From Glenn Greenwald, in Salon
Yesterday, Joseph Stack deliberately flew an airplane into a building housing IRS offices in Austin, Texas, in order to advance the political grievances he outlined in a perfectly cogent suicide-manifesto. Stack’s worldview contained elements of the tea party’s anti-government anger along with substantial populist complaints generally associated with “the Left” (rage over bailouts, the suffering of America’s poor, and the pilfering of the middle class by a corrupt economic elite and their government-servants). All of that was accompanied by an argument as to why violence was justified (indeed necessary) to protest those injustices:
“I remember reading about the stock market crash before the “great” depression and how there were wealthy bankers and businessmen jumping out of windows when they realized they screwed up and lost everything. Isn’t it ironic how far we’ve come in 60 years in this country that they now know how to fix that little economic problem; they just steal from the middle class (who doesn’t have any say in it, elections are a joke) to cover their asses and it’s “business-as-usual” . . . . Sadly, though I spent my entire life trying to believe it wasn’t so, but violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer.”
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From John Boudreau and Brandon Bailey in the San Jose Mercury News:
Just a few years ago, the mantra in Silicon Valley went like this: What’s your China strategy? A 2010 update could be: What’s your China headache?
China’s allure is stronger than ever. It remains a cheap place to manufacture goods, and its rapidly growing domestic market includes 400 million Internet users and 700 million mobile-phone subscribers, numbers unmatched anywhere else in the world. But a country already known for obstacles is becoming less welcoming to foreign businesses.
Google’s frayed relations with the Chinese government over intellectual property theft and censorship spotlight the growing discontent many Western companies are experiencing in the country. And American companies are certain to face even tougher conditions there if U.S.-China tensions continue to rise over issues such as China’s currency controls, which experts say boost China’s exports while limiting imports from the United States.
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From Zhu Zhe in the China
Daily:
The latest revision to the country’s Electoral Law, which grants rural residents the same rights as their urban counterparts to elect deputies to people’s congresses but does not expand direct elections, shows China will adhere to its own mode of development instead of adopting Western-style elections, a top legislator has said.
“Different countries have different election rules and a socialist China won’t follow Western election campaigns,” Li Fei, deputy director of the legislative affairs commission under the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC), the country’s top legislature, told China Daily following the adoption of the latest amendment to the Electoral Law last Sunday.
Li, who has been leading the revision, said some people want to expand direct elections, but the current priority is to perfect existing direct elections at county and township levels.
Whether in terms of justice or fairness, a society must pay more attention to “substantial democracy”, which in China means that there should be representatives from all areas, ethnic groups and walks of life, Li said.
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By James Lamont in Financial Times
International development agencies faced a “diminishing market” unless they partnered large emerging economies to bring development to the world’s poorest countries, Helen Clark, the head of the United Nations Development Programme, warned on Tuesday.
Ms Clark said the New-York based UNDP was seeking a global partnership with India, China and Brazil to deliver investment, technology and expertise to other developing countries.
It had already worked alongside India in a solar energy investment in Guinea-Bissau, efforts to boost agricultural productivity in Rwanda and civil and public service training in Afghanistan.
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