East Africa at the Brink: Hidden Hands Behind Sudan’s Oil War
Whatever hidden hands that continue to exploit Sudan’s woes now need to be exposed and isolated.
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Albany, CA: Activists raise stakes with renegade farm
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
A tussle between preservationists and UC Berkeley over a decadelong development project in Albany erupted into a pitchfork protest Sunday, when activists planted a renegade farm on a plot of land known as the Gill Tract in an effort to keep it agriculturally pristine.
Timing their action to Earth Day, about 200 members of Occupy the Farm to Take Back the Gill Tract broke a lock on a gate, rototilled the soil and planted carrot, broccoli and corn seedlings on part of the 10-acre site at Marin and San Pablo avenues. The Albany tract is owned by UC Berkeley, which has plans for further housing and commercial development nearby.
Greenwashing Walmart
Source: CorpWatch Blog
Is Walmart going green? Mike Duke, the company’s CEO, says in a new 126 page report that the company is becoming more sustainable and responsible while “building meaningful, long-term change.” Activists disagree. Walmart’s “environmental impact has only grown over the last seven years” they say in a counter-report. Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price movie poster
Walmart, based in Bentonville, Arkansas, runs giant discount retail stores that sell consumer goods at rock bottom prices. It has grown to become the world’s largest private employer with 2011 sales of $421.85 billion. The company has been a major target for union activists like United Food and Commercial Workers which started the Wake Up Wal-Mart campaign and the Service Employees International Union which started Walmart Watch (The two unions have since merged and so has the campaign) It was also the subject of a critical film: “The High Cost of Low Price” produced by Robert Greenwald in 2005.
Wallerstein: Limping Out of Afghanistan
The two candidates for the U.S. presidency seem to be trying to outshout each other concerning Iran, Syria, and Israel/Palestine. Each is claiming he is doing more to support the same objectives. Isn’t it therefore strange that no similar verbal contest is going on at the moment concerning Afghanistan?
Not so long ago, we were witness to the same Democratic-Republican game about Afghanistan. Which party was the more macho? Remember the concept that a “surge” in troops would win the war, a concept embraced by President Obama in his speech to the U.S. Military Academy in December 2009. Now all of a sudden, since March 2012, it seems to have become a subject no one wants to espouse too loudly.
Vermont Yankee: A Nuclear Battle Over States’ Rights
Source: In These Times
It was a 40th birthday bash attended by more than 1,000 people in three states–but the attendees came to demonstrate, not celebrate. The Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, a poster child for anti-nuclear protests throughout its four-decade history, was the target. Only the day before, on March 21, its state permit to operate expired and the legislature voted to shut it down. But the power plant was still operating.
The protest brought demonstrators (“Hell no, we won’t glow”) to Vermont Yankee’s owner, the Entergy Corporation, and its offices in Brattleboro, Vt., White Plains, N.Y., and corporate headquarters in New Orleans. There, they put up a yellow crime tape outside the building and went inside to demand an interview with CEO J. Wayne Leonard.
Brazil’s Landless Movement: Without Firing an Arm, We Created a Revolution
“We take the land from one hand and put it in the hands of a thousand... landowners would only use this land for cattle, and now we produce beans, milk, food, for the entire population.” – Ilda Martines de Souza, a leader of Brazil’s landless farmer movement.