Fuente: In The Subject

Video realizado por IN THE SUBJECT para Razon Publica.

Article published in Amauta with permission from the author

by David Sirota

Out of all the famous quotations, few better describe this eerily familiar time than those attributed to George Santayana and Yogi Berra. The former, a philosopher, warned that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The latter, a baseball player, stumbled into prophecy by declaring, “It’s deja vu all over again.” Read the full story

Article published in Amauta with permission from the author

Source: The Independent

We’ll never know the names of all the people who paid with their limbs, their lungs or their lives for the goodies in my home and yours

by Johann Hari

At first, this isn’t going to sound like a good news story, never mind one of the most inspiring stories in the world today. But trust me: it is. Yan Li spent his life tweaking tiny bolts, on a production line, for the gadgets that make our lives zing and bling. He might have pushed a crucial component of the laptop I am writing this article on, or the mobile phone that will interrupt your reading of it. He was a typical 27-year-old worker at the gigantic Foxconn factory in Shenzen, Southern China, which manufactures i-Pads and Playstations and mobile-phone batteries. Read the full story

Eva Carazo
eva@semillaslibres.org

En un foro sobre reactivación económica, organizado por Flacso y la Fundación Konrad Adenauer, expuse que la economía debería de dejar de ser un tema únicamente de “expertos”: si afecta cómo vivimos todas las personas, entonces se vale que todos los y las afectadas digamos algo al respecto.

Según Wikipedia “La economía es la ciencia social que estudia las relaciones sociales que tienen que ver con los procesos de producción, intercambio, distribución y consumo de bienes y servicios, entendidos estos como medios de satisfacción de necesidades humanas y resultado individual y colectivo de la sociedad”. Read the full story

Illustration by Tim Bower (for Rolling Stone)

Article published in Amauta with permission from TomDispatch and the author

Source: TomDispatch

Three Steps to Establish a Politics of Global Warming

by Bill McKibben

Try to fit these facts together:

* According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the planet has just come through the warmest decade, the warmest 12 months, the warmest six months, and the warmest April, May, and June on record. Read the full story

por Alfredo Jalife-Rahme

Fuente: La Jornada

Antecedentes: baste recordar en el “México neoliberal” el papel letal que jugó el banco multigenocida Goldman Sachs (GS) durante el Fobaproa/IPAB –un Vietnam financiero, según el cordobista Zedillo (uno de sus conspicuos cómplices)– cuyos pagarés, que tienen postrado al país, fueron firmados ilegalmente por el israelí-argentino (ni siquiera fungía como “mexicano”) Martín Werner Wainfeld, quien luego fue doblemente gratificado como “socio” de GS en México y codueño de banca Mifel, este en apariencia un inocuo cuan diminuto banco comunitario que llama la atención ostente una sucursal relevante en Metepec, asiento de la cárcel de alta seguridad (sic) de Almoloya (ver Bajo la Lupa, 2/5/10, y La Lupa Política, Voces del Periodista, Núm. 207). Read the full story

(Photo: lewishamdreamer / Flickr)

Article published in Amauta with permission from the author

by John Pilger

Tony Blair must be prosecuted, not indulged like his mentor Peter Mandelson. Both have produced self-serving memoirs for which they have been paid fortunes. Blair’s will appear next month and earn him £4.6 million. Now, consider Britain’s Proceeds of Crime Act. Blair conspired in and executed an unprovoked war of aggression against a defenseless country, which the Nuremberg judges in 1946 described as the “paramount war crime.” This has caused, according to scholarly studies, the deaths of more than a million people, a figure that exceeds the Fordham University estimate of deaths in the Rwandan genocide. Read the full story

Article published in Amauta with permission from TomDispatch

Source: TomDispatch

Oil Soldier, Nicolas Lampert (justseeds.org)

The Gulf Coast Joins an Oil-Soiled Planet

by Ellen Cantarow

If you live on the Gulf Coast, welcome to the real world of oil — and just know that you’re not alone.  In the Niger Delta and the Ecuadorian Amazon, among other places, your emerging hell has been the living hell of local populations for decades.

Even as I was visiting those distant and exotic spill locales via book, article, and YouTube, you were going through your very public nightmare.  Three federal appeals court judges with financial and other ties to big oil were rejecting the Obama administration’s proposed drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico.  Pollution from the BP spill there was seeping into Lake Pontchartrain, north of New Orleans. Clean-up crews were discovering that a once-over of beaches isn’t nearly enough: somehow, the oil just keeps reappearing. Endangered sea turtles and other creatures were being burnt alive in swaths of ocean (“burn fields”) ignited by BP to “contain” its catastrophe.  The lives and livelihoods of fishermen and oyster-shuckers were being destroyed.  Disease warnings were being issued to Gulf residents and alarming toxin levels were beginning to be found in clean-up workers. Read the full story

Traducción en español abajo

Article published in Amauta with permission from the author

Source: The Guardian

Protesters stand behind BP CEO Tony Hayward, as he arrives on Capitol Hill to answer questions about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. (Photograph: Haraz Ghanbari/AP)

Top executives at BP, Massey, Goldman Sachs et al might have acted more responsibly if they had faced the prospect of jail time

by Dean Baker

While BP has taken some heat over its spill in the Gulf, it is remarkable how limited the anger actually is. Many defenders of the company have made the obvious point: it was an accident. BP did not intend to have a massive spill that killed 11 people, devastated the Gulf ecosystem and threatens the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of workers.

Of course this is true, but it is also true that a drunk driver who runs into a school bus did not intend to be involved in a fatal collision. As a society, we have no problem holding the drunk driver responsible for a predictable outcome of their recklessness. Driving while drunk dramatically increases the risk of an accident. This is why it is punished severely. A person who is responsible for a fatal accident while driving drunk can expect to face many years in jail. Even someone who drives drunk without being in an accident often faces jail time because of the risk they imposed on others. Read the full story

Artículo publicado en Amauta con permiso y por medio de Centro para el Desarrollo Indígena (CEDIN)

Pabru Presberi

Manifiesto firmado por más de ochenta personas representantes de comunidades, incluido un numeroso grupo de Alto Urén, donde realizamos la primera inspección de la ruta ilegal de la minería entre el 19 y 22 de mayo 2010.  Por primera vez se llegó  hasta Tsiùbata, en la parte más alta de la zona donde fue construido un helipuerto clandestino para extraer muestras de rocas con minerales (días después se realizó otra gira con participación de la policía de la zona).

Nosotros (as), pobladores de los territorios indígenas Bribri, Cabecar , Keköldí, Gnobes-bouglé,  reunidos en Bribri el 27 de junio del 2010, nos levantamos para recuperar y hacer valer nuestros derechos ancestrales y otros como el Convenio 169 de la OIT y la Ley Indígena nacional, ante los atropellos que se dan en contra nosotro-as por parte del Estado, compañías privadas nacionales y transnacionales, que violentando las leyes que nos amparan, incursionan en los territorios indígenas con o sin permisos y de manera ilegal.

Entre las principales amenazas que enfrentamos los pueblos de Talamanca están: Read the full story