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India blames environmental activists for its economic problems

by CallieEomyavt Posted on June 14, 2014

India blames environmental activists for its economic problems

By

Salvatore Barbera

India’s economy is growing, but not as quickly as some pundits had forecast. You might guess that rampant corruption was curbing the country’s economic potential. Or maybe you would put some blame on worsening heat waves, which have been knocking out electrical grids. Or perhaps the crippling health effects of pollution from coal power plants?

Well, we’ve got some surprising news for you from India’s intelligence agency: Environmental activists like you must shoulder some of the blame. Your peeps in India have been accused of reducing the nation’s GDP by 2 to 3 percent every year. Reuters reports:

India’s domestic spy service has accused Greenpeace and other lobby groups of hurting economic progress by campaigning against power projects, mining and genetically modified food, the most serious charge yet against foreign-funded organizations.

The leak of the Intelligence Bureau’s report comes as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s new administration seeks way to restore economic growth that has fallen to below 5 percent, choking off investment and jobs for millions of youth entering the workforce. …

“A significant number of Indian NGOs funded by donors based in US, UK, Germany and Netherlands have been noticed to be using people-centric issues to create an environment, which lends itself to stalling development projects,” the Intelligence Bureau said.

These included coal-fired power projects, genetically modified organisms, mega industrial projects including South Korean firm POSCO’s steel plant and Vedanta’s bauxite project both in Odisha, hyro-power projects in Arunachal Pradesh, the strategic state on the border with China.

Greenpeace, naturally, denies the accusations, describing them as an effort to silence dissent.

The timing of the leak is interesting, given that the country has a new prime minister — one who campaigned on a business-friendly, pro-development platform. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a solar energy fan who has been talking nice about the environment, but he also appears set to push for the approval of highway projects delayed by concerns over wildlife and other environmental issues. Modi is a military hawk, and his new environment ministry has pledged to prioritize the granting of approvals for defense projects. It has already moved to hastily approve a stalled reservoir expansion that’s expected to force 250,000 people from their homes, despite pleas from local activists.

It looks like life is becoming more hostile for environmental activists in a nation with a long and rich history of protest. Because, you know. Economic growth.


Source
India spy agency says Greenpeace endangers economic security, Reuters

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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India blames environmental activists for its economic problems

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Low Interest Rates May Be the New Normal

by CallieEomyavt Posted on June 2, 2014

Mother Jones

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Paul Krugman says that low interest rates are likely to be with us for a long time:

Structural change is happening fast — just not the kind of structural change people like to talk about. Never mind the stuff about skill mismatches and all that. What’s really happening fast is the demographic transition i.e., an aging population, with Europe very quickly turning Japanese. And the US, although growing faster, also turning down sharply.

Add to this the fact that what we thought was normal actually depended on ever-growing household debt, and it becomes clear that historical expectations about normal interest rates are likely to be way off. You don’t have to believe in secular stagnation (although you should take it very seriously) to accept that low rates are very likely the new normal.

If this is true, is it another reason to think that Thomas Piketty might be wrong about returns to capital staying high over the next century even as economic growth slows down?

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Low Interest Rates May Be the New Normal

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12 Horror Stories Show Why Wednesday’s Big Supreme Court Abortion Case Matters

by CallieEomyavt Posted on January 14, 2014

Mother Jones

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Liam Lowney does not talk about his sister, Shannon Elizabeth Lowney, without first gushing about her personality. She was bright and intelligent, a talented student and passionate musician with an “infectious smile,” he says. Only then will he discuss how she died: On December 30, 1994, as she worked the front desk at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Brookline, Massachusetts, a man named John C. Salvi entered and riddled her face with bullets.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in McCullen v. Coakley, a case in which anti-abortion-rights activists are challenging a Massachusetts law—passed partially in response to Lowney’s murder—that bans protests within 35 feet of an entrance to an abortion clinic. The petitioners claim the law violates their First Amendment rights. Eleanor McCullen, the lead challenger, is a septuagenarian grandmother whose refrigerator is barely visible beneath all the baby photos that she says were sent to her by women she encountered outside clinics and persuaded not to proceed with an abortion.

But Massachusetts’s buffer zone was not created in response to peaceful protesters like those waged by McCullen and others. It was written in response to people like Salvi and those protesters who have used physical force to block women from obtaining abortions. Even after Republican Gov. Paul Cellucci signed a modest buffer zone into law in 2000, Massachusetts’s abortion clinics were swamped by protesters who physically barred women from entering. Yet lawyers for McCullen aren’t merely asking the court to strike down the extended 35-foot buffer zone, which Massachusetts established in 2007; they are asking the justices to ban all buffer zones outside abortion clinics.

Attorneys for the ACLU, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case, concede that buffer zones do impinge on free speech, but they contend this is necessary to protect the competing constitutional right to obtain an abortion. To prove that point, the ACLU compiled police reports, oral testimonies, and written statements that describe how difficult it had become in Massachusetts to obtain or provide an abortion before the 35-foot buffer zone was implemented in 2007. The following excerpts offer a glimpse of the pandemonium that often reigned outside Massachusetts’s clinics before this law was enacted.

Gail Kaplan, a patient escort at the Boston Planned Parenthood clinic, speaking to the Massachusetts Legislature in 2007:

The protestors are moving closer and closer to the main door. They scream and block the way for the patients to get into the clinic. We fill out police reports almost every week regarding the way they encroach upon the door, but nothing has changed…They’re getting so close that patients are terrified to even walk into the clinic.

I have often been spit upon while escorting a patient into the clinic since they got so close to me while shouting their protests…When it rains, they bring these huge umbrellas and try to knock the escorts out of the way.

Michael T. Baniukiewicz, head of security for Planned Parenthood facilities in Massachusetts, in a sworn 2007 affidavit:

I have observed two regular protesters standing by the PPLM-Boston garage entrance in Boston Police hats and jerseys…I saw them wearing Brookline Police hats and jerseys while standing near the entrance to the parking lot in front of Women’s Health Services.

They carried clipboards and had patients write on clipboards. These patients appeared to be frightened and upset when they learned that they were not police. Patients informed me that they had provided their names, addresses, and telephone numbers.

Baniukiewicz, in a 2007 deposition:

They place four of their protesters, especially on Saturdays, right on the curbstone of the buffer zone, so when people try to park there to let a patient out, they can’t get out.

On a weekly basis…they probably have at least one or two women who leave because they’re afraid to enter the parking lot because they block the parking lot entranceway.

The safety issue is scary…The protesters will look to start a fight, and obviously that’s keeping people from entering the building.

Vanessa B. in a harassment incident report filed with Boston police, December 5, 1998:

One person was carrying a fake baby doll and was yelling, “It’s alive. You see what you’re doing!” Another person had a tape recorder and was playing a tape with a child crying, “Mommy, Mommy”…Bad enough I was scared coming here, afraid I might get shot…They made me scared, but they are not running me away because I have rights too.

Karen Caponi, a nurse practitioner and director of the Worcester Planned Parenthood clinic, speaking to the Massachusetts state Legislature in 1999:

One of our of physicians has been threatened with “I’m watching you” and “You won’t be smiling for long.”

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12 Horror Stories Show Why Wednesday’s Big Supreme Court Abortion Case Matters

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WATCH: Tina Fey and Amy Poehler Roast Celebrities at the 2014 Golden Globes

by CallieEomyavt Posted on January 13, 2014

Mother Jones

On Sunday, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler once again hosted the Golden Globe Awards. Their opening bit was—reliably—a good time. The pair spent those first ten minutes roasting nominated celebrities: “It’s the story of how George Clooney would rather float away into space and die than spend one more minute with a woman his own age,” Fey said, describing the Best Drama nominee Gravity.

Watch it here:

Amy Poehler & Tina Fey – Opening Monologue… by IdolxMuzic

And here they are hosting the Golden Globes last year:

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WATCH: Tina Fey and Amy Poehler Roast Celebrities at the 2014 Golden Globes

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