By Li Xinran
Source: Shanghai Daily. 2009-9-18

HUNDREDS of residents in a township in east China’s Fujian Province gathered in front of the local government offices yesterday afternoon to protest a factory they believe caused lead poisoning in several children.

The demonstration took place in Jiaoyang Township, Shanghang County, after at least four children were found to have excessive lead levels in their blood, Xinhua news agency reported. Villagers charged that the pollution came from the nearby Huaqiang Battery Factory. read more…

Source: La Via Campesina. 9 September 2009

Today we celebrate September 10, International Day of peasant struggles against the WTO. Every year when this day comes, we remember September 10, 2003, and our mobilization against the WTO in Cancun.

For farmers and peasants around the world the fight against the WTO is a struggle for life. Trade liberalization is like a steamroller. Each time it moves forward, more farmers disappear. In 2003, Korean farmers were among those who neoliberal policies struck hardest. Due to strong competition from cheap imports, many producers could no longer sell their own harvests. Mr Lee Kyung Hae was one of those farmers whose right to live in dignity from farming was denied by international trade. In Cancun, he climbed the fence of the WTO ministerial meeting, with a sign over his body saying: WTO Kills Farmers! Then, a few moments later, blood poured from his chest. He had sacrificed himself to remind the key decision makers of their responsibility for the disappearance of peasant economies around the world. read more…

Source: SocialistWorker.org. 10 September 2009.

Paul LeBlanc, a long-time socialist and author of Lenin and the Revolutionary Party, is active with the Anti-War Committee of the Thomas Merton Center and one of the leading organizers of the Peoples’ Summit in Pittsburgh, called to offer an alternative to the pro-free market policies that will be discussed at the Group of 20 economic summit of industrialized countries on September 24-25.

LeBlanc talked to Ashley Smith about the issues behind the summit and the aims of the demonstrators.

read more…

Source: The Progressive Economics Forum. 9 September 2009.

Global Unions ‘Pittsburgh Declaration’
(24-25 September 2009)

I. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

1. The G20 leaders are meeting in Pittsburgh amidst reports that the global recession is bottoming out, with the massive decline in output in most major economies slowing, and that governments are preparing their strategies for exiting from the fiscal stimulus measures. This would be dangerously premature. The outlook for recovery, which is still uncertain, is at best modest and the slowing of the decline is due almost exclusively to government stimulus measures. As yet, there is no sign of a self-sustaining economic recovery.
read more…

by Alex Callinicos
Source: Socialist Worker (UK). 8 September 2009.

Less than a year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the banks are back. Puffed up with profits, they are flexing their muscles again.

This reality haunted the G20 finance ministers in London last weekend as they met to prepare for the summit that will take place in Pittsburgh in the US later this month.

This will be the third meeting of the heads of government of the world’s biggest economies in less than a year—a sign of the severity of the present crisis. read more…

By Walden Bello
Source: Foreign Policy In Focus. 3 September 2009.

The current global downturn, the worst since the Great Depression 70 years ago, pounded the last nail into the coffin of globalization. Already beleaguered by evidence that showed global poverty and inequality increasing, even as most poor countries experienced little or no economic growth, globalization has been terminally discredited in the last two years. As the much-heralded process of financial and trade interdependence went into reverse, it became the transmission belt not of prosperity but of economic crisis and collapse.
read more…

By Patrick Bond

Here’s a fairly simple choice: the Global North would pay hard-hit Global South sites to deal with climate crisis either through complicated, corrupt, controversial ‘Clean Development Mechanism’ (CDM) projects with plenty of damaging side effects to communities, or instead pay through other mechanisms that must provide financing quickly, transparently and decisively, to achieve genuine income compensation plus renewable energy to the masses. read more…

By Virendra Singh Rawat / Chennai/ Lucknow
Source: Business Standard (India). September 04, 2009

Nasdaq-listed Chinese mobile phone battery maker China BAK Battery Inc will set up a unit at Chennai in Tamil Nadu.

BAK Telecom India, the Indian subsidiary of the $300 million company, is in talks with the TN government, while the necessary approvals had already been taken.
read more…

By Liam Macuaid

Note: This is an editorial from the issue of Socialist Resistance which comes out next week.

In December the world’s rulers will meet in Copenhagen to discuss what they will do when the notably unsuccessful Kyoto Protocol expires. They won’t be alone. Lobbyists from the aviation, petrochemical and mining industries will be pressurising them in defence of their “right” to alter the planet’s climate by pumping millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. read more…

This report is against this background that the China-Africa Summit of November 2006 and China’s renewed interest in Africa have to be understood. China is essentially interested in natural resources and raw materials and offers investments in roads, railways and infrastructure. The deals concluded during the China-Africa summit are worth US$ 1,9 billion and include an aluminium plant in Egypt; a highway in Nigeria; a rural telephone network in Ghana; a copper project in Zambia and a ferrochrome smelter in South Africa. read more…