Islamic banking - the future?

The fastest growing banking sector in the world, operates in 70 countries and will soon have a $1trillion of assets.

Islamic banking acts in accordance to the islamic principles and is completely different to western banking. Islam prohibits riba, interest earned by moneylenders and denounces gharar which is any type of speculation. Money is supposed to be an instrument of productivity (not a commodity in itself to create more money). Gambling is banned so hedge funds and private equities and all those derivatives are frowned upon. Instead the money needs to be linked to real investments. Additionally, investors are supposed to share the risk of the lender - effectively making them a partnership - in contradiction to western banking which is risk averse meaning it diversifies or transfers the risk.

Alhamdul'llah... It also incorporates other principles such as helping the poor, (quite the opposite approach to here) and funding the pilgrimage to mecca.

Supposedly, it challenges rogue economics because it doesnt fund gambling, drugs and alcohol (the devil is in the bottle, as the koran says) or - I guess you could argue the ultimate by-product of western capatalism- porn and prostitution.

I know that the bank of Oman offers a monthly raffle instead of interest. You can win a phat four wheel drive! But the best thing, in my opinion, is that islamic banking avoids speculation which is already starting to affect food prices in a big way. It also avoids trading in debt which led to the big subprime melt-down last summer. Lastly, without interest there would be no student loan with compound interest and, much more importantly, no third world debt (poor countries are paying off more interest than the loan itself).

Insha'allah, we'll see how altruistic the principles stay, after all they are dealing with money.

Staying clean

or How to wash without buying lots of chemicals

In india, we washed the dishes with wood ash, for some time. It works quite well and historically, people used ash as a lye when making soap. Taking a half burnt log is a good way of cleaning the BBQ. Ash isnt reconmended to wash hands because it leaves the skin quite dry.

Another cool thing is reetha soap nuts. They are nuts from a tree (only grown in hot countries) and when soaked in water they release a soapy sap. Proven to be as effective as normal detergents, with the advantage that they are inexpensive, reusable and environmentally friendly (and suitable for people with senstive skin). You can throw them in the washing machine, dishwasher or bath tub. You wont find them in the shops so you will have to order online (someone usually sells them on ebay but make sure they are the shells only - nuts removed)

Alternatively, make your own ghanan soap with coconut oil:

www.modernghana.com/lifestyle/333/16/soap-making.html

eco-ghettos!

aparantly classical economics states that the answer to almost anything was to allow the forces of supply and demand do their job. And now that oil is so expensive, people are starting to realise that "eco-living" (whatever its called) is actually worthwhile and cleaner and a higher standard of living anyway. In this case, who cares if people are doing the right thing for the wrong reason!

Finally, America's "first fossil-free" neighbourhood is being built in Colorado. It looks good. But if its in the middle of nowhere - people still need to drive cars to buy food or go to Blockbuster's.

There's one in Stockholm (above) which is slap-bang in the centre. It seems to be well-kitted out with transport and energy. This is how the whole eco-system works: http://www.hammarbysjostad.se/inenglish/pdf/Hammarby_model_%20lowres_eng.pdf

I like the one in Freiburg and I hope to visit it. Its been around for years. 50% of the population dont have a car. After all, they need to pay 18,000 euros per year to park it! Sums it all up, doesnt it!

We feed the world

Good documentary from Austria: We feed the world. Some points:
- Each day vienna throws away enough bread to feed the second largest city, graz.
- Within Europe, tomatoes are driven 3000km from the south of spain. Transport only constitutes 1% of the cost (...so why are higher food prices being blamed on the rise of oil?????) Also these subsidized tomatoes end up in West Africa for 1/3 of the price of local produce. The farmers cannot compete and emigrate to EU cities for work.
- In the Amazon, an area larger than france has been cleared to grow, among other things, soyabeens to feed chickens in Europe, usa and Japan. 25% of Brazils population suffers from mal-nutrition.

So how comes it that 100,000 people die every day of starvation and at the same time heart disease is the biggest killer in the western world. "Heart disease" is high colestrol - which arrises from eating too much meat.

A view of Almeria, Spain, from space - 1975 and today. 25,ooo hectares of greenhouses where tomatoes are grown in artificial soil.

unsustainable "sustainable houses"

Its good to see that sustainable houses can be stylish and dont have to be ramshackle hovels made of coke-cans and old tires like those by garbage warrior (which is also cool, I think). Homlifestyle.com make some nice pads - advertised as green, eco and sustainable etc etc, prefabricated and delivered by bio-fuel trucks, of course. Good website.
I am bit skeptical though. Obviosuly capatalising on the current green trends. Its advertised as a second home for guilt-ridden city-dwelleres - so is it "sustainable" if you're not supposed to live in it? It probably helps the buyers justify building their holiday home in the first place.

The garbage warrior however, shows us that if you want to live sustainably, you can't! Government, pressurised by the big utilities lobbies, dont want that. The companies need income for the shareholders - as we all found out with British gas about a week ago. If you build houses "off-grid" you will get sued.

The garbage warrior (a proper architect) builds houses from discarded materials and the utility bills cost a couple dollars a month. Why not! The houses look kinda funky if you like that style. I think its cool. Much cooler than a white-trash trailer made of sustainable oak for the nouveau-riche.


garbage warrior's "earthship":

Rice

Some people were relatively shocked when they heard that Haitians had to eat "mud-cakes" (what a euphamism!) but nobody bothered asking why. Its very simple and unsurprising: debts and dependency.

Al Jazeera's Inside USA: Twenty years ago, Haiti produced enough rice to feed its population. Importing rice from other countries like the US was unheard of. Today, the country of less than 10 million people is the third largest importer of US rice in the world – 75 per cent of the rice eaten in Haiti is shipped in from the US.

Great for farmers in places like Arkansas and Missouri but devastating for farmers in the Artibonite valley, which used to be Haiti's rice bowl.

And now that Haiti is utterly dependent on imported food, the entire country is vulnerable to the mood swings of the global market. (often speculation see post below)

So when the price of rice doubled in the last year, the majority of Haitians, who live in bitter poverty, got slammed.



See also:
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43a/223.html

I've been flicking through "The complete book of self sufficiency" by John Seymour. Its a real page turner. Here is the foreword:

"... We can do things for ourselves or we can pay others to do them for us. These are the two 'systems' that support us; we might call them the 'self-reliance system' and the 'organization system'.
In the modern world, during the last hundred years or so, there has been an enormous and historically unique shift: away from self-reliance and towards organization. As a result people are becoming less self-reliant and more dependent than has ever been seen in history. They may claim to be more highly educated than any generation before them; but the fact remains that they cannot really do anything for themselves. They depend utterly on vastly complex organizations, on fantastic machinery, on larger and larger money incomes. What if there is a hold-up, a breakdown, a strike, or unemployment? Does the state provide all that is needed? In some cases, yes; in other cases, no. Many people fall through the meshes of the safety net; and what then? ... "

They suffer because they cannot help themselves. The book goes on to show us how to help ourselves by showing us how to bake bread, brew beer, grow crops for food or energy, build solar panels and water mills, keep livestock, compost, make bricks, smoke bacon, tan leather and so on for 300 pages. You can either live by this book (perfectly feasible) or as a reference to slowly become less dependent on these systems - which I think is a good idea.

Its definintely worth having. So here is a link to the same pdf that I downloaded:

http://rapidshare.com/files/109834236/The.Complete.Book.of.Self.Sufficiency.rar