UN: Gaza on Brink of Humanitarian Disaster

By Suleiman al-Khalidi

AMMAN - Gaza faces a humanitarian "catastrophe" if Israel continues to prevent aid reaching the territory by blocking crossing points, the head of the main U.N. aid agency for the Palestinians said on Friday.

Karen AbuZayd, commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), said the human toll of this month's sealing of Gaza's goods crossings was the gravest since the early days of a Palestinian uprising eight years ago.

"It's been closed for so much longer than ever before... and we have nothing in our warehouses... It will be a catastrophe if this persists, a disaster," said AbuZayd, whose agency is the largest aid body providing services to Palestinian refugees.

Israel closed the crossings after Palestinian militants responded with daily rocket salvoes to an Israeli army incursion on Nov. 4 into the Hamas-run territory, where a five-month-old, Egyptian-brokered ceasefire had largely been holding.

At present, UNRWA provides rations for 820,000 people classed as refugees and the United Nations' World Food Programme aids a further 200,000 people, AbuZayd told Reuters in Amman.

"They often bring us to the brink but they never have let us really be frightened about whether we are going to have food tomorrow or not," AbuZayd said.

Israel had restricted goods into Gaza despite the truce, which calls on militants to halt rocket attacks in return for Israel easing its embargo on the territory.

"This time throughout this whole truce since June none of us have been able to bring in anything extra that would create a reserve so we had nothing to call upon," she said.

Read on at Common Dreams

Categories: human-rights, humanitarian-crisis, israel, palestine, refugee

Recession? Try the `D' word instead

By Richard Gwyn

"It's time overdue for political leaders and economic experts and the rest to stop saying that we're either already in a recession or are about to slide into one.

"The truth, instead, is that we're either already in a depression or are about to tumble into one.

"No one wants to say this. It's a kind of economic correctness, a superstitious fear that saying the dreaded word will bring the horror on. The reason for this fear is that people always only have in mind the terrible Great Depression of the 1930s.

"There've been other depressions, though. One late in the 19th century, although never as deep or vicious, lasted for close to a quarter-century.

"A depression is simply a bad and prolonged recession or economic downturn, almost always preceded by wild speculation and excessive consumption.

"It's a built-in characteristic of capitalism, as Karl Marx understood very well. It's also a built-in characteristic of human nature, something that Marx didn't understand at all.

"Semantics isn't the reason for using the word 'depression' rather than 'recession.' The technical definitions of both terms are arbitrary anyway.

"The reason is intellectual and political honesty.

"We need to understand, and for this to happen we need to be told by leaders whom we trust that things may stay bad for quite a while, and that at times things may get very bad indeed.

"We need also to understand, and by doing so gain the confidence to cut our leaders some slack, that the various cures now being attempted may well turn out to be the wrong ones, with other approaches having to be substituted. This is to say that tensions and arguments and disappointments are inevitable.

"We need to understand, lastly, that almost no one understands what's now going on.

"That may seem like a wild, alarmist statement. It isn't. Try to think of a single person who predicted accurately what now is happening.

"Everyone, from President-elect Barack Obama on down, is really groping their way along ..."
Source

Categories: recession

Tuesday's Second Biggest Winner: Democracy

"Around 2.2 million more young people voted on Tuesday than did in 2004, accounting for 18 percent of the electorate -- a slight uptick from 17 percent in 2004. But they overwhelmingly voted for Obama: 66 percent to 32 percent - a 34-point spread. That's 25 percent more than the 9-point youth vote advantage Kerry had over Bush ...

"We are witnessing a tremendous ideological shift among young voters - one that could reshape our politics for decades to come. From 1976 through 2004, young voters basically supported the same candidate as older voters in most elections. During that time, the average gap in presidential choice between young voters and the overall electorate was only 1.8 percent. In 2008, that gap was 28 percent, with Obama winning by 6 percent -- but carrying the youth vote by 34 percent ..."
Arianna Huffington

Categories: obama, youth, usa

Obama cites NYT article on failings of agribiz and monoculture

"I was just reading an article in the New York Times by Michael Pollen about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it's creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs because they're contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in healthcare costs. That's just one sector of the economy. You think about the same thing is true on transportation. The same thing is true on how we construct our buildings. The same is true across the board."
Source

Categories: permaculture, agribiz, obama, sustainability

Clean feeds

"Last week, in an otherwise sleepy Senate Estimates session, Greens senator Scott Ludlum asked fellow senator and Minister for Communication Stephen Conroy a series of questions about the Government's proposal to 'filter' the internet sites Australians can view. As Ludlum thrust and Conroy parried, neither suspected their tussle would ignite mass action. But, like a landmine buried just below the scene of their affray, the whole thing has suddenly blown up.

"Campaigns have been launched, protests planned, reports filed throughout the broadcast media. Conroy now faces a rising chorus of complaints from backbenchers who suddenly find themselves deluged with emails from constituents.

"All of this is due principally to the emergence of a new kind of connectivity, the 'social message service'. Typified by Twitter, a web service now mushrooming in popularity, these social message services allow you to subscribe to messages from your friends, while your friends can 'follow' you and receive your messages. Across dense webs of interconnections (with many people all reading the messages of one another, forwarding the best messages along, etc.)

"Twitter has become a bit of an early warning system ..."
Source

See this item at Wilson's Blogmanac for background to Sen. Conroy's crazy plans to 'clean up' the Internet. See also the rather frightening Countrywide inet filters launched in Australia.

See also an articulate attack on Australia's misguided plan on Net censorship here at YouTube. (Lid dip to Nora from Extra! Extra!)

Categories: internet, australia, civil-rights, censorship, authoritarianism, social-network