Syria protesters torch buildings
One person killed as demonstrations in the southern city of Daraa continue for a third straight day.
via Syria protesters torch buildings – Middle East – Al Jazeera English.
Category: social revolution
Oil Still Leaking from Deepwater Horizon
Credit: Courtesy of Huffington Post (Jerry Moran/Stuart Smith oilspillaction.com)
While the media is busy assuring their audiences that we still need nuclear energy despite catastrophic accidents potential, environmentalists would like you to remember we still have issues in the Gulf of Mexico from another one of our short-sighted energy policies.
The Coast Guard is investigating reports of a potentially large oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico not far from the Deepwater Horizon site. According to a knowledgeable source, the slick was sighted by a helicopter pilot on Friday and is about 100 miles long. A fishing boat captain said he went through the slick yesterday and it was strong enough to make his eyes burn.
via Oil Still Leaking New Deepwater Horizon Drill Site | Crooks and Liars.
next GM Sugar Beets and Fish
By Center for Food Safety
The debate over genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is no longer just over alfalfa; the Center for Food Safety reports that GM fish and GM sugar beets are now being considered for the market. A bipartisan effort to ban the sale of these new genetically engineered products, or to require mandatory labeling if the items get approved for consumption, is already underway. Click here to learn more about these issues, and to sign pledges and see what else you can do to prevent GM beets and fish from becoming commonplace fare in your supermarket.
[Photo by Maureen Reilly]
TAGS: alfalfa, beets, fish, genetically modified, GMO
SEE OTHER POSTS FROM: Center for Food Safety
via It’s not just Alfalfa: threat of GM Sugar Beets and Fish « Ecology Center.
Activism 3.0 | Red Pepper
Activism 3.0
Protests are increasingly appearing on the internet in real time in a myriad of ways. Adam Waldron takes a look at the smartphone applications that every activist needs
Karl Marx famously said that capitalism would produce its own gravedigger – and of course he meant the working class would overthrow the world order. But the arch-capitalists at Apple are rapidly arming students and trade unionists with the technology to agitate online, secretly organise direct actions and then publicise them worldwide in seconds.
Apptivism has the potential to transform the spontaneous outburst of demonstrations and renewed interest in the radical left into a coherent, highly organised and efficient movement. When protesters go ‘tooled up’ to demonstrations these days, they are grasping iPhones and Blackberrys bristling with the latest applications.
Micah White argued in The Guardian that ‘digital activists’ promoting ‘clicktivism’ are endangering the very ‘possibility of an emancipatory revolution in our lifetimes’. But as Red Pepper launches its clicktastic new website, here is a practical guide to Apptivism – because iPhone apps will be used to equip the uprising out in the streets, in real time, and make sure it is televised.
Organising on the edge | Red Pepper
Organising on the edge
Caroline Elliot reports on a wave of grass-roots organising in sub-Saharan Africa bringing together workers in the informal economy
Anyone who has travelled in the global South will have experienced streets alive with the hustle and bustle of vendors and market traders, trying to sell you anything from drinks to second-hand clothes, from apples to electronics. Whether in the marketplace or on the streets, these workers form the basis of large and growing informal economies.
In November 2010 a unique gathering of such workers took place in Kitwe, Zambia. This meeting, funded by the Commonwealth Foundation and supported by War on Want, was the world’s first international conference run by street vendors for street vendors, and brought together organisations from Kenya, Malawi and Zambia.
The rise of the informal economy
Cruel and usual:
The spectre of Bradley Manning lying naked and alone in a tiny cell at the Quantico Marine Base, less than 50 miles from Washington, DC, conjures up images of an American Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib, where isolation and deprivation have been raised to the level of torture.
In fact, the accused Wikileaker, now in his tenth month of solitary confinement, is far from alone in his plight. Every day in the US, tens of thousands of prisoners languish in “the hole”.
A few of them are prison murderers or rapists who present a threat to others. Far more have committed minor disciplinary infractions within prison or otherwise run afoul of corrections staff. Many of them suffer from mental illness, and are isolated for want of needed treatment; others are children, segregated for their own “protection”; a growing number are elderly and have spent half their lives or more in utter solitude.
No one knows for sure what their true numbers are. Many states, as well as the federal government, flatly declare that solitary confinement does not exist in their prison systems. As for their euphemistically named “Secure Housing Units” or “Special Management Units”, most states do not report occupancy data, nor do wardens report on the inmates sent to “administrative segregation”.
Prosecutor, judge and jury
By common estimate, more than 20,000 inmates are held in supermax prisons, which by definition isolate their prisoners. Perhaps 50,000 to 80,000 more are in solitary confinement on any given day in other prisons and local jails, many of them within sight of communities where Americans go about their everyday lives.
via Cruel and usual: US solitary confinement – Features – Al Jazeera English.
Japan ; Worse Than Chernobyl
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Mar 17, 2011 (IPS) – A global nuclear disaster potentially worse than Chernobyl may be under way in Japan as hundreds of tonnes of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel are open to the sky, and may be on fire and emitting radioactive particles into the atmosphere.
Many countries have advised their citizens in Japan to leave the country.
“This is uncharted territory. There is a 50-percent chance they could lose all six reactors and their storage pools,” said Jan Beyea, a nuclear physicist with a New Jersey consulting firm called Consulting in the Public Interest.
“I’m surprised the situation hasn’t gotten worse faster… But without a breakthrough it’s only a matter of days before spent fuels will melt down,” said Ed Lyman, a physicist at the Union of Concerned Scientists and an expert on nuclear plant design.
Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant was damaged by a powerful earthquake and tsunami on Mar. 11. It has an estimated 1,700 tonnes of used or spent but still dangerous nuclear fuel in storage pools next to its six nuclear reactors, according to Kevin Kamps, a radioactive waste specialist at Beyond Nuclear, a U.S. anti-nuclear environmental group.
The storage pools holding 30 to 35 years worth of spent fuel at reactors No. 3 and No. 4 have lost containment and most if not all of their coolant water. They may be on fire, venting radioactive particles into the atmosphere, Kamps told IPS.
via Japan Nuke Disaster Could Be Worse Than Chernobyl – IPS ipsnews.net.
The Free 