Bruce Rastetter -- CEO of Pharos Ag, which has bought more than 300,000 hectares in Tanzania for large-scale food crop, beef, poultry, and biofuel production. This project will displace tens of thousands of civil war refugees awaiting Tanzanian citizenship.
Leonard Henry Thatcher and David Neiman -- who runs Nile Trading and Development (NTD), which has bought 600,000 hectares in South Sudan through a secret agreement with influential locals who went behind the backs of other community members.
Kevin Godlington -- (close associate of former prime minister Tony Blair), CEO of Crad-l and Director of Sierra Leone Agriculture (SLA) and its parent company, the UK-based CAPARO Renewable Agriculture Developments. SLA has bought 43,000 hectares in Sierra Leone to plant palm oil plantations.
The CFTC Refuses to Implement the Financial Reform Act
For me the biggest scandal (which the US media has also spiked) is the refusal of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to implement rules preventing speculation in oil and food futures that were part of the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act passed last July. As of May 27, the CFTC (under fierce pressure from Wall Street lobbyists) had yet to implement rules the Financial Reform Act required them to implement by January 17, 2011. See http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/05/27/sanders-accuses-cftc-of-breaking-the-law/
This flagrant disregard of Congressional authority is yet another example of the breakdown of democratic government in the US. It's Obama's role, as the executive branch of government, to enact the laws enacted by Congress. For him refuse to do so represents a major Constitutional crisis and is grounds for impeachment.
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