-
Brazil’s Flood of Austerity and Climate Catastrophe
Padre Josimo Settlement From 28 April, heavy rains, strong winds, and widespread flooding have lashed the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, killing over 160 people and impacting 2.3 million. The waters rose and rose again, rushing through houses and fields, erasing not only homes and the memories built there but also many […]
-
We Need to Reverse the Culture of Decay and March on the Street for a Culture of Humanity
Michael Armitage (Kenya), The Promised Land, 2019. The final months of 2023 pierced our sense of hope and threw us into a kind of mortal sadness. Israel’s escalating violence has killed more than twenty thousand Palestinians to date, wiping out entire generations of families. Horrifying images and testimonies from Palestine have flooded all forms of […]
-
Can Poorer Nations Break the Cycle of Dependency That Has Inflicted Grief for a Hundred Years?

In late July, I visited two settlements of the Landless Rural Workers (MST) on the outskirts of São Paulo (Brazil). Both settlements are named for brave women, the Brazilian lawmaker Marielle Franco – who was assassinated in 2018 – and Irmã Alberta – an Italian Catholic nun who died in 2018. The lands where the […]
-
For Argentina’s Small Farmers, the Land Is Predictable but the Markets Are Not

Thirty years ago, in my economics textbook in India, the section on international trade referred to Argentina. It would be better, according to the textbook, for Argentina to concentrate on the production and export of beef, while Germany should direct its resources towards the production of electronics. This example was used to illustrate Adam Smith’s […]