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Globalization

Hawaii TPP Protest Breaks Record For Conch Shell Blow

By Andrea Brower & Marti Townsend - In a galvanizing call-to-action, hundreds gathered today outside of secret TPP negotiations to put out a global kahea (call) to stop the corporate assault on people and planet. At least four hundred people took part in a unified sounding of the pū (Hawaiian conch shell), setting a new world record that will be officially submitted to Guinness Records. Event organizer Trinette Furtado said that in blowing the pū, “we are putting out a mighty kahea(call), past the shorelines of Maui, to connect with others standing up for their 'āina (land) and people.” Following the record-setting sounding of the conch, powerful ancient chants echoed down the beach, beginning with “I Ku Mau Mau”—“Stand Up Together.” Long-time Native Hawaiian activist Walter Ritte spoke, "We don’t need another layer of colonialism and bureaucracy. We had the sugar and pineapple barons, now we have the chemical-GMO barons and the tourist industry. We don’t need anymore. It’s pilau, pilau, pilau (rotten).”

Huge International Coalition Calls For A Big Change To WTO Agenda

By Deborah James in The Huffington Post - Negotiations in the WTO are heating up -- and they are going badly. In November last year, WTO members agreed to come up with a "Work Program" for resurrecting the Doha Round by July 31. As you may remember, it had been stalled for years, but since the new Director-General, Roberto Azevêdo of Brazil, took over in September of 2013, he has been shaking things up. The first WTO expansion agreement, on "Trade Facilitation," was concluded in December 2013, along with a promise to negotiate to reduce WTO constraints WTO on developing countries' ability to feed their poor. It must be remembered that developing countries only agreed to launch a new round of negotiations in order to address problems with the previous round that resulted in the founding of the WTO in 1995.

Neoliberal Globalization, Austerity, Resistance And Reaction

By Harry Targ in Heartland Radical - The movements of global resistance have grown enormously, particularly since the recession of 2008, as has reaction. Violent reaction from rightwing movements, in some places in the form of fascist and white racist campaigns, has spread. With a few more degrees of respectability rightwing populist parties such as the Tea Party in the United States have mobilized to pressure their more dignified neoconservatives and Wall Street liberals to support austerity and state repression of resistance. State violence against public campaigns has increased. In the United States police killings of African Americans have increased. Police agencies and vigilante groups have engaged in terrorism against so-called “illegal” immigrants. And governments have passed laws limiting mobilizations in public spaces.

We Need Domestic & Internat’l Regulations To Prevent Outsourcing

By Miriam Shestack for In These Times - When corporations can move, workers and politicians and communities become very worried and skeptical about applying any workplace regulations or environmental regulations, because companies openly claim that they will move the jobs overseas in the face of greater regulation. This undermines the ability of American workers to demand a safe workplace or good wages. Every time jobs are moved overseas, this undermines the ability of the American working class to fight for any kind of positive change. That’s because unions no longer have the union dues to affect the political system and workers and communities are careful to not say anything negative or do anything that might threaten their jobs. The other part, of course, is that both corporations and politicians have worked very hard to place production and pollution in communities that have the least ability to resist.

Critical Issue: Future Of Global Governance, End Of The Nation State?

Clearing the FOG speaks with two guests from the Center for Governance and Sustainability at the University of Massachusetts – Boston about the current direction that global governance is taking. Senior fellow Harris Gleckman authored a response to the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Redesign Initiative which was released in 2010. In brief, the direction proposed by the WEF would give a stronger role to multinational corporations and reduce the role of the nation-state. Maria Ivanova, co-director of the Center for Governance and Sustainability, will discuss governance systems with respect to environmental issues around the world that function well and those that do not. The future of global governance is the major question of the century. Maria Ivanova is an international relations and environmental policy scholar specializing in governance and sustainability. Her research and policy work focus on global environmental governance and the performance of international environmental institutions. She has worked on issues such as financing for the environment, US foreign environmental policy, and sustainability on campuses and in organizations.

The World Has Reached Peak Plutocracy

Parents in despair because they can’t pay the fees at the privatised neighbourhood school… Families left without healthcare because the mining company that pollutes their river also dodges the taxes that could pay for their treatment… Women getting four hours of sleep a night as they try to balance caring for their families and homes with earning income… Workers paid so little by employers that they’re suffering malnutrition.Whole communities thrown off their land to make way for a foreign company… These are just a few of the reports I’ve heard from my colleagues in recent months. We see people frustrated by the surge in the power of the plutocrats. Plutocracy is a society or a system ruled and dominated by a small minority of the wealthiest. The rich have always been powerful; some element of plutocracy has been present in all societies.

Newsletter: Austerity, Debt & Environmental Degradation

Last week, we wrote about the epidemic of neoliberalism. This week, as major protests erupt in Canada, Mexico and Belgium, we discuss its sister, austerity. In neo-liberal economics, wealth is funneled to the top through increasing privatization of the public and cuts to social services. This can only occur if those who are not at the top are subjected to austerity measures. Those at the bottom are squeezed, suffer financial insecurity and the inability to meet basic needs. Rather than these realities weakening our ability to stand up we must stand together in solidarity to take care of each other and build our power in the struggle. People are becoming more aware that their individual struggles are against system-wide problems and are seeing that when the people are united, they can win. Let’s keep building solidarity and unity of action so the muscle of people power grows.

How The 1 Percent Stays On Top

By the end of the 20th century, some imagined that the 1 percent had obtained all they could want — after all, their level of wealth and power was beyond fabulous. Now that their deindustrialization of the country had hollowed out the working class and many people had turned to elections and given up their most powerful weapon, nonviolent direct action, surely the 1 percent could relax. As we now know, however, the 1 percent did not ease up; they knew what Gandhi also believed: The best defense is an offense. The 1 percent took even more power and wealth while most progressive movements (except for LGBT activists) played defense and cried in their beer. The next national use of shock and awe might be a new Republican administration early in 2017. But there is time to get ready to turn their move to our advantage.

Regime Change In Detroit

There were no loud explosions nor chaos in the streets,troops did not flood the avenues and enclaves of the city. A manifesto was not distributed by air drop nor was there a state of martial law issued. A coup took place in Motown a ' regime change' in the post industrial rust belt has been installed. In the post industrial era of America political, cultural, and economic realities are unlike anything our country has experienced. The very fabric of life in this era is altered by the forces of technology and the global marketplace. Traditional platforms of interaction with elected officials has been fundamentally altered. The State has now replaced the local elected legislatures ( city councils) and the core of power.

Capitalism Is Just A Story And Other Dangerous Thoughts

Our system of modern capitalism is just one story; it is not the only one there is. It’s not inherent within us. It isn’t some inevitable expression of predefined Human Nature. It was invented by human beings and so human beings can change it. But in order to get there, we first have to engage in some "dangerous thinking." Those in power have always told us to beware of ideology. There is a strong inference that it represents a warping of our pragmatic ability to get things done by whatever means necessary. But that’s just plain wrong. And a necessary distraction, of course. Ideology is the set of ideas and ideals we all must hold to operate in the world. It is not a weakness of those who don’t agree with us.

Wave Of Disruption Sweeping In To Challenge Neoliberalism

I have always been attracted to the notion that disruption to powerful systems comes not from the heart of the empire, but from the margins. This idea first fired my imagination while I was learning about the role of the monasteries of the early Celtic church, located on the wild and windswept fringes of western Europe, in reseeding the continent with art, literacy and a love of learning that had been eclipsed by the dark ages. Today, I sense a similar wave of disruption sweeping in from various marginal corners of our globalised system, a mosaic of localised responses weaving into what begins to look like a new narrative to challenge the dominant neoliberal hegemony.

Newsletter: Praise For The Radicals

In his recent article, “The Dance of Liberals and Radicals”, the liberal Robert Kuttner writes, “No great social change in America has occurred without radicals, beginning with the struggle to end slavery. Causes that now seem mainstream began with radical, impolite and sometimes civil disobedient protest.” We at Popular Resistance share the view that there need to be people and groups who see the bigger picture, who fight for what is not on the table and who are willing to put their bodies on the line to make change. Those are the people we try to lift up in our daily coverage of the movement because they are rarely recognized and are usually lacking in resources. Yesterday we marched in Washington, DC for Spring Rising with our friends in the peace and Black Lives Matter movements.

World Social Forum: Building Alternative Forms Of Globalization

The greatest progressive innovation of our century -- to this point -- has been theWorld Social Forum (WSF). In the book Another World is Possible: popular alternatives to globalization at the World Social Forum,William Fisher and I first contended that the World Social Forum represented the beginning of building a new left and a new global civilization, grounded by a desire for participatory, radical democracy. There have been a number of insightful interpretations of the World Social Forum process: it embodies resistance to globalization, it represents the latest struggle against imperialism, it manifests the power of identity, it is an insurgency against patriarchy and other forms of hierarchical discrimination, and it represents the "movement of the multitude."

One Party Planet: An Analysis Of Today’s World

There is plenty of rightful outrage at corruption, endemic poverty and systemic exploitation, yet from most political discussions to mainstream media debates, and from well-meaning ethical consumerist actions to celebrity-sponsored charity campaigns, there appears to be an implicit acceptance that what we’re doing on a broad scale is basically fine. The problem, apparently, is that we need to do it a little better, tweak it here and there, or add something else on top. It is well-known that workers’ rights in many places are systematically trampled on; that a billion people are chronically malnourished even though we produce enough food to feed the world one and a half times over; that the governments of developing countries lose at least $1 trillion each year through tax havens; that levels of greenhouse gas emissions are accelerating despite an apparent commitment from world leaders to decrease them; that the richest 1% of the world own half of all global wealth; and that, according to World Bank figures, 80% of the world’s population live on less than $10/day while 60% live on less than $5.

Popular Resistance Newsletter: Link Arms We Are All Connected

For five days in a row this week a federal agency was blockaded by protesters, delaying workers, sending a strong message of demands and resulting in scores of arrests. Did you hear about the blockades in the corporate, mass media? The blockades were just a driveway's distance from CNN, just around the corner from NPR and in a mass media center, Washington, DC. Do you wonder why they did not report that there were blockades outside of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)? The protests were because FERC has been rubber stamping fracked gas infrastructure permits without considering the environmental and health impacts, especially ignoring climate change, and ignoring the views of the communities. Gas companies are very big advertisers in the mass media. . . . Each of the issues raised that day impact all of us and all of the issues we work on: climate change, war and militarism, media corruption, Internet access and global trade. Other days brought in the issues of the corrupt corporate duopoly and a government bought and paid for by big corporations and the wealthy; and the racially unfair impact of environmental toxicity and other issues. There is power in recognizing how our issues are connected. Working together we are stronger. Challenging the system and seeking transformative change is the only way we will create the change that is needed.
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