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polly7's JournalBello: Washington Debates the Pivot to Asia
Washington Debates the Pivot to Asia
By Walden Bello
Source: Foreign Policy in Focus
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Movement has been rapid, with Washington expanding its naval exercises with Japan, sending marines to Australia, conducting military exercises in the Philippines with its allies, and supporting the negotiating positions of the Philippines and Vietnam on the dispute over the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, or what Filipinos now call the West Philippine Sea. Sixty percent of the U.S. Navys strength has been deployed to the Western Pacific.
Containment of China is the aim of the Pivot strategy, which has drawn criticism from liberal critics of the policy like Robert Ross, a professor of Political Science at Boston University and a China expert. Writing in the November-December issue of Foreign Affairs, Ross acknowledges that Chinas actions in the South China Seaincluding claiming the whole area as Chinese territorial waterscome across as aggressive. However, the Pivot, he claims, is based on a fundamental misreading of Chinas leadership, which Ross says is now given to appeasing an increasingly nationalist public with symbolic gestures of force.
Full Article: http://www.zcommunications.org/washington-debates-the-pivot-to-asia-by-walden-bello
Who Can Own Life? Farmer vs. Monsanto Before US High Court
By Lauren McCauley
Source: Common Dreams
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Some of the reports findings include:
As of January 2013, Monsanto, alleging seed patent infringement, had filed 144 lawsuits involving 410 farmers and 56 small farm businesses in at least 27 different states.
Today, three corporations control 53 percent of the global commercial seed market.
Seed consolidation has led to market control resulting in dramatic increases in the price of seeds. From 1995-2011, the average cost to plant one acre of soybeans has risen 325 percent; for cotton prices spiked 516 percent and corn seed prices are up by 259 percent.
Corporations did not create seeds," said the reports lead author Debbie Barker, adding that their assertion of seed patents threatens a resource "that is vital to survival, and that, historically, has been in the public domain.
Full Article: http://www.zcommunications.org/who-can-own-life-farmer-vs-monsanto-before-us-high-court-by-lauren-mccauley
Protection of the Citizen
By Nikos Raptis
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Will the reader apply for a job that includes the following:
- "Not long after telling the police that she had been raped, a woman from South Delhi looked out her apartment window and saw the man who had attacked her laughing with a police officer who had given him [the rapist] a ride back from the police station... the woman, a 30-year-old mother of two ..." [The International Herald Tribune, January 23 , 2013]
- "The infliction of physical punishment is not every man's job, and naturally we were only too glad to recruit men who were prepared to show no squeamishness at their task. Unfortunately we knew nothing about the Freudian side of the business, and it was only after a number of instances of unnecessary flogging and meaningless cruelty that I stumbled to the fact that my organization had been attracting all the sadists in Germany and Austria without my knowledge ..." [Erik Larson, "In the Garden of the Beasts", Random House, 2011, page 370. The verbatim words belong to Rudolf Diels, the creator of the most "effective" police force in world history; the "Gestapo".]
- The man has earned: A Bronze Star, a Purple Heart, the Vietnamese Cross Of Gallantry and two Army Commendation Medals for Valor and was honorably discharged from the US Army. For 20 years, as a policeman, he had been torturing people in Chicago. Today he is serving a four and a half year sentence, instead of a 30 year one. His name: Jon Graham Burge. He will be released on February 14, 2015
Full Article: http://www.zcommunications.org/protection-of-the-citizen-by-nikos-raptis
The Latin American Exception
How a Washington Global Torture Gulag Was Turned Into the Only Gulag-Free Zone on Earth
By Greg Grandin
Source: TomDispatch.com
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Back in the early twentieth century, a similar red-hued map was used to indicate the global reach of the British Empire, on which, it was said, the sun never set. It seems that, between 9/11 and the day George W. Bush left the White House, CIA-brokered torture never saw a sunset either.
All told, of the 190-odd countries on this planet, a staggering 54 participated in various ways in this American torture system, hosting CIA black site prisons, allowing their airspace and airports to be used for secret flights, providing intelligence, kidnapping foreign nationals or their own citizens and handing them over to U.S. agents to be rendered to third-party countries like Egypt and Syria. The hallmark of this network, Open Society writes, has been torture. Its report documents the names of 136 individuals swept up in what it says is an ongoing operation, though its authors make clear that the total number, implicitly far higher, will remain unknown because of the extraordinary level of government secrecy associated with secret detention and extraordinary rendition.
No region escapes the stain. Not North America, home to the global gulags command center. Not Europe, the Middle East, Africa, or Asia. Not even social-democratic Scandinavia. Sweden turned over at least two people to the CIA, who were then rendered to Egypt, where they were subject to electric shocks, among other abuses. No region, that is, except Latin America.
Full Article: http://www.zcommunications.org/the-latin-american-exception-by-greg-grandin
Will We Have Enough Water? Adapting to a Warming, Water-Stressed World.
by Sandra Postel, originally published by University of Minnesota, College of Biological Sciences | TODAY
Post Carbon Fellow Sandra Postel recently gave a talk on 'Will We have Enough Water? Adapting to a Warming, Water-Stressed World' for the Moos Family Speaker Series on Water Resources. Watch the video here, Sandra's talk begins at 4:20.
http://mediasite.uvs.umn.edu/Mediasite/Viewer/?peid=cda2e3232e5942209f3fc07353b16af8
February 15, 2003. The Day the World Said No to War
By Phyllis Bennis
Source: Institute for Policy Studies
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Our movement changed history. While we did not prevent the Iraq war, the protests proved its clear illegality, demonstrated the isolation of the Bush administration policies, helped prevent war in Iran, and inspired a generation of activists.
And across the globe, the call came in scores of languages, the world says no to war! The cry Not in Our Name echoed from millions of voices. The Guinness Book of World Records said between 12 and 14 million people came out that day, the largest protest in the history of the world. It was, as the great British labor and peace activist and former MP Tony Benn described it to the million Londoners in the streets that day, the first global demonstration, and its first cause is to prevent a war against Iraq. What a concept a global protest against a war that had not yet begun the goal, to try to stop it.
It was an amazing moment powerful enough that governments around the world, including the soon-famous Uncommitted Six in the Security Council, did the unthinkable: they too resisted pressure from the United States and the United Kingdom and said no to endorsing Bushs war. Under ordinary circumstances, alone, U.S.-dependent and relatively weak countries like Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, Mexico and Pakistan could never have stood up to Washington. But these were not ordinary circumstances. The combination of diplomatic support from Old Europe, Germany and France who for their own reasons opposed the war, and popular pressure from thousands, millions, filling the streets of their capitals, allowed the Six to stand firm. The pressure was fierce. Chile was threatened with a U.S. refusal to ratify a U.S. free trade agreement seven years in the making. (The trade agreement was quite terrible, but the Chilean government was committed to it.) Guinea and Cameroon were threatened with loss of U.S. aid granted under the African Growth & Opportunity Act. Mexico faced the potential end of negotiations over immigration and the border. And yet they stood firm.
The day before the protests, February 14, the Security Council was called into session once again, this time at the foreign minister level, to hear the ostensibly final reports of the two UN weapons inspectors for Iraq. Many had anticipated that their reports would somehow wiggle around the truth, that they would say something Bush and Blair would grab to try to legitimize their spurious claims of Iraqs alleged weapons of mass destruction, that they would at least appear ambivalent enough for the U.S. to use their reports to justify war. But they refused to bend the truth, stating unequivocally that no such weapons had been found.
Full Article: http://www.zcommunications.org/february-15-2003-the-day-the-world-said-no-to-war-by-phyllis-bennis
Wikileaks Is A Rare Truth Teller. Smearing Julian Assange Is Shameful - Pilger
By John Pilger
Thursday, February 14, 2013
These public displays of warmth for Assange are common and seldom reported. Several thousand people packed Sydney Town Hall, with hundreds spilling into the street. In New York recently, Assange was awarded the Yoko Ono Lennon Prize for Courage. In the audience was Daniel Ellsberg, who risked all to leak the truth about the barbarism of the Vietnam war.
Like the philanthropist Jemima Khan, the investigative journalist Phillip Knightley, the acclaimed film-maker Ken Loach and others lost bail money in standing up for Julian Assange. The US is out to crush someone who has revealed its dirty secrets, Loach wrote to me. Extradition via Sweden is more than likely is it difficult to choose whom to support?
No, it is not difficult.
Full Article: http://www.zcommunications.org/wikileaks-is-a-rare-truth-teller-smearing-julian-assange-is-shameful-by-john-pilger
I Am Hurting Too - The hurt of militarized authoritarianism in Singapore, Afghanistan and the world
By Dr Hakim (Dr Teck Young, Wee )
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
But people are dying.
And children and women are feeling hopeless.
Full Article: http://www.zcommunications.org/i-am-hurting-too-by-dr-hakim-dr-teck-young-wee
Occupied Greek Factory Begins Production Under Workers Control
By Thessaloniki Solidarity Initiative and Brendan Martin and Dario Azzellini and Marina Sitrin
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
We see this as the only future for workers struggles.
Makis Anagnostou, Vio.Me workers union spokesman
With unemployment climbing to 30% - sick and tired of big words, promises and more taxes - not having been paid since May 2011, the workers of Vio.Me, by decision of the general assembly of the union declare their determination not to fall prey to a condition of perpetual unemployment, but instead to take the factory in their own hands to operate themselves. It is now time for workers control of Vio.Me.! (Statement of the Open Solidarity Initiative, written together with the workers of Vio.Me full statement: Viome.org)
Workers in Vio.Me stopped being paid in May of 2011, and subsequently the owners and managers abandoned the factory. After a series of assemblies the workers decided that together they would run the factory. Since then, they have occupied and defended the factory and the machinery needed for production. They have continued to reach out to other workers and communities throughout Greece, receiving tremendous support. The solidarity and support of all of these groups, communities and individuals, has made an important contribution towards the survival of the workers and their families thus far.
This experience of workers occupation to workers recovery and control is not new either historically or currently. Since 2001 there are close to 300 workplaces that are run democratically by workers in Argentina, ranging from health clinics and newspapers and schools, to metal factories, print shops and a hotel. The experience there has shown that workers together cannot only run their own workplace, but can do it better. The example of Argentina has spread throughout the Americas, and now to Europe and the US. In Chicago, workers of New World Windows have begun production under workers control after years of struggles with former owners and bosses. And now in Greece, workers are again showing that the way forward out of unemployment refusing the crisis is workers control and directly democratic self-management.
Full Article: http://www.zcommunications.org/occupied-greek-factory-begins-production-under-workers-control-by-thessaloniki-solidarity-initiative
Bulldozers and More Talks: Paving the Road for a New Status Quo
By Ramzy Baroud
Monday, February 11, 2013
Only hours after the announcement, Israel had its own announcement to make: the building of a new illegal settlement (according to international law, all of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are illegal) in Palestinian land. The area is called the E-1 zone by Israel. A couple of European countries responded with greater exasperation than usual, but soon moved on to other seemingly more pressing issues. The US called Israels spiteful move counterproductive, but soon neglected the matter. Palestinian activists who tried to counter Israels illegal activities by pitching tents in areas marked by Israel for construction were violently removed.
Mahmoud Abbas PA is at a standstill in the same pitiful possession. It continues to serve as a buffer between occupied, ethnically cleansed and rightfully angry Palestinians. Its existence would not have been possible without Israels consent. Fiery speeches, press releases and conferences aside, the PA has affectively sub-contracted part of the Israeli occupation as in maintaining Israels security for example in exchange for perks for those affiliated with the PA. Examples of these privileges include easier access to business contracts or jobs. It is this symbiosis that constantly averts any serious confrontation between Israel and the PA. Both parties would lose if the status quo were seriously hampered. For Israel to reclaim its responsibilities as an Occupying Power under international law would be a huge financial and political burden that could impede its settlement constructions in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. In fact, Israel is able to maintain all the benefits of military occupation without much cost. For Abbas, shutting down the PA conglomerate would mean financial and political suicide for the branch of Fatah politicians affiliated with him.
Thus some clever manifestation of the peace process show must be found that would help both parties save face Israel to finish its settlement plans and the PA to sustain its enterprise.
Full Article: http://www.zcommunications.org/bulldozers-and-more-talks-paving-the-road-for-a-new-status-quo-by-ramzy-baroud
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