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By now we are extremely familiar with the sigh of world leaders trying to turn the spotlight away from their domestic inadequacies by embarking on major new foreign policy initiatives. It seems to have been working for George W. Bush, and Tony Blair – who always takes his cues from the man in the White Read more…

When I went to Porto Alegre, attending the second World Social Forum, I was in a rather good mood. Namely, I have received news about a creation of a Balkan based network committed to homogenization of the fight for alternative globalization. The name of the paper in my hands was “South Eastern Europe Social Forum”.   Read more…

After months of bungled investigation, it now looks certain that America‘s anthrax attacks came from within. The implications are terrifying   THE anthrax attack of 2001 is over. No more powder-laced letters have turned up in the mail since October and no new infections since November. Unless spores are still lurking in someone’s lungs, office Read more…

One of my first assignments as a young reporter in Sydney was to go to the airport and ask famous people arriving from overseas what they thought of Australia. There was a checklist; our beer and beaches were near the top, followed by our “mateship”. If the famous person hesitated or, in the case of Read more…

The School of the Americas (SOA), in 2001 renamed the “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation,” is a military training school for Latin American soldiers, located at Fort Benning, GA.   Over its 56 years, the SOA has trained over 60,000 Latin American soldiers in counterinsurgency techniques, sniper training, commando and psychological warfare, military intelligence Read more…

PARIS — For a magic moment, the citizens’ movement was no longer on the defensive. From Seattle to Genoa, via Washington, Prague, Quebec, Nice and a dozen other destinations, the dispiriting decades of unbridled corporate greed and freewheeling financial markets seemed to be drawing to an ignominious close, smothered under their own sheer awfulness. Or Read more…

Some weeks ago, something curious happened: Israel discovered that Iran is the Great Satan. It happened quite suddenly. There was no prior sensational news, no new discovery. As if by the order of a drill-sergeant, the whole Israeli phalanx changed direction. All the politicians, all the generals, all the enlisted media, with the usual complement Read more…

His name may sound like that of a character from a Mel Brooks musical but Otto Reich is real enough. He has just been appointed by President Bush as assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs – and both the manner of his appointment and the role he will now play have profound implications Read more…

South African President Thabo Mbeki’s recent attacks on press freedom and the labelling of Alliance partner, the 2.5 million strong trade union federation the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), as being “part of an international terrorist plot” to undermine his government, signals that the love affair between the ruling African National Congress (ANC) Read more…

Something’s wrong with the kids. Childhood asthma incidence has doubled in the past decade. For children under five it increased by 160 percent between 1980 and 1994. Asthma is now the leading chronic disease in children, affecting 5 million kids in the U. S. Learning disabilities are increasing dramatically. One child in six is afflicted Read more…

Forget everything you thought you knew about ‘spin’. The work of the big PR multinationals involves a powerful combination of political lobbying, communications strategy, ‘crisis management’, grassroots organizing, and intelligence gathering. Peter Melchett, ex-head of Greenpeace UK, who has taken a consultancy job at the world’s largest PR firm and activists’ cartoon-book villain, Burson-Marsteller (BM), Read more…

In Buenos Aires, the Paris of Latin America, police gunned down two dozen Argentines in December after they chose to face bullets rather than starvation. The nation’s currency had crumbled and unemployment had shot up from a grim 16 percent to millions more than the collapsing government could measure. The economy had been murdered in Read more…

Do a quick search of the Web on the terms Enron and Argentina and you mostly get either references comparing the two, or a recent satire in which Kenneth Lay claims immunity by claiming Enron IS Argentina.  You might even stumble on the Mother Jones article detailing Dubya’s lobbying of the Argentinian government on behalf Read more…

Months ago, Said Karim, a supervisor of demining activities in the Western Afghan region of Herat, wanted to show to a foreign visitor something nice from his beloved country; something different than landmines and Uxo (bad Ufo, in a sense: unexploded ordonances) that pollute 724 million of square meters of useful land. Said, only 30, Read more…

Right till the end of January, Dita Sari was preparing to fly from her home near Jakarta to Salt Lake City to bask today in the admiration of assorted do-gooders and celebrities mustered by Reebok. The occasion is the 13th annual Human Rights Awards, overseen by a board that includes Jimmy Carter and Kerry Kennedy Read more…

In a January feature story on big shot corporate black executives, Newsweek strongly hints that more blacks than ever have cracked the corporate glass ceiling. It trumpets the ascension of Kenneth I. Chenault, E. Stanley O’Neal, and Richard D. Parsons as CEOs of American Express, Merrill Lynch, and AOL Time Warner as testament that black Read more…

In his State of the Union address, George W. Bush played sheriff to a world bedeviled by evil-doers and outlaw nations. It was a cunning cover for the unfolding saga of consummate corporate corruption of American politics, exemplified by Enron’s evil influence in the White House and Congress. The U.S. Chief Executive turned global-sheriff-in-chief, aroused Read more…

Just as the government struggles to shake off one scandal, it is entangling itself in several more. Almost every day for the past fortnight Labour has been embarrassed by new revelations about the favours it has exchanged with the disgraced companies Enron and Andersen. And almost every day for the past fortnight, the government has Read more…

An e-mail arrives in my inbox, recommending a website that seeks to explain–one might say rationalize–the multiple killings of black men by Cincinnati police over the past few years. Its sender, who feels I should “get my facts straight,” takes issue with some of my previous commentaries, wherein I cast a critical eye upon a Read more…

There could scarcely be an odder time to announce a massive airport development. Even before the crash in New York eleven days ago, the world’s airline companies were expecting to lose 15% of their trade and some $7bn. In the past fortnight two major carriers have collapsed. Several others seem sure to follow. But the Read more…

THE SOB STORY OF KEN AND LINDA LAY 2/11/02 I don’t know whether to laugh, cry, or throw up.The televised tear-jerker entitled "Ken Lay, What A Guy!" starred Linda Lay, the wife of Enron CEO Ken, in an Emmy Award-winning performance. Like the wives of prominent politicians who get caught with their pants down, Linda Read more…

The second World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, marked a dramatic counterpoint for a world that has been caught in a world of war and death since September 11. For six days starting on January 31, more than 51,000 people from around the globe participated in conferences, workshops, demonstrations, and innumerable informal gatherings and Read more…

 Since the end of the Cold War a decade ago, the U.S. has  gone to war in Iraq, Somalia, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan.  The interventions have been promoted as “humanitarian”  deployments to stop aggression, to topple dictatorships,  or to halt terrorism.  After each U.S. intervention, the attention  of supporters and critics alike has turned to speculate Read more…

Finally, they let me go to the toilet. My body shook with cold. My hands were swollen and my body throbbed with pain. I fantasized about sleep, about free hands so I could scratch my nose, about looking for my mother. In the Shin Bet facility where the good cop is the one who kicks Read more…

The collapse of Enron has swiftly morphed into a go-to-jail financial scandal, laden with the heavy breathing of political fixers, but Enron makes visible a more profound scandal–the failure of market orthodoxy itself. Enron, accompanied by a supporting cast from banking, accounting and Washington politics, is a virtual piñata of corrupt practices and betrayed obligations Read more…

Rahim Dad had eight mouths to feed and the drought had stolen his crops, his oxen and his goats. So he sold the most valuable asset he had left: his 12-year-old daughter. “I sold my daughter for money because of the hunger,” he says, shivering with fever in the chill of his mud and chaff Read more…

Its amazing how quickly an American President insensitive to the needs of ordinary Americans and the principle of fairness can lose the massive outward popular support that flows to the White House in times of war. At the conclusion of the Persian Gulf War in March 1991, multi-millionaire George H.W. Bush enjoyed extraordinarily high war-induced Read more…

This past weekend I attended the “State of the Black World Conference” in Atlanta Georgia. Among those present were black activists, politicians, scholars and clergy from around the globe. Even celebrities such as Tavis Smiley, Danny Glover and Chris Tucker made an appearance in order to raise the awareness of this important discussion. Although I Read more…

Some days ago, the interim Afghan leader, an Uncle Tom figure called Hamid Karzai, was flown first class to Washington, to formally thank US President George `Dubya’ Bush for blowing the cities and towns of his country to pieces.   Karzai not merely expressed his gratitude for the slaughter, he urged Dubya to press on Read more…

Palestinian ambulance crews have been constantly targeted by the Israeli army. It turned one young woman volunteer into a suicide bomber. Peter Beaumont reports from Ramallah Ahlam Nasser was sitting in her ambulance in the West Bank city of Ramallah when the first shots were fired, a mixture of tear gas and rubber bullets. Hunched Read more…

Porto Alegre is not exactly a Third World city. Located in one of Brazil’s more prosperous states, Rio Grande do Sul, and populated by people mainly of European stock, this city of 1.2 million people is First World when it comes to infrastructure and social services. In fact, it ranks near the very top of Read more…

Here comes the most fascinating election of 2002: Robert Mugabe, who led Zimbabwe through guerrilla war to liberation from Rhodesian colonists in 1980, facing a presidential vote in March where the challenger is Morgan Tsvangirai, who led the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions from 1988-2000. The confused, radical rhetoric associated with the Zimbabwe African National Read more…

David Bacon Torreon, Coahuila, is a dusty city in Mexico’s northeast desert. For decades, its workers labored in the Peñoles smelter and the factories clustered around its mines and mills. Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, Chihuahua, Tamaulipas—all states along the border—were the heart of Mexico’s heavy industry. Its workers were heavily-unionized, well known for their militance. Today Read more…

Berkowitz When the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) published its recent report claiming college and university faculty were “the weak link in America’s response to the attack” of September 11, it brought that conservative organization into the public spotlight for the first time. Many newspaper editorials quickly condemned the report’s overheated rhetoric and Read more…

Carter After September 11, all forms of popular music seemed particularly out of sync with the times. There was the predictable upsurge of blind one-dimensional patriotism reflected in endless renditions of the national anthem, “God Bless America,” and “America The Beautiful.” The healing and unifying power of music was powerfully present in the “America: A Read more…

Chomsky   The threat of international terrorism is surely severe. The horrendous events of September 11 had perhaps the most devastating instant human toll on record, outside of war. The word “instant” should not be overlooked; regrettably, the crime is far from unusual in the annals of violence that falls short of war. The death Read more…

S. Herman It is really impressive how efficiently the intellectual and propaganda resources of the imperial state are mobilized to meet its need to demonize its enemies and put its own and its client states’ actions in a benevolent light. This is especially important for an imperial power that retains its democratic forms as it Read more…

Samah Jabr I‘m tired, not a new state of affairs for me. I haven’t slept enough since I started medical school more than seven years ago. I’ve eaten in a rush for as long as I can remember. Even now that I’ve graduated and begun my internship I’m never finished with work. All this is Read more…

Jayadev When the AFL-CIO held its national convention at the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas this month, they had only to look at the men and women who were cleaning the tables, serving food, or doing security to get a good picture of today’s American work force: young, brown, and knows very little about unions. Read more…

Laursen Sounding a bit like Ronald Reagan after the invasion of Grenada, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick beamed out at the delegates to the World Trade Organization ministerial meetings last month and declared, “We have removed the stain of Seattle.” The WTO ministerial was its first since the collapse two years ago, when activists disrupted Read more…

Laursen Sounding a bit like Ronald Reagan after the invasion of Grenada, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick beamed out at the delegates to the World Trade Organization ministerial meetings last month and declared, “We have removed the stain of Seattle.” The WTO ministerial was its first since the collapse two years ago, when activists disrupted Read more…

Jonathan Lawson and Susan Gleason The social and political climate of post-September 11 America has seen intense pressures for citizens to conform to particular forms of patriotism. Pressures have flowed from the U.S. federal government’s repeated (and rather anti-democratic) calls for unity, and have been broadcast and amplified by a national media, which has shown Read more…

Jonathan Leaning Attorney General John Ash- croft’s recent statement that anybody who criticizes the administration’s crackdown on civil liberties is “aiding terrorists” does not bode well for the future of healthy dissent. The abolition, suffragist, and civil rights movements all started small, but grew to transform America for the better, steering society towards more democratic Read more…

Lenzer It may be due to dumb luck—not public health preparedness—that only four people died from anthrax bioterrorism to date, according to some experts. They warn that other organisms, such as smallpox, which are highly contagious, could cause hundreds of thousands of deaths in a matter of weeks. Problems with the anthrax vaccine, testing for Read more…

Justin Podur The arguments against reparations for Africa are in the details: How can you possibly measure, and repay, for millions and millions of shattered lives over centuries? When a figure is settled on, and paid, is it all over? Can there be adequate compensation for centuries of slavery, colonization, and destruction? Can one group Read more…

Richie & Steven Hill Redistricting is back. Every 10 years it revisits us like a recurring plague. After the release of new census numbers, all legislative districts in the nation must be redrawn to make sure that they are closely equal in population. In a large state, that means about 640,000 residents for each U.S. Read more…

Schmidt Rowman & Littlefield, 2000 Review by Mike Ryan The status of “professional” in America indicates to the masses that you have made something of yourself. You have become one of the best and the brightest. But what sort of Faustian deal had to be made to get there? The “best and the brightest” Americans, Read more…

Michael Steinberg A recent report by Greenpeace, written in the aftermath of 9-11, asserted “the NRC’s regulation of the nuclear industry is already a farce” and called for “the phase out of [U.S.] nuclear reactors” to “avoid a tragedy.” In its November 14 report the global environmental group named 14 nuclear power stations with 25 Read more…

November 24 marked the closing of the Second International Forum, “Frente a la Globalización: El Pueblo Es Primero” (Confronting Globalization, The People Come First), with hundreds of indigenous delegates, campesino organizers, grassroots activists, journalists and internationals in solidarity marching through the streets of Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. Over 800 delegates representing 262 organizations participated in the three-day Read more…

Vandepitte Few people feel very concerned about Europe. Why is the European Union so important? Most people underestimate the importance of the European Union. When the average family income in Belgium is comparatively lower than it was 20 years ago; when more and more young people survive on the legal minimum income; when one has Read more…