Some US protests against sub-prime evictions in text and pictures

JAN/23/08 - Neighbors & supporters rallied in front of Melonie Griffiths-Evans Dorchester home to physically block an eviction by US Bank & Ocwen Financial. Like thousands in Boston and across the country she is facing foreclosure as a result of sub-prime predatory loans. The eviction was called off because of the protest leaving her and her three children in their house, but some 1500 local families still face a similar situation. The organization City Life/Vida Urbana plans to continue fighting evictions.

Occupation by locals and activists of New Orleans offices of HUD-contractor, Housing Agency of New Orleans. At least they got a press conference, though will be unlikely to attract Yes Men-like levels of media attention - the other recent intervention to expose HUD's malfeasances in New Orleans, specifically the one of barring displaced residents from returning to structurally intact but economically unsound public housing where they lived in those misty pre-Katerina days when such people were still suffered to live. Miami Workers Center Friday, Aug. 31, 2007 at 7:51 PM joseph@theworkerscenter.org http://miami.indymedia.org/news/2007/08/9131.php

Originally in Report on Positivity: Canada has had some convulsions over the issue of water before and since the Walkerton, Ontario E. coli infections of 2000. There is heated debate over methods of efficient delivery and ensuring the availability of clean water. Should rights to distribution and purification be in public or private hands?

This Asia Times Online (www.atimes.com) piece reads the recent bond yields panic back through the contradictions of the informal 'Bretton Woods 2' system (under which China funds the US deficits and props up the dollar by spending export proceeds on the accumulation of a trillion or so dollars worth of US Treasury bonds, i.e. it lends the US the money).  Then the writer asks: what if the Chinese government tried to break out of this cycle by taking literally the US injunction to 'buy American' stuff: what if it started buying directly into US capital through 'Sovereign Wealth Funds', kind of like hedge funds but backed by the state's enormous dollar reserves, which would thus be channelled  away from US economic life support?