If Katrina pulled back the curtain on the reality of racism in America, the BP disaster pulls back the curtain on something far more hidden: how little control even the most ingenious among us have over the awesome, intricately interconnected natural forces with which we so casually meddle. BP cannot plug the hole in the Earth that it made. Obama cannot order fish species to survive, or brown pelicans not to go extinct (no matter whose ass he kicks). No amount of money – not BP's recently pledged $20bn (£13.5bn), not $100bn – can replace a culture that has lost its roots. And while our politicians and corporate leaders have yet to come to terms with these humbling truths, the people whose air, water and livelihoods have been contaminated are losing their illusions fast.

Cultures that do not recognize that human life and the natural world have a sacred dimension, an intrinsic value beyond monetary value, cannibalize themselves until they die. They ruthlessly exploit the natural world and the members of their society in the name of progress until exhaustion or collapse, blind to the fury of their own self-destruction. The oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico, estimated to be perhaps as much as 100,000 barrels a day, is part of our foolish death march. It is one more blow delivered by the corporate state, the trade of life for gold. But this time collapse, when it comes, will not be confined to the geography of a decayed civilization. It will be global. These deformed individuals lack the capacity for empathy. They are at once banal and dangerous. They possess the peculiar ability to organize vast, destructive bureaucracies and yet remain blind to the ramifications. The death they dispense, whether in the pollutants and carcinogens that have made cancer an epidemic, the dead zone rapidly being created in the Gulf of Mexico, the melting polar ice caps or the deaths last year of 45,000 Americans who could not afford proper medical care, is part of the cold and rational exchange of life for money.

We got our troops there remarkably quickly. We're quite capable of removing them at a similar pace. We could, that is, leave. There are, undoubtedly, better and worse ways of doing this, ways that would further penalize the societies we've invaded, and ways that might be of some use to them, but either way we could go.

Fuente: Conferencia Mundial de los Pueblos sobre el Cambio Climático y los Derechos de la Madre Tierra 22 de Abril Cochabamba, Bolivia Hoy, nuestra Madre Tierra está herida y el futuro de la humanidad está en peligro. De incrementarse el calentamiento global en más de 2º C, a lo que nos conduciría el llamado “Entendimiento de Copenhague” existe [...]

Article published in Amauta with permission from TomDispatch Source: TomDispatch by Rebecca Solnit These days, I see how optimistic and positive disaster and apocalypse movies were. Remember how, when those giant asteroids or alien space ships headed directly for Earth, everyone rallied and acted as one while our leaders led? We’re in a movie like that now, except [...]

Fuente: La Jornada por Guillermo Almeyra Con gran bambolla y campaña mediática, Barack Obama quiere hacer creer que está trabajando por la paz y contra la posibilidad de una guerra nuclear. El reciente premio Nobel de la Guerra, quien ha enviado más soldados a Afganistán que Bush, ha incluido a Pakistán en el blanco de sus ataques, [...]

Fuente: In These Times Traducción: María Valdés, CEPRID por Arundhati Roy 18 de enero, 2010 Las colinas bajas del sur de Orissa han sido el hogar de la kondh Dongria mucho antes de que hubiese un país llamado India o en un estado llamado Orissa. Las colinas vigilaban a los kondh. Los kondh adoraban las deidades que viven en [...]

Fuente: Página/12 Hay zonas enteras aisladas, pueblos que prácticamente dejaron de existir y puertos arrasados por las olas. Los apagones siguen siendo masivos y regiones enteras no tienen teléfonos. Hay miles de heridos y hospitales desbordados. por Carlos Rodríguez 28 de febrero, 2010 El sismo de 8,8 grados en la escala de Richter que sacudió en la madrugada de [...]

Article published in Amauta with permission from the author by Beverly Bell The downtown, around Grand Rue in the old part of the city, looks like a modern-day variant of Pompei. Nothing but ruins.  Here the tall buildings didn’t even pancake; they just crumbled. It’s ghostly, with no electricity or cars and few people. Those who are out [...]

Source: The Nation Traducción en español abajo by Naomi Klein February 11, 2010 If we are to believe the G-7 finance ministers, Haiti is on its way to getting something it has deserved for a very long time: full “forgiveness” of its foreign debt. In Port-au-Prince, Haitian economist Camille Chalmers has been watching these developments with cautious optimism. Debt [...]