Land ownership

From the New York Times today:

The definitions of private and state land are complicated, given different administrations of the West Bank going back to the Ottoman Empire, the British mandate, Jordan and now Israel. During the Ottoman Empire, only small areas of the West Bank were registered to specific owners, and often villagers would hold land in common to avoid taxes. The British began a more formal land registry based on land use, taxation or house ownership that continued through the Jordanian period.

Large areas of agricultural land are registered as state land; other areas were requisitioned or seized by the Israeli military after 1967 for security purposes, but such requisitions are meant to be temporary and must be renewed, and do not change the legal ownership of the land, Mr. Dror, the Civil Administration spokesman, said.

As this article implies, land ownership in the Middle East is a major point of contention - though not just in the Occupied Territories. The American model of property and its attendant rights is not by a long shot universal, even among western nations.

Maybe this will raise the profile of this issue as it relates to depressed/nonexistent local economies, social anomie, and the development of insurgencies and terrorism in the middle east. To me, land reform is a fundamental but frequently neglected component of any strategy for addressing the roots of terrorism.

Thanksgiving brings a focus to local food

The Salt Lake Tribune has a series of articles on local and organic food in today's edition:

Buying from local farm takes root in Utah

From farm to feast: How healthful is your meal? How local? How safe?

Avoid the 'Dirty Dozen,' buy organic

It's incredibly vindicating to see these ideas becoming so mainstream. The e coli scare this summer may have been the tipping point, but better that than a more comprehensive disruption in supply from any of a number of other causes.

Supporting local food production should be a no-brainer for our legislators as well; if we should be subsidizing anything, it should be local food systems.