Economic Expansion in China: Whose Miracle?
Deng Xiaoping announced in 1992 that ‘to get rich is glorious’, opening up the floodgates of economic expansion but also exploitation, inequality and corruption.
The Libyan Miscalculation
Source: Counterpunch
1. Partitions.
NATO miscalculates and thrice fires on the Benghazi rebels. The NATO commanders blame this on a confused frontline. It is hard to distinguish, they say, between the Libyan rebels from the Libyan regulars. Libya is effectively partitioned between the west and the east.
Qaddafi remains in command of the west. His son, Saif-al-Islam told the BBC that his family is not keen on an exit to Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe or Venezuela. Saif, and his brother Saadi, have made an offer that their father might consider stepping down from a position he claims not to hold, as long as the sons can remain in some form of authority (Qaddafi pere conducted the remarkable feat ofcentralization of power in the name of de-centralization). Former US Congressman Curt Weldon apparently told Qaddafi that he might be made honorary chairman of the African Union, and that his sons might be permitted to run for office in a future Libyan election. The Benghazi rebels are aghast. This is not what they hoped for.
Water vs. Gold Mining: How a Colombian City United Against Gold Greed
Joy ran high two weeks ago among students, environmentalists, businesspeople, and politicians as the news came in that Greystar Resources had revoked their application for a large-scale open-pit gold mine in the mountains of northeastern Colombia.
The War on Palestinian Memory
Palestinian citizens of Israel must have been proud of the fact that their collective tenacity always proved stronger than any Israeli attempt at dislocating them from their rightful historical narrative.
‘No safe levels’ of radiation in Japan
Source: Al Jazeera
In a nuclear crisis that is becoming increasingly serious, Japan’s Nuclear Safety Agency confirmed that radioactive iodine-131 in seawater samples taken near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex that was seriously damaged by the recent tsunami off the coast of Japan is 4,385 times the level permitted by law.
Airborne radiation near the plant has been measured at 4-times government limits.
Tokyo Electric Power Company, the company that operates the crippled plant, has begun releasing more than 11,000 tons of radioactive water that was used to cool the fuel rods into the ocean while it attempts to find the source of radioactive leaks. The water being released is about 100 times more radioactive than legal limits.
Declaration of Patihuitz in Chiapas, Mexico: Divided We Become Allies of the Government
Several campesino organizations recently convened in the village of Patihuitz in Chiapas, Mexico in an effort aimed at community education about Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) in the region. What follows is the declaration that emerged from that gathering.