Peasants across Africa are intensifying their struggles against land grabs and other harmful policies that promote industrial agriculture. At a recent international conference organized by the world’s largest peasants movement, Via Campesina, African peasants had opportunities to share their experiences of struggle.
Source: The Nation
How elites on both sides of the political spectrum have undermined our social, political, and environmental commons.
This interview comes from Open Source with Christopher Lydon, a weekly program about arts, ideas and politics. Listen to rest of the conversation with Chomsky here.
For 50 years, Noam Chomsky, has been America’s Socrates, our public pest with questions that sting. He speaks not to the city square of Athens but to a vast global village in pain and now, it seems, in danger.
More than two billion people lack access to clean and safe drinking water, according to a new report released by the World Health Organization. Although significant progress to ensure access to drinking water has been achieved, there is still a long way to go to ensure its quality—deemed free from pollutants and safe for drinking.
The Trump administration is increasing the militarization of Central America while expanding mining, destructive mega-dams, and corporate dispossession of indigenous land. Yet local resistance is growing. "We do not wish to be the experiment of the United States," Guatemalan indigenous leader Miguel de Leon Ceto explained. "We are not animals.”
Source: Common Dreams
As the 16th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan approaches, President Donald Trump is reportedly being pressured by a billionaire financier and a chemical executive to extend the scope of the conflict for one simple, greedy reason: to exploit Afghanistan’s mineral reserves.
According to James Risen and Mark Landler of the New York Times, the Trump administration is “considering sending an envoy to Afghanistan to meet with mining officials” as the president is receiving encouragement from Stephen Feinberg, the billionaire head of DynCorp, and Michael Silver, the head of American Elements, a firm that specializes in “extracting rare-earth minerals.”
Yemen is one of four countries, along with Southern Sudan, Nigeria, and Somalia, set to collectively lose 20 million people this year, one third the death toll of WWII, from conflict-driven famine. The US-backed bombing in Yemen is exacerbating the situation.
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