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An Interview with Chris Crass

 

{mosmedia} In his book A Language Older Than Words, Derrick Jensen articulates the dilemma of following one’s passions while surviving in a capitalist society: “Wishing away the wage economy did not make it cease to exist, and my determination to stop selling my hours did not lessen my need for food, nor for a place to stay. In other words, despite my highfalutin philosophy, I still had to find a way to earn some cash.”  Chris Crass is a political organizer who has grappled with this dilemma for years. 
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How Trade Trumps Culture

I come from New Zealand. Most people here will know that New Zealand has three main objectives in international trade and the World Trade Organization (WTO) - they involve agriculture, agriculture and agriculture. However, despite two decades of neoliberal policies that have radically changed our country, there is still more to life in New Zealand than butter, sheep and export markets.

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Argentina: Hope in Hard Times

"Imagine you lost your job and the government closed down the banks, so you couldn't get out your savings.  What would you do?" asks the narrator of the new film, Argentina: Hope in Hard Times.  In the case of Argentina's economic crisis in 2002, the situation brought about a renewal in grassroots democracy. This film covers the social movement that broke out in Argentina during that crisis, taking the viewer on a wild ride to street protests, worker-controlled factories, barter fairs and a Citibank transformed into a community center.  It discusses the rise and fall of a country that, in a matter of days, went from being one of the richest nations in the region, to one of the poorest. 

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Global Notebook 7-20-05

GLOBAL

Pope perturbed by Potter’s powers  

BERLIN – Is Harry Potter seducing young people and endangering their souls? According to comments attributed to Pope Benedict XVI by German writer Gabriele Kuby, the popular series of books by J.K. Rowling includes “subtle seductions which act unnoticed and by this deeply distort Christianity in the soul, before it can grow properly.”

Kuby, a devout Catholic who has written a critical book called Harry Potter – Good or Evil, sent the Pope a copy of her critique in 2003 and received two letters in response, when Benedict was known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. Kuby published passages from one letter in German on her website, according to the London’s Financial Evening News. read more

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Growing Evidence of a Massacre by UN Occupation Forces in Haiti

The San Francisco Labor Council sent a small delegation of US trade unionists and human rights workers to participate in the National Congress of the Confederation of Haitian Workers, held in Port-au-Prince July 1st and 2nd, as well as to investigate the labor and human rights conditions in Haiti. Toward the end of our mission, on July 6th, we received an eyewitness report from local Haitian human rights workers that UN military forces had carried out a massacre in one of Port-au-Prince's poorest neighborhoods, Cite Soleil. We extended our trip to investigate the report.