ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
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Divide and rule
GAVIN O'TOOLE applauds the argument that multicultural policies, aimed to empower indigenous peoples, are a smokescreen for their exploitation
TIPNIS marchers arrive in La Paz, Bolivia, 19/10/2011. Isiboro Secure National Park and Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS) became the epicentre of a conflict over the construction of a road, initiated by Evo Morales’s administration, that would run through the park. Indigenous peoples from the lowlands opposed the scheme, and, together with their counterparts in the Andean region, organised a march that was violently dispersed by the Bolivian armed forces.
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
MICK McSHANE rubs shoulders with Mod legend Steve Craddock and joins in with the joyous Glasgow choir
DENNIS BROE sifts out the ideological bias of the newest TV series offerings, and picks out what to see, and what to avoid
The Indigenous Right to Self-Determination in Extractivist Economies
Marcela Torres-Wong, Cambridge University Press, £17
THE resounding vote by Ecuadorians to stop the development of all new oil wells in the Amazonian Yasuni national park is an emphatic signal that indigenous people have steered the global debate on extractivism to a historic juncture.
The binding referendum decision permanently prohibits oil drilling in the Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini (ITT) oil project and is a major blow to the fossil fuel industry led by Ecuador’s own state oil company, Petroecuador.
The move has fuelled hysterical warnings by mainstream economists that it will further harm this cash-strapped South American country, with the praetorian guard of global capitalism, the credit ratings agencies, already penalising Quito.
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GAVIN O’TOOLE applauds an analysis of culture that explains why political conflicts today are focused more on values and identity than the economy and social questions
GAVIN O’TOOLE observes that the call for a new international framework for conflict mediation is fatally marred by a partisan position on the Isreali-Gazan conflict
