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Clearing Land: Legacies Of The American Farm combines memoir and history, drawing upon the author’s own experience growing up on a family farm with the economic realities that are forcing such farms to extinction in the modern day. Poetic in its reminiscence of a daily life deeply intertwined with nature, cultivating plants and animals, and the joy of simply being alive, Clearing Land is a powerful firsthand testimony sure to evoke memories both pleasant and questionable of those who also lived and worked in agriculture. An emotional and at times spiritual remembrance.

The bare steel and concrete ribs of a massive unfinished power plant tower above a lazy curl of the Euphrates River in the farmlands southwest of Baghdad. The Russian construction crew that worked on the plant for several years dropped everything and left when Coalition forces stormed across the Iraq border four years ago, leaving the huge complex a derelict monument to grandiose plans, halfhearted workmanship and the sudden realization that no more of Saddam Hussein’s checks were going to clear.

Cranes, cable spools, welding sets and boxcar-sized turbines sit rusting in the yard, but the plywood walls of a mess hall, weight room, command post and sleeping areas are recent additions. American soldiers have moved in and cobbled the ghostly complex into an outpost called Patrol Base Dragon. Today, it is home to Company A, 2nd Battalion, 14th Infantry (A/2-14 Infantry) from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team (BCT), 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry).

Posters are tacked to the walls; handheld video games, MP3 players and laptop computers lay on cots; and air conditioners are jammed into cutouts. An Internet café is open around the clock, and a jerry-rigged shower drips around the clock, too.

The shaving water is tepid, but steaming breakfasts and dinners are served from a mobile kitchen trailer; boxes of Hot Pockets are set out for lunch. You can get a cold soda from a brace of refrigerators anytime you want-until the week’s soda allotment runs out, which is about the third day after delivery-but soldiers share with each other goodies they receive in care packages from home. You find that selfishness diminishes in direct correlation to how rough soldiers live.

All in all, life’s not bad at Patrol Base Dragon. Certainly, it’s nothing to compare with the relative creature comforts of the big American camps and forward operating bases (FOBs) in Iraq: that would be like comparing a shantytown to Las Vegas. However, the soldiers of A/2-14 Infantry say they would rather be at the patrol base than a super FOB. They say it feels rather strange when they rotate back to Camp Striker for less than 72 hours every nine or 10 days. Most of them feel it is useful only for getting laundry done, grabbing a haircut and restocking snacks. OK, sure, you can grab a milk shake, but you also have to put up with overhearing soldiers who never leave the FOB (called “fobbits” in the current vernacular) talk about how rough they’ve got it.

Morale is exponentially higher among small units at places like Patrol Base Dragon because of the intangibles: a sense of collective self-reliance; making do with what you’ve got; depending on your buddies and taking care of your buddies; only the arms room really needs a lock; everyone talks to each other; everyone pulls his weight; and, if you really need it, somebody will give you his last pair of clean socks … or a pint of blood. There’s no way to name it all, and no price you can put on any of it.

Another thing they have is an around-the-clock, real-world mission -sharp-edged, ground-pounder stuff: finding weapon caches; raiding improvised explosive device (IED) factories; catching bad guys … shooting it out with them if it comes to that; sitting though a rainstorm on a crummy observation post; working to gain the confidence of the locals and joking with their kids. A place like Patrol Base Dragon means soldiering at the retail level. Sure, it’s dangerous, but at the end of a patrol, there’s a good chance there will be something to show for it.

The 2nd BCT, 10th Mountain Division, has patrol bases scattered throughout its area of operations (AO); it focused on establishing them as soon as the brigade arrived in Iraq.

“During our training [for the deployment], we tapped into Vietnam veterans to learn from their experiences,” said Lt. Col. John Valledor, commander of the 2-14 Infantry. “They said you need to live forward in-zone to successfully engage in a classic counterinsurgency operation.”

“The insurgency we’re fighting [in this AO] is strictly … Sunni extremists, who have been here for quite some time,” Col. Valledor explained. “[Among them] we have the 1920 Revolutionary Brigades group, which is involved with al Qaeda. … All told there are probably four distinct and [discordant] Sunni groups, and the fact that they are not working together makes it easier for us. My feeling is that the strong al Qaeda guys have been displaced and that we’re dealing with factionalized Sunni extremist groups that are still here because of the lack of governance. And that is why we are trying very hard to convince the sheiks and everyone else to become involved in the political process.”

“Fighting an insurgency involves being out there with the people, not fighting from an FOB,” Col. Valledor said. “Our soldiers are fighting in-zone. We don’t drive to work.”

A/2-14 Infantry occupied the power plant in late October after a short stint at the nearby Gator Swamp patrol base. The plant had been an off-and-on insurgent training camp and launch point for attacks and kidnappings, but the company took the facility without resistance. An Iraqi Army company has since colocated with the American soldiers at Dragon.

To speak of this land; identity and belonging in South Africa and beyond.

Brown, Duncan.

U. of KwaZulu-Natal Press

2006

214 pages

$35.95

Paperback

DT1754

Brown (literary studies, media, and creative arts, U. of KwaZulu- Natal, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa) uses a series of case studies to consider how people have, historically and in the present, used different textual forms to express, accomplish and enact a sense of what it means to live in a place, in terms of intimacy, ownership, usage, displacement or alienation. Ranging from rock painting and oral storytelling to rap music, the materials examined by Brown cover a range of linguistic, racial, economic and historical contexts, all speaking compellingly to the author of issues that reverberate widely through present-day South Africa and beyond. Distributed in the U.S. by ISBS.

The 2007 Strike, Land Attack & Air Defense (SLAAD) Annual Symposium will be held May 8, 2007, at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. The 2007 theme of the conference is Integration and Interoperability with Allies and Coalition Partners in Naval Warfighting. This symposium is classified SECRET for U.S. participants only.

Something is growing fast in the Brazilian countryside. And it’s not just the monoculture plantations of eucalyptus, soy and sugar cane for which city-sized chunks of rainforest are cleared. The Movement of Small Farmers (Movimiento de Pequenos Agricultores, MPA) has in just 10 years mobilized 10,000 families across 14 states to resist the expansion of these vast plantations and the transnationals that are often behind them. Such industrial farming displaces entire populations, poisons the land with chemicals and contributes nothing to the local food bowl.

On the other hand, small-scale family farmers produce almost 60 per cent of Brazilian food. By joining the MPA they band together to resist pressure from big agribusiness companies to sell their lands for conversion to monoculture. According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), 5.3 million people abandoned the rural areas between 1999 and 2001. There are now more than a million landless people in Brazil and 80 per cent of the population is squeezed into urban areas.

Standing up to agribusiness in rural Brazil takes courage. Small farmers are often victims of serious violence and even murder. Between 1990 and 2002, the Pastoral Land Commission (Comissao Pastoral da Terra, CPT) reported 16 assassinations connected to the sugar cane industry alone. Nonetheless, MPA members see little choice but to stay and fight. As one farmer battling a huge foreign-owned eucalyptus plantation put it: ‘We believe the unity of the small farmers is the only way to succeed. If we are organized we can fight this harmful enterprise, not let it invade our region any more. Everybody has to be together in case we need to make a choice for physical confrontation.

‘The small farmer has to choose ecological farming. This will be the basis of our strength against the big companies. If the MPA, the churches, the schools and the trade unions join together we will have enough strength to fight our oppressors.’

The scope of the MPA’s concerns reveals its dynamism–promoting crop diversity, organic farming, local production, medicinal plants, women’s empowerment, pension rights, literacy, youth projects and direct action. MPA groups have also forged links with the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), indigenous communities, NGOs, academics and students.

Sergio (pictured right), director of the MPA group in Espirito Santo, explains: ‘All the movements are autonomous, but we work together, not destroying each other’s autonomy.’

And getting what’s best for local communities is at the heart of the movement. ‘In Brazil, there are several organic production projects being developed. But all these are for export. They are not meant to feed the hunger of the Brazilian people. We wish to provide a local market, to feed the hunger of our people. Of course we would like to export as well, but that comes second. We believe that production should primarily be for consumption here. That is what provides our projects with a different logic and vision.’

La Crosse County supervisors got a first look Monday at the most controversial part of the new comprehensive plan: land use.

The plan, required by Wisconsin’s Smart Growth law, has several elements, including transportation, recreation and economic development. But land use is the trickiest because it affects how people can use their property.

The land use element of the plan will be up for county board approval in June, with the entire plan due for final vote as early as November.

The land use plan sets five broad categories for general land use: residential, non-residential, agriculture and rural areas, public-institutional and environmental. The county’s towns are developing their own plans, which are much more detailed.

“We don’t want the county to be portrayed as a 500-pound gorilla,” said Supervisor Jeff Schroeder, a member of the Comprehensive Plan Steering Committee. “All of this was done with a great amount of thought about landowner rights.”

But fellow committee member Tom Rauk said the landuse element “was the most difficult to arrive at, potentially the most controversial, and the one that will take the most effort to reach a consensus and agree to.”

Said Supervisor Donald Bina, “There’s going to be any number of people who don’t want their rights taken away. I think it’s a good plan, but there’s going to be quite a few people saying it’s infringing on their personal rights.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average of leading US stocks passed 13200 for the first time last week, after its strongest run (23 rises in 26 sessions) since 1955. The S&P 500, a broader indicator, stood at just over 1500, a fraction below the record high set in the final spurt of the dotcom boom. London’s FTSE-100 index, at 6600, is not far behind.

Both markets are being driven by a fever of takeover activity and rumour in the ‘digital media’ sector, including talks between Microsoft and Yahoo and an approach to Reuters from the Thomson empire of Canada — all ominously reminiscent of the AOLTime Warner deal, announced in January 2000, that was subsequently judged one of the most value-destroying mergers of all time.

And as if this isn’t enough evidence that the global balance of money and sense is wobbling dangerously again, the Daily Telegraph tells us that ’savvy investors’ are snapping up real estate in Ulaan Baatar, capital of Outer Mongolia. ‘Our main clients are wealthy bankers purchasing with dollars, which with the current exchange rate is very favourable to British buyers, ‘ a property consultant explains.

OK, I accept that overseas house-hunting has become a new national pastime — and when Merryn Somerset Webb tells us this week that Berlin is the hottest new hot-spot, I’m almost ready to declare, with JFK, ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’. But a luxury condo in the land of the weeping camel, where half the population live in nomadic tents and get their kicks from fermented yak’s milk? Things may have improved a bit since I stared out of a train window at Ulaan Baatar’s crumbling Soviet blocks in the late 1980s, but I still think this is one of the barmiest investment propositions I’ve ever come across.

‘As far as I’m concerned, the party’s only just begun, ‘ declares the developer of the 14storey Regency Residence, which will no doubt be the most sought-after address in the entire Gobi desert when it is completed next spring. As far as I’m concerned, the party’s almost over, and to paraphrase William McChesney Martin, chairman of the US Federal Reserve in the 1950s and 1960s, it’s time someone took the punch bowl away.

No pink ceiling

Lord Browne’s decision to lie in court about having met his boyfriend through an internet escort agency was at least partially excused, for some commentators, by the fact that he was trying to protect himself against unreconstructed homophobia in the business world, and especially in the oil industry. It may well be true that intolerance remains the norm on North Sea drilling platforms and Siberian pipeline stations, but I very much doubt that gayness or straightness any longer affects anyone’s career prospects in the upper reaches of the City or the elegant head offices of the West End. One robustly heterosexual senior investment banker I know chairs his firm’s gay and lesbian group with no embarrassment, and other blue-chip companies from JP Morgan to McKinsey eagerly advertise similar support networks.

John Browne was not even the first gay boss of a major British oil company. The late Sir Philip Shelbourne, chairman of the British National Oil Corporation from 1980 to 1987, was more discreet than he would have needed to be today, but his feline manner still provoked strong reactions — not least from Alastair Morton, later of Eurotunnel, who resigned as a manager of BNOC in protest at Shelbourne’s appointment. When I wrote Shelbourne’s obituary in the Daily Telegraph in 1993 (it is reprinted in Closing Balances, the collection published last year by Aurum Press) I wrestled with the problem of how to indicate his orientation — which would certainly have been known to, or suspected by, informed readers — without breaching journalistic boundaries. Among other descriptive details, I called him ‘a City grandee of strong opinions and fastidious tastes’, who ‘lived for many years in a Victorian house in Highbury in which he collected antiques and installed a complete Indonesian sitting room’. I filed the piece then rang the obituaries editor, Hugh Massingberd, to explain my predicament.

‘Oh don’t worry, ‘ he replied. ‘That Indonesian sitting room says everything.’

Who ate all the pastries?

But never mind metrosexuality, market exuberance and Mongolian buy-to-let — I hear you complain — tell us what’s happening in Helmsley. My North Yorkshire home town offers its own set of economic indicators, particularly at this time of year when new businesses open up to catch the spring tourists.

Last year, you may recall, I was confidently predicting meltdown in the confectionery sector, having counted within a few yards of each other no less than four high-priced handmade chocolate shops, one of which boasted a lukewarm chocolate fountain. I was wrong.

They all survived, and so did the fancy patisserie we thought was doomed because there were already several bakeries nearby and we’d heard that this one was going to make the fatal error of calling itself ‘Patisserie’ — Yorkshire folk generally having no truck with anything French. In fact it announced itself in plain English and became one of the most successful start-ups ever seen in the town — a lesson to would-be entrepreneurs that if you really pay attention to the quality of the product, success will follow however entrenched the competition. Last year’s doomsayers, led by me, can now be found daily barging each other like bullocks in the shop’s narrow doorway to buy olive bread and Danish pastries from the charming Polish sales girl.

* GLOVER WORKING TO ELIMINATE LAND MINES: Actor Danny Glover, a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, simulates using mine clearance equipment in a cleared mine field in Ethiopia. Glover’s appearance was designed to attract the attention of the public to the recent international conference on land mines in Nairobi, Kenya, where delegates from around the globe gathered to assess progress made in implementing the pact to eliminate landmines.

Glover expressed regret his own country has yet to sign the 144-nation treaty to eliminate the use of landmines which kill or maim more than 40 people around the world every day. Glover’s mission was his first as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.

LAND RUSH Lewis M. Goodkin, president of Miami-based Goodkin Research Group, says Latin interest in Miami real estate has increased in the past year. “I think Miami is a hot ticket, wherever you go,” he says. “I don’t believe last year’s Summit of the Americas really had a major impact.

The strong momentum of sales and investment was in place long before then.” Latin residential sales are one reason why Miami is the only metropolitan area in Florida whose housing starts in 1995-2005 are expected to be greater than the previous period, according to the University of Florida’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research. “By the year 2000, one in four total sales in Dade County will be from offshore purchasers,” Goodkin says, “and the foreign market will be dominated by Latin Americans.”

IMAGINE SAILING ACROSS A LAKE AT a speed of 100 mph. Now picture that lake without water, and you’ve just invented land sailing–only it already exists. With traces in America as far back as the 1700s, the centuries-old sport is now gaining popularity in the deserts and dry lake beds of California, Oregon, and Nevada–and anywhere else with long, sprawling expanses, including empty parking lots in the city of Chicago.

Modern land-sailing crafts have two fires in back and one in front, and have been clocked traveling as fast as 116 mph, a world record set by Bob Schumacher in 1999 at a race in Ivanpah, Nev. The key to moving is manipulating your sail to harness the wind while minimizing drag. “Your rear axle is your ballast, and you sit on it, between the two tires,” explains Terry Fulbright, the 2001 winner of the America’s Cup of Land Sailing, the sport’s biggest prize. Learning to land sail is easy, Fulbright says, adding, “If you’ve got your drag down and a good lift on the sail, you’re going to go like hell.”

Until now, the only problems have been the cost and size of equipment: Land sails can run as much as $15,000, and a typical ride requires its own trailer to lug it around. But new, more affordable compact models are attracting younger crowds who are spreading the sport’s appeal. (New Zealand-made Blokarts start at around $2,000 and fit in a car trunk.)

The sport is growing so quickly, in fact, experts say that within a few years, land-sailing junkies will swarm beaches, paring lots, and backcountry roads with the same sort of thrill-seeking camaraderie as skateboarders do now–and could finally number in the tens of thousands. As John Nicholson of the Hamilton Blokart Club in New Zealand says in summary: “It’s a sport that is accessible, affordable, social, and competitive.”