Paul Verhaeghe: Nieuwe beroepsziektes en (gebrek aan) solidariteit Op de Dag van het Socialisme op 2 november 2013 gaf hoogleraar psychotherapie Paul Verhaeghe aan UGent, een lezing over hoe het neoliberalisme ons ziek maakt. Hij vergeleek o.a. stress gerelateerde aandoeningen met de stoflong en de loodvergiftiging van weleer. Lees hier een uitgebreide versie van deze lezing die hij een dag voordien bracht op de bijeenkomst van de Nederlandse Gezondheidsraad in Utrecht. In deze tijden van ‘meten is weten’ steek ik van wal met wat cijfers. Binnen de EU kunnen we een ranglijstje opstellen van de ziektes met de grootste impact op levensduur en kwaliteit. Dit is, op zijn zachtst uitgedrukt, vreemd. Die vaststellingen zijn voor heel wat mensen een reden om een veroordeling uit te spreken over de groep die uit de boot valt. Ziekte is een zaak van het individu en schaadt ‘onze’ economie Deze redenering berust op een impliciete, en alleen al daardoor des te belangrijkere aanname. Psychologie en psychiatrie versterken de individualisering Even ter vergelijking.
SPIEGEL ONLINE - Nachrichten Monsanto Officially Starts Retreat from Europe Biotech giant Monsanto has officially withdrawn four requests for GMO cultivation in the EU, following its announcement last month that it would no longer try to grow biotech crops in the bloc. The US-based company, whose GM maize MON810 is the only biotech crop grown for food in the EU, now says it will focus on only conventional seed production and on importing more of its GMOs for food and feed uses. Last month Monsanto told Reuters that it will withdraw all pending approval requests to grow new types of genetically modified crops in the European Union, due to the lack of commercial prospects for cultivation there. “We will be withdrawing the approvals in the coming months,” Monsanto’s President and Managing Director for Europe, Jose Manuel Madero, told Reuters by telephone. The decision covered five EU approval requests to grow genetically modified maize, plus one soybean and one sugar beet.
Emol.com El sitio de noticias online de Chile Uprising: the crisis of civilisation and the struggle for the global commons… | Strike! Magazine Dr. Nafeez Ahmed is a bestselling author, investigative journalist and international security scholar. He is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development, and author of A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization among other books. That book was the basis for the excellent Crisis of Civilisation documentary. He also writes for the Guardian on the geopolitics of environmental, energy and economic crises on his Earth insight blog. Illustration by Lucca Benney Uprising: the crisis of civilisation and the struggle for the global commons by Dr Nafeez Ahmed The last half decade has seen the persistence of social protests in various forms, including civil disobedience and mass demonstrations. With the world reeling under the impact of banking collapses, austerity, environmental crisis, energy woes and rocketing food prices, it’s no wonder that people everywhere are rising up and demanding change. But the struggle for the global commons had only just begun.
Wikipedia Transnational Institute Oxfam-en-Belgique / Oxfam-in-België Leaked Cable: Hike food prices to boost GM crop approval By Rady AnandaFood Freedom In a January 2008 meeting, US and Spain trade officials strategized how to increase acceptance of genetically modified foods in Europe, including inflating food prices on the commodities market, according to a leaked US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks. During the meeting, Secretary of State for International Trade, Pedro Mejia, and Secretary General Alfredo Bonet “noted that commodity price hikes might spur greater liberalization on biotech imports.” It seems Wall Street traders got the word. By June 2008, food prices had spiked so severely that “The Economist announced that the real price of food had reached its highest level since 1845, the year the magazine first calculated the number,” reports Fred Kaufman in The Food Bubble: How Wall Street starved millions and got away with it. All to boost acceptance of GM foods, and done via a trading scheme on which Wall Street speculators profited enormously. “This was a very good substantive discussion.
Biodiversity Loss | Ingienous Designs Elizabeth Kolbertr discusses the Sixth Extinction ) The biodiversity crisis — i.e. the rapid loss of species and the rapid degradation of ecosystems — is probably a greater threat than global climate change to the stability and prosperous future of humankind on Earth. - professor Carsten Rahbek, Director for the Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate, University of Copenhagen. temperature zones are migrating towards the equator at 5 km/year- Dennis Meadows, author of Limits to Growth Biodiversity is humanity’s life-support system, delivering everything from food, to clean water and air, to recreation and tourism, to novel chemicals that drive our advanced civilization. We believe that ongoing loss of biological diversity is diminishing the ability of ecosystems to sustain human societies- Andrew Gonzalez, associate professor of biology and the Quebec Centre for Biodiversity Science, McGill University There are still tens of millions of unknown wild species out there. Dr. Dr.
European Patent Office grants Monsanto patent on natural broccoli seeds, florets (NaturalNews) Monsanto's efforts to usher genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) into the European Union (EU) have been largely stagnant in recent years, so the multinational corporation and others in the industry are taking a new and more evil approach to gain more market control. According to a recent announcement put forth by the human rights advocacy group No Patents on Seeds!, the European Patent Office (EPO) is now granting biotechnology companies patents on all-natural crops such as broccoli, which was recently handed over as private property to Monsanto. Exploiting an egregious loophole in European patent law, Monsanto and others have been feverishly filing for patents on all sorts of natural crops, presumably in response to widespread resistance by members of the European public to its GMO offerings. "We are calling for broad support of our opposition against the patent on 'severed broccoli'," said Christoph Then from the group No Patents on Seeds! No Patents on Seeds!