In economic news here at home, the number of Americans receiving food stamps has reached a new record of nearly 40 million, or about one in eight Americans. The number has increased by 8 million since December 2008.
"Everything we owned got smashed. We lost everything." Getro Nelio was not referring to the devastating earthquake of January 12. The unemployed, 24-year-old Haitian was speaking about losing his home a second time in three months, on this occasion due to the government. Since late March, armed Haitian police have been closing camps and destroying the shelters that quake victims created out of whatever supplies they could scavenge, from cardboard to small strips of tin. U.N. troops sometimes aid in the evictions.Getro Nelio, Top Tight
In her new book, Green Gone Wrong, Heather Rogers interrogates the efficacy of what is offered to consumers by the Green Marketplace: organic and fair-trade foods, eco-architecture, bio-fuels, hybrid automobiles, and carbon offsets. Going beyond the soundbytes and slogans of corporate greenwashing and inconvenient half-truths, Green Gone Wrong paints a vivid and disturbing reality of environmentalism in the 21st Century.
The 7.3 earthquake which struck Haiti on January 12 was only the start of Haiti's most recent catastrophe. It has been followed by an ever-deepening social and economic crisis for those whose survival was precarious before the quake, especially among the 1.3 million who were left homeless or displaced. Haitian Tent Camp
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