SolidarityEconomy.net

by Jerry Harris

.Starbucks in China’s Forbidden City

Starbucks Forbidden City location has been called an “affront to Chinese culture” in a protest by netizens to get the coffee shop relocated. China has 123 million people on-line where the campaign has found a home on blogs. Writes Rui Chenggang, “This is not globalization but abuse of Chinese culture.”

. Tesco to use carbon labels

Tesco is a UK corporation and the world’s fifth largest retail chain. It recently announced it will create an index to measure the carbon required to produce, transport and consume every product it sells.  This carbon footprint will be rated on each product for the consumer to see. One result may be to boost local suppliers as transportation is a big factor in the use of carbons. Tesco hopes to half its energy use in its 1,900 stores by 2008.

. Nanotechnology advances

US scientists at the University of California Riverside have gotten a dye molecule to carry two molecules of carbon dioxide in a straight line over a copper surface. Usually molecules will hop around in all directions. Says Professor Bartels, “This is an unprecedented step towards the realization of molecular scale machinery. Our experiments show a means to transport molecules reliably. This will become as important to the molecular machinery of the future as trucks and conveyor belts are for factories of today”

. Maoists join government in Nepal

After ten years of guerrilla war and a mass democratic movement to remove the king the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) has joined the parliament with 83 office holders and the second largest block of votes. In an agreement with the government the Maoist guerrillas will lock up their arms under UN supervision but keep the keys. The government’s army will lock up an equal number of arms. The Maoists broke with the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninists) to begin a guerrilla campaign in the poorest western regions of Nepal. Gaining strength over a decade of civil war, the Maoist joined with other parties when a mass democratic movement broke out in the urban centers against the virtual dictatorship of Nepal’s king. The party expanded their influence and eventually agreed to end the war when the king suffered a decisive political defeat.  Unlike their sister parties in Peru and the Philippines the Nepalese communists have proven more flexible in their use of the united front and mass politics. The New People’s Army in the Philippines staid aloof of the democratic movement that overthrew Marcos resulting in internal splits and have never fully recovered. In Peru the Shinning Path physically attacked other left and progressive parties disregarding any notion of the united front and eventually faced military defeat in isolation.