Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
Sick, starving and dying sea lion pups are washing up on the shores of California in record numbers this year. The culprit? An unusual blob of record warm water parked off the North Pacific Coast for a year and a half, affecting circulation and weather patterns with no relief in sight. Hence, sardine fisheries have collapsed with wildlife heading north.
Dana Frank writes on why the U.S. must stop funneling money to Honduras for repressive militarization and “free trade” projects that sacrifice labor and environmental standards in favor of multinational corporate hegemony. He must start treating its president like the corrupt ruler he really is.
In search for legendary “City of the Monkey God,” explorers ignore indigenous residents and archaeologists who have worked in the region for years, and shamefully claim to find the “untouched ruins” of a “vanished” culture found in the remote Moskitia region eastern Honduras.
The tiny forgotten Pacific port town of Amapala, among volcanic island sands and stifling heat, is proposed as the site of a radical libertarian experiment: an autonomous free trade city, a haven for multi-national corporations. And the locals are not celebrating.
The NOAA is shutting down cod fishing for six months, from Provincetown, Mass., up to the Canadian border, in an effort to reverse plummeting numbers of the iconic fish in the Gulf of Maine. Jeffery Bolster argues humans have depredated the Atlantic’s fish stocks for centuries, and the focus on short-term fixes only compounds the problem.
The film “Green” documents deforestation and orangutan extinction in the Indonesian rainforest. It is a silent film (without narration) presenting the treasures of rainforest biodiversity and the devastating impacts of logging and land clearing for palm oil plantations.
In 2013, the Honduran government granted BG Group oil and gas exploration rights in a 35,000 square kilometer block off the Caribbean Coast of the Moskitia. Miskitu and Garifuna community leaders, in the absence of organized support from environmental NGOs and scientists, are speaking out to defend their territories from oil and gas activity.