Mahler's Prodigal Son

This piece, " Save our annadatas " from The Asian Age , deals with the ever-growing plight of farmers in India, but also goes on to make the point of how global behemoths, like Monsanto and Pepsi are creating problems for farmers in America, and in many cases leading to their suicide. "The peasants and farmers of India are the most resilient and independent community I have ever known. They have defended their rights and fought injustice and bounced back after every flood, drought and crop failure. Why then are they giving up on life today? Why are they committing suicide in such large numbers? Addressing these questions has become a critical survival imperative not only for farmers, but also for all of us who rely on the food they put on our tables. The epidemic of farmers’ suicides in India started after 1995, when agriculture policies were changed under the pressure of the World Trade Organisation agreements that ushered in the era of corporate globalisation. Whe...

Sit back and reflect on this lovely shot taken at the wonderful Place des Vosges in Paris

Being patriot and honest may not win any plaudits from a government - just to the contrary!     Whistle-blowers not in the "in" crowd are destined to be pursued by their government, as this example of Jeffrey Sterling in the USA so amply demonstrates.     Justice?   Forget it.... especially with the likes of the Obama Administration relentlessly pursuing whistle-blowers . "Jeffrey Sterling recently stood before a judge as his sentence was read. The former CIA officer, the judge declared, would spend 42 months — that’s three and half years — behind bars. The feds had convicted Sterling on nine felony charges, including seven counts of espionage. He didn’t sell secrets to the Russians. He didn’t trade intelligence for personal gain. He made no attempt to disrupt the American way of life. What did he do, then? He reported to the Senate Intelligence Committee that the CIA had botched an operation to feed false information about nuclear te...

Is it any wonder that multinationals and large corporations are not trusted?.....or worse, seen as dishonest and disreputable!    Take this one example in relation to something as critical as the outbreak of Ebola in Africa...... "Public health experts involved in the response to the Ebola crisis have condemned what they described as a ludicrous, insulting and opportunistic attempt to exploit the disease for corporate gain by the world’s largest privately-held coal company. As part of a PR offensive to rebrand coal as a “21st-century fuel” that can help solve global poverty, it has emerged that at the height of Ebola’s impact in Africa, Peabody Energy promoted its product as an answer to Africa’s devastating public health crisis. Greg Boyce, the chief executive of Peabody, a US-based multinational with mining interests around the world, included a slide on Ebola and energy in a presentation to a coal industry conference in September last year. The slide suggested ...

Isn't there something radically wrong here?    Israel, a non-signatory to the NPT has, evidently, been the cause for those countries that are Treaty members, notably Canada, the US and the UK, after 4 weeks of negotiation, effectively blocking off any meaningful progress in ensuring the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.    IPS reports ..... "After nearly four weeks of negotiations, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference ended in a predictable outcome: a text overwhelmingly reflecting the views and interests of the nuclear-armed states and some of their nuclear-dependent allies. “The process to develop the draft Review Conference outcome document was anti-democratic and nontransparent,” Ray Acheson, director, Reaching Critical Will, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), told IPS. “This Review Conference has demonstrated beyond any doubt that continuing to rely on the nuclear-armed states or their nuclear-de...

At the end of the Second World War and the world saw what had happened in Europe - now known as the Holocaust - the catch-cry went up "never again!".    All too sadly, as events have so clearly shown, nothing could be further from the truth.  Witness the various atrocities which have occurred since WW2 right up to the present time. Also at the end of the War the world saw the crime against humanity brought into existence and many Nazis tried and executed.        It is therefore astounding that we now read that some countries seek to have that law abolished, and even more surprisingly, of all countries in the world, Israel being one of them. "The promulgation of International law addressing crimes against humanity was one of the major legal achievements resulting from World War II. As Robert Jackson, the lead American prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials put it, the crimes bred by that conflict were “so malignant, and so devastating that civiliz...

A UN Report identifies who the people who really feed the world are - hail women and biodiversity! - and what needs to be done in the future if we are to secure the supply of food.    To rely on corporations and GMOs doesn't seem to be the way to go! "The two great ecological challenges of our times are biodiversity erosion and climate change. And both are interconnected, in their causes and their solutions. Industrial agiculture is the biggest contributor to biodiversity erosion as well as to climate change. According to the United Nations, 93% of all plant variety has disappeared over the last 80 years. Monocultures based on chemical inputs do not merely destroy plant biodiversity, they have destroyed soil biodiversity, which leads to the emergence of pathogens, new diseases, and more chemical use. Our study of soils in the Bt cotton regions of Vidharba showed a dramatic decline in beneficial soil organisms. In many regions with intensive use of pesticides and GMOs,...