Daniel Moss's blog

Maude Barlow – world-renowned water activist and author of Blue Gold – was recently awarded the Citation of Lifetime Achievement by the Canadian Environment Awards. Grassroots International was honored to have her as our keynote speaker for our 20th anniversary celebration, at which time we awarded her a global activist prize.

I'd like to take a minute to congratulate Maude, and to encourage you to read about her achievements over the past two decades. Thank you Maude for your inspiring leadership in the water justice movement and for struggling tirelessly (and joyfully) for water for all!

President Bush's FY2009 budget request to Congress includes $2.55 billion in military aid to Israel, a 9% increase from 2007. This increase is the first installment of a ten-year plan to increase military aid to Israel by 25%, totaling $30 billion over the next decade.

Call the Senate Appropriations Committee today, April 9, at 202-224-7363 and let them know that you oppose this budget request. It violates the U.S. Arms Export Control and Foreign Assistance Acts. Click here to act now.

But now a group of more than 300 socially-concerned institutional investors is asking consumers to urge major food corporations not to buy genetically engineered sugar beets. The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) has launched a web site that helps consumers write effective letters to corporations like Kraft and Heinz about their desire not to see Monsanto's soon-to-be-released "Roundup Ready" sugar beets used in food products.

Biofuels can be effective disguises. They disguise the unseemly profiteering of agribusinesses that earn millions from corn- and sugarcane-based ethanol. They disguise the power-grabbing of governments that use biofuels as political pawns. And they disguise the suffering of land and people in the Global South whenever they are touted as "safe green technologies."

A new report from the Oakland Institute and Terra de Direitos lifts these disguises and documents how sugarcane grown for ethanol in Brazil has become the country's international bargaining chip, yet has also mobilized millions of Brazilians--and people throughout Latin America--against the growth of monocultures for export as fuel.

In celebration of International Women’s Day on Saturday, we at Grassroots would like to honor 900 peasant women who bravely seized and occupied a vast corporate tree farm in southern Brazil that they believe symbolizes the type of development that is destroying their communities and Mother Earth itself.

It could not have been easy.

The women, members of the Via Campesina, staged the takeover just before dawn on Tuesday, then proceeded to cut down the corporation’s trees and plant native trees in their place. At least 50 women were injured by rubber bullets and other material when police forcefully removed them from the 5,200-acre farm. Hundreds of them were reportedly arrested.

They were peacefully protesting water privatization in a corner of their home country, El Salvador -- until the Salvadoran government arrested them and labeled them "terrorists."

Now, the 13 protestors from Suchitoto are free, following a recent decision by El Salvador's attorney general to drop the terrorism charges. Prosecutors were unable to substantiate the charges under the "Special Law Against Acts of Terrorism" -- a 2006 law that the U.S. Embassy in San Salvador strongly supported. (The ruling party in El Salvador is a close ally of the U.S.)

When Mohamed Aboutreika, a star soccer player for the Egyptian Al-Ahly Pharoahs, lifted his jersey following his team's victory in the African Nations Cup late last month, it wasn't just another sports stunt. Under his jersey was a T-shirt that read "Sympathize with Gaza." For a brief moment, people around the world were reminded, or even alerted to, the plight of residents in Israel-occupied Gaza. (See a photo of Aboutreika here.)

Driving their tractors and greeting supporters along the way, a group of Mexican farmers recently traveled 1,200 miles over 14 days, protesting the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and demanding that the agricultural section of NAFTA be renegotiated.

Click here for a great photo of the over 200,000 strong march and an article in Spanish from La Jornada.

Today, the news from Europe is setting a promise of what's to come in 2008 for food sovereignty and real, sustainable energy. We received a press release today from the La Via Campesina that a hunger strike led by Jose Bové and the 15 other anti-GMO campaigners that the French government has sided with them. They will ban the only genetically modified (GM) corn (MON 810) legalized in France.

Numerous partners of Grassroots International work daily to secure basic social and economic rights for Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories. Much of this work includes raising awareness of the appalling living conditions of ordinary Palestinians.