Resources

Congo Week Draws Attention To The Congolese Struggle

October 25, 2024 Pavan Kulkarni, People's Dispatch. Resist! Cobalt mining, Coltan, Congo week, DR Congo, Mining, North Kivu, Philadelphia, Resources, Western imperialism

Teach-ins, concerts, screenings of films and documentaries, rallies, demonstrations, and other actions and events were organized in several cities around the globe from October 13 to 19 to raise global consciousness about the struggles of the Congolese people for peace and justice. “Breaking the Silence: Congo Week” has been observed annually in the third week of October since 2008 to commemorate the more than 5.4 million killed over the last 10 to 12 years, amid what the UN described as the deadliest conflict since World War II.

Digital Resources For A Free Palestine: A Roundup

March 17, 2024 Iman Husain, In These Times. Educate! culture, Education, Genocide, Israel, Palestine, Palestine Solidarity, Resources

In late November 2023, it was discovered that Israeli bombs reduced Gaza City’s municipal public library to rubble. The 25-year-old building was almost unrecognizable in the aftermath of the airstrike: Thousands of books, historical documents and archival material — once housed safely inside the library’s two floors and basement — were strewn across debris among chunks of ceilings and walls. The deliberate destruction of Palestinian cultural institutions and objects is just one part of Israel’s genocidal campaign, which has killed more than 31,000 Palestinians and wiped out hundreds of families since October 7 alone.

Cobalt Red, How The Blood Of The Congo Powers Our Lives

January 25, 2024 Ann Garrison, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Book Review, Cobalt, DR Congo, Electric Vehicles, Human Rights, Resources

“Unspeakable riches have brought the people of the Congo little other than unspeakable pain.” So writes Siddharth Kara in Cobalt Red, How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives . It’s one of the many poetic phrases that make this book easy on the ear but hard on the heart and mind. There’s pleasure in turning the pages of such finely crafted prose, pain in knowing that, if you have half a heart, you’ll never be able to see your smartphone, laptop, tablet, solar power system, or electric car quite the same way again, that you’ll see blood all over the supply chain that put them in your hand, on your roof, or in your driveway.

What The United States’ Grab Of Ocean Seabeds Signals

January 16, 2024 Kurt Cobb, Resilience. Educate! Environment, Extraction, Ocean, Resources, US Imperialism

There is an iron rule of resource exploitation: Go after the easy stuff first. If you don’t, your competitors will and run you out of business with lower prices. But where do you go when the easy stuff runs out? (And the easy stuff always runs out.) The United States’ recent expanded claims to ocean seabeds signals that the easy stuff has run out or will soon. More on those claims later. The obvious answer to getting more resources is to start digging up the harder stuff. Sometimes it’s new technology that makes the harder stuff economical to extract. Heap leach mining was developed to take low concentration ores and leach out the desired metals using chemical-laced sprays that result in a liquid “leachate.”

We Have, In Africa, Everything Necessary To Become A Powerful, Modern, And Industrialised Continent

October 6, 2023 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Educate! Africa, Finance and the Economy, Imperialism, Industrialization, Resources, Wealth

In his 1963 book, Africa Must Unite, Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president, wrote, ‘We have here, in Africa, everything necessary to become a powerful, modern, industrialised continent. United Nations investigators have recently shown that Africa, far from having inadequate resources, is probably better equipped for industrialisation than almost any other region in the world’. Here, Nkrumah was referring to the Special Study on Economic Conditions and Development, Non-Self-Governing Territories (United Nations, 1958), which detailed the continent’s immense natural resources.

Human Suffering Worsens In DRC, The Heart Of Africa

June 28, 2023 Ann Garrison, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Africa, Capitalism, DRC, Elections, Human Rights, Resources, Technology

It’s easy to think that the human suffering in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) couldn’t get worse until it does, and it always does. How much more Black life will have to be sacrificed to fuel the industrial world’s hunger for Congolese resource riches, meaning most of all the minerals essential to high-tech manufacturing, including state of the art weaponry? Black Africans fight one another in DRC, but all those of us on our phones, sitting in front of our laptops or in the seats of commercial and military aircraft, and in every other way wired to modern technology should know that this is our war, our highly complex and catastrophic proxy war.

Open Veins Of Africa Bleeding Heavily

December 12, 2022 Ndongo Samba Sylla and Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Inter Press Service News Agency. Educate! Africa, Imperialism, Resources, Wealth

The ongoing plunder of Africa’s natural resources drained by capital flight is holding it back yet again. More African nations face protracted recessions amid mounting debt distress, rubbing salt into deep wounds from the past. With much less foreign exchange, tax revenue, and policy space to face external shocks, many African governments believe they have little choice but to spend less, or borrow more in foreign currencies Most Africans are struggling to cope with food and energy crises, inflation, higher interest rates, adverse climate events, less health and social provisioning. Unrest is mounting due to deteriorating conditions despite some commodity price increases.

Acceleration Forever? The Increasing Momentum Of Mineral Extraction

July 11, 2022 Kurt Cobb, Resilience. Educate! Energy, Environment, Mining, Oil and Gas, Resources

Half of all the oil consumed since the dawn of the modern oil age in 1859 has been consumed from 1998 through 2021 inclusive based on data available from the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Approximately 1.4 trillion barrels of oil is thought to have been consumed to date (though there are estimates as low as 1.1 trillion). That means that in just the last 24 years total historical oil consumption has doubled. It is hard for most people to imagine the vast increases in the rate of consumption of practically everything that makes modern life possible. Resources appear without most of us ever thinking about how or whether the rising rates of consumption can be sustained.

Reconceptualising Boundaries

July 3, 2022 Giorgos Velegrakis, Resilience. Educate! Capitalism, climate crisis, Environment, Resources

The concept of planetary boundaries was introduced by Johan Rockström and colleagues in 2009 in the wake of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen where countries endeavored ‒ but ultimately failed ‒ to agree upon a new framework for climate-change mitigation. In contrast to earlier debates on environmental limits, “planetary boundaries” focus less on the exhaustion of natural resources than on the biophysical impacts of resource use and material consumption.

Repair Cafes Build Community Across All Social Divides

April 30, 2022 Ayako Nagano, Resilience. Create! Community, Repair Cafe, Resources, Transition Town

Transition Berkeley has cultivated a community of practice that hits close to ground zero – a “culture of repair,” that demonstrates a way to live with more humility, making do with what we have by sharing knowledge and skills, one repair at a time. Repair Cafes harness a library-system supported methodology that touches a diversity of people and interests. The bells that ring on the repair grounds throughout an event celebrates the completion of each repair – and total up to 100 in any four-hour event. Repair Cafes and fix-it clinics produce an excitement not unlike a dopamine-pumped day at the derby with your besties. This elegantly simple community-based solution draws support from people across all cultural, gender, age and socioeconomic lines and provides a unique opportunity for them to gather, connect, and build relationships.

Resource Limits And Our Strange Game Of Musical Chairs

April 18, 2022 Kurt Cobb, Resilience. Educate! Commodities, Energy, Environment, Resources

With a wide range of commodities in limited supply, various regions of the world are now behaving as if they are engaged in simultaneous games of musical chairs when it comes to commodity shortages. The games differ by commodity and by region, but they all share one characteristic: As in a game of musical chairs, someone will have to go without. And, as in a game of musical chairs, available supplies are shrinking (as represented by the removal of chairs). An interesting twist on this game is that now some chairs are being transferred from one game to another. For example, the Biden administration has declared that U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports to Europe will be stepped up in order to displace natural gas from Russia—which has become a suspect source due to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine and the broad economic sanctions against Russia.

Even Amid Give-Back Demands, Workers Can Still Safeguard Pensions

September 12, 2021 Steve Early, LA Progressive. Organize! Pensions, Resources, Retirement, Worker Rights and Jobs

In recent decades, a top management priority has been reducing the cost of retirement benefits. The pandemic and its economic fallout have generated a new round of employer demands for pension freezes, benefit cuts, plan conversions, and two-tier coverage. The Labor Guide to Retirement Plans (Monthly Review Press), a newly published book by Oregon union activist Jim Russell, shows why and how private and public sector workers should be mobilizing against such concessions. This book will be a critical resource for defending retirement security at the bargaining table and in the political arena. The Labor Guide is not only a highly readable account of retirement plan financing and administration, with a handy glossary of layperson explanations of sometimes confusing technical terms.

Today Is Earth Overshoot Day, Here’s What It Means

August 23, 2020 Mathieu Pollet, Euro News. Educate! Consumerism, Earth Overshoot Day, Resources, Sustainability

From today onwards, we have used every last bit of natural resources that Earth can provide within one calendar year and are now living on ecological credit. This year, Earth Overshoot Day occurs on August 22. It marks the imaginary point when humanity’s demand exceeds what Earth can regenerate in that year. The international research organization Global Footprint Network, which has been calculating this date since 1970, estimates 1.6 planets are required to support our population's way of life.

Latin American Indigenous People Fight New Plunder Of Their Resources

March 31, 2018 By Fabiana Frayssinet, Towardfreedom.com Resist! Indigenous Peoples, Latin America, Resources

(IPS) – Indigenous communities in Latin America, who have suffered the plunder of their natural resources since colonial times, are reliving that phenomenon again as mega infrastructure are jeopardising their habitat and their very survival. On the island of Assunção in Northeast Brazil, the village of the Truká indigenous people was split in two when the flow of the São Francisco River was diverted. “The Truká people have always been from this region. We are an ancient people in this territory. We have always lived on the riverbank fishing, hunting, planting crops. We did not need a canal,” lamented Claudia Truká, leader of the village in the municipality of Cabrobó, in the state of Pernambuco. The transfer, officially called the São Francisco River Integration Project, seeks to capture the river’s water through 713 km of canals, aqueducts, reservoirs, tunnels and pumping systems.

Protests In India Against Import Of Methane Gas

June 23, 2017 Staff, www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com Resist! India, LNG, Methane, Protests, Resources

By Staff of The Times of India - KOCHI: Njarackal policeremoved protesters from the Puthuvype LNG import terminal of the IOC on Wednesday after they allegedly disrupted the functioning of the plant. According to police, as many as 204 protesters were arrested and removed from the spot. The arrested persons were booked under sections 188, 283, 143, 145 147 and 149 of the IPC and were later let go on bail. District collector had given out instructions to ensure police protection for the smooth functioning of the terminal of Indian Oil Corporation. The district collector's direction to the rural district police chief came in the wake of orders of the state and central governments, the Kerala high court and the National Green Tribunal. High court had on September 8 ordered the police to provide necessary protection to the LPG terminal in the special economic zone of Puthuvype. The order was applicable to all persons connected with the terminal, including the company's property, employees and contractors. Varapuzha archbishop Joseph Kalathilparambil meanwhile condemned the arrest and police atrocity. "Abolishing people's protest is not the right way. There are more than 1,000 families residing in a one kilometer radius of the project. The people are apprehensive about the project leading to disasters in the future.

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