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globalisation

ALTERNATIVES

Richard Heinberg: Ecological collapse? There’s no app for that

10th August 2017

Even when we question the personal impacts of modern technology, how many of us consider how our dependence on technology might be harming us? Or question the belief that technological advances will save us from our most pressing environmental and societal challenges? Richard Heinberg tackles this thorny issue in this brilliant essay and animation feature….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Capitalism and the destruction of life on earth: Six theses on saving the humans

30th June 2017

As global capitalist economic growth accelerates planetary ecological collapse, Richard Smith argues that – impossible as it may seem at present – only the most radical solution -the overthrow of global capitalism, the construction of a mostly publicly-owned and mostly planned eco-socialist economy is the only alternative to the collapse of civilization and ecological suicide….

Conflict/Dispossession

Spotlight: China’s communist-capitalist ecological apocalypse

26th June 2017

From Truthout.org: This superbly researched 2015 paper explains why China’s unfolding environmental crisis is so horrific, so much worse than “normal” capitalism almost everywhere else, and why the government is incapable of suppressing pollution even from its own industries. It should serve as a warning for India, whose official policies increasingly mimic the ‘China model’….

William Mitchelle/Meme Super

Economy

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….

Monte Wolverton

Conflict/Dispossession

GROWing disaster: the Fortune 500 goes farming

24th April 2017

GRAIN.org reports: The world’s largest transnational food companies are rolling out a programme promising “market-based” solutions in agriculture. Vietnam’s highlands are the showcase for ‘GROW’, a global initiative under the World Economic Forum. A closer look reveals the programme’s real objective: to expand production of a handful of high-value commodities to profit a few corporations….

Bookshelf

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….

Extreme speculation in commodities trade can play havoc with food prices

Economy

Commodity derivatives: Playground for speculators, graveyard for farmers?

3rd April 2017

In a major push to widen the scope of commodity derivatives market in India, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has recently allowed options trading on commodity exchanges. Kavaljit Singh argues that what’s good for financial investors and commodity speculators is not necessarily good for the already vulnerable Indian farmer and small entrepreneurs….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Gail Tverberg: Twelve reasons why globalisation is a huge problem

24th March 2017

Globalization seems to be looked on as an unmitigated “good” by economists. Unfortunately, they miss the point that the world is finite. We don’t have infinite resources, or unlimited ability to handle excess pollution. So we’re setting up a “solution” that is at best temporary. Here’s why globalization is, in fact, a very major problem….

Conflict/Dispossession

Can India Inc. face the truth about the Manesar violence?

11th March 2017

Yesterday, a local court convicted 31, and acquitted 117 of the 148 workers charged with the murder of an HR manager at Maruti-Suzuki’s Manesar plant five years ago. The verdict once again puts the spotlight on the extreme exploitation and structural violence that characterise Indian industry, described by G. Sampath in this unforgettable 2012 article….

Economy

George Monbiot: The Golden Arches Theory of Decline

8th February 2017

A wave of revulsion rolls around the world. Approval ratings for incumbent leaders are everywhere collapsing. Symbols and slogans trump facts and nuance. One in six Americans now believes that military rule would be a good idea. From all this I draw the following, peculiar conclusion: no country with a McDonald’s can remain a democracy….

Conflict/Dispossession

Amitav Ghosh: What nutmeg can tell us about globalisation

23rd January 2017

From The New York Times: …It is impossible to imagine a world without global connections: They have always existed, and no place has escaped their formative influence. But this does not mean that there is any inherent merit in interconnectedness, which has always been accompanied by violence, deepening inequalities and the large-scale destruction of communities….

Conflict/Dispossession

Stephen Hawking: This is the most dangerous time for our planet

9th December 2016

We face awesome global environmental challenges. Climate change, food production, overpopulation, the decimation of other species, epidemic disease, acidification of the oceans. Together, they are a reminder that we are at the most dangerous moment in the development of humanity… Now, more than at any time in our history, our species needs to work together….

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

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….

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….

Bookshelf

Watch: Immanuel Ness on the ‘super-exploitation’ of contractual workers in India

31st August 2016

Professor Immanuel Ness, author of Southern Insurgency: The Coming of the Global Working Class which has India, China and South Africa as case studies, spoke to The Wire on trade unions and labour laws in India, social relations between labour and capital in the global south, merits of spontaneity in workers’ agitations and much more….

Food/Farming

India has sacrificed agriculture on the altar of GDP

22nd August 2016

Devinder Sharma writes: The real cost of economic reforms is being borne by rural India. The first-ever Socio Economic Census has now clearly brought out this stark reality… The economic wealth of 15 families in India equals that of 600 million people… On the other hand, 60-crore farmers are paying the price for unjust economic reforms….

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….

ALTERNATIVES

On Brexit: The fertile ground of bewilderment

9th July 2016

Charles Eisenstein in a new blog-post: The Brexit vote marks a rare moment of discontinuity, when the usual normalizing narratives falter and a society experiences a fertile and frightening moment of bewilderment. Brexit, though, is a mere foreshadowing of the vertigo that will ensue with the next economic crisis, which will dwarf that of 2008….

ALTERNATIVES

Why global capital fears ‘Brexit’

23rd June 2016

Helena Norberg-Hodge writes: Today, banks and corporations run Europe. For big corporations and financial institutions, diversity is an impediment, whereas monoculture – in all aspects of life, from seeds, fast food and clothing, to architecture – is ‘efficient’. For them, a single Europe-wide market of 500 million people was an essential step to further growth:…