In de kakofonie van partijslogans en oneliners willen wij een ander geluid laten horen. Wij staan voor onze verworvenheden als wereldburgers en kijken VERDER*

Onze Nederlandse politieke leiders zijn nu regelmatig te zien en te horen op radio en TV. Maar in een mediakeurslijf waarin het snel 'afschieten' van oneliners behandeld wordt als een topsport. Met zogenaamde winnaars van een zogenaamd debat.

Ik snak naar serieus leiderschap en een echte discussie over onze toekomst.

Geen gekibbel over hoe de hypotheekrenteaftrek eruit ziet over 40 jaar - maar oplossingen voor de klimaatcrisis. Dus een echte visie op CO2 uitstoot, consumenten gedrag, alternatieve energie bronnen.

Geen geruzie over koopkracht (van wie?) zonder dat te verbinden met de koop...

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Today I am fasting. My GCAP colleague and co-chair Kumi Naidoo is on the 11th day of his 21-day hunger strike in solidarity with the people of Zimbabwe. Kumi spent ten days before Christmas in Zimbabwe interviewing a broad range of civil society leaders and men, women and children on the ground fighting for their daily survival. He started his hunger strike particularly to lobby the African heads of state to stop their support or complicity of silence towards Robert Mugabe’s regime.  With the support of Civicus, GCAP (the Global Call for Action against Poverty) and Avaaz today I am one of 25,000 people from 179 countries around the world to have joined Kumi’s initiative, This has become a Global Solidarity Fast for the people of Zimbabwe. Kumi hopes it will become a &ls...

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Sharing power in a world which is clamoring for inclusive and effective democracy at the UN level, is obviously not easy for the rich countries. But it is exactly the power of money rather than putting people and values at the centre which has got the world in this mess  of multi-crises - what I call a moral crisis.

“The Doha Financing for Development Conference is over and my partner Rebeca will start quizzing me tomorrow. How did it go? What really happened?

Well, the two day pre-conference of the Civil Society was rather good. In a serious process of consensus building we went right through the first draft outcome document of the Doha conference. We had enough expertise in our networks and 250 people attending to have well researched argumentation in the ro...

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These days I feel like my four year old niece who used to ask me every few minutes, ´What´s happening Sylvia Financial crisis, rescue plans and thousands of billions are being shouted at me by the media. There is strong leadership being shown to save banks, but without apparently much knowledge about cause and effect. The top of ‘the pyramid’ needs to be saved with our hard earned tax money, we are told, otherwise we will all perish together in economic recessions.

Simultaneously, there appears to be little concern, and insufficient committed leadership shown towards the bottom of the pyramid. We need around one percent of all the money that governments are now suddenly spending on saving the banks to tackle poverty. Money that can make the difference bet...

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June 05, 2008
Is there really a world food crisis? Yes, 100 million people hungry, 800 million more living in extreme poverty. Especially women, children and the sick and elderly are dying, 25000 a day. That is the whole population of London and Paris in a year. All of the Dutch famished and dead in less than two years.

At the Food Aid Organisation (FAO) in Rome forty World leaders arrive at the invitation of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon. Speech after speech they speak about the causes of this crisis. Insufficient investment in agriculture, already for years. High oil prices. Unfair trade allowing rich countries to dump subsidized high-oil-intensive agricultural products in developing countries. Western tariff walls, monopolistic practice from a...

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