A List Of All 61 Journalists Killed In 2014

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Internationally, many journalists are killed all each year while gathering the news for us.

Two major organizations keep track of their deaths: the Committee To Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders. Both organizations have specific criteria governing the investigation and confirmation—as well as establishing motive—for each killing, including whether it occurred because of the journalistic activities of those killed. Both report their results annually.

In its annual report for 2014, the Committee to Protect Journalists, based in New York, identified 61 journalists whose deaths met their rigorous criteria. What follows is a brief summary, in chronological order, for each of those 61 journalists, with links to CPJ’s complete descriptions.

Attack Of The Land-grabbers: Land Grabs Beyond Africa

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Before going further, it is important to recognize that land grabs are not only happening in Africa and, while there is a “global rush to lock up African farmland” by state-owned companies and private investors, different investors have different motives. [21] One group of investors are Arab investors, who have the appeal “that Islam has made significant inroads in Africa, creating cultural and religious links” in their land grabs.

Within this group are Saudi investors, who began a push, thanks to the support of the royal Saudi government and its dictator King Abdullah II in 2008, to “acquire cropland abroad and grow food for export to the homeland.”

Some of these land grabs include the acquisition of land in Ethiopia, in 2009, to grow rice and in Sudan to grow wheat, corn, and soybeans for export to Saudi Arabia. [26] For the land grab in Ethiopia, every day a group of 1,000 locals pick, pack, and load “hundreds of tons of fresh production onto waiting trucks. After reaching the capital, Addis Ababa, the product is flown to a handful of Middle Eastern cities, entirely bypassing Ethiopia, one of the hungriest places on the planet” as Nancy MacDonald describes it.

Mining The Earth & Fracking The World: Where There’s Oil, You’re Bound To Find A Bush

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Selections from the world’s energy news including:

Peru: “A lush expanse of Amazon rainforest known as the [Madre de Dios or] “Mother of God” is steadily being destroyed in Peru, as mercury-filled tailing ponds from gold extraction grow. Sounds nightmarish with “tens of thousands of desperate fortune-hunters” operating “improvised mines” 24/7. 125,000 acres of rainforest destroyed by the illegal gold miners already, 30 – 40 tons of mercury dumped into rivers. 

Congo: “Loi Obama” or Obama’s Law requires US companies to ensure they don’t use “‘conflict minerals’—particularly gold, coltan, tin and tungsten … controlled by Congo’s murderous militias.” Disruption ensued as the government began a snail-paced effort to ensure the audits. Result: 11 of 900 mines in South Kivu certified so far. People unable to earn a living, increasingly miserable, thrown into the militias as a result of the well-intentioned Loi Obama.

USA: Did Walmart really pledge “to shift to 100 percent renewable energy … [and] to reduce its climate emissions as quickly as possible” almost 10 years ago? The Institute for Local Self-Reliance says so, but reports that, instead, “Walmart remains as deeply committed as ever to the dirtiest fuels, especially coal.” Only 3% of its US electricity consumption is from renewable energy sources.

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