This Saturday is the annual Sea Fest extravaganza on the Ham (and later on throughout town) and we will be right in the middle of it with a beach clean at 10am until 12. Please come along and join in, or if you can’t please share the attached flyer far and wide. As usual equipment is provided but do bring your own if you have it.
We have been given a load of litter pickers from EDDC for our Adopt A Spot scheme ( http://sidmouthplasticwarriors.org/adopt-a-spot/ ). If you are already an 'adopter', please let me know if you want one of the pickers, and if you want to sign up to be one then email me on info@sidmouthplasticwarriors.org and let me know where you are adopting, and again if you want a litter picker. I am compiling a list and then will get them all out to those who need them asap.
Lastly, what a busy few weeks it has been! Thank you to anyone who voted for me in the elections that resulted in me now being an East Devon District Councillor and Sidmouth Town Councillor! I felt the time was right for change and was proved right. We had our first informal town council meeting last night, to meet each other and get up to speed with how everything works, and it really feels like we can make some positive changes around the town – with a green agenda at the heart of it (if I have anything to do with it!) However, this has raised a bit of an issue… I want to grab this opportunity with both hands to make sure the environmental issues we all care about are really heard, in order to reflect in policy how we all feel. I hope that I can make a huge difference but I have to pour all my energy into it for a bit while I deal with the enormously steep learning curve I face.
This means I will be very busy. And I don't want to step down in any way from the warriors but I NEED HELP. This doesn't come easy to me as I am a natural control freak but was wondering how to delegate some areas. I know that a lot of you, if not all, are busy too of course but I think it may be time to get a proper committee system going, with groups for beach cleans, fund raising, plastic free status maybe, with someone in charge of each one and getting various people on each sub committee... and so I am hoping that some people will come forward who can give us some time and experience to take the Warriors to the next level. We could do with a meeting to take this further so please email info@sidmouth-plasticwarriors.org if you are able to potentially join in. It seems like a good time to do this anyway, as the ‘Plastic Free Sidmouth’ bit seems to have stalled (mainly due to me just not having time!) so we can push that forward and start to make inroads again. Don't worry if you think you're going to get loads put on you that you don’t have time for - I've managed fine up to now just doing these things myself but if we can push for more, grow, make it more a team effort, I think we will see a huge benefit.
Oh and I still want to be on the beach clean committee! :-)
There's a lot of push to get some sort of national 'rural strategy' together: Futures Forum: Calling on the government to produce a Rural Strategy This is from this week's The House - parliament's in-house magazine: Lord Foster: Rural economies are being severely undermined by the apathy of governments
Lord Foster The House Magazine Posted On: 7th May 2019
Rural policy lacks direction and rural priorities are too often side-lined. Ministers must pursue a comprehensive national-level strategy to ensure communities are not left behind, writes Lord Foster
'There is a serious risk that without action, the countryside will fall behind and its economies will be stifled' Many rural areas in England are great places to live and work and make a huge contribution to national wellbeing. Underpinning this is an often-vibrant rural economy, with agriculture still at its heart but now hosting an increasingly diverse range of businesses and industries. Around 17 per cent of the population live in rural areas which contribute 20 per cent of England’s total economic activity and provide the locations for 25 per cent of all registered businesses. So, helping the rural economy thrive is crucial.
It is often imagined that the rural economy is dominated by agriculture. But while farming provides the backbone, the rural economy is as diverse as its urban counterpart – and becoming ever more so, as traditional industries diversify, patterns of employment change and modern sectors grow. Manufacturing accounts for the same proportion of the economy in rural as in urban areas and there is also major rural employment in the service sector.
But the potential of rural economies is being severely undermined by the inattention and apathy of successive governments and a funding regime which disadvantages rural areas. There is a serious risk that without action the countryside will fall behind, and its economies will be stifled, with knock on effects for rural dwellers and the country as a whole. Doing nothing is not an option.
We took evidence from a huge number of rural groups across the country – and visited rural areas ourselves to understand better how their economies function and what action is needed to help ensure their growth and sustainability. Our final report has now been published.
A key message we heard was that Government rural policy lacks direction and that rural priorities are too often side-lined nationally. So, our report calls for a comprehensive national-level rural strategy, to be delivered locally with the full involvement of local communities, councils and businesses, and with a particular focus on the character of each rural place. Community action is particularly important for the success of rural economies and so we recommend measures to help support community ownership of shops and other critical rural amenities, as well as for community-run services and enterprises.
This rural strategy should aim to deliver better outcomes across the spectrum of issues faced by rural economies. We heard in particular that action is needed to improve digital connectivity. The opportunities afforded by 5G rollout and full fibre broadband must not be passed up, and the broadband Universal Service Obligation should be reviewed to ensure rural areas are not left behind. Rural affordable housing is also a key challenge and we heard there was a need for planning reforms to ensure the right homes are provided in the right places with proper sensitivity to their local context, and that sufficient business workspaces are made available.
Our roadside verges are sanctuaries for wildflowers, pollinating insects, reptiles, amphibians and small mammals. They also provide essential green corridors for which these species disperse. Furthermore, for many people wildflowers on our roadside verges provide an essential personal wellbeing and contribute greatly to their feeling of wellbeing.
Since the 1930’s, 97% of the UK’s wildflower meadows have been lost or modified. This loss of habitat has meant our pollinating insects have suffered steep declines and 87 species of wildflower are threatened with extinction.
Appropriate management of our roadside verges is essential. Without careful management, wildflowers on our road verges can be lost through too frequent cutting, or outcompeted by brambles, scrub and vigorous coarse grasses.
Get Involved
Devon County Council is encouraging communities to manage verges for wildlife (where safe to do so and not in conflict with health and safety management of verges), by downloading our free step-by-step guidance document from the bottom of this webpage.
The ‘Life on the Verge in Devon’ document provides practical guidance on what steps are required to manage a road verge for wildlife.
If you are already managing a road verge, then we are always looking for verge management case studies and community champions – so please get in touch if you can help.
Special Verges
A number of important verges within the county have been designated by Devon County Council as Special Verges, due to their exceptional wildlife value or their value to communities. Currently, there are 112 Special Verges located right throughout Devon, each one with its own specific survey and management card.
The location of all of Devon’s special verges can be found at Devon County Council’s environmental viewer, under the Ecology/Geology tab. Please email nature@devon.gov.uk if you would like to help manage a special verge or obtain more information (a survey card and management information is available for each).
Life on the Verge in Devon | Environment Thanks largely to Independent Cllr Claire Wright: Devon County Council launches wildflower verge policy and calls for champions
Devon County Council’s environment team has launched its long-awaited wildflower verge policy, following my work with three pilot verges in my ward of Otter Valley.
I started the pilot in late 2013 working with highways officers and Devon Wildlife Trust, to boost the numbers of insects after it became clear that populations were falling away dramatically.
It was also to offset the recent decision to not cut highways verges (except on junctions and bends) due to government budget cuts.
It has been a legal challenge to put together this guidance, due to highways and health and safety regulations but I’m delighted that the information went live on Devon County Council’s website a few days ago…..
From a practical point of view, it will be necessary to check with officers on the suitability of the road verge for wildflowers, and also to get the mix right.
Additionally, people need to do a short online health and safety training exercise.
It’s wonderful news and I know that many town and parish councils will want to get stuck into wildflowering their communities and so attracting the abundance of insects back to Devon that we’re so desperately lacking and we so desperately need.
Officers are also, as part of the project, calling for champions to help support the work of rewildflowering Devon. See the link below for more details!
Life on Grand Designs street where 10 families have built their own homes in £100k plot on ex-MoD land in UK first
The pioneering community spent between £60,000-£500,000 on their charismatic builds in a UK first
By Hana Carter 4th April 2019
NESTLED among trees and Oxfordshire greenery is a cluster of very unique homes, all built from scratch by a tiny community of creative self-builders. After a plot of ex-MoD land was put up for sale, ten families bought their own slice of the 188-acres for £100,000 to design their very own stunning build. Every single home is completely different on the brand new street with each one made from different materials and seemingly inspired by various eras and tastes.
The little community near Bicester Village, Oxfordshire will be Britain's largest self-build project, all starting and finishing at the same time. With each patch being sold by Cherwell District Council and they invited buyers to be as ambitious as they pleased when it came to deciding on how they were going to build their dream home. And they did just that, in fact, the residents of Graven Hill were so innovative that Channel 4's Grand Designs will be featuring them on tonight's episode.
Kevin McCloud, who visited a self-built town in Amsterdam in 2010 had been looking for a British counterpart ever since, so was elated when he discovered the commuter town adjacent to the A41. He said that constructing your own house means "you get a highly bespoke home that's suited to your needs and reflects who you are."
The homeowners on the street vary from age 24 to 72 and each spent between £60,000-£500,000 to build their stunning properties.
Lynn, 65, who originally lived in an 18th-century cottage in Northamptonshire, said she decided to apply for the scheme with her neighbours, Terry and Olwen. All three of them got their homes accepted and retired school teacher Lynn got to work on her clay tiled house. Her property is made from Siberian larch with an oast house-inspired roundel. Light spills into the rooms which are spacious and bright.
She told The Daily Telegraph: "Every day, I come down and can't stop smiling that this is where I live. I've wanted to build a forever home before someone puts me in one."
With rolling fields, nature all around and a safe community, what better place to bring up a child and for Blanka and Paul that couldn't be more true. They live in their eco home with their two kids, which worked out to be the cheapest on the street.
Prior to the build, they were renting a cottage nearby. If they were to buy something similar it would have cost them £700,000 - something the couple didn't want to part with. So they whimsically decided to build one themselves with a budget of just £60,000.
Paul, a human rights lawyer, said: "I just thought, 'how hard can it be to build a house?'"
Their home is built using Hempcrete, a biocomposite made from hemp hurds and lime - an environmentally friendly and cheap material. The couple ended up spending £300,000 on their home after admitting that they had massively under-budgeted. But their home was completed after Paul took a few courses and watched a load of YouTube tutorials.
In the next decade the spot of land is expected to house up to 1,900 homes which will all be variations on a short list of home blueprints.
Graven Hill managing director Karen Curtin said: "The opportunity to showcase the first 10 self-builders at Graven Hill on the national stage is a milestone not only for the development and its community but also for the future of UK house building. The series will give viewers an insight into a bold and unique type of housing project, which has the potential to revolutionise the way that people approach both choosing – or building – a new home, and the environmental challenges the UK currently faces."
It will also have a new primary school, village centre, supermarket, village green, pub and maybe even a gym. All the residents at Graven Hill are friends and have a tight-knit community and for Paul, his advice to those wanting to turn their hand to building is - "just go for it."
Grand Designs: The Street will air tonight at 9pm.
The Lords Rural Economy report, published on Saturday, was covered in a range of publications, including: ITV, ISP Review, Christian Today and Farming UK.
The report echoes RSN’s call for a comprehensive rural strategy, as argued for by chief executive Graham Biggs in an article published in The MJ today.
It recommends that the Government rethinks and reforms the rural proofing process to ensure that relevant policies and legislation are attuned to the needs of rural communities and rural economies.
Lord Foster of Bath, chair of the Committee, commented:
‘Rural communities and the economies in them have been ignored and underrated for too long. We must act now to reverse this trend, but we can no longer allow the clear inequalities between the urban and rural to continue unchecked. A rural strategy would address challenges and realise potential in struggling and under-performing areas, and allow vibrant and thriving areas to develop further. Doing nothing is not an option.’
We call on Government to produce a Rural Strategy to set out their priorities for Englands Rural Communities and the Rural Economy for the future and we ask you to support this call.
And by that logic, I guess it doesn’t need attention because it doesn’t affect the majority? Some people, and some areas, are disadvantaged, they don’t have facilities that people need.
Felicity Humphrey 07:00 April 16, 2019 But don’t fear, you can just move into an area that has facilities, like an over-crowded city.
But hang on, those areas are already quite full aren’t they?
Slowly pushing more people into them just doesn’t seem like a good idea.
Housing is already tight, traffic is definitely an issue and jobs are so competitive. Surely keeping towns and cities the only serviced areas will only add to over populated, stressed, congested areas, seeing more traffic, more pollution, more congestion, out of reach house prices (London) more tiny flats, more HMOS, overcrowded schools, overcrowded hospitals…
*Takes a breath*
…whilst rural areas, that are underserviced are left to become beautiful ‘chocolate boxes’, with only the Bountys left.
They’re inhabited by retirees, seasonal visitors and even more seasonal ‘hospitality’ workers. It’s ludicrous because we’re crying out for more space – but who wants to live somewhere you can’t even get a last-minute toilet roll.
I’m not sure at all that it makes sense to force a huge population into just a few, overcrowded, urban areas.
Have you been on the tube at rush hour? Can you imagine if all aspects of life were that bad? If all the aisles in Tescos were like the tube and you had to squeeze and apologise your way through an obstacle course of bodies to get to the freezers, finally finding that they’re out of Aunt Bessie’s anyway?
Maybe I’m being dramatic, but maybe I’m not.
Right now only 17% of the population live in rural areas.
If we don’t have something in place to make sure those areas don’t get forgotten about, it’s pretty obvious that it’s going to get worse, for both urban and rural people.
So how can we avoid this dystopian Armageddon?
Well, impassioned internet crowd, I’m glad you asked. We need a rural strategy.
We need one that all local and central government have a solid commitment to.
We need a rural strategy that places rural people at its centre, because they matter. And if we look after our rural areas, maybe some of the pressure on urban areas will ease as well.
Maybe if people can get education, jobs and houses in rural areas, they might want to live there, and we won’t all end up in living in London in Tokyo-style ‘mini-pods’.
The Government must articulate a high-level rural policy objective and it needs to be implemented across all of Whitehall, because nobody should be unreasonably disadvantaged by where they live.
It’s not good for rural people, and it’s not good for urban people.
SIDMOUTH TOWN COUNCIL Minutes of the Meeting of Sidmouth Town Council
held at the Council Chamber, Woolcombe House, Sidmouth,
on Monday 8 April 2019 at 6.30pm Neighbourhood Plan Community Actions Members were asked to consider the discussions and recommendations from an
informal joint meeting of the Council and Sid Valley Neighbourhood Plan Steering
Group regarding the Neighbourhood Plan Community Actions. RESOLVED: that 1. following Local Government Elections in May 2019, the Council sets up a
Community Action Coordination Group, to help facilitate the implementation of
Neighbourhood Plan Community Actions; 2. the steering group to consist of Councillors alongside a number of volunteers (in
a similar model to the NHP Steering Group) and report progress to full Council
quarterly; 3. the Council’s Committees and Working Groups champion relevant Community
Actions as appropriate.
Qamishli, Syria—As the de facto chief negotiator of the liberated region called the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, Ilham Ahmed, the Kurdish co-chair of the Syrian Democratic Council, has much on her mind. In recent months, she has traveled in the US and Europe, negotiating the future of a domain that is home to an estimated 5 to 6 million people, including a substantial portion of Syria’s 6.2 million internally displaced persons, and, now in addition, thousands of families implicated in Islamic State terrorism who are today living in refugee camps. As Ahmed continues delicate talks with the world’s superpowers over the status of this territory, its future is, to a certain degree, in her hands.
With determination in her eyes and a furrowed brow, her face bears witness to this formidable responsibility. But riding in her black armored utility vehicle through plains lush with green spring grasses and grazing sheep, south toward Deir al-Zour province for the official announcement last month of the defeat of ISIS’ so-called caliphate, Ahmed allowed herself a moment to muse about a lesson from history. In the year 612 BCE, she told me, the Guti, ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia whom Kurds sometimes identify as forebears, banded together with the Medes and other tribes to throw off their oppressor, the Assyrian King Zuhak.
“All agreed to light the torch of freedom on that day, March 21, the same day we declared the end of battle [against ISIS],” she said, recounting the legend of Nowroz, the Kurdish new year—a celebration of rebirth and renewal that has come to symbolize popular resistance. “At that time, there was a confederation of tribes, in the same way as today there is agreement between Kurds, Arabs, and Syrians over injustice, over oppression,” she went on. “The injustice of ISIS has been defeated by all the groups of this region. We have a confederal agreement. Same circumstances, different dates. Same geography, same results.”
Debbie Bookchin
A crowd of thousands celebrating Nowroz, the Kurdish New Year, in Kobane, Northern Syria, March 21, 2019
Confederation, said Ahmed, is vital to the stability of the Autonomous Administration (commonly known by the acronym NES). The region, which now encompasses one third of Syria and some 30 to 40 percent of its population, is also known more informally as Rojava, from the Kurdish word for West, referring to its location as the western-most part of greater Kurdistan, the ancestral homeland of the Kurds that includes parts of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. This entity dates from the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2012, when the Kurds began to implement what would become a new form of political organization based on self-governing, confederated communities. “The project,” as the Kurds sometimes refer to this region and its government, has pioneered a pluralistic, multi-ethnic political system—unique in the region—in which Arabs, Syriacs, Turkmens, Kurds, and other ethnic groups share all positions of power and govern their communities autonomously while participating in a broader democratic network. They view their model as the only hope for lasting peace and stability, and seek to work with Damascus to achieve recognition for the NES within a federated Syria.
As I traveled through the region, members of minority communities told me that, for the first time in decades, they were truly collaborating instead of being pitted against each other by the divide-and-rule policies of the dynastic Assad regimes. The Rojava project is based on a vision of economic, political, cultural, gender, and educational equality that they hope will transform Syrian society. Women’s rights, ecological awareness, and grassroots democracy are the three main pillars on which their “social contract” rests. Despite these convictions, NES leaders say that they don’t have the resources to stem a resurgence of ISIS without outside help. Unless the Coalition partners that formed to defeat ISIS including the US, Britain, and other leading nations provide the military, financial, and, above all, diplomatic support necessary to ensure political stability, the Islamic State movement will return in the region and from here, will export its terrorism to the West.
“If the political problems of Syria are not solved now, then Daesh will come back stronger than ever before,” said Sherwan Darwish, a spokesman for the Manbij Military Council, using the Arabic term for ISIS. “The future is even more dangerous than right now.” The MMC, as it is known, is the military force that began protecting the Manbij region after its liberation from ISIS in August 2016, when Turkey insisted that the Kurdish forces withdraw from the region. Manbij is one of seven cantons that make up the NES. The other six are Afrin, Jazeera (sometimes given as Cizre), Raqqa, Tabqa, Deir al-Zour, and Euphrates, which includes the border town of Kobane. Among the challenges facing Ahmed and her colleagues is that despite holding this large land mass, the NES has no internationally recognized status, hence her busy diplomacy these past months.
Her mission is set against a complicated geopolitical contest for control and influence over Syria, particularly between the Damascus-based regime of Bashar al-Assad and Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. NES officials have their own list of security concerns that apply to their territory: the establishment of ISIS sleeper cells, the continuing spread of jihadist ideology, economic instability, and the need for a legal process and repatriation for imprisoned foreign fighters for ISIS. On top of that, there are daunting humanitarian challenges: the tens of thousands of internally displaced persons living in refugee camps, vast infrastructure needs, and a program of rehabilitation for Syrians who aided ISIS or adapted to its rule in towns that were occupied by the Islamic State before the Syrian Democratic Forces, the US-backed militia of Kurds, Arabs, and Syriacs, fought to reclaim the region.
Neighboring Iraq has become an object lesson in how territorial reconquest can provide a false sense of security. Since “victory” was declared in December 2017, ISIS sleeper cells have launched hundreds of attacks: assassinations, kidnappings, and bombings—some in towns and districts never held by the group. And already, a sleeper cell killed seven Kurdish soldiers at a Manbij checkpoint just days after the official defeat of ISIS in Syria.
Although they face a similar threat of jihadist terrorism and guerrilla tactics, Rojava’s leaders believe their region could become a model for stability in the Middle East—if they can get outside support. Iraq’s centralized government has implemented anti-terror laws that have undermined the capacity of local communities to deal with lesser infractions and has empowered sectarian militias that have aggravated civilian populations with their heavy-handed counter-terrorism operations. In contrast, in Rojava, such communities are encouraged to resolve local matters themselves, using a model they have found successful in which “women’s houses,” started by the influential women’s organization Kongra Star, sort out domestic, family, and economic disputes in communities across the region. This process, more akin to arbitration, prevents tens of thousands of legal proceedings every year. And officials here say that they aim to reintegrate Syrians who cooperated with ISIS, rather than warehouse them in prisons.
Many of the roots—such as tribal chauvinism, religious fundamentalism, economic inequality—that fed the growth of ISIS in Iraq and parts of Syria outside of the NES region, are largely absent in Rojava, officials argue. But to ensure that those elements don’t surface, Ahmed said, “We need an organized campaign against the cult of ISIS. This will require personnel, financial and material support.” First of all, she said, the Coalition should use its influence in Iraq to end that country’s embargo that has starved the NES region of the equipment it needs to supply industrial needs—mills to process the abundant wheat that farmers grow across Jazeera’s red clay plains, for example, or machinery to refine oil from the region’s wells. From asphalt to medical products, everything is in short supply. Even basic items like desks for schools are hard to come by because of their cost, though education is crucial in ridding people of what leaders here call the “ISIS mentality.”
The US and European countries could also use their diplomatic influence with Turkey to end its military aggression that threatens the region’s sovereignty and security. At the same time, Ahmed said, the NES seeks to remain part of Syria, but wants Damascus to acknowledge its autonomy in a new Constitution. In an effort to appease Turkey, the US maintains that its relationship with the SDF alliance of Kurdish, Arab, and Syrian militias, led by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), has been purely “transactional.” But this five-year collaboration has had huge military significance for Western security interests in the region.
Since the battle of Kobane in 2014, the Kurds have relied on US and Coalition air support to beat back ISIS and stave off other hostile actors. At a cost of 11,000 lives and thousands more wounded, the SDF pushed ISIS first from Kobane, and then from town after town, across northern Syria. It’s time for the Western powers of the Coalition to repay their debt to their SDF allies in the fight against ISIS by recognizing the NES diplomatically.
Fawza Youssef, another senior NES leader, was even more blunt than Ahmed. NATO powers should admit that Turkey “has become a dangerous source of instability in the region by sponsoring terrorism,” she told me, pointing to the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army militias that had recruited fighters from jihadist groups and overran the NES canton of Afrin a year ago. Besides terrorizing the local civilian population with kidnappings, rapes, torture, ransoms, and the bombing of important infrastructure like a water treatment plant, this Turkish-sponsored incursion forced as many as 350,000 people, mostly Kurds, to flee of which 170,000 are now living in outdoor refugee camps. Turkey’s claim that it was combating the threat of terrorism along its border is vigorously disputed by the NES, which says its forces have never fired a hostile shot in Turkey’s direction and that Turkey has been the aggressor. They have described the district’s resettlement by Free Syrian Army families as forced demographic change, essentially ethnic cleansing, a charge that has been backed by independent groups like the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Meanwhile, it was the SDF that liberated the ISIS “capital” of Raqqa in October 2017, finally cornering the last zealots on the eastern border of Syria in the small town of Baghouz in January this year. The victory in Baghouz last month came after jihadist holdouts and their families—some 10,000 people in all—streamed out of the town over a period of weeks. There were long delays as the SDF tried to manage the process of disarming and imprisoning the fighters, and sending the women and children to the al-Hawl refugee camp, which now holds more than 72,000 people.
The fate of these ISIS fighters and their families is another grave challenge facing the NES. No one can account for exactly how many of the Burka-covered women are citizens of other countries, but Nuri Mahmoud, a YPG spokesman, said the number was high even before the fall of Baghouz. Grabbing a sheet of paper from a drawer in his desk, he pointed to a prior count of 584 foreign jihadist women and 1,248 children in camps, while the tally of foreign fighters in SDF-controlled prisons was already 795, from forty-six different countries. Those numbers don’t include an estimated 20,000 Iraqis who had joined the Islamic State and are now being interned in NES, or the thousands of ISIS holdouts, mostly foreign fighters, who emerged from Baghouz. Given the camp conditions, all these jihadists and their wives, now numbering many thousands, pose a severe security risk—not just locally but for the world, NES officials said, especially in light of Turkey’s threats to invade other parts of the NES region.
Coalition countries have so far refused to accept the repatriation of their foreign fighters, and NES officials have largely given up pressing them on the issue. Instead, they argue, the fighters should be tried by an international tribunal in Rojava. In that way, the world can bear witness to their crimes and see their extremist ideology exposed. But a judicial process of this order will require resources and funds the NES does not have.
“The mentality of Daesh would get an international audience,” Mahoud said. “Sunni Arabs, who now believe it represents Islam, would see the difference between Daesh and real Sunni Islam.” An international tribunal would also show that the Coalition and its partners had observed international human rights conventions, NES leaders point out, which would give legitimacy to the adjudication and imprisonment of ISIS fighters.
While NES officials were pleased when President Trump walked back his decision to withdraw all US troops from the region, now agreeing to leave a force of about 400, they want to see Washington use its clout to press for a negotiated peace in Syria—one that gives the Kurds and other ethnicities from the NES region a seat at the negotiating table.
“The US always says the decision is up to the Syrians, but we know very well that it’s not like that,” Ahmed said. “So they should have a vision for Syria and they should be transparent about their vision regarding Syria and also the political project being implemented here.” In Rojava, American military might already helped strengthen a society in which “people were taking care of their own affairs,” added Mahmoud. “This is something that never happened in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
A YPG commander named Polat Can, who dropped by Mahmoud’s office at that moment, chimed in: “We have to build a future together. It’s all the world’s job and mission—especially your country’s.”
Debbie Bookchin
Girls playing in the garden of the Museum of Martyrs in Kobane, the town where some 1,400 mainly Kurdish men and women died fighting ISIS in 2014 and 2015, Northern Syria, March 21, 2019
Can you reinvent a food culture? Dan Saladino meets a man who did, Denmark's Claus Meyer, the co-founder of Noma, one of the world's most influential restaurants.
From there he went to Bolivia and set up a restaurant to rescue lost foods of the Andes and Amazon, and onto New York where he founded a cooking school in a neighbourhood with some of the worst levels of food related illness in America.
Claus Meyer, Owner of The Meyers Group: The Nordic Food Revolution
In this wonderful, personal and thought provoking talk the Danish gastronomic entrepreneur Claus Meyer shares his dream about revitalizing local food culture by fostering local agriculture, encouraging environmentally friendly production, and turning consumers into co-producers. Claus Meyer addresses the global challenge on how we can revitalize local foods.
The Foundation’s work is focused on the following areas: to drive social change and to combat poverty through initiatives related to food and hospitality; to use education in food and cooking and culinary craft as instruments to inspire people to pursue careers in hospitality and the culinary arts; and to break picky eating habits of children and, from an early age, strengthen their ability to influence sustainable and healthy food choices. Community – Agern Restaurant And there is a manifesto: The New Nordic Food Manifesto | Nordic cooperation New Nordic Food | New Danish cuisine - Wikipedia Here's a piece from the Telegraph from a couple of years ago:
Meet Noma founder Claus Meyer: the man behind the Nordic food revolution
Claus Meyer represents all that is good about Nordic living. He’s just got off a plane but looks as if he’s been for a walk on some wild beach. He is glowingly healthy, tall and energetic.
A fifty-year-old French man of a similar level of success - Meyer runs an empire that encompasses hotels, restaurants, bakeries, delis and a charitable foundation – would be suave and formal. But Meyer - sporting jeans, All Stars and a crumpled but expensive cotton jacket – bounds into the room with the warmth of a Labrador and smiles broadly.
It’s possible you won’t have heard of him – Rene Redzepi, with whom he set up Noma, the Copenhagen restaurant which has grabbed the top slot on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list more than once – gets much more attention, but Meyer has brought about a revolution in Nordic food of which Noma is only a part.
The reasons for his dedication to improving the food of his country are obvious and painful, though he offers them without self-pity.
“I was a very unhappy child,” he says simply. “My mum and dad fought all the time and we ate food from the microwave. The vegetables were frozen and had been cooked a decade before in Eastern Europe. Everything was cheap, and most of it was dipped in melted margarine. People in Denmark believed it was a sin to put much time into cooking or into exploring the pleasures of eating. It was because of the Puritanism handed down from the past. I would say that ninety percent of the kids growing up in Denmark in the 1970s ate like I did."
This arid culinary landscape was also due, he believes, to the industrialisation of food production. "Denmark developed big cooperatives. These inhibited the kind of diversity you get in Italy and France.
"And in Denmark we gave ourselves the worst food, we had what was left after everything else had been exported. Never in the history of Denmark was there education about food."
His parents separated when he was fourteen. His father, who he says never loved him, left, and his mother became an alcoholic. Meyer went to France to work as an au-pair in his late teens and ended up living with a fourth generation baker and traiteur and his family in Gascony. It changed him for ever.
"In France I tasted food that could have been from another planet. Besides the flavours I saw a different way of life too, a capacity for enjoying the moment. That trip to France was huge for me."
Meyer was very overweight when he arrived in France, but there, as he puts it, he ate his way out of an eating disorder. "The food in France fed me in a different way: it was spiritually nourishing as well as delicious. I wasn’t just trying to fill a hole so I didn’t eat as much. When I went back to Denmark I wanted everyone to experience it."
He started to import French ingredients, foie gras, olive oil and truffles, and became a chef, applying French techniques and recipes to Danish produce. He became a TV star – twenty per cent of the Danish public watched his cooking programmes - but in 2001 he realised he’d got it all wrong.
‘I was down at the harbor in Copenhagen, near the site on which Noma eventually opened, where all the food arrives from the other Nordic countries. I liked the space and the smell. I suddenly thought that change had to come about with our produce, not the produce of France or Italy.’
He was struck by how fellow Danes and film makers Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg had created the Dogme 95 Manifesto, an approach to film making that set Denmark apart, marking it out as different from Hollywood. Meyer realised this philosophy could be applied to food, too: the Nordic countries didn’t have to follow, they could lead.
He finally decided to start a restaurant that would show the potential of the ingredients that were in his own backyard. This restaurant was Noma. Meyer approached Danish chef Rene Redzepi - then a 25-year-old sous chef who had worked at El Bulli in Spain and The French Laundry in California - to head up this new venture.
Working with fourteen chefs he developed the New Nordic Food Manifesto. It urges sustainability, seasonal cooking, the use of more vegetables as well as indigenous and local foods, sound animal welfare and a focus on health. It was a smart move.
"The manifesto was vague," he explains. "That way everyone would get on board and work towards change. And that change had to start with a great restaurant cooking with the food of our landscape. We had to show that beetroot could be as luxurious as truffles, that you can make a vinaigrette with buttermilk. Hundreds of restaurants took something from Noma. They realised they didn’t need to make beurre blanc or Hollandaise sauce, that there were things we could do with indigenous ingredients." There were Nordic culinary traditions – smoking, fermenting, curing – that could be built on and explored.
Meyer has been criticised for his ‘top-down’ approach, but all these years later he has had an effect, and not just in high-end dining. There is much more demand for Nordic produce in Denmark; cooking is now more vegetable-centric and sustainability very much to the fore.
Food lovers flock to eat the ‘new Nordic’ food that’s cooked in restaurants all over Scandinavia (so the tourist boards and politicians are happy) but the reach of Meyer and Redzepi has gone beyond their own back yard. There are Nordic-inspired restaurants with wooden tables, stoneware ceramics, ‘ferments’, minimalist menu speak ("beet, ash, liquorice") everywhere, from Volt in Stockholm to Septime in Paris and Lyle’s in London.
Meyer, putting food and philanthropy together, set up Gustu in Bolivia in 2013, where two Danish chefs are trying to create a kind of Andean Noma, using ingredients that are indigenous to the region while employing and training marginalized youth.
Meyer admits that his connection to Noma – he has now sold most of his share in it – has had disadvantages as well as advantages.
"People confuse the Manifesto with what Rene is doing. Rene has just taken the tenets of it. They think the manifesto laid down laws - like you can’t use tomatoes in a Nordic kitchen - but that wasn’t the case. That was something that they followed at Noma, but that was their decision - Rene’s. He is doing his own thing."
The home kitchen is what Meyer is focusing on right now, which, of course, is the whole point. If you ever wondered what the New Nordic Food Manifesto means when you’re cooking for your family, it’s in The Nordic Kitchen, his book of seasonal Scandinavian dishes. Mussel soup with barley and wild garlic, roast chicken with rhubarb: there’s no cheap bacon or marge here.
In Denmark, where they published a longer version, the book has become a culinary bible. "People use it every day," Meyer says. He smiles with pride. He is restless, a serial entrepreneur, driven, ambitious (he is about to open his first restaurant and a food hall in New York) a wealthy celebrity in a country that values humility so, despite the social programmes, he does get criticised.
But it’s hard to resent the joy he takes in what he’s achieved. No, not everyone in Scandinavia is eating mounds of vegetables they’ve dug up that morning, or fermenting their own Nordic miso. But Meyer knows what he’s done.
"A large number of important people, opinion formers with influence on people’s lives, have come to believe that the values in the New Nordic Cuisine Manifesto aren’t a trend, that they’re now the new normal. Change takes time. But I think we’ve made a good start."
