The blamestorming and name-calling has begun around the WTO collapse. I’ll post more about that particular storm in a teacup soon. Update: Here’s a swift thinkpiece on the WTO.
Were we perhaps expecting the event to come to us pre-labelled? The first US food riot of the twenty-first century didn’t look like much, and there certainly weren’t large signs announcing it. But the scenes outside the main welfare office in Milwaukee in the wake of last month’s floods must surely count.
The headline says it all, and the article gives the details.
What’s curious for me, though, is the organisation that sponsored the research. On its ‘about’ page, the Organization for Competitive Markets advertises itself thus: Keep Reading »
This report is lifted from the pages of the excellent Pambazuka News, where it first appeared. It’s a much better and more thoughtful article than the one that appeared in the Washington Post. I’m not linking to it directly, but to the CommonDreams page, which has some excellent back-and-forth in the comments section, nailing quite precisely the patronising and infantilising attitudes that characterise a great deal of reporting on the food crisis. More below the fold
Yep, I’ve been a very delinquent blogger over the past week. Trying to work on the next book while keeping up with the developments in food politics this week has rather overwhelmed me.
While I figure out my time-management skills, here are a few gobbets of good things. First, via Marilyn, is a piece from SciDev, in which an epidemiologist points out the blindingly obvious to his peers: Keep Reading »
When advocates of free trade policies pick a developing country poster-child, they often go for Brazil and Argentina. Which is why a new report, below, is especially useful in undermining the myths around agricultural trade liberalisation. The most important observation: Keep Reading »
The excellent Avi Lewis, whose documentary with Naomi Klein — The Take — is well worth watching, has turned his attention to the struggles around rice in Haiti. Here, in seventeen minutes, is one of the best treatments of the recent food riots in Haiti, and their long history.
Quietly last Monday, the Ecuadorian Constitutional Assembly changed the world. Seriously. As the report below shows, they approved legislation that would transform the planet, and ecosystems, from mere things into entities with legal rights to exist and flourish. It’s the sort of thing that will give jurisprudence something to work on for a good long while.
More on the food crisis, this time from the US member of Via Campesina, the National Family Farm Coalition. They’ve got some great analysis to balance out the World Bank claims that 75% of the price rise is biofuels related which, on reflection, seem somewhat inflated.
The good folk at ActionAid have sent along a fine precis of the G8 Summit in Hokkaido.
Africa: uninspiring Keep Reading »
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