SUNDAY SERMON IV

PASSION Peter Gabriel,1989 

Ultima Tentazione di Cristo 

dir.art. M.Fargnoli, F.Albano 

Open ensemble

LIVE

PASSION di Peter Gabriel, Prima esecuzione dal vivo della colonna sonora del film L' Ultima Tentazione di Cristo di Martin Scorsese (1989) da un'idea di Massimo Fargnoli, nell'ambito della rassegna 'Musica dello Spirito'' da lui ideata e diretta in collaborazione con il Comune di Napoli, Assessorato alla Cultura. Napoli domenica 13 dicembre 2015, 

Piazza del Plebiscito. Francesco Albano Open ensemble live 

Francesco Albano : Tastiere, Basso elettrico, Chitarra e Live electronics 

Riccardo Veno : Doudouk, Bansuri, Shalumeau, Flageolet, Ciaramella, Sipsi, Sax soprano 

Edo Notarloberti : Violino Salvio Vassallo : Batteria e Percussioni 

Paolo Cimmino e Francesca Del Duca : Percussioni, Frame drums, Riqq, Darbouka, Djiembe, Bendir, Daf, Gatham, Bodrhran, Caxixi 

Bruno Sacchi e Valentina Gaudini : Voci DYI String Quartet Post produzione audio video a cura di Paolo Lambiase.



Peter Gabriel ~ 'Passion' {Outtakes}


Oraelius
Music for The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)

0:02 ~ The Feeling Begins

4:25 ~ Disturbed

7:40 ~ Passion 

14:32 ~ Cor Anglais Theme 

16:31 ~ It Is Accomplished

21:50 ~ Bass Bowl

25:42 ~ With This Love

29:37 ~ Wall of Breath

35:46 ~ It Is Accomplished 2

42:45 ~ Trills

43:49 ~ Bread and Wine

48:12 ~ The Feeling Begins 2

52:18 ~ Of These, Hope 

53:24 ~ Lazarus Raised

56:59 ~ Location Recording – Morocco 

58:23 ~ Location Recording – Unknown 

Bonus: 1:00:00 ~ It Is Accomplished (Resurrection Remix) by Oraelius 

RELATED LINKS: Oraelius Remixes ~ PETER GABRIEL: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...

Peter Gabriel ~ I/ॐ: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list... 

Peter Gabriel ~ I/O: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list... 

OPUS GENESIS: https://www.youtube.com/user/SoulDirt... 

The Opus Marcus Podcast: https://opusmarcuspodcast.com

Mid-1990s interview with Peter Gabriel re. scoring Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ. He discusses getting involved with the project, finding the best regional musicians to bring the score to life, and the rough road to financing and completing the "Passion" score.

 

Peter Gabriel & Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - Passion

Undermining the Democratic Process: The Canadian Government Suppression of Palestinian Development Aid Projects

Jeremy Wildeman
30 Pages
1 File ▾
Countless Canadians have for decades been trying to provide support to Palestinians living under military occupation in the occupied Palestinian territories. However, they have often faced strong resistance from pro-Israel advocates and elites in Canada, including their own government. This paper looks at the government suppression of Canadian development sector organisations running Palestinian aid projects 2001 to 2012, including from the perspective of the people running them. Based on document analysis, policy analysis and original semi-structured interviews with coordinators running aid projects, it describes how their work was almost universally undermined by the Canadian government. Tactics uncovered include appointing ardent pro-Israel advocates to an organisation's management, defunding specific projects, defunding entire organisations, launching questionable audits, spurious allegations of terrorism and the forced closure of organisations. This oppression was particularly overt under the Harper Conservative government, but had a basis in earlier Liberal governments. This interference provides an understanding for the fear that exists surrounding Palestinian aid work in Canada and the process by which Canadian aid to Palestinians is rendered ineffective. The paper further argues that while these tactics were likely first honed against Palestinian solidarity work, they were then used against other progressive groups, undermining Canadian civil society and democracy.

https://www.academia.edu/37660610/Undermining_the_Democratic_Process_The_Canadian_Government_Suppression_of_Palestinian_Development_Aid_Projects?pls=RWLSxnqyad

Economic Impact of GMOs
Researched By Nogenics, https://www.facebook.com/groups/Nogenics/
GMO Bio-Piracy, Bt & GMO Companion Chemical Pesticides

1-According to an India Today Report

 2- According to ‘The Ecologist’ Reported

3- Why Bt Technology is an Economical Disaster in the Making

4- The Economic Health Impact of Bt Toxicity and GMO Poisonous Companion Pesticides -

Conclusion

https://www.academia.edu/3419876/Global_Economic_Impact_of_GMOs

The Neoliberal Food Regime: Neoregulation and the New Division of Labor in North America 

Gabriela Pechlaner Department of Social, Cultural and Media Studies, University of the Fraser Valley 

Gerardo Otero  Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Simon Fraser University 

 Abstract

We undertake a comparative investigation of how neoliberal restructuring characterizes the third food regime in the three North American countries. By contrasting the experience of the two developed countries of the United States and Canada with that of the developing country of Mexico, we shine some empirical light on the differential impact of neoliberal regulatory restructuring on the division of labor in agriculture within the North American Free Trade Agreement region. In particular, we investigate these countries’ agricultural production markets, trade, and food vulnerability—with an emphasis on Mexico—as analytical points for comparing and contrasting their experience with this neoliberal restructuring. We start with a synthesis of food- “neoliberal food regime.” We then discuss our case-study countries in terms of food vulnerability and resistance in Mexico, their differential relationships to trade liberalization, and what these trends might mean for the evolution of the neoliberal food regime. We conclude that, while dominant trends are ominous, there is room for an alternative trajectory and consequent reshaping of the emerging regime: sufficient bottom-up social resistance, primarily at the level of the nation–state, may yet produce an alternative trajectory

https://www.academia.edu/1048900/Gabriela_Pechlaner_and_Gerardo_Otero_2010_The_Neoliberal_Food_Regime_Neoregulation_and_the_New_Division_of_Labor_in_North_America_Rural_Sociology_75_2_179_208

 

The Third Food Regime: Neoliberal Globalism and Agricultural Biotechnology in North America

Gabriela Pechlaner and Gerardo Otero*

The agricultural sector is currently being shaped by two powerful dynamics as many nations reorganise their national agriculture according to free trade and other supranational agreements while new agricultural biotechnologies are increasingly adopted. This interrelationship between regulatory change and genetic engineering appears set to form the basis of a new food regime. In this article, we compare the role of national and international regulations relating to the technology, and the impact of local resistance to it, in the advanced capitalist countries of Canada and the USA and the developing country of Mexico. Similar to food regime perspectives, our study concludes that neoliberal regulatory reorganization is an important component of the evolving food regime.

Further, Mexico bore the brunt of the technology’s negative social impacts, demonstrating how it exacerbates existing inequalities between developed and developing nations. Resistance movements in the country have been sufficient to call into question the inevitability of a homogenous reorganization of agriculture, however. Evidence suggests that such resistance could modify, or even derail, this technology’s role in individual nations, and consequently, in the unfolding food regime as a whole

https://www.academia.edu/1048912/Gabriela_Pechlaner_and_Gerardo_Otero_2008_The_Third_Food_Regime_Neoliberal_Globalism_and_Agricultural_Biotechnology_in_North_America_Sociologia_Ruralis_48_4_351_371

Civil society challenges the global food system: the International Monsanto Tribunal

Nienke Busscher

Lidewij van der Ploeg

Julia Gabella

Amalia Leguizamón

2020, Globalizations

299 Views16 Pages

1 File ▾

Social Movements,

Globalization,

Human Rights,

Food Systems,

Agriculture

 ...more ▾

Show more ▾

The global food system has severe implications for human health, soil quality, biodiversity, and quality of life. This paper provides an analysis on how transnational alliances challenge the global food system. We illustrate this by focusing on the activities and hearings of the International Monsanto Tribunal (IMT), held in the Hague in 2016. The IMT provided a platform for civil society and enabled transnational alliances to demand attention for local struggles and legal disputes in relation to Monsanto’s products. With the involvement of independent and renowned experts, the knowledge exchange between local victims and civil society was enhanced, and the IMT reinforced social movement’s goals towards demanding justice for the negative effects associated with the global food system. The advisory opinion determined that Monsanto’s practices are in violation with human rights standards. The IMT exemplified that there is an immediate need for structural change in the current global food system.

https://www.academia.edu/38703134/Civil_society_challenges_the_global_food_system_the_International_Monsanto_Tribunal

 

Bigger is Not Always Better: Drivers and Implications of the Recent Agribusiness Megamergers

Jennifer Clapp

155 Views42 Pages

1 File ▾

Mergers & Acquisitions,

Food Policy,

Agriculture,

Agricultural Biotechnology,

Multinational Corporations

 ...more ▾

Abstract: The global agrifood industry is undergoing profound upheaval, with a spate of mergers, acquisitions and deals that are consolidating the sector. The mergers announced in 2015 and 2016, for example -- including Dow and Dupont, ChemChina and Syngenta, and Bayer and Monsanto -- are poised to change the face of the agricultural inputs sector. This paper examines the political and economic dynamics surrounding these large transnational agribusiness megamergers and reflects on the broader implications of these deals for global environmental and food politics. The paper advances two arguments. First, it makes the case that the current wave of mergers is in some ways similar to past waves of consolidation in the sector, but also different in important ways. Past mergers in the sector were driven largely by technological innovation and integration along with strengthened intellectual property protection. Further technological innovation and integration remains important for today’s mergers, but it is not the only driver. The current mergers are also deeply shaped by increased financialization in the agrifood sector that has prioritized investor demands for profits in ways that encourage corporate consolidation. Second, the paper argues that past episodes of consolidation in the sector had important implications for questions of economic fairness, farmer autonomy, environmental sustainability and political power, and that the proposed mergers are likely to result in even more pronounced effects on these fronts. Yet while these concerns are wide-ranging, the evaluation measures used by regulatory bodies to assess the impacts of the mergers only partially capture the ways in which they affect economic fairness, and say little on questions of environmental impact, farmer autonomy, and power inequities.

https://www.academia.edu/34400144/Bigger_is_Not_Always_Better_Drivers_and_Implications_of_the_Recent_Agribusiness_Megamergers?pls=RWLSxnqyad

Monsanto: Origins of an Agribusiness Behemoth

Brian Tokar

2019, The Fight Against Monsanto’s Roundup: The Politics of Pesticides, edited by Mitchel Cohen

133 Views17 Pages

1 File ▾

Show more ▾

Today’s Monsanto (now part of Bayer) is a far more specialized operation than it was in the 1990s. While the Monsanto of the early 2000s to 2010s focused almost entirely on biotechnology, seeds, and a limited range of agrochemicals, especially its Roundup brand herbicides, it was once a broadly diversified chemical manufacturer, one of only four to be listed among the top ten U.S. chemical companies in every decade from the 1940s - 1990s. To better understand the company’s emergence as the leading developer and promoter of genetically manipulated agriculture and Roundup herbicides, it is important to first examine its history.

https://www.academia.edu/38057991/Monsanto_Origins_of_an_Agribusiness_Behemoth

'Reckoning for Roundup Rolls On': Ninth Circuit Court Upholds Verdict in Case Against Monsanto

Edwin Hardeman was awarded $25 million in his case which showed Monsanto was responsible for his cancer diagnosis after decades of using Roundup.

by Julia Conley, staff writer

Published on Friday, May 14, 2021
by Common Dreams



A customer shops for Roundup weed killer in San Rafael, California, on July, 9, 2018. (Photo: Josh Edelson//AFP via Getty Images)


"The reckoning for Roundup rolls on."

So said George Kimbrell, legal director of the Center for Food Safety, on Friday after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco affirmed a lower court ruling against Monsanto (since acquired by Bayer) which found the chemical giant responsible for the cancer suffered by users of its signature herbicide Roundup.

The 9th Circuit rejected an appeal by Bayer in Hardeman vs. Monsanto, in which Edwin Hardeman accused the company of failing to disclose the dangers glyphosate poses to human health. Hardeman was awarded $80 million in the case, which was later reduced to $25 million.

"Today's appeals court ruling is another reminder the Biden administration should act and revoke the registration of glyphosate immediately."
—George Kimbrell, Center for Food Safety

Hardeman was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma in 2015 after two decades of using Roundup as an herbicide on his 56-acre property. His case was one of several high-profile lawsuits against Monsanto over its use of glyphosate. The company agreed to pay $10.9 billion to a total of about 125,000 people last year, all of whom alleged the use of Roundup was to blame for their cancer diagnoses.

The Environmental Protection Agency backed Bayer in its latest appeal in Hardeman's case, in which the company claimed the jury verdict should be nullified because states don't have the authority to deviate from federal regulations for herbicides.

The three-judge panel ruled that California's failure-to-warn law was consistent with the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA).

"FIFRA did not impliedly preempt Hardeman's state failure-to-warn claims," the court said.


Bayer also claimed that the World Health Organization's classification of glyphosate as a carcinogen should not have been entered into the court record as evidence. The judges ruled that "that the district court did not abuse its discretion in admitting" the evidence.

The Center for Food Safety, which filed an amicus brief in support of Hardeman last year, called the ruling a major victory "for all those who care about protecting human health and the environment and holding corporations accountable for the harm they cause."

Kimbrell said the group was "gratified that the Ninth Circuit unanimously rejected Monsanto's arguments that Mr. Hardeman and thousands of others harmed by their products are prohibited by federal law from suing to redress their injuries. The Court also properly upheld the reliance on the World Health Organization's classification of glyphosate as a probable carcinogen."

Despite international experts' warnings about glyphosate and decisions by policymakers in Austria, Germany, and other countries to phase out or ban the chemical, the EPA still claims that glyphosate is "unlikely to be a human carcinogen."

"Center for Food Safety is currently challenging the federal approval of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, as unlawful for a number of reasons—including cancer risks to farmers and farmworkers from exposure," said Kimbrell. "Today's appeals court ruling is another reminder the Biden administration should act and revoke the registration of glyphosate immediately."

Who Funds the Climate Crisis?

For fossil fuel companies, what drives their profit is ownership of carbon in the ground. That's why they have spent billions of dollars stoking the climate denial industry and fighting regulations.

by Cynthia Kaufman
Published on Friday, May 14, 2021
by Common Dreams



A protester holds a banner at the rally outside JP Morgan Headquarters in Manhattan, New York. (Photo: Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images)


First the good news: The technology needed for a carbon-free economy in every country in the world already exists. It is affordable, most of it will make our lives better, and making that transition rapidly would cost less than cleaning up the disasters anticipated by inaction on climate.

Now the not so good news: To achieve the very ambitious goals scientists have put forth to keep the planet habitable, such as reducing emissions and carbon capture, we need to act quickly; because the human and social costs to those living in the path of destruction, a disproportionate number of whom are low-income people of color, is incalculable.

Who is slowing the transition to a just and sustainable society?

There are many businesses still profiting off antiquated and destructive technology; many politicians who are still funded by them; and many in the world of finance who still see them as business partners.

Fossil fuel companies, like all corporations, are designed for generating profit. As society changes to require sustainable practices, many companies will be able to shift their business models to achieve the triple bottom line of profit, people, and planet. But for fossil fuel companies, what drives their profit is ownership of carbon in the ground. That’s why they have spent billions of dollars stoking the climate denial industry and fighting regulations.

We are not all on the same side in the fight for a sustainable future. There are many businesses still profiting off antiquated and destructive technology; many politicians who are still funded by them; and many in the world of finance who still see them as business partners. A company like Enbridge’s core business is building fossil fuel infrastructure. They are not going to shift to a green business model.

Stop the Money Pipeline


While the fossil fuel companies themselves cannot be counted on to become champions of the transition to a sustainable economy, the world of finance can change and remain profitable. And it is this group of actors that we need to pressure. Stop the Money Pipeline shares information on those funders and fights to expose their work. The key funders of Enbridge’s Line 3—a 1,097-mile crude oil pipeline extending from Alberta to Superior, Wisconsin—are Liberty Mutual, Blackrock, Wells Fargo, and JP Morgan chase. They are direct funders and insurers of the pipeline. If they withdrew their support the project would be stopped.

Less direct, but equally important in propping up the fossil fuel industry are the pension funds, such as California’s CalPERS and CalSTRS. They are among the largest investment funds in the world, and as public entities they should be acting in the public interest. These investors give companies like Enbridge a social license by investing in them.

Institutional investors and banks are not likely to stop funding the fossil fuel industry until we pressure them to do so. Earlier this year activists succeeded in getting the $246 billion New York State Common Retirement Fund to begin divesting from fossil fuels. Fossil Free California has been working for seven years to get CalPERS and CalSTRS to divest. It has been a strange fight, since the funds have already lost billions of dollars in value by staying in what is clearly a dying sector of the economy and Governor Newsome has asked them to use their investment strategies to speed the transition to a sustainable economy.

As the major fossil fuel companies are beginning to lose value, some investors are moving away from them. But passive funds still include them in their indexes. And fossil fuel companies are seen as legitimate businesses operating according to community norms. Big pension funds such as CalPERS and CalSTRS are holding onto passive funds arguing that they can help the fossil fuel industry to become better social actors. Enbridge and Exxon-Mobil might be heading for the precipice, but the banks and pension funds are the ones who fill their gas tanks.

Our role in the fight

For years the climate fight was seen by many as a matter of consumers voting with their dollars to shift how society functions. The concept of the personal carbon footprint was popularized in a 2005 British Petroleum campaign and encouraged people to look at individual consumers as the cause of the climate crisis. We need to come out of the fog of individualistic thinking and get clear about who is slowing us from making the transition from fossil fuels as quickly as we need to. And we need to take away the social license of the fossil fuel companies as quickly as we can. The way to do that is by focusing on their funders.

Scientists predict we have until 2030 for human society to make massive shifts in how we use energy that would allow the world can remain habitable. The present fight against the expansion of Enbridge’s Line 3 gas pipeline and the Dakota Access Pipeline is a test of grassroots mobilization. Right now, indigenous leaders, water protectors, youth climate activists, and people who live in the vast areas likely to be destroyed by spills and leaks from the pipelines, are engaged in a big fight to stop the expansion.

For those of us living in the rest of the country, we can support those activists by taking away the social license of the funders and insurers of those projects to make it impossible for them to go forward. By moving investments to climate-safe pension funds, pressuring J.P. Morgan Chase, the largest funder of the fossil fuel industry and Blackrock, the world’s largest investor in the fossil fuel industry to divest, we can help stop the pipeline of money that is fueling the climate crisis before it’s too late.



Cynthia Kaufman is the author of "The Sea is Rising and So Are We", "Challenging Power: Democracy and Accountability in a Fractured World" (2020), "Getting Past Capitalism: History, Vision, Hope" (2012), and "Ideas for Action: Relevant Theory for Radical Change" (2016). She is the director of the Vasconcellos Institute for Democracy in Action at De Anza College. She blogs at cynthiakaufman.wordpress.com.

Canada’s Refusal to Waive Intellectual Property Rights on COVID-19 Vaccines Should Be a Crime Against Humanity

The COVID-19 vaccine production process fails its own capitalist sniff test.

by Shree Paradkar

Published on Sunday, May 16, 2021
by Toronto Star


Protesters picket outside Johnson & Johnson Offices during the Global Day Of Action For A People's Vaccine on March 11, 2021 in Cape Town, South Africa. The group demanded that governments suspend patent rules at the World Trade Organization on COVID-19 vaccines. (Photo: Brenton Geach/Getty Images)

The U.S. surprised the world last week by throwing its weight behind waiving intellectual property rights for COVID-19 vaccines. Under pressure to respond similarly, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said: “I can assure you Canada is not interfering or blocking. Canada is very much working to find a solution.”

This is typical non-confrontational Canadian prevarication. “Not blocking” in this case still functions as a block.

Callous capitalism dictates that we get what we pay for. Ergo, the rich get more, the poor … bring their suffering on themselves. The proposal to waive certain patents on vaccines and medicines was brought forward in October by South Africa and India, well before any vaccines had been approved to prevent COVID-19. It has the support of some 100 nations, but the World Trade Organization works by “consensus,” meaning every one of its 164 members has to agree to the proposal. If you’re ever looking for the quintessential definition of structural discrimination, this is it. Create a coalition in the name of progress, but build in foundational structural barriers to equal access.

All this is happening against the backdrop of rich nations over-ordering vaccines, hoarding them, while blocking badly hit poor nations from accessing them.

By some counts, Canada has ordered enough vaccines to inoculate our population four times over. Meanwhile, where the virus feasts on humans, it continues to mutate dangerously making life unsafe for all — and exposing our myopic decision-making in the bargain.

So when Trudeau says he wants Canada to play mediator, to bring about a balance between protecting companies and improving vaccine access to poorer countries, he’s talking about a balance between profit and life. “Our” profit, “their” lives.

Callous capitalism dictates that we get what we pay for. Ergo, the rich get more, the poor … bring their suffering on themselves.

Except, the pharmaceutical companies claiming ownership to the recipes to the vaccines didn’t even bring these products to the market with their own funds. The COVID-19 vaccine production process fails its own capitalist sniff test.

As intellectual property rights expert Achal Prabhala outlines on The Dig podcast, the U.S. and other rich nations gave companies such as Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca billions of dollars — billions — in no-strings-attached grants to do the research, meaning no risk to the companies if they failed. Then they paid the companies billions of dollars — billions — in preorders so the companies were guaranteed buyers even before coming into the market. Now, they enjoy a global monopoly — largely funded by taxpayer labor.

As a result, poorer countries might not get vaccinated until 2023, according to some estimates.

We’ve seen this circus before with the same criminal consequences.


In 1996, antiviral therapy for HIV/AIDS was developed but was inaccessible to about 95 percent of the world’s people living with HIV, according to The Lancet.

That’s because one year prior, the creation of the World Trade Organization allowed companies to turn what were domestic patents into global ones. Nongeneric drugs cost about $10,000 a year at the turn of the century and were well out of the reach of many people. Calls for affordable generic antiretroviral drugs met by threats and lawsuits from pharmaceutical corporations. It took years to battle monopoly rights and finally make therapy affordable.

Meanwhile, people simply died.

In the case of smallpox, another deadly disease eradicated from the West but ravaging the developing world, it took a 1965 pledge by then U.S. President Lyndon Johnson to fund a program to wipe the disease off the Earth.

What about COVAX, the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access program, that is supposed to offer equitable access to vaccines? The U.S. and G7 nations committed to vaccinating at least 20 percent of developing countries by the end of 2021, but herd immunity requires 70 to 85 percent of the people to be vaccinated.

COVAX is so underfunded the vaccines don’t even reach front-line workers in poor countries. It has also been undermined by rich nations that jumped to the front of the queue by striking their own bilateral deals with pharmaceutical companies.

Opposition to the patent waiver has come with healthy doses of paternalism: Is this really the answer to the problem? Nations outside the U.S. and Europe don’t have the know-how to produce it. The waiver process is so long, it’s not worth it. And so it goes.

Look deeper and it gets messier.

The Indian government halted all exports of vaccines to combat its own deadly surge, leaving 91 countries depending on it in the lurch. “This colossal mess was entirely predictable, and could have been avoided at every turn,” Prabhala and pharmaceutical lawyer Leena Menghaney wrote in The Guardian. If only rich nations had nipped vaccine monopolies in the bud, they say.

Meanwhile, thousands die of this disease, daily. The patents remain in place. Canada is still “considering” supporting the waiver.

Shree Paradkar, a Toronto Star race and gender columnist, is the 2018-2019 recipient of the Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy. Shree has been a journalist in Bangalore, Mumbai, Singapore, and Toronto. Follow her on Twitter: @ShreeParadkar