AMY GOODMAN: How would you do that? How would you end capitalism?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] It’s changing economic policies, ending luxury, consumerism. It’s ending the struggle to—or this searching for living better. Living better is to exploit human beings. It’s plundering natural resources. It’s egoism and individualism. Therefore, in those promises of capitalism, there is no solidarity or complementarity. There’s no reciprocity. So that’s why we’re trying to think about other ways of living lives and living well, not living better. Not living better. Living better is always at someone else’s expense. Living better is at the expense of destroying the environment.
I forgot to link to Badael this week...
My editorial was titled "Globalized Carnivals" guess why? Ali Darwish also wrote about COP 15 and the poor, and Rameh Hamiyeh on Rashta, a winter recipe from the Bekaa...
"As a result, the food-security arm of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, a global alliance of agricultural experts, issued their report today that calls for an intensive effort to speed the implementation of dozens of agriculture-related technologies in developing countries, which are the most vulnerable to climate change.
"Agriculture is one of the areas that is most suitable for early action because there are certain agricultural practices that not only suck up carbon from the atmosphere and store it in the soil, but those same practices increase agricultural productivity and resilience," Ms. Mann said. "They're very crucial to food security and development."
Listed below is a sampling from the CGIAR wish list."
What I fail to understand is how is this list different from the priorities we set long time ago for sustainable agriculture...
"Britain has acted to increase pressure on Israel over its West Bank settlements by advising UK supermarkets on how to distinguish between foods from the settlements and Palestinian-manufactured goods.
The government's move falls short of a legal requirement but is bound to increase the prospects of a consumer boycott of products from those territories. Israeli officials and settler leaders were tonight highly critical of the decision." (Thanks Marcy)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/10/guidance-labelling-food-israeli-settlements
http://www.outlookindia.com/
"At a time when opportunism is everything, when hope seems lost, when everything boils down to a cynical business deal, we must find the courage to dream. To reclaim romance. The romance of believing in justice, in freedom and in dignity. For everybody. We have to make common cause, and to do this we need to understand how this big old machine works — who it works for and who it works against. Who pays, who profits.
Many non-violent resistance movements fighting isolated, single-issue battles across the country have realised that their kind of special interest politics which had its time and place, is no longer enough. That they feel cornered and ineffectual is not good enough reason to abandon non-violent resistance as a strategy. It is however, good enough reason to do some serious introspection. We need vision. We need to make sure that those of us who say we want to reclaim democracy are egalitarian and democratic in our own methods of functioning. If our struggle is to be an idealistic one, we cannot really make caveats for the internal injustices that we perpetrate on one another, on women, on children. For example, those fighting communalism cannot turn a blind eye to economic injustices. Those fighting dams or development projects cannot elide issues of communalism or caste politics in their spheres of influence — even at the cost of short-term success in their immediate campaign. If opportunism and expediency come at the cost of our beliefs, then there is nothing to separate us from mainstream politicians. If it is justice that we want, it must be justice and equal rights for all — not only for special interest groups with special interest prejudices. That is non-negotiable.
We have allowed non-violent resistance to atrophy into feel-good political theatre, which at its most successful is a photo opportunity for the media, and at its least successful, simply ignored.
We need to look up and urgently discuss strategies of resistance, wage real battles and inflict real damage. We must remember that the Dandi March was not just fine political theatre. It was a strike at the economic underpinning of the British Empire.
We need to re-define the meaning of politics. The `Ngo'isation of civil society initiatives is taking us in exactly the opposite direction. It's de-politicising us. Making us dependant on aid and hand-outs. We need to re-imagine the meaning of civil disobedience. "
(Thanks Marcy)
"Yet Mr Assad’s regime has not only endured but thrived, along with Syria’s economy. Its GDP, its foreign trade and the value of loans to its private sector have all nearly doubled in the past four years, as reforms have tapped suppressed entrepreneurial vigour. For decades Damascus looked as dour as Bucharest under communist rule. Now it pulses with life. New cars throng its streets. Fancy boutique hotels, bars and fully booked restaurants pack its rapidly gentrifying older quarters, while middle-class suburbs, replete with shopping malls and fast-food outlets, spread into the surrounding hills.
The revenue of Damascus’s swankiest hotel, the Four Seasons, is said to have doubled between 2006 and 2008. Bank Audi Syria, one of several Lebanese banks prospering there, made a profit within six months of launching in 2005. It now boasts $1.6 billion in deposits, and recently led Syria’s first-ever private syndication to finance a cement plant, a joint venture between France’s Lafarge and local businessmen costing $680m. In March Syria relaunched its stock exchange, moribund since the 1960s and still tiny. But with new rules allowing foreign ownership of equity, investors are showing keen interest."
http://www.economist.com/world/middleeast-africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14984967
via http://joshualandis.com/blog/?p=4590
I will be looking closely at the impacts of liberalization on local food systems and food security. Initial observations appear to show that the drastic decline in food security in Syria, especially that of the poorer classes, is linked with the latest liberalization trends.
"The best thing for us, India, is we are not a beef-eating nation.
The United States, the world's largest emitter along with China, is also the world's greatest beef-eating nation and consumes 25 per cent more than Europe.
"Breast milk, long revered for the nutritional advantages it gives a newborn, could be just as vital in terms of infant development, a leading scientist will claim this week. Up to three different types of stem cells have been discovered in breast milk, according to revolutionary new research.
Dr Mark Cregan, medical director at the Swiss healthcare and baby equipment company Medela, believes the existence of stem cells means breast milk could help a child "fulfil its genetic destiny", with a mother's mammary glands taking over from her placenta to guide infant development once her child is born." (Thanks Laila)
Watch the trailer of the movie here
I thought I knew what strength was before I came to Palestine. Really. I thought that if you could take a blow and not flinch, you were strong; that if you could risk your life in order to save what you loved the most, you were strong. That strength is about fighting for what you believe in."The Obama administration is currently undertaking at least two fundamental reviews of international development policy, one from a national security prespective, the other led by the State Department, of which USAID is a part. There had been rumours that, having originally talked about turning USAID into a stand alone division of government separate from the diplomatic wing of foreign policy, much like Britain’s Department for International Development, Team Obama was leaning towards scrapping USAID altogether. Shah’s nomination lays that idea to rest, and now he will be looked to for big ideas on how to improve the effectiveness of international aid.
USAID’s record is under attack from all sides, from those such as Bill Easterly and Dambisa Moyo, who have argued powerfully that aid harms the world’s poorest countries by breeding corruption and dependency, to the likes of Senator John Kerry, who want aid to play a bigger role in winning the “battle of hearts and minds” in places where America’s enemies currently flourish. Shah’s task will be to develop an aid policy that works on both fronts." (Thanks D.)
"Oglio, a third generation farmer eschews modern farming techniques -- chemicals, fertilizers, heavy machinery -- in favor of a purely natural approach. It is not just ecological, he says, but profitable, and he believes his system can be replicated in starving regions of the globe.
Nearly 5,000 miles away, in laboratories in St. Louis, Missouri, hundreds of scientists at the world's biggest seed company, Monsanto, also want to feed the world, only their tools of choice are laser beams and petri dishes.
Monsanto, a leader in agricultural biotechnology, spends about $2 million a day on scientific research that aims to improve on Mother Nature, and is positioning itself as a key player in the fight against hunger.
The Italian farmer and the U.S. multinational represent the two extremes in an increasingly acrimonious debate over the future of food." (Thanks Anna)
"The event, being organised by the Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC), has been described as 'the biggest civil society movement on climate change in history,' by the UN.
Faith communities own between 7-8 per cent of the habitable land surface of the planet, run (or are involved in) half the world's schools and control more than 7 per cent of international financial investments." (Thanks Laila)
أكد وزير الزراعة السعودي فهد بالغنيم أمس ان الأراضي المتاحة للاستثمار الزراعي في الوقت الحالي كافية ولا داعي لأن توزع الدولة أراضي زراعية جديدة. وأوضح: «يجب ان تكون لدينا عقلانية في استخدام مصادر المياه، خصوصاً أننا نسعى إلى زراعة مستدامة، لا زراعة تنهار بعد سنوات قليلة».
وأضاف في لقاء صحافي عقب مشاركته في ورشة عمل بعنوان «الاستخدام الآمن للمبيدات» نظمتها «غرفة الرياض»: «ان الحيازات الزراعية الموجودة، سواء المملوكة بحجج أو مبنية على قرارات توزيع، تبلغ نحو أربعة ملايين هكتار، أما المستغل منها فيساوي فقط مليون هكتار، لذلك لا داعي الآن لأن توزع الدولة أراضي مجانية».
ولفت بالغنيم إلى ان العمل جار على تكوين مجلس إدارة لشركة الاستثمار الزراعي الخارجي التي تأسست أخيراً بقرار من مجلس الوزراء. وأعرب عن «فخر شديد» بالمستثمرين الزراعيين في الخارج.
وعن قمة الغذاء لـ «منظمة الأغذية والزراعة» (فاو) التي ستُعقد بين 16 و18 تشرين الثاني (نوفمبر) بمشاركة السعودية، أشار إلى ان خادم الحرمين الشريفين الملك عبدالله بن عبدالعزيز لن يتمكن من الحضور شخصياً. وقال: «ستناقش القمة موضوع الفقر والجوع في ظل تقارير عن بلوغ عدد الجياع بليون شخص عام 2015، والهدف الذي وُضع عام 1996 في مؤتمر الغذاء الأول في روما أيضاً، قرر خفض هذا الرقم إلى النصف بحلول عام 2015، وثمة توجه الآن لتمديد المدة من عام 2015 إلى عام 2025».
وشدد على حرص المملكة على الإنتاج الغذائي «لكن امكاناتنا المائية في الداخل لا تساعدنا أبداً» على زيادة الإنتاج الزراعي، لذلك أطلق خادم الحرمين «مبادرة الملك عبدالله للاستثمار الزراعي في الخارج» لزيادة الإنتاج الزراعي، «واستجاب لها عدد كبير من المستثمرين السعوديين، وبدأ الاستثمار في الدول التي تضم موارد جيدة من المياه والتربة واليد العاملة والمدخلات الرئيسة، ونتمنى ان تزداد كمية الإنتاج الزراعي في العالم، وهي النتيجة النهائية المطلوبة لإتاحة كمية أكبر من الغذاء».
وعن العقوبات التي تُفرض على شركات الدواجن قال بالغنيم: «نحن مستمرون في فرض عقوبات على شركات الدواجن المخالفة للقواعد، ما سيحسن مستوى مزارع الدواجن، ومن هذه المخالفات رمي المخلفات في الخارج، وعدم تطبيق تدابير وقائية».
وحول التنسيق بين وزارتي الزراعة والشؤون البلدية والقروية حول تجارة المبيدات، قال: «هناك تنسيق دائم بينهما حول هذا الموضوع، وهناك لجنة أنهت اجتماعتها بين الطرفين لتنسيق العمل لئلا تحصل ازدواجية بين الجانبين». وشدد على أهمية الدور الذي تقوم به الجهات المختصة في وزارة الزراعة في مراقبة الاتجار المحلي بالمبيدات، مؤكداً ان حملات منتظمة على محال بيع المبيدات أسهمت في ضبط عدد من الأصناف غير المسجلة، ما أدى إلى تطبيق العقوبات المنصوص عليها بحق أصحاب تلك المحال وتضمنت فرض غرامات مالية
"A recent report by the American Security Project, an advisory group of high-powered Republicans and Democrats, called global warming "not simply about saving polar bears or preserving beautiful mountain glaciers ... (but) a threat to our security." The group has on its board Republicans such as former Sen. Warren Rudman as well as Democrats including Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the chief author of the Senate climate bill.
Across the globe there exist conflicts and security challenges including ethnic conflicts and emerging radicalism and often "these are also the parts of the world where we will see the most severe consequences from climate change," Bernard Finel, a co-author of the American Security Project report, said in an interview. " The intelligence community, CIA, (military) commanders, they're all looking at these issues.""
"The discovery that most of the 130,000 people to whom the organisation provided food vouchers had mobile phones gave officials the idea for the pilot scheme, to be targeted at 1,000 families in the first instance.
Families will be sent voucher numbers every two months by text message, one for each member of the family. The voucher, worth $22 (£14), can then be redeemed at any branch of a local government-owned food outlet in the two suburbs where Iraqi refugees have concentrated, Jaramana and Sayeda Zeinab."
"In a report, the human rights group says Israeli water restrictions discriminate against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
It says that in Gaza, Israel's blockade has pushed the already ailing water and sewage system to "crisis point".
Israel says the report is flawed and the Palestinians get more water than was agreed under the 1990s peace deal." (Thanks Laila)
"Hundreds of farmers demonstrated along the Arava Highway on Sunday in protest of cuts to their allotment of foreign workers.
Several protesters drove their agricultural vehicles slowly down the highway to disrupt traffic." (Thanks Marcy, and for the title too!)
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