Occupy Movement Seeks May Day Revival

Follow Independent Media Coverage of Occupy's Spring Uprising

Tomorrow is the day folks. You must have seen the signs on the street, viewed the many calls to action on the Web. You must have heard the early rumbles in the smattering of demonstrations here and there across the country. It’s time. The Occupy movement is emerging from hibernation and will running ahead, full steam, on May Day — which many in this country might not recall, also happens to be International Workers Day.

What to expect: Starting tomorrow, a spring of protests across the country fueled by the rise in anti-immigrant legislation, a lopsided economic recovery that favors the rich, and corporate control of our food, environment and natural resources.

 

If past coverage is any indication, corporate media will not tell the May Day story accurately or with depth. That’s why The Media Consortium, a coalition of independent media outlets of which Earth Island Journal is a part, is collaborating with its members to provide coordinated, national coverage of tomorrow’s events from around the country as …more

by Maureen Nandini Mitra – April 30, 2012

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Life at Land’s End

In the Sunderbans Delta, Climate Change Means More Storms, Crumbling Islands, and Displacement

I came across a news report recently that mentions that climate-related disasters have displaced more than 42 million people in Asia in just the past two years. It reminded me of a feature I wrote in 2008 for the German newspaper, Suddeutsche Zeitung, about the plight of the people in the Sunderbans delta in Bangladesh where the land is both subsiding and eroding at the same time. If anything, the situation there and in coastal areas across Asia, has become worse since then, especially for people living on the social and economic margins of society. Sharing the English version here given the context, even though it’s a few years old.

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All photos by Maureen Nandini MitraAnita Haldar serves customers tea while her husband, Nizanoor Halder hovers
in the background. The couple lost their home in a 2007 cyclone.

UNDER A POORLY thatched roof supported by bamboo poles, Anita Haldar boils black tea over a wood fire for her customers. A few feet away flows a wide brown canal where her …more

by Maureen Nandini Mitra – April 27, 2012

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Dolphin Killing Declining in Japan

Market for Dolphin and Whale Meat Collapsing Due To Increased Awareness About Mercury Contamination

The mass slaughter of dolphins in Taiji, Japan, as depicted in The Cove documentary, is declining.  Earth Island’s Cove Monitors – volunteers who observe and record the dolphin hunts during the entire 5-month season from September through the end of February – estimate that fewer than 800 dolphins were killed this past season. In the 2010-2011 hunt season, 1,190 dolphins were slaughtered for food. Japanese supporters tell us the market for dolphin and whale meat is collapsing due to IMMP’s educational efforts about high levels of mercury in dolphin meat.

Photo by Arpad IkumaFewer than 800 dolphins were killed at the Cove in Taiji this past season.

In March, Ric O’Barry, director of IMMP’s Dolphin Project, joined local grassroots groups in Germany and Switzerland to protest dolphins in captivity.  Switzerland’s parliament has banned import of any live dolphins and has only one dolphin park left. Germany has two.

O’Barry also told German reporters that tuna caught by killing dolphins is being sold in Germany’s EDEKA supermarkets and should be boycotted.  Brusfoods, a tuna broker in the …more

by Mark J. Palmer – April 26, 2012

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Farm Bill Will be a Fight Over Food Democracy

An excerpt from the new book, Food Fight

Excerpted from the book Food Fight. To learn more about the Farm Bill and purchase a copy of Food Fight please visit www.foodfight2012.org

Delving into the Farm Bill can seem like visiting another country (if not another planet), with its foreign language and sometimes twisted logic. Specialty crops, for example, are what the USDA calls fruits, vegetables, and nuts — the foods that we are told to eat five to nine servings of each day. ChIMPS describes what happens when budget committees make a “change in mandatory program spending,” taking away the funds that were promised for a program, such as permanently protecting wetlands or providing supplemental nutrition to low-income families. “Direct payments” are the redistribution of tax dollars to landowners, based on the historical harvest records of a property, regardless of whether the land is still being farmed or the owner has suffered income or yield losses. For the average citizen concerned about the food system, rural job creation, and stewardship of the land, it’s a trip that’s more frustrating than inspiring.

I confess, I am a …more

by Dan Imhoff – April 25, 2012

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PART 2: BP Covered Up Blow-out Prior to Deepwater Horizon

Evidence Now Implicates Top BP Execs As Well As Its Partners Chevron and Exxon and the Bush Administration

Ecowatch.org has revealed that, in September 2008, nearly two years before the Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, another BP rig had blown out in the Caspian Sea—which BP concealed from U.S. regulators and Congress.

Had BP, Chevron, Exxon or the Bush State Department revealed the facts of the earlier blow-out, it is likely that the Deepwater Horizon disaster would have been prevented.

Days after the Deepwater Horizon blow-out, a message came in to our offices in New York from an industry insider floating on a ship in the Caspian Sea. He stated there had been a blow-out, just like the one in the Gulf, and BP had covered it up.

To confirm this shocking accusation, I flew with my team to the Islamic republic of Azerbaijan. Outside the capital, Baku, near the giant BP terminal, we found workers, though too frightened to give their names, who did confirm that they were evacuated from the BP offshore platform as it filled with explosive methane gas.

Before we could get them on camera, my crew and I were arrested …more

by Greg Palast – April 24, 2012

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BP Covered Up Blow-out Two Years Prior to Deadly Deepwater Horizon Spill

Eyewitness Gives Devastating New Information About 2008 Caspian Sea Oil-Rig Explosion

Last week, EcoWatch.org located an eyewitness with devastating new information about the Caspian Sea oil-rig blow-out which BP had concealed from government and the industry.

The witness, whose story is backed up by rig workers who were evacuated from BP’s Caspian platform, said that had BP revealed the full story as required by industry practice, the eleven Gulf of Mexico workers “could have had a chance” of survival. But BP’s insistence on using methods proven faulty sealed their fate.

One cause of the blow-outs was the same in both cases: the use of a money-saving technique—plugging holes with “quick-dry” cement.

By hiding the disastrous failure of its penny-pinching cement process in 2008, BP was able to continue to use the dangerous methods in the Gulf of Mexico—causing the worst oil spill in U.S. history. April 20 marks the second anniversary of the Gulf oil disaster.

There were several failures in common to the two incidents identified by the eyewitness. He is an industry insider whose identity and expertise we have confirmed. His name and that …more

by Greg Palast – April 23, 2012

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For Earth Day, Treat Yourself to an Inspiring Success Story

Documentary Film Burning the Future Shows the Power of Citizen Action

Spoiler alert: The documentary Burning the Future: Coal in America has an inspiring ending. The film’s heroine, Maria Gunnoe, wins the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for her work to end mountaintop removal coal mining. The Obama administration starts to become much more vigilant than its predecessor in scrutinizing, and at times halting, the wantonly destructive practice. Massey Energy, the longtime nemesis of environmentalists, gets bought out. And one of the main battles covered by the film — the effort to re-locate Marsh Fork Elementary School away from a massive coal sludge impoundment lake — has been a success.

Now, none of this is covered in the film itself, which is airing on PBS over the next couple of weeks to mark Earth Day and is available for free for a limited time at www.BurningtheFuture.com. All of those positive developments have occurred since 2008, when the film was released. This is one of the treats of watching a four-year-old documentary: Events have overtaken some of the problems detailed …more

by Jason Mark – April 20, 2012

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