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corporate criminality

CLIMATE CRISIS

Just 90 companies caused two-thirds of man-made global warming emissions

11th January 2017

Suzanne Goldenberg reports: The climate crisis of the 21st century has been caused largely by just 90 companies, which between them produced nearly two-thirds of the greenhouse gas emissions generated since the dawning of the industrial age, new research suggests. They range from investor-owned firms –household names such as Exxon and BP– to state-owned firms….

Conflict/Dispossession

The Jharkhand Model of Development: Resources for investors, bullets for villagers

29th December 2016

When seven deaths have not stirred the government’s conscience, Rai is convinced that the resistance is futile. “The worst pain in the world is the pain of being displaced,” said Rai. “But the fact is neither political protests nor public demand can stop displacement. We’ll have to leave this village, our fields and our history.”…

Economy

David Korten: From serving money to serving life: A sacred story for our time

8th November 2016

When we get our story wrong, we get our future wrong. Much like the Trans-Pacific Partnership “trade deal”, everything we’re told about capitalism and our economy is a pack of lies. Time for a new story, says preeminent scholar and critic of corporate globalization, David Korten, the best-selling author of ‘When Corporations Rule the World’….

Food/Farming

Pope Francis slams biotech industry and GMOs on World Food Day

22nd October 2016

“Producing qualities that may give excellent results in the laboratory may be advantageous for some, but have ruinous effects for others. And the principle of caution is not enough, as very often it is limited to not allowing something to be done, whereas there is a need to act in a balanced and honest way.”…

Food/Farming

Are we working harder to make India’s farmers suffer?

20th September 2016

Suraj Kumar Thube writes: Much of the naturalisation of the suicides has also got to do with the urban perception of rural areas and rural lifestyles. The oriental imagination still does not cease to colonise our minds in terms of perceiving the rural as a stagnant and unchanging space characterised by divisive notions of caste-consciousness….

Health/Safety

Landmark NGT judgments hold private firms, not god or government, responsible

17th September 2016

Nehmat Kaur writes: The National Green Tribunal covered new ground for the ‘polluter pays’ principle by invoking it in two landmark judgments recently. Activists are hopeful that this will help deter corporations from functioning with impunity, under the cover of governmental apathy. The judgments in both cases acknowledged governmental inaction in dealing with environmental damage….

Education/Awareness

Exposed: The global super court that rules the world

12th September 2016

A parallel legal universe, open only to corporations and largely invisible to everyone else, helps executives convicted of crimes escape punishment. In this court, a nation that tries to prosecute a corrupt CEO or ban dangerous pollution can be sued for millions, even billions of dollars for ‘interfering with profits’. A investigative series from BuzzFeed….

Economy

Mike Maloney: This is the financial peak

5th September 2016

Monetary historian Mike Maloney says in this podcast: Within the next few years you’re going to see probably the greatest crash in history. I have often said that the crisis of 2008 was just a speed bump on the way to the main event. We are in the process right now of seeing this unwind….

Conflict/Dispossession

The global farm land grab in 2016: How big, how bad?

18th July 2016

In 2008, GRAIN exposed how a new wave of land grabbing was sweeping the planet in the name of addressing the global food and financial crises. Their new report shows that the global farmland grab is far from over. Rather, it’s in many ways deepening, expanding to new frontiers and intensifying conflict around the world….

Food/Farming

Modi and agribusiness: Doing business or corporate imperialism?

4th July 2016

Colin Todhunter writes: With Modi now at the helm, the government is doing the bidding of global biotech companies and is currently trying to push through herbicide-tolerant GM mustard based on fraudulent tests and ‘regulatory delinquency‘, which will not only open the door to GM crops but will boost the sales of Bayer’s glufinosate herbicide….

Conflict/Dispossession

Report: More earth defenders were killed last year than ever before

23rd June 2016

The non-profit Global Witness has documented 185 killings across 16 countries of people defending their land, forests and rivers against destructive industries in 2015. It’s by far the highest annual death toll on record. Communities that take a stand are finding themselves in the firing line of companies’ private security, state forces and contract killers….

The endangered white rhinoceros

Conserve/Resist

The illegal wildlife trade and the business of ecocide

16th June 2016

Colin Todhunter writes: Without addressing the impacts and nature of corporate greed and a wholly corrupt neoliberal capitalism that privileges corporations and profit ahead of people and conservation, regardless of any success in the area of the trafficking of wild animals or plants, much of the world’s wildlife and biodiversity will remain under serious threat….

Representational pic

Conflict/Dispossession

Bookshelf: Blood Red River: A Journey Into The Heart Of India’s Development Conflict

14th June 2016

In this excerpt from his new book, published by Hachette India, Rohit Prasad looks at the roles of the different players in the battle between Adivasis, Maoist rebels, corrupt bureaucrats and hungry corporations, concluding that the situation is one of “cooperative plunder”, where two apparently antagonistic forces align for the purpose of siphoning away resources….

Culture/Cognition

Video: Rapper Sofia Ashraf takes down Dow Chemicals for the Bhopal tragedy

13th June 2016

Scroll.in reports: Sofia Ashraf, the artist behind the Kodaikanal Won’t video (bottom) in 2015 has a new video out. Dow Vs Bhopal: A Toxic Rap Battle describes the US Government’s complete blanking out of the Bhopal tragedy, when a poisonous gas leak from a Union Carbide plant led to the death of some 16,000 people….

ECOCIDE/EXTINCTION

From the Green Revolution to GMOs: Living in the shadow of global agribusiness

2nd June 2016

Colin Todhunter writes: Powerful corporations hold sway over a globalised system of food and agriculture from seed to plate. The narrative about farming has been shaped to benefit this handful of influential corporations. With major mergers within the agribusiness sector in the pipeline, power will be further consolidated and the situation is likely to worsen….

ENERGY

Video: AAP Leader Ashish Khetan alleges “massive power scam” involving Adani, Ambani and Essar

Akhil Kumar reports: Citing an investigation conducted by the finance ministry’s Department of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), Ashish Khetan, AAP member and vice-chairman of the Delhi Dialogue Commission, has written to PM Narendra Modi demanding swift action in what he says is a massive scam in which major Indian power companies have been siphoning off public money offshore….

Bookshelf

Video & Report: More Confessions of an Economic Hitman

19th May 2016

Twelve years ago, John Perkins published his best-seller, ‘Confessions of an Economic Hit Man’, where he described his career convincing heads of state to adopt economic policies that impoverished their countries and undermined democratic institutions to promote U.S.’ interests. This new book is an updated version, and details how those methods have evolved since then….

ALTERNATIVES

Like an epic novel: How the global energy transition unfolded this April

6th May 2016

Jeremy Leggett writes: A Saudi Prince talks of his nation’s “dangerous addiction” to oil. A Bloomberg guru talks of renewables “crushing” fossil fuels. Arguably the most successful entrepreneur ever turns the unveiling of an electric car into the most successful product launch in history. Plus much more that would have been unimaginable a year ago….

"The Logic of Neo-Liberalism"

John Ledger

Bookshelf

Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems

18th April 2016

George Monbiot writes: So pervasive has neoliberalism become that we seldom recognise it as an ideology. We accept the proposition that this utopian, millenarian faith describes a neutral force; a biological law, like Darwin’s theory of evolution. But the philosophy arose as a conscious attempt to reshape human life and shift the locus of power….

Bookshelf

Bookshelf: Shattering: Food, politics, and the loss of genetic diversity

17th April 2016

Billy Brack writes: Shattering: Food, Politics and the Loss of Genetic Diversity by Fowler and Mooney is one of the important books of our times, explaining how agribusiness is putting the world at risk by limiting the world’s food crops to a few genetic strains. Quite literally we are putting our eggs in one basket….