July 2011 - Page 4 of 6 - Toward Freedom

Colombia’s Gold Rush

Fault Lines, Al Jazeera July 12, 2011 Fault Lines, Al Jazeera

Gold fever is sweeping across South America. Nowhere is it more lethal than in Colombia, where the gold rush has become a new axle in Colombia’s civil war.

Turf wars are erupting between paramilitaries and leftist rebel groups who are fighting to take control of mining regions. It is fuelling an old ideological conflict that has displaced thousands of people.

Helicopter raids by the Colombian army on small community mining collectives have become commonplace and the Colombian government is accused of targeting poor workers to protect big business interests and committing human rights violations with impunity. read more

Understanding South Sudan’s Independence

Rene Wadlow July 12, 2011 Rene Wadlow

Complexity is a term which is true for all Sudanese life — political, economic, and geographic. The failure to deal creatively with complexity has led to fighting for nearly all of its history.

India’s food security emergency

Vandana Shiva July 12, 2011 Vandana Shiva

Source: Al Jazeera

Corporate influence on food production and large, chemical monoculture farms is causing a severe food insecurity crisis.

The proposed introduction of the Food Security Act by the UPA Government is a welcome and much needed step towards securing the right to food for all of India’s citizens. The right to food is the basis of the right to life, and Article 21 of the Constitution guarantees the right to life of all Indian citizens.

India has emerged as the capital of hunger, illustrated by the fact that per capita consumption has dropped from 178 kg in 1991 – the beginning of the period of economic reforms – to 155 kg in 200-2003. read more

The National Education Association Flunks a Crucial Test

Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer July 12, 2011 Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer

Organized labor has the resources to pursue its own political agenda where it defends the interests of all working people in the face of this current historic corporate attack.

War Without Humans: The Increasing Use of Drones

Barbara Ehrenreich July 12, 2011 Barbara Ehrenreich

Source: Tom Dispatch

For a book about the all-too-human “passions of war,” my 1997 work Blood Rites ended on a strangely inhuman note: I suggested that, whatever distinctly human qualities war calls upon — honor, courage, solidarity, cruelty, and so forth — it might be useful to stop thinking of war in exclusively human terms. After all, certain species of ants wage war and computers can simulate “wars” that play themselves out on-screen without any human involvement. read more

Toward a Post-Growth Society

James Gustave Speth July 11, 2011 James Gustave Speth

It’s business as usual that’s the utopian fantasy, while creating something very new and different is the pragmatic way forward.