The Dark Side Of Ecotourism: When Green Travel Exploits People And The Planet
06-29-2025 ~ As luxury eco-retreats and voluntourism surge, experts warn that without systemic reform, the industry may be doing more harm than good.
Ecotourism is often hailed as a sustainable alternative to traditional travel—an opportunity to explore unique environments while supporting local communities and conservation efforts. Yet beneath its green image lies a more complex and often troubling reality. When poorly managed, ecotourism can inflict more harm than good, undermining the very ideals it seeks to uphold.
The ecotourism industry has emerged as one of the fastest-expanding sectors within global travel. According to the Global Ecotourism Network, in 2023, eco-travel accounted for an estimated 20 percent of the international tourism market, with projections indicating continued double-digit annual growth. In 2023 alone, the global ecotourism market was valued at over $200 billion. Economic predictions estimate that the market could reach between $759 billion by 2032 and $945 billion by 2034.
Despite this rapid growth and economic promise, ecotourism enterprises have faced significant criticism from conservationists and researchers. In a 2020 Architectural Review article titled “Outrage: The Ecotourism Hoax,” Smith Mordak, chief executive of the UK Green Building Council (UKGBC), asserted that “As long as the underlying principle behind tourism is to bring growth-stimulating inward investment, tourism cannot be made ‘eco.’”
The Ecotourism Paradox
Mordak’s remarks expose the deeper contradictions within many so-called “sustainable” initiatives, drawing attention to the pervasive issues of greenwashing and bluewashing. Just as corporations may falsely brand themselves as environmentally friendly or socially responsible to appeal to conscious consumers, ecotourism companies often mask exploitative or unsustainable practices behind the veneer of conservation. Ultimately, without a fundamental shift in the economic principles that underpin ecotourism, efforts to make the industry sustainable risk becoming performative, focusing on marketing rather than achieving meaningful impact.
According to UKGBC’s Mordak, “Like everything else nurtured in the agar jelly of capitalism, noble intentions soon become corrupted, and the ‘eco’ prefix amounts to little more than a greenwashing rebrand.”
Ecotourism is built on a dual promise—to protect natural environments and to share them with visitors—yet fulfilling one often puts the other at risk. In April 2025, I interviewed Dave Blanton, founder of Friends of the Serengeti. He started the organization in response to a proposed commercial highway through Serengeti National Park, a development that would have fragmented the ecosystem and destroyed critical migratory routes. He explained the paradox: “On one hand, the growth of tourism in the Serengeti-Mara region will generate government revenue and create jobs. On the other hand, it will increase environmental pressure and diminish the traveler experience.” Read more
Trump Is Setting The US Economy Up For Another Great Financial Crisis
Prof.dr. Gerald Epstein
06-26-2025 ~ Trump and tech capitalists like Elon Musk are trying to become kingpins of a largely unregulated financial system.
The financial system of the United States has always been prone to instability and crises. Now, however, under the new Trump administration, which is pushing for major cuts in regulation, including in the cryptocurrency sector in which the Trump family has a major financial stake, the financial system has become more vulnerable than ever, posing serious risks to the wider economy. Of course, this matters very little to Donald Trump, his family, and his billionaire friends. For Trump, the actual meaning of “America First” is “self-enrichment.”
In the interview that follows, progressive economist Gerald Epstein, a leading expert in finance and banking, talks about the changing nature of the U.S. finance system under Trump 2.0. He argues that Trump is turning the entire financial system into “a Wild West of unregulated institutions and markets,” thus potentially setting the stage for a financial crisis of unprecedented proportions. Epstein is professor of economics and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the author of Busting the Bankers’ Club: Finance for the Rest of Us.
C.J. Polychroniou: The U.S. financial landscape is always evolving, but not necessarily in a desirable direction. Financial technology (fintech), artificial intelligence (AI), the shadow banking system, and deregulation are raising concerns about financial instability and even warnings of another financial crisis. Indeed, just recently, even The Economist — a champion of free markets, deregulation, and financialization — ran an article titled, “American finance, always unique, is now uniquely dangerous.” Can you briefly address the evolving nature of the U.S. financial system since the 2007-08 financial crisis and whether concerns about an increase in financial stability risks are valid?
Gerald Epstein: The Great Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2007-2009 hurt millions of Americans and was costly to countless others elsewhere. Americans lost their jobs, their homes, and saw public services — such as resources for schools, health care, and subsidized child care — experience major cuts. As I show in Busting the Bankers’ Club: Finance for the Rest of Us, the roots of the GFC stem from radical financial deregulation by both Democratic and Republican administrations, and also joined by European governments, that permitted megabanks and their top personnel to take on huge risks and win large payoffs. And when the markets collapsed, they were bailed out by central banks and governments without penalty to themselves or their banks. More specifically, bankers and other operatives in the financial system, such as credit rating agencies, were able to profit from massive conflicts of interest; huge and often hidden levels of debt (leverage); deliberately overly complex and opaque financial products that their customers, and often themselves, did not understand; large-scale fraud and corruption that went largely unpunished; and, in the end, massive government bailouts that saved them and their institutions but came at the expense of the taxpayers and the overall economy, as the work of the late James Crotty has shown.
The financial reform laws, in the United States known as Dodd-Frank, were hard-fought but ended up with only moderate improvements in the financial regulations. These reforms promised to make banking less risky by reducing leverage and by increasing bank capital and liquidity; they also promised to make banking activities less opaque by increasing regulatory monitoring of the largest banks. But the effectiveness of these rules eroded over time. This erosion occurred partly because, under Trump 1.0, they were rolled back and weakened in some important respects. And the rules became less effective because the financial markets innovated around them. These changes were well described in the Economist article and included increasing the size of the less regulated areas, increasing the roles of private credit, including asset management firms like BlackRock, hedge funds, and private equity funds, thereby increasing the financial footprint of relatively unregulated credit institutions. Read more
Busting The Myth Of Trump As An Anti-War President
C.J. Polychroniou
06-25-2025 ~ Trump’s vision is of a world where the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. It has nothing to do with peace.
It’s been said that Donald Trump’s decision to join Israel’s war with Iran underscores his failures as a peacemaker. This is a preposterous statement because the idea of Trump being “a peacemaker and unifier” has always been nothing short of preposterous.
Yes, long before his ascendance to the White House, Trump had managed to paint him as a peacemaker, promising to end America’s “endless wars.” But most people in the United States of Amnesia seem to have forgotten that during his first four-year tenure in the White House Trump embarked on a dangerous path with a series of reckless foreign policy decisions that threatened peace and made the world a far more dangerous place. Trump 1.0 walked away from an Iran deal and withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and the Open Skies Treaty while U.S. air wars became broader and “increasingly indiscriminate.” Iraq, Somalia, and Syria were among the countries that Trump loosened the rules of engagement for U.S. forces. Trump also ordered the killing of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani and threatened “fire and fury” against North Korea.In addition, Trump increased tensions between Israelis and Palestinians by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving the U.S. embassy there from Tel Aviv. The president of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas said at the time that Trump’s decision undermined all peace efforts and called his actions “a crime,” while the political leader of the Hamas movement, Ismail Haniya, who was assassinated by the Israeli Mossad in Tehran on July 31, 2024, called for a new “intifada.” Shortly upon assuming the Office of the President of the United States for the second time, Trump embarked on a jingoistic journey by threatening to take over Greenland (an idea he had floated back in 2019), make Canada the 51st state, reclaim the Panama Canal, and attack Mexico. And just as he had done during his first term in office, he withdrew the U.S. from the landmark Paris climate agreement, even though the climate crisis is an existential one and is expected to increase the risk of armed conflict.
So much for Trump being a peacemaker.
Trump is also a notorious braggart. He repeatedly said that he would end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours upon taking office and boasted that the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas militants would not have happened if he were president. Yet, five months into his second term in the White House and all that Trump has accomplished in connection with the war in Ukraine is to receive Putin’s middle finger. With regard to Gaza, of course, there is no difference between “genocide Joe” and Trump. Biden funded and armed the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza while Trump has not only continued to provide Israel with the weapons that is using to slaughter innocent people, mostly women and children, but has floated a plan to “clean out” Gaza and move Palestinians to Egypt and Jordan.
It is hilarious to see Trump’s decision to join Israel in its war with Iran as some sort of a setback in his quest to become a global peacemaker. Trump was never a peacemaker and, in fact, has always been a warmonger. His politics in general, both domestic and foreign, has never been about the pursuit of unity but rather about sowing seeds of division.
Trump’s view of international order is one based on pure power politics and the fear factor. As such, coercion, intimidation, violence and ultimately war are the means through which he understands that U.S. dominance in the international system can be maintained and reinforced. It’s a vision of a world where the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. Read more
The Plebeian Council As An Example For Modern Citizen Empowerment
John P. Ruehl – Independent Media Institute
06-25-2025 ~ The rise and erosion of the plebeian council offers perspectives on the stagnant U.S. civil rights movement.
The political fight over America’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) intensified in May 2025 with the passage of the House’s Reconciliation Bill. The program, rooted in a Depression-era initiative to help the poor access food, has long drawn both praise for easing hunger and criticism for encouraging dependency and fraud. Though the Food Stamp Act permanently authorized the program in 1964 during the Civil Rights era, it now faces its most serious rollback yet.
This moment invites comparison with the Roman Republic’s enduring grain subsidies, formalized through the plebeian council by 123 BC. Like SNAP, these subsidies aimed to prevent hunger and unrest but were similarly attacked for creating dependency and political manipulation. Yet even after the republic gave way to the empire and the council lost its authority, the subsidies pushed through by the democratic citizen assembly remained, testament to the institution’s lasting influence on Roman society.
Of the republic’s four core citizen assemblies, the plebeian council stood out for empowering non-elite citizens through direct lawmaking. Unlike Athenian citizens, who adopted direct democracy early around the birth of the Roman Republic in 509 BC, Roman citizens used the plebeian council to push gradually and persistently for greater political participation over centuries.
The plebeian council’s democratic characteristics contrast with the mostly representative political bodies of modern republics. Though the U.S. borrowed plenty from Roman republican ideas in shaping its political institutions, the U.S. never seriously considered the Roman tradition of direct citizen assemblies. Founding Fathers like James Madison framed representation, not participation, as the foundation of a republic. Yet the role of Rome’s plebeian council suggests otherwise. Its arc provides a lens for today’s debates over democracy and political representation, with its rise and decline showing the promise and pitfalls of citizen-led power.
Formation
As Harriet I. Flower argues in her book Roman Republics (2010), the republic was not a single, static regime but a series of evolving constitutional arrangements. Among its earliest innovations was the plebeian council, emerging in 494 BC during the First Secession of the Plebs.
This was the first of five major secessions of the plebs, which saw plebeians, or commoners, withdraw from Rome in protest. In 494 BC, facing debt bondage and exclusion from political power and the judicial process, they marched out of Rome to the Sacred Mount and refused to fight, while enemy tribes threatened the city. Their actions brought the Roman economy to a halt and left it defenseless, forcing the patricians to negotiate.
Amid the standoff, the plebeians formed their own tribal assembly as both a protest and a platform for negotiation, which would evolve into the plebeian council. As a citizen assembly rather than a representative one, plebeians could propose, debate, and vote on laws directly. Rare even by today’s standards, this participatory model gave plebeians real political power and helped build early democratic concepts. Though initially unrecognized by the state and limited to passing laws (plebiscita) only binding on plebeians, the council gave Rome’s lower classes a means to organize and push for reform. It would become a central force in the Conflict of the Orders social struggle between commoners and the aristocracy. Read more
What Will It Take To End Trump’s ICE Raids?
Sonali Kolhatkar
06-25-2025 ~ Our reliance on armed agents of the state has led to fascism. The only way out is to abolish policing and militarism.
Donald Trump is not the first president to unleash the terror of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers on immigrant communities across the United States. But he’s the most blatant in his use of a federal armed unit as a tool of terror, fulfilling multiple goals at once: to reinforce white supremacy, to undermine his political opponents, to uphold policing as a means of order, and to wield raw, unchecked power.
Before June 2025, analysts were warning against the slide into fascism. Now, full-blown fascism is here. And, it’s not only Trump’s doing, but also a result of our society’s constant reliance on armed agents of state power as a means of control. If we want to end ICE terror and reverse the fascist tide, we need to rethink policing altogether.
Today’s ICE raids aren’t about rounding up violent criminals as Trump and his supporters claim. People caught in the dragnet include a Texas Army sergeant’s Latina wife, who had started the paperwork to acquire citizenship, and several other nonwhite U.S. citizens. As of early June, more than 50,000 people were being held in various detention centers around the U.S. on immigration-related charges. Of those arrested in 2025 alone, at least three-quarters have no known criminal convictions. (And even if it were about crime, Trump is Exhibit A in double standards on criminality.)
ICE raids are clearly targeting areas where low-income communities of color work and reside, such as the racially diverse area of north Pasadena where I live and where people are still reeling from the fallout of the Eaton Fire in January 2025. ICE forces raided a swap meet in LA County’s Santa Fe Springs popular among Latinos, a garment factory in downtown Los Angeles, and Home Depot parking lots where undocumented day laborers are known to congregate.
In spite of claims that immigration enforcement is about ensuring people follow the law, the facts demonstrate it’s about preserving white domination. Under both Democratic and Republican administrations, Haitians, Mexicans, Central Americans, Venezuelans, Chinese, and other nonwhite immigrants have been terrorized, arrested, detained, and deported. In contrast, white immigrants from Ukraine and South Africa have been welcomed, housed, and integrated.
If only past Democratic presidents had understood that immigration enforcement is about race, racial hierarchy, and the violent enforcement of white supremacy, and chosen the moral high ground. Instead, they laid the groundwork for Trump’s crusade. Read more
Skyscrapers Of Babel: How Ancient Mesopotamia Shaped The Modern City
Dr. Eva Miller – University College London
06-24-2025 ~ In the early 20th century, architects and artists like Hugh Ferriss drew on the myths and monuments of ancient Babylon to imagine futuristic skylines—melding ziggurats with modernism in a visionary blend of the past and the possible.
In the early 20th century, architects turned to a newly discovered past to craft novel visions of the future: the ancient history of Mesopotamia. Eva Miller traces how both the mythology of Babel and reconstructions of stepped-pyramid forms influenced skyscraper design, speculative cinema in the 1910s and 20s, and, above all else, the retrofuturist dreams of Hugh Ferriss, architectural delineator extraordinaire.
In a dramatic, monochrome rendering in ink and charcoal, a fractal of pyramids and steps regenerates at different scales and angles. Vertiginous towers, the tallest outgrowing the frame, ascend from a base of tiered structures—or ziggurats—rising in regular terraces. The roofs of lower blocks are dotted with minuscule trees that echo the larger, man-made shapes around them. They are the only living things visible at this scale, but an accompanying text tells us that this skyline is populated with people who enjoy the city’s elaborate roof gardens, sun porches, and open-air swimming pools.
This was how Hugh Ferriss imagined the future of urbanism in his treatise Metropolis of Tomorrow (1929). Born in St. Louis in 1899, Ferris trained as an architect and forged a career for himself in a role for which he invented his own job title: “architectural delineator,” bringing other architects’ projects to life on paper. His portfolio, now held by the Avery Art and Architecture Library at Columbia University, speaks to his proximity to numerous major works of modern architecture and engineering, including renderings of Rockefeller Center, Works Progress Administration infrastructure projects, World’s Fairs, United Nations buildings, and various mysterious, unnamed structures of his own imagination—visions swimming up to us through Ferriss’ dramatic wash of line and shadow.
City of Tomorrow
Metropolis is a portfolio of Ferriss’ images, annotated with reflections on the work he had participated in and the architectural changes he had witnessed during recent decades, when American cities, especially his adopted home of New York, exploded upward. He made modest trend forecasts for the near future: glass, he predicted, would be huge (true); hydroplanes would be everywhere (sadly not).
In the final, most memorable section of the book, he sketched a distant City of Tomorrow. This city would be planned along rational lines to maximize human health and spiritual happiness through a three-part plan with districts for art, science, and business, each centered on aesthetically appropriate superblocks.
Ferriss’ dramatic depictions of towering skyscrapers and lofty perspectives became, as media scholar Eric Gordon argues, the means by which “the image of the American urban future in the popular imagination took shape.” His futurism anticipated and influenced Norman Bel Geddes, as he created his Futurama for the 1939 New York World’s Fair, the Walt Disney Company’s Tomorrowland, TV’s “The Jetsons,” and numerous other prognostications of the rational planned city, the elevated expressway, and the heliport.
Yet Ferriss’s forward-looking vision also repeatedly evoked the ancient past. The pyramid skyscraper that he promoted was, in his own description, a “modern ziggurat,” the monumental architectural form of ancient Mesopotamian cities. Centered in modern-day Iraq, both Assyria and Babylon were geopolitical superpowers of the first millennium BCE, empires discussed in both biblical and classical traditions, which had once been considered lost to the desolating force of time. Beginning in the mid-19th century, the crumbled remains of ziggurat towers had inspired speculative reconstructions.
By the 1920s, German excavations had exposed the well-preserved urban fabric of Babylon’s 6th-century BCE city walls and gates, parts of which were also partially reconstructed in Berlin’s Pergamon Museum, looking rather Art Nouveau. Meanwhile, the nearby city of Ur was being excavated by thousands of workers in digs sponsored by the British Museum and the Penn Museum, turning up mass burials of gold-bedecked bodies. These new discoveries stirred those who read about them in the popular press to imagine an antiquity that was also somehow strangely modern: The women’s fashion in the Ur burials led to press jokes about the dead bodies being traces of the original flappers.
Ferriss was clearly not the only person who thought there might be some connection between the urban spaces of ancient Babylon and Assyria and the cutting edge of modernity. At a time when being modern, especially in architecture, often meant explicitly rejecting historical reference, it is notable how much the idea of an original urban form structured visions of the future. Read more