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EUROPE-DEVELOPMENT: The "Indignados" Still Have Wind in Their Sails

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Inter Press Service - By Cleo Fatoorehchi - Feb. 06 (News) - EUROPE-DEVELOPMENT By Cléo Fatoorehchi AIX-EN-PROVENCE, Feb 6, 2012 (IPS) - Months of protest across the European Union, sparked by indignant youth demanding an end to the brand of free market capitalism that has blighted the continent with an unemployme

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2012: The Year of the Cooperative

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

nationofchange.org - By Jessica Reeder - Feb. 02 (Special Report) - What do coffee growers in Ethiopia, hardware store owners in America, and Basque entrepreneurs have in common? For one thing, many of them belong to cooperatives. By pooling their money and resources, and voting democratically on how those resources will be used, they can compete in business and reinvest the benefits in their communities.

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6 Shocking Ways Capitalism Is Failing Working America

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Les Leopold - Feb. 01 (News Analysis) - Capitalism is coming apart at the seams and the middle-class is paying the price.

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300 Chinese Foxconn Workers 'Threaten Mass Suicide' At XBox Plant, Reports Claim

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

huffingtonpost.co.uk - By Michael Rundle - Jan. 11 (News Report) - Around 300 Chinese workers who manufacture XBox consoles took to a factory roof and threatened bosses with mass suicide over a dispute about pay, unconfirmed reports have claimed. The workers were employed at the Foxconn Technology Park in Wuhan in Hubei province. Foxconn is an independent, global manufacturing partner to companies including Apple, Microsoft and Sony.

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Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

thisamericanlife.org - By Ira Glass - Jan. 10 (Special Report) - Mike Daisey performs an excerpt that was adapted for radio from his one-man show "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs." A lifelong Apple superfan, Daisey sees some photos online from the inside of a factory that makes iPhones, starts to wonder about the people working there, and flies to China to meet them.

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U.S. Manufacturing Competitiveness in Global Trade

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Jared Bernstein: - Dec. 28 (News Analysis) - we're toward the low end of the advanced economies in terms of compensation costs. Second, in dollar terms, manufacturing compensation costs have increased much faster elsewhere over the past decade

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Oil Slick From Massive Spill in Nigeria Threatens Coastline, May Be Largest Spill in a Decade

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Dec. 27 (News Report) - Communities along Nigeria’s Niger Delta have been put on alert following a major oil spill from the oil giant, Shell. The massive oil slick is making its way to the Nigerian coast, threatening local wildlife and massive pollution along the shore. Much of the available information about the spill comes from the company responsible for it, Royal Dutch Shell, which says less than 40,000 barrels have leaked so far. But Nigeria’s National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency says the spill could be three times as large. It comes just four months after the United Nations said it would take 30 years and around $1 billion for a small section of the delta to recover from environmental damage caused by Shell and other companies.

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President Obama’s view of fraud “from 40,000 feet” (without an oxygen mask)

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

New Economic Perspectives - By William K. Black - Dec. 20 (Fact Check) - Hallucinations occur at high altitude when you become oxygen deprived. Let’s review the bidding on the Bush/Obama record in prosecuting the elite control frauds that drove the ongoing crisis. There are no convictions of the Wall Street elites that made, purchased, packaged, and sold millions of fraudulent liar’s loans. There are no federal prosecutions of the major banks that committed over 100,000 fraudulent foreclosures. There are a few settlements that sound like large dollar amounts, but are merely what even Obama concedes to be the (deeply inadequate) “cost of doing (fraudulent) business.” Fraud pays – it pays enormously and our elites now commit it with impunity as a means of becoming wealthy. We have just witnessed the travesty of Wachovia admitting to criminal conduct in their (grotesquely weak) settlement with the Department of Justice (which has a policy of no longer prosecuting large corporations that commit crimes) – and having the SEC refuse to require Wachovia to make similar admissions in its settlement. All this, the President implicitly or even explicitly concedes.

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Gingrich On Climate Change

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

FactCheck - By Brooks Jackson - Dec. 07 (Fact Check) - Newt Gingrich went too far when he claimed that “I’ve never favored cap-and-trade.” It’s true he’s never favored the approach taken by Democrats, but he said in 2007 that he would “strongly support” cap-and-trade if combined with “a tax-incentive program for investing in the solutions”.

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Richard Wolff: Eurozone Woes Result From Mating of Our "Dysfunctional" Political, Economic Systems

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Juan Gonzalez - Dec. 02 (News Analysis) - Richard Wolff: Eurozone Woes Result From Mating of Our "Dysfunctional" Political, Economic Systems European leaders are preparing to unveil their plans for addressing the sovereign debt crisis that’s threatened to tear apart the eurozone. Both France and Germany are expected to push for changes to the eurozone treaty, including centralized oversight of national budgets and tighter reins on debt

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Flipping Through DNC Playbook on Romney

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

FactCheck - By Eugene Kiely, Lori Robertson, Robert Farley, Brooks Jackson, D’Angelo Gore, Scott Blackburn, Lalita Clozel - Dec. 01 (Fact Check) - The Democratic National Committee casts Mitt Romney as an untrustworthy flip-flopper in a lengthy Web video, but pads a long list of examples with some falsehoods and distortions. It's true that Romney has changed or modified his position on some major issues -- including abortion, a federal assault weapons ban and Reaganomics, as the DNC says. But the video strains the truth ... More >>

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Newsvine - AP Impact: Right-to-know laws often ignored

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

NewsVine - By Martha Mendoza, AP National Writer,: Ravi Nessman from India, Charles Hutzler from China, Adriana Gomez Licon from Mexico. - Nov. 17 (Investigative Report) - In Mexico, the AP filed a query through a website and got all the information requested within two months. But in the U.S., the AP had to mail requests to six branches of the Justice and Homeland Security departments. After 10 months, 18 phone calls and 40 letters from the government, the AP ended up with two spreadsheets and a piece of paper with all names blanked out.

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Fact-check: South Carolina Debate

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

FactCheck - By Brooks Jackson, Eugene Kiely, Lori Robertson, Robert Farley - Nov. 13 (Fact Check) - We found several exaggerations and misstatements in the latest Republican presidential candidates’ debate. Romney issued a hollow threat to take China’s currency manipulation to a world body that doesn’t actually deal with overvalued money, and he claimed federal spending consumes more of the nation’s economic output than it really does. … More >>

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Wall Street v. Greece: G20 Opens as Greek PM Pushes For Referendum on Bailout and Austerity Measures

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Nov. 03 (News Report) - World leaders are gathering in Cannes for the opening of the Group of 20 summit today. On the top of the agenda is the Greece bailout and the European debt crisis. On Monday, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou angered many European leaders by announcing his support for a popular referendum — allowing the Greek people to decide if they want to accept the conditions of the $179 billion European Union bailout. After days of increasing criticism from European leaders, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou is now facing calls from within his party to resign. The Greek debt scandal has also pitted U.S. banking interests against France, Germany and other European powers. "The Americans are putting immense pressure on Europe saying, 'We will wreck your economy if you don’t wreck Greece's economy,'" says economic analyst Michael Hudson. President Obama is “basically telling Europe, ‘Don't go the democratic route, support Wall Street.’” [Transcript to come. Check back soon.]

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Bad Accounting Killed the US Economy

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700

populist.com - By Bob Burnett - Nov. 02 (News Analysis) - In each case Dell accepted the proposal because from a perspective of making money, it made sense: Dell’s revenues were unaffected and its profits improved significantly. However, the next time ASUSTeK came back, it wasn’t to talk to Dell. It was to talk to Best Buy and other retailers to tell them that they could offer them their own brand or any brand PC for 20% lower cost.”

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Millionaires Control 39% of Global Wealth

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

blogs.wsj.com - By Robert Frank - Oct. 19 (News Report) - Here’s another stat that the Occupy Wall Streeters can hoist on their placards: The world’s millionaires and billionaires now control 38.5% of the world’s wealth. According to the latest Global Wealth Report from Credit Suisse, the 29.7 million people in the world with household net worths of $1 million (representing less than 1% of the world’s population) control about $89 trillion of the world’s wealth. That’s up from a share of 35.6% in 2010, and their wealth increased by about $20 trillion, according Credit Suisse.

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Occupy Wall Street Protests Spread To Europe, Asia

Sat, 15 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Alessandra Rizzo, Meera Selva - Oct. 15 (News Report) - bright autumn sunshine and a social media campaign brought out thousands across Europe. In Spain, the Indignant Movement that began around-the-clock "occupation" protest camps in May which lasted for weeks held evening marches Saturday that converged on Madrid's Puerta del Sol plaza. "There is a huge crowd here," said Elsa Varona, whose choir sang an excerpt from Giuseppe Verdi's Nabucco overture as the marchers arrived. Organizers said 300,000 people took part, but police did not offer an estimate. Other Spanish cities including Barcelona, Seville, Valencia and Malaga hosted similarly well-attended gatherings."

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Court Ruling Backs Ecuadorian Effort to Hold Chevron Accountable For Amazon Pollution

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Sep. 20 (News Report) - A U.S. appeals court has ruled oil giant Chevron cannot escape an $18 billion fine for massive pollution of the Amazon rain forest. Amazonian residents won the damages in an Ecuadorian court earlier this year, and Chevron says it will appeal the decision. It is the latest development in a complex, 18-year legal battle that has gone before judges not just in Ecuador and the United States, but also the Hague. We speak with Atossa Soltani, executive director of Amazon Watch, which has worked closely with the Amazon residents suing Chevron. Atossa Soltani is in New York City this week to draw attention to environmental causes in the Amazon in conjunction with two major gatherings, the Clinton Global Initiative and the United Nations General Assembly. [Transcript to come. Check back soon.]

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American Superconductor: Ex-employee sold IP to China firm

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Bizjournals.com - Sep. 15 (News Report) - the company said a former employee of its Windtec subsidiary was arrested in Austria in July on charges of economic espionage and fraudulent manipulation of data. The employee was not named in the filing. The company said it now has evidence that the employee had been contracted by Sinovel to obtain parts of the company's wind turbine control software source code, and to transfer it to Sinovel.

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Are Jobs on Their Way to Becoming Obsolete? And Is That a Good Thing?

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Sarah Jaffe - Sep. 12 (News Analysis) - Rushkoff argues that we have more than enough to go around: “[W]e are attempting to use the logic of a scarce marketplace to negotiate things that are actually in abundance. What we lack is not employment, but a way of fairly distributing the bounty we have generated through our technologies, and a way of creating meaning in a world that has already produced far too much stuff.”

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Rebuilt Ground Zero Billed as National Symbol, But Costly Construction Projects Outsourced Overseas

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Juan Gonzalez - Sep. 09 (News Report) - While the 10th anniversary has made international headlines, little attention has been paid to some controversial aspects of the rebuilding at Ground Zero. At a time when President Obama is launching a massive jobs initiative, key parts of the construction project were outsourced overseas. A Chinese glass company won the contract to manufacture the special blast-resistant glass base of 1 World Trade Center. Some 250 tons of stainless steel from Germany will also be imported for the project.

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Titanic Battle or Insider Trading? The S&P Downgrade and the Bilderbergers: All Part of the Plan?

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Global Research - By Ellen Brown - Aug. 22 (Investigative Report) - What just happened in the stock market? Last week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose or fell by at least 400 points for four straight days, a stock market first. The worst drop was on Monday, 8-8-11, when the Dow plunged 624 points. Monday was the first day of trading after US Treasury bonds were downgraded from AAA to AA+ by Standard and Poor’s. But the roller coaster actually began on Tuesday, 8-2-11, the day after the last-minute deal to raise the U.S. debt ceiling -- a deal that was supposed to avoid the downgrade that happened anyway five days later. The Dow changed directions for eight consecutive trading sessions after that, another first.

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Six Ways To Get America Out From Under The Thumb Of Wall Street

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By David Korten, - Jul. 21 (Special Report) - Raising taxes on the rich and implementing financial reforms are essential elements of the solution to our seemingly intractable fiscal and economic crisis. Yet proposals currently on the table fall far short of the need. A newly released report of the New Economy Working Group, coordinated by the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC, goes beyond the current debate to call for a deep restructuring of the institutions to which we as a society give the power to create and allocate money.

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Monsanto Cash Incentives Under Federal Investigation

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Kathryn Gilje, - Jul. 16 (News Report) - n some circles, it would be called a bribe, at best. Evidence revealed last week shows that Monsanto's former Chief Financial Officer admitted that the agrichemical corporation planned to spend $150 million in cash and trade incentives in Latin America, North America and Europe to spur the uptake of the pesticide glyphosate, better known as RoundUp. $150 million is no small change - and surely that's not all that's been spent. The news came to light last week as part of an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Sadly, small farmers around the world know all too well the carrot and stick approaches that Monsanto and other pesticide giants use to lure farmers (and nations) toward industrial agriculture and onto the pesticide treadmill.

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The Murdoch Empire Could Be Undone": British Phone Hacking Scandal May Prompt U.S. Criminal Probe

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Jul. 13 (News Analysis) - The watchdog group, ProtectOurElections.org, has called on the FBI and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to launch criminal and civil investigations into possible prosecution under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in the wake of the scandal that began in the United Kingdom. The act makes it illegal for a U.S. corporation to bribe, or attempt to bribe, foreign officials. More than half of Murdoch’s profits come from his U.S.-based Fox TV operation, which encompasses at least 27 local Fox networks and is available to more than 100 million U.S. households.

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