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14 October 2023

This morning I was listening to Dr.Willis, a recognized researcher in nutrition from UNC Chapel Hill I believe. To a question from the People’s Pharmacy: “How will climate change affect our ways of eating?”, he answered, if I am not mistaken (not verbatim): “Eating less meat will make a big difference … for each steak dinner we do not eat, we save a tree in the Amazon.” – Very intriguingly, this is not an answer to the question. Nevertheless, it reveals that, in the mind of Mr Willis, there is no disconnect possible between food and climate. I thought this was very much to my general point.

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A Special Issue of the PBS NewsHour, last night, covering the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, brought some very thoughtful, informative voices to the table. One of the most surprising bits showed that 52% of Americans do not follow Biden in his choice to support Israel unconditionally. If true, this would show a high level of change in American opinion, despite the ever more aggressive language of the right wing crowds. Violence fatigue maybe? In which case this would shed a powerful light on an other information from PBS, this one about Hezbollah, in Lebanon. It says that Hezbollah is not pushing on the war accelerator in defense of Hamas, partly because it is aware of the violence fatigue affecting the Lebanese populations. Isn’t this an interesting way to bring the voice of the people – in this case its passive resistance, its violence fatigue into the political picture? Does this offer a glimmer of hope, however dim? Does it not, in any case, articulate that, without the voice/silence of ‘the people’, no peace is conceivable?

Which government will ultimately survive the denial of its people’s voice? Or is this yet an other of my pollyannic figures of inflated style?

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And the latest: Aussies say NO to a referendum question: Should the aboriginal people be recognized in the constitution? Is this too much or what? Talk about erasing a whole People? Denying them their reality?

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