Image credit:Mitchell Siporin

Tonight, I can't read Langston Hughes' Let America Be America Again without crying. When Hughes uses "America" twice in the title of his poem, he uses the word to signify a promise and a betrayal. Tonight my tears come not through the joy of a Democrat elected to the White House nor, it must be said, from one gin and tonic too many. For me, tonight is painfully familiar; the betrayal can’t be far off.

Growing up under nearly two decades of Conservative rule in the UK (Margaret Thatcher 1979-1990 and John Major 1990-1997), I remember when the British electorate put Tony Blair 1997-2007 in power. Having voted Green in the 1997 British Election, I came to America on the day that Blair's Labour Party came to power. I wasn't around to see the day when, I'm told, people smiled at one another on the London Underground - a sign of unrefined joy if ever there were.

But Blair's Britain turned to ashes. And I've no doubt that the Obama presidency will disappoint the vast majority of those who voted for him - he will not redistribute as forcefully, nor demilitarise as vigorously, nor change quite as hopefully as he offered.

Despite all that, tonight is still a promise partially delivered. In Britain it would have been, and still is, impossible to imagine a native-born person of colour winning the highest office in the land. It couldn't happen anywhere in Europe. When the United States elects a person of colour, one who grew up without the benefit of inheritance or patrimony, that's a clear sign of transformation, even if it's ultimately an egalitarianism among the bourgeoisie. That said, of course, this wee table from CNN is rather telling.

As we'll soon discover though, in any person's vision of how the future might be, there are always exclusions. In Hughes' poem, it's women. It won't be long before we find out who Obama's forgotten are. And it's as well to understand that Hughes' full promise will be fulfilled not when there's one Barack Obama, but where there are millions. To get from here to there, though, we'll still need to to celebrate the fall of tonight's a very real barrier (even as another is erected).

Let America Be America Again

by Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.) ... read more »

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Posted on 5 November, 2008 - 07:54

The last in today's bumper posting marathon - a piece by the French intellectual Eric Toussaint, explaining the connections between our two recent crises. Tomorrow, depending who wins, we'll see if the number of crises can be kicked up to three... ... read more »

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Posted on 4 November, 2008 - 06:00

Daryll Ray is a Professor at the University of Tennessee, and one of the minds behind the Agricultural Policy Analysis Center, from which weekly he sends out consistently splendid missives on food and the food system. He's a source whose induction into the Blogroll and Newswire is long overdue, and his thoughts on the Doha Round of WTO Negotiations and Country of Origin Labelling are good ways to dip your toe into his analytical style. ... read more »

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Posted on 4 November, 2008 - 02:12

Bill at Toplab has been sending on a good few pieces on water and water politics, of which a few of my favourites are: ... read more »

• Zimbabwean water wars, which makes the case that Zimbabweans are merely the canaries in the mineshaft of global water shortages. Which is ironic because
• the population of nearby Namibia could drink the water that Starbucks wastes every day. And Seattle's coffee imperium is at the trivial end of the

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Posted on 29 October, 2008 - 06:34

A couple of sites I've been meaning to write about at length, but will have to write about in haste. Since they're both in the early stages, I'm sure I'll have cause to revisit them as they blossom. ... read more »

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Posted on 29 October, 2008 - 05:17

It's not often that a President of the United States admits to, and regrets, commodity fetishism. But, apparently everyone's reading Marx these days and when Bill Clinton admits that food oughtn't to be treated like a commodity, he's making a Marxist observation. Of course, the ultimate end point of Clinton's analysis should be that no commodity should be treated like a commodity, but we can hope that he'll get there in time. ... read more »

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Posted on 25 October, 2008 - 02:32

I've worried before about my mammoth carbon footprint, particularly as I flit across North America giving talks. I'm convinced that the solutions to climate change proposed by George Monbiot in Heat are among the most sensible, with individual carbon accounts for everyone, and trading between each of us to balance out the disproportionate damage caused by people like me.

It's important to fight for that system but, while we fight, there is other work to be done. Individual offsets, in some form, seem to me to be a part of that. Granted, the folk at CheatNeutral brilliantly put the boot into the idea of carbon offsets - see the video below for more.

But my friend Anirvan Chatterjee, who stands fully behind Monbiot's arguments, is nonetheless serious about getting to the bottom of what's good and bad about carbon offsets. His new site, Offset Consumer is online here, and it's very helpful.

In Anirvan's words:

A lot of really nice people buy personal carbon offsets without understanding that they vary in quality and price. Offset Consumer's an attempt to bridge that gap by helping folks make better choices (environmentally and financially) with their carbon offset dollar. ... read more »

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Posted on 20 October, 2008 - 01:22

Photocredit WendyUsuallyWanders

This is the bleakest World Food Day in a little while. World Foodless Day, some are calling it.

The commodity price boom of early 2008 has passed. Prices are settling down on the international commodity markets, but most of us don't get our daily bread from the Chicago Board of Trade. And I've not noticed any significantly cheaper food being available at the supermarkets.

It looks as if we're moving into the worst of all possible worlds. Low commodity prices for producers (especially smaller farmers, who didn't do very well out of the boom in the first place), but a high price for food, because retailers are loath to drop prices that they've already spent time getting us accustomed to. This is what economists mean when they say that prices are 'sticky'.

Since I think we should get used to paying more for food, you'd think I'd approve of us getting used to high prices. ... read more »

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Posted on 16 October, 2008 - 15:29

Here's a splendid reminder about the context in which 'charity' happens today, written by Jonathan Glennie whose new book, The Trouble With Aid, I'm very much looking forward to reading. ... read more »

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Posted on 10 October, 2008 - 19:46

A bit more promotion, this time of a fine book by the splendid Wayne Roberts. The No Nonsense Guide to World Food is a handy, and short, overview of why we're in the mess we're in today. Look for it at your local independent book store.

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Posted on 19 September, 2008 - 03:54