This is a chart for arms sales by country in 2005. USA is currently tops by far, but if you read the accompanying Boston Globe article from last year, Russia’s trying very hard to catch up.
This is the oxygen that keeps conflicts going a lot longer than they should, and also make them so much more destructive. Remember this when your favorite government (they’re all to blame here, no singling one country out) starts talking about “peace”.
Happy Friday!!
Andrew Leonard of How the World Works makes an interesting argument about corn tortilla prices in Mexico. (If you did not know already, corn prices have been rising steeply in Mexico) Most of the initial blame has been on the diversion of corn to ethanol production, but Leonard fingers a deeper problem.
Much Ado about tortillas and ethanol
Quintana said that when tortilla prices rose in January, the government blamed ethanol. But there were other factors, including an increasing demand for grain by livestock owners, increases in gasoline and electricity prices, and the dominant role in the corn marketplace enjoyed by the American agribusinesses Cargill and Archer-Daniels-Midland, which owns a big stake in Mexico’s biggest tortilla maker, Gruma. As an example, Quintana asserted that Cargill and Gruma had sold 98 million tons of white corn originally intended for human consumption as livestock feed. The diversion of that corn played a critical role in pumping up tortilla prices.
Just a reminder, it takes 25 pounds of corn to make one pound of beef (Yes, It’s what’s for dinner!)
“Just to give you an idea, for each 30-ton container of corn that Cargill imports to Mexico we send back two undocumented migrants from the countryside.”
Interesting point, lost to most American policy makers who rail against immigration, I presume. That’s the beauty of “Free Trade”. The word “free” masks all kinds of inequalities, because “free” can’t be bad, right? The opposite of “free” is “enslaved”, that’s got to be bad, right? How can you be against “free” trade? What, do you support slavery?
As armchair critics debate endlessly on the virtues and vices of carbon trading versus carbon taxes, they are in no danger of losing their armchairs (or their homes, or their money, or their livelihood). Africa and Asia, not so lucky.
Poor Nations to Bear Brunt as World Warms – New York Times
Two-thirds of the atmospheric buildup of carbon dioxide, a heat-trapping greenhouse gas that can persist in the air for centuries, has come in nearly equal proportions from the United States and Western European countries. Those and other wealthy nations are investing in windmill-powered plants that turn seawater to drinking water, in flood barriers and floatable homes, and in grains and soybeans genetically altered to flourish even in a drought. In contrast, Africa accounts for less than 3 percent of the global emissions of carbon dioxide from fuel burning since 1900, yet its 840 million people face some of the biggest risks from drought and disrupted water supplies, according to new scientific assessments. As the oceans swell with water from melting ice sheets, it is the crowded river deltas in southern Asia and Egypt, along with small island nations, that are most at risk.
I read another story about Bangladesh recently, apparently in Bangladesh, there will be both flooding and drought due to cimate change!
We are fighting climate change on the front line,” Professor Nishat
told The Independent earlier this year. “But the battle has to be
integrated across all countries.”Bangladesh has good reason to feel aggrieved at global warming. Its
annual carbon emissions only 0.172 tons per capita, compared to 21 tons
in the US.If the rivers dry up, it would leave Bangladesh completely at the mercy of the rains.
What is to be done? There are no simple answers, but this is a global issue that requires a global solution. There needs to be a relentless push for efficiency and conservation, with technologies being made available sans intellectual property and patent protection to help India and China control emissions. Efficiency is where the low hanging fruit are. This wikipedia article is a decent compendium of options.
Europe has started on the control path already. The U.S has to act, will it do anything this year? Or do we have to wait for this? I am very cynical about the West’s ability and willingness to act in this regard. When the prime contributors and benefiters of a harmful action are not the same as the ones who will face the worst consequences, where’s the will? As life in the third world becomes more miserable, the rich countries can always build more walls.
No fun and games here!
TBTB (Too busy to blog), but this struck me as very weird.
On Google map, everythings back to normal after Katrina | Chron.com – Houston Chronicle
Google’s popular map portal has replaced post-Hurricane Katrina satellite imagery with pictures taken before the storm, leaving locals feeling like they’re in a time loop and even fueling suspicions of a conspiracy.
Scroll across the city and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and everything is back to normal: Marinas are filled with boats, bridges are intact and parks are filled with healthy trees.
“Come on,” said an incredulous Ruston Henry, president of the economic development association in New Orleans’ devastated Lower 9th Ward. “Just put in big bold this: ‘Google, don’t pull the wool over the world’s eyes. Let the truth shine.’ “
I am sure there is the usual, non-conspiracy involving explanation to all of this, and I don’t know enough about NO geography to even verify this fact, but an explanation would be nice!
Update:
Turns out there was a major upgrade of the imagery on the 29th of March. Still does not explain the above…
I had written recently about police firing deaths in West Bengal. It appears that there is a lot more to this story than a case of police overreaction.
BBC NEWS | South Asia | Ten held over India police firing
But there are suspicions that outsiders may have joined the police force to attack the villagers in Nandigram, protesting against the planned acquisition of farmland for an industrial complex.
The West Bengal government has now said it is abandoning the project.
“Outsiders”? That’s informative! Who might these “outsiders” be? More from an Indian source:
The Central Bureau of Investigation -, probing last Wednesday’s Nandigram deaths in police firing, Saturday recovered a huge cache of arms and ammunition from Khejuri, a base of the Communist Party of India-Marxist -.
Ten people, presumed to be members of the CPI-M, were arrested by the probe agency during the operation.
The CPI-M is West Bengal’s ruling party, having been in power for more than thirty years. So the emerging hypothesis is that some “operatives” (read goons) from the ruling party decided to “help” the police clear out the protesting villagers. The tragedy has gone national because the CPI(M) is a supporter of the ruling coalition in India.
It’s a complex issue, one that I want to learn a lot more about. But the gist of the story is that the ruling Communist party in Bengal is trying to kick start industrial development that has been stagnant for many years. The Haldia Development Authority has been tasked with this rather difficult task, and has been going about its merry business trying to acquire land and setup industrial parks and so called special economic zones.
The issue here is not the idea, which is sound, but the process, which has been top-down, and designed and implemented with no input from the people who will be affected. Some level of increased industrialization will provide more infrastructure, jobs and money eventually. But the process needed to be planned so that the farmers affected could transition a little more easily from their generations of farm employment. Medinipur, the district where Nandigram is located is predominantly agricultural with 65% of the rural population working as farmers (source Indian Census 2001). There are nearly 6 million people involved in agriculture in this district alone. That’s an arkload of people who will be affected by a major change in the occupational profile, they need to be considered and consulted.
So when the people affected protested and took the site over, the Chief Minister of West Bengal, Budhaddeb Bhattacharya, asked the police to clear them out, and I guess they took that literally.
These protests are spreading, with unrest in Orissa as well. The good news is that there’s been a lot of outcry, and the whole program has been put on hold pending a national policy on acquisition of land for industries. India is not China, people know how to organize, protest and generally make themselves heard. More importantly, the press will cover stories like these (at least for a few weeks, or until India loses to Bangladesh in the Cricket World Cup! – This happened on Saturday!), so development necessarily takes a slower and more tortuous path. That is not always a bad thing. Will they get the process right the next time they do it, I am not sure, but hopefully, these deaths will not have been in vain.
Eminent domain is the concept that governments can acquire private land for “improvement” and “development” purposes. But what happens when you combine
Well, in India, people die.
BBC NEWS | South Asia | ‘Seven die’ in India farm clash
At least seven people are reported to have died after police fired on farmers protesting at the acquisition of farmland for industry in eastern India. The clash happened in Nandigram in West Bengal state where thousands of riot police have been sent to quell protests against a planned chemical hub. Police say they met fierce resistance from thousands of villagers. Police say two people have died, but doctors in a local hospital say five more men have died of bullet wounds. ‘Land grab’ Farmers in Nandigram have been resisting the West Bengal government’s plan to acquire farms for setting up a hub for chemical industries by an Indonesian company.
As India’s manufacturing infrastructure and increasingly rapid industrialization starts to catch up with its already booming software economy, watch for these tensions to get worse. Indian governments are not used to handling issues like these in an equitable fashion. Hopefully, the sacrifices of these people will change something, but I am not optimistic. Lives are cheap in India. Nobody’s going to write a song about these 7 dead.
UN committee to review India’s compliance in preventing atrocities on Dalits
A special committee of United Nations working for elimination of all forms of racial discrimination will be reviewing India’s compliance of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) in the light of recent incidents of atrocities on Dalits, as highlighted in the Khairlanji killings.
This is sure to elicit howls of “colonialism”, “interference in internal affairs”, and “everybody does it” kind of protests. I am sure that some effigies will be burned. But the caste/class based oppression of disadvantaged communities is still very prevalent in large parts of rural India. Will some international light on this problem fix this? Probably not. But it may force the government to appoint yet another “commission” to study the problem, I guess.
How the other half lives has a good compilation of links on this issue.
Half of India’s children are malnourished – Yahoo! News
With about 46 percent of children underweight — a negligible improvement over the last survey, conducted in 1998-99 — India is in the same league as nations like Burkina Faso and Cambodia. In China, Asia’s other rising economic power and the country India so often compares itself with, only 8 percent of children are underweight.
The improved infant mortality rate — down to 57 per 100,000 births from 68 in 1998-99 — remains dramatically higher than that seen in Western nations, such the Netherlands, where it is 4.
In every category where a comparison between the health of people in the countryside and cities was offered, those in rural areas lagged far behind. The rural infant mortality rate, for example, was 62 per 100,000, compared to 42 the in urban areas.
Such statistics show India “should be worried,” said Werner Schultink of UNICEF. “It’s going to be difficult for India if wants to use its human resources to develop the nation but does not make improvements.”
I don’t really know what to say, it is depressing, and points to the enormous amount of basic nuts and bolts infrastructure work that needs to be done in India. Back to themes from yesterday’s sewer post, it is basic government work, not sexy, not exciting, not flashy, just plodding mundane get it right kind of infrastructure building. It HAS to be done, there’s no sense in pointing to fancy malls in Bangalore or a super wonderful space program. One day, when I have time, I will convert all these percentages to numbers, percentages are good for comparing data, but to get a true sense of the magnitude, I think numbers are necessary. Quick calculation,the 2001 Indian Census says there were 350 million children (15 years old or less) in 2001, well, that makes 170 million starving (okay, “underweight”) children, it’s a happy place, ain’t it?
Does put recycling in context…
Independent Online Edition > Environment
Regardless of how carefully you separate your waste, there is a good chance a disposal firm will dump it all in together with other kinds of plastic trash and ship it to the developing world to be dealt with by a family of migrant workers earning a pittance. They will deal with the salad-bar container, the pistachio ice-cream container and the superfluous bag for carrots in your shopping basket in a variety of different ways – it may be recycled, it may become landfill or it may simply be burnt. Whatever happens, it is generally not a priority for the waste disposal company. Britain dumps around two million tonnes of waste in China every year, everything from plastic mineral water bottles to shopping bags and other forms of superfluous packaging from some of the country’s biggest supermarkets.
Same for India as well. The article says that all of this “recycling” is illegal. But how do you hide 200,000 tonnes of plastic waste?
Read the whole article, it is tragic. Some highlights:
So too are the many and varied health complaints suffered by the local population, who risk multiple skin ailments and exposure to potent carcinogens as they touch the contaminated materials. Poisonous chemical effluents stream into their water supply, turning it black or lurid red, and studies by Greenpeace show that acid rain is the norm in this region. Children are prone to fevers and coughs. Their skin is often disfigured by the toxic plastic waste they have to process.
A report by the University of Shantou on the town of Guiyu, another Guangdong recycling hub, showed that more than 80 per cent of local children suffer from lead poisoning.
Ex-workers ask HLL to accept liability for mercury deaths
The death of a 47-year-old man who had worked for a Hindustan Lever thermometer factory for 18 years brought out hundreds of ex-employees, who had also been exposed to toxic mercury, to the streets.
Scores of people in the area suffer from skin diseases, premature greying, incessant headaches, stomach pain, kidney problems and blood in the urine, say the former workers who approached the Supreme Court in 2005 demanding compensation.
Well, I don’t know what to say. This tragedy goes on in India continuously, occupational pollution exposure is through the roof in most factories. Safety equipment is not used, enforcement is minimal, all in all, in a country of 1+ billion people, some are more expendable than others.
I suspect this one is getting more play because a large multinational is involved. But Indian factories are equal opportunity killers, whether owned by large behemoths like Unilever, or by your local rotary club small businessman.
It looks like they have not even done an autopsy/blood test to look for mercury in this man’s system, so it’s early days.