Monday, October 31, 2011

Stemming population growth is a cheap way to limit climate change | Environment | guardian.co.uk

There's no one way to suddenly cut carbon emissions, but better family planning where it's most needed is a cost-effective start

People walk struggling for space between
Lagos, Nigeria – one of the mostly densely populated cities in the world with more than 14 million residents. Photograph: Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP/Getty Images

On October 31, according to forecasts, the 7 billionth person will be born. A few weeks before this milestone, Adnan Mevic, whom the United Nations declared Baby 6 Billion in 1999, celebrated one of his own. He turned 12.

More than 200,000 people are added to the population each day, and we're expected to keep growing for years to come, reaching anywhere from 8 billion to 11 billion mid-century.

The idea of living sustainably, of "going green", has recently become a buzzword when talking about everything from energy to water to agriculture. We certify energy-efficient LEED buildings. We build electric cars. We invest in solar power. But in terms of our own numbers, we are anything but sustainable.

Of course, consumption is a big part of the problem. With less than 5% of the world's population, the US consumes about one-fifth of the world's energy. We're among the top countries in the world in terms of per-capita emissions, and the average American is responsible for about 200 times as much carbon as the average Ethiopian.

But it's the poorest areas of the world, those least responsible for the generation of greenhouse gases, that are disproportionately feeling the effects of climate change.

Over-exploitation and habitat loss as a result of population pressures is also accelerating the extinction of plant and animal species, undermining the poor in parts of the world where people are heavily dependent on nature for livelihoods. Areas of rapid population growth overlay those with high numbers of threatened and vulnerable plant species, and much of the coming growth is expected to take place in the tropics, where ecosystems harbour the planet's richest forms of biodiversity.

Responding to climate change and protecting plant and animal species requires integrated solutions from governments, businesses and advocates. We need to reduce land-based pollution and stop destructive fishing practices that weaken coral reefs. We need land use reforms, government incentives for developing biofuels and alternative energy sources, and education. However, doing any of that without also making efforts to slow population growth makes an uphill climb even more difficult.

It's unpopular to apply sustainability to the concept of population growth, as the word "population" evokes worries about state control and limits on reproductive freedom. But slower population growth can not only lessen vulnerability to climate change impacts, it also has the potential to significantly reduce future greenhouse gas emissions. Following a slower population growth path could reduce fossil fuel emissions by an extra 1.1 billion tonnes of carbon per year by 2050.

About half of those reductions would come from fertility decline in the United States and developing countries, and could be achieved simply through meeting existing demand for family planning services. More than 200 million women in developing countries want to avoid pregnancy, but need modern contraception. The emissions reductions that could be expected through meeting these family planning needs would be roughly equivalent to the reductions that would come from ending all tropical deforestation.

Compared with the technological investments needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions globally, the cost of meeting the current demand for family planning is cheap. Emissions averted through investments in family planning would cost about $4.50 per tonne of carbon dioxide, compared with options such as solar power ($30 per tonne) or carbon capture and storage from new coal plants ($60 per tonne).

Every human being has a right to a certain quality of life, which is harder to achieve with growing population. Human numbers are central to a achieving a sustainable future. As we celebrate the birth of the 7 billionth child, we should also make investments now to improve his or her future.

• Thomas Lovejoy is a conservation biologist who coined the term "biological diversity". He currently holds the Biodiversity Chair at the Heinz Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment based in Washington, DC, and serves on the Board of Directors for Population Action International.

Sunday, October 30, 2011

World reaches 7 billion people | GlobalPost

BOSTON — Planet Earth’s population reached 7 billion people Monday, according to the United Nations, posing new challenges to provide adequate food for all.

After taking about 250,000 years to reach the 1 billion mark in 1805, the world’s population has exploded in the past two centuries. The population reached 2 billion people in 1927 and then doubled to 4 billion just 47 years later in 1974.

Now only 12 years after the United Nations named Bosnian Adnan Nevic as number 6 billion on Oct. 12, 1999, the world has reached the 7 billion milestone.

“Our record population size can be viewed in many ways as a success for humanity: People are living longer, healthier lives,” said Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), in a 2011 report on population growth.

“But not everyone has benefited from this achievement or the higher quality of life that this implies,” he wrote.

The world has seen game-changing technological innovations, yet the gaps between rich and poor are widening in almost every region. The significant decline in the number of children per mother in some developed countries contrasts starkly with the high fertility rates in sub-Saharan Africa.

Related: Family Planning and Seven Billion

Experts predict massive environmental destruction and natural resource deficits if nothing is done to create a more sustainable way of life.

“We have to consume in more sustainable ways, but also we have to produce in more sustainable ways,” said Michael Herrmann, an adviser on population and economics with the UNFPA. “Many countries already face water shortages, food shortages and energy shortages.”

In late September of this year, PepsiCo, Inc., the PepsiCo Foundation, the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) and the United States Agency for International Development announced an initiative to tackle food and economic insecurity in Ethiopia by increasing the amount of chickpeas (garbanzo beans) harvested.

The partnership, called Enterprise EthioPEA, aims to use local crops in the country to meet nutritional needs. Part of the food will still serve the local Ethiopian and export market, and the rest will be committed to the WFP as nutrition supplements for other parts of the world.

Chickpea is a staple in the average Ethiopian’s diet and is a highly nutritious food, according to experts.

“With the ingenuity, power and reach of the private sector, we can make great strides in ending the malnutrition and hunger that is threatening the lives of millions,” Josette Sheeran, executive director of WFP, said in a statement.

Ethiopian Daniel Gad is a former AT&T senior executive in Seattle who returned to his home country in 2003 to invest in local food production. As the owner of Omega Farms, Gad teaches the locals participating in the initiative modern agriculture practices and manages the farm for his partners.

He said he considers Enterprise EthioPEA to be an important step in satisfying the world’s need for more nutritious food, and he hopes the partnership will inspire many more international donors to follow the example.

“The fact remains we’re not moving fast enough to keep up with the demand on food,” Gad said. “We’re not preparing ourselves to respond to food emergencies that we see cropping up all over the world.”

Herrmann agreed that innovative policies and investments are a much-needed tool in influencing population growth and said, “demography is not destiny.”

“We have to change the way we’re consuming and producing,” he said. “The world is reaching limits.”

Economist Harry Dent is Interviewed by Straight Talk Wealth host Bruce Weide (Part 1) - YouTube

Economist Harry Dent is Interviewed by Straight Talk Wealth host Bruce Weide (Part 1) - YouTube: ""

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Snow and Wall street Occupy l

Oct. 29 - Occupy Wall Street protesters stick it out in New York's Zuccotti Park, despite cold temperatures, snow, wind and rain. Deborah Lutterbeck reports. More

Occupy pop culture: Reflections on Occupy Wall Street | Washington Times Communities

By Balance Edutainment, special to Omkara World

OAKLAND, October 28, 2011—News of Occupy Oakland spread quickly after a police raid on Tuesday, October 25. Associated Press reported that, “Police in riot gear cleared anti-Wall Street protesters on Tuesday morning from the plaza in front of Oakland's City Hall, where they had been camping for about two weeks, prompting health and safety concerns among city officials. Seventy-five people were arrested, mostly on suspicion of misdemeanor illegal lodging, as hundreds of officers and sheriff's deputies from more than a dozen agencies went into the encampment with tear gas and beanbag rounds around 5 a.m.”

BALANCE EDUTAINMENT is an Oakland-based organization co-founded by Aaron Ableman and Dave Room that provides ecological education through entertainment and story. Ableman is a musician/emcee, social entrepeneur and the author of Pacha’s Pajamas. Room is a social entrepreneur, deep ecologist and storyteller.

“Marching with the people of Oakland for justice and peace - despite the tear gas and terror of the police, we move forward with the spirit of solidarity and chants for a better world. We are at a critical time to manifest real change, but we need to find solutions inclusive of all,” Ableman stated after the raid.

“Before BALANCE Edutainment, Aaron Ableman and I were engaged in a number of projects to build community resilience, ecological awareness and green jobs. It is natural that people are asking us about the Occupy movements sprouting up across the globe. Folks want to know is this real; or are going to peter out like most demonstrations and protests? Will the occupiers be around next week, next month and next year?” Rooms says.

“Frankly, from our limited view of the situation, it is an open question. The story is unfolding. We can imagine the occupy movements getting squelched by the powers that be or perhaps even by something as natural as winter. But we also see the possibility of the Occupy Movements morphing into new political and social entities. Whether the Occupy Movements are the vehicle of change or simply the most effective wakeup call we’ve had in decades, we are inspired,” adds Room.

BALANCE EDUTAINMENT provides these thoughts towards the Occupy movements:

Occupy Your Mind and Yourself

Like many things, occupation starts at home. It’s great to be occupying public areas, but we simultaneously can focus on occupying our own headspace. Many of us have essentially turned our attention over to the very corporations that are propping up the system that is designed to widen the wealth gap. It seems silly to camp out on the Main Street lawn as part of the local Occupy movement and at the same time, eat industrial hamburgers and fries, while listening to the misogynist, violent, and vapid music that crowds the airwaves.

The popular refrain that “we are what we eat” seems reasonable on a physical level. Awfully reasonable when we are eating junk and beautifully reasonable when we are eating whole, organic foods. On the cultural level, however, one might say we are our music. We are what we listen to. We are what we learn the lyrics of. We are what we sing in the shower or in the car. Unfortunately, most popular songs glorify things that are making us unhealthy as individuals and as a culture. If we are really serious about occupying institutions like Wall Street, we need to occupy our own headspace. We need to crowd out all the garbage to make space for the good stuff, good food and good music.

And that’s not civil disobedience, its corporate disobedience. If we stop feeding the beast that preserves the ever-growing wealth imbalance, maybe we will see a reduction of the imbalance. To do this, we need to stop giving the bankers and other parasitic entities our money, especially the ones that are actively propping up the status quo. In addition to occupying Main Street, let’s occupy our own headspaces and take responsibility for everything that comes into our mind and body.

Occupy The Media


The work of the current Media system essentially tells and spreads stories, and suppresses others. When did you hear about the Occupy Wall Street movement? It started in mid-September. Many of us did not hear about the movement in its early days because of a highly-effective media blackout. We need to occupy the media and more specifically, occupy the world of stories and culture. We must cultivate and tell the stories of resilience and share them. We must also learn to amplify the stories of the most impacted people. Occupy Wall Street could benefit from spreading the stories of the protesters, especially those who have lost homes, been out of work, etc… We must also learn to tell these stories across media platforms and make them culturally-relevant, like the Pacha’s Pajamas project.

Through partnerships and the Pacha’s Pajamas products, including an eBook, interactive apps, audiobook, live performance and feature film, BALANCE EDUTAINMENT intends to reach millions young people and their families at this critical time.

Occupy Pop Culture


If we want to deeply engage youth, perhaps the most important space to occupy is pop culture, as expressed in music. At BALANCE Edutainment, we believe music, in its various forms including audio, performances and videos, is the most viral communication platform. In the last century, music played a pivotal role in many of the world’s most important social movements such as the Union movement, Civil Rights, and Anti-Apartheid. As reported by MSNBC, rap played a pivotal role in the Libya, Tunisia and Egypt uprisings:

[Rappers] are pushing the boundaries of freedom of expression across the Middle East. The rappers have even been credited with helping to spark the so-called Arab Spring uprisings that deposed three long-serving dictators and rocked several other regimes.

The significant factor is youth: 60 percent people in the Arab world are aged under 30. Rap popularized calls for reform and the Internet spread that message like wildfire.

Recall how the will.i.am-produced “Yes We Can” music video (22 million views and counting) buoyed Obama on the campaign trail. Occupy and other movements can do that as well.

Call Out For Liberation Music


Music is already emerging from the movement such as:
http://rebeldiaz.bandcamp.com/track/we-the-99
http://jasirix.bandcamp.com/track/occupy-we-the-99.

We consider this Liberation Music. Another moniker is protest songs, which have a rich tradition as documented in the book “33 Revolutions Per Minute.”

The New Your Times recently reported that the Occupy Movements don’t have a melody:

“Every successful movement has a soundtrack,” the songwriter Tom Morello told reporters after he had tried to fire up the crowd at the Occupy Wall Street Protest last week with a Woody Guthrie tune and one of his own labor songs.

Perhaps he is right, but the protesters in Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan have yet to find an anthem. Nor is the rest of the country humming songs about hard times. So far, musicians living through the biggest economic disaster since the Great Depression have filled the airwaves with songs about dancing, not the worries of working people.”

Imagine if the Occupy Wall Street movement had a soundtrack, with simple sign-a-long choruses and potent messages:

#Occupy yourself!
On or Off the Wall Streets
Life of Debt bleeds
While the movement leads:
Our music can beat the system!
We’re the 99%

And, let's keep chanting:

Get Up, Stand Up,
Stand Up for your Rights!
The People United,
Will never be divided!

For more information, visit http://balanceedutainment.com/.

#Occupy Pop Culture

Related Omkara World Stories: Has the Occupy Movement come up with their one core demand?

Deepak Chopra’s Message to Occupy Wall Street and Beyond

Occupy Wall Street Protest Sparks Nationwide Movement

“Gross National Happiness”: A Better Indicator of National Well-Being.

Adam is a Reiki Master, certified Health and Lifestyle counselor, Intrinsic Coach, Licensed Massage Therapist, 20 year practicing bramana initiated Bhakti Yogi, Spiritual advisor, visionary, jock and veteran of the “hardcore punk scene” all rolled into one. His clients have included celebrities, politicians, professional athletes, and professional sport team owners. Adam is the founder of Omkara World and produced the mind/body fitness DVD “Intelligent Fitness."

Israeli OWS: 'Social Justice' rally returns to streets - YouTube

Israeli OWS: 'Social Justice' rally returns to streets - YouTube: ""

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Risking life for America... at OWS? - YouTube

Risking life for America... at OWS? - YouTube: ""

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Occupy Winter: OWS left out in the cold - YouTube

Occupy Winter: OWS left out in the cold - YouTube: ""

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Saturday, October 29, 2011

Occupy Oakland: Occupy Your Heart - YouTube

Occupy Oakland: Occupy Your Heart - YouTube: ""

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The Wall Street Occupation And The Cottage Cheese Revolt | The New Republic

The New York Times ran with two demographic surveys one day after the other. The first, which it headlined “Snapshot shows U.S. public more disillusioned than ever,” demonstrated that the American people are fundamentally miserable with their condition. They expressed egalitarian instincts at least to the extent that they want the distribution of wealth to be more even. But this feeling did not manifest itself in any particular warm feeling for the Democrats, although there is wide recognition that Republican politics and policy “favor the rich.” Another irony is that a majority of the public supports a wide range of the president’s concrete economic proposals. Yet this brings no balm to him, either manifest statistically in the survey or, as you and I well know, in the population’s perception of him as a loser (on virtually every issue except Iraq). So should the bad news for Obama give glee to the Republicans? Absolutely not. Their most popular candidate in the GOP presidential sweepstakes is Herman Cain, despite his minstrel affect about which you can read in John McWhorter’s quite dazzling piece earlier this week. This is very bad news for every other Republican contender, especially Mitt Romney who is the establishment’s point man but alienated from the deep and ugly passions among the populists in the party—who, I am afraid, are the party.

The second report, conducted by the Congressional Budget Office and discussed in theTimes yesterday, is not a surprise. In fact, it is common knowledge that there has been a steep rise in the percentage of the national wealth held by an ever smaller cohort of the populace over the last three decades:

The top 1 percent of earners more than doubled their share of the nation’s income over the last three decades, the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday, in a new reportlikely to figure prominently in the escalating political fight over how to revive the economy, create jobs and lower the federal debt.

In addition, the report said, government policy has become less redistributive since the late 1970s, doing less to reduce the concentration of income.

“The equalizing effect of federal taxes was smaller” in 2007 than in 1979, as “the composition of federal revenues shifted away from progressive income taxes to less-progressive payroll taxes,” the budget office said.

No surprise, you may say. After all, Ronald Reagan and not one but two men named George Bush sat in the Oval Office during this period. Still, let’s face the facts. Bill Clinton was no enemy of the acquisition of wealth. And certainly no enemy of those who do the acquiring. Also, don’t forget his chancellor of the exchequer, brilliant dazzling smooth Robert Rubin who, as Frank Rich reminds us in his hyperbolically happy column last Sunday, was the architect of it all.

There was little public despair about wealth and poverty under W, although the poor certainly had no illusions that they were rich or even comfortable. Ironically, despair emerged under the White House stewardship of the former Chicago community organizer Barack Obama, acolyte of Saul Alinsky. It was Obama, after all, who told us that “yes, we can.” Unfortunately, even he couldn’t. And please don’t blame everything on the damn Republicans. Obama is responsible for something.

So we now have “Occupy Wall Street” and “Occupy Oakland” and many of the cities and towns in between. Also abroad. The “occupation” of Oakland, where Jerry Brown used to be mayor, was interrupted by tear gas and five dozen arrests. My bet is that the cops were provoked, as usual. Similar happenings occurred elsewhere. And, believe it or not, there was an “Occupy Yom Kippur” epiphenomenon on Wall Street and a few other locales, a mild version of the revolution and actually with contrition as its theme rather than revenge.

I know that several of my admired friends have signed on to the occupation. And, frankly, when Michael Walzer and Paul Berman endorse something I take notice and ponder. The fact is that I, too, share in the dismay—actually utter dismay—at the sharpening of the distance between privileged and over-privileged (yes, there must be a category for these) people and ordinary folk, even those whose contribution to society is great and reward very sparse. Woefully sparse. When I was in elementary school—P.S. 28 in the Bronx more than six decades ago—the model expenditure of an ordinary family for rent was 25 percent of income. Now, in all but the most depressed cities in the country, the paradigm is about 50 percent or more. So let’s not dismiss the grievance feeding and fueling the quite (as of now, at least) mild revolt. This is America today.

On the other hand, no real program emanates from the nationwide protests. This is not exactly a criticism. After all, when a crowd gathers (or, rather, multiple crowds gather) without hierarchy and virtually without philosophy, as Elias Canetti has taught us, the drift will always be to the abstract, to the more incendiary, to the emotionally gratifying. You cannot reach for power with such as your base. Which is why memories from the “demos” of the sixties and early seventies provoke only a moment’s nostalgia and deep regret otherwise, even disgust. My heart does not swell or break when I hear “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” Since, moreover, I do not believe jobs will emerge from these demonstrationsor from the president’s rhetoric, I am left realistically pessimistic. Pessimism is our destiny.

As expected, there is a list of signatories to the “Occupy Wall Street” manifesto. This list has, as some idiot television talk-show host put it, many Type A celebrities on it. Susan Sarandon, for one. Naomi Wolf, who tried to dress Al Gore in earth-tones, for another. Jonathan Demme. And, of course, Gloria Steinem, all but forgotten. Alice Walker, also signer of anything anti-Jewish. Cornel West. 350 Columbia and Barnard faculty, including the Islamist faction plus the Columbia president Lee Bollinger who made the faction possible. (He is also a member of the New York Federal Reserve where, if he wanted, he could do something about reforming or even revolutionizing Wall Street. By the way, he earns $1.4 million per annum, which with his other annual lucre certainly puts him in the top 1 percent of earners.) Signer Michael Moore got into a pissing match with an interviewer, arguing that he may be in the top .1 percent but not in the top .01 percent, a real difference which, ironically, his stupid films have helped to obliterate.

In contrast to the politically minoritarian cast of the “big name” signatories, a poll done by the highly reliable Pew Research outfit demonstrates that 39 percent of the country is in favor of the goals of “Occupy Wall Street” and only a small minority support the aims of the Tea Party. With all the money and publicity behind the tax rebellion you’d have thought that these people would have done much better in public opinion. And given the amorphous character of the ideas behind the Wall Street occupying army you’d have thought—or I thought—it would have done much less well in the vox populi. Anyway, it is as it is. Except, as a poll of 100 occupiers, interviewed early on by Tracey Samuelson inNew York magazine, shows, these folk don’t know squat about the financial system. Fully 75 out of the 100 identified themselves politically either with Ralph Nader or Noam Chomsky. Paul Krugman attracted 12 adorers. Maybe this cohort is the revolutionary vanguard. Hey, but what about Barack Obama who is, after all, the president? Three responders identify with him.

As you may have gathered, I am back in Tel Aviv where on July 14 (the birthday of the French Revolution) at Sderot Rothschild (the boulevard commemorating Baron Edmund de Rothschild, the grandson of the founding Rothschild and known as Ha’nadiv, the benefactor, which, indeed, he was, of Jewish agriculture in and Jewish migration to Palestine) about 300,000 Israelis gathered to protest the wild variance not so much in social status but in the economic possibilities of the population. Soon thereafter, the movement radiated out from one of the most fashionable but also hip streets of the city to virtually every town and townlet in the country. This weekend there will be more such assemblies, from Kiryat Shmona in the tipy-tipy north to Eilat on the Red Sea. There’s been a slight escalation in the rhetoric. The organizers seem to be testing the crowd’s ideological limits with their new slogan, “Back to the Streets.” We will see how it fares and what it brings.

There is great paranoia among the leaders, self-styled and actual. Their theme is that Bibi Netanyahu was so desperate to destroy the movement that he is allowing 1,200 terrorists to go free in exchange for one Hamas-incarcerated Gilad Shalit. Now, the liberation of Shalit after five years without visitors (even the Red Cross didn’t visit) and without eyeglasses brought a kind of sublime satisfaction to Israel. (Why no eyeglasses? His captors were convinced that the Israeli security services could locate him through them. Nut cases, if you’ll excuse me. But okay, they could have gone into town and gotten Gilad an innocent pair of spectacles.) Ha’aretz also trafficked in such grotesque fantasies about Bibi. But that’s another matter.

The politics of this amorphous “social justice” movement is hard to track. The costs of daycare, for example, are a burden to every family from the middle class on down. So they cut across from left to right, and as in America many among the poorest—perhaps even most—are on the right. The syllogism continues: Among the richest are people on the left. Still, rich or poor is a reliable predictor of nothing. As Daniel Doron showed in these columns, the etiology of this mixed economy goes back to the early years of the state when a socialist government mixed its own trade union businesses with select private families. Many of these intrinsically corrupt structures no longer exist. The governor of the Bank of Israel, Stanley Fischer, a legendary figure in the world economy, is largely responsible for the general reforms to the economy. But he couldn’t have achieved these without Bibi’s disciplined support.

And then came a government-appointed commission which has now proposed a not unanimously backed package of reforms. Plus, from another more-or-less independent commission, a different set of prescriptions, more populist in character but, of course, also without total support from the populace. Actually, in comparison to the rancor generated around other matters, this public discussion is quite thoughtful, even civilized.

Except for one idiosyncratic feature: A certain madness has taken over in the founder’s head. A dangerous madness, if not dangerous to Israeli society then certainly dangerous to the movement which Daphni Leef improvised. Ha’aretz put this headline on Nehemia Shtrasler’s article: “Israel’s Social Protest Leader Is Now Her Own Worst Enemy.” She has begun to give ultimata to the country’s prime minister. Here is a look at a leader with an insecure mandate who seems to think that she has the power of a commissar:

Daphni Leef has become her own biggest enemy. She has become intoxicated with power. You can criticize the prime minister and demand that he increase social spending, but you can’t humiliate him in public, address him arrogantly and treat him as if he were the lowliest of officials.

At Leef’s press conference this week before tomorrow night’s demonstration, she didn’t hesitate to present Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with ultimatums; for example: “This is the last time I am addressing you directly.” How scary. If Leef roars, who will not tremble? She also demanded that he reverse economic policy completely so it will suit the caprices of her and her colleagues. She, after all, has the experience and knowledge and he’s merely prime minister: “We have no intention of compromising …. Your time is running out …. The keys to the country must be in our hands.”

If Leef believes the keys to the country must be in her hands, let her do us the honor of running against Netanyahu in the next elections and defeating him. We are, after all, still living in a representative democracy. At the press conference Leef spoke about the state’s obligation to provide all its citizens (for free, of course) excellent health care, a worthy education, fair housing, art and culture—and also a nice salary and respectable pension because these “are not luxuries but rather basic things.”

The fact is that there was a significant antecedent of the July 14 Rothschild Boulevard assembly, and it occurred not long before the great mobilization. It was modestly titled “the cottage cheese revolution.” It aimed first at the dairy industry led by a company named Strauss and following right behind was Tnuva, both run by women heads of the owner families. This fact allowed some columnists to take stabs at the idea that more women business executives would ease social stress. The Jerusalem Post ran an articletitled “Unrest in Curdistan” and written by David Rosenberg. It cops out at the end, blaming the situation of the poor on the educational system, as if a grand revolution in the schools will do anything in the immediate future for harsh economic realities. But the piece describes the structure of the dairy industry and its role in the ordinary lives of Israelis—which is actually why the revolution started there:

The first thing is to recognize the real problem, which is that cottage cheese is a symbol of middle-class distress. As housewives were turning their noses up at the dairy shelves last week, Merrill Lynch published its annual report of the world’s millionaires. Israel counted a total of 10,153 in 2010, a remarkable 20.6% increase from the year before and more than double the worldwide percentage growth. The average salary last year rose 3.7%.

It’s not a perfect demonstration of growing income inequality in Israel, but it captures many of the issues. The economy is growing, but a small fraction of the population is enjoying most of the fruits. If you had a substantial investment portfolio, which millionaires by definition have, you did very well last year. If you had an advanced degree and worked in technology or finance, you did well, too. This is a trend taking place all over the developed world, but in Israel it is more pronounced because the economy is so reliant on hi-tech at its top end and has so many people not working at all on the bottom. After the US, Israel is the most income unequal society in the West.

Daniel Doron wrote another illuminating article, “It’s not just cottage cheese. It’s everything,” in the Post, and Calev Ben David a broader piece in Bloomberg. Thomas White gives us an amazing narrative of the revolution which has forced the food industry—the basic food industry—to respond to the boycott of its customers. Before the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles, earlier this month the protest organization set a goal to reduce the price of food put on the table of an average family by 15 percent.

Of course, this aim was not met. But Osem, another huge company in the cartel, did reduce prices on 35 of its products substantially. This development was reported by Ora Coren in “The Marker,” the financial section of Ha’aretz. Included in the cost cuts are baby formula and other “Materna” products, ketchup, flour, crackers, chicken soup, soy sauce, corn products—and, of course, hummus and tehina. The company took its own initiative in announcing that starting in April 2012 it would not raise wages for senior executives but pay the sum saved to its employees who do not earn the company’s average wage.

None of this comes close to a real social revolution. But we’ve had enormously painful experiences with social revolutions over the last century, the poor even more than the rich.

Martin Peretz is editor-in-chief emeritus of The New Republic.

Friday, October 28, 2011

Wall Street Occupy protest targets bank


Oct.29 - Demonstrators seeking a more equitable distribution of wealth march on the headquarters of JP Morgan Chase in New York. Paul Chapman reports. More