Sidetracked on Saturday - well worth it!

Saturday was going to be a light training day, but there was a Social Forum/Congress at the university with such big wigs as Robert Fisk and Vandana Shiva among others. I only intended on catching 1 or 2 speakers, but I ended up spending the whole day there bouncing back and forth between workshops, films, and speakers. Some incredible stuff going on in our world, both good and bag.

Good = WTO summit in Seattle 1999, and the combined efforts of environmentalists, anti-globalizationists, and workers unions from the US and around the world to rattle the meetings until they collapsed. There was a very moving film about this (see links below), with more good things than bad, but I had lots of chills from both!

Bad = Palestinian/Isreali conflict. I’d only recently become aware of some ‘details’ of what is actually happening in this area, and I’m truly awestruck and saddened that the governments of the world are standing by and letting things get to where they are. This forum really opened my eyes about what we as people can do when we don’t feel our governments aren’t standing up for what we believe. Check out the link below for a simple map of the ‘barrier’ that Isreal is erecting – notice where it actually goes.

Some interesting links:
- This is What Democracy Looks Like - http://www.thisisdemocracy.org/ (from the WTO meetings in Seattle 1999 – really, a chilling movie, in both good and bad ways – but in the end more good than bad)
- We Feed The World - http://www.we-feed-the-world.at/en/index.htm (a file touching on Pioneer, the largest seed ‘operator’ in the world, bigger than Monsanto, but also focusing on more issues involved with our food chain – no, I am not going to become a vegetarian, however I will be looking into making smarter choices that are small changes for me, but if other people do them too it really will make a difference)
- Bullshit - http://www.peaholmquist.com/bullshit/about.htm (about Vandana Shiva - unfortunately they didn’t screen this film for some reason – it was never explained to me, but I’d love to see it!)
- Nederlands Sociaal Forum - http://www.sociaalforum.nl/spz/pub/website/main.php?obj_id=388835667 (the website in English for any additional readings!)
- Security Barrier Map - http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/22f431edb91c6f54852
5678a0051be1d/bb027df1429e73c6852571720054c874!OpenDocument (I had to cut the link in half so it would fit - just copy the whole thing into your browser, it shows the ‘security barrier’ in relation to Palestinian territory – and scary as it was, on the radio today I heard something about Isreal wanting to set it’s border in the eyes of the international community….you guessed it, along the security barrier, which was erected with a 100% promise from the Isreali government that it was never intended to mark out it’s territory)