Newsitem List

"Chile was the guinea pig of a free market paradigm that was foisted on other third world countries beginning in the early 1980s through the agency of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank." "..radical trade liberalization resulted in ...an export-oriented economy that favored agricultural production and resource extraction."...

Just last week, the state of Wisconsin launched an investigation into charges that Wal-Mart fraudulently puts the organic label on products that don't meet USDA standards for these sorts of items. It's another example of how Wal-Mart says one thing and does another....

Ford Motor Company announced last week that it lost $12.7 billion in 2006, making it the worst year in the company’s 104-year history. The massive losses are a further blow to Ford, which is already engaged in a retrenchment program that includes a series of plant closings, mass layoffs and employee buyouts designed to transform the former US industrial icon into a relatively marginal competitor in the US and world auto market....

Turmoil in the education sector is mounting. Firebombs are hurled against a fascist meeting place....

The trial of the former Volkswagen human resources executive Peter Hartz ended on Friday, January 26, with Hartz receiving a two-year suspended sentence and a fine. His case has drawn crowds of journalists and camera teams, with angry workers also protesting outside the court in the town of Braunschweig. Hartz was a former top Volkswagen manager and is still a member of the IG Metall trade union and the Social Democratic Party (SPD). As special advisor to Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (SPD), Ha...

Year after year, people in the Arab countries are helpless spectators to the ongoing destruction of Iraq and Palestine by the United States and Israel. They see families wiped out by bombs in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon. They see Arabs tortured and humiliated in Abu Ghraib and in Guantanamo. They see Israel regularly carrying out "targeted" assassinations in the Occupied Territories (splashing death around the target) while extending its illegal settlement of land belonging to Palestinians....

The official Democratic Party response to President Bush’s State of the Union speech Tuesday night was delivered by newly elected Senator James Webb of Virginia, a former Republican and secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration....

Microsoft are again in the spotlight with allegations that a Microsoft employee wanted entries in Wikipedia, the online volunteer edited encyclopedia, massaged to a more favourable viewpoint and were willing to pay someone to do it. The entries are about Microsoft's Office Open XML specification, which is being fast tracked to the ISO for approval as a standard, and the Open Document Format (already approved by the ISO) and comparisons of the two....

Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorin, the president of the G-20 (the group of 21 “developing” countries formed to defend their agricultural interests in international trade talks) told the press late last year that he would fight at all costs to restore credibility to the World Trade Organization (WTO). This “struggle” has become necessary following the collapse last year of the Doha round of negotiations on trade liberalization begun in Cancun in 2003. No concrete results were obtained ou...

President Hugo Chavez, emboldened by his overwhelming re-election on Dec. 3, has moved Venezuela’s revolutionary process into high gear. Two other landmarks of his presidency have similarly been followed by periods of intensified change: his election to a new full term, or his “re-legitimization” after the adoption of the country’s new constitution in 1999, and the burgeoning of social missions after the failed coup and oil company strike of 2002....