Blog Action Day: Reclaiming Air and Earth

When I set about to write a post under Blog Action Day, which this year focuses on climate change, I wanted to do so through a personal experience. Whilst the following, I have to shamefully admit, has only partially something to do with climate change per se, it is an account of my genuine acquaintance with an impending global problem, getting closer to home.

After a ten month absence, I landed on Casablanca airport where the sky was wonderfully blue. I almost forgot how warm and agreeable the sun was at this time of year. It wasn’t exactly the suffocating heat of the Moroccan summer nor was it the feeble warmth of northern Europe’s nascent fall. The Moroccan clement whether wrapped me with a welcoming embrace that plunged me back, almost instantly, to a place I felt perfectly fitting into, as I made my way out of the cabin and into the newly built corridor inside Terminal 2.

As I walked toward the customs my eyes were caught by a series of glistening posters, venting the merits of some gargantuan resort projects set to be built along the cost of the Atlantic. “Mazagan Beach Resort: The immensity of the ocean, endless beaches, sweet-scented gardens and in a life-sized presentation box” said one of the billboards. On a marvelous picture on one of the posters, you could enjoy the immensity of the would-be golf, dotted with aggregates of small houses and swimming pools, in the middle of which emerge impressive hotel buildings. I knew the place. The Hawzi’ya forest, north of the city of El Jadida, the city where I used to live and where I was heading to visit my parents. In the face of it, I thought this was great: new job opportunities, great source of money that would get the local economy rolling again.

I stayed for a while in Quartier Maarif, the commercial district that spreads in the shadows of Casablanca Twin Towers. I like the place and can’t come and visit the city without stopping there. I love the cafés and the human energy that breaks out of the general chaos that appears to inhabit the place. But I couldn’t imagine that the levels of congestion, noise and air pollution would have reached such alarming levels.

A couple of days later, heading south toward El Jadida, I was struck by the speed with which the landscape appears to be changing. Constructions appeared to be mushrooming everywhere. And, a couple of kilometers before entering the long and magnificent El Jadida access avenue, there, an unfamiliar skyline emerged from the distance, right along the Hawzi’ya beach, where I expected to contemplate the expanse of the once thick and green forest.

As I drove close-by, I could see a long, delicately engraved wall, running along the road, encircling what appears to be a construction site, where workers could be seen between the looped edges of the fortress-like wall, frenetically digging, assembling stones, watering gardens and newly planted plants.

Along the wall, large banners attached to high posts read “Kerzner International,” “Mazagan Beach Resort.” The site runs for long distance and stops right in the middle of a wide naked field where once stood an abundant grove.

A couple of miles south, I drove by the Club Med and its guarded entrance, and the Golf which snakes across the southern end of the Hawzi’ya forest, right beside the beach.

I eventually entered El Jadida, where I stayed for a couple of days. It looks like most of the talk in the city was about the new resort project, set to be inaugurated by the king himself on October 15, and about Brad Pitt -I kid you not- allegedly acquiring a home in the site. Most people I talked to, thought the project was a good thing for the city. But some issues kept recurring though. First the effect the water-thirsty resort was having on the city’s water supplies and second, the loss of large parts of a forest that is believed to be at the core of a fragile and complex ecosystem that allows for the gentle and warm local climate to sustain itself. That added to the ever expanding Industrial Zone, notorious for its polluted air, filled with greenhouse gases, emanating from agro industrial factories and spreading in the outskirts of the city. Not to mention the phosphates processing plant in Jorf Lasfar, in the south. Whilst the economic benefits of the resort and all other job creating factories were mostly acknowledged, one could feel the unease with regard to the way such gigantic projects, now spreading across the country, were alloted with little regard for either the local population’s basic needs, nor the ecological impact they might have.

But the haunting question remains for developing countries like ours, on how we can hope for economic progress without damaging the environment or impacting on climate. It appears that the whole country took a pass on sustainability, obsessed as it is by economic growth, at any cost.

Morocco is regularly afflicted by severe phases of drought. Paradoxically last month, the country experienced an unprecedented flooding that has struck the countryside, damaging crops and exposing much of the defective sanitation infrastructure in the main cities. This capricious and no longer predictable climate, to some extent, has brought the question of climate change, an issue that looked remote so far, to the popular level, although not to a level this would represent a major preoccupation, having to compete with more earthily (forget the pun) concerns.

In the meanwhile, the sight of the Hawzi’ya forest being literally uprooted, left an enduring pain in my heart. No longer will I enjoy the reseeding scents of wild flowers, or the shades of an unacquired tree in a wild field, only a couple of miles north of home. Or maybe should I just resign to an inexorable reality?

Homo Stupidus

After ages during which the earth produced harmless trilobites and butterflies, evolution progressed to the point at which it has generated Neros, Genghis Khans, and Hitlers. This, however, I believe is a passing nightmare; in time the earth will become again incapable of supporting life, and peace will return

~ Bertrand Russell

 

The Age of Stupid is, as I understood from enthusiastic critics, a “pretty imaginative,” “straightforward” and “striking” drama-documentary about climate change that has just been released in the UK.

 

It is set in the future. A man (Pete Postlethwaite) living alone, in a 2055 devastated world, browsing through media archives of the beginning of the twenty first century, wondering, helplessly, why didn’t we save ourselves when we had the chance.

 

The film, according to its official website is the end result of an independent enterprise that “crowd-raised” over 600,000 USD, selling shares to anonymous individuals and groups.

 

Sounds fascinating!

Illogical Effusiveness

“The decision of the United States should be an example to other countries that share our values.” Tzipi Livni – War Criminal.

Obama has apparently kept up to the business of lampooning his government, country and own personal heritage, and decided for the sake of racist Israel, to boycott the world gathering next April (20-24) in Durban Geneva against racism. Read the full story in this Aljazeera.net article.

The Times, They are A-Changin’

Got to give us what we want
Gotta give us what we need
Our freedom of speech is freedom or death
We got to fight the powers that be
Lemme hear you say
Fight the power

~ Public Enemy

 

 

I was watching the other day a documentary on Arte-TV (a Franco-German publicly funded television). It was commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the falling of the Berlin wall in 1989, which signalled the collapse of the Soviet Union.

  

The voice over the pictures explained how tough was “the struggle” against Soviet Communism, but it also explained that throughout the cold war, and apart from some rare Soviet breakthroughs (essentially in the space race), the west, led by the U.S.A., has always had the upper hand, and the Russians constantly had to posture in the defensive.

  

The central theme of the documentary was western propaganda efforts and the role this played in helping precipitate the fall of the USSR. The program interviewed prominent ‘journalists’ (propagandists shall we say) who worked at the time for Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, which were then the pillars of western propaganda against the USSR. What everybody knew and what was officially denied at the time was that both radio stations were directly financed by the CIA. Nevertheless, the enthusiasm for what both stations were broadcasting was real, and people who worked there, mostly refugees from Eastern Europe, genuinely wanted to free the people who stayed behind the Iron Curtain. And they succeeded.

  

There is I think, as it occurred to me at the end of the program, an obvious historical reason for that success; a tacit rule that mostly confirmed itself throughout history -and I say mostly because exceptions to this rule exist undeniably. But I don’t want to get bogged down too much into academic nonsensical verbigerations. What I mean is that the west succeeded in defeating the mighty USSR because the west had the most valid moral argument. The USSR was degenerating into a vulgar totalitarian tyranny. Its leaders stupefied as they were by the huge power they possessed, inebriated by the privileges they enjoyed and rendered paranoid by the full spectrum campaign conducted against them by the west, ended up building a huge but terribly crippled empire that bore the genes of its own failure. On the other hand, the west was -opportunistically some would argue- preaching freedom and emancipation. And from that standpoint the task was relatively easy and time was always on western side. It was only a question of years, maybe months before the Soviet union would fall down. And although these were tough and scary times –because of the nuclear scare and all the rest of it-, this was an overall predictably winnable war.

  

In other words: you might be hugely powerful and mighty, but when your moral assets are corrupted and dubious, at the end of the day, you’re running the risk of losing the battle; maybe not in the short run, but time generally doesn’t play on your side.

  

What are the implications of such an observation on today’s post cold war world?

  

Twenty years after the collapse of the Soviet union, there is only one single, relatively unchallenged power. USA’s foreign policy has been for decades ostensibly legitimized by the so-called struggle against communism. Now that this threat has vanished, the USA has lost a very valuable moral argument. The world was indeed horrified by the 9-11 attacks which served momentarily as a moral boon for American policy makers. Momentarily. But the world also, literally went out to the streets and protested the illegal invasion of Iraq and the disaster that ensued, with over a million dead and hundreds of thousands others displaced. It almost daily watches in sheer horror, the American sponsored crimes in Palestine and Lebanon. It sees how the U.S. are arrogantly and disrespectfully disregarding international law and Human rights.

  

Too much people are protesting the actions of the United States, in such numbers and in so many simultaneous places on earth that it becomes clear that the resentment toward the United States today, draws its inspiration and energy from the same sources as those that inspired past revolts against the church in middle aged Europe, the British in eighteenth century north America, the despotic monarchy in eighteenth century France…

  

This vision may look all too simplistic, but I personally see no reason not to believe that conditions that yielded revolutions and subsequent shifts in paradigms in the past, may not be transposable in this particular point in time. Maybe the difference -and that is a major one- is that the powerful establishment today, as opposed to that of the past, has accumulated power to such an extent that, as Chomsky might put it, it is no longer the question of whether the people or the establishment will win, it is really whether out of that struggle the human species as a whole will survive.

  

What we are witnessing is the same stupefying temptation of power that led to the degeneration of previous tyrannical powers. The moral discrepancy that comes with an insatiable system that glorifies greed, together with the enticing desire of -in American own policy makers words- Full Spectrum Control that comes with unprecedented power, leads inexorably to oppression and tyranny disguised under the most benevolent of all pretexts: humanitarian intervention, the fight against terror, spreading democracy and freedom, fighting a foreign enemy… you name it.

 

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. ~ James Madison.

  

Suddenly the picture becomes clear: what was then the USSR is the United States of today; what was then La Pravda, the newspaper that was famous for parroting Soviet Politburo’s official line, is the BBC, the CNN, the Fox News of today; what were Radio Free Europe or Radio Liberty is the Aljazeera and the Blogosphere of today; what was the FREE WORLD at the time is the anonymous PEOPLE OF THE WORLD today.

Picture (slightly altered) Courtesy of ‘Omar: Portrait of a Palestinian girl: Lana.

The Case For Obama

From an Arab perspective, foreign policy is paramount as far as the next American president’s intentions are concerned. Of course there is the ambivalent approach on Iran, the position on Israel (read this too), the condescending interventionist stance on Pakistan and all the rest of it. But let’s face it: The question here for anybody who has the privilege to vote in this crucial election and who has primarily foreign policy in mind, is, to put it bluntly, to choose the less worse candidate.

Five Good Reasons

1. His experience with poverty first in Indonesia where he witnessed -reportedly- the effects of an ill advised American foreign policy, supporting an ugly dictatorship, then in Chicago where he preferred working as a community organizer and civil rights lawyer rather than choosing a promising and predictably lucrative career as a corporate lawyer, having just graduated from a prestigious law school.

2. He opposed the war on Iraq well before the illegal invasion started, then he advocated an early and phased withdrawal in concordance with the opinion of a crushing majority of the “international community” (meaning: ordinary people’s).

3. Despite some early contradictory declarations, he generally seeks a renewed diplomacy with a more seasoned approach with Cuba, Syria and Iran. Of course, and as far as the middle-east is concerned, the pressure and the level of infiltration by the Israel lobby and by the Military industrial complex are such that it will be difficult in case Obama had the integrity, soundness and willingness to act as an honest broker, to overturn the flawed system in place. Of course Arabs have to walk the walk after having talked the talk, far from primitive and futile violence.

4. The power of symbolism. In other words: the simple fact of having a black, self-made, left-leaning (in American terms of course), charismatic and clearly smart American president (at least in comparison with the imbecile outgoing one) may in and of itself contribute to temper international relations, and inject hope an positive expectation not only amongst Americans but also to some extent, amongst young secular people over the world -literally.

5. He has met late Edward Saïd. This reason may sound childishly naive and senseless but this is a reason enough to me, if I were American, to vote for this guy, knowing that at some point of his existence, has been exposed to the reasonable discourse of a secular, exiled Palestinian intellectual explaining eloquently his plight and that of his people.

Now of course one could argue for hours about the nature of the political system in America, which is, as far as I’m concerned, more of an oligarchy that it is a democracy, but again an Obama president has the potential to change something of some size, to some extent positively to make the current status quo more viable.

The visionary dream of a compassionate pastor from Atlanta called King, nearly forty years ago may come soon true. Let us just hope that the man now about to achieve that dream will set about to also fulfill the other vision of Dr. King dreaming of a Revolution of Values.

Picture Courtesy of “Stevegarfield.”

The Sting

Socialising Risk, Privatizing Profit

What happens when a democracy gets hijacked? When the pillars of justice metamorphose into pillars of sand and salt? When what was intended to be the Land of the Free, Home of the Brave transforms into a open battlefield for mean private rascals who don’t give a damn about public interest and social justice let alone justice in international relations?

I have to admit, I’m a complete novice as far as finance and economy are concerned, but let’s forget about the figures, shall we, and let us just talk in human terms.

Whatever the extent to which one might despise Capitalism in the sense with which it is run and presented to the world, i.e. an extreme egotistical and cruel social and political system, one should recognize the benefits liberal ideals have brought to humanity. It would be indeed extremely hypocritical to claim that without the spirit of freedom and self-initiative inspired and led by America and then inoculated to the world, humanity would have achieved much. The problem, from my humble point of view, is that the very noble ideals set forth by the so-called fathers of the American revolution, whom I’m sure had no Wall-Street gamblers nor pressure groups in mind when they were writing their constitution, have been diverted then perverted by private power in America to the point that the federal government has become a mere executioner for the benefit of a wealthy and extremely influential oligarchy.

What did Chomsky say? … ‘What remains of democracy is largely the right to choose among commodities.’ … He added that ‘Business leaders have long explained the need to impose on the population a “philosophy of futility” and “lack of purpose in life,” to “concentrate human attention on the more superficial things that comprise much of fashionable consumption.”

‘Deluged by such propaganda’ he said, ‘people may then accept their meaningless and subordinate lives and forget ridiculous ideas about managing their own affairs. They may abandon their fate to corporate managers and the PR industry and, in the political realm, to the self-described “intelligent minorities” who serve and administer power.’

And indeed they abandoned their fate. The American people, and in fact the world watched in mesmerized silence, the biggest transfer ever of wealth in human existence, from public to private hands, paralyzed as we were by the vision of the so-called doom and gloom that would ensue otherwise.

Is it the end of Capitalism as we know it ? Is it the end of American hegemony? I’m in no position nor capacity to foresee. Now, God knows how much I distrust extreme ideologies including Communism (in the Stalinist or Maoist version… or whatever.) And I’m, by no stretch of the imagination dreaming of a social utopia here. Indeed I hope that the best part of America will survive, that everybody would be able to enjoy the benefits of a free and productive life where fundamental human needs are met and where Justice reigns as the shared human religion. For as much as I despise Capitalism-American style, I realize the wonderful energy-releasing, opportunity-creating machine that a well regulated liberal economy represents.

Consumerist capitalism is an unsustainable way of life, apart from the fact that it is immoral, for the simple reason that we would need three or more planets to barely cover the needs of the greedy crowds that we have all become, deluged, as it were, by all the tempting environment around us.

“Let’s burn the banks,” said almost seriously my friend Yves the other day when we were talking about the matter at lunch time. A radical view supposedly shared by many who maybe are beginning to feel the consequences of the economic sting that now threatens their financial security.

Should America survive, she must rid itself of the ills that have poisoned its soul and have transformed the dream into a nightmare, allowed lobbyists and pressure groups to pervert the political system, the corporate media to subjugate the masses into an obsessive spending herd. All this having in effect corrupted the very spirit in which the American constitution has been written, a document supposed to be the end product of a very rich enlightening century that extracted man from its primitive condition as a slave of either the elements, kings, knights or fundamentalist priests. Leading quite paradoxically to a state of blind arrogance, unprecedented in human history, and most worrying of all, to establishing, in Chomsky’s words, a “profoundly undemocratic character of state capitalist institutions, designed in large measure to socialise cost and risk and privatize profit, without a public voice.”