New film: WWF beds with Monsanto to steal public lands, promote GM crops

By Rady Ananda

“We need to start focusing on food production.  It takes 15 years to bring a genetically engineered product to market. The clock is ticking.  We need to get moving.” ~ Dr Jason Clay, Senior Vice President, World Wildlife Fund, 2010.

A 2011 film by Wilfried Huismann, The Silence of the Pandas, targets the World Wildlife Fund, the largest, most trusted, and best-funded environmental “protection” organization in the world.  Its reputation does not live up to its actions, however, which green wash industries that are destroying the environment as well as indigenous cultures.

POSCO Protest in Pictures: Warren Buffet, TIAA-CREF finance Indian land grab

Lying Down For Justice: The POSCO Satyagraha in Pictures

By POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti
Countercurrents.org

Here is an excerpt from an article by S.G.Vombatkere “Lying Down For Justice Children Show The Way”

“The people and especially the children of Dhinkia, Gadkujang, Govindpur and Nuagaon villages in Jagatsinghpur District in Odisha have shown the nation how people matter over governments’ plans for development of business corporations at their cost. The children ‘illegally’ lay down on the hot earth under in the blazing summer heat and refused to move to allow entry to government officials to take over forest land and their villages for the POSCO mega-project.

“This was in the face of around 1,000 policemen armed with lathis, tear gas and rifles threatening dire consequences if the villages were not vacated, making loudspeaker announcements every 15 minutes. Apprehending night or dawn attack by the police, the people have also been maintaining overnight vigils. This situation prevails not for one or two days but for two weeks, during which normal life in the villages is completely disrupted; the area is essentially in a ‘state of war.’ But the people have been strictly peaceful throughout and have been able to withstand the Odisha government’s terror tactics that work towards the strategy of acquiring the land for POSCO in terms of the MoU signed in 2005.”

BLM considers reopening Grand Canyon to uranium mining: Protest this now

The nation’s crown jewel is about to be destroyed by the nuclear industry. The Bureau of Land Management is accepting public comments here until May 4th.

By Walker Mackay
Salt Lake Tribune

For the past 15 years, I’ve worked as a rafting guide on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. I’ve been privileged to share the wonders of this remarkable place with people from all over the world, and they always tell me that the Grand Canyon is the most amazing place they have ever been. That is why I am concerned about the re-opening of uranium mining on 1 million acres of federal public lands adjacent to Grand Canyon National Park.

Since July 20, 2009, a two-year moratorium disallowing new mining operations has been in effect while the Bureau of Land Management conducted an environmental impact study. A Draft Environmental Impact Statement has been developed that includes four proposed alternatives for management of these lands. The public comment period will end on May 4. It is critical that the BLM hear from all concerned citizens by that date.

Steven Seagal: How many oil spills can we endure?

In the award-winning 1994 film, On Deadly Ground, which Steven Seagal directed and starred in, he plays Forrest Taft, an Alaska oil roughneck who sets out to stop the destruction of the wilderness at the hands of profit-crazed oil barons. The speech is as relevant today as then:

Review of The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century

Review of the book by Michel Chossudovsky and Andrew Gavin Marshall, Editors

By Kéllia Ramares

This is not an ordinary book on financial literacy that will tell people about the differences between banks and credit unions, the role credit scores play in our personal lives, or how to access small business financing. This book is a compilation of essays by some of the most socially conscious political and economic minds of our time, writes Kéllia Ramares.

Arundhati Roy Walks with the Comrades: India’s Resource Wars

Dantewada: Roy with the Maoists

Walking with the Comrades

Gandhians with a Gun? Arundhati Roy plunges into the sea of Gondi people to find some answers.

For every ton of iron ore mined by a private company, the Indian government gets a royalty of Rs 27 and the mining company makes Rs 5,000. In the bauxite and aluminum sector, the figures are even worse. We’re talking about daylight robbery to the tune of billions of dollars. Enough to buy elections, governments, judges, newspapers, TV channels, NGOs and aid agencies. Over the past five years or so, the governments of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa and West Bengal have signed hundreds of Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) with corporate houses, worth several billion dollars, all of them secret, for steel plants, sponge-iron factories, power plants, aluminum refineries, dams and mines. In order for the MoUs to translate into real money, tribal people must be moved. Therefore, this war.

By Arundhati Roy
Outlook India

The terse, typewritten note slipped under my door in a sealed envelope confirmed my appointment with India’s Gravest Internal Security Threat. I’d been waiting for months to hear from them. I had to be at the Ma Danteshwari mandir in Dantewada, Chhattisgarh, at any of four given times on two given days. That was to take care of bad weather, punctures, blockades, transport strikes and sheer bad luck. The note said: “Writer should have camera, tika and coconut. Meeter will have cap, Hindi Outlook magazine and bananas. Password: Namashkar Guruji.”