Arundhati Roy on “Democracy” and the state of the world

This is really too good for me to pick excerpts out of. It really expresses so much of what I believe is wrong with the world and to cut it up would diminish it. While focusing mainly on India, Arundhati Roy, author of the God of Small Things (a book I think is overrated since [...]

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The Egypt-Israel Gas Deal

I stumbled upon this post by Mo-ha-med and discovered a pretty good blog. I am reproducing the post in full. It’s about time someone put this much investigation into such a politically and economically critical yet entirely opaque issue. Don’t neglect to check out the first post (referenced in the first line) and the comments [...]

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Neoliberal Agribusiness causes farmer suicide

Here’s an article by Vandana Shiva, Ph.D., a physicist, environmentalist, feminist, science policy advocate and director of Navdanya and the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology essentially on how monoculture, non-organic, chemical-fertilizer-and-irrigation-dependent, non-renewable, genetically modified, corporate, IP-protected seeds are fucking farmers.
.. and an interview with her.
This is really, seriously, one of the most heinous [...]

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“Cairo, Divided City”

I figured this warranted its own post since it’s about the shift to the desert suburbs leaving the slums behind in old Cairo:

I like the sound and images, but i find the commentary to be mediocre. I think there’s much more to be said about this issue.

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Police State 2.0

Once Again, Naomi Klein is right on the money. The disaster capitalism complex has found yet another (err.. repeated) field to plough in the Olympics. And somehow, they’ve managed to find a loophole to avoid legislation regulating what’s sold to china (both for security and human rights reasons), turning huge profits and setting up the [...]

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More on the Brazilian Oil Find

This is pretty much what i was implying earlier.
With the attention of a great power like the United States, and a regional power like Venezuela, Brazil finds itself in a position of power that gives it several opportunities. Whether or not the Brazilian government headed by President Lula Ignacio da Silva will choose a [...]

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Human Development Report

The UN’s Human Development Report for this year is out and it focuses on, surprise surprise, climate change. Havent read it yet. But here’s the press release.

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Oil prices: speculative distortion

I realize i’ve been posting disproportionately frequently on oil and energy. I would post more on Egypt and the region but my time is quite limited these days.  I feel there’s no point in just posting links without commentary when someone else (the Arabist) already does it far more efficiently and including most of what i [...]

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OPEC Summit aside

Apparently an oil company consortium led by Brasilian company Petrobras has announced the conclusion of well tests that indicate the deep water Tupi field to be enormous. When the field comes online (it will require the cutting edge of oil drilling technology), it could place Brazil in league with the other major new world fuel [...]

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Oil prices: unstable subsidizers

As OPEC looks set to request assurances that demand wont decrease (hah!) as especially the US and Europe pursue other sources of energy in return for investing significantly in expanding production capabilities, someone finally looks at what these prices mean to people other than the gas excreters and guzzlers swimming in dollars and debt, respectively.
The [...]

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More on biofuels and hunger

George Monbiot argues that governments continue to avoid hard decisions by promoting converting crops for biofuel production – a process which often produces more carbon than petroleum and causes starvation by limiting already stretched food supplies.

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More On Oil

This article looks at supply trends in recent years and the evolving position of (esp. Sub-Saharan) Africa. With proven oil reserves rising to equal Iraq’s, its relative proximity to the US means that more US oil is sourced there. At the same time, Middle East oil has been increasingly directed eastward. That’s not to [...]

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“Dubai construction workers strike”

Jazeera reports on labor strikes in Dubai on Sunday:
[O]n Sunday, labourers ignored threats of deportation and refused to go to work, demanding pay increases, improved housing and better transportation services to construction sites.
[..]
Ali bin Abdullah al-Kaabi, Dubai’s minister of labour, described workers’ behaviour as “uncivilised”, saying they were tampering with national security and endangering residents’ [...]

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Oil: shocking lack of shock

Piece on BBC about oil prices and politics. Excerpts:
On Monday, oil rose to $93 a barrel, only seven bucks short of its cataclysmic, futuristic high, and the world is still standing, we are not at war with Iran (yet) and there are no riots at my local petrol station.
[..]
Oil is the poison in the diplomatic [...]

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Biofuels crime agaisnt humanity

According to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Jean Ziegler, biofuels are a crime against humanity. In a recently submitted report to the UN, he cites the use of food crops for conversion into biofuels as directly responsible for the world price increases. This comes in a year of unusually notable rises [...]

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