Colombia to the Congo: Lust for Gold Threatens Environment & Human Rights
Gold mining poses a danger to biodiversity and human rights across the globe.
Month: September 2011
Why the Middle East will never be the same again
Source: The Independent
The Palestinians won’t get a state this week. But they will prove – if they get enough votes in the General Assembly and if Mahmoud Abbas does not succumb to his characteristic grovelling in the face of US-Israeli power – that they are worthy of statehood. And they will establish for the Arabs what Israel likes to call – when it is enlarging its colonies on stolen land – “facts on the ground”: never again can the United States and Israel snap their fingers and expect the Arabs to click their heels. The US has lost its purchase on the Middle East. It’s over: the “peace process”, the “road map”, the “Oslo agreement”; the whole fandango is history.
An Interview with Pilar Rodríguez Aranda: 100 Thousand Poets for Change
Mexico City-based poet Pilar Rodríguez Aranda speaks about her work as the Mexico coordinator of the September 24 event, 100,000 Poets for Change.
A Surprise Morning March on Wall Street
Source: The Indypendent
(Photo courtesy of Waging Non Violence)
In the newly-renamed Liberty Plaza, the place that hundreds of protesters have come to call home for the last three days, nothing is quite predictable. At around 6:15 in the morning, those of us sleeping on the plaza’s hard, cold surface got the call to wake up, and someone called for a General Assembly meeting at 7. After people groggily packed up their bedding and lined up for dumpster-dived bagels, the meeting began. Its purpose was a run-down of the day’s events. Committees that were meeting the night before had decided to have marches to Wall Street at 9, 11:30, and 3:30. But then somebody came to the front and announced through the “people’s microphone”—those around him echoed one phrase at a time so others could hear—that he was heading off to march now. Wall Street bankers were walking to work as we were sitting there! He ran off and, immediately, one or two hundred others followed. They marched around the plaza, chanting “Occupy Wall Street! / All Day! All Week!” and then set off heading south on Broadway. The first weekday demonstration of the occupation had begun.
Showdown in Peru: Indigenous Communities Kick Out Canadian Mining Company
“In spite of government repression, if the people decide to bring the fight to the bitter end, it is possible to resist the pressure of mining and oil companies,” said Peruvian activist Yasser Gómez.
The Wall Street Occupation: A Sleep-In Protest in the Shadow of Power
Surrounded by the headquarters of some of the world’s most powerful financial players, over two thousand protesters converged on Wall Street this Saturday.