Le Journal des Alternatives

50ième anniversaire de la révolution

GaÃ«lle Janvier — 2009-11-23T00:51:24Z

50ième anniversaire de la révolution

50ième année de recherche constante d'alternatives!

Aloe

Daniel Arellano — 2009-11-19T03:39:05Z

Orphelinat de Bamako

Solange, Marie Nuwayo — 2009-11-18T17:03:30Z

Un sourire qui dévoile que malgré les moments difficiles que nous traversons, l'espoir fait vivre. Cet enfant qui a ouvert mes yeux sur les choses les plus importantes de la vie. L'innocence dans ses yeux est l'une des choses qui nous montre que le meilleur est à venir

Permacuture Promoters in Banao, Cuba

Daniel Arellano — 2009-11-14T14:02:00Z

Permaculture Promoters from the Fundacion Antonio Nunez Jiminez de la Naturaleza y el Hombre on a rooftop in Banao, Cuba. - Des organisations dynamiques et novatrices

Assistant to the environment and urban agriculture program

2009-10-05T14:24:54Z

n collaboration withe Youth Eco Internship Program of the YMCA Canada, Alternatives is offering an assistant to the environment and urban agriculture programs in Montreal

The Rooftop Garden project (a collaboration between Alternatives and the Santropol Roulant) is an unique community initiative who addresses food security, environmental health and urban ecology. Our innovative gardens empowr urban residents to produce their own food, green their neighbourhoods and build healthy communities.

Alternatives is an actor recognized in the field of urban agriculture with its Rooftop garden project, which won a Phénix award in the sustainable development category in 2008, and the Urban Design prize from the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, Canadian Institute of Planners (CIP) and the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects (CSLA) for its project in collaboration with McGill University. Alternatives develops with many local and international partners innovative models of urban agriculture.

By joining us, the intern will have the rare opportunity to familiarizing himself with new sustainable solutions, while working in a dynamic a devoted team. For more information on the Rooftop Garden Project please vist our website: http://rooftopgardens.ca/ .

Under the supervision of Alternatives' Environment Project Officer, the intern will support the coordination of Alternatives local and international urban agriculture projects. This internship will allow a young canadian to participate in the development of a concrete urban agriculture experience.

Tasks and responsibilities

Alternatives creates will many local and international partners innovative models of urban agriculture. The intern will experiment the different sides of an urban agriculture project: soil-less agriculture and permaculture techniques, management of an urban environmental project, reduction of urban heat islands, promotion of an healthy lifestyle, waste management, networking of an environmental project in an international context. As a member of Alternatives' team, the intern wi be invited to participate in the organisations' activities and team meetings. Supervised by the Environment Project Officer, the intern will:

Help develop new gardens and new gardening activities (balconies and rooftops);
Coordinate gardeners groups in many gardens (organize meetings, supervize activities, do a follow-up and write reports);
Help to represent the organisation and the project;
Collaborate in urban agrilculture project writting at a locally and internationally;
Collaborate in networking Alternatives and its international partners on urban agriculture and soial ecology;
Help advertise gardening techniques and distribute the "ready-to-grow" kits;
Help plan and organize public events.

Qualifications and skills required

Post-secondary graduate in a diploma related to environmental sciences
Good knowledge of urban agriculture and the community sector
Autonomy and dynamism
Good writting skills
Capcity to work in a team
Good organisational skills;
Gardening experience, good knowledge of ecological gardening
At ease with office software (word, excel, powerpoint)
Fluent in english and in french.

Other skills a plus:

A knowledge of spanish and portugese

Eligibility criteria

You must be:

Between the ages of 15 and 30
Unemployed
A Canadian citizen, permanent resident or a person to whom refugee protection has been granted under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act
Legally entitled to work in Canada
Legally entitled to work in your province or territory
A post-secondary graduate.

To submit your application

To apply, fill out the form on the website www.yeip.ca mentioning that you are applying for an internship with Alternatives

Please join your resume and a motivation letter answering minimally the following questions:

What is your vision the concepts of urban agriculture and food sovereignty in a local and an international level
How are you going to contribute to the Rooftop Garden project of Alternatives?
What is your motivation do an internship with Alternatives?

Also, send us a copy of your resume and motivation letter to: jardins@alternatives.ca

Deadline to apply: November 13 2009

Interviews: First week of December 2009

Internship durantion 9 months full time, 35 hours a week

Salary: 14$ an hour

Starting date: January 2010 to beginning of September 2010

Urban agriculture mobilization and education officer

2009-10-02T21:03:17Z

In collaboration withe Youth Eco Internship Program of the YMCA Canada, Alternatives is offering an urban agriculture mobilization and education officer position in its Montreal office.

Under the supervision of Alternatives' Environment Project Officer, the intern will support the sensitization and mobilization campaigns of Alternatives on urban agriculture and social ecology. The intern will take part in the promotion of organic agriculture, sustainable development, re-usability, composting and ecological management of water.

Tasks and responsibilities

The intern will experiments the different steps of an environmental education project, and will be asked to create and use different pedagogical tools. As a member of Alternatives' team, the intern wi be invited to participate in the organisations' activities and team meetings. Supervised by the Environment Project Officer, the intern will:

Participate in the update of different educative guides aiming different clienteles on urban agriculture
Update the website: www.rooftopgardens.ca, and manage the volunteers mailing lists.
Produce an e-newsletter distributed once every 2 weeks on variou subject surrounding urban agriculture for the members and volunteers of the gardens
Plan and facilitate gardening activities in the project "world gardens" with immigrant communities in Montreal
Sensitize the population to the adoption of good habits (healthy food, composting, re utilization, recycling) in many communities (HLM, retirement houses, day camps)
Help advertise gardening techniques and distribute the "ready-to-grow" kits
Help plan and organize public events.

Qualifications and skills required

Post-secondary graduate in a diploma related to communications or environmental sciences
Good knowledge of urban agriculture and the community sector
Autonomy and dynamism
Experience in group facilitating
Capcity to work in a team
Excellent communications skills
At ease with office software (word, excel, powerpoint) and with communication or design software
Fluent in english and in french.

Other skills a plus:

A knowledge of spanish and portugese
A knowled of urban agriculture and gardening techniques.

Eligibility criteria

You must be:

To submit your application

To apply, fill out the form on the website www.yeip.ca mentioning that you are applying for an internship with Alternatives

Please join your resume and a motivation letter answering minimally the following questions:

Also, send us a copy of your resume and motivation letter to: jardins@alternatives.ca

Deadline to apply: December 21, 2009

Interviews: week of January 18

Internship duration: 9 months full time, 35 hours a week

Salary: 14$ an hour

Starting date: february to beginning of october 2010

Guns or Butter: The Presidency of Barack Obama

JOHN FEFFER — 2009-09-22T18:02:10Z

The Vietnam War ruined everything. It not only destroyed Vietnam and killed a huge number of its inhabitants. It not only killed so many American soldiers and destroyed the futures of so many veterans. It not only spread into Cambodia and Laos and wrecked those countries for generations.

The Vietnam War also killed the Great Society. President Lyndon Johnson, with a large Democratic majority in Congress after the 1964 elections, enacted sweeping reforms in education, health care, and transportation, along with landmark civil rights legislation. But the pressure of spending on the Vietnam War — the guns vs. butter debate of the 1960s — eventually brought this last, great program of genuine American liberalism to a halt and scuttled the hopes of its architect for a second presidential term.

Will the Afghanistan War drive a similar stake through the heart of President Barack Obama's ambitious domestic program?

The two major issues currently on the public agenda are health care and the war in Afghanistan: the guns vs. butter debate of the 21st century. This year, the annual cost of the Afghan War has jumped to $60 billion. In total, we've spent over $220 billion on the nearly eight-year conflict. If General McChrystal gets his way and the administration sends even more troops, the bill will only grow. Meanwhile, Obama has his own version of Great Society reform on the table in the form of an ambitious health care initiative. It won't come cheap. The president has promised to cap the costs of his plan, the Holy Grail of liberal reformers since FDR's time, at $900 billion over 10 years.

The question is: Can Obama have his guns and eat his butter too? We've already laid out huge chunks of money for the financial sector bailout followed by the economic stimulus package. The Pentagon is continuing to spend as though we aren't facing a $1.6 trillion government deficit for 2009. The military budget for 2010, 4% larger than last year, clocks in at $636 billion.

Johnson believed that he could have both guns and butter. "We are a country which was built by pioneers who had a rifle in one hand and an ax in the other," he proclaimed. "We can do both. And as long as I am president we will do both." His hubris was not unprecedented. The other great liberal reformers, Woodrow Wilson and FDR, also tried to balance their ambitious domestic programs with military engagements overseas.

Johnson, of course, did not remain president for long. He pushed through most of his Great Society reforms in his first two years in office, when he had large Democratic majorities in Congress. By 1968, the war in Vietnam had led to considerable criticism of the president's record and a major drop in his popularity, and Johnson decided not to run for reelection. As Irving Bernstein writes in his probing study of the era, Guns or Butter: The Presidency of Lyndon Johnson, "One may speculate over what might have been if the country had remained at peace. Economic policy was working superbly in 1965 and it is likely that prosperity would have continued into 1968. In Chicago the Democrats would have renominated the Johnson-Humphrey ticket and it would have won easily. This might have launched a long period of Democratic control of the White House and the Congress. The Great Society would have survived and might have been expanded."

This expansion might well have been global. A few years after the end of the Vietnam War, ministers from 134 countries gathered in Kazakhstan and issued a declaration calling on the international community to reduce the gap in health care between the industrialized and developing worlds. "They considered the slogan 'Health for All by the Year 2000' as a laudable and achievable goal," writes Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF) contributor Adam Parsons in The Global Health Debate. "Not only did it involve guaranteeing access to essential health care at a community level for all people of the world, but primary health care services were to work closely with health-related sectors responsible for other essential needs including education, safe water, sanitation, and food security." This attempt at a Global Great Society foundered with the rise of neoliberal economic programs in the late 1970s.

History could have marched down a different path in 1965. After all, as a candidate in 1964, Johnson argued that "we don't want to get involved in a nation with 700 million people [China] and get tied down in a land war in Asia." As president, however, Johnson did exactly that: committing U.S. ground forces to Vietnam in 1965. This decision ultimately doomed his presidency and the Great Society. We've been living with the Considerably-Less-Than-Great Society of the neoliberals and neoconservatives ever since.

Obama, as a candidate in 2008, promised to refocus the U.S. military on Afghanistan. As president, he now has a chance to reverse himself and end the war. According to some recent indications, the president is willing to rethink his approach to Afghanistan. If he does, he can rescue his own Great Society ambitions, secure himself a second term of office, and acquire an enduring legacy as the first president to resolve the guns vs. butter dilemma in the only sustainable way possible.

Foreign Policy in Focus

In Defence of Neve Gordon

Michael Warschawski — 2009-09-18T15:10:14Z

In an op-ed piece published in the Los Angeles Times, Dr. Neve Gordon, professor of political science at Ben-Gurion University in Beer Sheva, called for international support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign. I have already explained in my blog that the point of this international campaign is to sanction Israel for its occupation policies, colonization and systematic violation of international law and United Nations' resolutions regarding the conflict in Palestine. Dr. Gordon is part of an activist Israeli group that has decided to support the BDS campaign from within Israeli society. This group, “Boycott from Within,” aims to support the claim that Israel must pay for its crimes, based on the understanding that only an unyielding position from the International community can put pressure on the leaders of the Jewish state to finally abide by international laws.

Abiding by international law is actually in Israel's interest because the alternative to international law is “law of the strongest” and this, sooner or later, will prove fatal to the Israeli people.

The fact that Israelis participate in the BDS campaign means that there is a will to switch from the law of the jungle to the reign of rights. This is the choice that Gordon has made along with hundreds of other Israeli activists.

This stance was harshly criticized: leaders of the Jewish community in Los Angeles have asked Ben Gurion University to expel Neve Gordon, and threatened to suspend their financial aid to the university and call for a boycott of the institution if this is not carried out.

Mission accomplished for Neve Gordon, who could ask for more: BDS is at work against his university. His message in the L.A. Times has been soundly heard. This being said, it is of primary importance that the academic world mobilizes itself to support and defend Neve Gordon, who is currently threatened in his institution and profession. The issue at stake today involves freedom of expression as well as the right of a citizen to express an opinion on his country's policy. The L.A. Jewish community may very well keep its money if it means receiving a right of veto on what academics can and cannot express in the media.

For the remainder of us in Israel, we will double our efforts to support the international campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions against our rogue state. The issue at stake is one of “public hygiene” in the realm of international relations. Following in the footsteps of white activists against the Apartheid regime in South Africa, we are saying out loud, “Please boycott our country to transform it into a state of rights.”

Towards a “Israeli War Criminals Watch”

Michael Warschawski — 2009-09-18T14:33:30Z

Publication of Report of the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict is an important step, on condition that it is followed up. This is important, first and foremost, for international public hygiene: during two decades of neo-conservative rule in the United States, we were witness to a joint effort of the White House and Israel to annul the norms of international law. Here we can recall the stupid comment of George W. Bush. Bush, in the framework of the global war on terror, argued it is essential to annul the limitations placed by the Geneva Conventions on combatants. And Israel, already in the early 1970s, decided that the Fourth Geneva Conventions are not applicable to the occupied Palestinian territories.

The report, and before it the advisory opinion of the International Criminal Court on the Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, remind the world that the lessons resulting from the Nazi era are not forgotten, and that the world is not a jungle in which the strong automatically rules, but a civilized community which strives to act in accordance with international laws protecting the most fundamental rights of human beings. And for those who contend, justifiably, that these international norms are violated every single day by a majority of the world's countries, we must reply that it is better that there be norms and laws protecting the weakened, even if they are not generally respected, than living in a society without law that permits the strong to do as it wishes.

The responses of Israeli leaders were expected: “biased report,” “one-sided approach,” and we even heard that Goldstone is anti-Semitic…or a Jew full of self-hatred. At the head of this campaign stood, and how could it be otherwise, Ehud Barak, who declared “not only does this report give a prize to terrorism, but also encourages it.” Barak added that the Ministry of Defense will provide legal counseling to officers against whom legal proceedings are liable to be initiated.

In accordance with the regulations of international law, the recommendations of the report are now supposed to be discussed in the Human Rights Council and then the Security Council, which should transfer the recommendations to the International Court in the Hague or a special international court so that those suspected of committing war crimes can be tried and if found guilty, to sit behind bars for many years. However, this same international law provided privileges to the big powers, called the veto. Israeli diplomacy will focus in the coming days on convincing some of these powers so they will veto and pull Israel out of the mud. And first and foremost it will pressure the White House.

So the real test of Barack Obama has arrived: not declarations about “peace within two years” and “the right of Palestinians to a state,” but actually dealing with real policies that contradict the values he preaches and with clear recommendations to take legal measures. Barack will decide if the system of international law is allowed to do what is expected of it. To my sorrow, I gamble on him siding with Israel, i.e., the use by the United States of its veto power in the United Nations Security Council.

However, the American veto is not the end of the story: numerous countries in the world have adopted laws allowing them to try persons accused of war crimes or crimes against humanity. It is upon us, every woman and man, in Israel and abroad, who fear for international public hygiene and international law—to unite forces in order to place before those war criminals the dilemma: risk being tried if they are found in countries in which the law permits this or remain locked in Israel, to give up tourism in Spain or a sabbatical in the UK. As occurred to the former Israeli Air Force commander who was forced to remain on the airplane in the airport in London, when he heard of the detention order awaiting him if he would step foot in the UK.

The establishment of an “Israeli War Criminals Watch” can be one of the contributions of civil society to following up the UN report, in addition to the collection of relevant material and testimonies about Israeli military actions in Gaza, in addition to monitoring the movements of these same suspects of war crimes.

Afghanistan: What Are These People Thinking?

Conn Hallinan — 2009-09-11T19:11:19Z

One of the oddest — indeed, surreal — encounters around the war in Afghanistan has to be a telephone call this past July 27. On one end of the line was historian Stanley Karnow, author of Vietnam: A History. On the other, State Department special envoy Richard Holbrooke and the U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal. The question: How can Washington avoid the kind of defeat it suffered in Southeast Asia 40 years ago?

Karnow did not divulge what he said to the two men, but he told Associated Press that the "lesson" of Vietnam "was that we shouldn't have been there," and that, while "Obama and everybody else seems to want to be in Afghanistan," he, Karnow, was opposed to the war.

It is hardly surprising that Washington should see parallels to the Vietnam debacle. The enemy is elusive enemy. The local population is neutral, if not hostile. And the governing regime is corrupt with virtually no support outside of the nation's capital.

But in many ways Afghanistan is worse than Vietnam. So, it is increasingly hard to fathom why a seemingly intelligent American administration seems determined to hitch itself to this disaster in the making. It is almost as if there is something about that hard-edged Central Asian country that deranges its occupiers.

Delusion #1

In his address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Obama characterized Afghanistan as "a war of necessity" against international terrorism. But the reality is that the Taliban is a polyglot collection of conflicting political currents whose goals are local, not universal jihad.

"The insurgency is far from monolithic," says Anand Gopal, a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor based in Afghanistan. "There are shadowy, kohl-eyed mullahs and head-bobbing religious students, of course, but there are also erudite university students, poor illiterate farmers, and veteran anti-Soviet commanders. The movement is a mélange of nationalists, Islamists, and bandits...made up of competing commanders and differing ideologies and strategies who nonetheless agree on one essential goal: kicking out the foreigners."

Taliban spokesman Yousef Ahmadi told Gopal, "We are fighting to free our country from foreign domination," adding, "Even the Americans once waged an insurgency to free their country."

Besides the Taliban, there are at least two other insurgent groups. Hizb-I-Islam is led by former U.S. ally Gulbuddin Hekmatyer. The Haqqani group, meanwhile, has close ties to al-Qaeda.

The White House's rationale of "international terrorism" parallels the Southeast Asian tragedy. The U.S. characterized Vietnam as part of an international Communist conspiracy, while the conflict was essentially a homegrown war of national liberation.

Delusion #2

One casualty of Vietnam was the doctrine of counterinsurgency, the theory that an asymmetrical war against guerrillas can be won by capturing the "hearts and minds" of the people. Of course "hearts and minds" was a pipe dream, obliterated by massive civilian casualties, the widespread use of defoliants, and the creation of "strategic hamlets" that had more in common with concentration camps than villages.

In Vietnam's aftermath, "counterinsurgency" fell out of favor, to be replaced by the "Powell Doctrine" of relying on massive firepower to win wars. With that strategy the United States crushed the Iraqi army in the first Gulf War. Even though the doctrine was downsized for the invasion of Iraq a decade later, it was still at the heart of the attack.

However, within weeks of taking Baghdad, U.S. soldiers were besieged by an insurgency that wasn't in the lesson plan. Ambushes and roadside bombs took a steady toll on U.S. and British troops, and aggressive countermeasures predictably turned the population against the occupation.

After four years of getting hammered by insurgents, the Pentagon rediscovered counterinsurgency, and its prophet was General David Petraeus, now commander of all U.S. forces in the Middle East and Central Asia. "Hearts and minds" was dusted off, and the watchwords became "clear, hold, and build." Troops were to hang out with the locals, dig wells, construct schools, and measure success not by body counts of the enemy, but by the "security" of the civilian population.

This theory impelled the Obama administration to "surge" 21,000 troops into Afghanistan, and to consider adding another 20,000 in the near future. The idea is that a surge will reduce the violence, as a similar surge of 30,000 troops had done in Iraq.

Delusion #3

But as Patrick Cockburn of The Independent discovered, the surge didn't work in Iraq.

With the possible exception of Baghdad, it wasn't U.S. troops that reduced the violence in Iraq, but the decision by Sunni insurgents that they could no longer fight a two-front war against the Iraqi government and the United States. The ceasefire by Shi'ite cleric and Madhi Army leader Muqtada al-Sadr also helped calm things down. In any case, as recent events have demonstrated, the "peace" was largely illusory.

Not only is a similar "surge" in Afghanistan unlikely to be successful, the formula behind counterinsurgency doctrine predicts that the Obama administration is headed for a train wreck.

According to investigative journalist Jordan Michael Smith, the "U.S/ Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual" — co-authored by Petraeus — recommends "a minimum of 20 counterinsurgents per 1,000 residents. In Afghanistan, with its population estimated at 33 million, that would mean at least 660,000 troops." And this requires not just any soldiers, but soldiers trained in counterinsurgency doctrine.

The numbers don't add up.

The United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies currently have about 64,000 troops in Afghanistan, and that figure would rise to almost 100,000 when the present surge is completed. Some 68,000 of those will be American. There is also a possibility that Obama will add another 20,000, bringing the total to 120,000, larger than the Soviet Army that occupied Afghanistan. That's still only a fifth of what the counterinsurgency manual recommends.

Meanwhile, the American public is increasingly disillusioned with the war. According to a recent CNN poll, 57% of Americans oppose the war, a jump of 9% since May. Among Obama supporters the opposition is overwhelming: Nearly two-thirds of "committed" Democrats feel "strongly" the war is not worth fighting.

Delusion #4

Afghanistan isn't like Iraq because NATO is behind us. Way behind us.

The British — whose troops actually fight, as opposed to doing "reconstruction" like most of the other 16 NATO nations — have lost the home crowd. Polls show deep opposition to the war, a sentiment that is echoed all over Europe. Indeed, the German Defense Minister Franz-Joseph Jung has yet to use the word "war" in relation to Afghanistan.

That little piece of fiction went a-glimmering in June, when three Bundeswehr soldiers were killed near Kunduz in northern Afghanistan. Indeed, as U.S. Marines go on the offensive in the country's south, the Taliban are pulling up stakes and moving east and north to target the Germans. The tactic is as old as guerrilla warfare: "Where the enemy is strong, disperse. Where the enemy is weak, concentrate."

While Berlin's current ruling coalition of Social Democrats and conservatives quietly back the war, the Free Democrats — who are likely to join Chancellor Angela Merkel's government after the next election — are calling for bringing Germany's 4,500 troops home.

The opposition Left Party has long opposed the war, and that opposition gave it a boost in recent state elections.

The United States and NATO can't — or won't — supply the necessary troops, and the Afghan army is small, corrupt and incompetent. No matter how one adds up the numbers, the task is impossible. So why is the administration following an unsupportable course of action?

Why We Fight

There is that oil pipeline from the Caspian that no one wants to talk about. Strategic control of energy is certainly a major factor in Central Asia. Then, too, there is the fear that a defeat for NATO in its first "out of area" war might fatally damage the alliance.

But when all is said and done, there also seems to be is a certain studied derangement about the whole matter, a derangement that was on display July 12 when British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told parliament that the war was showing "signs of success."

British forces had just suffered 15 deaths in a little more than a week, eight of them in a 24-hour period. It has now lost more soldiers that it did in Iraq. This is Britain's fourth war in Afghanistan.

The Karzai government has stolen the election. The war has spilled over to help destabilize and impoverish nuclear-armed Pakistan. The American and European public is increasingly opposed to the war. July was the deadliest month ever for the United States, and the Obama administration is looking at a $9 trillion deficit.

What are these people thinking?

Conn Hallinan is a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus.

Editor: John Feffer