tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-65499258280957395992012-02-02T19:05:36.612+09:00ecopoleconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17648704839376963372noreply@blogger.comBlogger321100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6549925828095739599.post-52604045367804711632008-01-17T23:56:00.000+09:002008-01-18T00:03:03.230+09:00

By STEVEN R. WEISMANPublished: January 17, 2008WASHINGTON — Six months after taking over as president of the World Bank, Robert B. Zoellick faced new turmoil on Wednesday over a campaign against corruption in bank lending, with the resignation of the chief of the bank’s antifraud unit.Bank officials said that despite Mr. Zoellick’s efforts to heal the wounds left from the stormy tenure of his

ecopoleconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17648704839376963372noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6549925828095739599.post-86249998407828905942007-11-24T21:13:00.000+09:002007-11-24T21:27:13.735+09:00

Gilbert Achcar on U.S. foreign policy and violence in the Middle East; Jack Miles on Iraqi oil; Syed Saleem Shahzad on Musharraf's predicament; Alain Gresh on America's New Backyard Read together, these three commentaries suggest how fragile things are becoming in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Lebanon, countries which are regarded in decreasing order of importance by U.S. planners. The

ecopoleconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17648704839376963372noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6549925828095739599.post-40214199464537168582007-11-24T20:17:00.000+09:002007-11-24T21:26:10.071+09:00

Against all historical evidence, the EU is claiming that rapid liberalization will "help Africa develop." In a new draft agreement on Economic Partnership Agreements with the East African Community (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda), Brussels is asking the EAC to remove tariffs on 80% of products within 15 years. Kenyan farmers have attempted to file a lawsuit in Kenyan courts to

ecopoleconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17648704839376963372noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6549925828095739599.post-78238195191164073492007-11-20T22:44:00.000+09:002007-11-20T23:30:02.216+09:00

The FBI has reported that hate crimes in the U.S. rose 8% in 2006. Of 7,720 "single-bias incidents," 51.8% were "racially motivated." Hate crimes are a minor issue, however, compared to the fact that the income gap between blacks and whites has grown in the last 30 years. And it's no surprise: what is sometimes mythologized as a post-civil rights period of ascent towards equality has really been

ecopoleconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17648704839376963372noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6549925828095739599.post-74548322752137599112007-11-17T11:38:00.000+09:002007-11-17T16:02:38.346+09:00

The U.S. Congress has passed the U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement. Among the provisions: removal of duties on some 80% of U.S. exports to Peru, including subsidized cotton, corn and wheat (which will drive more Peruvian farmers off the land); expanded rights to drill in the Peruvian Amazon (which is why Occidental Petroleum, for example, has been lobbying hard for the FTA); and the greater opening

ecopoleconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17648704839376963372noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6549925828095739599.post-2032924934399510592007-11-08T13:01:00.000+09:002007-11-17T16:05:53.920+09:00

As Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen pointed out in his 1971 classic The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, all forms of production and consumption are ultimately tributaries of solar energy flow captured through mining, forestry and agriculture. Despite the vast diversity of output in the global economy—from art to artillery—the main inputs are relatively simple: fossil fuels, minerals, timber and

ecopoleconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17648704839376963372noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6549925828095739599.post-24704230300218107002007-10-31T08:26:00.000+09:002007-11-14T18:21:39.411+09:00

Last month, Defense Secretary Robert Gates embarked on a five-nation tour of Latin America. His stops included five Bush administration allies with poor human rights records: El Salvador, Colombia, Suriname, Peru and Chile. Gates, unsurprisingly, used his scheduled press conferences to take a few jabs at Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. From Agence-France-Press:At a joint news conference with

ecopoleconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17648704839376963372noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6549925828095739599.post-6061930509958510412007-10-30T22:52:00.000+09:002007-11-12T18:21:47.288+09:00

The Blackwater bodyguards who killed 17 Iraqi civilians have been granted immunity from prosecution by the U.S. State Department. This is a symbolic middle finger from Washington to Nuri Al-Maliki, who recently said that Blackwater ‘must pay’ for the killings. Evidently, the State Department is no longer even trying to pretend that the Republic of Iraq is a sovereign state. (Kind of like the U.S.

ecopoleconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17648704839376963372noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6549925828095739599.post-8545528593555529672007-10-29T22:58:00.000+09:002007-10-29T23:12:26.566+09:00

The UN has released its “State of the Future 2007” report. Some highlights:On corruption:-Annual worldwide income from organized crime “could be well over $2 trillion,” of which counterfeiting accounts for about $520 billion and the drug trade another $320 billion.-Contrary to self-congratulation about “transparency” in “the industrial democracies,” the report finds that “the vast majority of

ecopoleconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17648704839376963372noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6549925828095739599.post-36743738165069527192007-10-29T18:48:00.000+09:002007-10-29T19:21:52.231+09:00

This essay summarizes his argument in the book "Bad Samaritans." Looking at the economic history of Western Europe, the U.S., Japan and the so-called "tiger economies," Chang demolishes the neoliberal argument that liberalization, privatization and strict patenting/"intellectual property" laws lead to prosperity. Following the "golden age" of post-colonial developmentalism in the 1960s-1970s, the

ecopoleconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17648704839376963372noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6549925828095739599.post-55144497851990750792007-10-27T20:03:00.000+09:002007-10-27T21:02:36.562+09:00

25,000 landless farmers India are embarked on a 600-kilometer march to New Delhi. It began on October 2nd, and is scheduled to end on October 30th. From Agence France-Presse: "[Puthan Vithal] Rajgopal, a 59-year-old engineer, said he and the people following him believed the lack of land reforms was creating "tiny pockets of vast wealth" in billion-plus India, where 73 percent of the population

ecopoleconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17648704839376963372noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6549925828095739599.post-40382061002229375402007-10-23T21:38:00.000+09:002007-10-27T21:06:17.178+09:00

The concept of "primitive accumulation" comes from Adam Smith, who argued that the cycle of capital accumulation required an "original accumulation" to get up and running. Towards the end of Capital Vol. 1, Marx described a process of "primitive accumulation," consisting of acts of brute force and robbery ("non-economic coercion") which laid the basis for the capitalist mode of production(which,

ecopoleconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17648704839376963372noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6549925828095739599.post-26271980782623534972007-10-23T21:06:00.000+09:002007-10-23T21:37:10.234+09:00

Some frightening, and related, news from two Australian sources:According to the Australian Research Council, a third of global marine life is endangered by ocean acidification. This is caused by a long-term build-up of carbon emissions: the world's oceans are believed to have absorbed a third of all carbon emissions since the Industrial Revolution.Coral reefs are among the most threatened; the

ecopoleconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17648704839376963372noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6549925828095739599.post-92193818579636055052007-10-23T14:26:00.000+09:002007-10-23T20:10:16.608+09:00

60,000 Turkish troops have massed on the Iraqi border. Meanwhile, the PKK has offered Turkey an unconditional ceasefire on the condition that it does not cross the border.The U.S. has poured arms into Turkey throughout the duration of its brutal counter-insurgency campaign against the Kurds. Turkey was the third largest recipient of U.S. military aid between 1994 and 2004, behind Israel and Egypt

ecopoleconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17648704839376963372noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6549925828095739599.post-4704821099962985972007-10-22T16:27:00.001+09:002007-10-31T19:19:16.777+09:00

I first saw this on Kai Chang's blog. It says it all, doesn't it?It has to be said, though, that while Israeli settler-colonialism (and its racialized logic of dispossession) is as bad as its white South African cousin, neither are as bad as the white American version. And I say that as a white American who descends from settlers who got "Indian grants" in 1880s California, after the U.S.

ecopoleconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17648704839376963372noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6549925828095739599.post-31964636250560101122007-10-21T16:28:00.000+09:002007-10-21T20:01:27.456+09:00

Critics of "dependency" or other left theories of imperialism often point out that, in monetary terms, North-South trade is less important than North-North trade. But this perception of "importance" is an illusion created by what economists call value chains. Mineral and agricultural raw materials are the foundation of all commodity production, but most of the exchange value of final products (

ecopoleconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17648704839376963372noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6549925828095739599.post-83751779465614782692007-10-19T22:53:00.000+09:002007-10-21T19:57:13.316+09:00

Depending on who you ask, between 66% and 80% of all past carbon emissions can be traced to the OECD countries, which comprise 12% of the world’s population. But the biggest victims of climate change are the 4 billion + rural and urban poor in Asia, Africa and Latin America. There is evidence that the Sahel famines in the 1970s and 1980s, which killed millions of Africans, were caused by carbon

ecopoleconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17648704839376963372noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6549925828095739599.post-50421944750712695152007-10-14T19:50:00.000+09:002007-10-21T19:59:45.515+09:00

U.S. attempts to isolate Chavez in Latin America have been frustrated again. First, Hugo Chavez, Alvaro Uribe and Rafael Correa met last Friday to commemorate the opening of joint gas pipeline linking Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador. Venezuelan energy and oil minister Rafael Ramirez said that Venezuela and Colombia are looking into an extension of the pipeline to Panama “and then to the rest of

ecopoleconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17648704839376963372noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6549925828095739599.post-85184800029886027542007-10-10T19:23:00.000+09:002007-10-11T22:11:14.946+09:00

Over 20,000 people took to the streets of Mumbai yesterday to protest the entry of Wal-Mart into the Indian market. The Indian retail sector is worth an estimated $370 billion, only 5% of which is made up of supermarkets and chain stores. The rest consists of small merchants. The conflict here is not about corporate homogeneity vs. Mom n' Pop diversity, or Westernization vs. Indian traditionalism

ecopoleconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17648704839376963372noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6549925828095739599.post-44429935240450048322007-10-09T18:55:00.001+09:002007-10-10T18:59:14.449+09:00

Here is a paper on U.S. Latin America policy, comparing official allies and enemies and discussing the strategic and economic factors underlying U.S. government and media support. Any criticism of foreign governments' records on human rights, corruption or democracy from the U.S. government and media has to be placed in the context of these factors. They determine which governments' crimes are

ecopoleconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17648704839376963372noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6549925828095739599.post-14687291224603273002007-09-18T22:13:00.000+09:002007-09-18T23:16:09.817+09:00

The U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement was passed by Congress this week. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, defending the agreement against critics who say it will harm the U.S. economy, pointed out that the U.S. is running a trade surplus with the Dominican Republic and five Central American countries as a result of CAFTA. He is right to suggest that the U.S.-Peru FTA will extend the results of

ecopoleconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17648704839376963372noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6549925828095739599.post-63882195296831439642007-09-15T19:10:00.000+09:002007-09-16T14:01:15.356+09:00

Interfax reports that the U.S. signed a new "military cooperation plan" with Azerbaijan on Friday. In 2003, the Caspian Guard initiative was launched, under which the U.S. would carry out joint military exercises with Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. The U.S. has been trying to establish mobile army bases in the country, which is stragically important for two overlapping reasons: the soon-to-be-opened

ecopoleconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17648704839376963372noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6549925828095739599.post-47542694132449291452007-09-14T18:50:00.000+09:002007-09-17T22:29:47.295+09:00

Taiwan is one of the largest recipents of U.S. arms, recieving $540 million in high-tech weaponry in 2003 alone. U.S. planners are now worried that China will gain a military edge over Taiwan through a French arms deal with Pakistan. According to Jane's Defense Weekly, quoted by USA Today, Pakistan is developing a JF-17 jet fighter with China, and it is trying to buy air-to-air missiles from the

ecopoleconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17648704839376963372noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6549925828095739599.post-67556084161998023212007-09-13T20:19:00.000+09:002007-10-15T23:54:45.990+09:00

It has been noted by many commentators that 9/11 is not only a notorious day in the United States. On 9/11/1973, in a military operation coordinated with the CIA, the Chilean military bombed the Chilean presidential palace, precipitating the suicide of Salvador Allende and allowing General Augusto Pinochet to take power.On 9/11/1977, white South African security forces beat black activist Steve

ecopoleconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17648704839376963372noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6549925828095739599.post-4562217472508932982007-09-12T21:18:00.000+09:002007-09-12T22:52:56.342+09:00

There has been a great deal of speculation about how Russia will respond to the Eastern European missile defense system the U.S. is planning. This "defense" system is being widely interpreted in Russia as an offense system, not a means of preventing a Russian first strike, but of disabling a Russian retaliatory strike in the event of a U.S. first strike. This is exactly how the testing of a

ecopoleconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17648704839376963372noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6549925828095739599.post-64242655012568175372007-09-12T19:09:00.000+09:002007-09-12T21:18:41.223+09:00

While many people were thinking about non-state terror yesterday, the wheels of state terror were being liberally greased with a new round of arms sales. According to the Financial Times, one of the world's biggest arms fairs opened in the Docklands section of London on September 9th, and is scheduled to run through today. 1,300 companies from 30 countries will be present. There will be military

ecopoleconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17648704839376963372noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6549925828095739599.post-82105294736788548902007-09-11T20:38:00.000+09:002007-09-11T22:17:01.252+09:00

Every year, a chunk of the Amazon rainforest the size of Connecticut is cut down, releasing a huge quantity of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The Amazon still comprises some 300 million hectares of tropical forest, comparable to the Indian subcontinent, and home to an estimated 90% of the species on Earth. At present rates, this hub of fecundity will be a barren moonscape by the end of the

ecopoleconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17648704839376963372noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6549925828095739599.post-25721071180849571262007-09-11T13:54:00.000+09:002007-09-11T20:35:23.232+09:00

"At least" six oil and natural gas pipelines were attacked on opposite ends of the Mexican state of Veracruz on Monday night. The pipelines were all operated by the Mexican state oil monopoly, Petroeleos Mexicanos, or PEMEX. An unexploded bomb in the town of Antigua was found with the message, "Alive they took them, alive we want them. EPR." This signifies the Ejercito Popular Revolucionario, or

ecopoleconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17648704839376963372noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6549925828095739599.post-31643882536694343492007-06-08T11:13:00.000+09:002007-06-08T11:51:15.585+09:00

According to a new scientific study, six species of coral are under threat of extinction in the Caribbean due to toxic runoff and rising temperatures from global warming.Meanwhile, we are being told that a "compromise" was made on the issue of climate change at the G-8 Summit. As always with the mainstream media, symbolism is presented as substance.According to the BBC,"Leaders of the G8 nations

ecopoleconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17648704839376963372noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6549925828095739599.post-24960445541193372602007-06-06T07:26:00.000+09:002007-06-06T07:41:40.520+09:00

According to the U.N. Refugee Agency, the number of Iraqis who have been driven from their homes since 2003 is about 4.2 million, 2.2 million of whom have fled Iraq (1.4 million into Syria, 750,000 in Jordan, and the rest in Iran, Turkey and other states). The other 2 million comprising this estimated figure are 'internally displaced,' concentrated in the central regions of Iraq.This overshadows

ecopoleconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17648704839376963372noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6549925828095739599.post-15452585543987464642007-06-05T11:08:00.000+09:002007-06-05T11:29:45.305+09:00

In a March 2007 op-ed piece in the New York Times, Antonia Juhasz pointed out that, under the Iraqi Hydrocarbon Law currently slated for passage, "The Iraq National Oil Company would have exclusive control of just 17 of Iraq’s 80 known oil fields, leaving two-thirds of known — and all of its as yet undiscovered — fields open to foreign control."The law, which can be read here, is largely a

ecopoleconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17648704839376963372noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6549925828095739599.post-49346110542422357072007-06-05T08:33:00.000+09:002007-10-15T23:52:10.352+09:00

The effects of climate change are often discussed in the North as an abstract problem which "our" children and grandchildren will have to deal with in the future if emissions are not reduced. But there are two problems with this formulation. First, it sweeps aside the massive inequalities underlying both the causes and effects of climate change. Second, it presumes that the problem is not already

ecopoleconhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17648704839376963372noreply@blogger.com0