The leaders of thousands of forest-dwelling tribesmen who have fought for years to preserve their ancestral lands from exploitation by an international mining corporation have promised to continue their struggle whatever the decision in a key hearing before India’s supreme court on Monday, Jason Burke reports. Dubbed the “real-life Avatar” after the Hollywood blockbuster, the battle of the Dongria Kondh people to stop the London-based conglomerate Vedanta Resources from mining bauxite from a hillside they consider sacred has attracted international support. Celebrities backing the campaign include James Cameron, the director of Avatar, Arundhati Roy, the Booker prize-winning author, as well as the British actors Joanna Lumley and Michael Palin.(UPDATE – Editor’s Note: The case has been postponed. No date set yet.)
New U.S. Executive Order Grants More State Control Over Resources
A couple of weeks ago, President Barack Obama signed a new Executive Order into existence in the United States, giving unprecedented power to the state under the auspices of national security. The shocking order tells the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Interior “to encourage the exploration, development, and mining of strategic and critical materials and other materials.”
Global warming issue ‘on par with slavery’
Dealing with climate change is a moral issue on a par with ending slavery, the world’s most celebrated climate scientist, James Hansen, of Nasa, believes.
