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Cheaponomics

By Raj on 02/5/2010 in Uncategorized, featured with 21 Comments

A top ten list of things that aren’t as cheap as you think.

#10 Bottled Water – Bottled water sounds like it should be cheaper – it’s 200 to 10,000 times more expensive than tap water. But in the US, the annual energy wasted on bottled water adds the equivalent to 100,000 cars on roads and 1 billion pounds of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. And the price we pay for water doesn’t begin to address the longer term issues of global shortage for something that everyone needs to survive. Make a start: stop your local government from wasting your money on bottled water, as we did in San Francisco.

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Book Talk without the Carbon Footprint

By Raj on 02/3/2010 in Uncategorized, featured with 2 Comments

The North American book tour is winding down, and I’ve had many more invitations to speak than I’ve been able to accept. But that’s okay. In the course of a couple of months, I’ve had the opportunity to hone my presentation a little and one of my favourite events was at the Town Hall in Seattle on January 18th, 2010, Martin Luther King Day. Thanks to Ed Mays (who has a version of this talk as a Windows file), you can watch it below, all 70 minutes of it. It’s a more environmentally sustainable way of doing things than my flying around. And, yes, it’s free.

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Avatar!

By Raj on 01/29/2010 in Uncategorized, featured with 6 Comments

The Resources Development Alliance mines Pandora

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Haiti – How You Can Help

By admin on 01/14/2010 in featured with 3 Comments

The situation in Haiti is horrific. Here are some of the better analyses, by Peter Hallward, Jacques Depelchin, and from Democracy Now! – Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine is already being put into practice in Haiti.

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Durban’s bedtime stories: Abahlali baseMjondolo’s struggle continues

By admin on 12/27/2009 in Uncategorized, featured with No Comments

Published in Pambazuka News 2009-12-16, Issue 462.

In a house in a leafy Durban suburb, lightly festooned with Christmas decorations, a TV is playing the Adam Sandler movie ‘Bedtime Stories’. Across scenes of gumballs falling from the sky and Roman gladiator races, our hero tries to get ahead through wish fulfilment. Predictably, his dreams don’t come true in quite the way he hoped.

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Awologies

By admin on 12/7/2009 in featured with 1 Comment

I should have been posting a little more than I have over the past week or so, but I’ve been murderously busy with the UK publicity tour for The Value of Nothing which ended gloriously this morning with a five minute crossing of swords on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme. I’m heading to Malawi today, which means being offline for a week or two, but when I come back, expect thoughts on Copenhagen, economic recovery, and how much you can eat for $1 a day.

The Value of Nothing – UK Animation

By admin on 11/30/2009 in featured with 2 Comments

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Buy Nothing Day

By admin on 11/27/2009 in Stuffed & Starved, featured with 1 Comment

The Friday after Thanksgiving is traditionally the day when US consumers rush to the shops, and spend until their eyes bleed. But tomorrow doesn’t inevitably have to involve running around with a credit card and bags of crap we don’t need.

One man who takes shopping’s stigmata very seriously is the Reverend Billy, preacher at the Church of Stop Shopping.
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The Value of Nothing in the UK

By admin on 11/27/2009 in Stuffed & Starved, featured with No Comments

value of nothing uk book cover

I’m going to be in the UK for the launch of The Value of Nothing next week, and I’ll be giving talks at the London School of Economics on Tues Dec 1, the Bristol Festival of Ideas on Weds Dec 2, and City University on Thurs Dec 3. Keep Reading »