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Saturday, April 19, 2008

El Tsunami silencioso.


FOOD
Apr 17th 2008
From The Economist print edition
The silent tsunami

Food prices are causing misery and strife around the world. Radical solutions are needed


Getty Images

PICTURES of hunger usually show passive eyes and swollen bellies. The harvest fails because of war or strife; the onset of crisis is sudden and localised. Its burden falls on those already at the margin.

Today's pictures are different. "This is a silent tsunami," says Josette Sheeran of the World Food Programme, a United Nations agency. A wave of food-price inflation is moving through the world, leaving riots and shaken governments in its wake. For the first time in 30 years, food protests are erupting in many places at once. Bangladesh is in turmoil (see article); even China is worried (see article). Elsewhere, the food crisis of 2008 will test the assertion of Amartya Sen, an Indian economist, that famines do not happen in democracies.

Famine traditionally means mass starvation. The measures of today's crisis are misery and malnutrition. The middle classes in poor countries are giving up health care and cutting out meat so they can eat three meals a day. The middling poor, those on $2 a day, are pulling children from school and cutting back on vegetables so they can still afford rice. Those on $1 a day are cutting back on meat, vegetables and one or two meals, so they can afford one bowl. The desperate—those on 50 cents a day—face disaster.

Roughly a billion people live on $1 a day. If, on a conservative estimate, the cost of their food rises 20% (and in some places, it has risen a lot more), 100m people could be forced back to this level, the common measure of absolute poverty. In some countries, that would undo all the gains in poverty reduction they have made during the past decade of growth. Because food markets are in turmoil, civil strife is growing; and because trade and openness itself could be undermined, the food crisis of 2008 may become a challenge to globalisation.

First find $700m

Rich countries need to take the food problems as seriously as they take the credit crunch. Already bigwigs at the World Bank and the United Nations are calling for a "new deal" for food. Their clamour is justified. But getting the right kind of help is not so easy, partly because food is not a one-solution-fits-all problem and partly because some of the help needed now risks making matters worse in the long run.

The starting-point should be that rising food prices bear more heavily on some places than others. Food exporters, and countries where farmers are self-sufficient, or net sellers, benefit. Some countries—those in West Africa which import their staples, or Bangladesh, with its huge numbers of landless labourers—risk ruin and civil strife. Because of the severity there, the first step must be to mend the holes in the world's safety net. That means financing the World Food Programme properly. The WFP is the world's largest distributor of food aid and its most important barrier between hungry people and starvation. Like a $1-a-day family in a developing country, its purchasing power has been slashed by the rising cost of grain. Merely to distribute the same amount of food as last year, the WFP needs—and should get—an extra $700m.

And because the problems in many places are not like those of a traditional famine, the WFP should be allowed to broaden what it does. At the moment, it mostly buys grain and doles it out in areas where there is little or no food. That is necessary in famine-ravaged places, but it damages local markets. In most places there are no absolute shortages and the task is to lower domestic prices without doing too much harm to farmers. That is best done by distributing cash, not food—by supporting (sometimes inventing) social-protection programmes and food-for-work schemes for the poor. The agency can help here, though the main burden—tens of billions of dollars' worth—will be borne by developing-country governments and lending institutions in the West.

Such actions are palliatives. But the food crisis of 2008 has revealed market failures at every link of the food chain (see article). Any "new deal" ought to try to address the long-term problems that are holding poor farmers back.

Then stop the distortions

In general, governments ought to liberalise markets, not intervene in them further. Food is riddled with state intervention at every turn, from subsidies to millers for cheap bread to bribes for farmers to leave land fallow. The upshot of such quotas, subsidies and controls is to dump all the imbalances that in another business might be smoothed out through small adjustments onto the one unregulated part of the food chain: the international market.

For decades, this produced low world prices and disincentives to poor farmers. Now, the opposite is happening. As a result of yet another government distortion—this time subsidies to biofuels in the rich world—prices have gone through the roof. Governments have further exaggerated the problem by imposing export quotas and trade restrictions, raising prices again. In the past, the main argument for liberalising farming was that it would raise food prices and boost returns to farmers. Now that prices have massively overshot, the argument stands for the opposite reason: liberalisation would reduce prices, while leaving farmers with a decent living.

There is an occasional exception to the rule that governments should keep out of agriculture. They can provide basic technology: executing capital-intensive irrigation projects too large for poor individual farmers to undertake, or paying for basic science that helps produce higher-yielding seeds. But be careful. Too often—as in Europe, where superstitious distrust of genetic modification is slowing take-up of the technology—governments hinder rather than help such advances. Since the way to feed the world is not to bring more land under cultivation, but to increase yields, science is crucial.

Agriculture is now in limbo. The world of cheap food has gone. With luck and good policy, there will be a new equilibrium. The transition from one to the other is proving more costly and painful than anyone had expected. But the change is desirable, and governments should be seeking to ease the pain of transition, not to stop the process itself.

Related Items

Open article at "The Economist" Web Site


Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2007.

All rights reserved.

La Tentación de Uribe. The Economist. London.


Apr 17th 2008 | BOGOTÁ
From The Economist print edition
THE AMERICAS
Colombia´s President.
The Uribe temptation

America stiffs its best friend in Latin America. How much will he really care?


NOTIMEX

ALVARO URIBE is slight, bespectacled—and after nearly six years in office still in a hurry. Meet him in the presidential palace and he springs out of his chair, leads visitors to a map and with a plastic ruler explains the malevolent geography that for centuries has made this mountain-blocked and valley-scored Andean country of 44m people so hard to govern. Here is jungle, here savannah, there the 2,200km (1,400-mile) border with Venezuela. Where are the FARC guerrillas? Not long ago they used to be everywhere. Now—he waves his ruler—they have been driven into the remotest jungle, or across the border, and are harried even there.

Mr Uribe is that rarest of beasts: a democratic, pro-American president winning an anti-terrorist war. On the day of his inauguration, in 2002, guerrilla units lurked not only in the lush peaks that tower over Bogotá but sometimes inside the capital itself. During his swearing-in, rockets aimed at the palace landed in a working-class district, killing 19 people and wounding 60. Six years on, however, it is not only Bogotá but Colombia as a whole that has been transformed. This is still a violent country, but the long epidemic of murder and kidnapping, spread in ascending order by class hatred, ideology and drug money, is at last being tamed (see chart). The economy is growing at a lusty 7% a year.

It is good news all round—not least, you might think, for the United States. Colombia provides much of the cocaine snorted up American noses. In Mr Uribe, however, the Americans have an ally who has worked hard, through the American-financed Plan Colombia, to eradicate coca and disrupt the traffickers. More than this, he has made Colombia the odd-man-out in the Andes. Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia are run by anti-American leftists. Mr Uribe believes in free markets and has hitched Colombia's star to the United States. He even backed the war in Iraq.

Such an ally should be nurtured. Or so says George Bush, who appealed to Congress this week to ratify a long-promised Free-Trade Agreement (FTA) with Colombia so as not to "stiff" an ally. Stiffed, however, Colombia will probably be. The Democrats on Capitol Hill refuse to be bounced. Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House, responded to Mr Bush by accusing him of "stiffing" the American people via seven years of lousy economic policies.

Ms Pelosi's view of Mr Bush is no surprise. But what do the Democrats have against Colombia? Its hopes for an FTA have been caught in a pincer, with protectionists on one side and human-rights activists on the other. The Democrats hope to protect American jobs (or, at least, win votes in the forthcoming elections). Groups such as Amnesty and Human Rights Watch say America should withhold the plum of free trade until Colombia cleans up its human rights. Faced by such an alliance it seems safe to predict that Colombia will not win its FTA any time soon.



The quarrel in Washington highlights the difficulty Americans have in resolving the puzzle of Colombia's leader. Is Mr Uribe to be taken at his own estimation, as the man who is uprooting terrorism not just by employing a bigger and better army but also by strengthening democracy? Or is he, as some on the left say, a militaristic right-winger who behind the scenes is in league with the paramilitaries, the vigilantes who came into being to fight the FARC but turned out to be vicious killers and narco-traffickers in their own right?

If Americans are confused, most Colombians have made up their minds. For bringing order, Mr Uribe was hugely popular even before the boost he enjoyed after last month's cross-border raid into Ecuador. That attack killed Raúl Reyes, a top member of the FARC's elusive seven-man secretariat. Better still, the Colombians grabbed several laptops said to contain (Interpol is now examining their authenticity) juicy evidence of the help the FARC receives from Venezuela, whose oil-fired socialist president, Hugo Chávez, is Latin America's loudest foe of the United States. In the edgy face-off against Mr Chávez, Colombians feel it was their man who kept his cool and emerged the winner.

American labour unions and international human-rights groups make much of the fact that trade unionists are murdered in Colombia, and that few of the assassins are investigated and brought to trial. Human Rights Watch says that 17 unionists were killed in first three months of 2008 alone, and more than 400 during the six years of Mr Uribe's administration. No doubt, there is a problem. Photos of assassinated unionists are posted outside the thick glass security door of the CUT trade-union federation in Bogotá. Police with automatic rifles patrol outside. Carlos Rodríguez, the federation's head, claims that the killers include right-wing paramilitary groups and "agents of the state".

Yet these murders, however grotesque, should be seen in the context of a society still emerging from extreme violence. It is not only success against the FARC that has brought about the startling reduction of killing. Between 2004 and 2006 Mr Uribe persuaded the right-wing paramilitaries to give up their weapons. If they gave an account of their crimes, they would be treated more leniently. As a result, the justice system is swamped. Mario Iguarán, the attorney-general, says that in spite of being voted extra resources from Congress, his investigators are overwhelmed by the numbers. Some 4,000 people are being investigated for crimes against humanity; 800 new murders have come to light as a result of confessions alone.

In response to foreign pressure, the government has also set up a special unit to investigate the murder of unionists. But the government points out that union members are less likely to be murder victims than members of the population at large. Some of those killed, it says, may have been victims of common crimes, not singled out as unionists. Besides, says Mr Uribe, the unions have other reasons for opposing him. They do not like his liberal economic reforms. And although Colombians should be, and are, free to join unions, Mr Uribe says, there are historical reasons for distrust. In the 1960s unions were penetrated by Marxists who espoused all forms of struggle, including violence.

All the way with UribeIn appealing to the American Congress to ratify the FTA, Mr Uribe ticks off his achievements: the protection of journalists and unionists, the squashing of terrorism and the extradition during his term of more than 600 drug traffickers to the United States. "We have more to do," he admits: "But we request that we receive recognition of the progress we have made."

If he is refused, the economic damage to Colombia would not be immediate. A trade-preferences agreement already gives it access to the American market. This can be renewed if the FTA fails. But withholding an FTA after granting such agreements to other countries in the region may knock investors' confidence. And that, says Mr Uribe, would make it harder to create the jobs needed to wean Colombians from terrorism and narco-trafficking.

The political impact on Mr Uribe himself is a different matter. Some foreign diplomats in Bogotá say the FTA's failure would land a heavy political blow on a leader who has paid a high price in the neighbourhood for aligning himself with the United States. And yet this danger can be overstated. There is little evidence that Colombians would blame their president rather than the United States. Mr Uribe is still seen by millions of Colombians as their saviour. If anything, indeed, he may be too popular for Colombia's good.


All the way with Uribe

Just one more push

Having already served two terms, he cannot have a third. But the constitution can be changed, just as it was to allow him a second term in a row. His soaring popularity and confidence may tempt Mr Uribe to see himself as man of destiny, selected by providence to inflict a final defeat on the guerrillas of right and left, uproot the narco-traffickers and turn Colombia into a fully fledged democracy. He has come closer to this goal than any predecessor, but his term ends in 2010. Is it not his duty to seek a third term and finish the job?

The temptation must be strong. If you believe General Freddy Padilla de León, head of the armed forces, the long and bloody war against the FARC is not just beginning to end: this is "the end of the end".

The general makes no secret of the debt the army feels to Colombia's present political leadership. For the first time, he claims, the soldiers do not feel they are on their own. Mr Uribe's programme of "democratic security" has laid down a co-ordinated strategy that combines politics, social intervention and military force. The army has been modernised and provided with "extraordinary" resources. General Padilla says his forces can reach any part of the country's territory "with precision, surprise and a minimum of collateral damage". Central to its planning is the notion of legitimacy. With the people's support, he says, victory is at hand.

Generals exaggerate. The army is still accused of abuses. But the FARC is plainly losing ground and its men are deserting. Though it holds hostages, such as Ingrid Betancourt, it is failing to extract concessions from this tough-minded government. The guerrillas may hope for a softening under a new president. But that is why Mr Uribe may be tempted to stand again.

When asked if he will, he laughs off the question. Until a couple of months ago, the betting was that he would not. The legalities are complex and Congress is rich in rivals who fancy the top job themselves. But since the success of the Ecuador raid and his mano a mano against President Chávez the odds have shortened. His supporters have quietly taken the first step of organising a petition for a third term. One European ambassador says Mr Uribe has started to behave more like a candidate than a president nearing the end of his term. He has groomed no successor.

Mr Uribe might win a third popular mandate. But elite opinion, even among admirers, is mixed. That is because his record is mixed. For example, although the president takes credit for the prosecution of the demobilised paramilitaries, his original plan was to grant them an amnesty; it was Congress and the constitutional court that insisted on tougher terms (and some are still running their rackets). His supporters give Mr Uribe credit for the "parapolitics" affair, under which almost a fifth of Colombia's Congress members are being investigated for secret links to the paramilitaries. But here it was the Supreme Court that made the running, not the president.

For all its sorry history of violence, says Rafael Pardo, a former defence minister (and possible presidential candidate), Colombia has had some strong and independent state institutions. In Mr Uribe it has a formidably strong president, who has already concentrated a good deal of power in his hands. Whether the independence of the institutions could survive the re-election of the man is, at the least, an open question. And the answer to the question could matter, in the long run, rather more to Colombia than the fate of the FTA.


Open article at "The Economist" Web Site


Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2007.

All rights reserved.

Friday, April 18, 2008

EL MIO - TORRE DE BABEL

Diario "Occidente". Cali Abril 18, 2008.
EL MIO – TORRE DE BABEL
Nicolás Ramos Gómez

Al grupo de ciudadanos que alertamos a la ciudad sobre la falta de un estudio de movilidad como base esencial y de lógica elemental para una adecuada planeación del MIO, como en otras ocasiones, nos tildaron de "mulas muertas" atravesadas en el progreso de la ciudad.

Hoy los tozudos hechos confirman que la movilidad es cada día más complicada en la ciudad. Eso nunca se quiso analizar, era contario a la improvisación para mostrar obras que parece nunca se terminaran.

La ausencia de ese estudio hace cada día más evidentes los problemas que surgen por doquier.

La falta de un estudio sobre la movilidad y la improvisación en los diseños del MIO, aún incompletos, esta dando sus frutos.

Se pusieron oídos sordos a lo propuesto sobre las calles 13 y 15, hoy monumento al mal diseño que desvaloriza todo el sector y acrecienta el caos peatonal y vehicular en el centro de la ciudad.

Seguimos considerando, como lo más prudente, un alto en el camino y acomodar lo hecho a un verdadero plan de movilidad de la ciudad y sus municipios vecinos, cuyos habitantes interactúan con Cali, que cada día es un mayor y traumático "cruce de caminos".

No hacer lo propuesto pronto será más complejo para una ciudad que se hincha, no crece, en total desorden por la falta de una verdadera planeación y la ausencia de autoridad que controle su creciente desorden.


Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Asado de Costillar de Res.


Dining & Wine.
Beef Roast With Melted Tomatoes and Onions
Adapted from Susie Fishbein
Published: April 16, 2008
  • 1 silver tip roast, 5 pounds, or rib roast, 7 pounds
  • Fine sea salt
  • Freshly ground black pepper
  • 4 tablespoons olive oil
  • 2 onions, coarsely chopped
  • 4 cloves garlic, cut into slivers
  • 3 large or 4 medium ripe tomatoes
  • 6 sprigs thyme, woody stems discarded.



Photo: Evan Sung for The New York Times
Ms. Fishbein's roast beef with tomatoes.

  1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Season roast with salt and pepper. In a large heavy pot or Dutch oven, heat oil to very hot. Sear roast on all sides until crusty dark brown, at least 3 to 4 minutes a side. Do not move roast around while searing, as this will prevent crust from forming.
  2. Add onions, garlic, tomatoes and thyme to pot. Stir and cook vegetables 3 to 4 minutes. Add water to come a third of the way up the roast. Place pot in oven, uncovered.
  3. Braise about 1 1/2 to 2 hours depending on size, until meat thermometer inserted into center registers about 155 degrees (medium rare). Do not overcook. Remove from oven, tent with aluminum foil, and let rest 10 minutes. Transfer to carving board or platter and serve with tomatoes, onions and pan juices.

Yield: 10 to 12 servings.


Somos Carne ? Propuesta artística de Johnathan Cadavid.

March 25, 2008 — colombianart

"We Are Meat?"
An Artists Proposal by Jonathan Cadavid

The Art of Jonathan Cadavid - An Introduction

Well folks, the 6th International Biennal of Suba (a suburb of Bogota) has been and gone and with great unanimity a young artist, just 23 years old, from Medellin was chosen by the curatorial committee as the winner.

Jonathan Cadavid`s work has a harsh appearance to some - and perhaps even nauseating to others. However, what cannot be denied is the depth of concept and in its delivery the presence of poignance and stimulation toward a deeper conscious interest in the art. That is what his work brings to what is perhaps an ambivalent world of Colombian art.



So what is it that elates or sickens the viewers of Cadavid`s work and makes them think that they are more pertinent to a Quentin Tarantino film than an art gallery or a home? Is it the fact that he places beauty and the deathly reality of life side-by-side? Reminds us of our final destination? Makes us question not only our mortality but makes us confront our relation with it - be that by cloaking our life in religion or atheism . . .or by reducing our moments of supposed perfection to subtleties of vanity upheld by our egos?

Cadavids work is not really about meat - not our flesh nor that which we eat, although that that may seem to be central to his proposition - but about the fundamental question that intrigues us all: Of life and death - and beyond.

After the death of a close friend, Cadavid started to question mortality - his friends, his own and of humanity.

Part of the conclusion reached is that we may simply be created from flesh and bones - there seems to be no place for a soul in his world and that is one of the points of view that he questions through his work. He questions the possibility that we may be no more than meat - equivalent to that which we find in a butchers shop where at least there still exists an element of the life that once lived and breathed - perhaps even thought and felt unlike the sanitized way meat is packed and presented at most supermarkets, detached from what it once was. However, this question then leads us as the observer to recognize in a more forceful manner that fact that we are alive and that we are able to lead our lives, in such a fashion that what we may leave behind after our death is much more than the flesh and bone that we are made of.

What Jonathan Cadavid is doing with his artwork is searching for an answer to that age-old question of the existence of the soul.



Carnivore of the Animals

Another point that immediately resounds when observing a piece by Cadavid is our relation to animals and the possibility of recognising in them a soul, thoughts and feeling, just as we do recognise this in ourselves a humans. In Jonathan`s own words:

"Visualicemos por un momento nuestro cuerpo tendido sobre un mesón de carnicería a la vista y tacto de cualquiera.

Un carnicero dispone de cada parte de nuestros miembros; cada parte de nuestro cuerpo será pesado y medido como mercancía.

La imagen no es familiar, pero es posible, no? Si nuestra conformación primaria son las mismas carne y huesos que los del cerdo, en algunos casos el mismo porcentaje de grasa y quizás hasta el mismo sabor, es igual de posible que el "alma" de un cerdo trasciende la carne y que una vez muerto el cuerpo, su espíritu vaya a un lugar diferente a nuestros intestinos.

Pensar de este modo nos asusta, pero además nos hace mas conscientes de nuestra condición mortal, la vida se percibe de forma diferente y hasta se valora más a los animales; somos muy pretenciosos y por esto no aceptamos que los animales sean nuestros semejantes, pero bueno, que se defienda quien sepa cómo hacerlo."

"Let us visualize for a moment our own body laid upon a butchers table available to be seen and touched by anyone.

A butcher presents each of our limbs; each part of body will be weighed and measured as merchandise.

The image is not familiar, but it is possible, isn't it? If our constitution is primarily made up of the same meat and bones as those of a pig, in some cases with the same percentage of fat and perhaps of the same taste, it is equally possible that a pig transcends meat and once its body is dead, its spirit goes to a place that is somewhat different than our intestines.

To think in this manner scares us, but it makes us more conscious of our mortal condition, we perceive life differently and even may value animals more. We are pretentious and do not accept animals as our equals, but then, those that know how to should defend them."

Are we really so different from other animal forms that share this planet with us? If not how should we treat them.

As carnivores for many thousands if not millions of years, it would seem strange that we change that habit - but perhaps the work of Jonathan Cadavid should make us at least reflect on our relationship with the meat that we do eat - that once lived, breathed and perhaps shared its soul with the universe just as we do.



The Art of Jonathan Cadavid - the Art of Existence

A work of art is always appreciated from the point of view of the observer and as I observe the works of Jonathan Cadavid I see nothing but strong talent - of creation - divinity.

Indeed, in artistic terms his color tones reflect those used by Jenny Saville - however, his mixture of purity of color in the nudes and the reds in the meats operate almost in stark contrast and filter his message in perhaps the strongest way possible so that it arrives at the public without alteration.



One of the artists strongest views is that there be no blood in his artworks - he has no intention of relating his works to bloodiness or to violence as such - it is a spiritual proposal, though not a religious one.

Perhaps there is no hereafter once we are dead. Perhaps we are just meat as Jonathan questions - but I think that while we are here on earth at least, then we are during that time a fundamental representation of the same creation that begat the universe - be that spiritual, divine or simply the Big Bang. And that spark of timeless creativity is present within the works of Jonathan Cadavid. Perhaps it is the same spark that Jonathan seeks to investigate - one that shines in his work.

Exhibition

As part of his prize for winning the Biennal, Jonathan`s work is being given his first one-man show in the district of Suba, Bogota during April, 2008. Take some time and go and see it. Decide for yourselves if we are just meat after all!

  • Exhibition: Somos Carne? ("We are Meat?")
  • Place: Suba Main Library, Plaza Suba, Bogota
  • Telephone:(+571) 686-1304
  • Date: April 17th, 2008
  • Time: 6:30pm

Suscribir al Boletìn Informativo de Jonathan Cadavid para recibir informacion en Español y recibir las mas recientes actualizaciones.

Book Cover

As an additional point of interest, this young artist already has one of his works chosen to represent a book of poetry by Faber Cuervo - and here it is.


Self Portrait
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