The Punjabi farmer has found it hard to escape the whirlpool of an ecologically unviable cropping pattern and its commercial entrapments created by the history of its past six decades. Despite Punjab’s meagre size, the region has remained an important constituent in the self-imagination of the Indian nation. The imprints of Punjab’s agrarian economy and… Read More Surinder S. Jodhka: Changing Modes of Agriculture in Punjab
Oil companies knew 50 years ago the huge damage they were doing. Their motive to ignore it is the same now as it was then. Capitalism is on a collision course with human life and the future of our planet. Each year, air pollution takes more lives than smoking: the last estimate suggests 8.8m deaths across the… Read More Owen Jones: The planet cannot survive our remorseless pursuit of profit
In a year, bitcoin uses around the same about of electricity as the entire country of Norway. The digital currency is one that allows people to bypass banks and traditional payment methods. It is the most prominent among thousands of so-called cryptocurrencies and has been repeatedly reaching new records – but is it sustainable? The Guardian’s UK… Read More Why Bitcoin is so bad for the planet – video explainer
It’s not just the value of bitcoin that has soared in the last year – so has the huge amount of energy it consumes. The cryptocurrency’s value has dipped recently after passing a high of $50,000 but the energy used to create it has continued to soar during its epic rise, climbing to the equivalent to the… Read More Lauren Aratani: Electricity needed to mine bitcoin is more than used by 'entire countries
NB: Contemporary conservative thought has a tendency to equate all social control, or even the hint of such control, as ‘communism’. Hence the antipathy toward activists such as Greta Thunberg, who simply asked for urgent measures to control damage to the environment. Note this paragraph from the article below: “The fight against climate change in… Read More Roger Sollenberger: What caused the Texas disaster? Decades of Republican deregulation: "Laissez-faire run amok"
In September 2021 the UN will hold a Food Systems Summit. The aim will be to reshape world agriculture and food production in the context of the Malthusian UN Agenda 2030 “sustainable agriculture” goals. The recent radical farm laws from the government of Narenda Modi in India are part of the same global agenda, and… Read More The WEF Agenda Behind Modi Farm Reform. By F. William Engdahl
The coronavirus recession is over, if you ask the billionaires of the world. According to a report released Monday by Oxfam, the top 1,000 billionaires collectively lost about 30% of their wealth when COVID-19 restrictions stalled global economies in March. By the end of November, they’d made it all back. For the world’s richest, it… Read More Oxfam report: 10 Billionaires Made Enough Money During The Pandemic To Vaccinate The Entire World
NB: This is some information – kindly sent to me by a friend – on the implications for Indian agriculture and Indian livelihoods, of the governments’ plans. It provides clues as to why critics and opponents are being defamed, intimidated and arrested. This is the altar of ‘muscular’ nationalism and pseudo-patriotism at which our democratic… Read More COLIN TODHUNTER: Farmers’ Protest in India: Price of Failure Will Be immense // Global Corporations' plans for India's agriculture
When the vast expanse of rural Iowa was carved up for settlers in the 19th century, it was often divided into 160-acre lots. Four farms made a square mile, with a crisscross of dead-straight roads marking the boundaries like a sprawling chess board. Within each square, generations of families tended pigs and cattle, grew oats… Read More How America’s food giants swallowed the family farms / The Big Tech takeover of agriculture is dangerous / (Video) The reason the world is running out of farmers
Rather than rail against the overheated apocalyptic rhetoric of others, Kotsko undertook his own cool-eyed, analytical version, saying, “I will follow my prophetic and apostolic forebears in diagnosing the root cause of that corruption and decadence as a failure to recognize the truth, which has resulted in a thoroughgoing moral and political nihilism.”.. Neoliberalism… Read More A moment of moral and political nihilism: Theologian Adam Kotsko on our current crisis
After the truth-shower 