MESSAGE TO OBAMA: FREE AMERICA from the tyranny of oil

After six days and 322 arrests (and counting), the Tar Sands Action is in full effect.  This two-week long protest is being staged on the sidewalk in front of the White House in Washington, DC, plainly visible to government employees, diplomats and tourists alike.  Concerned citizens have travelled from all 50 states and Canada to send a direct message to President Obama and the U.S. State Department:  Stop the construction of TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport crude oil from Alberta’s tar sands to Gulf Coast refineries.  The tar sands extraction process requires massive amounts of energy and water, and results in about three times the amount of greenhouse gas emissions as conventional oil.  In his Washington Post op-ed, Bill McKibben provides more information on the pipeline and its environmental impacts, and describes why this act of civil disobedience is so critical. 

The “New Normal”: Food in the 21st Century

By Baskut Tuncak

The global food system is broken.  Worldwide, 925 million are undernourished.  The Asia-Pacific region ranks highest in terms of number of people that are hungry and sub-Saharan Africa leads on a percentage basis.  In Niger, for example, one in two children suffers from malnutrition and one in six dies before the age of five.  In July of 2011, the UN declared Somalia’s food crisis a famine, triggered by the country’s worst drought in 60 years, killing tens of thousands of Somalis from malnutrition-related causes and forcing mass exodus to neighboring Kenya.  Aid agencies estimate that 3.7 million people in Somalia and millions more in neighboring Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya are close to starvation.