Source: Permavisions

Source: Steve Cran, Global Sustainability Corps. Content created by Steve Cran and Global Sustainability Corps is licensed under Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

I meet Villy the Indian tractor driver. He’s in the cafe placing a lengthy order to a woman who is staring at him blankly. I tell him forget it mate, just ask what she’s got because there is only that. No menu’s here. He smile a big Indian smile and waggles his head. His ears stick out of the side of his head like beer mug handles. I can sense he is a pretty good guy. Villy tells me he is plowing all the poor peoples land for a government project, (there’s an election coming up). He is sad because the people have no seed. I tell him he can have some of the seed I have but the people must save their seed from this crop for the next one. He waggles his head and thanks me.

A week later I see Villy in the cafe. He looks like hell. He is sweating and his usual smile is fading. He tells me he has “bad toilet problems” and his joint aches. I ask him what he has been drinking. Maybe he has dysentery. He tells me he has been drinking 15 bottles of coke a day. What?….Bloody hell, Villy, that crap will kill you, I tell him. No more coke!

Next day I hear Villy is in Hallaleyah Hospital with malaria. I go the hospital which is a brick building looking like a warehouse. In the backroom is a stained mattress with Villy laying on it covered in sweat. He has a drip attached to his arm. I ask him how he is doing. “I’m very much vomiting” he rasps and still tries to waggle his head. “Are you drinking water mate?” I ask him. He shakes his head. You gotta drink or you’ll die, I tell him. I sit with him for a while remembering my first time with malaria. It’s the worst feeling, like being savaged by demons awake or asleep.

Its getting dark. Mosquitoes are biting me. There are other patients laying on beds in the other room. I wonder if the mosquitoes have bitten them first. Villy has no bed net. Time to get Villy outta here. I force him up and disconnect his drip. The nurse comes in and protests. She gives in when she looks into my eyes and takes out the drip connection from his arm. “Gimme your wallet Villey” I tell him. I pay the nurse for the treatment with Villys money and drag him down the road to a hotel and check him in. The soccer’s on and everybody is cheering as I help Villy to his room.

His brother is coming to pick him up tomorrow. Goodnight Villy and don’t even think about a coke for 6 months. He falls asleep while I’m looking at him. Villy’s lucky somebody was watching out for him. Plenty people die here from malaria. Somebody saved me once and it was my turn to return the favour.

I jump into the landcruiser. My bags are packed. Its an 8 hour ride from hell to Kampala. We go a different way there than before so I get to see the country. There are so many NGO’s with offices in every town. We always make jokes about their names like “War Child” and another called “Peace Child.” What happens when they meet? Do they cancel each other out? There’s “Save the Children” and I’d joke who’s going to save the rest of the people? I saw one NGO called “Invisible Children.”

It must be hard to round up those children if they’re invisible. Many of the local NGO’s have the christian cross on their logo. One has the cross, the bible and some cows. It could be cows for Jesus. There’s doctors without borders, engineers without borders and veterinarians without borders.

I may start one up called “Save the Borders!”

The best one I reckon was in Moroto. There we spotted a vehicle with DED on the side. I said to Santos Hey how would you inspire people in the field if your NGO was called DED. Later we nicknamed Matius, the bloke driving the car , “the DED guy.” We had plenty of DED jokes especially when we found out he was doing a peace building project with the K’jong warriors.

Let’s hope he doesn’t live up to his nickname! I’m pretty cynical about all these charities and Non Government Organizations. All that money pumped into this place with little to show after 40 years. Some organizations get some good projects going but mostly its the usual stuff. I call em “stop and flop” projects because they fail as soon as the NGO leaves or finishes the funding. You know your project is good if it continues to grow after you go. That’s a “go and grow project.”

The land-cruiser is flying down the bush roads leaving a dust tail 300 meters long. Finally we find a bitumen highway of sorts. Now we are really moving. 130kph passing all kinds of vehicles going both ways. Best not to look I tell myself. I’m still a bit jumpy after rolling the batmobile. We see baboons on the side of the road. Maybe they’re hitch-hiking. We don’t pick them up.

After a few hours we stop at a honey project run by an NGO. They have a workshop set up to make beehives made from cane and mud. I try the African honey. WOW! Very nice, like a perfumed honey. There is a little sign attached to the trees spouting messages about the environment. Under the sign is a pile of plastic garbage. Where do you put garbage when there is no dumps? Everywhere is the answer.

Back in the vehicle and continue to Kampala. Finally the villages become towns. We pull over at the side of the road behind a bus. All these dudes selling meat skewered on a stick shove them through the open window. I’m not hungry as I watch the driver make a selection. Something slaps against my window. Its a plastic bag full of pale yellow stuff with a wicked smell like…rancid butter! Its butter Santos tells me. Want some? My hygiene alarm is beeping. NO WAY I say.

Soon we are in the capital city of Uganda. So much food for sale on the side of the road. We get stuck in a traffic jam next to “Mother Darling’s comfortable furniture” factory. People with stuff to sell are trying to look through the vehicles tinted window. Some of the sellers are Karamajong women with tribal scars on their faces. Beggars, mostly children and women with babies scratch at the window. The traffic is weaving all over the place like a bunch of drunks. Its the massive potholes in the highway. Your car could seriously disappear in those. I’m visualizing a hot shower and some western food. All is possible in this crazy city.

I have finished up planning the next phase. We will train 50 Green warriors in a 3 week boot camp. We have tents, tarpaulins and a field kitchen. These warriors will have to dig their own toilets, set up their own showers and build several gardens around Abim in the 3 weeks we have them. After that the survivors will go to the field and build gardens in the villages, mainly around the bore pumps.

Every 4 weeks they return for “master classes” like earth oven building or nursery skills. At the end of 6 months whoever is left will be employable by any NGO or community. I even have 2 guys from the prison as staff.

The course is a modified permaculture design certificate course. Some of the participants cant read and write but the course covers that with hands-on skills. Half or more of the students will be women. I’ve already invited a few tough ones I’ve met in my travels. We also have a manual “The Five Rings of Sustainability” which I wrote with 3rd world trainers in mind.

This is my last blog for a few weeks. I’m taking a break and going back to Australia. I’m coming back with some goodies for the next phase. I’m dreaming of those 50 Green Warriors training 500 Green Warriors training 5000 Warriors…..

Source: Steve Cran, Global Sustainability Corps. Content created by Steve Cran and Global Sustainability Corps is licensed under Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

Permaculture Cooperation: Climate Change & Peak Debt

Robert Z. Lawrence is Albert L. Williams Professor of International Trade and Investment, a Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Professor Lawrence was a speaker at the United States Studies Centre’s 2009 National Summit, Sustainable Globalisation: Will It Survive the GFC?

Andong Zhu

Guest Blogger, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

After the biggest, multi-trillion dollar stimulus plan in human history was implemented by the governments of many countries, financial indicators, world trade volume and industrial production all show positive signs. According to a recent calculation by American economist Barry Eichengreen, world equity markets, world trade, and world industrial production all recovered from the trough (50%,20%,13% below the previous peak, respectively) to the current situation (25%,8%,6% below the previous peak, respectively). The latest World Bank forecasts of world GDP growth in 2010 and 2011 are 2.7% and 3.2%, after a decline of 2.2% in 2009.

Stock market indices in several so-called emerging economies, such as Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, have already returned to or surpassed their previous peaks. In China, the real estate market is booming to the extent that house prices in the major cities have surpassed their 2008 peaks to reach outrageously high levels. Car sales in China in 2009 exceeded 13.64 million, 3.4 million higher than in the United States. With these indicators bringing some optimism to markets and policy-making circles, talk has begun about the return to normalcy and the exit strategy for the stimulus plan.

However, this may be excessive optimism. Not all the indicators look so good. According to the International Labor Organization, the number of jobless people around the world climbed to an historic high with nearly 212 million unemployed last year, or 6.6 per cent of the global workforce. In January 2010, unemployment in OECD nations amounted to 46.2 million, or 8.7% of total labor force, with rates of more than 10 per cent in the US and nearly 20 per cent in Spain. Without a real recovery in the labor market, we cannot expect a sustained recovery of household income and consumption, and the whole economy. Therefore，returning to normalcy in the near future may be wishful thinking.

Before the crisis broke, mainstream economists and political elites ignored the warnings of a possible crisis. For example, a 2006 IMF report on the global real estate boom asserted that there was “little evidence … to suggest that the expected or likely market corrections in the period ahead would lead to crises of systemic proportions.” After the crisis the same denial has been evident, with assertions that no one predicted the crisis and furthermore, it is in any case unpredictable.

But the fact is that many heterodox economists did warn of and predict the crisis. Dirk J Bezemer from Groningen University has noted at least 12 analysts did so on the basis of careful reasoning. Of course, it would not be difficult to add many more names to his list.

Then, why should such denial continue, and even be enhanced with the return to business as usual? The continuing political and economic power of finance internationally and within countries has a lot to do with this. It is only too clear that financiers have not been defeated by the crisis, and financial interests continue to exert disproportionate power over political establishments, including in the US.

This is also why such mainstream rethinking as is occurring is only about financial markets. The fundamental reasons, such as the nature of the capital-labor relation, growing inequality, the effects of neoliberal policies, etc., are almost totally excluded from the mainstream reflection. Furthermore, mainstream rethinking on financial market is focused on some relatively superficial issues, such as the need for regulation. Therefore, the current proposed reform of international financial markets also concentrates on these issues, without even considering the possibility of fundamental changes. The old games continue, with the old rules and even the same old players.

But this will not last long, because the crisis is not really over. Eventually, as business and the real economy are unlikely to return to normalcy in the near future, this will hurt the strength, influence and power of the financiers. And this will push the general public to rethink the fundamental reasons of the crisis. So a return to “normalcy” is no longer possible without fundamental changes, which in turn imply that the system will be different from what is now seen as normal!

Source: TripleCrisis

Our meetings are held on the 3rd Monday of every month (except January) at the:
Ku-ring-gai Centre for Seniors 259 Pacific Highway Lindfield [map]
Doors open at 7pm for a 7:30pm start.Phone 1300 887 145, or email info@permaculturenorth.org.au for more information.

Nicholas was born in Sydney and grew up on a small chicken farm on the rural fringe of the western suburbs of Newcastle in the Hunter Valley. Nicholas has founded a number of Permaculture cooperatives including Permaculture Groups, Permaculture NEWS Cooperative and Permaculture TV and he makes the case that cooperative are a key structure that Permaculturalists can use to organise and work effectively together.

In the early 90s he completed a PDC at Crystal Waters with Max Lindegger as teacher and followed this by WWOOFing at Bill Mollison’s Tyalgum farm and a few other properties in Australia and Italy. The last 5 years Nicholas has been making a wiggly transition from an IT media career in the big end of town (with stops, starts and backtracks) into sustainability and media, with most of his efforts going into research and publishing and the formation of a global Permaculture Cooperative. Taking sanctuary in Robyn Francis’ Djangbung Gardens (now Permaculture College Australia) he did more experiments with a Permaculture cooperative project that became PermacultureTV.

During 2009, Nicholas toured Australia, California, New York, France, Basque Country, Spain, England, Scotland and Denmark researching Permaculture cooperation in the context of climate change and peak debt. In 2010 Nicholas and his partner plan to be the USA and Europe researching and working with Permaculture cooperatives. They will continue to use media to spread the concepts and developments of Permaculture cooperatives.

permaculturenorth.org.au

Michael Konczal on a 21st Century Glass-Steagall (MMBM) from Roosevelt Institute on Vimeo.

Simon Johnson presents his chapter on the Doom Cycle that produces (and predicts) increasingly greater financial crises - at the Roosevelt Institute’s ‘Make Markets Be Markets’ conference on March 3, 2010.

Simon Johnson on the Doom Cycle (MMBM) from Roosevelt Institute on Vimeo.

In the disturbingly near future, Venice is submerged, Canal Street in New York City has become a real canal again, and it’s 87 degrees in December in Boston. Catastrophic global warming has moved from theory to fact. At the Biosphere Climate Change Expo, undersecretary for the Department of Global Warming Mason Park (Tim Kang) informs the crowd of scientists and activists that the tipping point has passed, and that they are all at fault.

He tells them that the scientists of the world failed to create the necessary pressure, which would have allowed for the political changes needed to confront global warming. Now the Department of Global Warming has been defunded, drying up research money for climate initiatives.

That night at the hotel bar, Park runs into Dr. Gloria Holtzer (Betty Gilpin), a former graduate school classmate, and one of the scientists who will be losing her grant money. Park blames himself for failing to prevent the climate catastrophe in time, but finds comfort in Holtzer’s arms. However, she has an ulterior motive. Park awakens in the morning and soon realizes that everything has changed.

Holtzer’s ecotech company has developed an entirely new way to confront the challenge of catastrophic global warming — by changing the very nature of the human race itself. And Park has become a very powerful test subject.

Mister Green is a parable about change — both personal and political.

Source: FutureStates.TV