Author: David Legge
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Fuelling the future, poisoning the present: Myanmar’s rare earth boom
2022 Study revisited in 2024 and published 24 May 2024 by Global Witness In 2022, a Global Witness investigation revealed a shocking reality at the heart of the green energy transition. Unregulated mines in Myanmar had become an essential source of heavy rare earth elements (HREE), vital ingredients for the magnets used in electric vehicles (EV) and…
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Ian Angus’s “The War Against the Commons”: A vital new history of the bloody rise of capitalism
Review of The War Against the Commons: Dispossession and Resistance in the Making of Capitalism by Ian Angus, reviewed by Steve Leigh in Firebrand, republished by Monthly Review Online, 22 May 2024 In Marxist theory, primitive accumulation is, as Marx defined it in Capital Volume I, “the historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of…
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The Global Digital Compact we need for people and the planet
by Anita Gurumurthy, Nandini Chami, Shreeja Sen, Merrin Muhammed Ashraf of IT for Change, via South Centre, 24 April 2024 The Zero Draft of the Global Digital Compact (GDC) to be adopted at the Summit of the Future is crucial to international digital cooperation under a transformative vision of global digital governance. It should identify…
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Licencias obligatorias para exportación: operacionalización en el orden jurídico argentino
By Valentina Delich via South Centre, 19 April 2024 En el año 2017, entró en vigor la enmienda del Acuerdo sobre los Derechos de Propiedad Intelectual relacionados con el Comercio (ADPIC), por la cual se incluyó el artículo 31 bis en su texto. Esta disposición permite las licencias obligatorias para exportación a terceros países sin o con insuficiente…
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Cholera, diarrhea & dysentery update (20): Yemen (AD) increasing incidence, fatal, MOH
From Al-Omana, 21 May 2024, via ProMED The director of the Epidemiological Surveillance Department, Ministry of Health, Aden governorate, has revealed that they have registered 80 cases of cholera during 24 hours, which is the maximum number of cases within one day since this new outbreak of cholera started. He also mentioned that the number…
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How do Taxes Drive the Sustainable Development Goals?
By Thomas Beloe and Ahtesham Khan in IPS, 7 May 2024 Tax revenue remains the most sustainable source of income for governments and plays a crucial role in financing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It diminishes the need for international assistance and contributes to the repayment of burdensome debt, ultimately strengthening a country’s ability to withstand external shocks. In 2022,…
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Trade Liberalisation Kicked Away African Development Ladder
By Jomo Kwame Sundaram in IPS 8 May 2024 Africans have long been promised trade liberalisation would accelerate growth and structural transformation. Instead, it has cut its modest production capacities, industry and food security. Berg helped sink AfricaThe 1981 Berg Report was long the World Bank blueprint for African economic reform. Despite lacking support in theory and…
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Dissenting Voices at Nairobi Soil Health Forum Over Increased Fertilizer Use
By Isaiah Espisu in IPS, 9 May 2024 As the Africa Fertilizer and Soil Health Summit convened in Nairobi to review the progress made in terms of increasing fertilizer use in line with the 2006 Abuja Declaration, experts, practitioners, activists, and even government officials pointed out that accelerated fertilizer use may not be the magic…
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How rich-country government and World Bank funding to for-profit private hospitals causes harm, and why it should be stopped
By Anna Marriott, Oxfam International, 26 June 2023 Development finance institutions owned by European governments and the World Bank Group are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on expensive for-profit hospitals in the Global South that block patients from getting care, or bankrupt them, with some even imprisoning patients who cannot afford their bills. At…
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First, Do No Harm: Examining the impact of the IFC’s support to private healthcare in India
By Anjela Taneja and Amitabha Sarkar, Oxfam International, 26 June 2023 This report examines the support to private healthcare provision in India by the World Bank’s private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC). Despite supporting private healthcare in the country since 1997, no healthcare results for lending and investments have been disclosed since the…
