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The shocking connection between doomsday maps and billionaire land acquisitions

16th June 2017

From Forbes Magazine: With all of the knowledge of future mapping, do the world’s financial leaders know something we don’t? Consider how many of the richest families have been grabbing up massive amounts of farmland around the world. All property far away from coastal areas and in locations conducive to self-survival, farming and coal mining….

Now five men own almost as much wealth as half the world’s population

14th June 2017

From AlterNet: Last year it was eight men, then down to six, and now almost five. The world’s richest five men now own over $400 billion in wealth. On average, each man owns nearly as much as 750 million people. The super-rich are absconding with our wealth, and the plague of inequality continues to grow….

A scene after violent clashes between farmers and the police at Pipliya in Mandsaur district of Madhya Pradesh

PTI

Ground Report: How demonetisation brought MP farmers onto streets

13th June 2017

This series of timely reports from Hindustan Times surveys the explosive situation in Madhya Pradesh’s Mandsaur district, epicenter of the violent protests that left six farmers dead from police bullets. The lead article looks at the impact of demonetisation in creating the crisis, while another report examines the role of social media in organising farmers….

AFP

Harsh Singh Lohit: Why do farmers protest?

12th June 2017

Why, please ask yourself, does the city get 24 hour electricity, schools, colleges, dispensaries, hospitals, roads, public transport, even cooking gas and the village either not at all or services that are a pale shadow of their urban selves? Why this inequality in allocation of resources, even though 68.84% of Indians live in rural areas?…

Vehicles set on fire by agitating farmers in Madhya Pradesh on June 7, 2017.

Why a bountiful harvest drove farmers to despair and anger

10th June 2017

IndiaSpend reports: A plentiful harvest in 2016 and imports drive some prices down 63%. A shortage of cash because of demonetisation. Despite Rs 3.5 lakh crore– invested over six decades to 2011, more than half of all farms depend on rains. These are the three factors agitating India’s 90 million families who depend on farming….

How do you ‘degrow’ an economy, without causing chaos?

29th May 2017

Jonathan Rutherford writes: Reducing societal consumption –degrowing the economy– need not necessarily result in chaotic economic breakdown. This is indeed an inevitable outcome within our present economic system, but possibly not others. What then would be required to contract the economy, in an orderly and fair way? A possible answer, from the ‘Simpler Way’ perspective….

Bookshelf: Scarcity – Humanity’s Last Chapter?

28th May 2017

Richard Reese writes: In ‘Scarcity: Humanity’s Final Chapter?’ Christopher O. Clugston analyses 89 key non-renewable resources that are essential to the existence of our industrial global society, and finds that 63 of them have peaked globally. His conclusion is that the only possible outcome for a society that is dependent on these resources, is collapse….

A mega power plant would have eliminated Vilambur's strong local economy that includes charcoal producers

Dhruv Malhotra © Wilson

Ground Report: India’s slow but sure shift away from coal

27th May 2017

Keith Schneider writes: It is almost impossible for a single place to embody the full array of emerging factors around climate, carbon, water, finance, culture and cleaner technology that have utterly changed how India and the world view the value and risks of coal. But if such a place exists, it’s Vilambur in Tamil Nadu….

Breakwater being constructed for Adani's Vizhinjam port

Dredgingtoday.com

Sagarmala: The Rs 10 trillion project that is wrecking India’s coast

24th May 2017

From DNA: Sagarmala is the Indian Government’s Rs 10 lakh crore programme to build Coastal Economic Zones (CEZ) and industrial clusters around 14 key ports. But, the Sagarmala plan document lays out its goals as if the coast has been an empty or unproductive space, and is now poised to be a “gateway” to growth….

Study: What 10 years of smartphone use means for the planet

We’re all on track to use at least 29 phones in our lifetimes. This rapid turnover of devices leads to record profits for smartphone manufacturers year after year. It also leads to many damaging impacts on people and our planet. Greenpeace USA’s new report, ‘From Smart to Senseless’, explores the high cost of smartphone use….

India’s outsized coal plans would wipe out Paris climate goals

21st May 2017

The Wire reports: If India builds all its proposed coal-based power plants, then it might not fulfill its promise made under the Paris climate agreement, says a new study conducted by CoalSwarm. The country is currently the fourth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, and its largely-coal-based energy sector contributes two-thirds of those emissions….

William Mitchelle/Meme Super

Why India’s Competition Commission must stop the Dow and DuPont merger

20th May 2017

From The Wire: The Competition Commission of India (CCI) is currently assessing the likely adverse effects on competition of the proposed merger of Dow Chemical and DuPont. If it goes through, the merger will create the world’s biggest chemical and materials company. But there are a dozen reasons and more why it must be stopped….

What the data tells us about ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas’

19th May 2017

From TheWire: Public memory in India is amnesiac. Still, it is difficult to forget that Narendra Modi rode to power in 2014 on the plank of promoting development, aptly captured by ‘Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas’. Three years down the line, it’s time to take stock. These findings seriously question the Modi government’s record so far….

Danomyte/Shutterstock

Luddites have been getting a bad rap for 200 years. Turns out, they were right

From Quartz.com: The Luddites were the bands of English workers who destroyed machinery, especially in cotton mills, which they believed was threatening their jobs. As machine learning and robotics consume manufacturing and white-collar jobs alike, New York Times journalist Clive Thompson revisits the Luddite’s history to see what the 200-year-old workers’ rebellion can teach us….

Overdose: The Next Financial Crisis

18th May 2017

From Journeyman Pictures: The financial storm of 2008 began brewing in when the US congress pushed the idea of home ownership for all. When it all went wrong, they opted for gargantuan bailouts for the big banks. This documentary offers fresh insight into the greatest economic crisis of our age: the one still awaiting us….

Here’s why bottled water is one of the biggest scams of the century

14th May 2017

From Business Insider: Some of us get our water for free from the tap. The rest pay for it – at the cost of roughly $US100 billion a year. But there are plenty of reasons to stop buying bottled water. Read on to find out all the things you didn’t know about your drinking water….

Avijit Pathak: I’m not a Marxist, but I’m grateful for Marx

9th May 2017

Karl Marx was possibly the founder of the most appealing secular religion in modern times. On his birth anniversary I hear a call from within; I feel like paying homage to the prophet of modern times. Though I’m not a Marxist, the oceanic currents in his thinking continue to fascinate students and wanderers like me….

Why the Asian Development Bank is facing a hundred protests in India this month

4th May 2017

A 100 actions of protest will be held across the country between May 1 – 7, 2017 to mark the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the ADB, highlighting the gross human rights violations, loss of livelihood, and environmental destructions caused by the ‘development model’ being pushed by ADB and its ilk, using public money….

Here come the robots – And they’re going to take our jobs

28th April 2017

Michael Snyder writes: What in the world are we going to do with billions of human workers around the globe that are no longer needed when technology takes virtually all of our jobs? Some have suggested that society will evolve into a socialist utopia; others see a dystopian future with greater inequality than ever before….

How vulture capitalism is swallowing the world

22nd April 2017

“What you see in a lot of countries is a predatory capitalism, from Afghanistan to Pakistan to Australia, which show the corporations that are involved in the neo-liberal agenda, an agenda that has been implemented without really any public consent. This is happening, I would argue, almost by stealth,” says author and journalist Anthony Lowenstein….