What is a large and growing epidemic of global proportions about which little is heard? Could it even be there is an epidemic which is weakly addressed? Could it be that it is growing at alarming speed but with little alert?
According to Susie Orbach, British psychotherapist and social critic, there is indeed such a epidemic – and it is very real. It is what she calls body distress.
I could scarcely say I know someone in the global North who does not suffer from body distress, which may come as a surprise to those who know me. And having spent significant amounts of time in the global South, I could say quite definitely I have recognized and continue to recognize signs of this distress in nearly every place I have been.
But what is body distress? You may be saying, “I do not fuss over my weight or my looks and yet you are saying that I am likely suffering from some sort of body distress?”
Orbach argues in her 2009 book Bodies that until recently we humans essentially took our bodies for granted. Our bodies were shaped by each cultural moment, as they are today by this cultural moment, but we produced things with them. Now, in this era of what she refers to as late capitalism, in industrialized societies our bodies have become the production itself, and thus, our body “is judged as our individual production” (p 5). For instance, what used to be taken for granted as natural processes in the life cycle – such as body changes due to child birth or facial wrinkles due to aging – have become unwanted and in need of manipulation.
Other signs of body distress may be dieting (and the exploding dieting industry) or eating disorders (overeating, under eating, binge eating) or skyrocketing profits of the cosmetic industry or even psychosomatic disorders (like irritable bowl syndrome and eczema).
The signs are many but clearly this epidemic shows itself in the singularizing notions of beauty. Orbach argues that no longer is bodily transformation a part of social ritual, but rather it is about creating an acceptable body – and what is ‘acceptable’ is narrowing worldwide, especially for women (p 82).
Recently I went with a friend to a festival of short Egyptian films. One of the clips was about a young, single Egyptian man who recently returned to Egypt from abroad. He had a neighbor who talked non-stop about his lovely wife, and the young man was awaiting to see this beauty to whom his neighbor referred. A climactic moment in the film is when the neighbor opens the door to introduce his wife, a woman who is visibly large and who takes on a jolly-go-lucky persona. And at that moment the audience laughs hysterically.
The vision of the beautiful wife was apparently shattered at the site of a round woman with a double chin. When I express my dismay to my friend, she kindly tries to explain to me that in Egypt “we like women with a …figure.”
One of the theoretical arguments Orbach is making in Bodies is that body distress is not necessarily about compensating for something else, as is commonly believed, but rather reflects “the conundrum of how to have a body” (p 74) or “bodily disenfranchisement” (p 75). Her theory, in contradiction to what she refers to as the most current theory, is that situating the origins of distress in the mind fails to fully capture the dis-ease that pertains to the body. Rather, it is more challenging to understand body distress as “a signal of a body that is struggling to express itself and its needs, or even to exist” (p 76).
In this way, she is refusing to single out commercial interests as the problem, but at the same time fully recognizes that “fashion’s handmaidens in the diet, food and pharmaceutical industries a nefarious role, adding to a sense of our bodies being a battleground” (p 94).
In other words, it is clearly not enough to talk about “The Price of Beauty,” as the new VH1 series refers to cultural practices related to prescriptions of beauty. This is not just about diverse specifications of beauty but about growing pressure on women and men to have an acceptable body – and those growing pressures are largely informed by commercial interests or religious doctrines. Highly processed foods and drinks, same-same glossy and digitalized images on the tv and movie screens, damning prescriptions from religious sects.
And let us not be deceived that the distress comes from failing to achieve the standard. It may seem so, we may try to convince ourselves it is so – if only I had thinner legs, less freckles, lighter skin – but the point of the commodified body is that it is not attainable. It is not that you can’t thin your legs, but that the project of working and reworking is ongoing.
As someone who has spent most of her professional life promoting healthy bodies, Susie Orbach does not just stop at the critique. She urges us, as products of this cultural moment, to take our bodies for granted and enjoy them!
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Friday, March 26, 2010
Taker Culture
How you know you are solidly within Taker Culture, a culture systematically destroying the web of life*:
It is believable or seems feasible or fails to seem utterly ridiculous that –
God created the earth and the creatures on the earth and THEN man to be God’s “successor” or to have dominion over all other beings on earth.
God is ego-maniacal – i.e., demanding and expecting praise from humans.
There is eternal continuity of the self or Ego.
Your kitten is naughty when he tries to bite you!
(Fill in)
* For the reference to “Taker Culture,” see Daniel Quinn’s books Ishmael and The Story of B.
It is believable or seems feasible or fails to seem utterly ridiculous that –
God created the earth and the creatures on the earth and THEN man to be God’s “successor” or to have dominion over all other beings on earth.
God is ego-maniacal – i.e., demanding and expecting praise from humans.
There is eternal continuity of the self or Ego.
Your kitten is naughty when he tries to bite you!
(Fill in)
* For the reference to “Taker Culture,” see Daniel Quinn’s books Ishmael and The Story of B.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
PPPs
Public Private Partnerships abound.
In Egypt perhaps once a week or twice or more there are public announcements of private contracting bids for new public private partnerships. The announcements come from the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Housing, the Ministry of Aviation, and so on – and in partnership with this or that foreign agency (say, a Swiss Development Fund or a Kuwaiti bank) – they seek international contractors to construct a wastewater facility or design the new Medical City or build a new runway for Hurghada international airport.
It seems nearly any public function is placed on an international bid, and it is the ‘big guys’ who get to compete. Not the local construction companies nor even the regional consulting firms. No, they don’t have a shot standing alone. So the local or regional company joins in a ‘consortium’ with a multinational contractor like Halliburton or a Big 5 auditing firm like KPMG.
Why all this?
In short, development agencies offer the reserve-poor, indebted government a loan to contract part or most of the development project to a private company or consortium.
The justifications are many: Egyptians don’t have the proper technical expertise; Egyptians don’t produce internally the proper tools, parts, materials; private international investment will attract more investment, which will generate growth; and so on.
Well, it is not just reserve-poor, indebted governments like the Egyptian one that contract out their development role. In fact, most countries outside of the Global North, even the superbly wealthy ones of the Gulf region, contract part or most of their new development projects to Northern companies.
Who else to do development then those who are developed?!
But wait, are multinational corporations experts at development? These corporations or company consortiums are offered fantastic deals. In fact, that is the whole point of attracting foreign investment: underpricing energy resources and setting up ‘economic zones’ with tax holidays and lax labor and environmental regulations. Why else would a foreign 'investor' come to Egypt, when it may get a better deal in Vietnam or India?
In the end the job may or may not be done properly; nonetheless, huge profits are reaped by a few. There has been no or little realization of internal capacities to get the next job done.
And Egypt has more debt. It borrowed money for this PPP and will borrow money for the next.
In Egypt perhaps once a week or twice or more there are public announcements of private contracting bids for new public private partnerships. The announcements come from the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Housing, the Ministry of Aviation, and so on – and in partnership with this or that foreign agency (say, a Swiss Development Fund or a Kuwaiti bank) – they seek international contractors to construct a wastewater facility or design the new Medical City or build a new runway for Hurghada international airport.
It seems nearly any public function is placed on an international bid, and it is the ‘big guys’ who get to compete. Not the local construction companies nor even the regional consulting firms. No, they don’t have a shot standing alone. So the local or regional company joins in a ‘consortium’ with a multinational contractor like Halliburton or a Big 5 auditing firm like KPMG.
Why all this?
In short, development agencies offer the reserve-poor, indebted government a loan to contract part or most of the development project to a private company or consortium.
The justifications are many: Egyptians don’t have the proper technical expertise; Egyptians don’t produce internally the proper tools, parts, materials; private international investment will attract more investment, which will generate growth; and so on.
Well, it is not just reserve-poor, indebted governments like the Egyptian one that contract out their development role. In fact, most countries outside of the Global North, even the superbly wealthy ones of the Gulf region, contract part or most of their new development projects to Northern companies.
Who else to do development then those who are developed?!
But wait, are multinational corporations experts at development? These corporations or company consortiums are offered fantastic deals. In fact, that is the whole point of attracting foreign investment: underpricing energy resources and setting up ‘economic zones’ with tax holidays and lax labor and environmental regulations. Why else would a foreign 'investor' come to Egypt, when it may get a better deal in Vietnam or India?
In the end the job may or may not be done properly; nonetheless, huge profits are reaped by a few. There has been no or little realization of internal capacities to get the next job done.
And Egypt has more debt. It borrowed money for this PPP and will borrow money for the next.
Monday, January 25, 2010
O, OO, OU, OW
What lies beyond what is seen? What does the eye mask? Can the eye detect what it does not expect?
I see concrete, I see dead dogs, I see clouds of fumes. I see rows of concrete buildings and the steel of cars. I see the planted tree and the grass. I see the cat hiding and the donkey waiting.
I see a world of human design.
And I feel despair.
Until, high above, viewing where I do not view, seeing a sight that I did not expect. A delight.
Shimmering white, hovering, perching, looking below. Looking intently, only to fly out of sight.
But remaining within an audible range of sound. Screaching.
In Moroccan Arabic MOKA, Egyptian Arabic BOOMA, Amharic GOOGUT, French HIBOU.
In English OWL. The bird that can make the sound of O OO OW embodied in the roundness of her face.
A round O and an exquisite presence. A regular barn owl, the most common of birds of nearly any place.
Such remarkable commonness where tall concrete buildings meet an empty lot, the metro, a long “garden” strip and palm trees.
Indeed, in the trees lies the unseen, in the ground the unheard and unremarked, in the empty buildings and spaces of Cairo the seekers of darkness in light.
The world of human design becomes a world of such breadth and depth, a living and deadening energy, manipulation and resistance, will and determined paths.
A mystery.
I see concrete, I see dead dogs, I see clouds of fumes. I see rows of concrete buildings and the steel of cars. I see the planted tree and the grass. I see the cat hiding and the donkey waiting.
I see a world of human design.
And I feel despair.
Until, high above, viewing where I do not view, seeing a sight that I did not expect. A delight.
Shimmering white, hovering, perching, looking below. Looking intently, only to fly out of sight.
But remaining within an audible range of sound. Screaching.
In Moroccan Arabic MOKA, Egyptian Arabic BOOMA, Amharic GOOGUT, French HIBOU.
In English OWL. The bird that can make the sound of O OO OW embodied in the roundness of her face.
A round O and an exquisite presence. A regular barn owl, the most common of birds of nearly any place.
Such remarkable commonness where tall concrete buildings meet an empty lot, the metro, a long “garden” strip and palm trees.
Indeed, in the trees lies the unseen, in the ground the unheard and unremarked, in the empty buildings and spaces of Cairo the seekers of darkness in light.
The world of human design becomes a world of such breadth and depth, a living and deadening energy, manipulation and resistance, will and determined paths.
A mystery.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Copenhagen: Where is the Arab World heading?
(This was intended as an op-ed piece for a Cairo-based newspaper. We couldn't get it published in a timely manner, so it ended up here...)
So much momentum was built for this year’s UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen (COP15) – and so much is at stake – and by the Summit’s end so little was offered. The agreed upon ‘Copenhagen Accord’ has been a resounding failure, with no legally binding commitments to carbon emissions reductions and insufficient funding for developing nations to cut their rates of emissions.
The scientific and civil society communities are largely behind the target of restoring carbon dioxide levels in the earth’s atmosphere to 350 parts per million (ppm), in order to save life from the worst of climate change effects. This means keeping climate change to 1.5˚ Celsius above pre-industrial levels. And this roughly translates into 30% reductions in carbon emissions from 1990 levels by 2020 and 80% by 2050.
According to the Guardian, the Copenhagen Accord drops these targets – 1.5˚C increase and 80% reductions by 2050 – and instead vaguely promises reductions to a temperature increase of 2˚ Celsius, but with no clear measures of how we would reach that goal.
The Group of 77, the largest representative of countries present at the Summit, representing more than 134 nations or roughly 80% of humanity, was loud in its opposition to a 2˚C increase agreement. G77’s Chief Negotiator, Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, called this a “suicide pact” for the G77. According to a leaked document from the UN’s own Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCC) Secretariat, during the last week of the Summit, what was on the table at Copenhagen would lead to at least a 2˚C increase, which amounts to at least a 3.5˚C increase for all regions of the African continent. And such a huge temperature increase will mean almost certain devastation for the continent.
And of course it is not just the African continent that will face certain devastation. Add the many small island nations in the mix, plus the many low-lying nations and cities throughout the world. But really, we are just talking about the more immediate catastrophe brought by climate change. If we go beyond the next two or three decades, the truly global devastation of global warming becomes much more apparent. This is why civil society groups have been present throughout COP15 from in and outside the UN Summit, calling for a “real deal” – 350 ppm, 1.5˚ Celsius.
And this is precisely why they were wire-tapped, arrested, stripped of their UN Summit badges. Groups from Greenpeace to Friends of the Earth were refused entry into the Summit during the last days, as the global elite and their sham of a deal was being hashed out.
US President Obama came to the Summit briefly to try to fool the world that the US has come to be a leader and is ready to tackle climate change. With a play on words (17% reduction in emissions by 2020) one may think that with Obama on the throne the US is quite serious, but those targets are from 2005 levels and come out to actually a mere 4% from 1990 levels. Further, the US has pledged to support a $100bn global fund to help developing nations adapt to climate change, but made no specific commitments to meet its climate debt. In fact, US political leaders refuse to acknowledge that industrialized countries, particularly the US, owe a debt to the rest of the non-industrialized world for historically contributing most to this climate disaster, while developing countries must face it.
The United States was indeed leading the way at the Summit – to utterly preposterous targets that will lead millions and millions displaced, hungry, dead. This is not exactly surprising. In fact, it is quite utterly expected. But what is noteworthy at least from here, in Cairo, is the Arab World’s seeming agreement with such untenable leadership.
Where in fact have countries of the Arab Union “been” in all of this? According to one of the main civil society groups on climate action, 350.org, more than half of the world’s countries support the 350 ppm target. And of those majority countries only two Arab Union countries are among them – Yemen and Sudan. All other North Africa and Middle East countries officially support weaker climate change policies.
Even more, according to the Pew Global Attitudes Project 2008, of the Pew Research Center based in Washington, D.C., a survey of climate change concerns in 24 countries ranked the three Arab countries included in the survey – Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt – 18th, 20th and 21st, respectively. This survey was conducted in select countries in all five continents and reflects relatively little concern about climate change among people of the Arab region.
This is startling considering what is known about inevitable climate change impacts in the region. The 2009 Report of the Arab Forum for Environment and Development (AFED) warns that global warming will have drastic impacts on a number of Arab countries.
According to Denmark’s lead climate change negotiator, Niels Pultz, studies on the sea level rise have shown that the Middle East and Africa are the most likely to be affected, second only to small island states in oceans.
The 2009 AFED forecasts that the sea level rise will mostly threaten Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Tunisia, devastating "one to three percent of land in these countries." In Egypt, more than 12 percent of the country's best agricultural land in the Nile Delta is at risk from the sea level rise.
Even Egypt’s own Agricultural Research Center recently issued an official report forecasting major losses in agriculture and rural life in the Delta region due to climate change, with millions of people being displaced in the coming decades.
Also, with global warming encroaching fresh water supplies in the region will continue to be under severe limitations. "Environmental deterioration forms serious threats to peace in our Arab region and the world as a result of the increase in the conflict around water resource," Lebanon's Environment Minister Mohammed Rahhal has cautioned.
The message: It is alarming that people of the Arab World are not taking climate change seriously enough. Listen and follow the lead of the G77 – the voice and reason of the vulnerable, developing nations – and demand climate justice. There is still much negotiating to do in the years to come and the G77 coalition will be much strengthened by a strong commitment from Arab countries.
So much momentum was built for this year’s UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen (COP15) – and so much is at stake – and by the Summit’s end so little was offered. The agreed upon ‘Copenhagen Accord’ has been a resounding failure, with no legally binding commitments to carbon emissions reductions and insufficient funding for developing nations to cut their rates of emissions.
The scientific and civil society communities are largely behind the target of restoring carbon dioxide levels in the earth’s atmosphere to 350 parts per million (ppm), in order to save life from the worst of climate change effects. This means keeping climate change to 1.5˚ Celsius above pre-industrial levels. And this roughly translates into 30% reductions in carbon emissions from 1990 levels by 2020 and 80% by 2050.
According to the Guardian, the Copenhagen Accord drops these targets – 1.5˚C increase and 80% reductions by 2050 – and instead vaguely promises reductions to a temperature increase of 2˚ Celsius, but with no clear measures of how we would reach that goal.
The Group of 77, the largest representative of countries present at the Summit, representing more than 134 nations or roughly 80% of humanity, was loud in its opposition to a 2˚C increase agreement. G77’s Chief Negotiator, Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, called this a “suicide pact” for the G77. According to a leaked document from the UN’s own Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCC) Secretariat, during the last week of the Summit, what was on the table at Copenhagen would lead to at least a 2˚C increase, which amounts to at least a 3.5˚C increase for all regions of the African continent. And such a huge temperature increase will mean almost certain devastation for the continent.
And of course it is not just the African continent that will face certain devastation. Add the many small island nations in the mix, plus the many low-lying nations and cities throughout the world. But really, we are just talking about the more immediate catastrophe brought by climate change. If we go beyond the next two or three decades, the truly global devastation of global warming becomes much more apparent. This is why civil society groups have been present throughout COP15 from in and outside the UN Summit, calling for a “real deal” – 350 ppm, 1.5˚ Celsius.
And this is precisely why they were wire-tapped, arrested, stripped of their UN Summit badges. Groups from Greenpeace to Friends of the Earth were refused entry into the Summit during the last days, as the global elite and their sham of a deal was being hashed out.
US President Obama came to the Summit briefly to try to fool the world that the US has come to be a leader and is ready to tackle climate change. With a play on words (17% reduction in emissions by 2020) one may think that with Obama on the throne the US is quite serious, but those targets are from 2005 levels and come out to actually a mere 4% from 1990 levels. Further, the US has pledged to support a $100bn global fund to help developing nations adapt to climate change, but made no specific commitments to meet its climate debt. In fact, US political leaders refuse to acknowledge that industrialized countries, particularly the US, owe a debt to the rest of the non-industrialized world for historically contributing most to this climate disaster, while developing countries must face it.
The United States was indeed leading the way at the Summit – to utterly preposterous targets that will lead millions and millions displaced, hungry, dead. This is not exactly surprising. In fact, it is quite utterly expected. But what is noteworthy at least from here, in Cairo, is the Arab World’s seeming agreement with such untenable leadership.
Where in fact have countries of the Arab Union “been” in all of this? According to one of the main civil society groups on climate action, 350.org, more than half of the world’s countries support the 350 ppm target. And of those majority countries only two Arab Union countries are among them – Yemen and Sudan. All other North Africa and Middle East countries officially support weaker climate change policies.
Even more, according to the Pew Global Attitudes Project 2008, of the Pew Research Center based in Washington, D.C., a survey of climate change concerns in 24 countries ranked the three Arab countries included in the survey – Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt – 18th, 20th and 21st, respectively. This survey was conducted in select countries in all five continents and reflects relatively little concern about climate change among people of the Arab region.
This is startling considering what is known about inevitable climate change impacts in the region. The 2009 Report of the Arab Forum for Environment and Development (AFED) warns that global warming will have drastic impacts on a number of Arab countries.
According to Denmark’s lead climate change negotiator, Niels Pultz, studies on the sea level rise have shown that the Middle East and Africa are the most likely to be affected, second only to small island states in oceans.
The 2009 AFED forecasts that the sea level rise will mostly threaten Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Tunisia, devastating "one to three percent of land in these countries." In Egypt, more than 12 percent of the country's best agricultural land in the Nile Delta is at risk from the sea level rise.
Even Egypt’s own Agricultural Research Center recently issued an official report forecasting major losses in agriculture and rural life in the Delta region due to climate change, with millions of people being displaced in the coming decades.
Also, with global warming encroaching fresh water supplies in the region will continue to be under severe limitations. "Environmental deterioration forms serious threats to peace in our Arab region and the world as a result of the increase in the conflict around water resource," Lebanon's Environment Minister Mohammed Rahhal has cautioned.
The message: It is alarming that people of the Arab World are not taking climate change seriously enough. Listen and follow the lead of the G77 – the voice and reason of the vulnerable, developing nations – and demand climate justice. There is still much negotiating to do in the years to come and the G77 coalition will be much strengthened by a strong commitment from Arab countries.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Time to Block Out the Noise
Faced with a global financial meltdown and a food crisis growing out of control, last year the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) held a World Summit on Food Security. And now, more than a year into the crises and many unmet pledges later, rates of hunger continue to rise.
It is in the backdrop of such resounding failure that the World Summit on Food Security in Rome was held for a second year from November 16th-18th. And again there was a renewed commitment of spending $44 billion a year to end hunger by 2025, but no concrete actions or policies taken from attending rich countries.
According to the FAO’s own numbers, the number of hungry people rose to 1.02 billion people in 2009. And the vast majority of the hungry are those who produce food.
A reason for the continued failure to respond to the crisis is that the World Summit continues to push liberalization policies in the Global South that have consistently impoverished small farmers – and of course does so by shutting out farmers themselves from the official delegations.
Declaring their presence, farmers and others not represented at the Summit came to Rome and held the Peoples’ Food Sovereignty Forum, a parallel Forum to the UN’s Summit. 642 people came to the Forum from 93 countries, representing 450 organisations of peasant and family farmers, small scale fisher folk, pastoralists, indigenous peoples, youth, women, urban dwellers, agricultural workers, local and international NGOs, and other advocates. They met
* to reassert the Right to Food
* to take a firm stance against international institutions like the World Bank and the IMF that privilege commercial interests
* to promote an ecological model of food provision
* to assert farmers’ rights to land in the midst of a huge land grab by transnational companies and regional agribusinesses
* to commit to a strong alliance of organizations, groups, advocates that promote food sovereignty
(Their declaration can be read here: http://farmlandgrab.org/9034.)
Unfortunately their Forum was relegated to a distant cry in the face of dizzying World Cup qualification matches. Here in Egypt the World Cup qualification led to violence upon violence, nationalist cries upon nationalist cries, and now a full-on diplomatic war between Egypt and Algeria. The drama has consumed all national concerns, despite the fact that just a couple weeks ago the Agricultural Research Center issued an official report forecasting major losses in agriculture and rural life in the Delta region due to climate change. And in the same speech President Mubarak gave to the People’s Assembly fueling the fire of a diplomatic war with Algeria, little attention was given to the farmer who confronted the President during this speech with the plea, “Mr. President, farmers are suffering.” Again, platitudes were given but no concrete policies.
And will the voices of farmers and the vulnerable be drown out again at the next United Nations Conference, this time, on climate change? What will consume us and block our vision? More football matches? Another celebrity’s death?
The Copenhagen conference will be held from December 7-18, and the TckTckTck coalition and the Global Climate Campaign are organizing a weekend of actions held during the conference to keep the pressure on. 350.org and many other organizations (and individuals) will take part in vigils, protests, actions, educational events, and the like in countries all around the world.
Demonstrations that will be held on December 12th are called forth with the following message:
(Check out at http://www.globalclimatecampaign.org/index.php?lang=en.)
It is in the backdrop of such resounding failure that the World Summit on Food Security in Rome was held for a second year from November 16th-18th. And again there was a renewed commitment of spending $44 billion a year to end hunger by 2025, but no concrete actions or policies taken from attending rich countries.
According to the FAO’s own numbers, the number of hungry people rose to 1.02 billion people in 2009. And the vast majority of the hungry are those who produce food.
A reason for the continued failure to respond to the crisis is that the World Summit continues to push liberalization policies in the Global South that have consistently impoverished small farmers – and of course does so by shutting out farmers themselves from the official delegations.
Declaring their presence, farmers and others not represented at the Summit came to Rome and held the Peoples’ Food Sovereignty Forum, a parallel Forum to the UN’s Summit. 642 people came to the Forum from 93 countries, representing 450 organisations of peasant and family farmers, small scale fisher folk, pastoralists, indigenous peoples, youth, women, urban dwellers, agricultural workers, local and international NGOs, and other advocates. They met
* to reassert the Right to Food
* to take a firm stance against international institutions like the World Bank and the IMF that privilege commercial interests
* to promote an ecological model of food provision
* to assert farmers’ rights to land in the midst of a huge land grab by transnational companies and regional agribusinesses
* to commit to a strong alliance of organizations, groups, advocates that promote food sovereignty
(Their declaration can be read here: http://farmlandgrab.org/9034.)
Unfortunately their Forum was relegated to a distant cry in the face of dizzying World Cup qualification matches. Here in Egypt the World Cup qualification led to violence upon violence, nationalist cries upon nationalist cries, and now a full-on diplomatic war between Egypt and Algeria. The drama has consumed all national concerns, despite the fact that just a couple weeks ago the Agricultural Research Center issued an official report forecasting major losses in agriculture and rural life in the Delta region due to climate change. And in the same speech President Mubarak gave to the People’s Assembly fueling the fire of a diplomatic war with Algeria, little attention was given to the farmer who confronted the President during this speech with the plea, “Mr. President, farmers are suffering.” Again, platitudes were given but no concrete policies.
And will the voices of farmers and the vulnerable be drown out again at the next United Nations Conference, this time, on climate change? What will consume us and block our vision? More football matches? Another celebrity’s death?
The Copenhagen conference will be held from December 7-18, and the TckTckTck coalition and the Global Climate Campaign are organizing a weekend of actions held during the conference to keep the pressure on. 350.org and many other organizations (and individuals) will take part in vigils, protests, actions, educational events, and the like in countries all around the world.
Demonstrations that will be held on December 12th are called forth with the following message:
“We demand that world leaders take the urgent and resolute action that is needed to prevent the catastrophic destabilisation of global climate, so that the entire world can move as rapidly as possible to a stronger emissions reductions treaty which is both equitable and effective in minimising dangerous climate change.
We demand that the long-industrialised countries that have emitted most greenhouse gases currently in the atmosphere take responsibility for climate change mitigation by immediately reducing their own emissions as well as investing in a clean energy revolution in the developing world. Developed countries must take their fair share of the responsibility to pay for the adaptive measures that have to be taken, especially by low-emitting countries with limited economic resources.
Climate change will hit the poorest first and hardest. All who have the economic means to act, must therefore urgently and decisively do so.”
(Check out at http://www.globalclimatecampaign.org/index.php?lang=en.)
Friday, November 6, 2009
From a Car Window
In some significant ways my current Cairo routine takes me back to a routine I had maintained years ago while staying in Calcutta. Or at least I am taken back to certain memories from my past.
It was during my post-graduation period. I had graduated from university and spent a half year in India, the Northern Half, being a backpacker, a student of meditation, a volunteer. I ended my travels in Calcutta, having received a generous invitation to stay with a Bengali family for free. I found Mother Theresa’s Missionaries of Charity in a back alley of downtown, and signed up to volunteer with the Sisters’ two missions – one an orphanage for severely disabled children, the other a makeshift school for Bihari street children. The family I stayed with became my family.
I happened to be in West Bengal during the hottest months of the year, the pre-Monsoon season. Just being would cause profuse sweating. The weather was so damp the air felt as a suspended cloud.
And I had a long daily commute. I lived in Jadavpur, a suburb of Calcutta, and volunteered in two locations quite far, more toward the center of the city, depending on one’s vantage point I suppose. I would wake early in the morning. Walk to a corner to catch a rickshaw – a motor-powered, not human-powered one. There would be a long line of early morning commuters waiting. When it would be my turn to catch a rickshaw, we would pile in. What appeared to be a two-passenger rickshaw easily turned into a six-passenger one, with me more often than not hanging out the rickshaw as it meandered its way through the dirt roads lining the many shacks. The rickshaw driver would drive so quickly, make turns so suddenly, that I often felt my life would end or a limb would surely be lost.
Hanging out of the rickshaw I would look upon the thousands and thousands of shack dwellers, brushing their teeth in waterways adjacent to the roads, children defecating along the roadside.
We would get dropped off at the underground metro, and I would take the metro to a stop not far from the orphanage. It was exhilarating work, as we volunteers and the Sisters took the children to the bathroom and bathed them and dressed them. It was so hot – and I was so drenched in sweat – that I would have a difficult time keeping hold of the children. I would lift them, but they would slip between my hands from the sweat. I would bathe them but would have to adjust my glasses as they fell from my sweating face.
When I would get home after another hour-long commute, my sweaty body would be layered in coating upon coating of dust and soot. The very first thing I would do when I got home would be to take a cold shower. It restored me. I would feel renewed and able to start the same routine over again in the morning.
I will never forget a comment made by a Calcutta family member during my stay. She was a doctor and her husband a well-known doctor. They were solidly part of a upper-middle class household. Like is standard for upper-middle class families here, the upper-middle classes in India have not only their own fully-equipped cars but they have their own drivers to drive them around. And this family member had a driver take her around the city.
She had just returned from a conference in San Francisco and said to me:
I was stunned to silence. Then I quickly realized how differently one’s perceptions of a place are depending on one’s mode of transport. From the window of a car, I guess one could come to think of San Francisco and Calcutta as nearly indistinguishable. I mean, they both have highways, big buildings, water bodies, homeless people. In fact, from the “secure” place of inside a car, I imagine one could think of typologically-like places (e.g. “urban,” “rural”) as nearly identical.
Surely the uniformity of the experience in a car can not be divorced from the developmentalist narrative – of massive highway networks, private enterprises and big buildings and business complexes, cookie-cutter style housing complexes, huge shopping malls, and other urban delights.
And of course the flipside of the standardization of experiences and impressions from inside a car is the standardizing effect of decades of development policies on the experiences and quality of life of the millions upon millions of those reliant on transportation ‘for the public’ (whether publically or privately operated) to get around in huge metropolises.
In a de-industrialized era industrial goods like transportation come with foreign reserves or they come cheap locally or worn as donations. That makes good transportation very expensive for countries like India and Egypt. And during years of structural adjustments, that continue, even less money is available for essentials like buses and their spare parts. The combination of expensive essentials and less money for essentials is indeed quite disastrous. And policies that were supposed to fuel industrialization (such as high subsidies for leaded fuel) have instead led to extremely high levels of toxic pollution and resulting health problems like birth defects, cancer and asthma. American-style urban development –with capital and employment concentration in only a handful of urban centers (where privatization of real estate has made housing outrageously expensive) has led to very long commutes for commuters. Many here as elsewhere spend hours in commute daily.
I may not know how one experiences the world if largely from the window of a car, but I do know how much my experiences here have been affected by my to and fro. I have lived here long enough now and have gone through enough different phases to know how differently I experience this place if I am depending largely on a short walking commute, on taxis or on privatizing public transportation.
And so much of how I currently feel about this place is shaped by my many rides on the micro-buses and buses and the metro. I have long ways to and from. Any exposed hair and skin is covered in soot. I struggle to fight off allergy-induced illness and general constant congestion. I am surrounded by terribly obese women who can barely make it a step up into the micro-bus or metro. And the one thing I desperately look forward to – at least during the long, hot summer months – is a cold shower.
It was during my post-graduation period. I had graduated from university and spent a half year in India, the Northern Half, being a backpacker, a student of meditation, a volunteer. I ended my travels in Calcutta, having received a generous invitation to stay with a Bengali family for free. I found Mother Theresa’s Missionaries of Charity in a back alley of downtown, and signed up to volunteer with the Sisters’ two missions – one an orphanage for severely disabled children, the other a makeshift school for Bihari street children. The family I stayed with became my family.
I happened to be in West Bengal during the hottest months of the year, the pre-Monsoon season. Just being would cause profuse sweating. The weather was so damp the air felt as a suspended cloud.
And I had a long daily commute. I lived in Jadavpur, a suburb of Calcutta, and volunteered in two locations quite far, more toward the center of the city, depending on one’s vantage point I suppose. I would wake early in the morning. Walk to a corner to catch a rickshaw – a motor-powered, not human-powered one. There would be a long line of early morning commuters waiting. When it would be my turn to catch a rickshaw, we would pile in. What appeared to be a two-passenger rickshaw easily turned into a six-passenger one, with me more often than not hanging out the rickshaw as it meandered its way through the dirt roads lining the many shacks. The rickshaw driver would drive so quickly, make turns so suddenly, that I often felt my life would end or a limb would surely be lost.
Hanging out of the rickshaw I would look upon the thousands and thousands of shack dwellers, brushing their teeth in waterways adjacent to the roads, children defecating along the roadside.
We would get dropped off at the underground metro, and I would take the metro to a stop not far from the orphanage. It was exhilarating work, as we volunteers and the Sisters took the children to the bathroom and bathed them and dressed them. It was so hot – and I was so drenched in sweat – that I would have a difficult time keeping hold of the children. I would lift them, but they would slip between my hands from the sweat. I would bathe them but would have to adjust my glasses as they fell from my sweating face.
When I would get home after another hour-long commute, my sweaty body would be layered in coating upon coating of dust and soot. The very first thing I would do when I got home would be to take a cold shower. It restored me. I would feel renewed and able to start the same routine over again in the morning.
I will never forget a comment made by a Calcutta family member during my stay. She was a doctor and her husband a well-known doctor. They were solidly part of a upper-middle class household. Like is standard for upper-middle class families here, the upper-middle classes in India have not only their own fully-equipped cars but they have their own drivers to drive them around. And this family member had a driver take her around the city.
She had just returned from a conference in San Francisco and said to me:
“It was my first trip to America. I thought it would be so different from here. But really I didn’t see many differences. It seemed just like Calcutta.”
I was stunned to silence. Then I quickly realized how differently one’s perceptions of a place are depending on one’s mode of transport. From the window of a car, I guess one could come to think of San Francisco and Calcutta as nearly indistinguishable. I mean, they both have highways, big buildings, water bodies, homeless people. In fact, from the “secure” place of inside a car, I imagine one could think of typologically-like places (e.g. “urban,” “rural”) as nearly identical.
Surely the uniformity of the experience in a car can not be divorced from the developmentalist narrative – of massive highway networks, private enterprises and big buildings and business complexes, cookie-cutter style housing complexes, huge shopping malls, and other urban delights.
And of course the flipside of the standardization of experiences and impressions from inside a car is the standardizing effect of decades of development policies on the experiences and quality of life of the millions upon millions of those reliant on transportation ‘for the public’ (whether publically or privately operated) to get around in huge metropolises.
In a de-industrialized era industrial goods like transportation come with foreign reserves or they come cheap locally or worn as donations. That makes good transportation very expensive for countries like India and Egypt. And during years of structural adjustments, that continue, even less money is available for essentials like buses and their spare parts. The combination of expensive essentials and less money for essentials is indeed quite disastrous. And policies that were supposed to fuel industrialization (such as high subsidies for leaded fuel) have instead led to extremely high levels of toxic pollution and resulting health problems like birth defects, cancer and asthma. American-style urban development –with capital and employment concentration in only a handful of urban centers (where privatization of real estate has made housing outrageously expensive) has led to very long commutes for commuters. Many here as elsewhere spend hours in commute daily.
I may not know how one experiences the world if largely from the window of a car, but I do know how much my experiences here have been affected by my to and fro. I have lived here long enough now and have gone through enough different phases to know how differently I experience this place if I am depending largely on a short walking commute, on taxis or on privatizing public transportation.
And so much of how I currently feel about this place is shaped by my many rides on the micro-buses and buses and the metro. I have long ways to and from. Any exposed hair and skin is covered in soot. I struggle to fight off allergy-induced illness and general constant congestion. I am surrounded by terribly obese women who can barely make it a step up into the micro-bus or metro. And the one thing I desperately look forward to – at least during the long, hot summer months – is a cold shower.
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