Officially an Immigrant!

So I am back in Romania and I have my residency permit, I am now officially an immigrant and therefore I will be lazing around doing no work, living off benefits and stealing everybody's jobs. Neo-racism doesn't specify exactly how this is done but no doubt destroying the fine traditions and everything this country stands for will come quite naturally now. 'Immigrant', a word surrounded by dark shadows of twisted meaning, put there by those with a less than generous turn of mind.

But nations are as transient as bubbles on water, they form, join, split, pop and reform, so who is calling who an immigrant anyway? And to say that one bubble is better than another, madness! Its all the same water, its just forming pretty shapes!

Well this is a post of my journey from one bubble to another (bubbles inside bubbles). I apologise now for the quality of some of the photos and the lack of others, I lack the obsession, sorry I mean motivation, that many have towards taking photos. Also in taking photos on a moving coach there were quite a few very interesting pictures to the right of the photo I actually took! (Click on the photos to see large versions)

So, I set off from Birmingham at 9pm on a Tuesday, arriving by coach in London just before midnight. Here was my first challenge, enduring the night in Victoria coach station.

My bags contained many books that I would be needing on the project, solar power and equipment, netbook, and of course clothes, packed so that my two bags would form a reasonably comfortable bed to lie on. I found myself a wall near where others were trying to sleep and made my nest. Not being tired I got out Terry Pratchetts new book from my bag and settled down to read, Pratchett did not disappoint! I needed the toilet though and it was a few hours before they would open them. What a strange phenomenon, being somewhere on my planet where there was likely no legal place for me to perform such a basic bodily function!

At about 1am I was a little surprised to be told to leave the coach station because it was closing for the night, as I had specifically contacted the coach station before to see if it would stay open. I told the man this and was directed to a small room at the other end of the place, there was a toilet near this place too, bliss! So I remade my bed, much to the envy of those practicing contortionism in the metal chairs, and settled down again. Mainly I read, I did try to sleep at times but largely failed, not due to discomfort but mainly I think to the general level of alertness I keep while traveling and possibly to the eternal daytime that seems to exist in places like that.

Daytime came, or rather the buzz increased and the shutters went up (the mechanical sunrise!) and it was time to check in. On the coach I headed straight for the back row and sat roughly in the middle aiming to give out the message that 'yes you can come and sit on the back row, but maybe one of those other empty seats will be just a little bit more convenient for you'! It worked beautifully, aided by the fact that the coach was quite empty anyway. At 8am Wednesday morning we set off, and at 8.30am we returned due to a 'technical error' (half the passengers were missing!).

London, obviously so...
A couple of hours sleep later and the cliffs of Dover...
...where I assume we had missed our boat (and my hoped for hot meal, not of course that I was short for food in my bags), because we then headed down the coast to the channel tunnel. (Other explanations for leaving the ferry port are possible, for instance the driver may have had a phobia of boats, and while he had been psyching himself up for it and thought he could do it panicked at the last moment; or there could have been a giant iceberg floating past, full of thriving polar bears, that the international community of scientists busy conspiring to fake global warming didn't want anyone to see and so diverted all traffic under the sea instead of over it).

Heading down the ramp to get on the train...
A horse on the hill, running away from the trains...
A short nap later and France...
A few sandwiches and an open source story from Cory Doctorow and I am in Belgium...
The last stop in Belgium a father an his two children got on the coach, and their need for three of my five seats was greater than mine so I didn't fight for the space!

Germany passed in darkness, and generally sleep, though there was the odd stop (two euros to use a toilet, well done civilisation!)...
And then dawn, with her fingertips of gray, found us in Austria...
OK, so a point I want to make, for every pretty city center there are a handful of very ugly industrial parks around at best, and at worst vast slums (though not in our bubble at present). In obsessing about beauty and things that are shiny, we create much that is so ugly, and then we hide all the ugly stuff, where it then festers. This I think is true on many levels, physical and otherwise. I don't think it is just within a city that the 'nice' parts necessitate bad parts, the 'developed' world looks and operates how it does by exporting a lot of the ugliness and suffering to the developing world. What is beautiful and ugly seem a bit blurred to me these days however, maybe precisely because of this, for how can a new car or a supermodel be beautiful, when you really see all that is behind them within them? And which is ugly, a fine house with a family in conflict, or a small shack where a community meet as friends? But back to my original point, city centers are a facade, here is Vienna....
With stories, food, music and watching Europe go by I enter Hungary, and success, I am about to arrive without once loosing my coach!
On the journey to Hungary when we stopped on the way you could never be quite sure what language you were meant to speak, not least because with no boarder controls you are never quite sure what country you are in, and the question 'what country is this?' seems up there with 'what year is this?'; not questions I feel inclined to ask even when I need to know! So arriving in Hungary was great, I knew what language I was meant to speak, and even better I could speak at least a few words (I make no claims about having those words understood, but I felt good just being able to say them!).

I left the coach here, caught the subway to the train station (Updated Mark's Subway Ranking 1.Bucharest 2.Paris 3.Hungary 97.London - I don't know what the other 94 subway systems there are ahead of London, but my loathing for London's tubes assures me they must be there), and there after getting my ticket and having a look around I stood resting my back a little before searching for food. My name was called and there appeared one of my hosts from Forest Garden, she was traveling back from Sweden on the same day, a most happy coincidence! So we stashed our bags in left-luggage and went looking for food together. Nearby we found a Chinese restaurant and had a very tasty and long meal chatting away there. It was just what was needed!

When it was time for her train we headed back to the station, she left heading directly to Transylvania, and I settled down to read a bit more Pratchett while waiting for my train to Bucharest. The train I caught was the night train, and so I was in a carriage with six beds. The carriage I was in I was sharing with four friendly Romanians. The train had barely set off before they insisted on sharing their food with me, and wine, and palinca (a spirit made from plums). We only spoke a very very few words in common, and eventually found the best way to communicate was through drawing pictures, which was fun!

It was getting dark at this stage so we made the beds, and I was on one of the top bunks. There I slept soundly, only waking to show passport control my passport as we crossed the boarder into Romania. I woke not long after dawn, who was at that time making her foggy tendrils visible through the forest of the Carpathians. The journey through these mountains was the most beautiful part of the trip...
My traveling companions for the train journey...
A picture of the beast that carried me, finally in Bucharest...

So now I am back with Sophie, here in the capital of Romania, and very nice it is too! Within a week I will be off up into the mountains, to begin the next thing.

:)

Mark

Give a man a fish...

There is a proverb that gets used quite often, especially in relation to charities helping poor countries...

'Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you will feed him for a lifetime'.

Well for a long time I have disliked that quote, for a start it shows arrogance on the part of the would-be teacher, who seems to be assuming that those that are hungry are so because they are not as cleaver as we. Of course that isn't always the case, and often it is valuable to share skills. But, and this may be the cynic in me, I also dislike it because it doesn't seem to match up well with some of my understanding of how things are and it ignores some fundamental issues. My version of the quote would be...

'Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, try and teach him to fish and he will tell you "don't be stupid, I know how to fish, but the fish in the sea have been wiped out due to overfishing by the west, the smaller rivers are drying up due to climate change, and the larger river is polluted because of a factory upstream owned by a western corporation"'

Well today Andy Zaltsman provided me with a new version (on BBC iPlayer currently)...

"Give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day, but lease him a fishing rod and he will feed you cut-price fish for a life time, and that is a competitively priced labour market you have got there! Plus since you own the rod he better fish and fish hard, otherwise you can take his rod away, no rod means no wages and no wages means no imported tinned fish, which is now all he and his family can afford to eat!"

It seems to me that people, globally, often are not poor because of random chance or due to a lack of effort on their own part, rather, that people are poor largely because we have created a world that requires some to be poor so that others can be rich. This does imply a power to be able to create things differently though.

Thanks for reading!
Mark

P.S. Terry Pratchett has a rather humorous adaptation of this quote 'give a man a fire and he is warm for a day, set a man on fire and he is warm for the rest of his life!'

Paying the Torturer

The UN has condemned the British government for playing a part in the torturing of some prisoners (The Independent news article).

If you are living in the UK and pay taxes some of your money funded this.

Happy Valentine's day, or not! (It all depends where you get your gold)

"The production of one gold ring generates on average, 20 tons of mine waste. Gold mining has been linked to violent conflict, has displaced people off their lands and traditional livelihoods, and poisoned waterways with toxic chemicals" (Earthworks article)

But if you are a traditionalist (if indeed gold rings are traditional) all is not lost, because you can get responsibly sourced gold (the above site will probably tell you more)

Anyway, I now know why Mordor in the Lord of The Rings is so dark, why little grows and the inhabitants are angry and twisted - Sauron did not follow The Golden Rules set out by the No Dirty Gold campaign!

I can just imagine Sauron (or the Eye of Sauron) sat at his laptop in the depths of Mordor peering at the No Dirty Gold website reading "As an industry leader, you have a real opportunity to be at the leading edge of the jewelry industry when it comes assuring..."!

Medicine, Money, Malaria and You!

The production and supply of pharmaceutical products is an entirely commercial venture, or in other words, your medicine is supplied by those who have to put profit before social and environmental costs. In the words of the Director of Roche in Korea "We are not in business to save lives, but to make money. Saving lives is not our business."

I have discussed before the problem of pharmaceutical companies manipulating the medical profession in order to make money (see here), but in this post I will address the issue of the provision of health care, of who gets treatment and who doesn't, of who lives and who dies.

In an article in the Independent today it was stated that the weak value of the pound could lead to a shortage of drugs in the UK as imports become less profitable and exports more profitable (see article). Basically, you may not get the medicines you need on time because the money market dictated otherwise. This situation is, however, a very positive one compared to how it is in some other countries or how it could be here in the future.

I first became aware of this problem a few years back, about the time I was becoming interested in studying herbal medicine, when I went to a seminar on using natural medicines in the tropics. The seminar was run by an amazing charity call Anamed (www.anamed.net), whose basic aim is to educate people who may not have access to medicines, such as in parts of Africa, to be able to treat common conditions, such as malaria, effectively with herbs. It was when reading up on the information for this seminar that I found out about the problems concerning the provision of medical treatment and realised how they might apply to Western countries in the future.

In parts of Africa the reasons for the lack of medicines can be many, though mainly it comes down to money. Often drugs are simply not affordable. In some cases where a person can buy the drugs even simple medication may cost a month's wage. In other cases it is the problem of infrastructure that makes drugs inaccessible - health centers are too far away, roads are too poor, deliveries can't get through. So what is done? well, a lot do the only thing that can be done: die. They may die of a serious case of malaria, or they may just die of diarrhoea. So this is where Anamed comes in - teaching simple things like oral rehydration solution for diarrhoea, herbs for malaria (Artemisia annua) and other things.

The question of poverty in Africa is a topic for a different post, but I will look here at how it relates to a specific case, that of malaria. Artemesinin is (in combination with a few other medicines) the leading drug for the treatment of malaria and it is currently extracted from the plant Artemisia annua. It is grown in huge plantations in some African countries, is purchased by pharmaceutical companies at a very low price, it is shipped over to America or a European country, the artemesinin is extracted and then sold back to the African country at a price most people can't afford - so people die. Where the drug is purchased by those rich enough, the money goes back to the pharmaceutical company, meaning the African country gets poorer. The actual herb Artemisia annua can be drunk as a tea to treat malaria and is just as effective as the drug, though taking slightly longer to have its effect.

So anyway, drugs become scarce if a country becomes poor or the infrastructure breaks down, and pharmaceutical corporations follow where the money leads. Who is to say that our country will always stay rich and function smoothly? When you consider the far reaching effects of financial instability (which is likely to increase in the long term) and the looming problems of both the energy crisis and climate change it seems wishful to think that we are immune to these problems. Pharmaceutical companies are no more stable than other industries, such as the automotive industry, or the money grabbing industry. So as things can't or won't stay the same, and as millions are already dying due to the lack of health care, what needs to happen?

Take the money out of medicine

Pharmaceutical corporations should not be allowed to profit from what they do, health should not correlate with your pay packet, essential medicine should be freely available to all whether an individual has money or not. An option may be nationalising the pharmaceutical industry with the development and production of drugs being paid for by the government. This would be easily funded by the savings gained from the NHS not having to buy drugs from pharmaceutical companies and by the profits from the sale of non-essential over-the-counter drugs. Knowledge of how to manufacture the drugs could be freely shared between countries further increasing benefit. Or maybe there is some other scheme that would work, but however it is done it should not be a profit making business. If this was done it would also have the following benefits:

• Doctors would have less bias information on the effectiveness of drugs.
• Research showing harmful effects of drugs would not be hidden.
• More holistic drugs could be researched (pharmaceutical companies don't want people too healthy, it is bad for business).
• Drugs would be freely accessible to all.
• Drug supply would be more stable.
  
• Government money would provide more medicine instead of making a few rich.
• Effective alternative treatments would not be suppressed.
  

Increase the use of natural medicines

• They can be produced where ever in the world you are.
• They are cheap.
  
• They have been shown to be effective (Artemisia annua can effectively treat malaria, with treatment only lasting a couple more days than treatment with Artemisinin).
• People could easily treat themselves for minor complaints, therefore reducing the pressure on the NHS.
  
• They have limited side-effects and are generally more safe.
  
• They can help the local economy when produced and used locally.
• They are much more environmentally sustainable.
  
• Focusing on a more holistic approach to health would mean less people getting ill in the first place.

As always your comments are welcome.

Not One Death

Not One Death

Not one death is acceptable,
Not one civilian casualty.
Not one dead child in a father's arms,
Not one freaked child at a dead mother's side,
Not one man left lying in a street,
Not one emaciated corpse thrown in a hole.
Not sad but unavoidable,
Not acceptable.




.

Doctor good, pharma bad?

I know a fair few medical doctors (including four of my own relatives) and without exception all are very good people and very skilled: they are kind and caring, wish the best for others having dedicated their lives to serving others and have undergone extensive and difficult training. How then did they end up with such jerks as pharmaceutical companies? It is like a beautiful, caring, intelligent woman ending up in a relationship with an ugly, twisted, malicious monster!

I'm sure there are nice people working in pharmaceutical companies - in my more sceptical moments I think they just wondered in by mistake and couldn't find the exit, but I'm sure they are there, fervently trying to design a new drug to save the lives of those around them. BUT THEN THERE IS THIS:

"We are not in business to save lives, but to make money. Saving lives is not our business." (Director of Roche in Korea when challenged about providing AIDS drugs to those who couldn't afford them) (article)

"Disease mongering" - Pharmaceutical companies undertaking marketing to convince healthy people they are sick and to make people think mild diseases are more serious (BMJ article)

Pharmaceutical companies trying to bribe governments into allowing their products to be used - even if the science says they are no good (Guardian article)

Pharmaceutical companies ghost writing research to make it look unbiased (journal article) or forcing researchers not to mention harmful effects of drugs (article).

Adverse drug reactions killing over 100,000 people a year in the US (Lancet article) with serious side effects of drug affecting many many more.

Basically, when doctors get a large amount of their information about drugs from drug reps; when training or research centers can be under the pay of pharmaceutical companies; when research and clinical trials contain, for many different reasons, bias; when all other alternatives are suppressed; when pharmaceutical products can involve hidden (or overt) harms: where does that leave medicine?

On the plus side however, I really believe that if pharmaceutical companies' money making motives were removed, the doctor's art and the amazing advances of biomedicine that have been made would loose their tarnish and medicine would really shine again.

As always, your comments are welcome.

Ok, so here goes - death, destruction and rebirth

OK, so here is an issue that I have to address, but it is not an easy one. Those of you who know me will probably have heard me mention these things before because sometimes it just comes out! Still, they are not issues I like to address because it involves human suffering. Still, no harm in starting it off with a cartoon...!


Ok - so it will get positive towards the end, but first, a journey through hell...

So widespread job loss, devaluation of currency, people losing their homes, people going cold and hungry - bad yes? See, this is where it gets difficult, because from much reading, from listening to talks and having discussions I can't help but think that how ever bad that might be, it is possibly better than the main alternative. (There is a third option, a difficult one, but it is there, difficult, but possible). Let me explain.

Economic downturn is causing many problems, however it has some positives: CO2 emissions are set to drop as industry declines (Article - Slump Means EU Industry Carbon Caps No Longer Bite). It is essential that CO2 emissions drop as we are now reaching the point where climate change spirals out of control (Cartoon - Wake Up, Freak Out - then Get a Grip), however, industry is dragging its feet because making proper (real, effective) changes would in the short term damage profits. Is, therefore, a major recession the only way to make them change? I hope not, because who could? Who could wish mass job losses and mass homelessness - no one!

And yet if real changes aren't made - and we are talking big changes, major lifestyle, social, political changes - the alternative is so much worse. If climate change continues to worsen and ecosystems (including the soil which grows our food) continue to die humans die too. Estimates have been made as to how many people would survive, different estimates have been made, the most generous I have found is 1.7 billion people surviving, the worst is 100-300 million people surviving (Article - The Silence of the Greens). There are currently 6.8 billion people alive on this planet. If serious positive changes aren't made 3 out of every 4 people dead by the most generous estimates, 59 out of every 60 dead by the worst estimates. Of course all these people would not die instantaneously, I'm guessing it would be over the next 50 to 100 year. I can't even begin to imagine what that would be like, those are just numbers to me, but if I imagine what that means in terms of my family and friends - this is not a pleasant subject. This isn't something that will happen in the future, it has already started: global food supplies are very low and the number of malnourished people is just about to cross the 1 billion point (Article - Food Crisis Could Worsen Next Year).

So things are going to change and are going to do so with or without our will with either industry continuing and the environment dieing or industry dieing and the environment and people not dieing as much.

OR

The third option, thankfull a third option: we stop fighting (personally and globally), we stop dragging our feet, we get to know our neighbours and our local community, we create loving supportive relationships, we develop a joy in living that is independent of what we own, we help each other learn and develop, we learn how to live sustainably, we develop new skills to help ourselves do this and we share them, we reassess what we really need and stop using what we don't need, we buy local organic food, we leave jobs that cause environmental damage and create life-sustaining jobs, we use less energy, start living together in communities so as to use less energy as a whole, we stop buying stuff, we stop most driving and flying, and more. Only two things are needed to do this...

We have to want to change
and
realise that it is not a sacrifice but
that there is much joy in it.

Really - imagine what it would be like living surrounded by your best friends every day, living in beautiful surroundings, having stress free and worthwhile jobs, being safe in the knowledge that violence has all but ceased, to know you are doing right, to feel love more, to feel connected - it is ours if we want it!

Thank you for listening and please leave comments, I need both your support and disagreements in this! Mark

A quick note to the inhabitants of earth...

To those running businesses and corporations: agree to serious CO2 reductions and find new ways of continuing your business in a healthy way because, as many of you seem yet to have realised, YOU CAN'T MAKE MONEY IF YOU ARE DEAD AND THE WORLD AROUND YOU IS DEAD, YOU IDIOTS!

To those thinking corporations are to blame and politicians should step in: YOU BUY THIS SHIT THAT CORPORATIONS SPEW OUT, where do you think your iPod comes from; your car; your new laptop; your new speakers; your new clothes; the plane you flew abroad in; your new electric toothbrush; the servers that support all your online avatars; your new accessories; all that meat you are eating; your processed food and its packaging; that new clock that looks oh-so-good in your newly decorated kitchen; your new carpets and furniture; your updated appliances, because wouldn't life be easier if your iron heated up quicker and the kettle kept itself warm; your new mobile with new bouncing tv around the globe technology; the technology, factories and transport systems that support all the above. WAKE UP AND STOP KIDDING YOURSELF THAT BECAUSE YOU RECYCLE, HAVE BROUGHT AN ORGANIC TOP AND RESISTED HAVING TWO NEW PHONES A YEAR INSTEAD OF ONE THAT YOU ARE DOING YOUR BIT!

Ok, ok, so I am wrong to shout, it is most understandable that the majority of people have gone down this route, it was seen as the way to progress, the way to happiness, the way to health, the way to respect from your peers. I know me shouting is likely to polarise the alternate views even further, that views become more entrenched with people defensively protecting their views and ways of being, so I apologise and I ask you to recognised it is because of the frustration I feel and the threat I perceive to what I hold dear that arouses my anger.

Thank you for listening and I welcome your comments

Mark