Mink and I met the proprietors of Kailua’s free store today, Nandita and Gaye. They told us that a box of money appeared and disappeared this morning and that the speed things come and go sometimes astounds them. Check out their great site. cd Freebay • An Anti-Capitalist Free Store
Category: cash and poverty
Ivory Coast toxic waste in France
Here’s an UPDATE on the toxic sludge dumped in Ivory Coast back in August. When it proved too costly for a ship run by the Dutch company Trafigura to dispose of the waste in Amsterdam, they continued on to Africa and finally found a company in Ivory Coast that agreed to take the sludge. A…
Euro bills in Germany mysteriously disintegrating
You can be sure that the Unabomber is sitting in his cell smiling right now. This is an ingenius way to attack the structures of civilization he hates. The article below talks about extortionists, but what if it is something else entirely? If, like me, you think that human civilization has taken a few wrong…
U.S. Jobs Shape Condoms’ Role in Foreign Aid – New York Times
Great NYT article on the big business of foreign aid. EUFAULA, Alabama — Here in this courtly, antebellum town, Alabama’s condom production has survived an onslaught of Asian competition, thanks to the patronage of straitlaced congressmen from this Bible Belt state. Behind the scenes, the politicians have ensured that companies in Alabama won federal contracts…
Housing Bubble Bursts….Market is Flooded
It seems that the housing bubble has finally burst. This may just be the first leak. Are you going to be a dutch boy with his finger in the dyke? Or are you going to take what you can get before the next market correction hits. Statistically, there is a way of graphing these movements…
Hospitals Try Free Basic Care for Uninsured – New York Times
About time! It isn’t rocket science that an investment in preventitive care saves millions of healthcare dollars down the road, but getting ANYONE anywhere to budget money for something that hasn’t happened yet is usually close to impossible. Bravo. AUSTIN, Tex. — Unable to afford health insurance, Dee Dee Dodd had for years been…
Bangladesh bankers to the poor win Nobel Peace Prize – Yahoo! News
OSLO (Reuters) – Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank he founded won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for grassroots work to lift millions out of poverty that earned him the nickname “banker to the poor.” Yunus, 66, set up a new kind of bank in 1976 to lend to the neediest,…
Canada troops battle 10-ft Afghan marijuana plants
Leave it to the Canadians to find the weed. cd OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canadian troops fighting Taliban militants in Afghanistan have stumbled across an unexpected and potent enemy — almost impenetrable forests of 10-feet (three metre) high marijuana plants. General Rick Hillier, chief of the Canadian defence staff, said on Thursday that Taliban fighters were…
Chile indigenous tribe fights extinction
The legacy of colonialism continues as indigenous people around the world silently disappear into the annals of history. This is the story of one groups efforts to not let that happen. cd SANTIAGO, Chile – A once-nomadic tribe of hunters and fishermen living in the frigid channels near the bottom of the world is nearing…
Black Gold – The world coffee market, the African economy, and WTO – New York Times
The documentary “Black Gold” tells an unresolved modern version of the age-old David and Goliath story. The giants in this case are multinational corporations that control the worldwide coffee market. The heroic little guy, Tadesse Meskela, represents the Oromia Coffee Farmers Co-op Union, which encompasses 74 co-ops in southern Ethiopia. That country, the birthplace of…