Meat

So you only eat free-range eggs, and spend the extra on organic sausages. But what's life really like for the animals that end up on your plate? And how can you be sure that the meat in your shopping bag is cruelty-free? Rob Sharp investigates.

Very interesting article on animal welfare. From the Independent's excellent Food and Drinks section.

I like this short "History of Syria".

Biofueling the US elections

"Biofuels are commercially questionable, do not materially advance energy independence, and may not even help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Naturally, Congress wants to mandate them. Why? Well, Iowa caucus voters win; Archer Daniels Midland wins; and special interest contributors to political campaigns win. Bioethanol is just a subsidy boondoggle masquerading as a solution to America's energy problems. But it does help get some politicians elected." (Thanks D.)

Sunday's poem is here, thanks to Karin.

Fast food syria

From Syria, a good article on the changes in food habits and the invasion of fast food, and its relationship with the self image of the youth. Includes a summary of a recent New Scientist article on obesity in Britain. From Al-Hayat.

Hanging the gardens

"Iraq Gets American Seeds of Democracy

Democracy for Iraq meant erasing the "cradle of civilization" for unfettered free market capitalism. Iraq was conquered for its oil but also to make the country a giant free trade paradise. The scheme was diabolical, elaborate and ugly - blitzkrieg "shock and awe," elaborate PsyOps, fear as a weapon, repressive occupation, mass detention and torture, and the fastest, most sweeping country remake in history. It happened in weeks, Iraq no longer exists, the country is a wasteland, its people are devastated, and a blank slate was created for unrestrained corporate pillage on a near- unimaginable scale.

Part of the scheme was for GMO agribusiness giants to have free reign over that part of the economy - to radically transform Iraq's food production system into a model for GMO seeds and plants. One hundred swiftly implemented Bremer laws mandated it, but Iraqis had no say about them as the country is now governed out of Washington and its branch office inside the heavily-fortified Green Zone in the largest US embassy in the world by far.

Bremer laws imposed the harshest ever Chicago School-style "shock therapy" of the kind that devastated countries around the world since first introduced in Chile under Pinochet in 1973. The formula was familiar - mass firings of state employees in the hundreds of thousands; unrestricted imports with no tariffs, duties, inspections or taxes; deregulation; and the largest state liquidation sale and privatization plan since the Soviet Union collapsed.

Corporate taxes were lowered as well from 40% to a flat 15%, and foreign investors could own 100% of Iraqi assets other than oil. They could also repatriate all their profits, had no obligation to reinvest in the country and wouldn't be taxed. They were further given 40 year leases, and the only Saddam era laws remaining were those restricting trade unions and collective bargaining. Foreign transnationals, mainly US ones, swooped in and devoured everything. Iraqis couldn't compete, and the occupation laws assured it.

Consider Bremer Order 81. It covered patents, their duration and stated: "Farmers shall be prohibited from re-using seeds of protected varieties or any variety" the edict covered. It gave plant varieties patent holders absolute rights over farmers' using their seeds for 20 years. They'd be genetically engineered, owned by transnationals, and Iraqi farmers using them had to sign an agreement stipulating they'll pay a "technology fee" as well as an annual license fee.

Plant Variety Protection (PVP) was the core of this order. It made seed saving and reuse illegal. Even using "similar" seeds could result in severe fines and imprisonment. GMO seeds got protection to displace 10,000 years of developed plant varieties being sacrificed.

Iraq's fertile valley between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers is ideal for crop planting. Since 8000 BC, farmers used it to develop "rich seeds of almost every variety of wheat used in the world today." They were erased through a GMO modernization and industrialization scheme so agribusiness can get a foothold in the region and supply the world market. While Iraqis suffer and starve, GMO giants run the country's agriculture for export. Iraqi farmers are now agribusiness serfs and are forced to grow products foreign to the native diet like wheat designed for pasta.

Bremer laws mandated it and are inviolable under Article 26 of the US-drafted constitution. It states that the Iraqi government is powerless to change laws a foreign occupier made. To assure it, US-sympathizers are in every ministry with those most trusted in key ones. Engdahl sums up the damage to agriculture: "The forced transformation of Iraq's food production into patented GMO crops is one of the clearest examples of (how) Monsanto and other GMO giants are forcing (these) crops onto an unwilling or unknowing world population." They're infesting the planet with them one country at a time so it's futile trying to undo the damage they cause." (Thanks A.)

The third installment of: Reviewing F. William Engdahl's Seeds of Destruction - Part III. Stephen Lendman. The people's voice.

Food prices index

Assafir has started a monthly food prices index. About time somebody did that. Government, what government? As long as HE the high commissioner does not tell them to compile a price index, they won't do it. Why should they? It might expose speculators, so tightly connected to the political class.

Lebanon news

From Al-Akhbar's excellent economic page, a New Year's bundle: Abdel Halim Fadlallah's article on Growth without welfare, on how the 4 folds economic growth of the world between 1975 and 2007 was matched by a 4 folds increase in unemployment; and how the increase in growth has also been met with a decrease in human welfare. Another article on the unending wheat subsidies saga: the flour mills cartel is holding the government hostage and demanding more subsidies, which implies that the price of bread may suddenly increase by 25%. We also learn that the Lebanese government is asking the World Bank to take charge of the social security fund: great move, the Bank being known for its transparent, human and pro-poor methods.

On a different note, H5N1, the avian flu virus has been found in birds in Haifa, a few km south of the Lebanese border with occupied Palestine. The Lebanese ministry of agriculture has reacted by asking the ministry of finances for a budget of $350,000 to establish a surveillance system in South Lebanon. Lets see when it gets it.

Friends of who?

That's why I dislike some "environmentalists". They are single issue campaigners and claim to be "objective" and "non-political", and that the protection of the environment comes before social justice and the elimination of oppression. Look at this site, Friends of the Earth Middle East. Look their publications on water and see how they deal with the Jordanians, the Palestinians and the Israelis as if they were equal in their policy making power. They are not, FoEME, Israel is the oppressor, and the Palestinians are the victim. No matter how many token Palestinians you get into your silly meetings and your even sillier publications, Israel will still be the oppressor and the Palestinians the victims.

Look at how they have a page called: Israel and Hezbollah War (with no links there, one wonders). Let me set the record straight: it was Israel's war of destruction on Lebanon, encouraged (and planned) by the US and the Global North. The Lebanese Resistance led by Hizbullah gave them a thrashing, but you don't see us bragging about it, do you? (well maybe only a little).

And look how panicky they are about "sharing water". Israel, sharing anything? That would be the day. Look at a couple of posts below in this blog to see how much Israel likes "sharing" water. Israel's plan for sharing water in the Middle East is probably something like that: "Either you give us your water nicely (and we want it cleaned first), or we'll take it by force."

Oh and what I like most: They are the Middle East chapter of Friends of the Earth. So that's the Middle East: the countries that made peace with Israel. Who's the President of FoE? GW?

Donkey

"They may be a rare sight in Britain, but in Israel and the Palestinian Territories working donkeys are still an essential part of daily life. Lucy Fensom, a former British Airways hostess, has dedicated her life to helping these beasts of burden. She has set up Safe Haven for Donkeys in the Holy Land (SHADH), a British-registered charity and the only organisation that cares for working and abandoned donkeys in the area."

Well she's from the country where the queen knows her priorities: There is a Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and just a National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Would they send a donkey to Eton?

Badael-Alternatives

The first issue of 2008. My editorial: Neither government nor opposition are concerned with social justice in Lebanon. Jad Shaaban's article on inequality in lebanon, Ali Darwish's article on the ever elusive MDGs, Rana Hayek on eating antibiotic-stuffed turkey, and a new section: Mawasem, to live by the rhythm of the seasons.

Pire pressure

"The prestigious journal Nature agreed to publish Chapela's findings, Monasterio wanted them quashed, but Chapela refused to comply. As a result, he was intimidated not to do it and threatened with being held responsible for all damages to Mexican agriculture and its economy.

He went ahead, nonetheless, and when his article appeared in the publication on November 29, 2001 the smear campaign against him began and intensified. It was later learned that Monsanto was behind it, and the Washington-based Bivings Group PR firm was hired to discredit his findings and get them retracted." (Thanks A.)

To mark Jose Bove's hunger strike against GMOs in France

This is Palestinian land-2

"Idhna, Southern West Bank, 19 Dec. (AKI) - Source IRIN - "The best thing about Khirbet Qassa was the grazing land. We had open spaces. Now we've become dependent on other people and their land," said Abdel Halim Nattah, a shepherd in the southern West Bank.

Several weeks earlier he and all his fellow villagers, 37 families numbering 272 people, were evacuated by the Israeli military from Qassa and told to find a new home somewhere else.

The Israel Civil Administration said the land the Palestinians were living on was an archeological site under state auspices, and the villagers had been given warnings about the impending evacuation.

"They came at 7:30 in the morning," one villager told IRIN. "We sent away the women, children and sheep. An old man pleaded with the soldiers saying 'we will move ourselves'. They gave us until the next afternoon, and said anyone remaining would be arrested and anything left confiscated."

When the villagers told the soldiers they had nowhere to go, the response was: "That's not our problem. This is state land.""

The land is Palestine

Seven Bedouin flock owners in the Negev who are having trouble making a living have formed a cooperative. "Somebody in the Bedouin Administration once told me that agriculture is for Jews, not for Arabs," said Farhan Shlibi, who is in his 40s. "They don't let us make a living in agriculture and raise flocks. But our goal is to get together and fight this."

From Haaretz. Read it to get a taste of Israeli democracy. And remember that the Bedouins are more integrated in Israel than the other Palestinians. They serve in the army and especially in the frontier guards which is in charge of oppressing other Arabs. Divide and rule, fan internal conflict.

Kenya

"Plant protection experts have stepped up the fight against desert locusts that have, for the first time in 45 years, invaded parts of northern Kenya." As if civil strife wasn't enough.

Concerned

"Israel has reason to be especially concerned by the increase of greenhouse gases - which initiate a chain of events that lead to global warming and rising sea levels - according to a report released by the Friends of the Earth Middle East (FOEME) at the Bali conference.

The report found that rising sea levels could have severe environmental, economic and political implications for the already-parched Middle East.

Climate change could act as a "threat multiplier," exacerbating water scarcity and tensions over water between nations linked by hydrological resources, geography and shared borders - particularly in Jordan, Gaza and Egypt.

"Poor and vulnerable populations, which exist in significant numbers throughout the region, will likely face the greatest risk," said the report. Rising sea levels would also contaminate the drinking water of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, and displace two to four million Egyptians by 2050, the report said."

From the Jerusalem Post. How about they stop killing Palestinians if they're so concerned? Or just let food into Gaza?

Generous occupier

"“This, of course, included the 1,000 or so acres on which we had been farming for decades,” Bernstein said. “This could be returned to the Jordanians for peace. And, we at Yahel, and the other villages along the border with Jordan, were willing to give back every inch of land, every pomelo, every date, everything that we had been growing in exchange for the most important gift we could give our children – and that’s peace with out Arab neighbors."

See for yourself, this typo (?) is not mine. Who said Freud was wrong? But read the rest of the article: The guy admits they appropriated the land, but is his infinite generosity, he is now willing to give it back to Jordan in exchange for peace.

Palestine is the land of the Palestinians and only they can decide what to do with it.

Christmas oysters

Another ludicrous idea for Lebanese agriculture: the cultivation of oyster mushrooms as a replacement crop for "traditional" crops. Unbelievable. No one, but no one, in Lebanon eats oyster mushrooms. What are they trying to do? Grow oyster mushrooms as an export commodity? They've been trying to promote this project since 2000, and they made their first local sales in November 2007. Great success.

On the impossibility of democracy

Asa'ad Abu Khalil (Angry Arab) veeery long article in Al-Akhbar: on the impossibility of democracy. i don't usually post Asa'ad's articles, because they rarely address development of food and farming issues, but this one is exceptionally good, and it has a good section on the selective use of democracy and on the blackmailing of governments by aid donors.

More controversy

"For years, many scientists have been making dire predictions of widespread irreversible ‘desertification’ in the African Sahel. But recent findings have proven them wrong.

Satellite images consistently show an increase in ‘greenness’ since the 1980s over large areas, confirming evidence on the ground indicating that the Sahel has recovered from the great droughts of the 1980s, and that human factors have played a large role in reclaiming the desert.

Although variable rainfall and droughts are seen as normal in arid and semiarid climates, the droughts that struck the Sahel in the late 1960s through to the 1980s were unprecedented in length and severity. Land degradation and famine during the droughts, exacerbated by political instability and unrest, prompted the UN to hold a conference on desertification in 1977. This initiated a debate, still ongoing, on the causes and effects of drought, land degradation and desertification." (...and Rania is back, with thanks!)

I don't know how many of you have been following the very interesting blog comments exchange in the "Senate Skeptics" post, and if you haven't, take a look, believe me, it is worth it. Here's another controversial issue: is the UNCCD all wrong?