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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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: 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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FreeRice

I love this: i can improve my vocab and feed people in one fell swing.

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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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4.5: the sum is greater than the parts

This article was published in September in the LA Times. It’s about Arba3a wi Noss (literally, 4.5), which is one of Cairo’s many squatter slums. It also happens to be one of the areas where a lot of (especially Sudanese) refugees have wound up. I know a lot of work has been directed there over [...]

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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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FP’s Five population trends to watch

Nothing really new here. Just some geopolitical strategic food for thought. Developed countries will age; the South’s population will boom; AIDs and other diseases are killing subsaharans at their most productive ages; indians and chinese are becoming more male; and the south moves north.

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Documentary: Rabbena Yesahhel

I also recently watched a documentary on youth unemployment in Egypt. It’s a decent look, despite horrible production, at the problems, perceptions and attitudes associated with Egyptian youths’ growingly impossible employment situation. I didnt learn anything new, but i felt that it offered a decent narration, making sure to cover higher-income, mostly hi-tech; manual labor; [...]

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Labor in Qatar

The Angry Arab has posted an anecdotal letter on the plight of laborers in Qatar. Naturally, this extends to other gulf countries like Saudia and the Emirates.

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Hurtful food aid

I’ve got a draft that i’ve been meaning to work on for a while on health aid. Soon. Anyway, in an encouraging sign, according to the iht, CARE, one of the largest international development and aid NGOs, has announced that it will stop participating in the US gov’t’s food aid programs. Or at least the [...]

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1930s “Cairene Concerns”

Surfing the Web, i found this article on Cairo’s problems in the 30s from 2006 in the Ahram weekly. It’s part of their Ahram: A Diwan of Conteporary Life series. It’s funnysad how it’s all the same problems 70 years later.
Noise Pollution
The first manifestation of suffering Al-Ahram monitored was the “clamour of the streets”. [...]

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“Ideology of Development”

William Easterly of NYU writes [subscriber only, but i found the pdf] in FP on the “Ideology of Development”. The article criticizes Development for all of the reasons that development criticizes itself and its various schools. Perhaps the only addition is framing development as an ideology.
Like all ideologies, Development promises a comprehensive final answer [...]

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