America's economy is in a bad way. The economic recovery has turned out to be disturbingly weak, and joblessness rates are still actually rising. Investment is down, Americans are depressed and angry, and there are even worries about a double-dip recession.
There has not been much analysis of the causes behind today's economic stagnation. Most experts talk about how weak recoveries generally follow financial crises. Politically, Republicans blame Democrats, and Democrats are generally too busy trying to fix the problem than to think about what caused it.
Yet there is indeed something that did badly damage the recovery - an event very few nowadays link to America's economic woes.
I went to a protest in Philadelphia this past Saturday, and it was more disheartening than anything else. It was against the wars and various other injustices, with a special focus on he recent FBI raids of peace activists and Pennsylvania Homeland Security spying on innocent civilians and activists.
By the end of it, I kind of just felt like going up to the megaphone and asking, "How much moral outrage can one person muster? There are more people handing out fliers here than not, and with this country committing so many disgusting, outrageous acts, I don't blame you." I won't lie, I handed a few out myself. Yet the contrast between the righteous causes featured in the speeches and on the signs and on the fliers and the, as a fellow protester said to me, "complete lack of solidarity" was striking.
As Iceland's erupting volcano strands thousands of air travelers across Europe and worldwide, a less publicized but arguably more costly catastrophe is mounting 15,000 miles away: piles of gourmet produce and cut flowers, some of Kenya's chief exports, are rotting in limbo. Meant to be shipped to upscale grocery stores throughout Europe, lilies, roses, carnations, carrots, onions, baby sweet corn, and sugar snap peas are going bad in heaps, on the vine, and in the ground because airport warehouses are already full and there's no local market for the expensive produce in a country where half the population lives on less than a dollar a day.
As food prices continue to rise worldwide, reducing food waste will be a critical element in alleviating hunger and poverty worldwide. Already, Nourishing the Planet has highlighted the many ways that growing indigenous vegetables for local markets and improving storage techniques can help to both reduce food waste and improve access to food, in Kenya and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa.
Thank you for reading! If you enjoy our diary every day we invite you to get involved: 1. Comment on our daily posts-we check comments everyday and look forward to a regular ongoing discussion with you. 2. Receive weekly updates-Sign up for our "Nourishing the Planet" weekly newsletter at the blog by clicking here and receive regular blog and travel updates.
Switzerland's landslide vote to ban Muslim minarets surprised many pundits and commentators, more familiar with the nation's image as a bastion of tolerance and European enlightenment.
These results, in fact, are not so surprising. They derive from the peculiar structure of Swiss democracy, which effectively creates a voter base less diverse than the general public. These voters are generally predisposed to support such initiatives as the minaret vote.
I am specifically talking about Swiss citizenship. Becoming a Swiss citizen implies that one has become part of the Swiss people, and the Swiss have a very strict definitions of what this means. Since - of course - only citizens may vote, this strictness directly impacts the Swiss electorate.
On Friday, Rachel did a segment on China's aggressive development of high speed rail in the next few years. It's really amazing how much rail they're going to have built within the next two years, 42 lines including connections between China's most important cities:
The US, in contrast, will have one line built in four years, connecting Tampa and Orlando. Tampa and Orlando? That's not so much a high-speed rail line, more an overgrown Disney ride.
Here's the clip:
This short clip made me think of three things:
(1) At the same time that China was spending massively to build this new high-speed rail network, ($185 billion Rachel said, in the last two years), the GOP was screaming bloody murder over the idea of spending anything on high-speed rail in the stimulus bill.
(2) Even if Obama had been absolutely serious about spending our way out of the recession, and laying a green infrastructure foundation for our future, there is no way the US could have marshaled anything close to that level of construction in such a short period of time. The America that build the Interstate highway system is gone, baby, gone. Boxed up and shipped overseas in pieces starting with the Carter/Reagan double-dip recession, which we responded to by ignoring deindustrialization, cutting taxes, and investing heavily in military spending to compete with the USSR, based on the first grand neo-con con: the infamous "Team B" report that said the CIA was all wet when it accurately reported that the Soviet Union was struggling to keep up with us...and failing.
(3) The country that builds the most advanced transportation system is de facto the most advanced country on the planet. It used to be the US. We sensed this when Europe built the Concord and the Airbus. We're totally oblivious now that China is going apeshit with high-speed rail. Forget the time decades in the future when China's GDP equals ours. China is the most advanced country on the planet now. We're number 2. Get used to it. And don't forget to thank the Republicans in particular, because it's their beloved free market that tells us we don't need high-speed rail, and the market is never wrong. Piratize NASA! Yeah!
But, of course, even with all that advanced transportation, who wants to live in a Chinese-style security state? Well, all of Versailles, apparently, but in America, who wants to live in a Chinese-style security state? Which brings us to a Democracy Now! segment on Europe, talking with Steven Hill, author of "Europe's Promise: Why the European Way Is the Best Hope for an Insecure Age". (Europe has high-speed rail, too, you know.) They begin by noting the economic crisis happening in Greece, then pivot away from the expected story line, from one of impending doom to one of greater resiliency:
Whenever I write about U.S. politics, people ask me "Don't you have any good news?" (Unless the Republicans are in power, in which case people ask me "Who are you going to vote for?") But I do have good news, boatloads of good news, if Americans want to hear it.
If a city or state next to yours were to achieve a dramatic breakthrough for democratic representation, environmental sustainability, healthcare, education, peace, or justice, wouldn't that be good news? Wouldn't you trumpet that news where you live and demand the same of your elected officials?
I have a Thanksgiving story for your consumption that has nothing to do with turkeys or pumpkin pie or crazy uncles.
Instead, in an effort to remind you what this holiday can really stand for, we'll meet some people who are thankful today for simply being free.
It's a short story today, but an especially touching one, so follow along and we'll take a little hop across the Atlantic for a trip you should not miss.
This blog was written by Robert Blair at Huffington Post. We received permission from Mr. Blair to cross-post it here. We ask that, if you have a Huffington Post account, you leave any comments there.
As the G-20 meeting of the world's 20 biggest economies approaches, the right is cultivating a strategic relationship with the "reformed socialists" of Western Europe. President Obama continues to press our European allies to commit to more stimulus spending, even appealing directly to the public in an op-ed in the International Herald Tribune earlier this week. But Europe, like good classical liberals, won't budge. President Sarkozy of France put it simply: "We do not want to spend more money."
So the Wall Street Journal, stopping just short of apologizing for "freedom fries", basks in the irony that "in our newly upside-down world, it's the French who are warning Americans about runaway spending and false Keynesian stimulus hopes." Truly, a brave new world. Loyalists at National Review's The Corner are horrified that a State Department official would rebuff the British claim to a "special relationship" with the United States.
In Serbian elections today, the center-right Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS for short), which had allied itself with the pro-Russia, right-wing nationalist Serbian Radical Party, was defeated by the pro-Europe, center-left, Democratic Party (Serbia) (DS for short). This is a major upset, as the Radicals have been gaining power as a result of the Kosovo Independent movement and its Western Support. With the DS now in power, relations should improve, but the conflict is not over yet, as the head of the DS still refuses to recognize the independence of Kosovo. While this isn't being widely covered, it is actually quite important, geopolitically.
Italy's new parliament met for the first time today with applause for Rome's mayor-elect, Gianni Alemanno, a day after followers celebrated his triumph with straight-arm salutes and fascist-era chants.
Alemanno, a former neo-fascist youth leader, took 54% of the vote in a run-off on Sunday and Monday, crushing his rival, Francesco Rutelli, a deputy prime minister in the last, centre-left government.
Silvio Berlusconi, who won a general election earlier this month, welcomed the latest evidence of Italy's leap to the right by declaring: "We are the new Falange". Although he took care to wrap his remark in a classical context, his choice of words appeared to be a nod and a wink to his most extreme supporters.
The original Falange - the word means "phalanx" - was the Spanish fascist party, founded in the 1930s, which supplied Francisco Franco's dictatorship with its ideological underpinning.
The worst days of history are not necessarily behind us, and Western democracies are not necessarily tolerant.
"I don't know what the left wants [but] we are ready," he told reporters. "If they want conflicts, I have 300,000 men always on hand."
On Monday night, the area around Rome's city hall rang to chants of "Duce! Duce!", the term adopted by Italy's dictator, Benito Mussolini, equivalent to the German "Führer". Supporters of the new mayor gave the fascist Roman straight-arm salutes.
STATE BLOGS
As Iceland's erupting volcano strands thousands of air travelers across Europe and worldwide, a less publicized but arguably more costly catastrophe is mounting 15,000 miles away: piles of 
