From within Israel, Labor may appear to be center-left given the scales are tipped by all the Likudniks and beyond.
Viewed from most places in the world not currently involved in permanent military occupations in such a blatant way, the policies of the Labor party clearly fall under the far right category. The parties beyond Likud can't be seen from the center without binoculars.
Since we are a social species, we often want to find people who think like we do. So there is the temptation to equate the spectrum of policy in two countries and then look for a corresponding slice to ally with. Indeed you will quickly find people in Israel who think like you about the price of housing. Palestinian human rights are very different, sadly you will easily find "centrists" Israelis who are matter-of-factly denying them their rights, if not their humanity, and support their ongoing dispossession.
Modern day piracy has arisen in the peripheries of the world-economy. Unsurprisingly, their own "narratives" usually contain a lot of insight into the nature of that periphery of the world economy, the realities on the local ground.
African countries turned to fishing for subsistence in a big way only after their agriculture was undermined by dumping subsidizing Western (mostly EU) produce on them.
Meanwhile, EU policy sided with big fishing industry against traditional fishing even in the face of overfishing and did nothing to prevent those huge fleets from systematically picking clean African waters further and further away from Europe.
These fleets are essentially beyond regulation as fish caught are typically transferred from vessel to vessel a number of times before getting off-loaded at port. To connect this to everyday life: this means that nobody can reconstruct from what region of the planet most of the sea-food that is sold to you actually comes from.
The intrinsic lawlessness of the large scale fishing industry has had some rather blunt side effects such as snatching local fishermen on the high seas and pressing them into slave labor on the big vessels, as well as dumping radioactive waste along the African coast.
It is harder to cite evidence for bigger picture context then for specific information; bits and pieces of it are often admitted to in passing in the media, which doesn't seem to touch such topics until there is an actual firefight between some crack marine unit and ragtag "pirates". I'd recommend Loretta Napoleoni's Rogue Economics for an overview.
We may be able to get a deeper understanding of local political developments as well as of the relative efficacy of assistence strategies if we make every attempt to understand what it means to be born into the peripheries of the world economic system.
Even doing "embedded" journalism (sic) in Afghanistan is costly and oh so depressing, so the marketers of the "mainstream" media will not touch it even though there may well be a "market" - how else to explain the disproportionate popularity of your own "egghead" blog? 😉
I'm not sure all that many USAns are given a choice to actually follow up on their professed interests in a meaningful way, at least within "mainstream" (corporate) culture...
Well, this would be more than understandable even without the recent "offensives" (not to mention the constant bombardments...)
Where I am from (Austria), G.I.s were actually welcomed by most people in 1945, there were no allied air bombings whatsoever after the war ended... and even so, the U.S. troops did begin to wear out their welcome after 10 years (at which point they were actually withdrawn from their bases - a very popular move all around, can you imagine?)
they left a lot of their heavy equipment such as lorries behind as it wouldn't have been worthwhile to carry old stuff them halfway around the world. Vignette: the Austrian military actually uses these lorries to this day - yes, most of our military transport vehicles really date back to the 40ies - this is among the few things that makes me proud to be an Austrian 😉
great discussion on trucking and commuting - 2 more gas guzzlers - wars and air conditioning (this is hell had an interview last week with stan cox who reports that 75% of the fuel imported into iraq by the US goes to air-conditioning
and then there is industrial agriculture, especially production of red meat...
Consume less.
It depends on your point of view.
From within Israel, Labor may appear to be center-left given the scales are tipped by all the Likudniks and beyond.
Viewed from most places in the world not currently involved in permanent military occupations in such a blatant way, the policies of the Labor party clearly fall under the far right category. The parties beyond Likud can't be seen from the center without binoculars.
Since we are a social species, we often want to find people who think like we do. So there is the temptation to equate the spectrum of policy in two countries and then look for a corresponding slice to ally with. Indeed you will quickly find people in Israel who think like you about the price of housing. Palestinian human rights are very different, sadly you will easily find "centrists" Israelis who are matter-of-factly denying them their rights, if not their humanity, and support their ongoing dispossession.
Modern day piracy has arisen in the peripheries of the world-economy. Unsurprisingly, their own "narratives" usually contain a lot of insight into the nature of that periphery of the world economy, the realities on the local ground.
African countries turned to fishing for subsistence in a big way only after their agriculture was undermined by dumping subsidizing Western (mostly EU) produce on them.
Meanwhile, EU policy sided with big fishing industry against traditional fishing even in the face of overfishing and did nothing to prevent those huge fleets from systematically picking clean African waters further and further away from Europe.
These fleets are essentially beyond regulation as fish caught are typically transferred from vessel to vessel a number of times before getting off-loaded at port. To connect this to everyday life: this means that nobody can reconstruct from what region of the planet most of the sea-food that is sold to you actually comes from.
The intrinsic lawlessness of the large scale fishing industry has had some rather blunt side effects such as snatching local fishermen on the high seas and pressing them into slave labor on the big vessels, as well as dumping radioactive waste along the African coast.
It is harder to cite evidence for bigger picture context then for specific information; bits and pieces of it are often admitted to in passing in the media, which doesn't seem to touch such topics until there is an actual firefight between some crack marine unit and ragtag "pirates". I'd recommend Loretta Napoleoni's Rogue Economics for an overview.
We may be able to get a deeper understanding of local political developments as well as of the relative efficacy of assistence strategies if we make every attempt to understand what it means to be born into the peripheries of the world economic system.
Even doing "embedded" journalism (sic) in Afghanistan is costly and oh so depressing, so the marketers of the "mainstream" media will not touch it even though there may well be a "market" - how else to explain the disproportionate popularity of your own "egghead" blog? 😉
I'm not sure all that many USAns are given a choice to actually follow up on their professed interests in a meaningful way, at least within "mainstream" (corporate) culture...
Well, this would be more than understandable even without the recent "offensives" (not to mention the constant bombardments...)
Where I am from (Austria), G.I.s were actually welcomed by most people in 1945, there were no allied air bombings whatsoever after the war ended... and even so, the U.S. troops did begin to wear out their welcome after 10 years (at which point they were actually withdrawn from their bases - a very popular move all around, can you imagine?)
they left a lot of their heavy equipment such as lorries behind as it wouldn't have been worthwhile to carry old stuff them halfway around the world. Vignette: the Austrian military actually uses these lorries to this day - yes, most of our military transport vehicles really date back to the 40ies - this is among the few things that makes me proud to be an Austrian 😉
great discussion on trucking and commuting - 2 more gas guzzlers - wars and air conditioning (this is hell had an interview last week with stan cox who reports that 75% of the fuel imported into iraq by the US goes to air-conditioning
and then there is industrial agriculture, especially production of red meat...