There are now more than 700 million obese people worldwide, 108 million of them children, reported the New York Times in 2017. In Brazil, food giant Nestle sends vendors door to door hawking its high-calorie junk food and giving customers a full month to pay for their purchases. Nestle calls the junk food hawkers, who are themselves obese, “micro-entrepreneurs.” 

Big Food is increasingly targeting poor countries as “emerging markets” to please Wall Street and shareholders––perhaps because getting people fat and hooked on junk food in rich countries has plateaued.

In the light of the devastating floods of 2018 many people are coming forward with suggestions for the future of Kerala’s development. I too came up with a ten point agenda for Kerala.

Marxism and the liberation of animals are two things which, at first glance, do not seem to have much in common. Neither did the former make waves for being particularly animal-loving, nor are animal lovers known for taking up the cause of liberating the working class and the construction of a socialist society.

A systemic critique of 'luxury communism' & other recent techno-utopias, both liberal and nominally leftist ones, from the leading-edge Uneven Earth blog.
 

Lately I’ve been struck by a picture of Melinda Tillies, a Louisiana homeowner recently featured in an article by Julie Dermansky in DeSmogBlog.* Tillies is standing in front of her house. In the background (not more than “25 feet away”) is a crane, its arm lifted, ready to plunge into the earth.

Tillies looks into the camera. She appears at once angry, fed-up, resigned, and defiant.