In US politics today we are witnessing two processes running parallel to one another, each gathering its own seemingly unstoppable momentum. While in the hermetically-sealed domain of electoral party politics the Democratic Party, perhaps the most hypocritical, smugly self-congratulatory organised group of persons on the planet, continues to churn out an interminable array of buzz-phrases and slick choreography themed around a vapid and disingenuous message of "change", the mainstream media discourse offers a more instructive appraisal of the direction in which US imperialism is really heading, and, by extension, the total irrelevance of the Democrats' ill-defined political position, and the key to their likely defeat in the forthcoming national elections.

Recent developments in Georgia have placed international relations firmly back on the editorial agenda of US media organisations, with commentators adopting increasingly aggressive language in support of the specious claim that we are in the midst of a "new Cold War". This mood is exemplified by Arthur Herman's article in Monday's edition of the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal ("Russia and the New Axis of Evil", Wall Street Journal, 1st September 2008), an excremental piece of journalism which is remarkable for its Orwellian distortions and utterly brazen aggressiveness. According to Herman, global security is under threat from an alliance between Russia, Iran and Venezuela. Noting that "the term "axis" has been overused in recent years, and in misleading contexts", Herman asserts that "Russia, Iran and Venezuela are acting very much as Japan, Italy and Germany did in the 1930s, when each took advantage of each other's aggressive moves to extend their own regional power at the expense of liberal democracy".

That Herman's principle accusation against Putin and Ahmadinejad is that they "clearly aim to control access to every major source of fossil energy from the western end of the Persian Gulf to the Caspian Sea" – a stretch of land and sea that is located almost entirely within the sovereign territories of their respective nations – reveals the true motive behind this sudden and quite uncharacteristic concern for "liberal democracy" in the developing world. When Herman refers to the "liberalising trends of globalisation" that he perceives to be under attack from the "three dictatorships", what is really under discussion is the entitlement of these nations to control their natural resources. Any pretence of accuracy is sacrificed at the altar of this overriding imperialist drive to secure the "liberalisation" of the natural resources of Iran, Russia and Venezuela, ideally on terms favourable to US business and economic interests. So, without any shred of evidence for either proposition, Herman explains that "Iran has used its terrorist proxies to sow chaos in Iraq" (predictably, half a million killed by the US-led invasion in 2003 does not appear to register as "chaos", for these purposes), and "Mr Chávez wages a proxy war against Colombia through the terrorists of FARC". In respect of the latter, Herman identifies the murderous authoritarian regime of President Uribe in Colombia as one of "democracy's vital new flanks", which the US ought to support against the threat of "tyranny" posed by its neighbour Venezuela. The brazen mendaciousness and ideologically-stilted terms of reference will be familiar to anyone who followed the sham debate which preceded both of George W. Bush's Middle-Eastern wars.

Herman's solution – and, in all probability, the solution that will in due course be adopted by Washington – is a "broad strategy of…sanctions and multilateral diplomacy, backed by US military power". This manufactured crisis against a constructed enemy "axis" is a manifestation, in the political sphere, of an expansionist economic policy that is a matter of critical importance to the global hegemony of the United States. Elsewhere in its pages, the Wall Street Journal describes the Democratic presidential candidate Obama, without irony or satire, as a "leftist". The truth is that the elite of the United States have nothing to fear from the Democrats, who will never have the inclination or the courage to challenge the might of the military-industrial complex or re-consider America's imperial agenda. The electoral contest is an irrelevance here – the sabre-rattling of the Wall Street Journal is the truest indicator of where America is heading: it is not "change", it is more of the same.

The world is full of drug addicts. The drug of choice is oil, and some countries are even willing to resort to theft and murder to obtain it. We enjoy around 94 million barrels of this drug per day. Suffice to say, such consumption of oil, and other finite fossil fuels, is simply not sustainable in the long term. We have already seen, in the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the first resource wars of the 21st century.

In October 2006, the World Wildlife Fund, an international NGO that promotes environmental conservation, released its annual ‘Living Planet Report’. The key message of the report was clear: ‘We are using up the planet’s resources faster than they can be renewed’. According to the report, our consumption of natural resources, having rapidly increased in recent decades, now exceeds the Earth’s capacity to regenerate by 25%. The report also predicted that, if current trends continue, globally speaking, by the year 2050, we will be consuming natural resources at twice the rate at which they can be regenerated. In essence, we are living well beyond our means, and must take steps to alter our course.

However, the report did have a positive message – steps can be taken to reduce the consumption of natural resources and, in the words of the WWF, make the ‘transition to a sustainable society’. In the report, the term ‘sustainable development’ is described as being a way of ‘improving the quality of human life while living within the carrying capacity of supporting ecosystems’. To fit this description, a country must have both a ‘high level of development’ (measured by factors such as life expectancy, literacy and GDP per capita) and, at the same time, not exceed ‘the average bio-capacity available per person’ (ie: each citizen should on average not use the Earth’s resources at a faster rate than they can be regenerated).

It comes as little surprise that the most developed and affluent countries are also the ones who exact the greatest toll on the environment. At present, the average citizen of the US, Australia, Canada, Australia, Japan or the EU, is using up natural resources at rate of 2.5 (Japan) to 5 times (US) faster than they can be regenerated. At the other end of the scale, there are developing countries such as India and China. While their use of natural resources does not yet exceed bio-capacity, they are anot classed as having a ‘high level of development’, according to the aforementioned criteria, used by the UN.

As it transpires, Cuba is the only country that is able to meet the standards by which sustainable development is measured.

While conservation had been practiced in Cuba since the revolution, - a reforestation campaign beginning in 1959 has managed to nearly double the proportion of the island covered by forest - Cuba’s green revolution took off in the early 1990s, owing to circumstances the country faced at the time. The fragmentation of the Soviet Union in 1991 had a disastrous effect upon Cuba’s food and oil imports, which fell by more than 50%. According to George Carriazo, the Director of Cuba’s Centre for the Investigation of the Global Economy, foreign trade plummeted by 85% after the collapse of the USSR. Food Rations were cut and blackouts become the norm. The 1990s have come to be known as the ‘special period’ and were a time of great hardship for many Cubans.

The Toricelli and Helms-Burton Acts were imposed in 1992 and 1996 respectively, by a US government seeking to tighten the noose around Cuba. These pieces of legislation, designed to further impede Cuba’s overseas trade, added to the suffering of the populace.

With Cuba facing the prospect of starving citizens and an economic collapse, sweeping radical changes were rapidly implemented across the island. Effort was put into the development of alternative sources of energy. Farming practices that were adopted included the use of worm farms to convert waste into compost, a natural fertiliser. Natural pesticides were also developed. In short, a distinct method of farming, known as Permaculture, was implemented. This approach to agriculture relies on maintaining a diverse interdependent ecosystem and results in the production of high crop yields by way of minimal external input. Chemical fertilisers and pesticides are now rarely used. By 2003, their use had been reduced by more than 10 fold, compared to 1989. Another novel approach was the introduction of small-scale farming, including co-operatives and urban farms.

In response to the crisis of the 90s, Cubans created a system of agriculture that makes use of all arable land, and which works with, as opposed to against, the environment.

The story of Cuba illustrates what can be done when there is a will and a necessity to act. Let us hope that the steps to creating a sustainable world are taken sooner rather than later. Failure on the part of our governments to act could result in an indefinite global ‘special period’ characterised by widespread starvation, resource wars and irreversible environmental damage.

This week, Roberto Perez, a Cuban Permaculturalist and environmental educator, embarked upon a lecture tour around the UK. He will be speaking on the topic of urban solutions, food sustainability and the power of community. Mr Perez will discuss Cuba’s agricultural transition, and how individual communities faced up to the challenge of making it a reality. The environmental activist has previously featured in the award-winning documentary ‘The Power of the Community'.
The lecture tour began yesterday with Mr Perez giving a talk at the Embassy of Venezuela, in London. The Cuban Permaculturalist will be giving his next address tomorrow at the Permaculture Association Convergence, in Ilkley, before continuing his speaking tour, which will see him visiting many UK cities throughout the month of September.

A list of dates and venues for the speaking tour can be found at:

More than three years in the Central Asian states of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan with attendant visits to Russia in 2004 and Georgia in 2006 as a localisation expert has provided me with a unique perspective on affairs in the former Soviet Union. During that time, I was a US State Department Fulbright scholar, worked for the Kazakhstan National Oil company and later a major US oil company for skills development. I became well acquainted with the real situation on the ground, up close and personal. The situation in Georgia is a reflection of what currently goes on in most of the Caucuses and Central Asia. It is unknown to most people outside these countries. Unlike living in Huntsville or Long Beach, USA, where access to foreign officials and international organisations is non-existent, being in the capital cities of Central Asia and the Caucuses had an active forum and open window to see and meet these representatives and organizations firsthand. Some ideas and people were impressive, most were status quo.

The issue of the Russian invasion and the ensuing response from the US, European Union, and NATO is hypocritical at best. Since most Americans are not genuinely interested in US foreign policy, the anti-Russia barage fed on FOX and CNN ignores some major issues. The West are fomenters of this problem and as such are bona fide reasons for the invasion. How did this happen? Blatantly and intentionally ignoring real, on the ground problems and unresolved geopolitical issues. Despite the rhetoric about “market economy” and “democracy”, the truth is the average citizen in Georgia and most of former Soviet Union are more so victims of the former and less participants in the latter than the US government and EU is deluded into having us believe or even understand. This pretext of the invasion is about oil, transport and facilitation of that oil, and the geo-politic of the “Prize”. The US miscalculated in its brazen support of Georgia, namely, its aggressive support and construction of the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline, or BTC as it is known in oil circles. This pipeline conduits practically all Central Asian oil through the tiny country of Georgia, while bypassing Russia. Another pipeline for Central Asia oil, Novorossisysk, actually goes through Russia and has been the subject of much political game playing over the years to the chagrin of the major (and national) oil companies. There are key points that should be further noted here: oil and its geo-politic, who most benefits from free markets, and the fallacy of establishing democracy in transition economies. First, the BTC pipeline and its significance.

This pipeline is the artery that puts Georgia on the US and EU radar. Without it, Georgia would be about as critical to the US and Europe as Benin or Togo. It is so important that Bush visited Georgia in 2006 to proclaim his support for its people and their democracy. It is the real cause of the Russian invasion and the West’s consternation with that invasion. Most foreign direct investment (FDI) into these regions is for oil and gas projects, not just upstream (wells) but also service providers and logistics (pipelines, railways, etc…). This means that investment is not disseminated into development of other industry that will benefit locals outside of the oil business. This is huge money, billions of dollars at stake, yet there is little or no “trickle down” effect in this. The oil business is technologically challenging and very labor specific. These skills are not easily conveyed to local people without serious and costly training. Oil companies effectively buy off local leaders through various methods in order to avoid or mitigate this training and local content. Enforcement of this development and usage of locals is weak. In short, most Georgians do not benefit from this pipeline.

Who does benefit? Well connected insiders, oligarchs, and skilled oil company expatriates. Most of the BTC was built using foreign oil service contractors, sometimes to do the most mundane jobs, such as Bangladeshi pipe fitters and Nepalese truck drivers. Local Georgians, despite some
protests, were largely left to drive taxis and push brooms. But what does that have to do with the Russian invasion? Simply, Russia was not getting any cut out of this lucrative pipeline on its doorstep. By being bypassed, it is being marginalized. Yet, there is a deeper issue here that is not known to much of the world: that being, many of these large oil and gas fields in Central Asia were developed and first produced by the Soviet Union (Moscow), using Soviet money, technology, and manpower. A similar parallel would be the outrage over the US built Panama Canal, a few years back when a Chinese government owned company sought to control it. Congress made certain that did not happen. From credible stories inside the oil business in Central Asia, in 1991, Moscow sought some types of compensation from these fields from the newly created states. They received nothing in their weakened situation, nor did it help that at that time the US government aggressively sought to exploit these weaknesses at the close of the Cold War in the ensuing political chaos of the new states. Nonetheless, these large oil reserves and attendant world oil price highs most certainly made this unresolved issue unbearable to the new Russian oil bear, spurring it to unsavory action.

Second, a market economy. Despite the vast riches of many of these oil resource states and their proxy states as oil channels, money does not‘cascade down’ into the eager hands of the locals. Nor do these oil resources alleviate unemployment or spur economic development. There is actually a term for this, the resource curse. When I first went to Georgia in 2006, I was greeted by several aggressive men at the border all willing to offer me a taxi ride. Most needed a shave and smelled of vodka. It was a nervous welcome. I stood as a lone Westerner amidst a sea of the uneducated and unemployed. It appeared time had stopped in 1991 in most of the country. The roads were potholed and cracked. Cows crossed back and forth between broken down cars and old busses. Most of the buildings in the outskirts of the city were crumbling and worn. People were shabbily dressed in the latest imported Chinese knock offs. The currency, the Lari, was so tattered that most notes were falling apart. Any exposed metal was rusty or broken. Rubbish was strewn about. People appeared and were actually poor. However, in the core centre of the cities, a very different picture emerged. New buildings, a new park, neon lit nightclubs, an upscale shopping mall that was being developed by Turkish investors. Contexted in all this, a profile emerged of the typical mover and shaker in Georgia (and most former Soviet satellites): shaved head, armed body guards, Rolex (or better) watch, black Armani suit, Mercedes Benz.

These are the people who are really running the show. Business does not get done or is even permitted without them. The true gangster identity emerged in the power vacuum between totalitarianism and transition state. In fact the market economy is especially good to the well connected gangster. With oligarchial and government connections, and vague laws, they can seize and renovate prime locations, buy expensive cars, pollute others property, and have opponents or legal impediments quickly removed and dealt with. While they were not running the oil business per se, they were the hands that controlled any of the first fruits trickling down from it. This type of crony market capitalism is not addressed in the textbooks, Wall St. or in Harvard MBA program. Yet, it is the reality that any entrepreneurial or money making activity is quickly usurped by them. If not, payoffs and bribes are in order. The Russian term for this is “krishka” meaning roof, or protection. That is the way the market economy or “quasi-business” really works in most former Soviet states. This issue cannot be stressed enough, bringing Michael Porter from Harvard Business School to lecture the dictators of these countries about economics brings a large fee for Dr. Porter, and good world PR for the dictator, but nothing for local citizens.

Economic competitiveness is a nice theory, democracy that empowers is an even more far flung ideal in these non-transparent, asymmetric countries. Lastly, lack of democracy and severely misguided programs. This is an issue that should not be taken lightly. There are many well funded US EU, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and non-governmental organisation programs in Caucuses and Central Asia. Most are farcical and do not deliver any results since by design they assume a level, Western style playing field (See reasons 1 & 2). However, they do deliver high salaries and contracts to their foreign managers and expatriate consultants. If there is an organised crime network that controls domestic business in these countries, there is also a US AID (Agency for International Development) cartel and OCSE cartel that hinders creativity and ideas in these places due to entrenched nepotism and awarding of contracts based on connections in the Beltway or Brussels. How the system works is this: A State Department or OSCE directive that calls for “democracy” or “economic development” is put forward with a mandated (usually in the several millions of dollars) budget. These large government organisations rarely do the actual work themselves. A request for a proposal to address these initiatives is tendered. Bids are solicited from contractors to do these jobs. Despite advertisements, the process is never fair or transparent, as only someone or company with past experience and deep connections can offer an appropriate tender for the job, as many tenders are very subjectively written with ambiguous ‘goals’. Once the tender is accepted and contracted, the aid organization or NGO goes to that country and administers the program locally.

However, there is rarely any “Kellogg style” evaluation of these programs by standard Western metrics, (qualifications, GDP or GPI, localisation effectiveness, industrial placements, etc…) nor is there oversight as to how much can and should be spent on contractors or consultants. The objective of the contracting organization becomes keeping the contract extended; rewards are aligned with keeping handlers in Washington or Belgium satisfied, not in on the ground mechanisms that deal with local people being developed by way of education and retraining or economic progress. Business as usual calcifies processes. People in countries such as Georgia do not care about democracy and any US funded program to promote it, if their basic needs are not being met, or they have to deal with unsavory enforcers on a daily basis to merely survive. This is the reality on the ground.

The point of all the above is that US foreign policy needs a new paradigm to deal with problems and issues in these countries that is currently unaligned. This change will not happen by osmosis with an oil business and entrenched financial interests. Shakeup is in order. Simply put, Central Asia and the Caucuses are only relevant based on their oil and resource related economies. Local citizens need training and knowledge to work in those industries that is in control of foreigners, mainly from the US and Europe. Ignoring the magnitude of these energy intensive industries and historical legacy behind it is only inviting more trouble. Power and resources channeled through the hands of a few oligarchs and organised criminals does not “filter down” in an orderly Western style market economy cascade when dealing with people without ethics or any sense of fair business.

The democratization and economic competitiveness programs that promote pie in the sky pipedreams of the Beltway well wishers and International Monetary Fund economists do not reflect the social reality in these places. These programs need to be scrapped or overhauled to align real skills for real people in these countries so they can find work and be involved in the businesses their countries are needed for: hard resources. Then democracy can really grow through empowerment. The United States and its status quo foreign policy towards many of the former Soviet Republics needs a wake-up call. Perhaps this tragic invasion of Georgia will have a silver lining in promoting that shakeup.

In an unprecedented move, three judges of the Superior Tribunal of Sincelejo, a city in northern Colombia, have ordered that President Alvaro Uribe and several of his top ministers be arrested and jailed. Others named by the court include Interior Minister Fabio Valencia and Housing Minister Oscar Ivan Zuluaga.

The court has ordered that the officials spend three days in jail for failing to enforce a judgement pertaining to wages for workers in the judicial sector. While it is common in Colombia for governors and mayors to serve short prison sentences for failing to comply with judicial orders, it is the first time that such a sentence has been ordered for the President.

The ruling came after a group of judicial workers appealed to the Sincelejo Tribunal, the highest court in the region, that the deadline for government action had passed following a February 29th order that wages for judicial workers should change.

It is understood that the ruling will now be sent to the Supreme Court for a review and that no arrest warrant has yet been issued for the President.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has expressed his support for Russia’s decision to recognize the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, referring to it as an act of dignity.

“They thought that Russia was going to stay quiet, ‘No,’ Russia responded…and Russia was within its right because they are attacking it, they are trying to bring it to its knees and stop it, and Russia stood up again like a big world power,” he stated.

“Russia is defending its interests…we would do the same,” he said.

The Russian President, Dmitri Medvedev said he considered the recognition of the sovereignty of the regions, where South Ossetia was recently attacked by Georgian troops, as irreversible. He said the decision was made in order to prevent further bloodshed.

Medvedev added that Moscow rejects a world order in which all the decisions are made by one country, even when it’s the US.

Russia recognized the independence of the two territories, which Georgia considers part of its own territory, on 26 August.

Jose Antonio Ejido, a Venezuelan sociologist, believes that the events in Georgia have provoked various country alliances (between Russia, China, and Latin America) that will “generate a change in the relation of forces at an international level, negative for Washington and its allies in NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and the European Union, and favorable for the construction of a multipolar world.”

In this sense, he felt the route chosen by Venezuela was correct, and that it confronts the aggressive intentions of the U.S.

“The consequences turn in favor of Venezuela and …for the Bolivarian Alternative for the People of Our America (ALBA), well it has generated a strengthening of relations with Russia, which has as its basis the unity of humanity,” he explained.

The vice chancellor of Venezuela for Africa, Reinaldo Bolivar also supported Russia’s actions in the Caucasus, “Right now there is relative peace in the region…Russia doesn’t have its forces in Georgia, Russia is a power, the United States are worried but haven’t shown it because they know that they are facing a military and political giant, just like the European Union, and besides Russia is one of the big providers of energy for all of Europe.”

“The world gains a lot with the position Russia has taken, in the sense that the large hegemonic power was the United States, (and) based on its military power [the US] has invaded nations.”

Chávez also announced on Sunday that new defense equipment, bought from Russia, will soon arrive in the country. He said he considered Russia like a strategic alliance and warned that Venezuela would continue acquiring war material for the defense of its sovereignty.

Included in the equipment is a system of anti-aircraft defense, long-range rockets of 200 kilometers. Chávez explained that the F-16 that Venezuela currently has only has a range of 20 km, where as the new Sukoi can make a plane go back from 150-200 kilometers away, and has a camera on its point.

“We don’t want to fire it at anyone, but no one should mistake us.”

He also reiterated that Russia would be welcome by the Venezuelan government, should it decide to go ahead with training, which would involve sending a navel fleet through the Caribbean.

Finally, Chávez also announced that during his travel to Beijing this month he will also sign agreements for training planes. He stressed that Venezuela had tried to buy planes from Brazil but the U.S had impeded the transaction with the company.

Tamara Pearson writes for Venezuela Analysis.

Where there is prohibition, a vacuum is filled with a black market. On the long list of prohibited items in the former German Democratic Republic, or East Germany, the most sought-after contraband for young people was not Coca Cola, clothes or David Hasselhof (contrary to what he might think) but
copies of Bravo magazine, the German cult rag for young people. Its coverage of music, film and television stars, (and Hasselhof here has to be grudgingly included) as well as its handling of teen issues, made it a highly-coveted black market commodity.

The Bravo phenomenon

Calling itself a tabloid that unashamedly targets the teen market, this muted definition of Bravo belies its prominent role in providing generations of Germans with a frank sex education. Many credit the magazine, at least in part, for Germany's free and uninhibited attitudes towards sex and the body. The magazine was founded 1956 (with Marilyn Monroe gracing the maiden cover) at a time when post-War Germany wanted to emerge from its misery and embrace modern life. Since 1962, it has given no-holds-barred advice on sex and growing up through the advice of "Dr Sommer", resident agony uncle and real-life doctor (though Dr Sommer is a pseudonym). Generations of Germans and other Europeans in this way received their Aufklaeurung ('clearing up') on matters of sex.

Bravo of course is also a celebrity gossip mag. Teenagers learn about the lives and loves of America's biggest stars along as well as the best method of contraception for young couples. Amusingly, unlike its British counterparts, (heat for example) it never pokes fun, tongue-in-cheek or otherwise, at the people it covers. Every also-ran gets treated like they are the next Elvis Presley - from international superstars like Michael Jackson to German pop runts Tokio Hotel and some of Central Europe's most embarrassing "dance acts"- DJ Bobo and DJ Oetzi, take note. This
affectionate strategy does seem to pay off, however. It should be noted that Bravo followed boy band 'N Sync's fortunes like a swooning teenager (its key demographic) from the mid-1990s, when they could barely fill school gyms in Germany and Austria and Justin Timberlake had yet to grow
facial hair.

Despite its importance, Bravo manages to completely avoid political issues, with the exception of the environment and animal rights - issues that are deemed important to its target audience. Its most politically daring acts to date: printing a picture of Pope John Paul II and publishing stars'
thoughts on America, post-11th September 2001.

Smuggling Bravo

Thanks to its whole-hearted celebration of Western celebrity, the Bravo was banned in the GDR, not for its sexual content but because it was labelled an example of 'decadent Western thought' and 'imperialist literature' by the Committee for Entertainment Arts. But for young people in the GDR, it formed a vital connection to the world beyond the wall because of its voyeuristic coverage of music and film stars. More than that, it was a link to the stranger world of growing up and sex, its frank treatment of which children in the West may have taken for granted.

An article in the Berliner Zeitung in 2006, marking Bravo's 50th Anniversary, discusses the smuggling of the magazines into the GDR. One teenager used to travel to Hungary with her friends to loot the music shops for albums banned under the GDR, as well as editions of Bravo. Another girl
paid the equivalent of 20 DM (£8) for the latest issue - it would have set her back about 1.70 DM had she lived on the right side of the iron curtain.

Despite its status as culturally bankrupt and unfit for GDR eyes, Bravo was thoroughly catalogued, archived and rated. Possession of Bravo was strictly prohibited, which is why it was often smuggled on 18-hour train rides from Hungary, under sweatshirts against bare skin, at the mule's annoyance upon finding the cover illegible by the sweat. Often it would have to be peeled from the belly. For West Germans, who could pick them up while buying toiletries, this may sound somehow romantic.

Along the borders and in the post offices, the government did its best to stop the influx of Western literature, but some Bravos managed to slip through. Covert trade of Bravo's colourful posters in GDR schools was so brisk that it even had fixed prices: A double-sided poster went for 20
Ostmarks, a single page poster for ten. The larger posters could fetch up to 40 marks and a whole magazine would cost 100. This was at a time when young apprentices in the East earned only 120 Ostmarks per month, and children's pocket money was not usually more than 20 marks a month.
Somehow, the money was always there.

Most people brought Bravo to the GDR when returning from visits, but because the eager customs goons would search luggage, smugglers had to be inventive. Sasha Lange, in his book "DJ West Radio - My Happy GDR Youth" recounts how his mother, when returning from the West to visit his
grandmother, would go to the toilet just before she went through the checkpoint, and hide various papers and magazines in her boots. Another magazine would go under her sweater.
There was further money to be made in the photographs taken of Bravo pages, again with fixed prices: "These became so valuable that they were given out as prizes at the Leipzig fun fair shooting gallery. I once won a picture of Kim Wilde, but because I was such a bad shot, I spent five marks on ammunition," says Lange.

Lange says that the obsessive collection of posters among schoolchildren surpassed the collection of music records. Finding a poster which you wanted required making use of every contact you had, inside and outside school, to find out who had something you wanted and who might want something you had. "I had a grandmother in the West - this is how I managed to get my hands on over 80 posters of Depeche Mode," says Lange.

Black market music

Bravo also helped people in East Germany place words and faces to the music from 'over there'. Claudia Rusch writes in her 2003 book, My Free German Youth, that music was more difficult to censure than literature. If a book was banned, it was simply not imported. End of story. "Music was different. As soon as Western songs were played on the West's radios and people walked down the street singing them, it was too late. They settled like fine dust on the ears of people in the GDR," says Rusch. The furtive and urgent collection of Bravo, with its voyeurism of music stars and colourful posters, was part of this vicarous consumption of Western music, and sated
some of the hunger for banned music.

For the music-hungry in the GDR, every titbit contained in Bravo's pages was considered sacred. "Everyone knows the anecdotes," Rusch writes. "The black market, the false covers of Bohemian horn music, and of course the Bravo posters, which could cost up to a month's salary."

Every song that contained the word "free" became a cult hit in the GDR. Rusch laments that Bob Dylan could not have known the true importance of his 1987 concert in East Berlin, and how disappointing it was for his music-starved audience that he said almost nothing during his performance: "Like it was just another one more point on a long list of irritating
obligations - but for the people there, it was like seeing God."

Still here and not forgotten

Antje Pfeffer of the Youth Archives Project in Berlin, says that presumably the yearning for the music-and sex-education paper was nowhere stronger than in the GDR. The Archives Project documented the German history of the magazine to accompany its 50th anniversary celebrations. Pfeffer herself
grew up in the GDR, and does not recall any smuggling of Bravo but remembers other curious behaviour. She has fond memories of a black and white picture of Rory Gallagher a childhood friend photographed from his copy of Bravo and then sent on to her. The Archives museum is full of such
grainy, overexposed and secretly developed snapshots of Bravo stars and articles.

The subject of Bravo within the GDR was also examined by the magazine itself. In 1967 it published letters from girls from sent from 'over there,' assuring them their names and addresses would not be printed. The letters described how they were approached by middlemen, who offered 12
marks per page and 60 DM for a whole edition.

Of course, there was nothing comparable at the time. Nowadays Bravo is one of many youth magazines, its copycat versions, Popcorn, Pop Rocky and Girl skimming its profits and diluting its circulation. In days past, whoever wanted to have posters of Western stars could not avoid Bravo. Perhaps another reason to be nostalgic for the Cold War: Bravo is now available everywhere but is nowhere near as coveted.

feel almost shy about writing this column. It contains no revelations, no call to arms. No one gets savaged: well, only mildly. The subject is almost inconsequential. Yet it has become an obsession which, at this time of year, forbids me to concentrate for long on anything else.

Though we still subsist largely on junk, even bilious old gits like me are forced to admit that the quality and variety of most types of food sold in Britain has improved. But one kind has deteriorated. You can buy mangoes, papayas, custard apples, persimmons, pomegranates, mangosteens, lychees, rambutans and god knows what else. But almost all the fruit sold here now seems to taste the same: either rock hard and dry or wet and bland. A mango may be ambrosia in India; it tastes like soggy toilet paper in the UK. And the variety of native fruits on sale is smaller than it has been for 200 years.

Why? Most people believe it’s because the supermarkets select for appearance not taste. This might be true for vegetables, but for fruit it’s evidently wrong. Green mangoes, Conference pears, unripe Bramley, Granny Smith or Golden Delicious apples look about as appealing as a shrink-wrapped stool. Appearance has nothing to do with it. What counts to the retailer is how well the variety travels.

Take the Egremont Russet, for example. It’s a small apple that looks like a conker wrapped in sandpaper. But it has one inestimable quality. It can be dropped from the top of Canary Wharf, smash a kerbstone and come to no harm. This means it can be trucked from an orchard at Land’s End to a packing plant in John O’Groats, via Sydney, Washington and Vladivostock, then back to a superstore in Penzance (this is the preferred route for most of the fruit sold in the UK) and remain fit for sale. The supermarkets must have had some trouble shifting it because of its strange appearance, so they promoted it as a connoisseur’s apple. Such is our suggestibility that almost everyone believes this, though a dispassionate tasting would show you that it’s as sweet and juicy as a box of Kleenex.

For the same reason, we are assaulted with Conference pears, most of which resemble some kind of heavy ordnance, rather than any one of a hundred exquisite varieties such as the Durondeau, Belle Julie, Urbaniste, Glou Morceau, Ambrosia, Professeur du Breuil or Althorp Crasanne. It is because these pears are so delicious that they cannot be marketed. They melt in the mouth, which means they would also melt in the truck before it left the farm gate. As the best pears, plums, peaches and cherries are those which go soft and juicy when ripe, the grocers ensure that we never eat them.

To compound the problem, the supermarkets demand that fruit is picked long before it ripens: it doesn’t soften until it rots. This makes great commercial sense. It also ensures that no one in his right mind would want to eat it. But, happily for the retailers, we have forgotten what fruit should taste like. The only way to find out is either to travel abroad or (the low-carbon option) to grow your own. I find myself becoming a fruit evangelist, a fructivist, whose mission is to show people what they are missing.

When I lived in Oxford, at a time when allotments were underused, I spent a week in the Bodleian library reading Hogg and Bull’s Herefordshire Pomona, a massive book of apples and pears, written in the 1870s (you can now buy it on CD from the Marcher Apple Network). Then I cleared two and a half plots and planted the best varieties I could find. I left just as the trees were ready to fruit. But land here in mid-Wales is cheap. I bought half an acre and have started planting a second orchard.

When I first tried to place an order, I caused great excitement among the nurseries I phoned. Where had I seen these apples? Who recommended them? Two of them, I discovered, had been extinct for at least 50 years. So I have had to settle for second best, by which I mean breeds which still exist. I began by planting a Ribston Pippin and an Ashmead’s Kernel. These apples, both exquisite when fully ripe, can be stored from October till May. To spread the fruit as far through the year as possible, I have ordered an apple called the Irish Peach, which ripens in early August; a St Edmund’s Pippin (September) and a Wyken Pippin (December to April). After a long search I think I have pinned down the apple I once tasted and loved in a friend’s garden. I’m pretty confident that it was a Forfar, also know as the Dutch Mignonne, so I’ve bought one of those too. If I’d had more space, I would also have planted a Catshead, a Boston Russet, a Sturmer Pippin and a Reinette Grise.

I have bought two pears - a Seckle and a Beurre Rance - a green plum (the Cambridge Gage), a fig, a medlar, a peach, currants, gooseberries, raspberries, loganberries and blueberries. But what excites me most are the suggestions made by a man called Ken Fern. Once a London bus driver, Fern has spent most of his life cataloguing and growing the edible species of fruit and vegetable which can survive in this country. His list now extends to 7000, some of which are featured in his book Plants for a Future. I’ve decided to buy an Arnold Thorn (Crataegus arnoldiana), which belongs to the same genus as the hawthorn, but grows sweet juicy fruits the size of cherries, and to replace my hedge with Eleagnus x ebbingei, which produces sweet red berries with edible seeds, in (uniquely) April and May. This means, if it works out, that I can eat fresh fruit all the year round. I can store apples and Beurre Rance pears until the Eleagnus fruits, then my strawberries should be ready more or less when it stops. One day when I can afford it I will buy more land and plant a few dozen of the weird species Fern has found.

Most people have less space than I do, but even a tiny garden can support half a dozen apple trees, if you grow them as cordons (single stems with short spurs) 80cm apart against a wall. If you have room for only a couple of pots, you could grow blueberries, strawberries, cranberries or some of the little shrubs Ken Fern recommends, such as Vaccinium praestans and Gaultheria shallon. Or you could become a guerilla planter or guerilla grafter, growing fruit on roadsides, on commons and in parks and wasteland. Apple twigs of any kind can be grafted onto crab trees. Medlars and one breed of pear (a delicious variety called Josephine des Malines) can be grafted onto hawthorn. Kiwi fruit, passion fruit and a vine called Schisandra grandiflora will climb into trees of any kind.

It’s not just the produce I love. When you start growing fruit, you enter a world of recondite knowledge, accumulated over centuries of amateur experiments. You must choose the right rootstocks and pollinators and learn about bees, birds and caterpillars. But above all you must learn patience. Growing fruit forces you to think ahead, to imagine a sweeter future and then to wait. Perhaps it is this, as much as the forgotten flavours, that I have been missing.

This article first appeared in the Guardian newspaper on 2nd September 2008, and [Monbiot.com]