On June 11, Laos (Lao People’s Democratic Republic)—a country of 7 million in Southeast Asia—said it had temporarily prevailed over COVID-19. Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith said that his country had “gained an important victory in the first campaign against this vicious enemy.” The first cases of COVID-19 detected in Laos were registered on March 24; a total of 19 people had been infected with the virus by April 12, and—after 58 days of no new cases—the last patient was discharged on June 9. There were no new cases of COVID-19 in Laos since April 12 (93 days of no new cases as of July 14). There have been no deaths from COVID-19 in Laos. More

One day in 2003 I was surprised to get a call from Charlie at a time when he should have been in Kamchatka. In the faintest whisper, he told me that his cubs had been killed. He discovered bear gallbladders nailed to the door of his cabin – clearly a threat intended to send him and his partner Maureen Enns packing back to Canada. The cubs were nowhere to be found. “They are lost, all is lost,” he moaned. Charlie’s family had been murdered. I could find no words. More

Under the name of ‘growth’, self-multiplying private money sequences turn all that exists into ever more of their own demand with no life necessity regulating them. We now know a few billionaires own more than the majority of the world. What is not tracked is how they exponentially increase their fortunes by massive pollution and depletion of all that supports life to auto-maximize their profits – from the air and the water to the ice-caps and the biomes of our soil and guts. This is shamefully called ‘the free market’, and ‘overpopulation’ of the poor is still blamed for the results. More