"Hamas is negotiating with Israel:" this is what Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas confidently said to a BBC -Arabic reporter in an exclusive interview. How does he know? Abbas asserted that there are "no secrets in Israel".

If things could only be this simple in the Middle East, Mr. Abbas would have known from the get-go that the Oslo Accords were a disaster for the Palestinians, Bush's Road Map for Peace was just another road to nowhere, the Annapolis Peace Conference was dead on arrival, and Obama's promises for "change" do not mean squat when it comes to Israel.

The President of the Palestinian Authority added that the presidential and legislative elections scheduled for January will be postponed and that he would not seek a second term as president. Abbas

looked frustrated...he looked like a beaten man.

Meanwhile, the Israeli government in recent days has been scrambling for yet another distraction to offer the beleaguered Palestinian Authority President: an interim accord that would include a Palestinian state with provisional borders. This way he'll have a quasi-state with temporary borders to show for all the endless negotiations. What a brilliant idea!

The reasoning behind this brilliant idea is that it would remove contentious issues that have prevented an agreement in the past, such as the Palestinian refugee issue and Jerusalem, from the negotiating table. No big deal, really!

This is starting to sound like another chapter from One Thousand and One Nights.

In another development, the Israeli government has recently approved the construction of 900 new housing units in Gilo, a Jewish neighborhood built on lands captured by Israel in 1967. The announcement has caused an uproar in the international community and has drawn sharp criticism and "dismay" from the White House.

And yetanother brilliant idea: according to the Jerusalem Post, in an attempt to lure the PA back to the negotiating table, in private discussions, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made clear he was prepared for a moratorium on new settlement construction, as long as it did not include Jerusalem and did not preclude construction of public buildings needed for normal life in the settlements.

Translated, this means construction will continue as usual in E. Jerusalem along with expanding current Israeli settlements.

Meanwhile, with all this happening, media reports have been surfacing that a final deal has been reached for the release of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Some Arab media outlets have been reporting that Shalit might be released as early as the Muslim Eid holiday in exchange for 1000 Palestinian prisoners. Should this happen, it will be a major victory for Hamas and another blow to Abbas.

Last month Hamas handed Israel a video of Shalit in exchange for 20 female Palestinian prisoners; something that was widely seen as a major victory for the organization by many Palestinians.

According to a poll published in Haaretz, 57 per cent of Israelis support the idea of talking with Hamas. The poll was taken in the wake of a statement by former defense minister Shaul Mofaz, who last week unveiled a plan that includes negotiations with Hamas and an interim Palestinian state on 60 percent of the West Bank in a year.

"If Hamas would be elected and would want to negotiate and accept the Quartet's conditions, from that moment, it is no longer Hamas", said Mr. Mofaz. He also added, "Responsible leadership in Israel would sit with those who changed their agenda".

So if Hamas is no longer Hamas, and the Palestinian Authority is no longer an authority, what options do the Palestinians have?

To be continued on another night...

**This article was published on the Huffington Post.

Fair Trade is much more than just an economic formula guaranteeing the farmers more money than conventional coffee sales. One of the most exciting aspects of the movement to me is the impact Fair Trade has on women throughout the developing world. Within Fair Trade cooperatives, gender equity is required. That generally means that women have to be represented on the Board of Directors and on other governing bodies, and of course, they can vote and their votes are equal. I am not naïve, however, and I know that in many of the societies where coffee grows women’s empowerment is still a goal and is resisted subtly and sometimes overtly by the ruling men. At the same time, I have seen powerful indications of change. Five of the fourteen coops we work with around the world are managed by women. And those women use their power not only to improve the lives, social standing and self-esteem of women in their own coops, but each of them reaches out and mentors women in other coops. An awesome model for all of us.

We take voting for granted, and many of us don’t even bother to vote in primaries or in general elections. For women (and men) who have never had the opportunity to participate in decisions that effect and control their economic and political lives, voting is a powerful act. I have seen enormous changes in women over the years as they participate and have their voices heard in their communities and on the world stage. One example, Esperanza Castillo from Pangoa Cooperative in Peru. When we first met in 2003, she was a shy and quiet manager of a small coop (about two hundred families). Over the years, Esperanza has developed into an internationally recognized voice for women and Fair Trade. At one event she got a standing ovation when the next speaker (Hilary Clinton) got warm applause. In Ethiopia, Nekempte has gone from an “office girl” when we first met in 2000, to the number three in command of Oromia Cooperative, which has over 100,000 members! 

The point here is not that all of the problems of women’s empowerment have been solved by Fair Trade. Rather, the movement opens an oasis of opportunity to women in rural societies where there are not that many other institutional openings. That is the true evolution of change beneath the surface of a cup of Fair Trade coffee.

(Read Part 1 of Dean's trip to Kenya)

Later in the week was the launch of a new NGO, Fair Trade Organization of Kenya (FTOK).  Forty farmers representing ten thousand farm families came together for the celebration and a full-day workshop on fair trade and organics, presented by John and I, along with FTOK founder Sophie Mukua and President, Samwel Okwenda.  There were also representatives of Thika Mills (mills are traditionally the last bad guy in the farmer rip-off equation), which is now certified to process fair trade coffees (hmm, we’ll see), and Robert Thuo of the African Wildlife Foundation, which is saving elephants and helping farmers with a grant from USAID and Starbucks (it is great work, but I had to ask, wouldn’t it be betmter if Starbucks simply paid the farmers more for their coffee? Then they could put up their own fences and feed their families directly-what a concept!).

The farmer coops in attendance introduced themselves, and talked about the low price of coffee they receive and the terrible effects of the drought. They talked about how difficult it was to find direct buyers; even though they were allowed to do so by law, they didn’t know how.  John gave a wonderfully detailed description of the organic farming system.  Most of these farmers were raised on government information that was hopelessly out of date and more appropriate for large plantations, not small holdings of two acres or so.  We talked about interplanting and what crops farmers used in different countries to fix nitrogen into the soil, create soil stability and have more food for their families and the local markets.  We described natural pesticides and took a break for me to plant a muthega tree at the coop of Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Matthai.  The tree is used as a natural pesticide and it made a big impression on the farmers.  I spent about two hours describing why they don’t get decent money for their crop, how prices are determined in New York, not in the field, and how to protect themselves from thieves coming into the “second window”. We had to change shillings into dollars, pounds into kilograms, and coffee cherries into green beans (about seven to one in Kenya), which made for a head pounding, exciting translation of information for farmers who had never had access to this before.  After several intense hours of questioning, we called it quits, applauding each other heartily.  Elias Matenge, head of the Thiriku Cooperative came up to me and patted my shoulder forcefully. “This has been revolutionary!” he beamed. “This was the best workshop I have ever attended!” shouted Nelson Mwaniki from Rianjagi. We all walked outside the meeting hall in a good mood.  Then the most unbelievable thing happened.

It started to rain.

(Read Part 1 of Dean's trip to Kenya)

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today called on Israel to halt what he called "provocative" actions after another Palestinian family in East Jerusalem was evicted from their home, the latest in a series of similar incidents.

Jewish settlers have forced their way into a house in east Jerusalem, using hired guards to evict an elderly Palestinian woman and throwing out other residents' belongings. The settlers displayed what they said was a court order granting them ownership of the single-story building. Human rights groups said the takeover was part of a push by Jewish settlers to expand their presence in the traditionally Arab sector.

Shortly after the Six Day War in 1967, Israeli settlers forcefully took over several homes in Hebron and other areas in the West Bank; on many occasions under the watchful eyes of Israeli soldiers. In 1994, Baruch Goldstein, a doctor who had emigrated from the U.S., machine-gunned 29 Palestinians to death as they prayed in Hebron's Ibrahimi Mosque during the holy month of Ramadan. In 2005, I worked on the documentary Occupied Minds and witnessed first hand the plight of a Palestinian family living in fear under the continuous harassment of the zealot settlers who were determined to drive them away from their ancestral home.

This week, Israeli police filed terrorism charges against Jack Teitel, a 37-year-old Florida-born West Bank settler, which include the murders of two Palestinians and attacks wounding three other people over the past 12 years.The first attack of which Teitel is accused was the murder of Samir Billbisi, a Palestinian taxi driver who was found shot dead in his cab in East Jerusalem in June 1997. Two months later, allege the police, Teitel shot dead Isaa Mousa'af Mahamada, 57, a Bedouin shepherd near the Carmel settlement in the south Hebron hills.

Micky Rosenfeld, an Israeli police spokesman, described Teitel as a "Jewish terrorist", adding: "He was deeply involved in terrorism in all different levels." 

Below is a video report which aired on Al Arabiya TV detailing the eviction of Um Nabil, who lost her home to Israeli settlers. In the video one of the settlers sends a message to the entire world, "You know, we are God's chosen people," he says.

Those of you who have read my book, Javatrekker, will remember how I got clobbered in Kenya trying to create fair and transparent trade a few years ago.  There was so much corruption and so little information or options for the farmers that It looked like fair trade and organics would never take root there.  Yet the coffee farmers of Kenya are a tenacious bunch. In spite of a year-long drought, election violence and market disruptions, they have continued to organize and seek help towards bringing more money and resources to their families.  They haven’t quit, so how could I?

I arrived in Embu with John Njoroge, the head of the Kenya Institute of Organic Farming, whom we had funded last year to come to the USA and receive certification as an international organic inspector.  Building organic capacity in Kenya is a key part of our strategy, so that farmers won’t have to rely on European and American inspectors to create and monitor their systems (very expensive and pretty darn colonial!).  The year- long drought in the area meant that every step raised a cloud of dust, and the crops were withered and sickly. I was greeted by the head of the Rianjagi Cooperative, Albert Mwaniki, who told me that he never forgot that I had said “if trade was not fair, then it was immoral”, and he was eager to continue the quest for fairness for the farmers. We immediately began laying out the program for Rianjagi to become the first organic certified coffee cooperative in Kenya, a three-year process that would demand a lot of work on the farmers’ part. We needed to set up an Internal Control System to document and monitor farm practices, set up training programs in water and soil conservation, build demonstration plots for natural pesticides and new practices, file with an international body for recognition and more. KIOF, Dean’s Beans and Rianjagi would sign a Memorandum of Agreement on who would be responsible for what, and most significantly, who would pay for all of this (guess who?). Just beyond the door of the coop office, women and men sang softly while they turned the coffee beans on their raised drying beds, bringing the moisture down to the required 12 percent before hulling, grading and bagging the beans for export. We worked late into the night designing the program, celebrating with a great dinner of everything grown on the farm of Molly Njeru, the Vice Chair of Rianjagi and a dedicated organic farmer.

We also talked about the big change in Kenya.  Before, farmers were forced to sell their coffee to the big processor, KPCU, which was theoretically owned by the coops, but was controlled by the government. At last the law had been changed to allow the farmers to find their own buyers and market their coffee directly. This was known as the “second window”. They thanked me for the small role I played in that change, as my whistle blowing on corruption inside KPCU pushed the changes along, they said. Well, I don’t know about that, but at least one minister and many KPCU board members were dismissed as a result. Some satisfaction for the incredible rip-off we experienced trying to buy Rianjagi coffee before. We also talked about fair trade coming to Kenya.  There were now three registered fair trade coops, although no certified organic ones.  Were the fair trade coops making better money? Nobody knew, and there are still enough Byzantine regulations and channels of commerce outside of the farmers’ control that I don’t think anyone will know for a while.

The next day we celebrated the inauguration of a new computer system that would allow complete transparency and accountability for the farmers. They could go on the computer and see exactly what they brought in, what it sold for, how much was added to their accounts and who the buyers were.  This was funded by Solidaridad, a Netherlands NGO along with Utz Kapeh, a self-certifying system for large European coffee importers. The claim to fame of the Utz system is transparency, but it doesn’t guarantee the farmers any more money. One of the board members commented sardonically that it was a good system, but they can’t eat computer paper.  The new Minister for Cooperative Development was there (the old one got canned after my debacle, although he is now the head of exports! It seems politicians know a lot about sustainability).  I gave a short speech about how impressed I was with the changes since my last visit, and how much more we had to go to insure fair treatment for Kenyan coffee farmers...

Read Part 2 of Dean's Kenya trip.

If someone is caught cheating in the Olympics or another sporting event, the athlete is immediately disqualified, and it is seen as a disgrace. In the case of the recent election in Afghanistan, however, cheating has been rewarded and even praised by no less than the President of the United States himself.

President Obama said that he contacted Hamid Karzai shortly after the Afghan president said he would abide by the results of a presidential election held in August.

"I wanted to congratulate him on accepting the certification of the recent election," Mr. Obama said.

How quickly have we forgotten how many Western leaders hailed the August 20th vote as an example of "democracy," a democracy mired with fraud. And we're not talking here about a few hundred "hanging chads," but rather more than one million ballots (cast on August 20) that were discounted due to the "coefficient of fraud," as the Electoral Complaints Commission refers to it. Mr. Hamid Karzai now says he wants a better and cleaner presidential election run-off in November to bring stability to Afghanistan at a time when Taliban violence is at its worst in eight years of war. The Afghan leader has played down fraud allegations but bowed to international pressure by ordering a run-off as a way to bolster the election's credibility at a time when Washington is weighing whether to send more troops to Afghanistan.

"Now that we are holding the second round in two weeks, I want it to be better than the first round," Karzai said.

Why isn't Mr. Karzai being held responsible for this blatant act of election fraud? And who can guarantee that a repeat of the fraud won't happen? Or that all hell won't break loose during the run-off? Since the August 20 vote, five suicide bombs alone have ripped through the capital Kabul.

Meanwhile, as President Obama ponders sending more troops to Afghanistan, and anxiety and anticipation are building up over the run-off, a recently released UN report says that Afghanistan produces 92% of the world's opium. The equivalent of 3,500 tons leave the country each year, fetching more than $65 billion to fund global terrorism. The Taliban's direct involvement in the opium trade allows them to fund a war machine that is becoming technologically more complex.

The report also says that every year, opium kills five times more people in NATO countries than all the NATO lives lost in eight years of fighting against the Taliban. So here is something to think about: according to the CIA's World FactBook, Afghanistan's entire GDP in 2008 was $22.27 billion. President Obama's decision to send 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan to bolster security earlier this year has failed, and the country is just as unstable as ever. Would 40,000 additional troops help? Perhaps for a short while, but with the Taliban and Afghan warlords earning this kind of money from the opium trade, not only can they buy politicians, but they can also keep this war going for a hundred years. Afghanistan is not the "good" war.

Original article published in the Huffington Post.
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It’s been over a month since the Goldstone Report was published on September 15, 2009. I’ve written about this topic in the Huffington Post, and since then a myriad of reactions and repercussions to the release of the report have occurred. We’ve learned for example that there was a conspiracy by the Palestinian Authority to prevent the report from being submitted to the UN, and that the Israeli government was preparing itself to fight war crimes trials. Just today, an article in Haaretz addressed this very thing:

“The prospect that Israeli officials could face war crimes trials abroad led the political-security cabinet on Tuesday to form a committee to deal with the international legal consequences of the Goldstone Commission's report on the Gaza war. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who promised a lengthy battle to "delegitimize" the findings of the United Nations commission, also instructed government officials to draft proposals for changing international laws of war.”

The coverage of the story has been all over the place – starting in Israel, where the lead investigator Richard Goldstone has been accused of anti-Semitism and of being out to get Israel, even though Mr. Goldstone is a South African Jew. Arab media has been celebrating the report and neglecting to mention that Hamas was also held accountable.

Last Friday, Al Jazeera’s Listening Post aired a report exploring the 575-page hot potato-  causing controversy with the Israeli government, the Palestinian Authority and the global media. I was invited to contribute my two cents…the saga continues.

Here comes my rant: These days it seems we throw the term "throat singing" around a bit loosely. It can get confusing. After all, Mongolian and Tuvan overtone singing (the technique of singing more than one note simultaneously) is called throat singing. But as far as I can hear, the Inuit singing technique does not deal with overtones.  Rather, it is about vocalising on both the inhaled and exhaled breath. Yet it is referred to as throat singing.  Personally I'd rather just call one overtone singing, and call the other Inuit singing (or two-way singing?).
That said, Tanya Tagaq visited us in the summer, and she was a trip, as you'll see from our interview.

We were also sent a fantastic short film that called "Tungijuq" in which she stars and provides soundtrack.  We're still trying to figure out if it's too strong for broadcast. It concerns itself with the cycle of life and death from an Inuit perspective, and it is not for the squeamish...or prudish. Be on the lookout for it, as it is just about to hit the film festival circuit.

It's amazing what a little controversy can do to the ratings of a mediocre television show: it drives them up through the roof. And that's exactly what happened to what used to be a "barely-watched" Turkish drama series called Ayrilik: a love story that develops between the lead characters during Israel's "Operation Cast Lead" on the Gaza Strip. The show, which airs on Turkey's state-owned TRT television, depicts Israeli soldiers murdering innocent Palestinian civilians. One particular segment showed images of Israeli soldiers shooting a smiling young girl in the chest, steamrolling a tank through a crowded street and lining up a firing squad to shoot at a group of Palestinians.

Ayrilik's producer owes some gratitude and thanks to Israel's Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman who has recently complained to the Turkish government over its airing when he said on Wednesday that, "broadcasting this series is incitement of the most severe kind, and it is done under government sponsorship." Since then the show has been making headlines in both Turkish and global media, drawing more audience to TRT television and curiosity-seekers to YouTube to watch clips of the show.

This is not the first time a Turkish drama has caused a buzz in the Middle East. Last year a cheesy series called Noor (light) became a phenomenon when it captured an audience of 85 million viewers when it aired its last episode. The show's popularity increased when some Muslim Imams accused it of violating Islamic values and the grand mufti of Saudi Arabia issued a fatwa against watching it.

The saga between Israel and Turkey is not about a television drama, although in reality it has unfolded like one ever since the rise of the Justice and Development Party in 2002. Turkey's ties with Israel have been deteriorating rapidly since Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip last winter, which left hundreds of Palestinian civilians dead. However, tensions between the two allies hit a peak after Turkey's Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, stormed out of a conference during the Davos summit this year where he confronted Israel's President Shimon Peres over the Palestinian civilian casualties during its offensive on Gaza. Wagging his finger at Peres, an emotional Erdogan accused him of "murdering children on beaches" -- an outburst that made Erdogan a hero in the Arab world.

Adding more fuel to the fire, Turkey has recently banned Israel from an international air exercise in protest against its actions in Gaza, then announced that it will hold military exercises with its nemesis Syria. The announcement came after officials from Ankara and Damascus held the first meeting of a new co-operation council in the Syrian city of Aleppo aimed at ending years of tension between the two neighbors.

For decades Turkey has been looking to the West. It has been eager to please the United States, Europe, and NATO. It has been obsessed with membership to the EU, though snubbed thus far. What's more interesting is the fact that the Turkish military, which usually determines the country's strategic path, even when it goes against the will of the people, is keeping mum about the political decision which could signal a major shift in Turkey's future alliances.

For decades, Turkey has been Israel's closest ally in the Muslim world. It was the second Muslim majority country (after Iran) to recognize the State of Israel. The Islamic Revolution ended Iran's ties with Israel, and although Turkey's ties with Israel will not be severed, they have been permanently damaged.

Article first published in the Huffington Post.

My colleague Fernando Gonzalez has graciously contributed this exclusive eulogy for Mercedes Sosa who passed away last week. We both agreed that the video of her performance of "Todo Cambia" captures her passion, charisma and the love she elicited from her fans. Thank you, Fernando.

Mercedes Sosa

By Fernando Gonzalez

For an artist, becoming a political symbol is a double edged sword.
Argentine singer Mercedes Sosa, who died of in kidney failure in Buenos Aires on October 4, at age 74, was for many Mother Courage, The Voice of the Americas, The Mother of the Americas, The Voice of the Voiceless, and more.
Sometimes obscured by the mythmaking was the fact that she was an extraordinary artist.
A short, stocky woman, with Indian facial features and jet black hair (she was nicknamed La Negra, the black one), Sosa possessed an extraordinary alto voice, rich and powerful but also remarkably expressive. She could go from a whispered love song to a rousing flag-waver with stunning ease. Sosa was not a songwriter. But, quoting an old line, when Sosa sang a song, it stayed sung. She made her own songs such as “Gracias a La Vida,” “Alfonsina y el Mar,” and “Maria, Maria,” even when the songwriters were themselves major figures such as Violeta Parra and Milton Nascimento. 
She performed usually sitting center stage – although before health problems pretty much confined her to a chair on stage, she would also get up and dance, a memory perhaps from when Sosa was a teenager in Tucumán, a province in Argentina’s northwest, and she was a teacher of folk dances.
She started as a traditional folk singer but soon she was part of a group of poets and musicians who were, sometimes literally, rewriting folk music with what became known as Movimiento del Nuevo Cancionero, the New Song Movement, updating the standard folk lyrics to address the plight of the poor and disenfranchised. It set the tone for her entire career.

 “We were looking for a different poetic language, and musically we looked at jazz,” she once explained. “We spoke from truth and poverty, but didn´t forget about the landscape, because we didn’t want to grow apart from the people. They called us communists because any revolutionary act provokes fear and culture is the most important revolution. Governments don’t last. Culture is the greatest power.”
Notably, and especially after her return to Argentina in 1982 after a three year self-imposed exile, Sosa not only maintained a progressive attitude regarding the lyrics but applied it to her music, collaborating, for example, with rockers such as Charly Garcia and Fito Páez, and opening her repertoire to young, sometimes unknown, songwriters.
In recent years, in 1997 and again in 2003, she struggled with various health problems. In ‘97 the situation was so dire that, she acknowledged years later, she wrote her testament. Her problems in 2003, including severe depression, kept her off the stages for two years.
Sosa died after 13 days at the hospital. Her illness canceled plans to present a new two-disc set of duets featuring an all star cast of collaborators including García, Páez, Shakira, Julieta Venegas, and Joaquín Sabina. (It was released in the U.S. as one disc including selections from the two volumes.) It was, appropriately, called “Cantora,” singer.
For all the names she was called, this was the only title Sosa claimed for herself.
"Sometimes, one is made to be a big mouth or some sort of Robin Hood and it's not like that," she once told me, in the 90s. "I am a woman who sings, who tries to sing as well as possible with the best songs available. I was bestowed this role as big protester and it's not like that at all. I'm just a thinking artist."