S. Ushakumari is a horticulturist who has been working with a public interest research organization, Thanal, for the past 22 years. Part of her life’s work is a movement which is sweeping the globe: zero waste.
In early March over a thousand environmentalists and indigenous activists marched 700 kilometers from Ecuador’s southern Amazon region to the capital city of Quito. The activists mobilized to oppose plans for an open-pit copper mine they say will ravage their communities.
Mic check. The “people’s mic” is a tactic used by the 99% Movement to relay messages from a speaker to a vast crowd. This Changes Everything: Occupy Wall Street and the 99% Movement is Occupy Wall Street’s mic check to the “increasingly interested masses.”
From Japan, on the expansion of the Trans-Pacific trade agreement and the homegrown battle to stop it.
Source: CorpWatch Blog
President Barack Obama personally helped Shell obtain authorization to drill for oil in Alaska, according to a 4,678 word front page article in the New York Times. This is a startling break from decades long U.S. policy which regarded the environment in the Arctic region too fragile to tamper with.
“(T)he president concluded that the reward was worth the risk, and created an unusual interagency group, overseen by a midlevel White House aide, to clear Shell’s path through the often fractious federal regulatory bureaucracy,” write John Broder and Clifford Krauss.
Source: Dissent
Is the topic of income inequality “Too Hot for TED“? Controversy has erupted in the past week over this question after a talk planned for the organization’s popular website was pulled at the last minute. The incident has offered an interesting window into the politics of the group.
Here’s what happened: recently, wealthy Seattle-based venture capitalist Nick Hanauer gave a talk challenging the idea that the rich are “job creators.” Countering this concept, he made the demand-side argument that consumer spending is what generates employment, and that more equitable distribution of income, in turn, produces more robust consumer demand.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019