The case for ecocentric socialism:

 Part 1

By Kamran Nayeri,

 originally published by Our Place in the World
July 22, 2021



“I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil—to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization: the minister and the school committee and every one of you will take care of that.”

“…[I]n Wildness is the preservation of the World.”—- “Walking” by Henry David Thoreau, May 1862


“I feel so much more at home even in a scrap of garden like the one here, and still more in the meadows when the grass is humming with bees than at one of our party congresses. ”—- Letter to Sophie Liebknecht by Rosa Luxemburg, Breslau Prison, May 2, 1917

1. Introduction

This essay is a response to a question I was asked during a Zoom presentation and discussion about Ecocentric Socialism on May 7, 2021. The meeting was organized thanks to Mr. Farrokh Jafari and Ettehad-e Fadian-e Komonist (Fadian Communist Unity) who invited me. The presentation and discussion followed two earlier meetings they organized. In the first, Mr. Jafari introduced environmentalism and some of the environmental problems we face particularly in Iran. The second meeting was organized after a reading of two of my essays, “The Crisis of Civilization and How to Resolve It: An Introduction to Ecocentric Socialism” (October 2018) and “The Coronavirus Pandemic as the Crisis of Civilization” (March 2020), to discuss them and raise questions. These questions were then shared with me to prepare my presentation for May 7. The most important of these questions was this: “How does Ecocentric Socialism differ from other theories of socialism and ecosocialism?” Although I offered an outline of a response to this question in my Zoom presentation, it was clear that there is much more to be said in more detail. This is the task of this essay.

After an initial opening remark in which I focus attention on the problem of anthropocentrism, I will present textual arguments in Section 2 to demonstrate that anthropocentrism is a hallmark of human civilization for almost 5,000 years.

In Section 3, I will discuss how anthropocentrism arose as the reflection of alienation from nature as some groups of hunter-gatherers began to take up farming about 12,000 years ago in the process that is now called the Agricultural Revolution leading to the establishment of the first city-state civilizations about 5,000 years ago.

In Section 4 (ed. note: this will be Part 2 to be posted subsequently), I will outline the main features of Ecocentric Socialism and how it differs from other socialist and ecosocialist theories including some key policy implications.

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The case for ecocentric socialism: Part 1 - Resilience

The case for ecocentric socialism: Part 2

By Kamran Nayeri, 

originally published by Our Place in the World
July 23, 2021

4. Theory and Practice of Ecocentric Socialism

Ecocentric Socialism distinguishes itself from all other theories of socialism and ecosocialism by a conscious attention to the problem of alienation from nature as manifested in anthropocentrism.

Animistic ecological materialism

For about a decade, I have proposed a rethinking of the theoretical heritage of Marx and Engels that would do away with the dualism inherent in historical materialism by arguing for a theory of history deeply embedded in ecology (For the most recent statement, see Nayeri, 2020, October 2018; also see, Nayeri 2013). Central to my reconsideration is the ecological nature of humans and the scientific understanding of who we are and where we come from so that we can better understand where we are going.

We now know that life itself emerged out of inorganic matter and humanity’s lineage is from mammals, in particular primates, that eventually led to the emergence of the Homo genus over 2.8 million years ago and subsequently Homo sapiens who emerged at least about 300,000 years ago.  That is, society has emerged out of biology which itself emerged out of physical and chemical properties of inanimate objects. It follows that we are not just the sum total of our social relations but instead we are the sum total of our ecological and social relations over at least 2.8 million years.

Humans as “collective organisms”

We are even more embedded in the web of life than we could have imagined only two decades ago. In recent decades, the study of the human microbiome, the collection of all the microorganisms living in association with human cells and organs, has advanced greatly, although our knowledge of their relationships is still at infancy.

“These communities consist of a variety of microorganisms including eukaryotes, archaea, bacteria and viruses. Bacteria in an average human body number ten times more than human cells, for a total of about 1000 more genes than are present in the human genome. Because of their small size, however, microorganisms make up only about 1 to 3 percent of our body mass (that’s 2 to 6 pounds of bacteria in a 200-pound adult).” (National Institute of Health Human Microbiome Project, accessed March 17, 2020)

Although most biologists treat the microbiome as separate from the human body, they also acknowledge its essential role for our wellbeing:

“These microbes are generally not harmful to us, in fact they are essential for maintaining health. For example, they produce some vitamins that we do not have the genes to make, break down our food to extract nutrients we need to survive, teach our immune systems how to recognize dangerous invaders and even produce helpful anti-inflammatory compounds that fight off other disease-causing microbes. An ever-growing number of studies have demonstrated that changes in the composition of our microbiomes correlate with numerous disease states, raising the possibility that manipulation of these communities could be used to treat disease.”  (ibid. emphasis added)

The socialist biologist Michael Friedman also notes:

“Some biologists conceive of our microbiota as a hitherto unrecognized organ or organs fulfilling important physiological functions and networking with other organ systems, while many microbial ecologists propose that we are not ‘individuals,’ but collective organisms comprised of the person (mammal) and its entire microbiome. Many other species are also collective organisms, termed holobionts, tightly bound by evolution ever since the earliest eukaryotic cells arose from fusions of independent prokaryotes (non-nucleated cells, such as bacteria).”  (Friedman, 2018)

Lynn Margulis, the celebrated biologist and evolutionary theorist, with her co-author, Dorion Sagan (Margulis and Sagan, 2002), have argued for a theory of symbiosis which refer to mutual interaction involving physical association between “differently named organisms.” In the “Forward” to their book, the prominent evolutionary biologist Ernest Mayr writes: “At first considered quite exceptional, symbiosis was eventually discovered to be almost universal.”   Donna J. Haraway (216), ecofeminist and a philosopher of the interaction between science, society, and nature, has made symbiosis a foundation of her view of social life.

Thus, in a biological sense, a human maybe considered a “collective organisms,” an organic whole that is greater than the sum of its multiple constituent parts. This view of humanity is much closer to the philosophical holism of Hegel (1817) promoted also by Marx that “the truth is in the whole.”  Indeed, recent research has found a correlation between gut microbiota and personality in adults (Han-Na Kim, et.al. 2018). If microorganisms in humans may affect even our personality, how could they not have an impact on our history as a species?

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The case for ecocentric socialism: Part 2 - Resilience

POST GROWTH: LIFE AFTER CAPITALISM

Post Growth: Excerpt By Tim Jackson, originally published by Resilience.org

May 18, 2021

Ed. note: This piece is an extract from Tim Jackson’s book Post Growth published by Polity Press. You can find out more about the book on their website here.

As a capitalist, I believe it’s time to say out loud what we all know to be true: Capitalism, as we know it, is dead.-Marc Benioff, 2019

Shamed, dishonoured, wading in blood and dripping with filth, thus capitalist society stands.-Rosa Luxemburg, 1915

Our prevailing vision of social progress is fatally dependent on a false promise: that there will always be more and more for everyone. Forged in the crucible of capitalism, this foundational myth has come dangerously unravelled. The relentless pursuit of eternal growth has delivered ecological destruction, financial fragility and social instability.

Who killed capitalism?

Crime scene investigation

The most obvious answer to this question is: no one. Capitalism is alive and well, thank you very much, and living the high life in New York and Dubai and London. Beijing, even. And Davos, certainly. Despite their anxiety, no one at the World Economic Forum was seriously about to give up on capitalism. The introspection was an elaborate show. In fact, the principal outcome from the surprising self-flagellation was an all-too-familiar refrain: capitalism is dead; long live capitalism!

Stakeholder capitalism; capitalism with purpose; ‘woke’ capitalism, as the New York Times amusingly called it. These were to be the new incarnations of an old regime. They were paraded almost daily by those who, sometimes by their own admission, had benefited most from the old regime. (Why should we not entirely trust them? I couldn’t possibly imagine!) But beyond the sometimes distasteful rhetoric, and the unmistakable impression of power clinging on to power, lay the dawning realization that something extraordinary had happened to the foundational narrative on which social progress depends. So the question remains. Who or what was responsible?

For a while now, the most convenient suspect has been the global financial crisis. I’ve lost count of the number of attempts I’ve seen to compare the average growth rate before 2008 with the average growth rate in the years that followed. It’s so easy to conclude that the problems arise from the continuing ‘headwinds’ caused by the crisis. These commentaries miss the point completely. The decline was already happening decades before the crisis struck. The peak in labour productivity growth in most advanced economies was more than half a century ago.

Every now and then, a suspicion has caught hold that the problems are more deeply rooted. In November 2013, five years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the former World Bank chief economist and US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers gave a speech to the International Monetary Fund which sent something of a shock wave through the audience. The continuing uncertainties of the post-crisis years were not just temporary after-shocks. ‘The underlying problem may be there forever,’ he said. Low and declining growth may just be the ‘new normal’.

Summers was certainly not the only, or even the first, but he was certainly the most well-known economist to make such a claim. The repercussions were profound. For a while, it became acceptable to ask previously unthinkable questions. What if there just isn’t so much growth to be had anymore? What if sluggish demand is here to stay? The term ‘secular stagnation’ – first coined in the 1930s – was revived to describe a phenomenon that was becoming too obvious to miss: an increasingly visible long-term decline in growth rates, particularly in the mature economies of the West. As the futurist Martin Ford pointed out: ‘There are good reasons to believe that the economic Goldilocks period has come to an end for many developed nations.’ The reputation of the economic system (and of economics itself) certainly took a pretty heavy beating during the financial crisis and has struggled to regain its mojo in the intervening decade or so since. But to attribute capitalism’s woes to that time and that time alone is certainly wrong. The cracks were already visible beneath the shiny surface long before the crisis ‘made them manifest’.

Fargonomics

Another common suspect is the economic shifts that took place in the 1980s. The economics of ‘monetarism’ heralded a radical agenda of privatization and deregulation. Today’s predominantly neoliberal, free market policies stem from that time. They had a profound impact on society. It’s since that time in particular that inequality has risen, debt has expanded, anxiety and suicide rates have multiplied, obesity and lifestyle disease have accelerated.

‘In America, the emblematic core of capitalism, half of the 1980 generation are absolutely worse off than the generation of their parents at the same age,’ reveals Collier. In the intervening decades, capitalism has ‘continued to deliver for some, but has passed others by’.

That’s a kind interpretation. Less kind is Noah Hawley’s black-comedy crime series Fargo. In the second season of the show, set in 1979, a local family in Fargo, North Dakota, goes head to head with the infamous Kansas City Crime Family and comes off worse in the conflict. In the final episode of the season, one of the Kansas gangsters, Mike Mulligan (played by Bokeem Woodbine), arrives at the syndicate’s headquarters expecting promotion for his part in the downfall of the Fargo family. He’s shown to his new office in an unremarkable building and told by his manager that he’ll be ‘working closely with the accounting department, looking for ways to optimize revenue.’ Mike is mystified. ‘This is the future,’ his manager explains. ‘The sooner you realize there’s only one business left in the world – the money business, just ones and zeros – the better off you’re gonna be.’

Hawley’s message is clear, right down to the time the story took place: 1979. It was the year that Ronald Reagan announced his Presidential campaign and Margaret Thatcher came to power in the UK. Monetarism announced an era in which, as the Chicago School economist Milton Friedman infamously declared: the business of business is business. Social responsibility was irrelevant. The ethics of the city became virtually indistinguishable from those of organized crime. Charles Ferguson’s 2010 documentary Inside Job and Adam McKay’s 2015 comedy-drama The Big Short – two films about the financial crisis – make the same point.

It would all have appalled Adam Smith – the founding father of capitalism. But he wouldn’t have been remotely surprised. He knew only too well that self-interest left unchecked undermines the benefits of the market. He once railed deliciously against ‘an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it’. The target of his attack was ‘those who live by profit’ – or in other words, capitalists themselves.

Only the state could counter the dangers of runaway self-interest, Smith realized. Neoliberalism’s fantastic conceit was to neglect this advice completely. Instead, it argued, capital should be freed from government to the greatest extent possible. What ensued was a philosophical abomination. It had nothing to do with the ‘freedom’ of the market and no credibility in either theory or practice. Yet over the last two decades of the twentieth century its ideas became deeply influential across the world. It is quite simply Fargonomics. Its ethics are gangster ethics, the law of the jungle. And it’s created a form of capitalism that has worked exceptionally well for the few but continues to fail for the many.

The voices in Davos reflect a rising awareness of this failure. The assailant was known to us, they seem to imply. We made a mistake in trusting him. We understand now the lesson that Smith tried to teach us. We must reverse the damaging policies of the past and make capitalism work for everyone. Profit with purpose in Benioff’s view. A strengthening of ‘reciprocal obligations’ in Collier’s book. These proposals are clearly important. Revolutionary even, by recent standards. They represent a call for a return to capitalism’s ‘golden age’ – the immediate post-war period – where business was kinder, inequality was lower and the concept of social welfare mattered.

But as the Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf has pointed out, things aren’t that simple. Conditions have changed. ‘The egalitarian western societies of the 1950s and 1960s had a global monopoly of industry and a social solidarity bred by shared adversity,’ he wrote. ‘That past is a foreign country. It can never be revisited.’

It’s a salutary reminder that we cannot rewind history. But perhaps, as Maya Angelou suggested, we can still learn some of its lessons. If neoliberalism was the assailant, why was it allowed to wander free over so many decades, inflicting its pain across society? Why was the damage condoned for so long? What convinced us to buy this misreading of Smith’s vision of the market in the first place?

Pickup trucks are a plague on Canadian streets


MARCUS GEE
TORONTO
PUBLISHED JULY 25, 2021

Once the vehicle of the cowboy, the contractor and the good old boy, pickups have become the continent’s mainstream ride.
JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Many things have changed in pandemic times. One that has not is North America’s love affair with the pickup truck. Even in the midst of economic uncertainty, consumers lined up to buy these hulking, belching kings of the road. Once the vehicle of the cowboy, the contractor and the good old boy, pickups have become the continent’s mainstream ride. Even city parking lots are simply full of them. In Canada, Ford’s F-150 has been the best-selling auto for years.

Auto writer Brendan McAleer came up with a colourful way of describing the extent of the phenomenon. “If you lined up all the F-150s sold in 2019 nose to tail, and then flew the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird spy plane overhead at its top operational speed of 3,500 kilometres an hour, it would take about an hour and a half for the plane to cover all 896,526 of them.”

In the United States, five of the 10 top-selling automobiles are pickup trucks. Just three leading models accounted for 13 per cent of the vehicles sold south of the border in 2020. Last spring, for the first time, Americans bought more pickups than cars.

The time is right to take on street racing

For heaven’s sake, why? Most people no longer use pickups to haul bales of hay. They drive them to the mall to shop or the soccer field to drop off their kids. Why anyone thinks they need such a beast to do that is an abiding mystery.

“Since 1990, U.S. pickup trucks have added almost 1,300 pounds on average,” writes author Angie Schmitt in Bloomberg CityLab. “Some of the biggest vehicles on the market now weigh almost 7,000 pounds – or about three Honda Civics.”

What spectacular overkill. One survey found that three quarters of pickup drivers used the vehicles for hauling only one time or not at all in the course of an average year. Despite all those ads showing manly pickups growling up mountain roads or churning through mud, nearly as few drivers used them to go off road.

Pickups have evolved to suit the way people use them. They often have big second rows, four doors and shorter cargo beds than they had in the past. Their cabs have all the latest electronics and attendant bells and whistles. In short, they are sort of suburban sedans on stilts, with big tires, powerful engines and giant grills that serve little purpose except to impress.

That seems to be the main point. At the same time as they have become domesticated and urbanized in function, pickups have become super-sized and jacked-up in form. We’ve all seen the “lifted” versions with their high profiles and giant wheels, the tricked out models with gleaming chrome, extra lights, big bumpers and fancy racks. Ford even collaborated with the Toronto Maple Leafs on a limited edition bearing the club’s logo and colours. Buyers can drop $100,000 on luxury models, which most will spend more time polishing than loading.

With Ottawa’s new target for EV adoption, it can’t afford to wait on Washington much longer

All harmless fun, you might say. Is it? Even though automakers have greatly improved the fuel efficiency of the modern pickup – and electric versions are coming soon – having all those mastodons on the highway isn’t exactly kind to the planet. A recent U.S. report found that more than half a million diesel pickups had been fitted with devices that override their emissions controls, dumping pollutants into the air. In the charming practice known as rolling coal, some pickup drivers blow past cyclists and electric vehicles and deliberately spew black smoke at them.

Then there is safety. Anyone who has travelled a Canadian highway lately has been tailgated by a speeding pickup driver. Being up there in that big cab over that huge engine seems to make the drivers think they own the road, lesser vehicles be damned. An investigation by Consumer Reports last month, titled The Hidden Danger of Big Trucks, said that hoods are higher on current models and “drivers have poorer front sight lines, creating a blind spot that can hide a pedestrian or smaller car right in front.”

Even if they weren’t polluting and dangerous, the parade of pickups would be a blight on the roadscape and a finger in the eye of other drivers – a way of saying to everyone else: I am bigger, badder and richer than you. A vehicle that started as a practical tool for hard-working people has become, for many, an obnoxious assertion of dominance and division.

Huge carbon capture pipeline network proposed: Industry’s ‘delay-and-fail strategy’ rises again

By Kurt Cobb, originally published by Resource Insights

July 25, 2021


An astute journalist I know once described carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a “delay-and-fail strategy” devised by the fossil fuel industry. The industry’s ploy was utterly obvious to him: Promise to perfect and deploy CCS at some vague point in the future. By the time people catch on that CCS won’t work, the fossil fuel industry will have successfully extended the time it has operated without onerous regulation for another couple of decades.

And because huge financial resources (mostly government resources) will have gone to CCS projects instead of low-carbon energy production, society will continue to be wildly dependent on carbon-based fuels (giving the industry further running room).

The trouble is that the cynical CCS strategy has already been under way and failing for more than two decades already. And yet, it is seeking a renewed lease on life with a proposal for a vast network of carbon dioxide pipelines “twice the size of the current U.S. oil pipeline network by volume.” The public face of the effort is a former Obama administration secretary of energy with a perennially bad haircut, Ernest Moniz.

Moniz has a partnership with the AFL-CIO to push the idea. No doubt unions like the project because it would create a lot of jobs regardless of whether it actually addresses climate change.

Just for the record, here’s a list of reasons that CCS doesn’t work and likely will not work in any time frame that matters for addressing climate change:

It’s very costly. Many of the pilot projects have been shut down because they are uneconomical.
Suitable underground storage is not abundant and frequently not near facilities that produce the carbon dioxide.

Long-term storage may fail, releasing the carbon dioxide into the atmosphere anyway. After all, one must have injection wells into the underground storage, wells that can leak if not properly maintained. Not least, there is no multi-decade record of successful, leak-free sequestration. And finally, there is no assurance that such storage facilities can be maintained properly for the many centuries required to have them actually protect the climate.

The carbon dioxide in some current viable CCS projects is used by the oil industry to flush out more oil from existing wells. That’s hardly in keeping with the purpose of addressing climate change

Energy expert Vaclav Smil did some calculations for an American Scientist magazine article that demonstrate the scale of the CCS challenge:

[I]n order to sequester just a fifth of current CO2 emissions we would have to create an entirely new worldwide absorption-gathering-compression-transportation-storage industry whose annual throughput would have to be about 70 percent larger than the annual volume now handled by the global crude oil industry whose immense infrastructure of wells, pipelines, compressor stations and storages took generations to build. Technically possible—but not within a timeframe that would prevent CO2 from rising above 450 ppm.

Smil wrote that back in 2011. The latest reading in Hawaii at the often-cited Scripps Institution of Oceanography Mauna Loa Observatory is 418 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere. The relentless upward slope of the observatory’s graph of carbon dioxide concentration shows that the fossil fuel industry’s tactics—of which delay-and-fail CCS is just one—are working splendidly.

It is troubling that a key official at the U.S. Department of Energy is taking the CCS plan seriously. One would think that decades of failure would finally make clear the false promises of the industry. But, of course, failure is the whole point of the CCS ruse. What’s puzzling is that the failure to date has somehow become a rallying cry to try harder by building one of the biggest boondoggles ever conceived.

Photo: Carbon Capture Pilot Plant in 2012. Author Mm907 (2015).Via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Carbon_capture_32.jpg

Hemp having a moment as Prairie farmers try to grow niche crop into $1-billion industry

Marijuana legalization and growing interest in hemp seed 'superfood' have helped boost industry

Amanda Stephenson · The Canadian Press · Posted: Jul 25, 2021 

According to Health Canada, there were about 22,000 hectares of hemp seeded in Canada in 2020, up from just 2,400 hectares in 1998. Alberta leads the way in hemp production. (The Associated Press)

Not that long ago, Rod Lanier could count on an annual spring visit from the police.

The southern Alberta farmer has been growing hemp for 12 years, and in the early days, the distinctive odour that wafts from his fields when the crop is in flower would invariably catch the attention of area residents.

"For years each spring, the police would have to come out to ask, 'Mr. Lanier, is that hemp or is that marijuana?'" Lanier recalls. "And I would answer, 'If it was marijuana, would I grow a mile by a mile field of it, right beside the highway?'"

Today, Lanier is far less likely to get a knock on his door just because the wind is blowing a certain way. Once considered a bit of an oddity, Lanier is now one of about a dozen farmers in the Lethbridge area growing industrial hemp — and the sight and smell of the distinctive, jagged-leafed plant are far less likely to attract unwelcome attention.

In fact, hemp, which is part of the cannabis family but contains no THC (the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana), is enjoying a bit of a moment. Across the Prairie provinces, new businesses are popping up to process and market different parts of the plant.
Hemp production on the rise

Hemp farming is still a fledgling industry, but some proponents believe it has the potential to move from a niche crop to a staple of Canadian agriculture.

"How do we turn hemp into the next canola? How do we turn hemp into a 500,000 acre crop in the next 10 years?" says Andrew Potter, chief executive and president of Blue Sky Hemp Ventures.

"I believe it's very, very doable."

According to Health Canada, which licenses and regulates the industrial hemp industry in this country, there were about 22,000 hectares (50,000 acres) of hemp seeded in Canada in 2020, up from just 2,400 hectares (5,900 acres) in 1998. Alberta leads the way in hemp production, followed by Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

The growth in acreage is due to multiple factors, including growing interest in hemp seed as a nutritional "superfood" as well as the legalization of cannabis in 2018. That opened up a new source of revenue for farmers, as hemp growers can now harvest flowers for CBD, the non-intoxicating cannabinoid that was once illegal without a medical prescription.
Key to expanding industry is using all parts of the plant

Blue Sky, which was founded in 2017, believes the key to expanding the hemp industry is "whole plant utilization." The company already has a CBD extraction facility near Saskatoon and another facility in central Saskatchewan is capable of processing 5,500 tonnes of hemp seed annually into food products like protein powder and hemp seed oil.

Blue Sky is also on the verge of announcing its plans for a large-scale "decortication" facility, which Potter says will process the hemp plant's tough stems and stalks into fibre products. Hemp fibre can be used to make everything from building products and insulation to textiles.

Dan Madlung, president and chief executive of BioComposites Group, which runs a hemp fibre processing plant near Drayton Valley in central Alberta, says developing this third plank of the hemp industry is crucial. In the past, most Canadian farmers growing hemp for seed have had no buyer for the stems and stalks, and have had to let that part of the plant go to waste.

How regenerative farming could help Canada meet its new carbon emission targets

Huge hemp facility proposed for Prince George, B.C.

Building out decortication capacity across the Prairies would give farmers a third revenue stream and a much greater incentive to grow hemp, Madlung says. He adds BioComposites Group already has plans for a new, larger second facility to be built in a yet-to-be-announced Alberta location.

"We have what it takes right now to develop a new industry," Madlung said. "But there's tons of interest across North America … others may beat us to the punch."
Some challenges still facing industry

There are still many challenges that must be overcome before hemp farming becomes truly mainstream. While farmers no longer have to undergo a criminal records check to grow industrial hemp (it was required before cannabis was legalized), they still face other regulatory requirements such as Health Canada licensing.

The industry also needs to invest in market development and commercialization, says Manny Deol, executive director of the non-profit Alberta Hemp Alliance. Many consumers don't know quite what to do with hemp hearts or hempseed oil, so there's room for the development of more customer-friendly products.

Farmers also need to be encouraged to grow a crop that may be brand-new to them, Deol says. Because the hemp plant is also good at sequestering carbon dioxide in the soil — better than many other crops — the industry is lobbying for the creation of a carbon credit for farmers who grow it. That would provide additional incentive for producers looking to branch out.

Canadian hemp exports exceeded $110-million in 2019, and Deol says he believes this country could have a $1-billion industry by 2030, if it does everything right. He says investors appear to think so too, given the number of new processing facilities recently constructed or proposed.

"There is a buzz about hemp right now," Deol says. "I think farmers and other business people are looking for any diversification opportunities, so they're watching this crop."

Abir Moussi: The Tunisian MP who was slapped but not beaten

By Magdi Abdelhadi
North Africa analyst

Published18 July

Abir Moussi is a thorn in the side of political Islamists in Tunisia

When Tunisian tennis star Ons Jabeur hit global headlines for becoming the first North African woman to reach the Wimbledon quarter-finals, another Tunisian woman also made the news but for all the wrong reasons.

Abir Moussi, the outspoken leader of the opposition Al-Dustur al-Hurr party, was slapped and kicked as she was filming a parliamentary session on her mobile phone in June.

The perpetrators were two male members of parliament from an Islamist coalition.

They then threw water at her, followed by the empty bottles and the whole incident was caught on TV cameras - to the shock and bewilderment of many in the Arab world.
Figure captionWarning: Third party content may contain adverts

Ms Moussi is a passionate 47-year-old lawyer and indefatigable campaigner against political Islam and Tunisia's version of it - known as the Nahda movement - which forms the biggest bloc in parliament.

She was once a solid supporter of the ousted dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, and regards herself and her small party as the guardians of the secular tradition laid down by the founder of modern Tunisia, Habib Bourgiba.

He led the country to independence and became its first president, serving from1957 to 1987, and introducing women-friendly legislation such as banning polygamy.

In parliament, Ms Moussi cuts an extraordinary figure.

She attends sessions wearing a helmet and a flak jacket because, she says, she has received death threats from Islamists.

Abir Moussi says she has no choice but to wear a helmet and a flak jacket in parliament

She also keeps a photo of Bourgiba on her desk in the chamber and occasionally uses a hand-held megaphone to interrupt debates, while broadcasting the session live from her mobile with running commentary.

Her critics say she is a corrupt supporter of the old regime who wants to thwart Tunisia's transition to democracy.

Shortly before the parliamentary fracas in June, she upset her critics by opposing a development deal between Tunisia and Qatar - one of the main financial backers of political Islam in the region.

The Tunisian parliament has issued a strong statement condemning the attack on Ms Moussi and vowed to inflict the harshest possible sanctions on the two men.

'House of obedience for women

Whatever the rights and wrongs of Ms Moussi's conduct - she is accused of obstructing the work of the parliament and violating parliamentary procedures - the fact remains that the incident has been seen and understood in Tunisia and beyond as simply two men physically attacking a woman.

Tunisia is the only country where the 2011 Arab Spring has led to a democratic government

Writing in the pan-Arab daily Al-Sharq al-Awast, Lebanese author Hazem Saghiyyah said he was especially disappointed because Tunisia was the only country where the Arab Spring uprising was a relative success, pointing to the 2017 approval of Law 58 law which promotes equality between the sexes.

Instead, Saghiyyah argues, the two men "wanted to turn the parliament into another house of obedience, much larger and more authoritative than the family home" - a reference to the controversial Islamic tradition whereby a judge can order a wife back to the marital home if she has left it for any reason.

Pushback against women's rights

Law 58 put Tunisia ahead of many of its neighbours and other Muslim majority countries as far as women's rights are concerned.

For example, it broke the controversial Muslim tradition of allowing a rapist to marry his victim to avoid jail and to "protect the family honour" of the victim.

The law also strengthened protection for women who report violence against them to the police, and it obliges the police to refer them to hospital and treat their complaints with due diligence.

Despite the progress on the legal front, reality tells a completely different story.

By all accounts, violence against women, and in particular domestic violence has increased.

Aïsha Meddeb

There is an incredible wave of frustration and anger that's released on women."Aïsha Meddeb
30-year-old project manager from Tunis

A local rights organisation says domestic violence kills a woman every week in Tunisia, and it has worsened during the pandemic, says the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women.

"Violence against women is more alarming than ever," says Aïsha Meddeb, a young professional.

"There is an incredible wave of frustration and anger that's released on women. Like someone trying to remind us that we belong to wherever they want us to belong. Successful women have existed since Bourguiba's time."

Yosra Frawes, the regional head of the International Federation for Human Rights, acknowledges the strides in legislation to protect women's rights, but adds that these have been reduced to mere "ink on paper".

She says the threat to these improvements comes from "the rise in right-wing and Islamic forces which seek to render these laws ineffectual - by, for example, tolerating the perpetrators, or people who disseminate outmoded ideas and encourage marrying underage girls and campaign against abortion".

Ms Frawes says although Tunisian women enjoy significant rights they have yet to attain full equality.

'Long and arduous path'

The main obstacle to that is a male-dominated society that renders all forms of discrimination and violence acceptable, she argues.

"Tunisian women, like all women in the region, face a long and arduous path to attain recognition of their human rights and to eliminate all forms of domination and violence... Whatever form of government there is, be it religious or military.

Far from being a uniquely Tunisian problem, Saghiyyah argues that the oppression of women is increasing across the region from Iran to North Africa.

He says this is partly due to the fact that the rights given to women were imposed from above - as in the case of Turkey's autocratic ruler Kemal Ataturk, or Bourgiba's Tunisia.

That is why it was easy for Islamists and their followers to set up all that is progressive - including women's freedom - as being against "the people and their freedom".

Police brutality and high unemployment have driven young Tunisians to protest in recent months

Back in June and still reeling from the attack in parliament, Ms Moussi made an impromptu speech:

"Where are you America," she asked rhetorically. "Is this how your democracy works? They have beaten me in front of you and in front of the whole world. Are these your democratic partners?" she added in tearful, and somewhat melodramatic, tones.

The entire episode illustrates the fundamental paradox troubling Tunisia's transition to democracy, and other countries like it.

Modernisation introduced by post-colonial autocrats such as Bourgiba may not survive the onslaught of the ballot box.

In free and fair elections, deeply conservative forces may win the vote and set the liberalisation of society back, and women are often the first losers.

 The Myth of Daphne, Who Chose Eternal Silence Over Sexual Assault

By Marguerite Johnson & Tanika Koosmen*

July 25, 2021

“Apollo and Daphne,” created between 1622 and 1625. Credit: Wikipedia/Alvesgaspar/CC-BY-SA-4.0

This ancient myth of Daphne, in which the nymph transforms herself into a tree to escape the lustful attention of the god Apollo, has inspired countless retellings in art. Its themes resonate today.

Ancient Greek myths and folktales are shaping popular culture, from big-budget films to television series to novels. You can even find advice on how to look like a Greek goddess or heroine on your wedding day, with gowns inspired by Aphrodite and Helen of Troy (among others).

In particular, myths of transformation have appealed to artists and writers who are attracted to the challenge of retelling stories of shifting forms — the strange movements between human and animal or plant. Such states of flux can shed light on our own understanding of identity.

Among the many mythical figures changed through metamorphosis is the nymph or dryad, Daphne. One of the mythical beings who cared for trees, springs and other natural elements, Daphne was the child of Peneus, a Thessalian river god.

Her decidedly sad and violent story, in which she is transformed into a tree to escape the lustful attention of the god Apollo, gives rise to the ancient explanation of the creation of the laurel tree, known as “Daphne” by the ancient Greeks.

Daphne’s plight continues to intrigue artists. Today, new interpretations are finding fresh ways of reading this influential, much-contested myth, with its themes of sexual violence and bodily autonomy.

Parthenius (1st Century BC-1st Century AD) provides the earliest complete extant version of the myth of Daphne and Apollo. As a grammarian, Parthenius collected stories from texts now lost to us. His version of the story can be traced to earlier works dating to the 3rd century BC, suggesting the myth is even older.

Parthenius’ version begins with Leucippus, the son of a mythic king of Pisa, falling in love with the beautiful nymph. Daphne was favoured by the goddess Artemis, who bestowed upon her the gift of shooting a straight arrow. Leucippus contrived to spend time with Daphne by dressing as a woman and joining her during a hunt.

But this enraged Apollo, who also desired Daphne. He encouraged Daphne and her fellow female hunters to bathe in a nearby stream. When Leucippus refused to join them, the women stripped him, discovering his ruse and stabbing him with their spears.

The god Apollo, then took his chance:

“but Daphne, seeing Apollo advancing upon her, took vigorously to flight; then, as he pursued her, she implored Zeus that she might be translated away from mortal sight, and she is supposed to have become the bay tree which is called daphne after her.”

“Destroy this beautiful figure”

The Latin poet, Ovid (43 BC-17 AD) retells Daphne’s story in Book 1 of his epic poem of transformation myths, the Metamorphoses. Ovid explains that Apollo’s desire was caused by Cupid, whom Apollo had slighted. In response, Cupid shot to the god Apollo, causing him to feel intense passion for Daphne. But she was shot with another type of arrow, ensuring she would not reciprocate his attraction.

Ovid’s version depicts a frightened Daphne fleeing her pursuer with language that paints her as a hare hunted by a greyhound. Daphne’s fear of being caught by Apollo as he chases her is evoked with visceral realism. Her transformation comes when she no longer has the strength to run:

“With her strength used up, she went pale with fear and, overcome by the effort of her frantic flight and gazing upon the waters of Peneus, she cried: ‘Bring help, father, if your waters possess divine power! By changing it, destroy this beautiful figure by which I generated too much desire.’

“With her prayer scarcely completed, a heavy torpor took possession of her limbs: her soft breasts were bound by a thin layer of bark, her hair grew into foliage, her arms into branches; her feet, just now so swift, hold fast in sluggish roots, a crest possessed her facial features, radiance alone remained in her.”

Even without human form, however, Daphne is not saved from Apollo’s lust. After her transformation, Apollo reaches out to touch the trunk of the tree, which shrinks from him.

In the final lines of this episode, Ovid reveals what Apollo does with this tree’s leaves: they are woven into a laurel wreath and placed around his quiver and lyre, to be used in rituals performed in his honor.

While Daphne is saved from the assault of her human form, she is nonetheless forcibly objectified for the sake of the god Apollo’s desire.

Loss of self

Since antiquity, the story of Daphne has been retold over and over again – painted, sculpted, performed and analyzed.

Bernini’s “Apollo and Daphne.” Credit:Wikipedia/Architas/CC-BY-SA-4.0

We can gaze at Daphne in all manner of poses in museums and galleries throughout Europe. The Galleria Borghese in Rome displays Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Daphne being seized by the god Apollo in a life-size, glowing marble statue.

Completed in 1625, it depicts Apollo’s intense determination as he seizes the nymph by the waist with one hand even though she is in the very process of turning into a tree.

While his face is eerily peaceful, Daphne’s replicates the fear that underscores Ovid’s description.

In this way, Bernini’s sculpture is Ovid’s poetry in material form. Masterpieces of art and literature, respectively, compromise us by the beauty that depicts a narrative of attempted rape.

The Louvre has Giambattista Tiepolo’s version of the Greek myth, dating to approximately 1774. Here, a baby Cupid hoists Daphne as if she were a ballerina while Apollo seems somewhat discombobulated. An aged Peneus slumps on the ground, seemingly exhausted from his transformative magic.

While Bernini’s Daphne is shocked and traumatized, Tiepolo’s nymph — with her attendant narrative of fear and suffering — has been tamed for a genteel Baroque audience. This silly and passive rendition of sexual assault is accentuated by the delicate shoots of foliage that grow from Daphne’s right hand.

Historically, scholarship has shown a deep-seated patriarchal interpretation of the Greek myth, rendering Daphne’s role in her own transformation as secondary to the actions of masculine power, represented by the god Apollo.

The creation of the laurel wreath, for instance, recorded by Ovid, has been interpreted as an act of mourning, turning Daphne’s transformed body into a symbol of Apollo’s grief.

Feminist interpretations, however, remind us Apollo’s intention was to rape Daphne. Thus his grief was firmly based on his failed attempt and nothing more. These interpretations encourage us to consider the intense violence inherent in the Greek myth.

As a tree, leafy and earth-bound, Daphne’s loss of self is both physical and psychological. No longer human, she loses the ability to express herself through her facial features, and the power of speech. Like so many women in the myths of transformation, Daphne is perpetually silenced. She can only “speak” through the rustling of leaves.

The burden of women’s historic experience of sexual harassment, violation and rape is also vividly chronicled in Daphne’s story. Ovid, a master of narratives of violence and abuse, reveals Daphne’s burden by suggesting she sees herself as partly accountable for Apollo’s pursuit of her. In her prayer to her father, she begs to be relieved of her beauty, which she believes has caused the god’s actions.

Her pleas have echoed across millennia in the self-admonishment of many women and their desire to become invisible to the male gaze. Daphne achieves a form of invisibility — or so she thinks — in her new form as a mass of leaves and bark. But, as Ovid tells us, not even as a tree can she escape the god’s persistent lust.

The sheer absurdity of the entire Greek myth begs the question: would a woman prefer to become a tree rather than be raped?

Modern interpretations of the Greek Myth of Daphne

In the 20th century, Salvador Dalí, Paul Delvaux and Ossip Zadkine all reworked Daphne, painting and sculpting her for a modernist audience.

Zadkine’s sculpture of Daphné (1958) mirrors yet mocks Bernini’s work, rendering the nymph as a powerful root-bound tree of monumental grandeur and ungainly defiance. She, however, remains silent.

In a new exhibition opening at Melbourne’s Australian Centre of Contemporary Art, Australian audiences can see some of Daphne’s incarnations over the centuries, including early works, such as Anthonie Waterloo’s etching of Apollo and Daphne (1650s) and Agostino dei Musi’s engraving from 1515.

Traditional works celebrating the so-called grandeur of classical mythology so much in vogue in the Renaissance (and beyond) are joined and contested by competing interpretations. These include Erik Bünger’s Nature see you (2021), a video essay on the world-famous but inherently vulnerable gorilla, Koko; and Ho Tzu Nyen’s 2 or 3 Tigers (2015), a digital projection that meditates on tigers in the Malay context.

In both works, we see the story of Daphne as sentient nature in the form of gorilla and tiger, and nature both mythical and metaphorical. We also see nature as silent and therefore fragile in a world of human gods who are just as ruthless and destructive as their mythical counterparts.

Daphne’s humanity — her womanhood — is also referenced in Wingu Tingima’s paint on canvas, Kawun (2005). Based on the traditional Indigenous Australian story of the Seven Sisters, Tingima’s work suggests the trauma of women as they travel to escape the desires of the Ancestral Being Nyiru, who is determined to take one of them as his wife.

Like Daphne, the sisters escape by ascending to the sky and transforming into the constellation known as the Pleiades.

This rich exhibition approaches the Greek myth of Daphne from many angles. Working back and forth through time, mixing traditional ways of seeing with vital contemporary narratives (including the Anthropocene, #MeToo, and post-humanism), it is an uncomfortable reminder of the power of myth and its own vulnerability to the forces of transformation.

A Biography of Daphne opened at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne on June 26 and runs to September 5, 2021. 

Marguerite Johnson is a Professor of Classics, University of Newcastle. Tanika Koosmen a PhD Candidate at the University of Newcastle.

This article was published at The Conversation and is republished under a Creative Commons license.

See all the latest news from Greece and the world at Greekreporter.com.

 GREECE

Alonnisos in Shock as Spearfisherman Kills Island’s Mascot Seal

ByNick Kampouris

July 25, 2021

The dead seal. Credit: MOm Monachus Monachus / Facebook

The famous seal of Alonnisos island is gone; residents and tourists are shocked by the news of the death of one of the most famous and beloved seals of the island, who was named ”Kostis.”

The devastating news was made public on Saturday evening by the Environmental Conservation Organization MOm – Monachus monachus.

”Unfortunately, yet again, it is proven that human wickedness and stupidity have no limits!” the announcement of the MOm organization stated in a post on Facebook.

”We have been informed today that the young monk seal “Kostis” (who in recent months had become the mascot of Alonnisos) has been deliberately killed. The innocent and unaware seal was executed at close range with a spear gun that had a large spear for exactly that purpose!” the announcement says.

It is noted that the seal had become very popular on Alonnisos lately due to its very friendly and sociable ways toward people.

”This news was received with great grief and outraged not only the people of MOm (who cared for several months for Kostis during his rehabilitation), but also all the sensitized residents and visitors of Alonnisos who had the luck to admire “Kostis” from close by. The perpetrator obviously won’t have the slightest bit of courage to come forward and admit his idiotic act,” the MOm declared, adding that they will proceed with filing charges against the person responsible for the crime.

”The relevant authorities to take immediate action in order to bring the person(s) responsible for this barbarous act to justice. Any citizen who has any information about the incident to contact the Port Police authorities immediately,” their announcement concludes.

Seal protection on Alonnisos: Who is MOm?

Alonnisos is an island of the Northern Sporades archipelago in the northern Aegean Sea, an area that is home to the Mediterranean monk seal is a monk seal belonging to the family Phocidae.

MOm / The Hellenic Society for the Study and Protection of the Monk seal is a Greek non–governmental environmental organization with the legal status of a Non–profit association. MOm is active in the protection and promotion of the coastal and marine environment of Greece, through the protection of the Mediterranean monk seal, which is the only seal species in the Mediterranean Sea and the most endangered seal on earth.

According to their official website, the financial resources of MOm originate ”from the memberships of our supporters, donations from private entities, selected partnerships with national, European and international bodies, and from nationally and European-funded programs.”

MOm is subject to regular financial auditing by Certified Public Accountants – Auditors.

MOm’s scientific research, conservation and education activities are carried out by a dedicated and highly specialized team of professionals, such as biologists, field technicians, and media officers with the help of numerous volunteers. The organization’s activities include scientific research, rescue and rehabilitation, protection and Management, public awareness and sensitization, as well as environmental education.

Their revenue for 2020 was a bit more than 500,000 euros, with only six per cent of this amount coming from donations.

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The Barefoot Fire-Walking Ritual of Anastenaria Lives On in Greece

ByTasos Kokkinidis
July 26, 2021

Anastenaria is a Greek and Bulgarian tradition. Credit: Public Domain

Hundreds of people descend on the town of Langadas, near Thessaloniki, each year in late May to participate in the ancient ritual of “Anastenaria,” in which barefoot people walk on glowing coals.

The communities which celebrate this ritual are descended from refugees who entered Greece from Eastern Thrace following the Balkan Wars of 1911–12 and the harrowing population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923.

The origin of Anastenari

The roots of this tradition are steeped in mystery — and a bit of controversy as well.

The Anastenarides hold that the origin of the ritual lies in a fire which took place at Kosti, near the Black Sea in the thirteenth century which set ablaze the church of Saint Constantine. As the empty church burned, the villagers claimed to hear cries coming from the flames and believed that they were appeals from the icons, desperately calling out for help.

Some villagers ran into the burning church to rescue them, returning quickly with the icons — and neither the icons nor their human protectors were burned or injured in any way. This occurrence, according to the fire-walking practitioners, prompted the annual celebration which the Anastenaria holds to commemorate their deliverance from the flames.

However, many scholars do not believe this to be the true origin of the Anastenaria ritual.

It is largely believed that the ceremony is the survival of an ancient Thracian Dionysian ritual which was later given a superficial Christian interpretation in order to be tolerated by the Greek Orthodox Church, which does not support the fire walking ritual since it is viewed as pagan.

“The Anastenaria are religious communities of Orthodox Christians, known for their devotion to Saints Constantine and Helen and the fire-walking rituals they perform in their honour. These rituals are part of an elaborate annual ritual cycle, which culminates with the festival of the two saints every May.

“The festival, which lasts for three days, includes various processions around the village, an animal sacrifice, music and ecstatic dancing. The most dramatic moment of the festival is the fire-walking ritual itself, where the participants, carrying the icons of the saints, dance over the glowing coals,” writes historian Dmitri Xygalatas. He continues:

“This practice is very old. Since the nineteenth century, Greek ethnographers have almost unanimously argued that the Anastenaria derives from the ancient orgiastic cults of Dionysus, constituting a continuous tradition of almost three millennia. This is something that most people who have heard about the Anastenaria know, and to which many Greek anthropologists attest.

“However, such a claim is completely unfounded; a more careful study of the sources reveals that the theory of the Dionysian origins of the Anastenaria has been intentionally constructed and later uncritically reproduced, resulting in a false version of history.”

The Anastenaria ritual, which is also performed in Bulgaria, is an important element of the cultural heritage of the Bulgarian people. In 2009 it was included on UNESCO’s World Heritage list of cultural events.


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