Day: March 9, 2010

Amir, ten years old, abducted by Israeli soldiers from his bed By Nora Barrows-Friedman

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8 March, 2010 — Uruknet.info – Electronic Intifada

Nora Barrows-Friedman writing from Hebron, occupied West Bank

Amir al-Mohtaseb smiled tenderly when I asked him to tell me his favorite color. Sitting in his family’s living room last Thursday afternoon, 4 March, in the Old City of Hebron, the ten-year-old boy with freckles and long eyelashes softly replied, ‘green.’ He then went on to describe in painful detail his arrest and detention — and the jailing of his 12-year-old brother Hasan by Israeli occupation soldiers on Sunday, 28 February.

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Hours after our interview, at 2am, Israeli soldiers would break into the house, snatch Amir from his bed, threaten his parents with death by gunfire if they tried to protect him, and take him downstairs under the stairwell. They would beat him so badly that he would bleed internally into his abdomen, necessitating overnight hospitalization. In complete shock and distress, Amir would not open his mouth to speak for another day and a half.

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Strained US ‘ China Relations: China’s Crucial Role as America’s Creditor By Prof. James Petras

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8 March, 2010 — Global Research

The Obama Administration has heightened tensions with China through a series of measures which can only be characterized as major provocations designed to undermine relations between the two countries. These provocations include political support for separatist movements, such as the US-funded theocratic-monk led Tibetan secessionists and the Washington-based Uyghur secessionists, as well as through the $6.4 billion-dollar advanced arms sales to Taiwan, a virtual protectorate of the US Navy. President Obama has publicly met with and openly backed these separatist and secessionists groups, flaunting Washington’s refusal to recognize China’s existing borders. This is part of the US strategy of encouraging the physical break-up of independent nations, which are viewed as ‘obstacles’ to its program of global military empire building.

In addition to continuing and escalating the hostile policies of his predecessor, the Obama Administration has exploited several other issues in order to rally American public opinion and mobilize overseas allies behind its confrontational posture. First, the Obama Administration claims that China’s currency (the Renminbi) is artificially undervalued to give Chinese exports an unfair price advantage, thus undercutting US manufacturing exports and costing ‘millions of American jobs’. And secondly, the Administration claims that, after the US had opened its domestic manufacturing market to Chinese firms, the Chinese would not ‘reciprocate’ and open their financial sectors to Wall Street investment banks.
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The Emilia-Romagna Coops: A Market Without Capitalists By Frances Moore Lappe

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8 Mar 2010 — Alternet.com – SolidarityEconomy.net

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Poster: Italy’s Federation of Consumer Coops

A market economy and capitalism are synonymous — or at least joined at the hip. That’s what most Americans grow up assuming. But it is not necessarily so. Capitalism — control by those supplying the capital in order to return wealth to shareholders — is only one way to drive a market.

Granted, it is hard to imagine another possibility for how an economy could work in the abstract. It helps to have a real-life example.

And now I do.

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Activists Push to Save Greenpeace By Ian Angus

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8 March, 2010 — Climate and Capitalism

Putting a Canadian Liberal in charge of its international climate change program could put one of the world most successful environmental organizations on the fast track to corporate collaboration

I like DeSmogBlog. It does wonderful work exposing the machinations of the climate deniers and their corporate funders. Climate Cover-Up, by DeSmogBlog founder James Hoggan, should be mandatory reading for anyone who to understand that disinformation campaign.

But DeSmogBlog also supports the not-very-green Liberal machine in British Columbia. It exposes lies about global warming, but the most radical corrective measure it espouses is that province’s feeble carbon tax — a measure implemented by a government whose environmental record is otherwise appalling.

So, unfortunately, I wasn’t at all surprised that DeSmogBlog recently published a vicious and ill-informed attack on long-time radical environmentalist and anti-tar-sands campaigner Macdonald Stainsby.

Why?

Because he has had the temerity to suggest that Liberal Party supporter Tzeporah Berman, the woman who organized an absurd environmental award for BC’s Liberal Premier during the Copenhagen conference, is an inappropriate person to head Greenpeace International’s climate change program. The pale greens in B.C. stick together, and they don’t like criticism.

Stainsby says: ’Greenpeace’s original approach was confronting corporations and governments at the scenes of their crimes. That approach has softened lately, but if they hire Tzeporah Berman, they’ll be on the fast track to corporate collaboration, beyond the point of no return.’

Stainsby has launched the Save Greenpeace website to encourage Greenpeace supporters to join his campaign to stop the activist organization from becoming ‘a cog in the corporate greenwashing machine.’ He was interviewed about the campaign by CBC Radio on March 5. Click here to listen.

Full disclosure: Climate and Capitalism has published articles by Macdonald Stainsby. (Here and Here) I don’t always agree with him on analysis or tactics, but in this case he is raising the right concerns.