Valdehíta

Spain's ancient olive trees under threat from market for garden ornaments

Petition focuses growing backlash against companies who dig up thousand-year-old trees to sell to wealthy foreigners

 

They have witnessed – and withstood – much of Spain’s rich history; their thick, gnarled branches steadily supplying olives to a changing roster of Romans, Moors and Christians. But recent years have seen Spain’s thousand-year-old olive trees face one of their biggest threats to date: a growing demand for unique garden ornaments that has led to the trees being uprooted and transported around the world, from northern Europe to the US and the United Arab Emirates.

 

“We’re losing some of the biggest and oldest trees of Europe,” said César-Javier Palacios of Madrid’s Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente Foundation. The foundation, dedicated to honouring the memory of one of Spain’s best-known naturalists, recently launched a campaign to try and keep these trees in Spain.

 

In the past two decades, dozens of companies have sprung up across Spain to feed a robust international demand for ancient olive trees. Palacios says the financial incentive was big, with the oldest trees commanding as much as €40,000 (£30,000) on the international market. But the journey is precarious. “Many of them die on the journey,” he said. “And those that don’t die, instead of living maybe another 1,000 years, they may only live another 50 or 100 years.”

 

A petition launched by his organisation calling on the EU to protect the trees has received more than 140,000 signatures. “Just like 150 years ago, rich north Americans came to Spain to buy Roman shrines for next to nothing and take them back, stone by stone, we’re again allowing the same plundering of our natural heritage,” reads the petition.

 

Read more S.: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/31/spain-ancient-olive-trees-threat-garden-ornaments

 

Una hermosa coincidencia: La urgencia por llegar/Traspasando Espejos

La urgencia de llegar, Hijos de los días; Eduardo Galeano (2012)

 

Traspasando Espejos, Rafael Suárez (2007)

 



El viaje al mar

En los tiempos idos, los hijos del sol y las hijas de la luna vivían juntos en el reino africano de Dahomey. 

Y juntos vivieron, abrazándose, peleándose, hasta que los dioses los apartaron y los condenaron a la lejanía.

Desde entonces, los hijos del sol son peces en la mar y las hijas de la luna son estrellas en la noche.

Las estrellas de mar no caen del cielo: desde el cielo viajan. Y en las aguas buscan a sus amantes perdidos.

Eduardo Galeano
Los hijos de los Días
26 de Diciembre

http://www.outings-project.org/

Modernidad líquida

Rafael Suárez

Plus tolérer tout ce qui dure

Perturbation, l'incohérence, la surprise sont les conditions habituelles de notre vie. Ils sont même devenus des besoins réels pour beaucoup de gens dont le seul manger bonbons à la menthe (..) avec des changements brusques et sans cesse renouvelés stimuli (..)  plus tolérer tout ce qui dure. Nous ne savons plus comment faire pour que l'ennui mutuellement rapprocher fruits. Donc, toute la question se résume à cette question: l'esprit humain peut maîtriser ce que l'esprit humain a créé?.

 

Paul Valéry

Regards sur le monde actuel
et autres essais

¿Entonces conoce usted la meta?

«- ¿Hacia donde cabalga, señor?

- No lo sé -respondí-, sólo quiero partir, sólo partir, nada más que partir de aquí. Sólo así lograré llegar a mi meta.

- ¿Entonces conoce usted la meta? -preguntó él.

- Sí -contesté-. Ya te lo he dicho. Partir, ésa es mi meta.

- ¿No lleva provisiones? -preguntó.

- No me son necesarias -respondí-, el viaje es tan largo que moriré de hambre si no consigo alimentos por el camino. No hay provisión que pueda salvarme. Por suerte es un viaje realmente interminable.»

 

Franz Kafka.

La partida.

 

Luz Casal y Carlos Núñez: Negra Sombra

¡Entierra la carne y vive!

¿Es preciso contradecir la herida abierta?

Lanza un grito, en esta noche en vela.

Sin la luna de nadie, hace tiempo, que es fácil acero, derramar preguntas, aún con hilos de voz:

Obra, buen corazón; rumorea cárcel.

-          ¡Entierra la carne y vive!

-          Patalea. Despierta. Lucha.

Y si la memoria marchita, olvida la cena larga: no busques cortinas; Ni oasis. Ni emperos.

No confundas el destierro con tu soledad. Pero hay algo útil en ella. No hay errores. No hay venenos extraños.

 

¿Cómo se asombra un corazón ante un muro? Anula tu capacidad de indolencia, de preciso silencio, de arrojo eterno, de palabras, embriaga tus labios bajo el peso de escribir, bajo la lámpara de la noche.

Rafael Suárez

Perdóneme si le he ofendido

“Perdóneme si le he ofendido, soy extranjero en este país. Le respeto a usted y respeto a su hija. Yo soy de América, me oculto en Sicilia, me llamo Michael Corleone, y hay quien pagaría mucho dinero por esta información, pero su hija perdería un padre, en vez de ganar un marido”.

 

El Padrino

 

Quand par le dur hiver...

Quand par le dur hiver tristement ramenée
La neige aux longs flocons tombe, et blanchit le toit,
Laissez geindre du temps la face enchifrenée.
Par nos nombreux fagots, rendez-moi l'âtre étroit !

Par le rêveur oisif, la douce après-dinée !
Les pieds sur les chenets, il songe, il rêve, il croit
Au bonheur ! - il ne veut devant sa cheminée
Qu'un voltaire bien doux, pouvant railler le froid !

Il tisonne son feu du bout de sa pincette;
La flamme s'élargit, comme une étoile jette
L'étincelle que l'oeil dans l'ombre fixe et suit;

Il lui semble alors voir les astres du soir poindre;
L'illusion redouble; heureux ! il pense joindre
A la chaleur du jour le charme de la nuit !

Jules Verne

Ludwig Katz: Retrato de un hombre en rojo

Earth has lost a third of arable land in past 40 years, scientists say

Experts point to damage caused by erosion and pollution, raising major concerns about degraded soil amid surging global demand for food

 

The world has lost a third of its arable land due to erosion or pollution in the past 40 years, with potentially disastrous consequences as global demand for food soars, scientists have warned.

 

The world has lost a third of its arable land due to erosion or pollution in the past 40 years, with potentially disastrous consequences as global demand for food soars, scientists have warned.

New research has calculated that nearly 33% of the world’s adequate or high-quality food-producing land has been lost at a rate that far outstrips the pace of natural processes to replace diminished soil.

The University of Sheffield’s Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures, which undertook the study by analysing various pieces of research published over the past decade, said the loss was “catastrophic” and the trend close to being irretrievable without major changes to agricultural practices.

 

More inf.: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/02/arable-land-soil-food-security-shortage

Somaliland: A parched earth

Somaliland's harshest drought is decimating the herder way of life and displacing thousands.

Ashley Hamer

Hargeisa, Somaliland - Swaths of Somaliland, a fragile, internationally unrecognised nation-state in the Horn of Africa, have been racked by one of the harshest droughts in two decades which is destroying livelihoods and pushing families into destitution.

When a storm broke in mid-November, Aicha Jama huddled her last-remaining sheep and goats out of their bush pen and into her own tiny hut.

Jama's handful of wretched animals, already close to death from starvation, could not bear a violent gale. "Two goats died from cold just now," Musa, Jama's nephew, told Al Jazeera

In the drizzly aftermath, Jama carried the bony bodies of the survivors out of her hut and they crumpled, shivering with their hides soaked, the animals were too weak to hold their heads off the ground.

November's rain was some of the first to fall here for three years.

The coastal Awdal and Galbeed regions of northwestern Somaliland are suffering the driest conditions in recent memory.

Across three fractured territories that the international community still recognises as Somalia - Somaliland, Puntland and South Central - aid groups warn that a combination of protracted drought and sudden heavy rainfall brought on by El Nino weather patterns this year will probably push 855,000 people close to catastrophe in 2016.

In Somaliland's Awdal region, traditional rains - known locally as Gu and Deyr - which should occur regularly though the year and serve to replenish water reserves and rejuvenate grazing pasture, have failed for several consecutive years.

" Two years ago we owned 200 sheep and goats," said Jama. "But there has been no water, no food and the animals are dying continuously."

Her small extended family say that they cannot move from the remote dry zone because their last donkey died and the remaining sheep and goats are too weak to walk.

En route from the coast inland through desiccated terrain dozens of pastoralist families like Jama's displayed the meagre remains of once profitable herds - their lifeline - now reduced to three, five, 15 animals - or none at all.

Goat, sheep, donkey and even camel carcasses litter the bush around rural camps

Livestock production is the backbone of Somaliland's economy. Around 60 percent of the population practise some form of pastoralism or depend on animal products, primarily because the arid regional climate allows for few alternative livelihoods, says Abdullahi Rabile, a livestock specialist with the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Somaliland.

Eighty percent of Somaliland's export income is generated from sales of sheep, goats, cattle and camel.

In 2014, the combined territories of Somaliland, Puntland and South Central Somalia exported a record 5 million livestock, worth an estimated $360m.

Most of those beasts were raised in Somaliland - the most politically stable of the three territories - and the majority of sales went to Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the Gulf states.

But few communities in the drought zone sold any animals or managed to plant crops at all this year. Instead they are accumulating debt.

'I lost them all'

In Lughaya, a windswept town on the Awdal seafront, Marian Hussain, 60, says she used to own 300 sheep and goats.

Before the drought she would sell up to 10 animals a year, with a goat or sheep making on average $50 to $80, and additional income earned through sales of milk and meat.

" But slowly I lost them all. Now I have five goats left. I depend on food and support from my relatives."

Lughaya town elder, Ege Ali, earns more as a livestock trader than the transient pastoralists who raise the animals in the bush. He says he is regularly lending food rations to rural nomads whose herds have been decimated.

The business of the town is livestock, but there were no animal sales this year, not even camels … the animals that remain are too poor condition to sell," Ali said.

Average household debt in Awdal increased from $68 in September 2014 to $400 in the same month this year, according to Rabile.

Rural communities across this parched region are familiar with drought; they have experienced it from time to time for generations. But they say the rains they rely on have become increasingly erratic and less generous, and they notice that the landscape is changing, growing more hostile.

"The current year is bad, but this follows a series of poor rainy seasons in many years," said Richard Trenchard, FAO representative for Somalia.

"Most farmers and livestock owners are able to withstand a poor season or two. However ... we often see that one particularly bad season, after a series of poor ones, can tip vast numbers of people into desperate food security situations. This is where we are now, at least potentially: thousands of people are staring into a hunger abyss following a series of poor rainy seasons."

A direct link between human-induced global climate change and increasing drought in the Horn of Africa is difficult to make, says Friederike Otto, a senior researcher at Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute.

The region is geographically diverse with complex climate variations and there is a lack of long-term observational records which make it difficult to validate climate models.

Nevertheless, a report published by Oxfam in October suggests that soaring global temperatures in 2014 and 2015, coupled with the onset of a particularly powerful El Nino in the late months of 2015, may exacerbate the impact of disrupted rainfall patterns with dire consequences for populations across the Horn of Africa.

In Somaliland, Trenchard says the current drought is further intensified by poor land management and the limited capacity of the territorial government to regulate and manage land and water use sustainably.

Aggravating practices include unregulated over-grazing in concentrated areas and the relentless chopping-down of trees for charcoal production - another significant source of income for Somaliland - which causes deforestation leaving the soil weak and unable to retain water.

When the herd is gone the pastoralists can no longer support their families in the bush. People are forced to seek help and alternative sources of income in towns and cities.

Internally displaced

Somaliland proclaimed independence from Somalia in 1991 and maintains a fragile democracy. It is also the world's fourth poorest economy.

However, an estimated 84,000 people are internally displaced (IDP) within its borders and it shelters thousands of refugees from other countries - most notably at least 8,000 from Ethiopia and an influx of more than 9,000 from Yemen after the crisis there this year.

Many of Somaliland's IDPs have been uprooted by conflict in the region but the majority, according to the territory's Ministry of Resettlement, Rehabilitation and Reconstruction, have been forced to move by recurring drought and deteriorating landscapes that have rendered life impossible for herders.

On the outskirts of the capital Hargeisa, thousands of displaced families live in shanty towns and ragged camps. Some IDP settlements have been supported by humanitarian organisations, while others appear starkly neglected. 

 

The Naasa Hablod camp, for instance, sprawls over a hilltop above the city. Some IDP settlements are supported by humanitarian organisations. Naasa Hablod, however, is starkly neglected.

Osman Hugur Obsiye, chief of the camp, thinks about 1,000 families - perhaps as many as 5,000 individuals - squat on this rocky hill.

He says most families, including his own, are nomads displaced to the city over the past five years as drought and disease killed off their herds of sheep, goats, cattle and camel.

Obsiye claims Naasa Hablod receives almost no aid. Whereas humanitarian groups have built permanent structures in other settlements, here residents lash together their own homes from sticks, rags and rope.

There is no school, no mosque, no health facility and no police station. Water is brought up in trucks by merchants from the city and as a result residents claim they must buy it at an inflated price.

No funding

Maria Abdullahi owned more than 200 sheep and goats and lost them all to starvation in a single year.

"I have seven children … we came to the city because our chances are somehow better. In the countryside my husband could not find money for us," she said

Aid groups warn that the drought and rainfall brought by El Nino will most likely push thousands into a crisis state [AShley Hamer/Al Jazeera]  

 

"Here he collects rocks [as manual work] and I can sew cloth rugs to sell in town."

In camps such as Naasa Hablod, Somaliland's displaced populations are chronically neglected because the international community does not recognise the territory's independence and channels the majority of humanitarian aid into the more visible crisis of South Central Somalia, believes Ahmed Fagaase, a displacement specialist with the aid group Danish Refugee Council in Hargeisa.

Back in Awdal, Aicha Jama thinks that with a handful of decent downpours over the coming weeks her surviving animals could begin to recover after three months. But the family has no source of income in the interim.

Aid groups have distributed rations of flour, sugar, rice and cooking oil and are treating rising malnutrition in the region, but the support so far is insufficient to meet the needs of the people affected.

FAO wants to restock drought-hit communities with live sheep and goats, but as yet there is no funding for the proposal.

As of October, the international humanitarian response plan for the whole of Somalia was only 36 percent funded.

Meanwhile, for pastoralists existing in the drought zone the land grows drier. Even now with spotty rain falling in some areas it will be months before surviving herds are restored and crops can be grown.

Families who have lost all their animals and their livelihoods may have no choice but to move to a town where they must find alternative ways to earn a living. In a territory with a youth unemployment rate of 75 percent, they risk being cast to the margins.

"My animals are my life," says Shukri Bare, a pregnant mother-of-two in the small Awdal settlement of Kalowle.

"When they were almost finished we could no longer survive [in the bush] and we had to come for help here three months ago. We cannot go back. We do not know if we can recover from this."

 

S:http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/11/somaliland-parched-earth-151130112224968.html

Robando al mar

F.: Rafael Suárez

Vida Liquida

F.: Rafael Suárez

Guerilla Open Access Manifesto by Aaron Swartz

Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for
themselves. The world's entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries
in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of
private corporations. Want to read the papers featuring the most famous results of the
sciences? You'll need to send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier.

There are those struggling to change this. The Open Access Movement has fought
valiantly to ensure that scientists do not sign their copyrights away but instead ensure
their work is published on the Internet, under terms that allow anyone to access it. But
even under the best scenarios, their work will only apply to things published in the future.
Everything up until now will have been lost.

That is too high a price to pay. Forcing academics to pay money to read the work of their
colleagues? Scanning entire libraries but only allowing the folks at Google to read them?
Providing scientific articles to those at elite universities in the First World, but not to
children in the Global South? It's outrageous and unacceptable.

"I agree," many say, "but what can we do? The companies hold the copyrights, they
make enormous amounts of money by charging for access, and it's perfectly legal —
there's nothing we can do to stop them." But there is something we can, something that's
already being done: we can fight back.

Those with access to these resources — students, librarians, scientists — you have been
given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world
is locked out. But you need not — indeed, morally, you cannot — keep this privilege for
yourselves. You have a duty to share it with the world. And you have: trading passwords
with colleagues, filling download requests for friends.



Meanwhile, those who have been locked out are not standing idly by. You have been
sneaking through holes and climbing over fences, liberating the information locked up by
the publishers and sharing them with your friends.

But all of this action goes on in the dark, hidden underground. It's called stealing or
piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a
ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn't immoral — it's a moral imperative. Only
those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy.

Large corporations, of course, are blinded by greed. The laws under which they operate
require it — their shareholders would revolt at anything less. And the politicians they
have bought off back them, passing laws giving them the exclusive power to decide who
can make copies.

There is no justice in following unjust laws. It's time to come into the light and, in the
grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public
culture.

We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with
the world. We need to take stuff that's out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need
to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific
journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerilla Open
Access.

With enough of us, around the world, we'll not just send a strong message opposing the
privatization of knowledge — we'll make it a thing of the past. Will you join us?

Aaron Swartz

July 2008, Eremo, Italy

The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz (CC available)

Imperativo moral