Dove's Eye View

Bizr and Ka'ak: Food Politics

Food issues affect economics, the environment, and social systems. What you eat affects more than just your tastebuds or your personal health - your food choices reflect and affect your society and eco-system in ways you don't directly perceive.

Read about food politics, agriculture and Lebanon The Roots of Inequality at Ms. Levantine.

Here in California we say "think global, buy local" - it's a whole political/social movement intended to address just the questions described in this essay. Concerns about the environment, energy policy, pesticides in food, and good nutrition are all addressed when you buy locally grown produce.

Buying local addresses the problem of using oil to grow and distribute food - local produce needs far less oil to bring to market.

Organic farming is another part of this equation. It is labor-intensive, and it uses less petrochemicals (or none at all) to fertilize and grow crops.

When I choose to spend a little more to buy local, family-farmed organic produce, I am "voting" with my disposable income in favor of food production that is sustainable, that pollutes less, that emits no harmful toxins into the environment, and that supports small family farms.

Acting this way seems Quixotic to some, but in America we've been pushing this concept for 25 years and more, and now the biggest food producers are forced to respond. Organic crop production has become big business, and the major food distributors are selling organic. Economies of scale work in the organic world, too. However, this causes new problems.

I still favor buying local - I buy local, non-organic produce over imported, organic produce.

Local markets and vendors in Lebanon are part of the indigenous distribution system. People who care about Lebanon's agricultural future might want to buy LOCAL produce, from local vendors if possible. Buying imported food, or food produced and distributed by big agribusiness, may contribute to economic inequity and to pollution (boats and trucks emit bad stuff).

The same day I read the linked post about Lebanon and agriculture, I discovered a policy paper on food distribution that was left in my local produce market.

On pages 6 and 7, you will see photos of this very market! The think tank is in my city and they used images from this family-owned produce store to illustrate the benefits of choosing small vendors over huge conglomerate stores. One assumes that someone from the think tank placed the papers at the cash register. Only in the Bay Area do you pick up food policy papers while buying your salad greens.

The paper discusses food issues in terms of the enormous and corporatized American market - but the issues are related Lebanon's food production and distribution problems.

The solution is very similar: promote local agriculture. Promote sustainable agriculture. Buy in your local markets, and avoid Big Agriculture food products. Don't buy chips, processed cereals and sweets - bad for you anyway, and they contribute to these economic inequities.

For instance, Lebanese schoolchildren are better off buying bizr, kaak and other local, traditional snacks, than buying potato chips in bags or other American-style crap. Chips are unhealthy, they are too expensive, and they contribute to the corporatization of the economy; buying processed fast snacks harms local Lebanese businesses and workers.

Abu-Ali, the writer of the original food distribution post, tips us to a new Lebanese farmer's market initiatives: Souk el Tayeb. I love it. Yes the markets are upscale and seem to be patronized by Westernized, affluent elite. So what? Let the elite buy local; this will support local farmers and bring more goods to market. We want everyone to buy local.

The Souk el Tayeb link leads to Make Food Not War, a new initiative by the Slow Food movement. Here are my two favorite issues put together in one. Thank God the slow foodies decided to do something beyond eating elaborately prepared traditional food. Read their mission here.

If you're in Lebanon and picking up snacks, buy the bizr instead of the bagged potato chips. For Lebanon!

Mahmoud Darwish Poetry

Copper Canyon Press has released a bilingual edition of new poetry from Mahmoud Darwishcalled The Butterfly's Burden. Fady Joudah translated:

Two Stranger Birds in Our Feathers

My sky is ashen. Scratch my back. And undo
slowly, you stranger, my braids. And tell me
what's on your mind. Tell me what crossed
Youssef's mind. Tell me some simple
talk . . . talk a woman always desires
to be told. I don't want the phrase
complete. Gesture is enough to scatter me in the rise
of butterflies between springheads and the sun. Tell me
I am necessary for you like sleep, and not like nature
filling up with water around you and me. And spread
over me an endless blue wing . . .

Sample more of Dr. Joudah's Darwish translations at Words Without Borders. Copper Canyon Press is one of the top poetry publishing houses in the USA. Their editions are beautifully designed and produced, they publish poets of the best quality, and they win prizes big and small.

I will be ordering this book, and you should, too (see Amazon link at left, or order it from your local independent bookseller, as I do).

Read a poem Dr. Joudah wrote in the latest issue of The Beloit Review.

Barton Bentley Cregger

My first cousin, son of my mother's sister, died in Virginia Tuesday, March 27 at the age of forty-nine after a massive stroke. Besides being a devoted son to his recently widowed mother, and a loving husband, Barton B. Cregger was a dynamic professor and dean, someone who kept the gears turning for a huge organization. Update: his obituary in his hometown paper, the Roanoke (Virginia) Times.

We are bereft. May he rest in peace.

Heartfelt condolences to Aunt Susan, who has suffered terrible losses this year. We love you so much and our prayers are with you. And deepest sympathies and condolences to Norma, Bart's beloved wife and love of his life, who has also suffered much in this past year.

To my other readers and friends - Barton Cregger is not the blogger from Sacramento who is also my (second) cousin, Randy Bayne. Randy did take beautiful photos of Aunt Susan, Barton's mother, at our family reunion; sadly Barton couldn't make that trip because he had a big conference at home in Virginia that weekend.

Spring Break Fever: Music Dept.

Something completely atypical for the Dove:

Includes Fairuz, Patty Smith, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Africa Bambaata and Gogol Bordello...

Since we're doing online music, how about a video from my childhood - Fairuz singing I loved you in the summer. However, that word that sounds not nice actually means "winter" (or rainy season). If you don't know Arabic I guess it sounds funny. Oh well... She's singing to a man that she loved him in the summer, loved him in the winter, waited for him summer and winter... and it's not going well...

Sam'a Israel

In the New York Times, where Israeli Soldiers Stand Firm, but Duty Wears on the Soul, an Israeli man defends his military service in the West Bank and accuses "these people" (Palestinians) of being liars.

That was enough for Uriel Simon, 77 years old, a professor emeritus of biblical studies at Bar-Ilan University and a noted religious dove.

“As for liars,” Mr. Simon said, then paused. “My father was a liar. My grandfather was a liar. How else did we cross lines to get to this country? We stayed alive by lying. We lied to the Russians, we lied to the Germans, we lied to the British! We lie for survival! Jacob the Liar was my father!” he said.

As for the Palestinians, he said: “Of course they lie! Everyone lies at a checkpoint! We lied at checkpoints, too.”

Everyone is afraid of mirrors, Mr. Simon said, readjusting the knitted skullcap on his nimbus of white hair. “We hate the mirror. We don’t want to look at ourselves. We don’t like photographs of us — we say, ‘Oh, that’s not a very good likeness.’ We want to be much nicer than we are. But here there are also prophets who are mirrors, who are not afraid of kings and generals. The prophet says, ‘You are ugly,’ and we don’t want to hear it, but we have to look at the mirror honestly, without fear.”

Shma'a, Yisroel! Sam'a Israel!

Hat tip to The Arabist.

A Melkite Priest

I just came across the extraordinary biography of a recently dead Melkite priest, Joseph Raya. Archbishop Raya served from the Galilee to Birmingham, Alabama; he was a close friend of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and he led protests in Israel, while asserting that Muslims, Christians and Jews must reconcile.

Archbishop Joseph Raya, former Melkite Greek Catholic Archbishop of Akko, Haifa, Nazareth and all Galilee, died 10 June in hospital in Barry’s Bay, Ontario. He was 88 years old. Raya, who served in Galilee from 1968 to 1974, was known for his commitment to seeking reconciliation between Jews, Christians and Muslims and for his English translation of the Byzantine Liturgy. He has been nominated for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.

Born in Zahle, Lebanon in 1916, Raya did his seminary studies at St. Anne’s in Jerusalem and was ordained in 1941 and worked in Lebanon and Egypt before emigrating to the United States in 1950. He served as assistant pastor of St. Ann Melkite Church in West Paterson, NJ and became pastor of St. George Melkite parish in Birmingham, Alabama in 1952. Raya’s recognition of the dignity of every person brought him into close friendship with the late Rev. Martin Luther King. He marched several times at King’s side, and suffered at the hands of the Klu Klux Klan.

In Jerusalem in 1972 he led a peaceful demonstration of thousands of Arabs and Jews before Golda Meir’s Knesset, seeking justice for two villages of Upper Galilee who had been evacuated from their lands in 1948 but not allowed to return, despite a decision by the Supreme Court of Israel granting them permission to return. He sought justice through non-violent means and called Palestinians to be good citizens of the state of Israel. In August 1972, Raya ordered all his Galilean churches closed one Sunday as an expression of mourning what he called “the death of justice in Israel” as the villagers remained dispossessed.

In September 1974 Raya resigned from his archbishopric. In his letter of resignation he declared, “I came to the Holy Land to give. And behold! I was overwhelmed by what I received. I came to enrich and purify. And behold! I was the one to be enriched and purified. I loved the family of the Lord. His family are both the Jews and the Arabs. I held the Muslim, the Druze, the Jew, the Christian, everyone, believer and unbeliever, in the same embrace. How I yearned to wash everyone’s feet and hold them to my heart and try to weld them into one heart and one soul and show them all how they can live together, love together and see the radiance of God in each other’s face.” Though Raya was considered controversial, both Arabs (Christian and Muslim) and Jews regretted his decision to resign.

More here.

I find Msgr. Raya's biography remarkable. Perhaps my father's ecumenism and passion for justice were not aberrations; he seems to have arisen from a spiritual tradition in his church, even though he did not follow doctrine and was not a believer. Or was he?

Although I was not raised in any church, and had no more than a passing connection to the Melkite church of my ancestors, I still find in it a leader (and there are more like him) who lived beliefs similar to mine. Furthermore, Raya's connection to Dr. King knits together my father's tradition to that of my mother, an American Protestant who went to jail during the sit-ins and received a personal letter from Dr. King for her trouble. I'm really moved.

Energize America

While Bush fiddles and the world burns, citizens have been organizing via the internet to create and implement an energy plan that will alleviate many of our most pressing problems: Energize America.

Energize America is a comprehensive and compelling 20-point plan developed by informed citizen activists to wean the U.S. from its fossil fuel addiction and provide the U.S. with Energy Security by 2020, and Energy Freedom by 2040.

2. What are Energize America’s goals?

By 2020, Energize America will enable the U.S. to:

* reduce both oil imports and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 50%,
* generate 25% of our electricity from renewable sources, and
* create 2M new energy-related American jobs and save 1M ‘at-risk’ auto jobs.

The Dove is the daughter of an engineer and firmly believes that good old-fashioned ingenuity, technical and organizational, can solve our climate change and energy problems. I also worked in economic development in my 20s and I happen to believe that solving energy and climate problems will create new jobs. I live in Northern California. We are rich because we follow our visions to new technology, no matter how much the dinosaurs complain.

Read about the High Speed Passenger Rail Acthere:

Energize America has been working on draft legislation to help America reach energy security in the face of peak oil and our over-dependence on the Middle East, and to address concerns about global warming through efficiency and energy alternative measures. This week saw the delivery of several legislative proposals to congress. Among the commentary and responses there has been one issue that stood out to me: increasing support for rail, both passenger and freight.

The following is a first draft of a new "High Speed Passenger Rail Act", based on Act V - "The Passenger Rail Restoration Act" of Energize America version 5.

The High Speed Passenger Rail Act - Background

Energy Implications

Passenger air travel in the US in 2005 got about 45 passenger-miles per gallon of fuel [thanks to freelunch for the correction!], emitting 140 million tons of CO2 in total (1). Passenger cars on highways traveled over 1.5 trillion miles with an average of 1.59 occupants, at about 44 passenger-mpg, emitting about 750 million tons of CO2. Both air and automobile are heavily dependent on liquid fuels whose future supply is uncertain.

Successful high-speed rail systems, implemented in Japan and Europe, particularly the French TGV system, run on electricity with an efficiency equivalent to 300 to 500 passenger-mpg. And electric power is the easiest form to generate from new energy sources such as wind and solar energy. High-passenger-load high-speed rail would dramatically reduce the impact of the passenger transportation sector on energy consumption and CO2 emissions.

If you are a Daily Kos member (free sign-up), you may comment on the draft. This legislation as well as the Energize America plan were developed collectively through blog comments such as the ones you will read. While the Republicans are complaining, dragging their feet, and fighting useless wars to secure dwindling oil supplies, regular citizens are busy creating solutions - on their own time.

Jewish grandmothers patrol West Bank checkpoints

I blogged Machsom Watch in the earliest days of Dove's Eye View - now they've made the news: Jewish grandmothers patrol West Bank checkpoints - Yahoo! News.

Over the years, Machsomwatch has recorded a long list of checkpoint incidents: babies stillborn to mothers held up in queues, sick patients denied passage to hospitals, arguments that ended in Palestinians shot, food rotting on the way to market, students missing their final exams and bridegrooms their weddings.

The
United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Jerusalem says there are 528 permanent and temporary checkpoints in the West Bank, 40 percent more than a year ago.

Most are not between the West Bank and Israel but between West Bank towns and villages, a fact that makes anti-occupation Israelis and Palestinians doubt the Israeli government's contention that their primary purpose is security.

"The idea is to make life so unpleasant and so uncomfortable for them that they just give up and leave, emigrate to an Arab country, to Canada, wherever they can go," said Nomi Lalo, another veteran of Machsomwatch.

I wonder what made AP choose to run the story now? Well, it's fruitless to speculate. I am glad to see this story.

Reader Maloof notes that Nicholas Kristof calls for open dialogue on Israel in the United States. He points out that Israelis themselves say things in the pages of Haaretz that no mainstream American politician or pundit would dare whisper.

A shift in the wind? I am not holding my breath.

Whose Oil Is It, Anyway? - New York Times

Read all about it: Whose Oil Is It, Anyway? - New York Times.

Iraq’s oil reserves — thought to be the second largest in the world — have always been high on the corporate wish list. In 1998, Kenneth Derr, then chief executive of Chevron, told a San Francisco audience, “Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas — reserves I’d love Chevron to have access to.”

A new oil law set to go before the Iraqi Parliament this month would, if passed, go a long way toward helping the oil companies achieve their goal. The Iraq hydrocarbon law would take the majority of Iraq’s oil out of the exclusive hands of the Iraqi government and open it to international oil companies for a generation or more.

European Jews Criticize Israel

Not only Germans mentioned in this article: "German Jews Feud Over Criticizing Israel - Forward.com". The quote below describes Independent Jewish Voices, a new group in Britain.

The group’s letter put forth five principles it wanted upheld “in respect of the grave situation in the Middle East”: that human rights are universal; that Palestinians and Israelis have the right to live peaceful and secure lives; that peace and stability require a willingness to comply with international law; that there is no justification for any form of racism, and that the battle against antisemitism is undermined when opposition to Israeli government policies is automatically branded as antisemitic, as they claim it is.

In times of ignorance, prejudice, and knee-jerk race-hatred, some sane voices do prevail.

If humanity survives, I hope we'll look back on this era with puzzlement and sorrow.