View of a cold January morning across Braunton Great Field, with Heanton Punchardon church on the horizon.
Wednesday, 26 January 2011
Tawside
View of a cold January morning across Braunton Great Field, with Heanton Punchardon church on the horizon.
Thursday, 13 January 2011
Getting Rid of All Those Poor People
When evictions become routine
There's far too much funny money sloshing around the crazy world of finance, greedily seeking high returns and excessive profits now. Are we in the last phases of a centuries-long, ever intensifying global exploitation binge?
Whatever, it's quite clear who are the real misanthropists: the transnational land grabbers taking advantage of poverty, war, corruption, failing governance and inadequate land rights, turning the poor off their land and taking it to grow agribusiness monocultures, often for export.
The BBC radio have at last started to catch up with the trend with their feature today on ‘Crossing Continents’ about stomach-turning events in Cambodia, where “an estimated 15% of the country is now leased to private developers and stories are filtering in from the country's most impoverished farmers who tell of fear, violence and intimidation as private companies team up with armed police to force them from their land.”
They talk with Loun Sovath, a monk from Siem Reap province where peasants have been "victims of a high-profile land grab by rich and powerful people earlier this year [2009] which saw them lose 100 hectares. Some villagers were shot and wounded during a protest at the disputed site. The monk said the police arrested and handcuffed villagers just as the Khmer Rouge had done, then jailed them" according to the Ki-Media blog which reported on villagers' attempts at petitioning the government.
Already between 2006 and 2007 Adhoc, a Cambodian rights watchdog reported that "about 50,000 people throughout the country were evicted for development projects" and the problem just seems to be getting worse, with land in the capital being seized from the poor by a government working hand in glove with private companies to build luxury apartments and shopping malls.
There's far too much funny money sloshing around the crazy world of finance, greedily seeking high returns and excessive profits now. Are we in the last phases of a centuries-long, ever intensifying global exploitation binge?
Whatever, it's quite clear who are the real misanthropists: the transnational land grabbers taking advantage of poverty, war, corruption, failing governance and inadequate land rights, turning the poor off their land and taking it to grow agribusiness monocultures, often for export.
The BBC radio have at last started to catch up with the trend with their feature today on ‘Crossing Continents’ about stomach-turning events in Cambodia, where “an estimated 15% of the country is now leased to private developers and stories are filtering in from the country's most impoverished farmers who tell of fear, violence and intimidation as private companies team up with armed police to force them from their land.”
They talk with Loun Sovath, a monk from Siem Reap province where peasants have been "victims of a high-profile land grab by rich and powerful people earlier this year [2009] which saw them lose 100 hectares. Some villagers were shot and wounded during a protest at the disputed site. The monk said the police arrested and handcuffed villagers just as the Khmer Rouge had done, then jailed them" according to the Ki-Media blog which reported on villagers' attempts at petitioning the government.
Already between 2006 and 2007 Adhoc, a Cambodian rights watchdog reported that "about 50,000 people throughout the country were evicted for development projects" and the problem just seems to be getting worse, with land in the capital being seized from the poor by a government working hand in glove with private companies to build luxury apartments and shopping malls.
Happy and Docile
How are we all kept in our place? Simple.
1. Consumerism. This brilliant idea was invented following the industrial slaughter of two world wars by Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays. The aim was to sublimate all those nasty wild and unruly human emotions into one single, easily manipulable emotion: greed.
The Century of the Self by Adam Curtis.
2. Built in Obsolescence. This is added insurance. Just in case the lure of consumerism isn’t enough to keep profits flowing in as well, manufacturers ensure that we must keep on buying, by making the things we buy break down and not be able to be repaired easily or cheaply.
Buy and Throw video.
1. Consumerism. This brilliant idea was invented following the industrial slaughter of two world wars by Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays. The aim was to sublimate all those nasty wild and unruly human emotions into one single, easily manipulable emotion: greed.
The Century of the Self by Adam Curtis.
2. Built in Obsolescence. This is added insurance. Just in case the lure of consumerism isn’t enough to keep profits flowing in as well, manufacturers ensure that we must keep on buying, by making the things we buy break down and not be able to be repaired easily or cheaply.
Buy and Throw video.
Wednesday, 12 January 2011
Heinz Fifty Million Varieties Award
Now that we’re all warm and cosy leafing through our seed catalogues, it’s a good time to remember the brilliantly resourceful and ever inventive ancestors who provided us with all these lush varieties we enjoy growing - and eating today.
Here’s the Global Crop Diversity Trust’s Cary Fowler, quite a useful heritage variety himself, enthusing about seeds. Happy news that he won a Heinz Award recently as it’s very much deserved for the life's work that he’s put into saving our food crops from monocultural doom (eg here).
All the Heinz Awards last year were devoted to global change, and the year before that to environment; recognising the uncomfortable fact to some, that these are the most important issues we at last must start facing up to.
Here’s the Global Crop Diversity Trust’s Cary Fowler, quite a useful heritage variety himself, enthusing about seeds. Happy news that he won a Heinz Award recently as it’s very much deserved for the life's work that he’s put into saving our food crops from monocultural doom (eg here).
All the Heinz Awards last year were devoted to global change, and the year before that to environment; recognising the uncomfortable fact to some, that these are the most important issues we at last must start facing up to.
Crisis Committee Coming to Britain
In case we had forgotten, Britain is on the list of STUPID, heavily indebted countries, and later this month we can expect a visit from the EU’s Special Committee on the Financial, Economic and Social Crisis (CRIS) headed up by Wolf Klinz, onetime partner at McKinsey & Co and board member of the East German privatisation agency the Treuhandanstalt, so says Wpedia.
Herr Klinz opines (here pdf) that Europe is at a crossroads needing a "deepening of integration in the economic, budgetary, and social fields, more investments in infrastructure, a functioning labour market as well as a completion of the internal market ... a standstill of reforms in Europe would mean regression."
And on his blog he writes that:
"Reforms of the EU treaties are essential to master the crisis. By failing to address this issue, European leaders are pulling the wool over the eyes of European citizens. The heads of state should be honest to the citizens and they must act rapidly to address their concerns.
The solutions lie in more European integration. What Europe needs is a strengthening of the Community method and less intergovernmentalism."
I wonder if we will hear much about this visit from our media?
Herr Klinz opines (here pdf) that Europe is at a crossroads needing a "deepening of integration in the economic, budgetary, and social fields, more investments in infrastructure, a functioning labour market as well as a completion of the internal market ... a standstill of reforms in Europe would mean regression."
And on his blog he writes that:
"Reforms of the EU treaties are essential to master the crisis. By failing to address this issue, European leaders are pulling the wool over the eyes of European citizens. The heads of state should be honest to the citizens and they must act rapidly to address their concerns.
The solutions lie in more European integration. What Europe needs is a strengthening of the Community method and less intergovernmentalism."
I wonder if we will hear much about this visit from our media?
Tuesday, 11 January 2011
What a Lot of Bankers!
The Daily Mirror and Ann Pettifor have been investigating, and found that, guess what, the government which is very anxious that we shouldn't be so down on bankers, is made up of .....
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