Living Colour’s Open Letter (to a Landlord):
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2Cf-UOBeN8[/youtube]
Now you can tear a building down
But you can’t erase a memory
These houses may look all run down
But they have a value you can’t see . . .
Month: March 2009
Police detained the opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, at his house in Lahore early Sunday morning hours before his address to a planned demonstration here, and arrested supporters protesting outside his home.
Trying to regain my sense of place today. Heard the track below during the trip – it’s Joanna Newsom’s Peach, Plum, Pear (2006). You’ll either cringe or love it.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcHjAUhtSrk[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efdfGeUKXuU[/youtube]
Last time I was here, this was a brand new hit, played in bars up and down the beach.
Please forgive the sporadic posting of late. This space deserves better than its gotten from me lately, and I’m planning to right that. Soon.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rAHrHd2lcw[/youtube]
A very interesting (and hopefully alarmist) overview of the state of food production across the world, from Der Spiegel:
[Environmental] trends are taking a significant toll on food production: In six of the last eight years world grain production has fallen short of consumption, forcing a steady drawdown in stocks. World carryover stocks of grain (the amount remaining from the previous harvest when the new harvest begins) have dropped to only 60 days of consumption, a near record low. Meanwhile, in 2008 world grain prices have climbed to the highest level ever.
[ . . . ]
Today we are witnessing the emergence of a dangerous politics of food scarcity, one in which individual countries act in their narrowly defined self-interest and subsequently accelerate the deterioration of global equilibrium. This began in 2007 when leading wheat-exporting countries such as Russia and Argentina limited or banned exports in an attempt to counter domestic food price rises. Vietnam, the world’s second-largest rice exporter after Thailand, banned exports for several months for the same reason. While these moves may reassure those living in exporting countries, they create panic in the scores of countries that import grain.
[ . . . ]
The current surge in world grain prices is trend-driven; some of these trends expand demand and others restrict growth in supply. On the demand side, these trends include world population growth of 70 million people a year, a growing number of people consuming more grain-intensive products, and the massive diversion of US grain to ethanol-fuel distilleries. During the last few years, the United States’s use of grain for ethanol has nearly doubled the annual growth in world grain consumption from 19 million metric tons to more than 36 million metric tons.
This isn’t theoretical.
Well, of course there are. Just ask ex Executive Director Dusty Foggo, soon to be settling down for a 37 month stint. Plenty more there, though, if this is any indication:
New documents show the CIA destroyed nearly 100 tapes of terror interrogations, far more than has previously been acknowledged.
[ . . . ]
“The CIA can now identify the number of videotapes that were destroyed,” said the letter by Acting U.S. Attorney Lev Dassin. “Ninety two videotapes were destroyed.”
This isn’t something we ought just pass over.