Reporter

ANC’s plan to make white owners hand their land over to workers

Since 1994 white farmers have been murdered in alarming numbers.

Rural Development and Land Reform Minister Gugile Nkwinti wants white commercial farmers to hand over half their farms to black farmworkers.

Nkwinti said in an interview this week that stakeholders in commercial agriculture, including farmers, trade unions, farmworkers and the agricultural business sector, have until April next year to react to his proposals.

The commercial farmers retain 50% of the farm;
The labourers on the land assume ownership of the remaining 50%, proportional to their contribution to the development of the land based on the number of years they had worked on the land;
The government pays for the 50% to be shared by the labourers, but the money will not go to the farmer. It will go to an investment and development fund to be jointly owned by the parties constituting the new ownership regime. The investment and development fund will be used for reinvestment in the farm, skills improvement and to pay out those who want to opt out of the arrangement;
Current tenancy protection remains and it will be balanced by a regime of duties and responsibilities that worker-dwellers must comply with if they want to stay on the farm;
Of the 50% to be shared by labourers, all labourers with a history of between 10 and 25 consecutive years of disciplined service will share 10%, those with 25 to 50 years’ consecutive service will share 25%, those with more than 50 years’ consecutive service will share 50% and 15% will be available for household subsistence farming; and
Land rights management committees, consisting of local people, will be established to solve local disputes.

Nkwinti said he had come up with the proposal because the previous system had “many deficiencies”.

Land reform has been brought into sharp focus by the decline of agriculture in neighbouring Zimbabwe, where many white commercial farmers have been violently evicted and their property rights trampled by the state.

Some 90% of farms redistributed to South Africa’s black population from white farmers are not productive.

Since 1994 white farmers have been murdered in alarming numbers.

About 50 people on average are murdered in South-Africa per day, of which at least 20 are white(95+ % black on white murder rate), although whites make up only 9% (4 500 000) of the demographics in South-Africa.

Is ‘flipping’ property a good investment?

For as little as US$100 a company called F4P tells investors they could get a share of the profits made from buying and selling well-priced properties in the United States, where transfer costs are low and there’s no short supply of distressed sellers.

Empoyees of F4P have ‘guarantees’ that investments pay at least 50 percent in six months.

Sounds too good to be true?

An attendee at a F4P presentation recently, says it left him feeling uncomfortable.

The presentation deals with how one can make money by referring other people to the scheme. There are a lot of commissions being paid to several parties on new money entering the scheme. The performance of the investment would have to be really outstanding in order to give the investor a return, plus pay commissions to all the hangers-on.

“They show images of expensive cars and big houses, and ask, ‘Isn’t this the kind of lifestyle you would like to have?’, but are vague on the details of the scheme. I asked how it had performed as a whole, because your return is from all the properties purchased,” he said.

With high returns go come high risk.

Deposits are being taken by unqualified financial advisers that flaunt a website with no telephone number.

An authority on investing in property, says a legitimate pooled investment would never include a referral commission structure that rewards individual investors for introducing new investors, or a network that offers lifestyle benefits to members for growing a network, as F4P does.

Apparently, the company restores and sells houses fast in a market where eager buyers are also a dime a dozen. This quick buying and selling of property for profit is called “flipping” in the real estate business.

To share in the profits, you pay a once-off joining fee of $249, and $50 a year thereafter, but to sweeten the deal, the company that is offering it, Flipping4Profit (F4P), will reward you – in dollars – for every person you get to become a member of the scheme.

F4P is actively recruiting members in South Africa, but experts in property and financial planning have serious concerns.

Oz offers asylum seekers money to go home

The Australian government is offering asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru detention centres up to $10,000 to abandon their hope of resettlement in Australia and voluntarily return to the country they fled from.

The revelation comes as the High Court on Friday issued a stunning rebuke to the Abbott government’s border protection policy, striking down its decision to to refuse to issue permanent protection visas to boat arrivals found to be refugees.

In two unanimous decisions, with implications for thousands of boat arrivals, the court ruled that Immigration Minister Scott Morrison’s decision to impose a cap on the number of places in Australia’s refugee intake for boat arrivals was invalid.

The sudden boost in payments is the latest tactic being used by the Abbott government to cement its hardline stance against asylum seekers who come to Australia without a visa.

In what are dubbed as “return packages”, the Coalition has dramatically increased monetary incentives for asylum seekers to return home that range from $3300 to $10,000 based on “individual circumstances”, compared with Labor’s offering of between $1500 and $2000 last year.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees on Friday showed Australia’s efforts to help alleviate the crisis have stagnated or worsened, with the country sliding backwards in the global rankings, according to some measures.

Australia now ranks 17th in the world to resettle refugees, according to the Refugee Council of Australia.

Asylum seekers who take up the cash offer are transported to the Hideaway Hotel in Port Moresby that is paid for by the International Organisation of Migration before being flown back to their country of origin.

Fairfax Media understands Lebanese asylum seekers are being paid $10,000 if they voluntarily return to Lebanon, while Iranians and Sudanese are being offered $7000, Afghans are being given $4000 and Pakistani, Nepalese and Burmese asylum seekers are receiving $3300.
Immigration Minister Scott Morrison confirmed that 283 people had voluntarily returned home since September 2013.

It is understood the payments, which are administered by the IOM but funded by the Australian Immigration Department, are made once the asylum seeker has returned to their home country.

Mr Morrison said the packages were tailored to each individual case. “The process of voluntary return is conducted in direct partnership with the International Organisation for Migration which has extensive experience in such matters worldwide,” a spokesman for Mr Morrison said. “All such returns are voluntary. The IOM does not facilitate involuntary returns,” he said.

Yet in a motion before the Senate, the Greens are urging the government to put a moratorium on sending asylum seekers back to Iraq, where a violent uprising continues to swallow the country.

It is not known whether any money has been offered to Iraqi asylum seekers to leave the centres. Only two days before the violent clashes in the north of the country, an Iraqi man on a bridging visa was forced back to Basra, Iraq by the Australian government, it was revealed on Friday.

Source: smh.com

Pope takes on Mafia

Pope Francis has called the ‘Ndrangheta crime group, the dangerous Italian mafia, an example of “the adoration of evil” and saying Mafiosi “are excommunicated”.

Speaking during a mass in the southern Italy, he issued the strongest attacks on organised crime since the late Pope John Paul lambasted the Sicilian Mafia in 1993.

“Those who in their lives follow this path of evil, as mafiosi do, are not in communion with God. They are excommunicated,” Pope Francis said in impromptu comments at a mass before tens of thousands of people.

He told the crowd: “This evil must be fought against, it must be pushed aside. We must say no to it.”

He branded the ‘Ndrangheta as the “adoration of evil and contempt of the common good” and said the Church would exert its full force in efforts to combat organised crime.

Source: Reuters

The Yellen Fed will inflate

The Yellen Fed will inflate until the markets tell the Fed what to do.

Frederick J. Sheehan is the author of Panderer to Power: The Untold Story of How Alan Greenspan Enriched Wall Street and Left a Legacy of Recession (McGraw-Hill, 2009), which was translated and republished in Chinese (2014). He is researching a book about Ben Bernanke.

As always, there was plenty of talk after Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen held a press conference yesterday, June 18, 2014. Complaints are heard she said nothing of substance, which is true. To what the Fed might do, Yellen answered, “It depends.”

In fact, there is no question what Janet Yellen will do. The Yellen Fed will inflate until the markets tell the Fed what to do. The-then Vice Chair recited all one needs to know on March 4, 2013, in “Challenges Confronting Monetary Policy.”

“I view the Committee’s current rate guidance as embodying “lower for longer” commitment….”

Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen will inflate to infinity since her mind is incapable of grappling with an alternative.

The return on higher education

While U.S. schools have remained competitive globally in the face of declining state subsidies and rising tuition costs, it’s fair to ask whether students are getting what they pay for.

Some argue that too many degrees are a waste of money. The return on higher education would be much better if college were cheaper.

The cost of higher education has surged more than 500 percent since 1985, illustrating why there have been renewed calls for change from both political parties.

Tuition expenses have increased 538 percent in the 28-year period, compared with a 286 percent jump in medical costs and a 121 percent gain in the consumer price index. The ballooning charges have generated swelling demand for educational loans while threatening to make college unaffordable for domestic and international students.

College graduates aged 25 to 32 who are working full time earn about $17,500 more annually than their peers who have only a high school diploma, according to the Pew Research Centre, a think-tank. But not all degrees are equally useful. And given how much they cost—a residential four-year degree can set you back as much as $60,000 a year—many students end up worse off than if they had started working at 18.

Arts and humanities courses all nourish the soul, but not all fatten the wallet. An arts degree from a rigorous school such as Columbia or the University of California, San Diego pays off handsomely. But an arts graduate from Murray State University in Kentucky means earning less over 20 years than a high school graduate, after paying for his education.

Of the 153 arts degrees in the study, 46 generated a return on investment worse than 20-year treasury bills, and of those, 18 offered returns worse than zero.

Technology will give colleges a chance to cut costs and raise quality. Online education will accelerate the trend. In 2012, 6.7m students were taking at least one online course.

Source: The Economist

Obama ready to end US embargo against Cuba?

At the end of last week, Uruguayan President Jose Mujica passed along a message from US President Barack Obama to Cuban leader Raul Castro, in which Obama demonstrated willingness to hold a dialogue aimed at cancelling the US embargo against Cuba, the Uruguayan newspaper Busqueda said with reference to sources in official circles.

The newspaper claims that Obama’s message was passed along to Castro by President of Uruguay on the sidelines of the summit in the Group of 77 and China format, which took place at the end of last week in the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz. Meanwhile, the newspaper does not specify in what form this message was given – oral or written.

For his part, Castro “shows great interest” having expressed willingness for rapprochement between Havana and Washington, but only in case the US did not impose their point of view.

According to the newspaper, Mujica assessed the meeting with Castro as “fairly optimistic”.

In May, Mujica visited the USA on an official visit and held talks with the US President. According to the Uruguayan newspaper, it was at this meeting that Obama reported to Mujika his readiness for closer ties with Havana.

Washington imposed sanctions against Cuba in 1961, after the failure of the operation aimed at overthrowing the government of Fidel Castro. In 1996, the US Congress adopted the “Helms – Burton Act” on additional sanctions against foreign companies trading with Cuba.

Source: Voice of Russia

US indexes hit record highs

It was another good week for the stock market. The Dow Jones industrial average and Standard & Poor’s 500 index both ended Friday at record highs. It was the third consecutive day the S&P 500 index reached a new record, and it’s now up 6.2% for 2014. The Dow is also up for the year at 2.2%. All the major stock indexes managed to finish the week ahead of where they started at the beginning of the week.

For the week, the S&P 500 index managed to gain 3.39 points to 1,962.87, an increase of 0.17%. The weekly gain is becoming a welcome trend. The S&P 500 has managed to end the week ahead in five of the last six weeks, and it’s the 22nd time this year it’s managed to hit a record high.

The Dow had a slightly smaller percentage gain in the S&P 500 coming in with an increase of 0.15%. That was 25.62 points more than the previous week, and the Dow ended at 16,947.08. This broke the previous record high which was set on June 10, 2014 when it ended at 16,945.92.

While the NASDAQ Composite continued to make gains, it’s still well below the soaring heights of the dot-com era when it managed to peak at over 5,000. It managed a 0.20% increase for the week, or 8.71 points, to end at 4,360.04. While not a all-time record, it is the highest level in 14 years

US government bonds slipped a fraction during the week, with the year for the 10 year Treasury note ending at 2.61%. This was down 0.01% from Thursday.

While all the major indexes were able to finish up, the moves have been coming in small increments. It appears the market is currently focusing on the specific performance of individual companies, rather than the geopolitical unrest in Iraq and Ukraine, and questions about the US economy.

The midweek remarks from the Federal Reserve indicating they plan to keep short-term interest rates low also helped stocks for the week. The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) release a statement saying interest rates remained unchanged at 0.00% to 0.25% at the end of their two-day meeting.

Whether week ahead brings about new record highs will depend a lot on housing data which will be coming out during next week, as well as if there are any major new geopolitical developments.

FIFA 2014: Monkey chants,bananas and homophobia

During a training session with the Spanish national team in 2004, the Spanish national coach Luis Aragonés was recorded by a Spanish TV crew referring to French soccerplayer Thierry Henry as a “black piece of s***” to José Antonio Reyes, Henry’s Arsenal teammate.

That experience, however, is not his alone. In fact, West Ham United players Clyde Best and Ade Coker were subjected to monkey chants when they were playing soccer during the 1960s, 40 years earlier. The chants have continued, and players, such as Jozy Altidore and Danny Alves, have inherited this treatment.

Many believe that thirst for justice will go unquenched and racism will persist.

Racism has given way to a spout of homophobia: Mexico’s fans harmonized a chant, singing “puto” during two recent matches when Mexico was pitted against Cameroon and Brazil.

HBO’s “Real Sports,” hosted by Bryant Gumbel, aired an episode in April, entitled “Soccer Racism.” The episode reported on the frequent displays of racism in European football, which have gone to show the “ugly side of a beautiful game.” Several black soccer players spoke about it.

Sometimes slang for “fag” or “man whore” or “coward,” the word being used during Mexican soccer matches only dates back to 2003, which discredits the usage as a tradition. FIFA, which isn’t a fan of inflammatory remarks, has launched an investigation to examine Mexican fans’ use of “puto.”

Giovanni Marti from FIFA’s Media Department encourages individuals and groups to submit any evidence in their possession with regard to discriminatory behavior for the analysis and consideration of the FIFA Disciplinary Committee.

While it’s too early to know how FIFA plans to handle Mexico’s fans, if history is any indicator, little may be done. Though, if they were looking to make an example of a team, it’d more likely be Mexico than a European team. But, why punish Mexico now and not 10 years ago when the word first came into rotation?

And with 2018’s World Cup taking place in Russia, a country that known for its anti-black sentiment, many wonder if banana tossing and monkey cries will persist.

Source: latinpost.com

MSF: Ebola totally out of control

The Ebola outbreak ravaging West Africa is “totally out of control,” according to a senior official for Doctors Without Borders (MSF), who says the medical group is stretched to the limit in responding.

The outbreak has caused more deaths than any other of the disease, said another official with the medical charity. Ebola has been linked to more than 330 deaths in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, according to the World Health Organization.

International organizations and the governments involved need to send in more health experts and increase public education messages about how to stop the spread of the disease, Bart Janssens, the director of operations for the medical group in Brussels, told The Associated Press on Friday.

“The reality is clear that the epidemic is now in a second wave,” Janssens said. “And, for me, it is totally out of control.”

The Ebola virus, which causes internal bleeding and organ failure, spreads through direct contact with infected people. There is no cure or vaccine, so containing an outbreak focuses on supportive care for the ill and isolating them to limit the spread of the virus.

The current outbreak, which began in Guinea either late last year or early this year, had appeared to slow before picking up pace again in recent weeks, including spreading to the Liberian capital for the first time.

“This is the highest outbreak on record and has the highest number of deaths, so this is unprecedented so far,” said Armand Sprecher, a public health specialist with Doctors Without Borders.

According to the WHO, the highest previous death toll was in the first recorded Ebola outbreak in Congo in 1976, when 280 deaths were reported. Because Ebola often touches remote areas and the first cases sometimes go unrecognized, it is likely that there are deaths that go uncounted during outbreaks.

The multiple locations of the current outbreak and its movement across borders make it one of the “most challenging Ebola outbreaks ever,” Fadela Chaib, a spokeswoman for the World Health Organization, said earlier in the week.

But Janssens’ description of the Ebola outbreak was even more alarming, and he warned that the countries involved had not recognized the gravity of the situation. He criticized WHO for not doing enough to prod local leaders; the U.N. health agency did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

“There needs to be a real political commitment that this is a very big emergency,” he said. “Otherwise, it will continue to spread, and for sure it will spread to more countries.”

But Tolbert Nyenswah, Liberia’s deputy minister of health, said the highest levels of government are working to contain the outbreak, noting that Liberia had a long period with no new cases before this second wave.

Source: Breitbart.com

Entire class in Sweden victims of genital mutilation

School health services in the small Swedish city of Norrköping have found 60 cases of female genital mutilation (FGM) among schoolgirls since March, with evidence of mutilation found in all 30 girls in one class, 28 of the most severe form.

In Sweden, where the EU’s Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) says that FGM “is considered to be a serious problem,” the law enables genital examination of children to be carried out without parents’ consent.

FGM has been a crime in Sweden since 1982 and can be punished by up to four years in prison, increased to 10 years if judged to be an aggravated offence.

According to EIGE, concerns about FGM became widespread in Sweden in the early and mid-1990s with the influx of Somali migrants: “The first national action taken in the field…was initiated after alarming testimonies from the healthcare sector indicating the existence of FGM among many — if not all — women that originated from FGM-practising countries.”

Now the daughters of immigrants are in danger of undergoing FGM. According to the Local, the risk of becoming a victim of the procedure increases in the summer when many schoolgirls visit their parents’ home country: “We’re working to inform parents that they could face prison if they come back and their children have undergone female genital mutilation,” said Petra Blom Andersson, student health coordinator in Norrköping.

Mutilation carried out abroad has been a crime in Sweden since 1999.
In 2013, Somalis were the third largest group granted asylum in the EU countries, according to a Eurostat figures reported yesterday by Breitbart London, with almost 10,000 granted protection. Sweden gave refugee status to 26,400 people last year, more than any other EU country. The third largest group arriving in Sweden came from Eritrea, a country in which according to a UN report FGM is illegal but widely practised, with the rate estimated at 94 per cent.

FGM is carried out in 28 countries in the world. It involves the cutting and/or the removal of the clitoris and other vaginal tissue, often under unsanitary conditions.

Source: breitbart.com

According to the European Commission, “while all EU member states have legal provisions in place to prosecute the perpetrators of FGM, either under general or specific criminal laws, prosecutions are very rare. This is due to difficulties detecting cases, gathering sufficient evidence, a reluctance to report a crime and, above all, a lack of knowledge about female genital mutilation.”

Investors fight Fed on inflation

Treasury 30-year bonds dropped as investors bet on faster inflation even as Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen dismissed signs of rising consumer prices.

Sam Bullard, a senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities in Charlotte, North Carolina says “Fed officials will have to acknowledge the firming price environment.”

Benchmark 10-year notes fell for a third week after Yellen said June 18 that the Fed maintains its commitment to low interest rates. Gauges of expectations for consumer prices for periods from five to 30 years widened before the Commerce Department is forecast to report June 26 that the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation rose to the highest since October 2012. The Treasury will sell $107 billion of coupon debt next week.

“The market is voting with its feet and lifting rates because it doesn’t agree with Yellen’s conclusion on CPI,” said Adrian Miller, director of fixed-income strategies at GMP Securities LLC in New York.

“The market does seem to be fighting the Fed here,” said James Caron, who manages money in New York at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, which oversees $61 billion of fixed-income assets. “The market believes it’s only a matter of time before those inflation pressures start to manifest.”

Source: Bloomberg/Reuters

Honda finds its mojo

They say, “When you’re on a good thing, stick to it.” Honda has followed that formula since launching the first Jazz back in 2001. And why not? It’s worked wonders for the automaker so far.

Now manufactured at 10 plants in eight countries, the Jazz – Fit in the US – has sold more than 4 million units. The second generation, released in 2007, essentially followed the original’s design with bolder headlights and grille, and maintained the car’s central fuel tank layout and dimensions. But according to the third generation’s 2015 chief engineer, Makoto Konishi, “It’s time for a big change. That ‘good thing’ needs to get better.”

He rallied his R&D team by urging them to create the “Super Cub” of the car world. The Cub was a 50cc motorcycle launched in 1958 that became the biggest seller ever (60 million in 50 years).

At Honda’s Takasu Proving Ground in Hokkaido, the car looks great. The front end is bolder. It appears to take design hints from the Clarity fuel-call car, the CR-V, and even the new NSX.

Design boss Toshinobu Minami says that in designing the new exterior, he wanted to make a strong connection with a market smitten with smartphones and the Internet, a market fascinated by new gadgets.

“We had to give the new model a significantly new face and stronger road presence while maintaining its dimensions,” Minami said. The face, especially, had to exude ‘new.’ That is why Honda opted for a more solid face with an “exciting edge design.” said Minami.

Senior handling and ride quality engineer Terumasa Kotada told us Honda benchmarked the Jazz/Fit on a certain Volkswagen.

“In upping our game, we wanted to make a stronger international competitor, so we benchmarked our Jazz/Fit on the Polo. The moment you get in the Polo, you notice how low you sit in the car. This instills confidence. And then when you drive the Polo, you notice how low its roll center is and its huge stability levels, instilling even more confidence. To get our desired result, I tested the car extensively on the autobahns in Germany,” he said.

To give the Jazz/Fit better road feel, feedback, and stability, Kotada says the car’s suspension geometry was redesigned by adding a new H-beam torsion rear suspension setup and a revised front strut. Taking hints from the Polo, toe control and caster angle were revised. The electronic power steering was modified to give the car a more natural steering feel.

In a strange way, the Honda actually feels bigger and more substantial on the road, and turns in like a charm with almost no understeer and loads of feedback. It rolls less while going into corners, and is more stable at speed, gripping the blacktop while the rear follows neatly and cleanly. Under heavy braking, the car resists nosedive as the back end stays absolutely planted. “Rear end stability is just one major result of our Polo-inspired suspension redesign,” adds Kotada.

The cabin is filled with a sporty exhaust note that has been tuned and silenced — with sound-absorbing felt — to delete all human-unfriendly sounds. While the dash design is simple yet functional, it is not in the same class as the Polo when it comes to interior trim, materials, and quality.

When you benchmark a car on another, you expect to see significant improvements in all major areas, upgrades that put the new car in the same class. Honda says we can expect to see further refinements inside the car before it goes on sale in Europe and elsewhere early next year.

Designer Minami commented that he would have liked Honda’s announcement of a return to F1 with McLaren to come a year earlier. That way he could have incorporated some McLaren design hints into the car. As it is, he seems happy enough, but does admit that some people may find its looks over the top.

Honda seems to have found its mojo again. It’ll be back in Formula 1; a new NSX is coming out soon; a smaller sports car is on the way; a new Accord hybrid will travel more than 800 miles on a tank of gas; and a new Civic Type R will soon challenge the Megane RS for the fastest lap by a front-drive car at the Nurburgring. If anything, this car is a reflection of the company’s newfound corporate confidence.

Source: motortrend.com

Oil price hikes are manufactured

Today’s double dose of codswallop is the oil price.

Turmoil in Iraq is the predictable last chapter of the fiasco that began with a pack of lies about atomic bicycles from Dubya and Blair. Same old same old: US goes on silly half-baked venture, UK crawls up its backside, West gets bored, Islamists sit quietly waiting for laurel-resting….and then move back in.

But it’s the idea that crude oil prices have been “boosted” by the unsettled Iraqi situation that strikes me as complete poppycock. While Iraq has probably the world’s largest untapped oil reserves, it still has eleven producers ahead of it – and with the world careering towards recession aka slump, 9% of total output isn’t any kind of game changer….even if disruption were to be 100%…um, as it was when the Blair-Dubya Grand Alliance gave us all Schlockanawe.

No, the price has gone up because (1) Bourses overreact to everything – or ignore everything – depending on whether we’re talking QE or oil; and (2) the smart aka crooked money got in there first and directionalised the saps.

Remember, dark pool, algorithmic and/or speed-of-light trading (they overlap) is estimated to account for around 2 in 5 trades on the NYSE today. Or using another dimension of market concentration, just six firms on Wall Street account for 33% of all trades:

Markets are no longer there to raise money for dynamic businesses, they exist to make money for banking firms and their vaguely defined ‘clients’.

All these firms know the numbers. Their job is to suggest danger to the nervous, get them to buy, wait for the truth to dawn…and then buy back at a price lower than where they sold.

The practice contributes nothing to the real economy, but quite a lot to the unreal bonus.

If you want to see some really significant moves on this front, then look at Venezuela and Ukraine.

It’s another reason why Bourse-obsessed capitalism is on the skids.

http://investmentwatchblog.com/