A new government surveillance and intelligence program is being developed by the US National Security Agency in which academics utilize US government-collected online data to predict future events, such as political protests, pandemics, and economic crises—with a focus on Latin America.
Source: The Nation
Months after the Rana Plaza factory disaster, victims’ families have received little to no compensation.
A foreign visitor is never left alone to contemplate the ruins of Rana Plaza. On a searing hot August morning, sorrowful people gathered with fistfuls of documents and pictures, jostling for my attention. They were desperate for some acknowledgment of the daughter, son, wife or husband they had lost when the eight-story factory building pancaked on April 24, crushing more than 1,100 people—most of them garment workers filling orders for Western brands. As the crowd swelled around me, faint pleas became full-throated demands, and I soon found myself backed against the barbed wire fence that fronts the disaster site, now a pool of dark water. My only way out was to write down the name and phone number of each and every person, with a vague assurance that something would be done.
Source: IPS News
(IPS) – Conflicts over water are increasing in the sprawling Pangani River Basin in northeastern Tanzania as farmers and herders jostle for dwindling water resources in the face of climate change.
Over the past decade, Maasai pastoralists from the northern areas of Moshi and Arusha have been streaming towards the basin with tens of thousands of their cattle in search of water and grazing pasture.
Hafsa Mtasiwa, the Pangani district commissioner, told IPS that the Maasais’ traditional land was strained by overuse of water resources and overgrazing. She said in the last three years 2,987 herders with 87,1321 cows and 98,341 goats moved into the basin’s low land, destroying arable land.
Emerging from the airport baggage claim late the following afternoon he crossed to the taxi stand for a lift into town. It would be only minutes to the Hilton and a comfortable room with a commanding view of the waterfront and Lake Champlain. But then he heard his last name being called and noticed a wiry-haired kid holding a cardboard sign with the word “Wolf” on it.
“Instead of foreigners sending us food, they should give us the chance to do our own agriculture so it can survive.” - Rony Charles, a rice grower and member of the Agricultural Producer Cooperative of Verrettes, in Haiti.
Source: The Progressive Magazine
As Lily Tomlin has noted, “No matter how cynical you get, it’s almost impossible to keep up.”
For example, imagine if a prestigious group announced that this year’s “World Environmental Prize” will be awarded to BP for its unique contribution to the ecology of the Gulf of Mexico. Too absurd, you say?
Right, but try this one: An Iowa group announces that the “World Food Prize” will go to Monsanto for pushing its patented, pricey, genetically-tampered Frankenseeds on impoverished lands as an “answer” to global hunger. This would be so morally perverse that the “cyn” in cynical would be spelled S.I.N. Yet, it’s actually happening.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019