Hurry! It is only twenty-eight shopping days until international Buy Nothing Day (29 November), when you can express your concern at excessive consumption in the first world by taking a break. To aid your efforts Vancouver-based Adbusters has created some inspirational posters featuring Uncle Sam, the Queen of England, a Canadian Mountie, and the Vicar of Christ.
Sustainable Consumption has all but fallen out of serious international political discussion in recent months, as Felix Dodds told openDemocracy earlier this year. But Adbusters continues to fight the good fight. They have a great line in planet-trashing SUV subvertisements, and are asking your help to fund a public service spot on CNN. Now in its sixth year or so, Buy Nothing Day is getting to be quite a venerable institution, if not yet quite on a par with the Church of Rome.
Peace Fire (Israel/Palestine)
On a recent visit to New York City I visited the Hassidic district of Williamsburg in Brooklyn. Here, the irresistibly named Hatco Hat Company commands a supremely loyal customer base. Small kids with straw-coloured hair and high Slavic cheekbones run from strangers, whispering in Yiddish. Not everybody is friendly, but when my (non-observing Jewish) friends and I (an Anglo-Scot, sharing 50% of my DNA with a banana) stopped into a little café we were treated to (German) sauerkraut combined with (Lebanese) falafel. Lets hear it for globalised cuisine!
Peace Fire - Fragments from the Israel Palestine Story is an even more inspiring combination. Just published, it brings together 107 voices from all sides (there are more than two - see for example openDemocracy contributor Stephen Howe, and openDemocracy North American editor Todd Gitlin ) over the last two years of conflict. This is a vivid work, compiled with integrity and high moral purpose, and its a great read.
In comparison to some entreprises of late 19th and 20th century European colonialism (see last weeks Globolog), Zionism is a pretty benign experiment. And, with nuclear-powered submarines and an anti-missile system under development more advanced even than the US , Israel should be able to maintain its fences for some decades - and all the while build a highly successful, fully globalised economy (cheap foreign Non-Muslim labour with few rights will help, as will the occasional ten-billion dollar donation from the US).
Identity - self-defined - is central to survival, argues Imre Kertész the Jewish-Hungarian recpient of this year's Nobel for Literature. But as, the novelist David Grossman sees it, there is a danger that Israel will entrap itself - in a sense recreate the ghetto. As Albert Einstein clearly understood and stated, open windows are as essential to just and sustainable political settlement as they are in matters of the spirit. And, as Tasmanian novelist Richard Flanagan cautions, "the need to be one thing denies the many things we come from, and the many things we are constantly becoming". OK, enough preaching already.
Oil, Blood and Weapons of Mass Salvation
Is it the hottest party on the planet? In New Delhi delegates from 185 countries are arguing about COP8. Thats not a rehashed TV police show; its the eight session of the conference of the parties (and seventeenth session of the subsidiary bodies) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and Kyoto Protocol.
COP8 includes debate and posturing (including discussion of funding from rich countries for poorer ones to develop new climate friendly technologies, and of systems for reporting and verifying greenhouse gas emissions). And, says party animal Benito Muller, "almost no one is expecting important breakthroughs or decisions" in the final declaration on 1 November. Benito is in New Delhi to put the case for an impact response instrument - a way of getting the money moving quickly when climate-related natural disasters hit big time.
More inventive and imaginative thinking was on show at a gabfest organised by the Royal United Services Institute earlier this month. The event was unusual in that it drew together some serious players from the energy, environmental and security "communities" to puzzle over the Rubiks Cube of energy and environmental security.
Step forward Robert McFarlane, sometime Military Assistant to Dr Henry Kissinger and former National Security Adviser to US President Ronald Reagan. McFarlane now runs energy businesses in Russia (one plans to capture and use billions of dollars worth of gas that is at present flared and wasted from Russian fields; another plans to harness methane seeping from coal mines that accounts for 10% or more of Russian greenhouse gas emissions). Hot-footing it from a recent summit in Houston of Russian and US oil interests earlier this month (see 9 October Globolog), McFarlane told Globolog that US-Russian military co-operation was sure to increase. And human rights? Here, Mr McFarlane did the Do-Ci-Do: "Its like our opening to China in the early 1970s. At that time, the Chinese government was killing thousands. The issue was pragmatic politics. We said, look there is something called the UN Declaration of Human Rights. For our relationship to prosper you need to do something about this. And they did. Similarly, Putin will need to get things sorted out in Chechnya". Well, ask a dam fool question
Of course, Russias greatest problems are not soluble by military means. According to Nicholas Eberstadt, writing in a forthcoming issue of Foreign Affairs, an AIDS pandemic is going to knock the country sideways. Eberstadt also outlines chilling scenarios for China and India. His figures lend support to the call by development economist Jeffrey Sachs for a programme for Weapons of Mass Salvation. "The Bush administration is prepared to spend $100 billion to rid Iraq of Weapons of Mass Destruction(WMD), but it has been unwilling to spend more than 0.2% of that sum ($200m) this year on [Weapons of Mass Salvation such as] the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria", says Sachs. Great stuff, Jeffrey. Will it swing the vote in South Dakota?
Beyond Pinocchio in the southern Caucasus
"BP said they had consulted with local people [in the Kurdish region]. For example, they claimed to have consulted the village of Hacebyram by phone. On our fact-finding mission we found no telephone in the village. The village has been razed. Many of the people from that village, and from many others where the pipeline will run, are dead".
Nick Hildyard,a human rights campaigner, is talking about a pipeline planned by a BP-led consortium that will be part of a huge system linking oil and gas fields in the Caspian Sea to a terminal in the Mediterranean. The Azerbaijan-Georgia-Turkey Pipelines System (AGT) will be one of the biggest projects of its kind - 1,750 kilometres across Azerbaijan, and across Georgia and Turkey to reach the coast at Ceyhan - capable of pumping a million barrels a day to Western markets.
Trouble is, the pipeline will route through regions torn by conflict, including what the Turks refer to as south-east Anatolia, where the Kurds live. "We are extremely concerned that [the project] will exacerbate conflict in the region" says Pete Blatter of Amnesty International.
Campaigners who have first hand experience of BP in Alaska, Colombia, West Papua and elsewhere met with the UK Parliament All Party Group on Human Rights on 28 October to discuss the AGT. "The treaties setting the stage for AGT are the most colonialist I have ever seen" Hildyard told Globolog. The Host Government Agreement, as it is known, "has many of the provisions of the now discredited Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), which would have empowered private investors to extract compensation from foreign governments for legislation that adversely affected their investments, regardless of the public interest".
One catch: the BP-led consortium is demanding "free public money" from development and export credit agencies because otherwise the project is not economically viable. "But public money is not free money. If theyre going to get public money the project has to have a public purpose", says Hildyard. The International Finance Corporation and BP assert that World Bank standards for the protection of indigenous peoples [and ethnic minorities] should not apply to the project.
A campaign against AGT is just getting underway (further information, including booklets from Platform). Note to the Chairmen of the UK Parliament Select Committees on Foreign Affairs and International Development: you could play a constructive role here if you choose to.
No Grass in Mongolia
The secret of being a successful player in the global economy is out. Its grass. On a recent visit to Mongolia, George Soros was struck by the lack of it. "Mongolia is doing good things in governance, which is one of the key elements in successful globalisation. But they have a problem with location, another key element. On a recent visit I went out on the steppe. There is not even any grass for the animals". Next time, George, visit after the rains.
In fact, Soros was making a serious point in a debate last week with the Green politician Caroline Lucas on "whether globalisation can work for the poor". He stressed the potential value of the International Labour Organisation in delivering better terms for workers in China and elsewhere (a view shared by openDemocracy stalwart Jean-Pierre Lehmann) . Soros and Lucas agreed that the worlds poorest countries should not have to depend on export led growth. Lucas painted an enticing vision of enlightened, radical re-localisation of regional economies. Sounds great, but I cant help recalling the experience of the Bioregional Development Group, who are brilliant pioneers in affordable green housing, re-localised jobs and so on. They found that their breakthrough ideas on mini-paper mills for Europe were only affordable in China.
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