chopper to destroy