Making Sense of Things

Posts related to 4. International

It aims to offer outlooks on international affairs – tell us more about your own country!

• 19 November 2011 - Aquaponics – eFISHient food production in Palestine

  Aquaponics in the West Bank

  During our stay at Bustan Qaraaqa in Palestine, we have been lucky enough to volunteer one day a week with Phil and Lorena from Byspokes on aquaponic systems (their website is where the following information comes from). Aquaponics is a combination of aquaculture, which is growing fish in water, with hydroponics, which is growing plants in a liquid. Since they arrived in the West Bank in July 2010 they have been researching, developing and trialing the FIRST EVER aquaponic system constructed behind the Wall!

  They have been developing integrated aquaculture/irrigation systems and aquaponic systems to enhance food security in rural areas of Palestine, where as much as 44% of the population are chronically food insecure. In general, water and space for agriculture here are in short supply, and this is nowhere more apparent than in high density urban areas such as refugee camps. For the last 60 … Read the rest

• 26 October 2011 - The politics of olive harvesting in Palestine

  We are currently staying at Bustan Qaraaqa in Palestine and just happen to be here during olive harvest season… we are also here during an interesting time because of the Shalit Deal, where Israel swaps one Israeli soldier for 1027 imprisoned Palestinians… so, how do we link olives with the Shalit Deal??

  Well, ironically, the olive leaf is a symbol of abundance, glory, wisdom, fertility, pureness and peace… but here people are oppressed, getting their olive groves and rain water cisterns destroyed by Israel as the natural water resources are monopolised (on average Israelis have access to 4 times as much water as Palestinians). People’s ability to sustain themselves is being taken away from them. In the past every self respecting family in Palestine would produce their own olive oil but now many are shifting to buy their oil as access to their land is taken away and their trees are uprooted… more about that later!

  This post … Read the rest

• 02 October 2011 - Growing forests in deserts…

  It has been a long time without posting… we do apologise for such a long silence but the truth is we’ve been extremely busy! We spent most of August hiking in the Swiss Alps and we do hope to be able to share with you our experience with the makers of the über-famous Gruyere cheese… Anyway, after this great holiday, we then went to Jordan to study permaculture. We ended up doing a Permaculture Design Course for two weeks in Amman (it’s now Carly’s second PDC!), followed by a week of conferences/discussions/experience sharing in the Wadi Rum desert, exchanging about agriculture and water harvesting in arid climates; cross-fertilisation of the aid and permaculture sectors; using permaculture in regions where there are land rights conflicts such as Israel and Palestine; using carbon footprint offset taxes to finance permaculture projects, etc… After that, we went to the Occupied Palestinian Territories to visit some of … Read the rest

• 25 July 2011 - “Faced with inhumanity, we must be more human” – A witness account of the Oslo tragedy

  Erik Abild, a Norwegian friend of mine whom I met while working in Gaza, yesterday shared his thoughts about the horrendous and absurd killings which just occurred in Oslo. We particularly appreciate his call for greater humanity. As he puts it perfectly:

  “Today, here in Norway, many politicians and people state that “today we are all AUF” (the name of the youth party). And we are. Just as we all were Japanese when the earthquake struck, or as we all are Somalis when we read about famine. This feeling of community is a part of being human. And this communality, the shared experience of humanity, is essential to hold onto. In the face of inhumanity, we have to be more human. Because there is only this one world, brutal and beautiful, and we only have one fragile life to make our difference in the world we all share as … Read the rest

• 02 June 2011 - Insecurity in Central America, a little heard story

  I just come back from Central America where I was doing a consultancy for a British humanitarian organisation and, given that we don’t hear much about the region in the news, I thought you might be interested to know a bit about it.

  

  The organisation has been operating there for decades but has recently questioned its presence given the drastic deterioration of the security there in the last three years. Indeed, statistically, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador (now known as the “Northern Triangle of Death!”) are amongst the most dangerous countries on earth. While in each of these countries, the levels of insecurity vary from one area to another, this means that aid workers (and of course the population) are living in high-risk areas. In light of this, the aid organisation asked me specifically to assess whether they could continue working in these countries, and if so, provide them … Read the rest

• 23 April 2011 - Living well in the West Bank?

  If you follow this blog regularly (which we are grateful for! ), you know that I’ve recently come back from the Middle-East and already expressed some reflections about my stay in Israel in a previous post. Today I would like to share some thoughts about my stay in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

  As you know, ‘Palestine’ does not exist as a legal entity (although around a hundred countries recognise it as a country and it is likely more will later this year) and is rather referred to the Occupied Palestinian Territories, composed of two disconnected and fragmented territories, namely the West Bank and the Gaza strip. While the former is governed by the party Fatah, the latter is de facto led by the Hamas, an Islamist movement. Although both territories are populated by Arab Palestinians, the West Bank is also occupied by Israeli Jews, essentially settlers. The International Court of

  … Read the rest

• 16 April 2011 - Reflective impressions of Jerusalem

  I am pretty lucky as my job frequently brings me to diverse places of the world. This time, I just come back from Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) composed of the West Bank and of Gaza where I spent the last three weeks. Although I was based for most of my stay in the recluse/closed down Gaza strip (indeed inaccessible to most), I nevertheless also had the chance to stay few days in Jerusalem. This post then relates my impressions of Israel, while I’ll write two other posts about the West Bank and Gaza.

  I’ve been wanting to visit Jerusalem for a looooong time, and indeed, my expectations were met. Its central place in the world’s history is obvious to anyone looking at it, and it remains today one of the most important places for half of the world’s population, namely the Jews, Christians and Muslims.

  

  First, of all,

  … Read the rest

• 16 February 2011 - Chinese companies mass producing fake rice out of plastic…

  … well, that’s what Natural News has reported. Like a previous story about fake eggs being produced in China, we don’t know if it’s true, but it’s still worth reading. Check by yourselves:

  “According to a report in the Korean-languageWeekly Hong Kong, the manufacturers are blending potatoes, sweet potatoes, and plastic industrial resin to produce the imitation rice. A report inVery Vietnam states that an official from the Chinese Restaurant Association has announced that eating three bowls of this fake rice is the equivalent of eating an entire plastic bag. Consuming such plastic material is obviously a serious health hazard, and officials are allegedly gearing up to conduct an investigation into the factories accused of producing the phony rice.”

  The article rightly recalls that this “scandal is not a surprise when considering China’s long legacy food problems, including the 2008 melamine-tainted milk incident where roughly 300,000 people were injured and at least six … Read the rest

• 01 December 2010 - Is WikiLeaks the product of a global conspiracy instigated by the CIA?

  Yep, I know the title is really catchy – sorry!- but many believe that WikiLeaks is indeed the product of a global conspiracy instigated by the CIA. I personally don’t share that view. Having said that, I nevertheless believe that studying the arguments of such proponents is rather interesting (as do a number of sociologists and psychologists), so let’s together make sense of them.

  Let me first put the post into its wider context. As you know, the online whistleblower facilitating website WikiLeaks has released a number of documents – apparently only 200 out of 251 287 - that originate from the US State Department. I’m sure you’ve gone through (some of) these and are aware that they tackle a range of subjects including US diplomats’ views on Iran, North Korea, Russia, France, but also about the United Nations, the Hezbollah, the personality of several world leaders, etc. They offer nothing new … Read the rest

• 20 November 2010 - What ‘Peak Oil’ means, and how you can benefit

  We don’t know how you feel about it, but personally, we struggle with the concept of Peak Oil. The concept itself is easy to understand – basically, Peak Oil refers to the maximum extraction rate of oil after which, oil being a finite resource, the rate of extraction declines.

  

  What we struggle with then, is not the concept itself, but the consequences it implies for me, for you, for us all. As we’ll see below, our industrialised societies are oil-junkies. But try preventing an addict to get his drug by dramatically decreasing his supply in a short amount of time and you’ll rapidly see the effect: tensions at best, hostility at worst.

  As we said, the concept of Peak Oil is easy to understand, but the dramatic effects it carries with it are just too daunting to be able to fully comprehend them. The first problem is that major … Read the rest

older posts »