Today we attended the long-awaited presentation of  a new study – proposal for a new Greek Tourism Development Model, prepared by the greek association of tourism enterprises, SETE, which represents the interests of  large tourism businesses. Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, there was nothing new therein, apart from some truisms and neoliberal recipes for more golf, holiday homes, 5-star hotels and the removal of all ‘bureaucratic’ obstacles that scare (?) investors planning mega-resorts. Although the proposal contains some telling statistics indicating that greek tourism has already reached stagnation – for example excessive hotel construction during 2000-2009 which has resulted in a 400,000 bed surplus with the highest increase 154% in 4 and 5-star hotels --  it fails to interpret these very numbers, arguing for more expansion, and more luxury hotels. But what was particularly annoying and regressive was its critique of small-size (locally-owned) tourism businesses and of  alternative forms of tourism, which it considers as...

opening the new year with two great videos: the award-winning, short film "Pet Shop" by new greek director Michael-Gabriel Zenelis, a subtle comment on the cruel, consumerist, competitive system but also hopeful in a way by showing that the alternatives are in front of us. The second video is one of the best by 'The Love Police' team, who humorously protest against the taking over of the commons by the corporates (using a famous London tourist attraction as an example), the loss of our privacy by security hysteria and what links the two processes. Non quia difficilia sunt non audemus, sed quia non audemus, difficilia sunt. "It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult." - Seneca  

Along with the mainstreaming of worries for Climate Change, there are sinister attempts through a revival of long-discredited malthusianism, to blame it on the many have-nots rather than the few haves, on overpopulation rather than on capitalism, on some of the symptoms rather than the causes. The 8-point platform of 'Deep Ecology', written by Arne Naess and George Sessions,  contains an arbitrary malthusian argument that is very hard to digest: "The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a *substantial decrease* of the human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life *requires* such a decrease." Most of the other 7 points are apolitical truisms ("Eco-La-La" a la Bookchin) talking about..."humans" in general. Arne Naess, the founder of Deep Ecology, was a very affluent dweller of a very affluent country, in fact the younger brother of the famous Norwegian shipping magnate Erling Dekke Naess. Indeed many radical philosophers and leaders (such...

Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Considering that not only diplomacy and international relations, but the modern human (capitalist) civilization itself, is built on lies, small and large, it takes a Hero-madman, the first  Internet Hero (although we could also add the founders of Wikipedia), Julian Assange, to reveal global hypocricy (...in installments). Wikileaks has proven that the Internet is still not controlled by the state, the superpowers and the corporates, and that people power is a match for the military-industrial complex, the war mongers. Each one of us can and should become an Assange, against violence exploitation of all types. And already wikileaks mirrors and offshoots are popping up. The incident has also proven, as if proof was needed, of the limitations and dependencies of the corporate part of the Internet, as providers were quick to shut Wikileaks down under heavy pressure from the system, as did...

Last week I was invited to participate in a UNEP-sponsored ‘International Year of Biodiversity’ conference held in Athens, organized by MedSOS, a leading Greek environmental NGO, a genuine one, focusing on marine and coastal pollution.  The conference was held a few days before a new biodiversity legal framework is brought to parliament, at a time when the financial crisis which brought us the IMF is increasing development pressures for neoliberal recipes such as a controversial “fast-track” plan to facilitate large scale foreign investments and circumvent environmental legislation, local protests and other civilized niceties. The subtitle of the conference could have been: “what happens when EU subsidies, including subsidies for environmental conservation, dry out”? There were representatives from most protected area management bodies, all complaining about lack of state funding,  lack of authority to do something about issues such as illegal hunting and fishing and pollution. In private conversations one could also...

At a time of growing environmental and economic crisis the 'capitalist lunacy' of golf, in the words of Bernard Shaw, is becoming more evident. Ironically, in Cuba, Golf developers, encouraged by recent 'economic liberalisation' announcements are making their own plans... In his regular weekly 'Alo Presidente' TV Show, Hugo Chavez has recently hinted that some of Venezuela's golf courses would be expropriated to be used for other purposes, along with 'good land' that has been abandoned. Stating the obvious, Chavez, who has in the past called golf a 'bourgeois sport' pointed out that it was "an injustice - that someone should have the luxury of having I don't know how many hectares to play golf and drink whiskey and, next door, there's misery and children dying when there are landslides". The comment followed the landslides of October where many people died in shanty towns and is also related to Venezuela's acute...

The Obama administration, may have slightly loosened the travel ban in April 2009 by allowing Cuban-Americans to travel freely to Cuba, but otherwise has made little progress in lifting or at least loosening "El Bloqueo", the 50 year old & cold war trade and travel embargo, imposed by the world's most powerful state against a small island nation. The travel ban already has plenty of holes as it is condemned at the UN each year by all the world's countries (except Israel) and is also increasingly ignored by many US citizens travelling via Canada or Mexico, or, officially under humanitarian or educational cover (a "professional research general license"). Ironically, the travel ban has affected and distorted the Cuban Tourism model, with resorts seen as a last resort after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the abrupt end of soviet aid. (on the contrary the solution in agriculture was ecological with...

A ghost is again floating over Europe, the ghost of racism! From the recent electoral far-right breakthrough (6%) in the former poster child of social democracy, Sweden to blackshirt vigilantism in the Italian South, to Vienna municipal elections, to the endless tragedy of drowned and imprisoned immigrants in the Aegean and other Mediterranean islands right next to blissfully oblivious package tourists. Based on the Greek experience since the early 1990s, when a local community suddenly receives a far greater number of economic immigrants, refugees fleeing imperialist or local wars (and soon climate refugees) that it can immediately absorb in menial jobs, agriculture, construction and industry, its fringe racist & fascist elements, seconded by arch-conservative religious elements and the tabloid press & TV, become vocal and mainstream. Once this happens, right wing parties but also social-democrats try to follow, so as not to lose votes and the whole political discourse moves to...

  UNWTO has issued a press release release today assuming on the one hand - on behalf of Tourism - a 5% responsibility of global carbon emissions and on the other "cautioning" against 'mitigation' measures for air passenger transport 'taken in isolation' so as 'not to harm' developing countries and 'small island developing states' dependent on tourism. Hostage to its powerful membership, as the only UN body with multinationals as voting members, UNWTO fails to evaluate what sort of 'development' path the current capitalist tourism model offers to these states,  any "development" will do...(similar to "tourism creates jobs" or the "we employ locals"). But it seems small island states are also being used as hostages by the powerful airline lobby, so that the oligopoly of airlines and aircraft manufacturers can avoid green taxes in perpetuity. The rest of us can happily pay VAT and subsidise new airports, fuel etc.

A great video showing that research is a lot more fun for both whales and humans when combined with respect and tourism. Not for fine sushi purveyors and other delicacy enthusiasts or for those who would like us swallow that they 'need' to kill whales in order to "research" them. Featuring dwarf minke whales at the Great Barrier Reef off Queensland and Alastair Birtles, a marine biologist in the Tourism Department, who has been studying them for the past 15 years, during their annual migration from/to the Antarctic, when they are in playful mode and hence friendly and curious towards people, doing a bit of human-watching. A limited number of swim with whales operators based in Port Douglas and Cairns, have been licensed by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority  on the understanding that sightings will be reported and form part of a monitoring program with the cooperation of James...