Jeff Conant

Mexican Bishop Samuel Ruiz dead at 86

By MANUEL DE LA CRUZ, Associated Press SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico – Retired Bishop Samuel Ruiz, a staunch defender of Indian rights who served a mediator in peace talks between the government and leftist Zapatista rebels, died Monday at the age of 86. The man who replaced Ruiz at the Roman Catholic dioceseContinue reading “Mexican Bishop Samuel Ruiz dead at 86”

Interview with Nnimmo Bassey from COP 16, Cancun

This interview I recently conducted is cross-posted at Climate Connections — Jeff Conant Nnimmo Bassey, the Chair of Friends of the Earth International and Director of the Nigerian organization Environmental Rights Action is a poet, architect, activist, and tireless spokesperson for human and environmental rights. I’ve known Nnimmo since 2005 or so, when he served as aContinue reading “Interview with Nnimmo Bassey from COP 16, Cancun”

The EZLN and the Other Campaign deny involvement in kidnapping Fernandez de Cevallos

Currently buzzing through the political channels in Mexico is a rumor that the EZLN were behind the kidnapping of Mexican politician and billionaire Fernández de Cevallos, who disappeared May 14 from his La Cabaña ranch near San Clemente, Querétaro. De Cevallos was released after his family paid a $30 million ransom. An article in MexicoContinue reading “The EZLN and the Other Campaign deny involvement in kidnapping Fernandez de Cevallos”

like saying ‘yes’ to sunlight…

…I’ve been reading the great and greatly strange Argentine writer Julio Cortazar lately, and am fascinated that one of his U.S./American translators was the poet Paul Blackburn, a poet most closely associated with the Black Mountain school, but more generally with the “new American poetry” of the 1960’s…So I’m looking up Paul Blackburn, who diedContinue reading “like saying ‘yes’ to sunlight…”

Safe Holidays!!

Menagerie in Cancun: Of Snakes, Rats, and a Trojan Horse

Cross-posted from Global Exchange At COP 16 this week, the tone has been tense and difficult, both inside the negotiations at Cancun’s opulent Moon Palace, and on the margins where social movements, NGO’s, and indigenous peoples’ groups have gathered to raise their voices in opposition to the increasingly crushing decisions of global elites. After lastContinue reading “Menagerie in Cancun: Of Snakes, Rats, and a Trojan Horse”

Biofuels Fallacy: Why Burning Plants Instead of Fossil Fuels Won’t Save the Climate

My most recent piece on Alternet: an interview with Jim Thomas of ETC Group, who has just published a new report on the emerging bioeconomy. — Jeff C. The quest to replace black fuels with green fuels is just another resource and land grab by big corporations. While there is no doubt that we needContinue reading “Biofuels Fallacy: Why Burning Plants Instead of Fossil Fuels Won’t Save the Climate”

The Doomsday Machine and the Race to Save the World: Geoengineering Emerges as Plan B at the 11th Hour

By Jeff Conant, AlterNet With the pending expiration of the Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period in 2012, the widely decried failure of last year’s climate talks in Copenhagen, and the next set of U.N. climate negotiations to take place in Cancun, Mexico in less than six weeks, the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), meetingContinue reading “The Doomsday Machine and the Race to Save the World: Geoengineering Emerges as Plan B at the 11th Hour”

Rural cities in Chiapas: Government plundering the peasantry

Note: Having just returned home from five weeks touring A Poetics of Resistance, many people have asked me what’s happenibg right now in Chiapas, and with the Zapatistas. While there are many things “happening,” one worth paying close attention to, as part of Plan Mesoamerica, is detailed in the report below from the respected ChiapanecContinue reading “Rural cities in Chiapas: Government plundering the peasantry”

Poetics of Resistance Roadshow Rolls On

I’ve been traveling for a couple of weeks now, from Philadelphia to Buffalo to Ithaca to Vermont to NYC, where my last event was held at Bluestocking Books. In Vermont, CCTV recorded my talk. Meanwhile, back in the Bay Area, KPFA aired an interview I about the book before hitting the road. And website DissidentContinue reading “Poetics of Resistance Roadshow Rolls On”