Is cacao production unsustainable? It seems the problem is the oligopolistic and exploitative price setting architecture for cacao. Pay farmers more, and supply will increase.
One of the alt-chocolate alternatives mentioned here involve palm oil, one of the most environmentally destructive ingredients on the planet.
I don't think beyond meat is an example to follow. It is ultra-processed fake food ruinous of health, and rightly - at least in the UK - now has an aura of ill-health surrounding it. Better to just make yourself a burger with healthy whole foods, like lentils, mushrooms, chickpeas.
I find critiques of palm oil accurate, but it begs the question - what is your preferred source of saturated dietary fat? You can do all sorts of things with vegetable oils from seeds/legumes, but you need saturated triglycerides for high melting point products like chocolate or to maximize the stability of deep-frying.
Maybe we could go back to artificially hydrogenated oils, but actually give a damn about food safety this time and work out an industrial process to separate trans fats?
This is the main reason I don't frequently eat chocolate anymore. Dark chocolate is both the tastiest and lowest-sugar chocolate, but its cacao-intensity increases your intake of metals.
If I recall correctly, however, the origin of the cacao makes some difference. Cacao from West Africa and Asia has a lot less lead and cadmium than from South America. Still, I think little chocolate, wherever it's from, is metal-free.
Related: I completely avoid any broth or stock made from chicken bones because it has way too much lead for me.
I claim to be able to feel the effects of the lead in the hours after I eat a meal containing chicken stock. I don't doubt your report about lead in chocolate, but I didn't feel the characteristic signs of my getting too much lead the last time I ate chocolate.
I use the app screenzen. It rations distracting apps and retrains you to use your phone as a functional device again. I now only use my phone for messaging, emails, maps and spotify, but can still access Chrome when I need. A perfect balance.
It's reasoned conjecture on an internet message board. Yes, it is over-stated. But if one treats quality of diet as one variable among many in cognitive capacity, which is the only sane approach, then trying to match the diet of a population to trendlines in society-wide cognitive performance is not going to tell you anything.
I don't think so. The energy market CFD concept strikes me as just another example of the over-financialisation of almost everything. Like the kind of solution you get from 2A gun aficionados when a particularly horrible event crops up (the answer is always more guns). In this case, more financialisation.
As a long-standing Guardian reader, I couldn't disagree more. It might be financially solvent, but the business model of the paper under the leadership of Katherine Viner has shifted to high throughput, low quality content vying for clicks in the attention economy. They have gone all-in on volume.
Compare that to the Financial Times, which has a low throughput of very high quality content, enabled by a discerning and high paying subscriber base. I read the Guardian for the lifestyle / cooking sections these days, but the FT is an incomparably better and more serious publication, whatever your politics (mine are the diametric opposite of the financial class).
Yeah, me too. I'm definitely more on the side of the Guardian politics wise, but the FT is SO MUCH BETTER.
To be fair though, the FT is both really expensive, sells market data for a large price, and has a tier of subscription that can only be bought by organisations (they didn't even show me a price).
The Guardian has been going downhill massively over the last few years. I think the point at which I lost faith in them was when they trumpeted that 50% of carbon emissions were caused by 10 companies (i.e. the oil majors).
They approach environmental reporting like a campaign organisation, it's just not serious. Politically, I will never forgive the Guardian for the mendacious editorial campaign they waged against the Corbyn project. In general, the Guardian leads with cultural issues geared towards the liberal professional managerial class, which only compounds the logic and superficiality of its clickbait business model. It is incredibly hard to learn anything by reading the Guardian. This quote from the nymag piece is telling: “The reason I think that it works for us is we cover so much breaking news and it drives a lot of traffic, and we have the scale to make it work,” Reed said. “Even if we only monetize one percent, it’s still a lot.”
I agree as well: the Grauniad's UK political reporting is often shameful at the way it covers internal Labour Party warring with anonymous "internal party sources" that often toe the center-right line, and what are often briefed pre-speech announcements for centrist Labour up-and-comers that read like press releases. (Let alone how they'll breathlessly report anything remotely related to "gender confusion" regardless or not of its actual impact.) Sure, the "quality" UK press is often in hock with one party or another, but it still rankles.
Betsy Reed runs the American side with a lot more quality and a lot less political baggage, which is to her credit. I do think that her tenure at The Intercept, and and in particular The Intercept's inadvertent leak of Reality Winner's identity the feds, has made her more thoughtful.
Wikipedia is fairly reliable if our standard isn't a platonic ideal of truth but real-world comparators. Reminds me of Kant's famous line. "From the crooked timber of humankind, nothing entirely straight can be made".
Bizarre confabulation: the text you quote says nothing of the sort. They say the made one site, not to be confused with other, similar sites, and that the idea originates with someone else's tweet. Why jump to negative conclusions when they are sharing their project for the first time?
Less a scandal than the predictable outcome of a massive wartime trade account deficit, and faltering state revenues, that have to be made up via the sale of Ukrainian assets in the capital account paying out to the state? I am a socialist, but Ukraine is in a war of survival under extreme economic duress, and could lose US backing under Trump. It has to do whatever is necessary at this point. Not surprising it would favour the UK given that it's one of its leading geopolitical backers and the City of London. Happy to be told otherwise if anyone knows more about the Ukrainian economy and any alternative lifelines open to it.
And support some sort of Dick Cheney move on Ukranian communal assets?
Don't you think selling out the country will deplete moral? Eaten by Russia from the east, eaten by US/UK from the west? Crushed between super powers. What a gruesome fate, but "whatever is necessary" I guess.
Ukraine's capital account has to offset its trade account or its currency tanks, and the state is in desperate for revenue, so however regrettable, this looks more like predictable economic arithmetic working itself out than a conspiracy. I don't 'support' it, that's not the point, but the global trade architecture is a brute fact of the conjuncture which give states in Ukraine's extreme situation few options. Again, happy to be told otherwise by anyone with more knowledge of the Ukrainian economy.
I should say, Mark Curtis is a well-known conspiracy-adjacent figure in the UK. His piece cherry picks and distorts the primary sources. He makes mundane civil service work sound far more sinister than it is. Go on the UK project website and read for yourself.
Curtis' version:
"It notes: “Ironically, despite the horrific circumstances in which interventions are being delivered, the operating context has provided a unique opportunity to really demonstrate to the GoU [government of Ukraine] and the Ukrainian population the importance and effectiveness of targeted technical assistance interventions designed to deliver reforms that generate tangible benefits”.
These reforms are also variously described in the UK project documents as “better integration with Euro-Atlantic markets” and “aligning it [Ukraine] more closely with Western markets”."
Original version:
"Whilst Russia’s invasion has had a fundamental impact, the roots of Ukraine’s weak governance and growth stretch back to independence: systemic corruption via oligarchy and economic concentration; inconsistent application of the rule of law and judicial corruption; weak public administration capacity and state capture, and large-scale state involvement in the economy. These were some of the factors driving the need for continuation of the GGF even prior to the invasion.
What has changed over the past year is that the invasion has led to a profound increase in need, coupled with an unsettling of the previous reform-resistant ‘elite bargain’. As such, opportunities exist for serious reform and a healthier long-term political settlement. Some favourable conditions exist such as a (temporary) decline in the political power of the oligarchs , much greater international support for Ukraine, including increased international support for EU candidacy as both an incentive and a structured process for deep-rooted reforms, greater social cohesion, and a resurgence of civil society and civic activism. Most importantly, public support for the state has grown, and in part as a result of the support of GGF-funded and managed interventions.
Ironically, despite the horrific circumstances in which interventions are being delivered, the operating context has provided a unique opportunity to really demonstrate to the GoU and the Ukrainian population the importance and effectiveness of targeted technical assistance interventions designed to deliver reforms that generate tangible benefits. The GGF has seized such opportunities providing valuable support to some hugely important reforms for example: through the TAPAS project IDPs were able to receive status certificates in days instead of weeks, citizens accessed ID cards, passports, birth certificates and tax payer identification numbers online in 18 regions and half a million people, (55% women) from occupied areas and active warzones were able to register their unemployment status and thus receive GoU support. The IFC project has supported Digital Data Corridors that have enabled thousands of Ukrainian refugees in eight countries across Europe to access their credit history. The IFES project resulted in over 3,000 students in 22 universities actively engaging in civic education. Finally, the IDLO project has supported the Higher Council of Justice (HCJ) to resume its work after a two year hiatus, appointing 8 new members in January 2023.
"
So, Curtis' killer quote actually referred to helping hundreds of thousands of displaced or embattled Ukrainians access their passports and birth certificates so that they could claim state benefits and asylum abroad.
> this looks more like predictable economic arithmetic working itself out than a conspiracy.
Fighting wars for the profit of Brittish bankers is a classic conspiracy, ye.
A firesale of communal property is a bad deal. What is even the market value of a factory or mine that might end up on the other side of the front line? How does the market price in a total write off of the asset?
If a government makes great powers profit from war revaging it, the country is up for a really bad time. One might speculate about the order of events here.
Cutting a deal with the capital is cutting a deal with the devil. It is just a more politically palatable form of surrendering but with the working class still forced into the trenches.
I'm not sure how you interpreted this as a scandal for Ukraine. It's a scandal for the UK. Nobody cares if the Ukraine government is corrupt, it was notoriously referred to before the war as the most corrupt country in Europe.
One of the alt-chocolate alternatives mentioned here involve palm oil, one of the most environmentally destructive ingredients on the planet.
I don't think beyond meat is an example to follow. It is ultra-processed fake food ruinous of health, and rightly - at least in the UK - now has an aura of ill-health surrounding it. Better to just make yourself a burger with healthy whole foods, like lentils, mushrooms, chickpeas.