Uprisings Everywhere: Activism Spreads To China, The Arctic - FDL

[WillyT]

Uprisings Everywhere: Activism Spreads to China, the Arctic
By: David Dayen - FDL
Friday April 22, 2011 12:24 pm

<snip>

Given the hollowed-out state of our politics and the dubious ability to seek justice and accountability through the courts, the streets are increasingly the only refuge for change. We’ve seen the Arab world erupt and tangible changes come to pass in a few countries as a result of their uprising. But this isn’t localized. In Shanghai, China, truck drivers protested for a third straight day, with a legitimate economic impact to their action.

Striking truck drivers protested for a third day on Friday in Shanghai’s main harbour district amid heavy police presence and signs the action has already started to curb exports from the world’s busiest container port <...>

A crowd of up to 600 people milled about outside an office of a logistics company near the Baoshan Port, one of the city’s ports. Some threw rocks at trucks whose drivers had not joined in the strikes, breaking the windows of at least one truck.

The strikers, many of them independent contractors who carry goods to and from the port, stopped work on Wednesday demanding the government do something about high fuel costs and what some called high fees charged by logistics firms, said the drivers, who clashed with police on Thursday.

And...

An even more fascinating situation is playing out on the seas.

The fight to stop the global oil industry exploring the pristine deep waters of the Arctic has been dubbed the new cold war, and early on Friday it escalated as environmental activists from 12 countries occupied the world’s second largest rig on its way from Turkey to Greenland to drill among the icebergs.

The protesters found the 52,000-tonne semi-submersible platform Leiv Eiriksson at around midnight, steaming due west at a stately six knots in the sea of Marmara, heading for the Dardanelle straits and the open Mediterranean. It took four more hours for Greenpeace to bring in its inflatables and a further 50 minutes in the choppy moonlit sea to intercept it.

Read the whole story, the author really knows how to recreate a narrative: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/apr/22/activists-occupy-arctic-oil-rig

<snip>

Link: http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/04/22/uprisings-everywhere-activism-spreads-to-china-the-arctic/

:kick:

[malaise]

1. Won't be long before folks are on the streets

in Jamaica.

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. What's setting the stage in Jamacia, malaise?

[jwirr]

5. I haven't heard much from our family in Kingston, so I am also interested

in the problems over there. Given the anger in the music for the last 15+ years it would not take much to spark unrest.

[unkachuck]

2. people power is a beautiful thing....n/t

[upi402]

3. bring it back!

:fistbump: