Cows graze through garbage at the Deonar landfill site in Mumbai, India. Credit: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg

UN Releases Alarming Report on Global Soil Pollution

Soil pollution is posing a serious threat to our environment, to our sources of food and ultimately to our health. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations warns that there is still a lack of awareness about the scale and severity of this threat. Global production of municipal solid waste was around 1.3 billion tons per year in 2012 and it is expected to rise to 2.2 billion tons annually by 2025.

No Picture

Is Trump’s Abandonment of the Iran Nuke Deal a Prelude to War?

Source: The Nation

President Trump’s decision to abandon the Iran nuclear deal ranks as his most reckless policy move yet. It is also his biggest triumph so far in his continuing bid to reverse or shatter every one of his nemesis-predecessor’s major accomplishments, regardless of the consequences.

And there will be consequences. Some may turn out to be rather narrow, while others could have a global impact. Some may emerge as the direct result of US actions, while others will depend on how other governments and nongovernmental actors respond. Life will almost certainly become more difficult for ordinary Iranians, who are still coping with crippling US-imposed economic sanctions unrelated to the nuclear deal. read more

Riot police agents clash with students in Managua, Nicaragua, during a protest against government reforms. (Inti Ocon / AFP Photo)

Nicaragua’s Protests Transcend Old Political Divides

For Nicaraguan university student Rosa, it was the sheer brutality of the police crackdown that left her terrified in her own country. “I never thought it would be like that,” she said, reflecting on the first time she joined a peaceful protest against proposed social security reforms. Like tens of thousands of other Nicaraguan students, she participated in a wave of demonstrations in mid-April against the Ortega administration’s plans to slash pensions and increase employee contributions to the financially troubled Nicaraguan Institute for Social Security.

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David Graeber on Capitalism’s Endless Busywork

Source: In These Times

David Graeber had a hypothesis. The anthropologist grew up working-class in New York, and while his scholarship garnered accolades, he’s never felt at home in the world of academia. From his time as a professor at Yale (ended prematurely, he believes, due to his anarchist activism) to his current gig at the London School of Economics, he kept running into professional managers who didn’t seem to do much. Over drinks, some confessed they actually didn’t do much; they spent a few hours a week working and the rest browsing cat memes. read more

Palestine's iconic olive trees are key to the local economy. The olives from the 11 million trees across these lands support 100,000 families. LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN/AL JAZEERA

Spirit of the Orchard: A Palestinian Story

Spanning decades and encompassing war, mass exodus, epic migrations and the search for individual and collective identity, The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story tells the story of modern Palestine through the memories of those who have lived it. Ordinary Palestinians have rarely narrated their own history. In this groundbreaking book, acclaimed author Ramzy Baroud draws on dozens of interviews to produce vivid, intimate and beautifully written accounts of Palestinian lives - in villages, refugee camps, prisons and cities, in the lands of their ancestors and in exile.