American investigator exposing obama criminal ivory trade syndicates stabbed to death in neck in shocking mystery

[Jack Fake]

An American investigator trying to shed light on the notorious
underground ivory trade threatening elephants and rhinos with
extinction worldwide was found stabbed to death in his home in
Kenya.

A family member went to Esmond Bradley Martin's house Sunday to
check on him after he did not respond to phone calls and found
the body on a bed with a stab wound to the neck, Nicolas
Kamwende, head of criminal investigations in Nairobi, said
Monday.

Martin, a former U.N. special envoy for rhino conservation, had
recently returned from a research trip to Burma and was in the
process of writing up his findings, the BBC reported.

The 75-year-old was known for his undercover work investigating
the ivory trade, and had risked his life to document illegal
sales in far-flung corners of the globe. Martin would pose as a
buyer and obtain details of black market prices, the BBC
reported.


Nic Hailey
@HCNicHailey
Shocked and very sad to hear of the death of Esmond Bradley
Martin. A passionate and committed man who made a big difference
to our planet. May he rest in peace.

1:51 AM - Feb 5, 2018
15 15 Replies 47 47 Retweets 113 113 likes

Conservationist Paula Kahumbu told the Associated Press that
Martin was at the forefront of exposing ivory traffickers in the
U.S., Congo, Vietnam, Nigeria, Angola, China and recently Burma.

Police are investigating Martin’s death as a botched robbery,
according to the BBC, which said he first went to Kenya in the
1970s during a surge in elephant killings.

"A passionate and committed man who made a big difference to our
planet. May he rest in peace," British High Commissioner to
Kenya Nic Hailey said in a Twitter post.

"Esmond was a true giant of conservation and a champion for
African elephants and rhinos," U.S. Ambassador to Kenya Robert
Godec said in a statement. "His extraordinary research had a
profound impact and advanced efforts to combat illegal wildlife
trafficking across the planet."

Conservation group Save the Elephants described Martin as "a
longtime ally," a passionate champion of wildlife and meticulous
researcher.

Illicit demand for elephant ivory has led to devastating losses
from illegal poaching as the natural habitat available for the
animals to roam has also dwindled by more than half, according
to the Associated Press. As a result, the number of African
elephants has shrunk from about 5 million a century ago to about
400,000 today. And that number continues to decline each year.

The tusks fetch huge sums of money in black markets.

In January, Thai authorities seized 326 pounds of African
elephant ivory, including three large tusks worth around
$469,800 from a Bangkok airport, the Associated Press reported.

Less than 30,000 rhinos also are estimated to remain in the wild
due to poaching.

The price of rhino horn skyrocketed as demand has grown in Asian
countries, mainly China and Vietnam, where consumers believe
that the horn made of the same substance as fingernails has
powerful healing properties. The price was believed to be at its
highest in 2012, when it was worth around $65,000 per kilogram
(2.2 pounds), The Guardian reported.

In an interview with National Public Radio in 2007, Martin said
his greatest contribution academically to conservationism would
be to show that except for one small area in India, rhino horn
has never been used by Asians for sexual purposes.

Martin Mulama, a rhino expert with the WWF conservation group
and former Kenyan government official who worked with Martin,
said the American did the legwork to prove rumors about the
illegal wildlife trade, thereby encouraging officials to take
action.

"He tried to unearth some of these difficult things," Mulama
said. "He would actually come with evidence to show that this is
actually happening."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/02/05/us-investigator-into-
ivory-rhino-horn-trade-killed-in-kenya.html

[d***@agent.com]

Post by Jack Fake
An American investigator trying to shed light on the notorious
underground ivory trade threatening elephants and rhinos with
extinction worldwide was found stabbed to death in his home in
Kenya. [...]

Why won’t the UN tell us what really reduces poverty?
By Chelsea Follett, Oct 27, 2017, humanprogress.org

Earlier this month, the United Nations urged the world to celebrate
the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, advertising it
on social media using the hashtag #EndPoverty. The UN noted the
incredible progress on the issue:

Poverty has declined globally, from 1.7 billion people in 1999 to 767
million in 2013, a drop in the global poverty rate from 28 percent in
1999 to 11 per cent in 2013. The most significant progress was seen in
Eastern and South-Eastern Asia, where the rate declined from 35 per
cent in 1999 to 3 per cent in 2013.

Unfortunately, the UN seems to misunderstand the source of that
progress. It argues that government action and top-down technocrat-led
programs are to thank for poverty’s remarkable decline. The UN
statement continues:

Countries have taken action to end poverty… The Government of
Tanzania, for example, started a massive overhaul of its current
national programme, the Tanzania Productive Social Safety Nets, to
reach people living below the food poverty line.

It is an accidentally instructive example. Tanzania has made
impressive progress against poverty, but that is not because of
increased government spending on food for the poor. In fact,
Tanzania’s government is today far less redistributionist than in the
past — and those past policies of redistribution led to
near-starvation for the poorest Tanzanians.

In 2011, the most recent year for which the World Bank has data, just
under half of Tanzanians lived in extreme poverty. That figure was 86
per cent in 2000.

The real cause of that reduction is pretty straightforward: economic
freedom. Tanzania has gradually dismantled the socialist or “ujamaa”
economic policies enacted by the dictator Julius Nyerere, since he
stepped down in 1985. Nyerere was widely praised by leftist
intellectuals in developed countries for his sincere belief in
socialism, relatively low level of corruption, and not intentionally
slaughtering his own people like so many other dictators.

But Nyerere instituted policies that, according to Dr. John Shao,
resulted in intense food shortages, a collapse of agricultural and
industrial production, deteriorating transportation infrastructure,
economic crisis and “general distress of the population” by the 1980s.
Nyerere also banned opposing political parties to consolidate his
authority and prevent debate about his ruinous policies.

Post-Nyerere, Tanzania managed to speed up its economic growth rate by
removing price controls, liberalizing trade, and freeing its people to
engage in private enterprise.

The UN’s attribution of progress to government programs, and its
insistence on the importance of foreign aid to development, is as
worrying as it is unsurprising.

Nyerere was able to hold onto power for so long despite his disastrous
programs thanks to billions of dollars of aid money. As my colleague
Doug Bandow put it, “The World Bank, demonstrating that it lacked both
a conscience and common sense, directly underwrote his brutal ujamaa
scheme.”

Not only is government aid ineffective compared to market-led
development, but aid programs often ignore the property rights of the
poor and the need for institutional reform. Other examples of
dictators who received aid money include Idi Amin of Uganda, Mengistu
Haile Mariam of Ethiopia, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire (now the
Democratic Republic of the Congo) and even the infamously brutal Pol
Pot of Cambodia.

The money often props up authoritarian regimes while they pursue
destructive policies such as stealing their citizens’ farmland through
nationalization. That was the case in Tanzania, which received
billions of dollars in foreign aid while its socialist government
nationalized hundreds of farms — slashing agricultural production and
leading to the aforementioned massive food shortages. The store
shelves were empty, and people waited for rations of food.

“When I first came to Tanzania in the 1980s, we used to have whole
wards of kids very debilitated with malnutrition, some too far gone to
survive,” recalls an aid worker for the World Food Programme, the
food-assistance branch of the United Nations, “now there will only be
up to one or two at any time, and we would usually find a social
cause, such as an alcoholic father, or being orphaned, or inheriting
HIV.” The page containing that quote goes on to claim that the U.N.
food programme “made a difference”, but the reason far fewer children
resort to using the food programme today compared to the 1980s is
conspicuously absent.

Reducing trade barriers is far more effective at improving the quality
of life for those in poor areas of the world than sending aid or
technocrats to help design government programs. To get serious about
eradicating poverty, countries should pursue policies of economic
freedom. Because, ultimately, countries don’t fight poverty.
Individuals free of excessive regulations and able to participate in
global trade do.

http://humanprogress.org/blog/why-wont-the-un-tell-us-what-really-reduces-poverty