Africa

Nigerians say the timing is wrong considering the country is facing its worst economic crisis in decades.

Nigerians say the timing is wrong considering the country is facing its worst economic crisis in decades.

Charlie the elephant has been in captivity since 1984 when it was captured at two years

Training being provided to local farmers for water harvesting and the reuse of waste water for the local farming community.

By Umar Manzoor Shah
SRINAGAR, India, Aug 21 2024 (IPS)

Brij Mohan, a 37-year-old farmer from Deoria, a modest village in India’s northern state of Uttar Pradesh, has a story of resilience and transformation. Mohan, the lone breadwinner for his family, has two children, the eldest just 10 years old.

A year ago, Mohan grew cabbage on his 3-acre farm, but severe water scarcity limited him to cultivating the crop just once a year under difficult conditions. With minimal irrigation facilities, Mohan’s farm yielded no more than Rs 40,000 annually (about USD 600).

“I had no shortage of land, quality seeds, or fertilizers. But the lack of water was a major obstacle to my livelihood. The late arrival of monsoons and limited water from government-sponsored irrigation schemes nearly pushed me to abandon farming. I was pushing my family towards starvation,” Mohan told IPS News.

Many members of the farming community are in Mohan’s situation, struggling with water scarcity that leaves their lives and fields high and dry.

Manga Ram, who lives just a mile from Mohan, has a similar story. He cultivates brinjal on his 4-acre land but faces meager water supplies that render his otherwise cultivable land barren mid-season.

“I can’t blame the government for everything. I know there’s a water shortage throughout the region. Farmers are craving water everywhere. But the losses were unbearable,” Ram told IPS.

He added that last year he expected a harvest worth over Rs 90,000 (USD 1,200) but barely made half that amount.

“The saplings didn’t get enough water, turning into dry twigs and leaving my hopes of a profitable harvest in ruins,” Ram recalls.

Brij Mohan with a bundle of brinjals. Experts have encouraged water harvesting and the reuse of waste water for the local farming community.

The End of Imagination

According to government estimates, 72 of 75 districts (96 percent) in Uttar Pradesh, including Rampur, recorded below-normal rainfall this year. Data from India’s Meteorological Department shows that in 59 districts, rainfall was “very low,” with a significant deficiency of less than 60% of the recommended precipitation.

“Even major districts like Meerut and Allahabad received insufficient water for farming. How could we expect this remote area to get government help? Farming was becoming increasingly difficult, as was sustaining our families and providing a good life for our kids,” says farmer Suneel Singh.

Another farmer, Ram Dayal, describes the dire situation: “I have a 2-acre plot of land where I grow tomatoes. There wasn’t enough rain, and the government’s efforts to provide irrigation facilities were minimal. Our resources were too poor to rely on. We were praying for God’s help, or it was the end of imagination for us,” Dayal told IPS News.

Last year, a team of non-governmental agencies visited the area to understand the farmers’ issues. They learned about the severe water shortage that was turning fertile fields barren. The local village heads and NGOs brought in scientific experts who proposed water harvesting and wastewater reuse for the farming community.

During surface irrigation, excess water draining from the fields, known as irrigation tailwater, is primarily considered agricultural wastewater. A certain amount of tailwater drainage is necessary to ensure proper water penetration and irrigation efficiency.

The experts recommended building artificial ponds to collect water cheaply, such as by digging trenches lined with polythene sheets. Water could be stored for 4–5 days, enabling farmers to grow crops on small plots.

Following the guidance, farmers like Suneel, Ram Dayal, and Mohan dug 3-foot-deep pits with 8×6 foot dimensions and carved channels to divert wastewater into the pits. This method allowed them to collect and use wastewater for irrigation, watering their crops twice daily and protecting them from the scorching heat.

“I can now cultivate at least three crops a year. I grow cabbage, cauliflower, and brinjal, which was previously impossible,” says Mohan.

He is hopeful that his profits will double in the future, allowing him to provide a comfortable life for his family. “I want my children to get an education but continue farming. Earlier, I was worried about their future. Now I am not,” Mohan said.

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By Norman Solomon
SAN FRANCISCO, USA, Aug 21 2024 (IPS)

An observation from George Orwell — “those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future” — is acutely relevant to how President Biden talked about Gaza during his speech at the Democratic convention Monday night.

His words fit into a messaging template now in its eleventh month, depicting the U.S. government as tirelessly seeking peace, while supplying the weapons and bombs that have enabled Israel’s continual slaughter of civilians.

“We’ll keep working, to bring hostages home, and end the war in Gaza, and bring peace and security to the Middle East,” Biden told the cheering delegates. “As you know, I wrote a peace treaty for Gaza. A few days ago, I put forward a proposal that brought us closer to doing that than we’ve done since October 7th.”

It was a journey into an alternative universe of political guile from a president who just six days earlier had approved sending $20 billion worth of more weapons to Israel. Yet the Biden delegates in the convention hall responded with a crescendo of roaring admiration.

Applause swelled as Biden continued: “We’re working around-the-clock, my secretary of state, to prevent a wider war and reunite hostages with their families, and surge humanitarian health and food assistance into Gaza now, to end the civilian suffering of the Palestinian people and finally, finally, finally deliver a ceasefire and end this war.”

In Chicago’s United Center, the president basked in adulation while claiming to be a peacemaker despite a record of literally making possible the methodical massacres of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians.

Orwell would have understood. A political reflex has been in motion from top U.S. leaders, claiming to be peace seekers while aiding and abetting the slaughter. Normalizing deception about the past sets a pattern for perpetrating such deception in the future.

And so, working inside the paradigm that Orwell described, Biden exerts control over the present, strives to control narratives about the past, and seeks to make it all seem normal, prefiguring the future.

The eagerness of delegates to cheer for Biden’s mendaciously absurd narrative about his administration’s policies toward Gaza was in a broader context — the convention’s lovefest for the lame-duck president.

Hours before the convention opened, Peter Beinart released a short video essay anticipating the fervent adulation. “I just don’t think when you’re analyzing a presidency or a person, you sequester what’s happened in Gaza,” he said.

“I mean, if you’re a liberal-minded person, you believe that genocide is just about the worst thing that a country can do, and it’s just about the worst thing that your country can do if your country is arming a genocide.”

Beinart continued: “And it’s really not that controversial anymore that this qualifies as a genocide. I read the academic writing on this. I don’t see any genuine scholars of human rights international law who are saying it’s not indeed there. . . . If you’re gonna say something about Joe Biden, the president, Joe Biden, the man, you have to factor in what Joe Biden, the president, Joe Biden, the man, has done, vis-a-vis Gaza.

It’s central to his legacy. It’s central to his character. And if you don’t, then you’re saying that Palestinian lives just don’t matter, or at least they don’t matter this particular day, and I think that’s inhumane. I don’t think we can ever say that some group of people’s lives simply don’t matter because it’s inconvenient for us to talk about them at a particular moment.”

Underscoring the grotesque moral obtuseness from the convention stage was the joyful display of generations as the president praised and embraced his offspring. Joe Biden walked off stage holding the hand of his cute little grandson, a precious child no more precious than any one of the many thousands of children the president has helped Israel to kill.

Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of many books including War Made Easy. His latest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, was published in 2023 by The New Press.

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Indigenous people gathered in Brasilia during the Free Land Camp, which is held every April in the capital, demonstrate against the time frame law, with the National Congress building in the background. Credit: Gustavo Bezerra / IndiBSB

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 20 2024 (IPS)

A never-ending battle threatens the indigenous rights that seemed clear and secure in Brazil, until the extreme right emerged in 2018 with a force challenging the civilisational advances set out in the Constitution.

After three decades of progress in the demarcation of their territories and other victories, Brazil’s indigenous peoples have suffered setbacks since the administration of former president Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022). Now that the government is friendly to their demands, they face an insidious enemy: the time frame.

“I see no prospects for a favourable solution,” admits Mauricio Terena, a lawyer and coordinator of the legal department of the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (Apib), formed by the country’s seven main indigenous organisations.“The rights of the indigenous minority are the negotiable part within a larger negotiation to calm the alleged democratic crisis. But granting a snack to mitigate the crisis feeds the monster that the STF wants to devour”: Juliana Batista

“We are worried, our expectations are not good”, agreed Juliana Batista, a lawyer at the Instituto Socioambiental, an indigenous and environmental non-governmental organisation.

Both are referring to the conciliation process convened by the president of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), Gilmar Mendes, in search of an agreement on the indigenous lands, between the indigenous peoples themselves and the legislators who passed a law in the National Congress imposing a time frame.

This time frame, a rule limiting indigenous peoples’ rights only to the lands they had occupied up to 5 October 1988, the day the Constitution was enacted, is the weapon of a far-right offensive that has sown uncertainty and setbacks among indigenous peoples.

On 21 September 2023, the STF deemed this framework unconstitutional, after years in which this notion, embraced by some judges, prevented several demarcations. The Constitution assures indigenous people “original rights over the lands they have traditionally occupied”, which is the opposite of a date.

But Congress rebelled against this ruling and six days later passed a law setting the time frame and amendments that weaken indigenous autonomy and the protection of their territories.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva vetoed most of the measures, including the time frame. But three months later Congress overrode the veto, in an open challenge to the president, the STF and the Constitution.

The makeshift camp where indigenous Guarani-Kaiwoá people live in Douradina, a municipality in the central-western state of Mato Grosso do Sul, awaiting the final demarcation of their territory. In July and early August they were attacked by landowners’ gunmen, who wounded 10 people. Credit: Bruno Peres / Agência Brasil

The risks for indigenous peoples

“Conciliation has no sense on a thesis that the Supreme Court has already deemed unconstitutional. It looks like a move of self-preservation by the Supreme Court in its disputes with Congress,” Terena told IPS, referring to the worsening conflicts between the two branches of government that have been roiling Brazilian politics for the past five years.

The STF’s battles, previously more frequent with the executive branch due to Bolsonaro’s abuses of power and lies, including in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic, are now common with the legislative branch, where the extreme right has grown stronger, despite Bolsonaro being defeated in his 2022 bid for re-election.

Judge Mendes is reportedly trying to flexibilise the dispute, mainly with the “ruralistas”, the agribusiness caucus, the largest in Congress and upset by the STF ruling, which considers it hostile to rural property and a factor of legal uncertainty for the powerful rural sector.

To this end, it has set up a Conciliation Commission, a series of STF hearings when a matter under its consideration is particularly controversial and could become conflictive. In this case, it is made up of 24 members, mostly legislators and government representatives.

Apib has only six members and feels it has been left with a dramatic choice.

Terena belongs to this indigenous group that feels at a disadvantage and has threatened to withdraw from the negotiations at the first hearing, on 5 August, given the adverse rules for indigenous peoples dictated by Mendes, as rapporteur of the time frame processes in the STF.

The judge decided after that hearing to consult the indigenous communities before deciding. The second hearing will be on 28 August.

Indigenous people protest in front of the Supreme Federal Court in Brasilia on 3 March 2024 against the law that reinstated a time frame for the demarcation of indigenous peoples’ lands, which was deemed unconstitutional by the same court but remains in force, fuelling conflict. Credit: Rafa Neddermeyer / Agência Brasil

Contradictions weaken the Supreme Court’s role

Among the proposed rules, one states that if a party walks out from the negotiations these will not be interrupted. Another says that resolutions may be adopted by a majority vote. No conciliation is possible without one of the interested parties, nor is it imposed by a vote, Terena argued in his interview with IPS by telephone from Brasilia.

The decision must be delayed because there are many leaders to be heard and “many risks in withdrawing from or remaining in the commission,” said the member of the Terena people, one of the most numerous in Brazil, who live in the central-western state of Mato Grosso do Sul.

“I think the risks are greater in being present, because it would mean accepting these rules and legitimising a meaningless conciliation process,” the lawyer said.

Moreover, the indigenous people, the most affected party in this issue, are a minority in a commission that can vote on resolutions, Batista added.

The damage to indigenous rights is prolonged and accumulating.

The STF took two years to conclude the trial on the time frame and did not suspend the law’s validity, even though its main precept is unconstitutional according to the country’s highest court, the ISA lawyer pointed out.

“This contradiction weakens the authority of the STF. Mendes adopted a position that was more political than legal, so as not to confront the economic interests of a strong sector”, that of agribusiness, she also said by telephone from Brasilia.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva received in Brasilia on 10 August leaders of the Guaraní-Kaiwoá people, who live in territories that are too small or are fighting for the demarcation of their lands, sometimes under armed attack by large landowners. Credit: Ricardo Stuckert / PR

To the detriment of the minority

Batista warned that “the rights of the indigenous minority are the negotiable part, in a larger negotiation to calm the alleged democratic crisis. But granting a snack to mitigate the crisis feeds the monster that the STF wants to devour.”

Terena stressed that since it seems unfeasible to defend the constitutionality of the time frame, “the object of the negotiation” by the ruralists is the compensation to landowners for the land in their possession that they may lose when indigenous rights are restored, and the economic exploitation, be it mining, agricultural or other, of the demarcated territory.

So far, those occupying land recognised as indigenous are only entitled to compensation for the improvements and works they have contributed to the territory, where economic activities are restricted and subject to indigenous acceptance.

Anti-indigenous forces may also benefit by putting obstacles to the demarcation of reserves, to delay the process. Compensation for those with legitimate land titles, a measure already approved by the STF, could make many demarcations unfeasible for a government with severe fiscal constraints, Batista said.

“What happens to indigenous people who do not get the land they need and are entitled to? Forced assimilation by the surrounding society, but also many deaths, including in conflicts over land, suicides of those who are not assimilated,” he warned.

The intended conciliation should prioritise obtaining “land to compensate and resettle occupants of territories under demarcation”, and for the growing indigenous population, said Marcio Santilli, a founding partner of ISA, in an article published by the organisation.

Genocide

The indigenous population, estimated at three to eight million when the Portuguese arrived in Brazil in 1500, fell to 294,131 in the official 1991 census, which for the first time counted those who declared themselves indigenous. Previously they were considered to be mestizos.

Historical genocide flared up during the military dictatorship (1964-1985). But it was precisely during this period that resistance manifested itself in the reaffirmation of indigenous identity and the struggle for rights, recognised in the 1988 Constitution, at least in relation to their land.

Three decades of democracy and constitutional rights prompted a renaissance of indigenous peoples that was reflected in the 2022 census: a total of 1,693,535 declared themselves indigenous, 5.7 times the 1991 population.

The Constitution encouraged the demarcation of 451 indigenous territories, 84.6% of Brazil’s total, in the three decades following the military dictatorship, according to data from ISA, which accumulates an extensive database on indigenous peoples.

But that progress was interrupted during the Bolsonaro government, a representative of the same forces that backed the military. The current administration has resumed demarcations and other indigenist policies, but with the limitations imposed by the power of the far right in Congress and in agricultural and religious sectors.

President Lula promised to ratify the 14 indigenous lands that were already demarcated and ready for final approval at the start of his government in January 2023, but four have yet to be ratified. Brazil has 533 of these territories already formalised, while another 263 are in various stages of demarcation.

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