Source: In These Times

Less fanatical reactionaries than Gov. Scott Walker and his crew in the Wisconsin legislature would have given up by now.

Protests against Walker and his budget proposals are again rapidly gathering pace, with protesters erecting a “Walkerville” to remind public of the “Hoovervilles” that sprung up among the poor during the Great Depression. Budget hearings have been continually disrupted by nonviolent civil disobedience.

But the Republicans remain undeterred, having found another instrument to institutionalize their pro-corporate agenda. Still hanging on to majorities in both houses and with the state budget intended for passage within the next week or so, GOP politicians are still working to include a few particularly retrograde provisions. read more

Source: Al Jazeera

“The Earth upon which the sea, and the rivers and waters, upon which food and the tribes of man have arisen, upon which this breathing, moving life exists, shall afford us precedence in drinking.”
– Prithvi Sukta, Atharva Veda

Land is life. It is the basis of livelihoods for peasants and indigenous people across the Third World and is also becoming the most vital asset in the global economy. As the resource demands of globalisation increase, land has emerged as a key source of conflict. In India, 65 per cent of people are dependent on land. At the same time a global economy, driven by speculative finance and limitless consumerism, wants the land for mining and for industry, for towns, highways, and biofuel plantations. The speculative economy of global finance is hundreds of times larger than the value of real goods and services produced in the world. read more

The troubled sky reveals
The grief it feels.

These two lines were written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his poem “Snow-Flakes”, published in a volume in 1863 alongside his epic and better-known “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere”. Much of the news chatter this week has been about Sarah Palin’s flubbing of the history of Revere’s famous ride in April 1775. Revere was on a late-night, clandestine mission to alert American revolutionaries of an impending British attack. Palin’s incorrect version had Revere loudly ringing a bell and shooting a gun on horseback as a warning to the British to back off. read more

From The Guardian

Harvard and other major American universities are working through British hedge funds and European financial speculators to buy or lease vast areas of African farmland in deals, some of which may force many thousands of people off their land, according to a new study.

Researchers say foreign investors are profiting from “land grabs” that often fail to deliver the promised benefits of jobs and economic development, and can lead to environmental and social problems in the poorest countries in the world. read more