Friday, July 06, 2007

Paradise Lost

A series by the BBC shows the difference between poverty and living poor and happy. What's so great about living in Vanuatu?
The Pacific island nation of Vanuatu is the happiest place on earth, according to a new "happy planet index". Beside the palm trees and beaches, why is life so good there?

On a tiny island in a set of islands in the Pacific paradise is real. In the Vanuatu chain of islands the people have their own gardens, vast forests for sustainable housing and hunting, they have an gift exchange economy based on tusks, and they are happy.

For centuries, Pacific islanders have used tusks, mats, shells and even giant rocks as currency for trading and ceremonial purposes.

But the Tari Bunia Bank is now taking that custom to a new level of sophistication - and helping to protect Vanuatu's isolated traditional communities from the harsher imperatives of modern capitalism.


They don't have capitalism on Pentacost island. They have peace, no crime, and a cooperative society. They are considered poor by world economic standards, but remind us that economic poverty is only rated by the standards of capitalist accumulation not joyful subsistence of human existence and daily life.

For years, campaigners have urged the government to pay more attention to Vanuatu's traditional economy. Official statistics show the country is one of the world's poorest and least developed.

But Selwyn Garu, secretary of the National Council of Chiefs, said those figures fail to take account of "80% of the population who live under another system. The government is focusing on the Western capitalist system. But we feel that is not justice."

But on the more remote Pentecost Island, the outside world is still being kept at arms length.

Before heading to the village hall for a lunch of yams cooked in a stone oven, and fresh seaweed, Chief Viraleo closed and bolted the doors to the bank.

So far there have been no robberies. All the branches, he explained with a chuckle, were guarded by spirits and snakes.

Ironically on another island, 'Paradise ' is falling prey to capitalist development.

As foreign developers rush to buy up the coastline around Port Vila, some are not convinced.

"In my heart this is still paradise," said Ricky Taleo, 29, watching builders carve up the shoreline in front of his village for a new resort.

"But the happiness is fading away slowly. And I guess in a couple of years it's going to turn into a dump."


Where they came into contact with capitalism during WWII they have adopted a unique interpretation of their experience.

One of the world's last surviving cargo cults is celebrating its official 50th anniversary on Tanna island in Vanuatu.

The John Frum Movement worships a mysterious spirit that urged them to reject the teachings of the Church and maintain their traditional customs.

The cult was reinforced during WWII, when US forces landed with huge amounts of cargo - weapons, food and medicine.

Villagers believe the spirit of John Frum sent the US military to their South Pacific home to help them.

Devotees say that an apparition of John Frum first appeared before tribal elders in the 1930s.

He urged them to rebel against the aggressive teachings of Christian missionaries and instead said they should put their faith in their own customs.


The John Frum cult first emerged in Vanuatu in the 1930s, when the island was jointly ruled by Britain and France as the New Hebrides.

Rebelling against the influence of Presbyterian missionaries, dozens of villages on Tanna put their faith in the shadowy figure of John Frum, variously described as either a real person or a spirit.

They believed he would drive out their colonial masters and re-establish their traditional ways.

The cult was reinforced during the Second World War, when the US military arrived with huge amounts of cargo, such as tanks, ships, weapons, medicine and food.

Islanders were stunned to see black and white troops working and living together, in contrast with the French and British officials who had treated them as colonial subjects.

The Americans' wealth and racial co-operation seemed to dove-tail perfectly with their own beliefs. So they became convinced that John Frum, their mysterious saviour, was an American.

Since then, the villagers have spent the last six decades dressing up in home-made US army uniforms, drilling with bamboo rifles and parading beneath the Stars and Stripes in the hope of enticing a delivery of cargo once again.



SEE:

Commodity Fetish a Definition

The God Eaters

Palm Sunday April Fools Day

Anarchism In Action

Hobbit Controversy


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Bio-Fuel B.S.

Another excellent post on the real story behind bio-fuels.

Biofuels: The Five Myths of the Agro-fuels Transition

The agro-fuel transition closes a 200-year chapter in the relation between agriculture and industry that began with the Industrial Revolution. Then, the invention of the steam engine promised an end to drudgery. However, industry’s take-off lagged until governments privatized common lands, driving the poorest peasants out of agriculture and into urban factories. Peasant agriculture effectively subsidized industry with both cheap food and cheap labor. Over the next 100 years, as industry grew, so did the urban percentage of the world’s population: from 3% to 13%. Cheap oil and petroleum-based fertilizers opened up agriculture itself to industrial capital. Mechanization intensified production, keeping food prices low and industry booming. The next hundred years saw a three-fold global shift to urban living. Today, the world has as many people living in cities as in the countryside. [10] The massive transfer of wealth from agriculture to industry, the industrialization of agriculture, and the rural-urban shift are all part of the “Agrarian Transition,” the lesser-known twin of the Industrial Revolution. The Agrarian/Industrial twins transformed most of the world’s fuel and food systems and established non-renewable petroleum as the foundation of today’s multi-trillion dollar agri-foods complex.

The pillars of the agri-foods industry are the great grain corporations, e.g., ADM, Cargill and Bunge. They are surrounded by an equally formidable phalanx of food processors, distributors, and supermarket chains on one hand, and agro-chemical, seed, and machinery companies on the other. Together, these industries consume four of every five food dollars. For some time, the production side of the agri-foods complex has suffered from agricultural “involution” in which increasing rates of investment (chemical inputs, genetic engineering, and machinery) have not increased the rates of agricultural productivity—the agri-foods complex is paying more and reaping less.

Agro-fuels are the perfect answer to involution because they’re subsidized, grow as oil shrinks, and facilitate the concentration of market power in the hands of the most powerful players in the food and fuel industries. Like the original Agrarian Transition, the present Agro-fuels Transition will “enclose the commons” by industrializing the remaining forests and prairies of the world. It will drive the planet’s remaining smallholders, family farmers, and indigenous peoples to the cities. It will funnel rural resources to urban centers in the form of fuel, and will generate massive amounts of industrial wealth.

See

Real Costs of Bio-Fuels

Conrad Black and ADM

Bio Fuels = Eco Disaster

GMO News Roundup

Lost and Found

Boreno is Burning

Agribusiness

Desertification

BioFuel and The Wheat Board

The Ethanol Scam: ADM and Brian Mulroney

ADM

Wheat Board

Farmers



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