Month: February 2011

Source: Inter Press Service

Kanya D’Almeida interviews U.S. scholar and organiser JOEL KOVEL

(IPS) – As the powerful collective energy continues to surge through Dakar, veterans of the World Social Forum (WSF) are taking a moment to examine the history, trajectory and future of the alternative global movement.

Widely considered the father of the fast-growing Ecosocialist movement, Joel Kovel has played a leading role in the WSF since 2003, following the movement from Mumbai to Nairobi to Belem. read more

Source: Truthout

After a good start, the Obama administration’s response to the democratic revolution in Egypt has begun to exude the odor of betrayal. Now distancing itself from the essential demand of the protesters that the dictator must go, the administration has fallen back on the sordid option of backing a new and improved dictatorship.

Predictably, it is one guided by a local strongman long entrusted by the CIA, Vice President Omar Suleiman, described by U.S. officials in the WikiLeaks cables as a “Mubarak consigliere.” The script is out of an all-too-familiar playbook: Pick this longtime chief of Egyptian intelligence who has consistently done our bidding in matters of torture, and retrofit him as a modern democratic leader. But this time the Egyptian street will not meekly go along. read more

Source: Truthout

After nearly five years of legal and regulatory battles, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has fully deregulated Monsanto’s Roundup Ready alfalfa that is genetically modified (GM) to be resistant to Roundup herbicide.

The decision squashed a proposed compromise between the biotech industry and its opponents that would have placed geographic restrictions on Roundup Ready alfalfa to prevent organic and traditional alfalfa from being contaminated by herbicide sprays and transgenes spread by cross-pollination and other factors. read more