Does genetically engineering crops — creating seeds with the DNA of other species inserted in them, like a tomato with DNA that includes genes from a fish — violate religious principles? People with a vested interest have tried for years to speak on the Vatican’s behalf on this question. Now, Pope Francis has weighed in. Using plain and forceful language, …
China Is Building a Massive Railway Across South America—at Significant Human and Environmental Cost – Michelle Chen
It’s been a while since China built a transcontinental railway in the Americas. Last time, Chinese laborers were deployed to work on the railway that linked the East and West Coasts of the United States—and were rewarded with epidemic labor abuse and racial-exclusion laws. Today, China has a lot more to gain from its latest railway construction venture: linking two oceans …
Who are the psychopaths? By Duncan MacMartin
Recently we heard that the Australian government plans on destroying and burning protected remnant old growth forests to make electricity and woodchips; and before that we discovered the US government’s open secret of founding and supporting ISIL in Syria after failing to gather public support for a war against Assad! Every day we have been watching the Palm-Oil Mafia commit …
Global Internet Activists Give Thumbs Down to Facebook’s Internet.org – Tim Karr
Mark Zuckerberg’s plan for world domination is in trouble. The billionaire Facebook founder recently took to his social network in a bid to save Internet.org, his plan to give billions of the planet’s poorest people a limited taste of the World Wide Web. “We have a historic opportunity ahead of us to improve the lives of billions of people,” he …
Expat Files – 05.01.15
-Today we have a disturbing email from a female public high-school English teacher(in the states) hoping beyond hope that she can last just two more years and get her pension. Then it’s get the hell out of Dodge and down to Latin America.
-It’s not Carnival time, so why are there hundreds of thousands of people marching in the streets of Brazil? Here’s a hint… the Brazilian president’s popularity is at an all-time historic low of 13%. Yes, it’s a political corruption of massive proportions (again) but this time the media and the people have solid goods on the crooks in office. The snakes won’t easily buy or squirm out of this one.
Argentina: 30,000 doctors and health professionals demand ban on glyphosate
Union demands debate on the restructuring of agriculture around safe production methods Following on from the conclusion of the International Agency for Research on Cancer that glyphosate is a probable carcinogen, Argentina’s union of doctors and health professionals, FESPROSA, has issued a statement throwing the support of its 30,000 members behind the decision: “The organisation [IARC] has just released the …
Retreat, Renewal & Rejuvenation: A Process of Spiritual Development
Why has withdrawal always been so foundational to spiritual transformation? Why do we go on retreat? Retreat not just physical retreats but the notion of going inwards has to do with letting go of all the surface distractions in our lives. It allows the minor irritants and frustrations that create a little static in our hearts and minds to fall …
The Great Burning: On Rising to the Greatest Challenge Humanity Has Ever Faced
We live in a time of what might be called The Great Burning. However, we tend to ignore the tremendous inferno blazing around us. Most of the combustion occurs out of sight and out of mind, in hundreds of millions of automobile, truck, aircraft, and ship engines; in tens of thousands of coal or gas-fired power plants that provide the …
Russia to ratify BRICS currency pool deal soon — envoy
Russia intends to become the first country among the BRICS group of the world’s five leading emerging economies to ratify an agreement on the group’s foreign currency reserve pool, Russian Foreign Ministry Ambassador-at-Large Vadim Lukov said on Friday. “An agreement will be ratified soon on establishing a pool of foreign currency reserves. Russia will most likely be the first country …
Fears of a new global crash as debts and dollar’s value rise
Greek ministers are spending this weekend, almost five grinding years since Athens was first bailed out, wrangling over the details of the spending cuts and economic reforms they have drawn up to appease their creditors. As the recriminations fly between Europe’s capitals, campaigners are warning that the global community has failed to learn the lessons of the Greek debt crisis – …