Month: June 2009

Occupied East Jerusalem, June 15, 2009- Mordechai Vanunu and I, first crossed paths on the first day of summer in 2005, which was five days before my return to the USA from my first 16 Days in Israel Palestine .

On my last evening of my seventh trip to occupied east Jerusalem, Vanunu and I had a drink at the American Colony. Vanunu had a Taybeh beer, which is produced in the last remaining self-sufficient and last remaining Christian village in the entire West Bank.

I ordered a Vodka tonic and Vanunu warned me, that I should never have more than one shot a day. I replied, it was only my first and I had my last in the taxi on my way to Ben Gurion Airport. I knew it would be hours before I cleared SECURITY and the game we played had gotten tiresome for me- and I imagine it a death unto them who make a paycheck for interrogating those who are Telling the Truth at Ben Gurion…

For the first eight days of my ten day trip, I was embedded with CODE PINK activist’s, but missed their June 14th demonstration during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at Tel Aviv University against Israel’s invasion of Gaza, illegal settlements and the apartheid wall.

“Heavy handed police treatment of the CODEPINK: Women for Peace delegation began immediately after members of the group unfurled several pink banners that read “Free Gaza” and “End the Occupation.” CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin and New York activist Zool Zulkowitz were physically dragged across the street…A French journalist who was a member of the CODEPINK delegation, was arrested as she crossed a small street in an attempt to take photos of the demonstration…Israeli police and military violently shoved the group back into a wall. Delegation member Tighe Barry from Santa Monica, California was struck in the face with the butt of a military rifle and pushed to the ground…he was treated for a concussion, an injured neck and an asthma attack.

Wearewideawake for more
via
Countercurrents

By Will Pavia

Left: (Timothy Allen/eyevine) Alexandra Shulman accuses designers of making magazines hire models with ‘jutting bones and no breasts or hips’

The editor of Vogue has accused some of the world’s leading catwalk designers of pushing ever thinner models into fashion magazines despite widespread public concern over “size-zero” models and rising teenage anorexia.

Alexandra Shulman, one of the most important figures in the multi-billion-pound fashion industry, has taken on all the largest fashion houses in a strongly worded letter sent to scores of designers in Europe and America. In a letter not intended for publication but seen by The Times, Shulman accuses designers of making magazines hire models with “jutting bones and no breasts or hips” by supplying them with “minuscule” garments for their photoshoots. Vogue is now frequently “retouching” photographs to make models look larger, she said.

Her intervention was hailed last night as a turning point in the debate over model size that has raged after the deaths of three models from complications relating to malnutrition, and the decision of leading fashion shows to ban size-zero models.

Times on line for more

Written by Frank Joseph Smecker

“Of all our natural resources water has become the most precious. By far the greater part of the earth’s surface is covered by its enveloping seas, yet in the midst of this plenty we are in want. By a strange paradox, most of the earth’s abundant water is not usable for agriculture, industry, or human consumption because of its heavy load of sea salts, and so most of the world’s population is either experiencing or is threatened with critical shortages.” – Rachel Carson

Water Rights Protest, Phillipines
Around the world, scarcity of potable water is becoming a portentous matter. Admonishing phrases like “water is the next oil,” and “wells are running dry” have percolated their way into the collective lexicon of global issues. Rivers and streams are vanishing, and the desiccation and depletion of entire watersheds and aquifers is increasing the world over. When seeking a reason for the withering away of drinkable water and the silencing of gushing streams, it becomes obvious that there is not one sole factor contributing to this dire situation, but many. Global warming and climate change, industrial modes of production, dam construction, and water privatization all conduce to the problem of water scarcity.

The supply of freshwater on this planet is only 2.5 percent of the world’s total water. Considering the amount that is frozen up in ice and snow, roughly one percent is left for human use. Water consumption has grown twice as fast as the world’s population.

We are often told that we’ve exceeded our carrying capacity here on Earth (or are arriving at that calamitous denouement of the story of civilization in no time soon), and water – a finite resource – is being exacerbated at an alarming rate in tandem to population growth. It is very true that we’ve reached our carrying capacity, this planet cannot healthily sustain so many people living in current arrangements, but anyone who has closely studied the conflation of civilization, agriculture, and capitalism understand well that human population booms are endemic to the aforementioned social formula. And in all honesty, to blame the problem of water scarcity upon an increasing global population is sneaky as hell. Ninety percent of human water use is for industrial purposes – 70 percent being used exclusively for large-scale agriculture and factory farming. If the dominant economic mode were to shift gears, to one that wasn’t defined globally, and predicated upon the funneling of resources to the producer rather than the community, the availability of water would be much different. If community-scale projects and strict environmental protection policies were implemented to define our economic behavior, then I’m pretty sure billions of people would not be facing such dire water related plights. However, in a world where market theory has greatly influenced the dominant praxis of economic intercourse, the privatization of the planet’s water has been pitched as the panacea that will solve our troubles.

Such pernicious tropes like “blue gold” used to describe water have motivated many corporations to privatize water with much alacrity. In Vermont, where I live, I quickly got wind of the contentions surrounding the privatization and commercialization of water. Like sprouting cowslips that push their way through marshy soils in the springtime, private water-bottling operations were popping up left and right along Vermont’s pristine springs. These enterprises have set up shop with the intent to siphon the state’s fresh water from age-old springs and commercialize it.

There was the New Jersey resident, East Montpelier landowner, and chief executive officer of Montpelier Spring Water Company, Daniel Antonovich, who initially pitched forward the Montpelier Spring Water Company in May of 2007 to the East Montpelier select board.
Toward Freedom for more

posted June 11, 2009
Buckle your seatbelt, you may be going nowhere — and it could be a very bumpy ride. Oil futures have just passed $71 for a barrel of “light, sweet crude oil” (sweet for energy stocks, anyway) on its way to… well, we don’t know exactly where, but it won’t feel good, not at the pump and not in the economy either. In the Midwest and scattered other locations, gas prices are already at the edge of $3.00 a gallon and the height of summer isn’t even upon us.

Much of this sudden rise has been fueled by OPEC production cuts, investor dreams of a global economic recovery (and so a heightened desire for energy), and the enthusiasm of market speculators. Explain it as you will, the price of crude, which hit a low of about $32 a barrel in December, as the planet seemed to meltdown economically, has doubled in recent months.

Oil is like the undead. Just when you think it’s gone down for the count, it rises from the grave ravenous. As Clifford Krauss of the New York Times reported recently, gas prices have risen 41 days in a row, and yet the price at the pump is still “lagging behind the increase in the price of oil.” According to Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service, consumers are now shelling out one billion dollars a day to keep their tanks full. (It was $1.5 billion last summer when the price of a barrel of oil hit an astronomical $147.)

TomDispatch for more

Allan Gichigi/IRIN

International Day of the African Child on June 16th is supposed to honour the struggle of all African children for a better education. But with the world’s eight most powerful countries now preoccupied with finding an escape from any economy-boosting ‘stimulus spending’ on education and health, Africa’s children may have to wait much longer for a true celebration of their international day, writes IPS.

(left) Children in a crowded classroom in Kenya’s Rift Valley.

All Africa for more

CBC News

A retired Manitoba archeologist is accusing the builders of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights of mistreating First Nations heritage.

Leigh Syms, former curator of archeology for the Manitoba Museum, said the national museum is being constructed on one of the richest sites in the province for aboriginal artifacts. Although the museum funded an excavation of the site last summer, Syms said it didn’t go far enough.

He said only two per cent of the artifacts buried at the site were recovered because the museum won’t foot the bill for a larger dig to retrieve and preserve the remains of aboriginal settlements that date back thousands of years.

CBC for more

By Ayesha Siddiqa

MOHAMMAD Ali Durrani, the former information minister, recently went public with his plan to struggle for an independent Bahawalpur province. One can simply dismiss his views as an extension of the old Seraiki movement which people have heard about for very long.

This time round, however, the idea has been floated by a man reputed for his deep connections with the establishment. The timing of the proposed movement also raises questions about what may happen in that part of the country.

The former minister’s reasons for starting the movement are quite logical. He is of the view that when Bahawalpur was merged into the One-Unit in 1955, the State of Pakistan had stipulated that the princely state would revert to its original status if the One-Unit were dissolved. Durrani believes that not only did the State of Pakistan go back on its promise, it failed to invest in the socioeconomic development of Bahawalpur. Resultantly, there is a lot of poverty and underdevelopment in the region.

Dawn for more

Matt Walker, Editor, Earth News

Male, female and infant yellow baboons in Amboseli, Kenya
What are platonic friends for?

Male and female baboons form platonic friendships, where sex is off the menu.

Having a caring friend around seems to greatly benefit the females and their infants, as both are harassed less by other baboons when in the company of their male pal.

But why the males choose to be platonic friends remains a mystery.

The finding published in Behavioral Sociobiology and Ecology also suggests that male baboons may be able to innately recognise their offspring.

Primatologist Nga Nguyen decided to investigate the occurrence of ‘platonic’ friendships in four groups of yellow baboons living in Amboseli, Kenya.

To do so, Nguyen, an assistant professor at California State University Fullerton, California, teamed up with colleagues Russell Van Horn of the Zoological Society of San Diego, California, and Susan Alberts of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina and Jeanne Altmann of Princeton University, New Jersey.

Male and females of a few species of monkey, including baboons, macaques and others are known to form so-called ‘friendships’, where particular males and females will spend a lot of time in each other’s company.

These friendships are often strictly platonic, and don’t seem to involve sex. But no-one knows why they occur.

BBC for more