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This week on Uprising:

* Durban Climate Conference Ends in More Inaction
* Obama Administration Slows Down Corporate Crime Prosecutions
* West Coast Occupy Movements Attempt to Shut Down Ports
* Occupy LA Activist Shares Story of His Arrest, Compares to Treatment of Corporate Criminals

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Durban Climate Conference Ends in More Inaction

On Monday just a day after climate change talks in Durban, South Africa ended with a whimper, Canada surprised the international community by pulling out of the Kyoto Treaty. Canada’s action drew criticism from home and abroad. The Canadian government cited the expense of offsetting a leap in carbon emissions by purchasing carbon emission permits as one reason to pull-out. It estimates meeting its 2012 Kyoto target would cost 14 billion Canadian dollars, or about $1600 dollars per household. Canada’s environmental minister Peter Kent said the withdrawal from the only legally binding international treaty on carbon emission, was “shameful.” China issued a statement calling the move “preposterous” and said buying permits, “is far less expensive than the cost of inaction.” Japan and Russia have also pledged to not renew their Kyoto obligations. Negotiations at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change concluded last Sunday in Durban with 194 nations agreeing to craft a new legally binding agreement to reduce pollution. The two week conference was focused on renewing the Kyoto treaty, which is set to expire next year, and on creating a new Green Climate Fund. Developing nations, well into their own industrial revolutions, want the same freedom to modernize and expand as the US and other developed nations. Janet Redman wrote from Durban last week, “[f]or hundreds of millions of poor Indians, the right to develop is the right to survival.” Redman said this means either growing emissions, or, “massive support from rich countries in the form of money and clean technology.” The US has been blamed for being obstructionist in climate change talks, with the Executive Director of Greenpeace Kumi Naidoo observing US negotiators make “derailing demands and [announce] commitments that barely survive the plane trip home.” Naidoo went on to state the US, “has reached a new low in refuting that scientific consensus demands urgent and rapid pollution reduction.”

GUESTS: Janet Redman, Co-director of the Sustainable Energy & Economy Network at the Institute for Policy Studies; Laura Carlsen Director, Mexico City-based Americas Program of the Center for International Policy, Columnist for Foreign Policy in Focus

Read Laura Carlsen’s article here: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/12/08-1

Read Janet Redman’s blogs from Durban here (scroll to the bottom of the page): http://www.ips-dc.org/staff/janet

Obama Administration Slows Down Corporate Crime Prosecutions

In the latest in the on-going scandal over the now-bankrupt futures trading company MF Global, new testimony prepared at a Congressional hearing this week shows that the Federal Reserve gave MF Global so-called “primary dealer status” in February of this year, even after it was discovered that there were serious questions about compliance with regulations. The company which was headed by former Senator and former Goldman Sachs CEO John Corzine, lobbied heavily for the status which meant MF Global could “deal directly with the government to help carry out monetary policy and distribute U.S. debt” (Reuters). When questioned at a Congressional Hearing earlier in the week about missing billions of dollars of customer money, Corzine said he simply didn’t know what had happened to the money. Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi described what happened this way: “Corzine essentially reached into the company cash register to pay off his gambling debts. He didn’t have enough money of his own to fight off the wolves, so he took the money he had access to, in a desperate, insane hope that his bets would eventually turn around and he could replace the missing cash later on.” The MF Global scandal is only the latest in a series of instances of corporate fraud that have now become part and parcel of the American capitalist way, with any fines or disciplinary action upon discovering the fraud becoming simply a cost of doing business. President Obama, when questioned on CBS’s 60 minutes about corporate fraud, said “Some of the most damaging behavior on Wall Street — in some cases some of the least ethical behavior on Wall Street — wasn’t illegal.” Meanwhile a Syracuse University study in November revealed the shocking fact that criminal prosecutions against financial institutions for fraud per year, had fallen dramatically under President Obama. Even President George W Bush’s Administration pursued more than twice as many prosecutions for financial fraud per year than Obama. With the Occupy movement having taken a hold of the national popular imagination, there is a renewed public hunger for economic justice.

GUEST: William Black, Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and the author of “The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One.”

Visit http://neweconomicperspectives.blogspot.com for more information.

Here is a link to the article Prof. Black referred to during the interview: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204336104577094772749499652.html

From the WSJ article: “Under the proposal, banks would be released from legal claims tied to servicing delinquent mortgages as well as certain mortgage-origination practices, but government officials still would be able to pursue claims related to the packaging of mortgages into securities.”

West Coast Occupy Movements Attempt to Shut Down Ports

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Protests targeting West Coast ports on Monday stopped work shifts and shipments for hours with major disruptions at the ports of Long Beach and Oakland. Hundreds of people gathered at ports in the early morning hours from San Diego all the way up to Vancouver, Canada. Protesters targeted in particular, terminals owned by a company named SSA Marine because it is co-owned by the Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs, and grain exporter EGT for anti-union activity. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union, thousands of whose workers are employed by SSA Marine, did not sanction the action but respected the Occupiers’ picket lines. While some workers complained to press about a day’s worth of lost wages, an open letter by four port truckers decrying their working conditions, and in support of the spirit of the port shutdown, has received broad attention. In it, they say “we believe in the power and potential behind a truly united 99%. We admire the strength and perseverance of the longshoremen. We are fighting like mad to overcome our exploitation, so please, stick by us long after December 12.” Protestors significantly disrupted business at the Longview, Washington port, where companies sent workers home citing health and safety concerns. In Seattle, Washington hundreds of protestors shut down at least one port terminal and police turned out with flash bang percussion grenades to disperse the demonstrators. In Southern California where this program is recorded, the port of Long Beach saw hundreds of Occupy activists gather near Harry Bridges park and block shift changes for several hours. Police then pushed protesters out of the area, and arrested a small number of people. The longest port occupation appears to be Oakland’s, where protestors disrupted traffic into the port until 4am on Tuesday.

Uprising correspondent Lydia Breen was at the Occupy the Ports action at the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles yesterday and filed this special report.

Lydia Breen is with The Trailer Trash Project online at www.trailertrashproject.com.

Occupy LA Activist Shares Story of His Arrest, Compares to Treatment of Corporate Criminals

When the Occupy Los Angeles encampment was raided on November 30th, it ended that movement’s relatively cordial relationship with the police. In an essay published after the raid Patrick Meighan, an arrested protestor at Occupy LA, made a comparison with his treatment and the treatment of corporate criminals like Citigroup CEO Charles Prince. Meighan, who cooperated with police orders, was violently thrown to the ground and handcuffed in zip-ties, and then made to kneel on concrete for 7 hours before being transported to jail. Meighan spent the night before being released on $5000 bail. He concluded his piece asking why he was jailed when, “those who steal hundreds of billions, do trillions worth of damage to our economy… are not only spared the zipcuffs but showered with rewards?”

GUEST: Patrick Meighan is a father, a husband, a Green, a sitcom writer for Family Guy, a Unitarian Universalist, and a Culver Citizen.

Read Patrick Meighan’s article here: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/12/08-3

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day

“A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.” — Mohandas K. Gandhi