US Accused of Pressuring India to Drop Bhopal Claims

The Obama administration is being accused of leveraging millions in development aid to pressure the Indian government for leniency on the company responsible the 1984 Bhopal industrial gas disaster that left an estimated 15,000 people dead. The company, Union Carbide, is now a subsidiary of Dow Chemical. Dow has faced calls to clean up the contaminated site, increase compensation for victims, and fund studies to assess damages to the environment and public health. India has also demanded the extradition of former Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson, who fled India shortly after his arrest in the disaster’s aftermath. In a newly disclosed letter to an Indian government official, White House Deputy National Security Adviser Michael Froman appears to link US support for World Bank loans to India with India’s cooperation in easing up on Dow. Froman writes, "We are hearing a lot of noise about the Dow Chemical issue. I trust that you are monitoring it carefully. I am not familiar with all the details, but I think we want to avoid developments which put a chilling effect on our investment relationship." The White House hasn’t denied the email’s authenticity, but says it sees the two issues as unrelated.

Kashmir Youth and the Argument for Stones

Stone in my Hand-- to Kashmir (this is what democracy looks like)

Killings in Kashmir by Indian Forces Spark Protests.

Maoist Insurgency Trips Up Rising India

Mining, critical for India’s growth as a global power, erodes traditional livelihoods and fuels armed struggle

LONDON: The Maoist insurgency raging through India’s rural heartlands has come to dominate the domestic security agenda in recent months, but this internal struggle for power should also be seen as a vicious by-product of India’s emergence as a global player.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh repeatedly describes the Maoists – otherwise known as Naxalites after the town of Naxalbari in north India, where the movement’s first uprising took place in 1967 – as India’s “gravest internal security threat.” That much of India’s mineral potential exists in its poorest regions, where the Maoists are strongest, represents a direct threat to the country’s growth trajectory at a time when it struggles to meet demand for coal, iron ore, steel and other commodities.

Although the Naxalite movement is somewhat diffuse, the primary threat comes from the Communist Party of India (Maoist), led by a Politburo of 13 members, with an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 fighters and pockets of influence in at least 20 of India’s 28 states. A series of high-profile attacks dominated the news in 2010, including a 6 April ambush in the state of Chhattisgarh that left 76 paramilitaries dead and a 28 May train derailment by a Maoist-affiliated group that killed 148 civilians.

Myth of GMOs- vandana shiva

The Green Revolution has been a failure. It has led to reduced genetic diversity, increased vulnerability to pests, soil erosion, water shortages, reduced soil fertility, micronutrient deficiencies, soil contamination, reduced availability of nutritious food crops for the local population, the displacement of vast numbers of small farmers from their land, rural impoverishment and increased tensions and conflicts. The beneficiaries have been the agrochemical industry, large petrochemical companies, manufacturers of agricultural machinery, dam builders and large landowners.
The “miracle” seeds of the Green Revolution have become mechanisms for breeding new pests and creating new diseases.

Study: Half the World’s Poor Live in South Asia

A new study says more than half of the world’s poor live in South Asia, while a quarter live in Africa. According to the UN’s new multidimensional poverty index, there are more poor people in eight states in India than in all of sub-Saharan Africa.

Delhi survey suggests women 'unsafe' in city

Two in every three women in the Indian capital have faced some form of sexual harassment in the last year, a government-backed study has suggested.

Delhi women face continuous and different forms of sexual harassment in crowded and secluded places, it says.

news?

Oil From BP Spill Reaches Texas

Oil from the BP Deepwater Horizon spill has reached Texas for the first time, more than 75 days after the oil spill began. Tar balls were spotted Monday at a pair of Texas beaches. Nearly 500 miles of coastline in the Gulf of Mexico, from Texas to Florida, have now been contaminated. Tar balls and oil sheen have also been spotted in Louisiana’s Lake Pontchartrain, the large body of water north of New Orleans that is connected to the Gulf of Mexico.

Mother Jones Magazine-- STOP BLAMING THE POOR

This Earth Day, Tell Mother Jones (and everyone else) to End the Population Panic

I want Earth Day to be a time for people to think and take action about the absurd global inequalities that force the poorest nations and the poorest people in all nations to carry the heaviest burden of pollution, food and water insecurity, and climate change-related disasters. I want people to think about what governments, industries, institutions, and systems are responsible for this mess.
Mother Jones, which I thought I could count on to support me in this view, decided to go a different route.  Their newest issue instead focuses on the "population crisis" and the dangerous myth that poor, brown people and their babies are the biggest threat to our planet.

I was in a bit of disbelief at first and was somewhat relieved to see quotes like "Mention population, and discussion goes straight to the teeming Third World masses--never mind that an American's carbon footprint is 23 times that of an Indian" in the Editors' Note.  You'd think that with a beginning like that the feature story might be about the disproportionate consumption levels of developed countries, right?


Article Availble Feministing.org

Avatar: Real Beyond Graphics

The impressive realness of the movie avatar is not in its incredible graphic technology and C.G.I. but in its story. One needs only a brief survey of history to see the legacy of this theme; look at Tasmania, Australia, Congo, South Africa, North America, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Japan, Chile, Brazil and Iraq just to name a random few. Indigenous populations who, like the Na’vi, are poor (in the way we understand value, mainly income and material-wealth), less militarized, more communal and whose knowledge is devalued, for it’s not empirically backed are taken advantage of. One can't compete with the resources of the powerful. Within Inequality and power Democracy does not function nor exist, especially in the presence of a military state. How do you stand up for yourself your people your cause in the midst’s of 771 Billion dollars of military spending a year? (41.5% of the world’s total military spending distantly followed by the China with 5.8% of world share, France with 4.5%, the U.K. with 4.5% and Russia with 4%. Or how do you stand up for yourself your people your cause in the midst’s of a monopoly on all economic activity (World Bank, World Trade Organizations…structural adjustments and the free market). How do you stand up for yourself your people your cause in the midst’s of though control on that can make you, your people and your cause anything they want (Savage, Communist, Terrorist ect. FEAR, FEAR, FEAR!)…and how do you stand up and fight for yourself your people your cause while your children go hungry and your environment is depleted?

It would be nice to pretend that that the Avatar story was just mere story on a screen: to enjoy, experience and be wooed by but it is a story that continues:

La Via Campesina
Durban Shack Dwelers
The National Family Farm Coalition
Movimento dos Trabalhadores sem Terra
Argentina Kraft Unions
The Indigenous Peoples Network
Indigenous Activists Criticize Proposed deal to save Rain forests.

Peruvian Police Accused of Massacring Indigenous Protesters in Amazon Jungle
Yaqui Indian pueblo of Potam in Sonora, Mexico and Petrochemicals
No Olympic Games on Stolen Ground
Australian Aborigines Nuclear Ground
Native American Land struggle.
Detailed List of Peasant Movements world wide

Book: new world on indigenous resistance


( This is a short list I generated off the top of my head...plenty more struggles to discuss these are just resent ones


Sadly when people leave the movie theater, deposit there 3D glasses and pitch their bags of butter and un-popped kernels they will think little of the story at large. We can find it in our hearts to care and be moved by the struggle of blue people but shades of brown (and white) we don't care for so much.