Africa, Congo, Development, Economic Justice, Extractive Industries

China to seal $9bn DR Congo deal

BBC

A pending contract between China and Congo will give Congo $6bn of desperately needed infrastructure – about 2,400 miles of road, 2,000 miles of railway, 32 hospitals, 145 health centres and two universities. In return, China wiii get a slice of Congo’s precious natural resources to feed its booming industries – 10m tonnes of copper and 400,000 tonnes of cobalt. More

Church

Benedict XVI’s Address to Catholic Educators

Zenit

“Freedom Is Not an Opting out, it Is an Opting In”

Your Eminences,
Dear Brother Bishops,
Distinguished Professors, Teachers and Educators,

“How beautiful are the footsteps of those who bring good news” (Rom 10:15-17). With these words of Isaiah quoted by Saint Paul, I warmly greet each of you — bearers of wisdom — and through you the staff, students and families of the many and varied institutions of learning that you represent. It is my great pleasure to meet you and to share with you some thoughts regarding the nature and identity of Catholic education today. I especially wish to thank Father David O’Connell, President and Rector of the Catholic University of America. Your kind words of welcome are much appreciated. Please extend my heartfelt gratitude to the entire community – faculty, staff and students – of this University. More

Church

Benedict’s Discomforting Message

Truth Dig
The word “countercultural” is the key to understanding how Benedict’s message runs crosswise to conventional liberalism and conservatism. Benedict came to the United States as a quiet but forceful critic of “an increasingly secular and materialistic culture,” as he put it during Thursday’s Mass. Almost any American who paid attention to his sermon had to be uncomfortable because all of us are shaped by the very forces he was criticizing. – E.J. Dionne More

Climate Change, Economic Justice, Environment

World Bank Climate Profiteering

Policy in Focus – Institute for Policy Studies
The World Bank’s long-running identity crisis is proving hard to shake. When efforts to rebrand itself as a “knowledge bank” didn’t work, it devised a new identity as a “Green Bank.” Really? Yes, it’s true. Sure, the Bank continues to finance fossil fuel projects globally, but never mind. The World Bank has seized upon the immense challenges climate change poses to humanity and is now front and center in the complicated, international world of carbon finance. It can turn the dirtiest carbon credits into gold. More

Climate Change, Environment

Four Part Series on Climate Change

InterPress Service

CLIMATE CHANGE: The Future Is Now – InterPress Service
Rising levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in Earth’s atmosphere can be compared to a flooding river, swamping low areas at first but inevitably bursting its banks. More

CLIMATE CHANGE: The Fault Lies Not in Our Cars but in Ourselves – InterPress Service
Rising levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in Earth’s atmosphere can be compared to a flooding river, swamping low areas at first but inevitably bursting its banks. More

CLIMATE CHANGE: A Vision Worth Fighting For – InterPress Service
Sweeping societal change is a slow and erratic business. The civil rights movement in the United States went nowhere for decades and then exploded in the 1960s. Not long ago, smokers could light up anywhere they pleased in Canada and the U.S. Now they are mostly confined to a few outdoor areas and as a consequence, far fewer people smoke. More

CLIMATE CHANGE: A Game With Too Many Free Riders – InterPress Service
The evidence is piling up that climate change threatens to bring a chaotic future unlike anything ever known. Taking collective action in time to avert the worst means rewarding climate-safe behaviour, punishing climate transgressors and publicly praising those who are trying to protect the environment, a new study suggests. More