January 2011 - Page 4 of 6

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in His Own Words

Democracy Now! January 17, 2011 Democracy Now!

Today is the federal holiday that honors Dr. Martin Luther King. He was born January 15th, 1929. He was assassinated April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was just thirty-nine years old. While Dr. King is primarily remembered as a civil rights leader, he also championed the cause of the poor and organized the Poor People’s Campaign to address issues of economic justice. Dr. King was also a fierce critic of US foreign policy and the Vietnam War. We play his “Beyond Vietnam” speech, which he delivered at New York’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967, as well as his last speech, “I Have Been to the Mountain Top,” that he gave on April 3, 1968, the night before he was assassinated. read more

Rewriting the “Tragedy of the Commons”

Bill McKibben January 17, 2011 Bill McKibben

It was two years before the first Earth Day in 1970 when Garrett Hardin penned the famous essay “Tragedy of the Commons,” and it fit a certain bleak and despairing mood of the time.

Sudan: The Price of Separation

Nisrin Elamin January 12, 2011 Nisrin Elamin

All of this week a historic referendum is taking place in which the people of Southern Sudan are casting their votes to determine whether to secede from the North, likely becoming Africa’s newest independent nation.

Latin America: The Decade that Transformed a Continent

Raúl Zibechi January 12, 2011 Raúl Zibechi

Source: Americas Program

In many ways, the first decade of the 21st Century was the flip side of the last decade of the twentieth century in South America. There have been numerous and significant changes. We still don’t know if it’s a glitch in time or a new beginning. In any case, the region will never be the same.

Carlos Menem, Alberto Fujimori, Carlos Andrés Pérez, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Julio María Sanguinetti, Gonzalo Sánchez de Losada, Hugo Bánzer… The names of the figures who dominated the 90s say it all: it was an era of privatization and deregulation, of the unprecedented shrinking of the state, an intense concentration of wealth and a dramatic increase in the presence of transnational corporations. Calculations made by Brazil, where whole sectors of the economy were privatized, estimate that 30% of the Gross National Product changed hands in these years. “A veritable earthquake,” writes the Brazilian sociologist Francisco de Oliveira[1]. read more

Is Lockheed Martin Shadowing You?

William D. Hartung January 12, 2011 William D. Hartung

Have you noticed that Lockheed Martin, the giant weapons corporation, is shadowing you? No? Then you haven't been paying much attention. Let me put it this way: If you have a life, Lockheed Martin is likely a part of it.

India’s Green Party Maverick

Robert Hirschfield January 12, 2011 Robert Hirschfield

Source: In These Times

Subhas Dutta does not look like the man busy fathering the Green Party of India. Balding, with a pencil thin mustache, the legendary green activist looks more like an accountant, which he was trained to be.

Dutta is best known in West Bengal for beating environmental polluters in court. In 2008, the Calcutta High Court ruled in favor of his petition to permanently remove the city’s most toxic vehicles, those more than 15 years old, from the roads. Two-thirds of Calcutta’s air pollution is caused by its 1.2 million vehicles, according to Jayanta Basu of Calcutta’s Telegraph newspaper. read more