Not front page news · Nov 24, 01:17 by Vic Getz
Greetings from Kabul. I hope you received my recent email update. (If not, get on the list by emailing me at vgetz@moscow.com.) There’s not enough room to put all the news of Afghanistan! Of course, I’m in country now so it’s front page news for us 24/7. Not so to the rest of the world.
Who knows, for example, that two people were killed and as many wounded when two families from Khost clashed over the killing of a neighbor’s chicken? (Reported in the Daily Outlook Afghanistan, the leading (and only) independent English newspaper here on Nov. 22)?
I wonder how the story that the US is giving $30 million to provinces that have not been growing poppy – $500,000 each to 6 provinces – is playing in the US. (No report on how the poppy- free status was determined and no indication of how the use of the $500,000 will be monitored or the impact evaluated. Can you say “potential for corruption?”)
But, hey, it looks good on paper.
Then there’s the story of the young woman I visited in a northern Province district, whose depression leaked out of her eyes and her face and her whole body as she held one of her two children and told us how it is feels to be an educated woman (a nurse and now teaching mathematics at a village school) forced into marriage with an illiterate farmer in an area where there is almost no access to water for irrigation, let alone drinking. Or the hope that lit up her face as she talked about having been elected by the village to head the village National Solidarity Program (NSP) women’s Community Development Council (CDC) that gives her the opportunity to meet with other elected women members once each month for two hours – the only opportunity to meet with women outside of the household compound apart from weddings and funerals.
[PARTY!!!!]
How about the fact that, according to James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, we – the world (not necessarily you…or me….) – have less than a decade to take a “decisive action in the battle to beat global warming or risk irreversible change that will tip the planet towards catastrophe?”
But the good news is that potential new reserves of gas and oil have been “discovered” here. And an agreement between
Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India is nearly finalized to support the construction of a Trans-Afghan gas pipeline! That’ll make somebody happy – and rich(er). I mean, what’s not to love about a really long pipe 1,420 mm in diameter capable transporting gas at 100 atmospheres with a capacity of 33 billion cu m of natural gas per year???
Oh, I forgot. I’m not a believer in no limits to growth like the
current patriarchs of international development are – in an almost worshipful way. [Check out www.natcapsolutions.org and http://www.naturalcapital.org/]
It’s not the terrorists or the enemies of Afghanistan who scare me the most. It’s the powerful ignorance of the dominant ideology of unlimited growth based on exploitation and degradation of the earth’s carrying capacity on which we all depend….the natural resources of which conventional economic systems allocate a precise value of $0 when determining the GDP that gets pimped as the indicator of the well-being of societies. When you listen with that point of view, crime and pollution DO pay! [See http://www.rprogress.org/projects/gpi/]
For me, that blind adherence to growth is the most terrifying threat we face today. But, that’s not on any front page newspaper.
And neither is the potential that exists, in fact, the incredible opportunity that exists, particularly in this war-beaten, desperate and devastated country to plan for truly sustainable development that is based on ecological systems thinking and knowledge rather than purely economic fundamentalism. [http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid796.php]
But I digress. Because I see here on page 1, that Indian traders are eager to invest in Afghanistan.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Recommended reading:Limits to Growth, The 30-Year Update, Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers and Dennis Meadows.
ISBN: 1-931498-58-X
OLD ISBN: 1-931498-58-X
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
Release Date: 2004-05-27
“Not everything bears repetition, but truth does—especially when both denied by entrenched interests and verified by new information.”
—Herman E. Daly, former senior economist in the Environment Department of the World Bank and Professor School of Public Affairs University of Maryland
Be in touch,
Vic
PS No word on the women from Helmand!! Not front page news? Perhaps because of potential repercussions to the women involved. It’s the proverbial position between a rock and a hard place. How to have voices be heard without attaching identities to those voices. Stay tuned.
Professional objectives: Analytical work and catalytic activities. Gender analysis, livelihood assessment, impact analysis, project management, monitoring and evaluation, advocacy, capacity building, teaching, training and research in women’s rights, political participation, gender and development, sustainable communities and agriculture.,environmental sociology, international relations and development, sustainable livelihoods, ecological/economic systems. To create more laughter.
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