12/20	Know Justice, Know Peace -- The horrific terrorist attacks of September 11 forced the United States to confront a number of difficult questions: Should we respond to the assaults with our own attack, or should we refuse to fight violence with violence? How should the nation balance its traditions of freedom with its need for security? And how can we maintain our commitment to diversity and not let prejudice tear the country apart? (Global Exchange)
12/18	Adams urges end to Cuba sanctions -- Northern Irish nationalist leader Gerry Adams has urged Washington to end the four-decade U.S. trade embargo on Cuba. (CNN)
12/18	Cuba Leads Latin America in primary education, study finds -- Cuba, a Marxist nation with profound economic difficulties, leads Latin America in primary education, a regional task force has found. In test scores, completion rates and literacy levels, Cuban primary students are at or near the top of a list of peers from across Latin America, the task force reported. (New York Times)
12/17	Cuba receives U.S. shipment, first purchase since embargo -- The first shipment of American goods to be purchased by the Cuban government since the trade embargo was imposed nearly 40 years ago arrived in Havana harbor today. The shipment -- including more than 55 million pounds of corn -- is the first of several expected in the coming months. (New York Times)
12/17	Cuba travel-ban cases mired in system -- Nine years after the United States Congress granted the right to civil hearings for anyone accused of violating the Cuba travel ban, no judges have been hired and no hearings have been held. (Associated Press)
12/17	Human rights chief opposes military role in law enforcement -- The increasing presence of the military in areas of law enforcement will not solve the country's safety problems, a top human rights official said. National Human Rights Commission President Jose Luis Soberanes said the military should only take over the role of the police in exceptional cases, such as in the fight against narco-trafficking. (The News Mexico)
12/17	Rights commission deplores Colombia's record -- The Inter-American Commission for Human Rights (IACHR) ended its visit to Colombia Thursday with a condemnation of the extent to which the internal armed conflict has intensified, lamenting the consequent deterioration of respect for the civilian population's fundamental rights. (Inter Press Service)
12/14	Six dead, numerous injured in night of Israeli Violence: Quaker school attacked in Ramallah -- The latest Israeli attacks against the Palestinians began last night at around 7 pm when helicopters fired five missiles in central Ramallah. One of the missiles exploded in the Quakers "Friends Boys Schools," causing destruction and damage to eight classrooms, negating claims that Israeli military operates with "surgical precision," unless of course the school was a target. (Palestine Monitor)
12/14	Deadly Fumigation Returns to Putumayo: Violations of Colombian Law and U.S. Conditions -- For years, Colombia has been working to curb drug production in its territory. The growing narcotics industry is a problem that has had disastrous effects in both Colombia and the United States. In the past two decades, coca and poppy production-the raw materials for cocaine and heroin, respectively-has become a major concern for lawmakers and citizens of both countries. According to studies carried out by the United Nations Drug Control Program, today it is believed that Colombia has 400,000 acres dedicated to coca production. (Witness for Peace)
12/13	Castro warns on Americas trade plan -- After signing a summit declaration that supports a U.S.-sponsored Free Trade Area of the Americas, Cuban President Fidel Castro warned that the proposed treaty could lead to U.S. domination of Latin America. (Associated Press
12/12	53rd Anniversary of G.A. Resolution 194 (1948) -- 11 December 2001 marks the 53rd anniversary of the passing of UN General Assembly Resolution 194 (1948), the landmark resolution that reaffirmed the fundamental, inalienable rights of the Palestinian refugees -- to return, restitution and compensation. (BADIL)
12/12	Ochoa investigation slowed, criticized -- The investigation into the murder of human rights activist Digna Ochoa is being slowed down by the Defense Secretariat's (Sedena) delay in handing over information related to the case, the local press reported. (The News Mexico)
12/11	The Chocolate Industry: Slavery Lurking Behind the Sweetness -- When most people bite into a candy bar, it is unlikely that they take even a moment to consider where the chocolate they enjoy comes from. If they knew, it probably wouldn't taste as sweet. (Global Exchange)
12/11	3,500 Civilians Killed in Afghanistan by U.S. Bombs -- More than 3,500 civilians have been killed in Afghanistan by U.S. bombs, according to a study to be released December 10 by Marc W. Herold, Professor of Economics, International Relations, and Women's Studies at the University of New Hampshire. Professor Herold will announce his findings on Monday, December 10. (Presss Release)
12/10	Mexican govt's compensation offer rejected by families of victims -- Family members of victims of Mexico's so-called "dirty war" plan to reject compensation offered by the government because "a price cannot be put on life," Eureka Committee head Rosario Ibarra de Piedra, who lost a child in the war, said. (EFE)
12/10	Urgent Action: Prevent Military Action in Iraq -- Urge your member of Congress to support Rep. Ron Paul -- Global Exchange is deeply concerned about calls for expansion -- without Congressional assent -- of the limited congressional mandate granted to President Bush to pursue military action against the authors of the Sept.11 attacks to include Iraq. In response to these calls within Congress, on Tuesday December 11, the House International Relations Committee will be reviewing a joint resolution to authorize attacks on Iraq, submitted by Rep. Lindsey Graham (R-NC). Contact your member of Congress to sign on to Rep. Ron Paul's letter to prevent military action in Iraq. (Global Exchange)
12/10	Families pay the price of assault on Tora Bora -- Lying in a filthy bed with a bloody rag on his head, eight-year-old Zahid Ullah has a dirty syringe in his arm. His hands are curled like claws and his arms are wrapped in more bandages, all soaked in blood. Sometimes he turns over and moans in pain and sometimes, his nurses say, he calls out for his mother. (The Times UK)
12/10	Gap's same-store sales fell 25% in November -- "Unbelievably poor" is how New York analyst Richard Jaffe of UBS Warburg described Gap's 25 percent drop in same-store sales in November. (San Francisco Chronicle)
12/10	Rep. Miller Urges Companies, Consumers to Switch to Fair Trade Certified Coffee -- Congressman George Miller (D-CA) today urged coffee lovers around the country to begin Saturday, December 8, and every coffee day after that, with a cup of Fair Trade Certified coffee. American consumers are being encouraged to celebrate Fair Trade Coffee Day of Action and buy the blend of coffee that makes a tremendous difference to many of the world's coffee farmers and the environment.
12/9	House narrowly passes trade bill giving fast-track authority to Bush -- "I don't like fast track and I don't like free trade," said Duncan Hunter, a California Republican. "But I like less the idea of weakening my president [during wartime]. So, for that reason, and that reason only, I'm voting, just this once, in favor of fast track." (Wall Street Journal)
12/9	Suffer Palestine's Children -- Early in the morning of November 22, five Palestinian children were blown to pieces by an Israeli mine or bomb as they headed to school in Khan Yunis. The children were 6 to 14 years-of-age. (Dissident Voice)
12/9	Ex-FBI officials criticize tactics on terrorism -- The aggressive FBI dragnet -- championed by Attorney General John D. Ashcroft -- has provoked much commentary and criticism for its impact on civil liberties. Now, in a series of on-the-record interviews, eight former high-ranking FBI officials have offered the first substantive critique of the Ashcroft program, questioning whether the new approach will have the desired effect. (Washington Post)
12/7	Hamas says will attack PA officials if leader detained -- Members of the militant Palestinian group Hamas threatened to attack senior Palestinian Authority officials if the movement's leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, is kept under house arrest, Israel Radio reported. (Haaretz Daily)
12/6	Fast track passage won't defeat the "Seattle coalition" -- Now that fast track has been approved, pro-free trade analysts would no doubt like to begin ringing the death knell of the opposition forces. To the contrary, there are several reasons why this vote is only a small setback in the fight against corporate globalization. (Institute for Policy Studies)
12/6	House passes trade legislation -- In a victory for a wartime White House, the House narrowly approved legislation Thursday giving President Bush stronger authority to negotiate global trade deals. The vote was 215-214. (Associated Press)
12/6	Four women take emotional journey to record effects of war S.F. group finds pain, fear in refugee camps -- In her San Francisco office, Deborah James slipped on a blue burqa that she got while visiting refugee camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Along with the burqa, she brought back snapshots, video footage, spent bullet casings and metal ammunition pellets from the bombing of an Al Qaeda camp. They are all reminders of the bigger journey she and other activists are on: to see a new peace and prosperity in the region. (San Francisco Chronicle)
12/6	Mexico in danger of losing forests -- Mexico could lose its tropical jungles within decades if the government doesn't seriously hike the amount of money it allocates to deal with deforestation, according to the environment secretary (Associated Press)
12/5	Reconstructing Afghanistan: Statement by Global Exchange Women's Delegation to the Region -- The purpose of the trip was to investigate the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan and among the refugee population, to assess the consequences of US bombing, and to talk to women's groups about what role they would like to play in a transition government. (Global Exchange)
12/5	Statute of limitations could stop investigation before it starts -- After the release of a report last week detailing hundreds of forced disappearances during the 1970s, President Vicente Fox and Interior Secretary Santiago Creel announced the creation of a special prosecutor, vowing to bring those responsible to justice. (The News Mexico)
12/5	Hemispheric court orders protection for human rights workers -- The Inter American Court of Human Rights has ordered theMexican government to provide protection to members of the Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez Human Rights Center. (The News Mexico)
12/5	ADC joins ACLU and others in lawsuit -- American-Arab Anti-Discrimination (ADC) joined 18 other civil and human rights organizations in a lawsuit against the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) requesting disclosure of information about the thousands of individuals arrested and detained since the tragic terrorist attacks of September 11th. (ADC Press Release)
12/5	Sharon's war cannot be won -- Once again the world has had to confront the horror of innocent men, women and children killed by suicide bombers in the heart of Jerusalem and in Haifa. No decent person can refrain from condemning such attacks in the strongest terms. Such deeds harm not only their innocent victims, which in this case probably included Palestinian citizens of Israel, but also the just cause of Palestine. (New York Times)
12/4	High-tech launches trade push as vote nears -- High-tech lobbyists, stung by criticism that they have failed to deliver Democratic votes for presidential trade negotiating authority, said Monday they have been closely engaged on the issue and are in the midst of a full-scale push for the legislation. The House plans to vote Thursday on so-called trade promotion authority, even though GOP leaders acknowledge they still lack the votes to pass it. (CongressDaily)
12/4	Despite lack of trade support, Chamber tells House, 'vote it' -- U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue said Monday House GOP leaders should hold a vote on renewing presidential trade negotiating authority Thursday even if they expect the measure to fail. "I'm willing to take the risk," Donohue told reporters. He said that if House GOP leaders called Thursday morning to report the votes would not be there, his advice would be, "Vote it." (CongressDaily)
12/4	US gives Israel green light to 'defend itself' against terrorists -- The White House said that Israel had the right to defend itself against Palestinian suicide bombings, and placed the onus of resolving the latest crisis squarely on Yasser Arafat. (The Independent)
12/4	UN General Assembly voted for six resolutions criticising Israel -- The resolutions, none of them binding, were adopted despite a plea by Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Yehuda Lancry, for the assembly not to "endow Palestinian terrorism with an international legitimacy". (AFP)
12/4	Israel attacks Palestinian civilian population -- The Israeli army has just attacked the West Bank town of Ramallah, with helicopter missiles hitting Palestinian police offices within the Ministry of Interior building. Two Palestinians were wounded in the attack. (The Palestine Monitor)
12/3	GOP Makes Pitch for High-Tech Donors -- At a recent closed-door meeting of House GOP leaders, Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (Va.) made an unusual proposal: that they press ahead with a vote on trade negotiating authority this year even if they lack the votes to pass it. (Washington Post)
12/3	Trade Advocates Mount Campaign For Votes -- Supporters of presidential trade negotiating authority are preparing an intensive three-pronged campaign this week -- involving communications, whipping and coalitions -- to build support for the controversial trade bill heading to the floor next week. (CongressDaily)
12/3	Lil' rally around big profits -- After marching on downtown Seattle sidewalks where pepper spray tainted the air and thousands cried out against the World Trade Organization in 1999, about three dozen demonstrators rallied at Westlake Park yesterday in defense of capitalism. (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
12/3	This Dangerous Patriot's Game -- Few in the United States question the necessity for unusual civil measures in keeping with the current state of emergency. But a number of the Bush Administration's new laws, orders and policies are deservedly controversial. (Observer)
12/3	Government fights war on terrorism and drugs as one in the same -- As the United States wages a war on two fronts, against both terrorism and drugs, Ethan Nadelmann poses a fair question of priorities. "Which white powder do we want the government looking for," asks Nadelmann, executive director of the Lindesmith Center, a non-profit drug policy organization. "Do we want them focused on anthrax or do we want them focused on cocaine?" (St. Petersburg Times)
12/3	Kukdong workers to visit U.S. colleges, celebrate labor rights breakthrough -- From Nov. 28 - Dec. 6, Workers from Kukdong will visit a dozen U.S. colleges and universities to share their experiences and celebrate this extraordinary labor rights success with the students, administrators and faculty who helped make it happen.
11/30	Wake Up, America -- It is the broadest move in American history to sweep aside constitutional protections. Yet President Bush's order creating military tribunals to try those suspected of links to terrorism has aroused little public uproar. Why? Because, I am convinced, people do not understand the order's dangerous breadth -- and its defenders have done their best to conceal its true character. (New York Times)
11/30	Mexico probes 275 'disappearances' -- More than two decades after Mexico's so-called "dirty war," the government's human rights agency reported Tuesday that 275 leftists vanished while in government hands. (Associated Press)
11/30	Acteal: Improper Justice -- The release of six paramilitaries involved in the Acteal massacre is a confirmation of the failure of the Department of Justice of the Republic in the legal processes to demonstrate the responsibility of those involved. Source: Miguel Angel de los Santos (Miguel Angel de los Santos)
11/30	Political parties call for Congress to live up to Indian Rights Law -- Senators from two of the three major congressional parties have asked the lower house of deputies to direct more resources to indigenous communities and that modifications be made to the federal penal code to continue with constitutional changes required by the recently passed Indian Rights and Culture Law. (TheNewsMexico.com)
11/30	Release of Acteal murderers generate protest in Chiapas -- Almost four years after the Acteal massacre, members of the Las Abejas organization are protesting this week's release of six prisoners they consider to be responsible for the murder of 45 men, women and children. (TheNewsMexico.com)
11/30	Availability of cheap labor in the South does not compensate for the absence of proximity with the USA -- The maquiladoras still find the The Puebla-Panamá Plan and the "Marcha al Sur" Program unattractive, even after President Fox's invitation to contribute to the creation of a "great corridor" for the industrial, commercial and services sectors. (La Jornada)
11/30	Another war on terror. Another proxy army. Another mysterious massacre. And now, after 19 years, perhaps the truth at last... -- The eyes of the world are on Afghanistan, but today a Belgian appeals court is due to consider a case with disturbing contemporary parallels. Robert Fisk reveals shocking new evidence that the full, horrific story of the Sabra and Chatila massacres of 1982 has not yet been told. (The Independent)
11/27	Big vote in U.N. against U.S. embargo against Cuba -- The U.N. General Assembly, for the 10th consecutive year, voted overwhelmingly Tuesday for an end to the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, with Havana saying not even most Americans approved of the 4-decade-old sanctions. The vote was 167-3, identical to last year's record vote. Those opposing the resolution, in addition to the United States, were Israel and the Marshall Islands, the same countries who supported Washington in 2000. (Reuters)
11/27	In War, It's Power to the President -- The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the war in Afghanistan have dramatically accelerated a push by the Bush administration to strengthen presidential powers, giving President Bush a dominance over American government exceeding that of other post-Watergate presidents and rivaling even Franklin D. Roosevelt's command. (Washington Post)
11/27	The facts support the protesters -- 'There are dangerous, violent hooligans here," read the graffiti scrawled in chalk on a downtown building. "The cops." Not an original accusation, perhaps, but not wildly inaccurate. During a weekend of small and ongoing provocations, the most disturbing and violent incident I witnessed was initiated by the Ontario Provincial Police. (The Ottawa Citizen)
11/27	For South Africa's poor, a new power struggle -- In South Africa, the most despised acronym is arguably not HIV, the AIDS virus that infects nearly a quarter of the adult population, but GEAR, the ANC's economic package -- Growth, Employment and Redistribution -- which opens the door to global trade. (Washington Post)
11/26	Israelis being offered free housing in West Bank settlements -- Israelis are being offered free housing in an isolated part of the West Bank where settlers have been leaving because of danger from the Palestinian uprising and an economic slump, a municipal official said Wednesday. (Associated Press)
11/26	Fox says jailed general has "right to trial in civilian courts" -- Activists have said they will go to an international tribunal to press for the release of a military general who was jailed in 1993 after suggesting the army pay greater attention to human rights. (AP)
11/26	Israel "regrets" death of five children, announces probe -- Israeli Defence Minister Binyamin bin Eliezer voiced "regret" for the deaths of five Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip and announced an inquiry, after reports said an army booby-trap was to blame. (AFP)
11/26	U.S. farmers elated over Cuba trade -- U.S. grain vendors on Thursday celebrated a decision by Cuba this week to buy up to $10 million in food and medicine supplies from the United States to deal with Hurricane Michelle's devastation. "We're very excited about it," said Audrae Erickson of the American Farm Bureau. "We believe it's the beginning of rebuilding our trade relationship with Cuba." (Miami Herald)
11/24	Free Speech R.I.P.! -- Several hundred people have been detained secretly by the government since Sept. 11. A coalition of civil liberties, human rights and Arab-American groups charge that a growing number of reports "raise serious questions about deprivations of fundamental due process, including imprisonment without probable cause, interference with the right to counsel and threats of serious bodily injury." (New Haven Valley Advocate)
11/21	No More Innocent Victims: Stop The Bombing in Afghanistan! -- International Days of Action, Dec 7-10, 2001. Unless massive food shipments resume, hundreds of thousands of innocent Afghans will die this winter. The death toll could reach beyond one million people -- a disaster of holocaust proportions. This must not happen. At this crucial time, it is important that we do whatever we can to support the people of Afghanistan. (Global Exchange)
11/21	Israeli forces increasing use of torture -- Amnesty International said Tuesday that Israeli security forces are increasingly using torture against Palestinian suspects despite a 1999 High Court ruling, which sought to stop the practice. Members of the Israeli security forces are benefiting from impunity for torture or ill-treatment of Palestinians (AFP)
11/20	Capitol Hill tunes in to Tancredo -- Amnesty has been shelved. The Immigration and Naturalization Service is up for a thorough overhaul. The idea of putting troops on the border no longer seems strange to many. (Denver Post)
11/20	Afghan women gather for faltering first march -- Shedding their head-to-toe burqas, hundreds of women gathered in the Afghan capital on Tuesday to demand their rights after five years of stifling Taliban rule. (New York Times)
11/20	Sharon 'summoned' by Belgian court -- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is being summoned to a Belgian court to answer questions over his role in the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacres, say Belgian media reports. (BBC)
11/20	Militia kidnaps 6 Colombian mayors -- A right-wing militia announced Monday it was holding six mayors hostage to protest their attempts to reach grassroots peace agreements with leftist guerrillas in Colombia. Police confirmed that several mayors from war-riven northwest Antioquia state have been reported missing since Sunday. (Associated Press)
11/19	Human Rights fact finding delegation will investigate refugee conditions and food aid in Pakistan and Afghanistan -- From November 18 to November 30, a five-person fact finding team sponsored by the international human rights organization Global Exchange will examine refugee conditions in Pakistan and investigate how food aid is being distributed in Afghanistan. The delegation will focus on the plight of women as it seeks female Afghans' views on what they think a post-Taliban government should look like. (Global Exchange)
11/19	Some crash relatives fear deportation -- Fearing deportation, some relatives of the victims of American Airlines Flight 587 are afraid to claim the bodies of their loved ones or leave the country to bury them, family members and community leaders said Wednesday. They called on the federal government to grant an amnesty so that those in the United States illegally can regain entry into the country if they return to the Dominican Republic to bury their dead. (Associated Press)
11/19	Feds questioning 5,000 male foreigners -- Investigators are knocking on the doors of Middle Eastern visitors in the United States and looking through the files of foreign students as part of a widening terrorism inquiry, sparking complaints about racial profiling. (Associated Press)
11/19	Must government share evidence with detainees? -- "At issue here is whether our government can lock up human beings without affording them a meaningful chance to defend themselves," says David Cole of the Georgetown University Law Center. Civil libertarians fear that, should the court rule in favor of the government, the threshold for evidence used to keep illegal aliens behind bars could be lowered. (Miami Daily Business Review)
11/19	Bush pushes for more trade authority -- President Bush, buoyed with a big trade victory where President Clinton suffered a major failure, hopes to score an even bigger legislative triumph in an upcoming showdown vote in the House. Republican leaders have set Dec. 6 for a House vote on Fast Track legislation. (Associated Press)
11/19	WTO member nations agree to launch development round at tough talks in Doha -- Member countries of the World Trade Organization Nov. 14 agreed after six days of often difficult talks here to begin negotiations aimed at setting new rules governing trade in areas ranging from agriculture to services, and from intellectual property protection to import tariffs on industrial goods. (International Trade Daily)
11/19	On U.S.-Saudi Relations: With us ... or against? -- Of the many mysteries that Americans have tried to investigate in the fight against terrorism, few topics are more impenetrable than the role of Saudi Arabia. And none is more taboo. (San Francisco Chronicle)
11/16	U.S. is reportedly prepared to allow food sales to Cuba -- For the first time since the United States imposed trade sanctions against Cuba four decades ago, Havana is negotiating a deal with American producers to buy food and agricultural products to replenish stocks destroyed by a recent hurricane. (New York Times)
11/16	Fox lacks resolve to free Gen Gallardo, son charges -- The youngest son of Mexican political prisoner Gen. Jose Francisco Gallardo said Thursday that President Vicente Fox has the power to free his father, but lacks the resolve to challenge the powerful Mexican military. (The News Mexico)
11/16	Seizing Dictatorial Power -- Misadvised by a frustrated and panic-stricken attorney general, a president of the United States has just assumed what amounts to dictatorial power to jail or execute aliens. Intimidated by terrorists and inflamed by a passion for rough justice, we are letting George W. Bush get away with the replacement of the American rule of law with military kangaroo courts. (New York Times)
11/14	Doomed from the start, Doha round is a hollow victory for corporate-managed trade -- Trade negotiators' inability to meet their goals of dramatically expanding the World Trade Organization's (WTO) reach during the Doha meeting shows that the "free trade" agenda is ultimately doomed to fail. Still trying to repair its image and legitimacy after the collapse of talks in Seattle, the WTO's announcement of a new round of trade talks is a half-baked plan full of holes and vague, sometimes contradictory language. (Global Exchange)
11/14	WTO OKs new round of trade talks -- Bleary-eyed delegates at the World Trade Organization conference agreed Wednesday to start a new round of much-anticipated talks to free up global commerce after the lone holdout -- India -- said it would not object. (Associated Press)
11/14	In Colombia, a local push for peace -- El Penol's mayor, has joined 14 angry colleagues in a rebellion of their own. Tired of war and frustrated with the central government's failure to stop it, the mayors have signed a cease-fire agreement with the National Liberation Army (ELN), Colombia's second-largest guerrilla insurgency, that calls on the National Police to leave their towns. (Washington Post)
11/14	Mexican general says president is hiding rights violations -- Mexican Gen. Francisco Gallardo, who has been in prison since 1993, on Friday accused President Vicente Fox of "covering up" human rights violations committed by high-ranking military officers. (EFE)
11/14	Refining opened to private sector -- Eleven months after coming to power, the Fox administration yesterday unveiled its six year plan for Mexico's energy sector. The energy secretary outlined how the electric power industry will be reformed. (El Financiero)
11/12	Starbucks says program will reward responsible suppliers -- Starbucks Coffee on Monday unveiled a plan to pay coffee suppliers up to 10 cents more per pound if they protect the environment and abide by local minimum wage and worker safety laws. The test program, scheduled to be announced at a coffee suppliers conference in Costa Rica Monday, comes as the coffee industry faces a worldwide glut that has pushed wholesale prices down 40 percent, to around 40 cents per pound. (Associated Press)
11/12	Israeli army invades Tal village -- At 3 am this morning, Israeli tanks and troops invaded Tal, a Palestinian controlled village in the Nablus area. Israeli soldiers killed Mohammad Yusif Hamid while in his house. Twelve Palestinians have been arrested, and the Israeli army demolished a civilian home. (Palestine Monitor)
11/12	Rights groups say Israel tortures prisoners, despite court ban -- Israeli authorities continue to torture Palestinian detainees, despite a 1999 Supreme Court ruling banning the practice, three human rights groups said Sunday. (Associated Press)
11/12	Freed environmentalists fear for their lives -- The renowned environmentalists Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera, who were freed by President Vicente Fox on Thursday, said they would fear for their lives if they were to return to their homes and continue defending the environment, the Mexican press reported. (The News Mexico)
11/12	Fox takes steps to end army's rights abuses -- Nearly a year after President Vicente Fox took office promising to clean up Mexico's human rights record, he is taking his first steps to address the military's long history of impunity and rights abuses. (Washington Post)
11/12	CNDH affirmed that 250 people were executed during the dirty war -- The National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) affirmed that 250 people of the 531 considered missing were executed, according to this social organization's report. In it, it establishes that "the last time these people were seen they were present in municipal or state prisons and in federal offices, including military installations like the Military Camp #1, with the majority of them being in the hands of the White Brigade." (La Jornada)
11/12	Activist sentenced for Colombia protest -- Mark Colville of the Amistad Catholic Worker Community in New Haven was sentenced to serve 45 days in Bridgeport's North Avenue Jail for trying to deliver a letter to Mr. Dean Borgman, President and CEO of Sikorsky Aircraft in Stratford asking him to stop building Blackhawk Helicopters to be sent to Colombia. Mark was charged with Disorderly Conduct and Criminal Trespass in the First Degree for his arrest on December 6, 2000 with five others. (Catholic Relief Services)
11/12	Where are you? -- Experienced, respected food aid organizations warn that even before the bombing of Afghanistan began on October 7, some 7,500,000 Afghans were -- through a gut-wrenching combination of poverty, drought, war, dislocation, and repression -- at risk of starving to death this winter. When the bombing began, almost all delivery of food from the outside world stopped. (WorkingForChange.com)
11/9	US Government's $2.5 Million Biopiracy Project in Mexico Cancelled: Victory for Indigenous Peoples in Chiapas -- After two years of intense local opposition from indigenous peoples' organizations in Chiapas, Mexico, the US government-funded ICBG-Maya project aimed at the bioprospecting of Mayan medicinal plants and traditional knowledge has been "definitively cancelled" by the Project's Chiapas-based partner, ECOSUR -- El Colegio de la Frontera Sur. The US government confirmed today that the ICBG-Maya Project has been terminated. (ETCGroup.org)
11/8	Coffee roasters rev up PR machines on low coffee prices -- Negative publicity about the struggles of cash-strapped coffee farmers facing thirty-year price lows set against high roaster profits has set public relations efforts whirring at leading roasters. Within the last month alone, Swiss roaster Nestle SA has said it's "very concerned" about the current low coffee prices, while U.S. specialty roaster Starbucks Corp. has agreed to promote "fair trade" coffee and contribute $1 million to a fund for farmers. (Dow Jones Newswires)
11/8	Globalization protest kicks off at AUB -- Jose Bove strolled in late to the opening session of the World Forum on the WTO Monday night, but his strong call for Arab action resounded through the hall, crowded with activists and students. Bove, the French farmer turned anti-globalization activist, urged Arabs to "rise up and fight against globalization -- the newest form of colonialism." (Daily Star, Lebanon)
11/8	Greenpeace sails to Doha to show WTO the environmental side of trade -- Greenpeace announced Friday its intention to go to Doha and conduct campaigns for more equitable world trade, which are planned to take place outside the World Trade Organization's Fourth Ministerial Conference in the Gulf emirate of Qatar to be held from Nov. 9-12. (Daily Star, Lebanon)
11/8	Beirut prepares to host alternative to Doha WTO meeting -- A gathering of Lebanese and international labor unions, women's groups, environmentalists and civil society organizations, the forum will provide space for those questioning and opposing the World Trade Organization -- voices they say are being silenced at the fourth WTO ministerial meeting in Doha, Qatar on Nov. 9-15 (Daily Star, Lebanon)
11/8	Release of Political Prisoners Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera -- Global Exchange is thrilled with the long overdue release of political prisoners Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera from prison in Iguala, Guerrero. While we applaud President Fox for taking this action, we are concerned about the ten members of the Organizacíon Campesina Ecologista de la Sierra de Petatlán y Coyuca de Catalán (OCESP) who remain in prison in Guerrero or are being persecuted with invalid warrants for their arrest. (Global Exchange)
11/8	FTAA is best weapon against economic downturn -- Gaviria said he was confident Congress would give Bush fast track authority -- allowing the administration to negotiate international trade agreements and submit them to the legislature, which can only pass or reject them without making modifications -- despite the fact that lawmakers have not granted the authority since 1994. (EFE)
11/7	Farmers to congress: Not So Fast with Fast Track -- As corporate America intensifies pressure on Congress to pass Fast Track trade promotion authority before the World Trade Organization ministerial adjourns in Doha, Qatar later this week, farmers and ranchers are sending a different message: not so fast with Fast Track. (National Farm Action Campaign)
11/7	Call for big changes to global financial system -- A group of former finance ministers from emerging market countries will today propose fundamental changes to the global financial system, including an international bankruptcy procedure for government borrowers. (Financial Times)
11/6	IMF leaving Argentina to face toughest test alone -- As Argentina faces its darkest economic hour, the International Monetary Fund is deliberately staying at arm's length from a situation that could result in the largest sovereign debt default in history. (Reuters)
11/6	Israeli occupation forces killed three Palestinians today -- Palestinian sources from the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) told the Palestine Media Center (PMC) that Israeli occupation forces killed three Palestinians today 6 November. The incident took place in front of the PRCS crews, after they were prevented from treating the victims. (Palestine Media Center)
11/5	Death threats renew fear of violence against rights workers -- A death threat against five human rights defenders, made public Thursday, has added to the climate of hostility and insecurity felt in Mexico since the Oct. 19 assassination of Digna Ochoa. The anonymous note demanded 30 million pesos from the federal government or the human rights defenders would be killed. (The News Mexico)
11/5	Greenpeace: Fox administration to legalize GM crops -- In closed-door meetings with agribusiness executives, the Agriculture Secretariat (Sagarpa) is working to legalize the cultivation of genetically modified (GM) crops, Greenpeace Mexico announced on Thursday. The meetings were convoked by Sagarpa to discuss the creation of a measure that would set the rules by which GM agricultural products could be grown and sold on a large scale. (News Staff)
11/4	At WTO talks, protesters will be out of sight, but not out of mind -- When representatives of the 142 member countries of the World Trade Organization gather in Doha, Qatar, next Friday, the antiglobalization street protesters who severely disrupted the WTO's last meeting won't be there. But their demands could still threaten the talks. (Wall Street Journal)
11/2	Coca invades Colombia's coffee fields -- The coffee crisis, as it is called here, has helped create a countrywide recession. Unemployment is near 20 percent, and higher in the countryside where war and scant public resources make poverty nearly inescapable. That, in turn, has given the country's various armed groups -- Marxist rebels on one side, a counter-guerrilla paramilitary force on the other -- a larger pool of idle young men and women from which to fill their ranks. Recruiting has never been easier. (Washington Post)
11/2	Colombian coffee growers start sowing poppies -- Coffee income -- boosted by advertisements featuring the mustachioed Juan Valdez -- brought a measure of social cohesion to regions wracked by four decades of civil conflict in Colombia. But the latest price drop has led to an upsurge in kidnappings, violence and farming of drug crops. (Financial Times)
11/2	Killing of Rights lawyer strains Fox's credibility -- Mexico's top human rights official said today the government's credibility has been jeopardized by law enforcement's failure to properly investigate death threats against Digna Ochoa y Placido, a leading human rights lawyer who was killed last week. (Washington Post)
11/2	Court orders Mexico to probe death -- The Interamerican Human Rights Court has ordered Mexico to investigate the death of a prominent human rights lawyer and provide security for her colleagues -- a decision applauded Friday by human rights groups. (Associated Press)
11/1	Israeli government escalates violence: Israeli army invades 'Arraba -- It has just been reported that the Israeli government has assassinated Jamil Jadallah Qawasmi. An eyewitness confirms that 22 year old Jamil was killed by a missile from an Israeli helicopter while standing in the yard of his home in Hebron. (Palestine Monitor)
11/1	Peres says he may see Arafat, drawing criticism from right -- Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said today that he would probably meet this week with Yasir Arafat, and that he had drafted a new peace plan for the Middle East. (New York Times)
11/1	Intifada in the Aftermath -- By now, accepted wisdom says that an unexpected outcome of the September 11 attacks in the US may well be the Palestinian Authority's salvation from extinction at the hands of Ariel Sharon. But the more optimistic scenario, that the sudden reordering of US strategic priorities in the region might lead to an interim solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, remains far off. (MERIP)
11/1	Many pessimistic about Fox's vow to aid Ochoa investigation -- The European Union this week joined a long list of governments and organizations condemning the Oct. 19 murder of human rights lawyer Digna Ochoa, but many say despite growing pressure, some Mexicans are not optimistic President Vicente Fox's administration will resolve the case. (The News Mexico)
11/1	U.S. plans scaled back delegation after meeting fixed for Doha -- The U.S. and other World Trade Organization members struggled this week with how to handle sending delegations to the Ministerial meeting Nov. 9-13, after political confirmations that the meeting would move forward as planned in Doha, Qatar. (Inside US Trade)
10/31	Radio warns Afghans over food parcels -- The United States is seeking to avert further criticism over the use of cluster bombs in Afghanistan by warning the Afghan people not to confuse unexploded bombs with food drops. (BBC News)
10/31	War needs good public relations -- For some people, war is terror, disaster and death. For others, it's a PR problem. At the Rendon Group, a public-relations firm with offices in Boston and Washington, pleasant news arrived the other day with a $397,000 contract to help the Pentagon look good while bombing Afghanistan. (Norman Solomon)
10/30	Coca invades Colombia's coffee fields -- Coffee shrubs the color of army fatigues cover the hills above this village, which is set in a deep valley cut by the River Samana. But near the peaks, the bright green stripes of another crop can be seen between the coffee, spelling trouble for Colombia's most renowned industry and the United States' drug war. (Washington Post)
10/29	A dangerous appetite for oil -- For 70 years, oil has been responsible for more of America's international entanglements and anxieties than any other industry. Oil continues to be a major source both of America's strategic vulnerability and of its reputation as a bully, in the Islamic world and beyond. (New York Times)
10/29	For trade protesters, 'slower, sadder songs' -- Next month, international financial and trade officials will gather in two important meetings -- one in Doha, Qatar, and the other in Ottawa -- to resume a series of talks that were scheduled before, but questioned after, the attacks on Sept. 11. Strident demonstrations against globalization may occur in Europe, but protesters in the United States are scrambling to see if they can hold together a movement now that their most effective way of getting attention is out of sync with the national mood. (New York Times)
10/29	It's time to ask "borderless" corporations: Which side are you on? -- A recent New York Times headline asked an insinuating question: "After the Attacks, Which Side Is the Left On?" The Times should find the nerve to put the same question to the major players of business and finance. Which side is Citigroup on? Or General Electric and Boeing? (The Nation)
10/29	For coffee traders, disaster comes in pairs -- The price of raw coffee -- in decline for several years -- plummeted to a record low last week. The fall has been dizzying. Futures contracts on the coffee exchange, the benchmark for prices around the world, had been as high as $3.05 a pound, in May 1997. But last Monday, they bottomed out at 42.5 cents a pound, then rose slightly. And the future looks no brighter. (New York Times)
10/26	Ochoa's murder mars Mexico's "new" democratic image -- In 1994, an election year, the ruling party's presidential candidate was shot dead at a rally, and a few months later, another top ruling party politician was murdered in downtown Mexico City. Those deaths fit in with the way politics played out in Mexico under the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which, after 71 years in power, lost the presidency last year to Vicente Fox of the conservative National Action Party (PAN). (The News Mexico)
10/26	UN condemns Mexican killing -- Ochoa defended many of Mexico's poor UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson has urged Mexican authorities to capture and prosecute the killers of leading human rights lawyer Digna Ochoa. (BBC)
10/26	Asia leader criticizes globalization -- With Pacific Rim leaders pushing more economic globalization, Malaysia's leader delivered an alternative broadside Saturday against ways of the West he says are leaving too many people behind. (Associated Press)
10/24	At least six Palestinians killed in Israeli raid in West Bank -- At least six Palestinians were killed Wednesday in an Israeli incursion into a West Bank village, Israeli and Palestinian officials said, one of the bloodiest clashes in more than a year of fighting. (Associated Press)
10/24	Forget the war against poverty -- Despite the grand hopes of an escape from poverty laid out by African leaders, without extra help from the west, the slump in commodity will threaten the economies of coffee producers like Uganda and Tanzania and cocoa exporters like Ghana and Ivory Coast, all of whom owe large sums to the west. (The Guardian)
10/24	Brutality smeared in peanut butter -- There is no easy way out of the spiralling morass of terror and brutality that confronts the world today. It is time now for the human race to hold still, to delve into its wells of collective wisdom, both ancient and modern. What happened on September 11 changed the world forever. Freedom, progress, wealth, technology, war -- these words have taken on new meaning. (The Guardian)
10/23	Price-hit Panama coffee growers warn of crisis -- Price-rocked Panama coffee growers on Monday warned of a round of bankruptcies, farm closures and deepening poverty for coffee pickers, if the government did not step in with $6 million in emergency aid. (Reuters)
10/23	Fair-trade movement brews new hope for coffee growers -- Inside a Starbucks cafe on Denver's 16th Street Mall, bank-loan specialist Beth Bockenstedt, 44, ordered up a $3.80 Caramel Macchiato last week. She knew about fair-trade coffee. She'd seen the brochure featuring Santiago Rivera. The cafe in Denver offered no fair-trade coffee as a daily brew. Bockenstedt said she might be inclined to try it or buy fair-trade beans for home instead of French Roast. (Denver Post)
10/23	Diversity's peace -- The protest signs were mixed and varied. One read, "Stop the War in Afghanistan." But another read, "Stop Racial Scapegoating." And another, "Defend Civil Liberties." Through all these messages runs a racial thread that marks what makes this movement for peace different from others in the past. It's broader and more diverse than you can imagine. It's a peace movement that looks like America. (San Francisco Chronicle)
10/23	War not going quite as planned -- Militarily, the Taliban movement is proving to be harder to crack than expected; diplomatically, efforts to forge a post-Taliban coalition also have been frustrated by the contradictory demands of different factions and external powers. (Inter Press Service)
10/23	UN set to appeal for halt in the bombing -- The United Nations is set to issue an unprecedented appeal to the United States and its coalition allies to halt the war on Afghanistan and allow time for a huge relief operation. (The Observer)
10/23	We are being reoccupied -- The government of Ariel Sharon has finally revealed itself as a government of war. Now his real intention -- to destroy the peace process he never agreed with -- has been unmasked. (The Guardian)
10/23	Mexican government condemns murder of rights lawyer -- The Mexican government roundly condemned on Sunday the murder of an internationally acclaimed human rights lawyer, a slaying that rights workers called a sharp blow to Mexico's developing democracy. (Reuters)
10/22	Close, But No Cigar: Starbucks' programs show improvement in commitment to fair trade, but not nearly enough -- While Starbucks slowly and slightly increases its Fair Trade Certified offerings, a crisis has enveloped the coffee industry which is threatening the livelihoods of coffee producers around the world. (Global Exchange)
10/22	Starbucks buying more Fair Trade coffee beans -- Starbucks Coffee announced yesterday that it will buy a million pounds of Fair Trade Certified coffee within the next 18 months, and also is giving $1 million to be used for capital investments, quality improvement, credit, and other initiatives to boost the standard of living for coffee farmers. (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
10/22	Demand Justice for Human Rights Defenders: Express your outrage at the killing of Digna Ochoa y Plácido -- Internationally known human rights attorney Digna Ochoa y Plácido was assassinated in her office on Friday, October 19. (Global Exchange)
10/22	Mexican Human Rights Lawyer is killed -- One of Mexico's most prominent human rights lawyers was found shot to death in her office here on Friday, bringing criticism of the administration of President Vicente Fox from environmentalists and rights advocates. (New York Times)
10/22	Batiz: Human Rights Defender's Assassination Politically Motivated -- The Prosecutor for the Federal District, Bernardo Batiz, reporting on the death of Digna Ochoa, human rights defender, stated that the motive for the killing "is undoubtedly political in nature," given that a warning to PRD members was found in the lawyer's office. (El Universal Online)
10/22	10 Reasons to stop bombing Afghanistan -- Why not treat terrorists like the criminals they are, building a long-term, world-wide coalition to stop terrorism that includes the U.N. and world court? If we use the media more effectively instead of operating in secret, and invest the billions of dollars we are spending to pulverize Afghanistan to address social and economic needs around the globe, we will be on a more productive path toward making the world safer from terrorism. (AlterNet)
10/22	President's declarations in Europe are lies -- The National Indigenous Congress (CNI) "is at that moment not disposed to contact president Vicente Fox, in order to discuss the counterreform" on indigenous rights and culture, assured Larisa Ortiz, representative of the Congress, who is in Spain to "spread the version of the Mexican Indigenous" against "Fox' mendacious declarations before the European spaces". (La Jornada)
10/22	Russia fears U.S. has hidden Afghan agenda, fighter says -- Russia summoned the commander of Afghan anti-Taliban forces to a meeting in neighboring Tajikistan over the weekend as escalating U.S.-led attacks fueled a new competition for foreign influence over this country. (Los Angeles Times)
10/21	The high, hidden cost of Saudi Arabian oil -- George W. Bush warned that the nation faced an oil crisis. He was right, but not in the way he foresaw. The crisis that came has nothing to do with prices at the gas pump, or environmental obstacles to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. Rather, it has to do with the political and military price the United States must pay for its dependence on oil from the Persian Gulf. (New York Times)
10/19	U.S. may use military in hemisphere -- The United States will use military force where appropriate to fight terrorism in the Western Hemisphere, the State Department's top anti-terrorism official said Monday. (Associated Press)
10/19	Chiapas governor calls for tighter border security -- At the same time President Vicente Fox is touting Mexico's unconditional support for the war against terrorism, the governor of Chiapas is continuing his months-long campaign of asking the federal government to provide more surveillance of the nation's southern border. (The News-Mexico)
10/19	Israel is re-occupying Palestinian Territories -- Israeli forces entered the Palestinian town of Bethlehem, shelling civilian neighborhoods in the town and occupying the Paradise Hotel on Al Mehid Street. So far, seven Palestinian civilians have been injured, three in very critical condition as a result of the Israeli shelling. (Palestine Monitor)
10/19	The coming Arab crash: If the Saudi and other pro-western regimes are lined up against Bin Laden, they will fall -- The west's most important friends in the Arab Middle East -- Fahd of Saudi Arabia, Abdullah of Jordan, Mubarak of Egypt and the PLO's Yasser Arafat -- are probably the world's most vulnerable political quartet. It is likely that endemic problems and the Islamic fundamentalist tide gripping their countries will bring an end to their regimes within the next five years. (The Guardian)
10/19	Oil Omissions: Bush Sr., Cheney have big stakes in Saudi status quo -- The New York Times ran an interesting article Sunday, as interesting for what it did not say as for what it did. Headlined, "Fears, Again, of Oil Supplies at Risk," the piece by Neela Banerjee addressed the nightmares that George W's war has raised among those concerned about oil. (WorkingforChange)
10/19	China braces for impact of membership in W.T.O. -- China is girding itself to defend its huge yet fragile economy from an invasion by foreign companies once its membership in the World Trade Organization is ratified. (New York Times)
10/19	IMFC and Development Committee meetings to be held November 17-18, 2001 in Ottawa -- These meetings will bring together ministers and central bank governors from around the world to discuss issues of importance to the membership of the IMF and World Bank. (IMF External Relations Department)
10/19	A rational alternative to thoughtless bombing' -- The bottom line is this: Ordinary Afghan people, men and women and children who have never done anything wrong to anyone, are getting mangled and killed by American bombs. The innocents have spouses, parents and friends, and these spouses, parents and friends quite naturally hate those who mangled and killed their loved ones. (AlterNet)
10/19	U.S. propaganda to Taliban: 'You are condemned' -- The Pentagon is sending radio broadcasts into Afghanistan telling the Taliban they are "condemned," and the messages seem to suggest that U.S. troops will eventually be on the ground in that country. (CNN)
10/19	100,000 Afghan children could die this winter -- As many as 100,000 Afghan children could die this winter unless food reaches them in sufficient quantities over the next six weeks, the United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF, warned on Monday. (AFP)
10/19	Jails: New claims of mistreatment continue to come from attorneys and relatives of the 700 held in terrorism probe. -- Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft said Tuesday that there has been no wholesale abuse of those being detained in the five-week federal terrorism investigation, even as four more cases surfaced in which young men allegedly are being kept from their attorneys and confined in jails without proper food or protection. (Los Angeles Times)
10/19	Nafta dispute is in court once again -- A frequent goal of trade pacts like the North American Free Trade Agreement is to speed and simplify the settlement of cross-border commercial disputes out of court. But the limits on their effectiveness are visible in a five-year dispute between an American company and the Mexican government, which went back to court yet again this week. (New York Times)
10/18	Sweatshop Case May Grow -- The U.S. District Court in Saipan signed an order this week opening the door to more potential plaintiffs in a lawsuit alleging widespread sweatshop abuses in the island's garment trade. "This is huge," said Michael Rubin, a San Francisco-based attorney representing 972 Saipan factory workers from China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Bangladesh and other low-wage nations. "It's unbelievable. This adds up to 20,000 additional plaintiffs." (Los Angeles Times)
10/18	Mexican immigrants face new set of fears -- The whole nation has been anxious this past month, but for millions of Mexican immigrants around the country there have been added fears. (New York Times)
10/17	Campesinos demand end to GM imports -- Campesino organizations from Chihuahua to Chiapas on Tuesday called on President Vicente Fox's administration to block genetically modified (GM) corn allegedly being imported from the United States. (The News-Mexico)
10/17	Right-wing Israeli minister is shot -- Suspected Palestinian gunmen shot and seriously wounded Israeli right-wing, anti-Arab cabinet minister Rehavam Zeevi in an assassination attempt on Wednesday, dealing a serious blow to U.S.-led peace efforts. (New York Times)
10/17	Threat of terrorism leaves trade summit plans in doubt -- Less than a month before thousands of government officials and private experts were scheduled to gather for the first global trade summit meeting in two years, a Bush administration official said today that the threat of terrorism had left arrangements for the meetings in doubt. (New York Times)
10/17	Yes, there is an effective alternative to the bombing of Afghanistan -- As the bombing of Afghanistan continues for the second week, the Pentagon has admitted that some bombs went astray. Two hundred Afghan civilians have been killed so far and more will die if the bombs continue to fall. (The Independent)
10/17	US offers Taliban role in future state -- The US sought to prise open alleged cracks in Afghanistan's Taliban regime yesterday, by offering moderates a possible role in any new Afghan government. (The Independent)
10/17	Promises, promises -- Colin Powell tells Pakistan's General Musharraf that he will help solve the problem of Kashmir. Tony Blair offers Yasser Arafat the vision of a Palestinian state. But should we take them at their word? History shows that assurances made in wartime aren't always everything they seem. (The Independent)
10/16	San Diego State joins Worker Rights Consortium! -- It is with great joy that I write these words... San Diego State University has agreed to become affiliated with an independent monitoring organization, the Worker Rights Consortium. (San Diego State University)
10/16	Questions swirl around men held in terror probe -- In a high-security wing of Manhattan's Metropolitan Correctional Center, an unknown number of men with Middle Eastern names are being held in solitary confinement on the ninth floor, locked in 8- by 10-foot cells with little more than cots, thin blankets and, if they request it, copies of the Quran. Every two hours, guards roust them to conduct a head count. (Washington Post)
10/15	Inside Corporate America -- You'd think Democrats would blast Zoellick for this crude, heartless and somewhat oddball maneuver to jam through Bush's big business agenda while a nation mourned. But this week, war-spooked Democrats in Congress are expected to vote to revive the moribund trade legislation. (The Observer)
10/15	Killing by Israeli army undermines truce -- Israel sabotaged US and British efforts to solidify a Middle East truce yesterday by carrying out the first assassination of a Palestinian militant since the attacks on America on September 11. (The Guardian)
10/15	Will a few holes in the runway of Kandahar airport make a difference? -- True, we bombed Osama bin Laden's camps. I bet we did. There would have been no difficulty in spotting their location because, of course, most of them were built by the CIA when Mr bin Laden and his men were the good guys. (The Independent)
10/15	Calling for a wider, but smarter war -- Was there anything symbolic in the fact that the first reported civilian deaths were of four Afghans who worked as security guards for a United Nations mine-clearing project in Afghanistan? An errant US Tomahawk cruise missile killed individuals involved in a humanitarian project. (AlterNet)
10/15	Killing them softly: Starvation and dollar bills for Afghan kids -- The Pentagon's air drops of food parcels and President Bush's plea for American children to aid Afghan kids with dollar bills will go down in history as two of the most cynical maneuvers of media manipulation in the early 21st century. (Norman Solomon)
10/15	'Hate Free Zone' posters sprinkled in cities nationally -- San Francisco-based Global Exchange plans to dispatch more people to put up posters in New York City, Los Angeles, San Diego, Denver, Boulder, Colo., and Boston this weekend. (Associated Press)
10/15	The World Bank's former Chief Economist's accusations are eye-popping -- including how the IMF and US Treasury fixed the Russian elections -- In 1999 the World Bank fired Stiglitz. He was not allowed quiet retirement; US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, I'm told, demanded a public excommunication for Stiglitz' having expressed his first mild dissent from globalization World Bank style. (The Observer)
10/15	P&G eschews fair-trade coffee offered by some sellers -- Procter & Gamble Co. is resisting the decision of some companies to sell coffee that returns more profits to growers. Instead, P&G prefers its tradition of helping poor communities where the coffee is grown. (Associated Press)
10/13	Refugees back Taliban's casualty figures claim -- Civilians fleeing Afghanistan yesterday reported mass burials of bombing victims in and around the eastern city of Jalalabad, supporting claims by the Taliban of major casualties and extensive damage to property. The refugees' accounts are the first provided by sources independent of the Taliban. (The Telegraph)
10/12	In-State Tuition OKd for Migrants -- Gov. Gray Davis Thursday signed legislation allowing students who are longtime residents and California high school graduates to pay the same tuition at state colleges as other residents. (Los Angeles Times)
10/11	There isn't a target in Afghanistan worth a $1m missile -- Heikal can see no logic in the attack on Afghanistan. For a start, he says, there is nothing there worth attacking. "I have seen Afghanistan, and there is not one target deserving the $1m that a cruise missile costs, not even the royal palace. If I took it at face value, I would think this is madness. (The Guardian)
10/11	London folly of aid and bombs -- Four weeks remain before winter envelops Afghanistan, during which enough food must be delivered to last until March. Yet the US is prepared to drop, at its own best estimate, barely one quarter of one day's needs. (The Guardian)
10/11	Trying to try Sharon -- On November 28, a Belgian court will decide whether Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon can be tried for his alleged role in the slaughter by Lebanese militiamen of untold numbers of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in West Beirut in 1982. (MERIP)
10/11	The charge of the trade brigade -- The World Trade Organization is still, unbelievably, planning to meet in the Middle East nation of Qatar in a month's time. There, hundreds of high level trade officials and politicians will attempt to resurrect the talks that collapsed in Seattle two years ago. (Globe and Mail)
10/10	Statement by Alianza Civica-Chiapas about the Chiapas Elections -- This election was characterized by a lack of training of electoral officials, vote buying and coercion, new fraud mechanisms, an abstention rate of over 50% of the population, a wide array of political party options which fragmented the vote, and the lack of opposition coalition candidates due to an electoral reform which prevented the formation of coalitions. (Press Release)
10/10	Chequerboard of oil, minefields -- The only permanent geopolitical factor which stirs and boils this vast cauldron of human misery is the global power game over the future Eurasian Pipeline Network that has turned Central Asia into a post-Cold War Middle East-in-waiting. Afghanistan, Pakistan or Iran, just like the former Soviet republics of Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan or Turkmenistan, are pawns disguised as key players in the Eurasian "chequerboard of oil and minefields", as one expert calls it. (Athens News)
10/10	Fear of chaos stops US bombs from falling on Taliban tanks -- American and British bombing runs have so far not targeted Taliban armour and artillery emplacements around Kabul in order to delay an attack on the capital by the opposition United Front. The calculation stems from fears that the early fall of Kabul to the UF could create administrative chaos as long as there is no Afghan transitional government in place. (The Telegraph)
10/10	Anti-terrorism coalition strains U.S-Israel ties -- The campaign against Osama bin Laden is severely testing the United States' relations with its closest Middle East ally, Israel, which many Muslims say is a root cause of the Sept. 11 attacks. How Israel deals with its long-festering conflict with the Palestinians -- and how they respond -- could determine the fate not only of peace prospects but the Arab world's fragile support for the U.S.-led anti-terrorism coalition. (USA Today)
10/10	Signs of the Times -- The obituaries are already appearing in newspapers around the world: "Anti-Globalization Is So Yesterday," reads a typical headline. It is, according to the Boston Globe, "in tatters." Is it true? (The Nation)
10/10	As the Smoke Clears, New Attitude on Security Alliance Emerges in Mexico Diplomacy: Attacks on U.S. have stimulated support for the concept of treating terrorism as a common threat. -- The attacks set off a fierce debate within the Mexican political elite on how the country should respond to the U.S. call for a global campaign against terrorism. (Los Angeles Times)
10/10	Judge dismisses all charges against Gap anti-sweatshop protestors -- The judge dismissed all charges against the anti-sweatshop protestors arrested May 6, 2000 at the Fashion Fair mall. (Labor/Community Alliance)
10/9	Agencies question Afghan aid drops -- International medical aid agency Medecins Sans Frontiers said the humanitarian action was "a piece of military propaganda aimed at making the U.S.-led attack more acceptable to international opinion." (CNN)
10/9	Chiapas Elections: PRI retains dominance, abstention rates very high -- In local Chiapas elections this Sunday October 7 the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) retained its dominance in the municipal governments and State Congress, followed by the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) and the National Action Party (PAN). (Global Exchange)
10/9	PRI conserves majority in Chiapan Congress -- The Congress of Chiapas will once again be composed of an absolute PRI majority, the party which according to the State Electoral Institute (IEE) triumphed in 72 of 118 municipalities. (La Jornada)
10/9	Abstentionism calculated at 60% -- The elections celebrated this Sunday in Chiapas to renew the 118 municipal presidencies and 40 local deputies were distinguished by abstentionism within the electorate of 2,189,571 voters and by the significant numbers of voting stations which were not installed in the EZLN's zone of influence. (La Jornada)
10/9	Mexican labor protest gets results -- At the time, it seemed an insignificant act of disobedience. About 900 workers at Mexmode, which produces sweatshirts for colleges in the United States, boycotted the company cafeteria because they were fed up with finding worms in their salads. (New York Times)
10/9	Nicaragua Pre-election Delegation Report -- A delegation sponsored by Global Exchange visited Nicaragua on a fact-finding delegation to assess pre-election conditions. The ten delegation members were academic experts, union leaders, activists, experienced election monitors and other Nicaraguan specialists, many of whom had spent significant periods of time living and studying in the country. (Global Exchange)
10/9	Anti-terrorism bills raise online privacy issues -- Both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives have introduced new legislation aimed at making it easier to fight terrorism. But critics fear the laws take away too much privacy. (NewsFactor Network)
10/8	Municipal Elections in Chiapas -- This coming Sunday, October 7 2001 local state elections will be held in Chiapas. One hundred eighteen municipal governments and forty local deputies are up for decision. Historically, elections have brought heightened tensions and violence within communities as political parties fight for votes. (Global Exchange)
10/8	Drawing a line between terrorists and guerrillas -- With government officials and legislators set on revamping the nation's security policy after the events of Sept. 11, the line between guerrilla groups and terrorist organization has yet to be clearly defined. (The News)
10/6	Gephardt says he will fight Bush on trade -- The prospects that Congress would give President Bush enhanced trade authority received a blow today when Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, the House Democratic leader, said he would lead the charge against the measure. (New York Times)
10/6	Thomas unveils trade negotiating authority proposal -- Ways and Means Chairman Thomas this afternoon formally unveiled a proposal to renew presidential trade negotiating authority, and announced his committee will mark up the legislation Friday. (National Journal's CongressDaily)
10/6	Fox to visit Bush to express support -- President Vicente Fox of Mexico will visit President Bush in Washington next week to show his nation's support for the U.S. war on terror. (Associated Press)
10/5	A divisive trade dispute -- U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick has tried to cast the Fast Track bill in patriots-versus-the-enemy tones, likening its opponents to terrorists and anti-globalization anarchists. (San Francisco Chronicle)
10/5	Fast Track: Countering the Myths -- The Administration and Republican lawmakers are hurling the nation into a senseless rush to advance an unpopular free trade agenda, propagating numerous myths along the way. (Institute for Policy Studies)
10/5	Israeli Terrorist Forces (IF) kill five Palestinians in attack on Hebron -- Five Palestinians were killed and 15 wounded in a dawn incursion Friday by Israeli tanks backed by helicopters into Palestinian-controlled areas of the flashpoint West Bank city of Hebron, police and hospital sources said. (Agence France Presse)
10/5	White House rejects Sharon's criticism -- Sharon's blast came after Bush said on Tuesday that part of his long-term vision for Middle East peace was a Palestinian state. Bush said this had "always" been his policy. (Associated Press)
10/5	Sharon warns U.S. not to 'appease' Arabs -- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon bluntly warned the United States on Thursday not to "appease" Arabs at Israel's expense and said Israel would chart its own course in the fight against terrorism. (CNN)
10/5	Amnesty International urges investigation of Ariel Sharon -- A court in Brussels will begin to consider arguments about whether Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon may be investigated in Belgium for alleged war crimes committed in Lebanon in 1982 while he was Israel's Minister of Defence. (Amnesty International)
10/5	How the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Undermine Democracy and Erode Human Rights: Five Case Studies -- The IMF and World Bank say their policies are designed to succeed in the "long run." But after more than 20 years of managing dozens of economies, the institutions have created more inequality, more environmental destruction, and no real security. (Global Exchange)
10/4	Trade compromise proposed -- Seeking to advance President Bush's hopes for expanding trade with other countries, House Republicans and a small group of Democrats yesterday unveiled a compromise proposal to strengthen the president's authority to negotiate trade agreements. They announced plans for a House vote next week. (Washington Post)
10/4	Prison companies get hot -- America's new wall of homeland security is creating a big demand for cells to hold suspects and illegal aliens who might be rounded up.Stocks of private companies that build and operate prisons for governments have zoomed as high as 300 percent in anticipation of internment camps and new prisons. (New York Post)
10/4	Show the evidence -- Although American and British officials say they have "no doubt" that Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda terrorist organization were behind the crimes of Sept. 11, so far no actual evidence has been made public. (New York Times)
10/4	The algebra of infinite justice -- People are being asked to make two leaps of faith here. First, to assume that The Enemy is who the US government says it is, even though it has no substantial evidence to support that claim. And second, to assume that The Enemy's motives are what the US government says they are, and there's nothing to support that either. (The Guardian)
10/4	Genocide or peace -- The new consensus has missed something. It's a consideration which is well-understood in peacetime, but often, and disastrously, ignored in war. It's the factor which defeated Napoleon and possibly Hitler. It's the item which brings all humanitarian operations to a halt. It is, of course, the winter. (The Guardian)
10/4	Don't forget Latin America -- Things have not been going well in Latin America for some time. The events of Sept. 11 are making the situation worse. The No. 1 problem is the economy. (Christian Science Monitor)
10/4	We are all Palestinians -- To most Israelis, Durban was "just like the dark days of the past," as described by an Israeli editor at the daily Haaretz. (Al-Ahram Weekly)
10/4	A year of war crimes and resistance -- Colonial occupation is now universally viewed as a crime against humanity. Many atrocities -- diverse in nature, but all equally appalling -- have been perpetrated against occupied peoples, especially in countries of the southern hemisphere. (Al-Ahram Weekly)
10/4	The decline and fall of the Israeli left -- Anyone visiting Israeli academia in the mid-1990s must have felt a fresh breeze of openness and pluralism blowing through the corridors of a hitherto stagnant establishment, painfully loyal to Zionist ideology in every field of research that touched upon Israeli reality, past or present. (Al-Ahram Weekly)
10/2	Before attacks, U.S. was ready to say it backed Palestinian state -- Before the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, the Bush administration was on the verge of announcing a Middle East diplomatic initiative that would include United States support for the creation of a Palestinian state, administration officials said, and it is now weighing how to revive the plan. (New York Times)
10/2	Four new settlements to be created - Protest campaign started -- Four new settlements are about to be created on Sunday, October 7, at various points in the occupied territories. (Gush Shalom)
10/1	Background and information about Mexican maize and the contamination -- Mexico is the center of origin and diversity for maize, one of the most widely consumed grains in the world. Such centers of origin and diversity are important regions for the development of new breeds or varieties of crops. The introduction of genetically modified species (all genetically identical) drastically reduces genetic diversity. (Global Exchange)
10/1	Serious genetic contamination revealed in Mexican maize -- Greenpeace today called on Mexico to adopt emergency measures to combat the first serious outbreak of genetic pollution in the centre of diversity of maize, located in several communities in the state of Oaxaca. (Greenpeace)
10/1	Results revealed about studies in Oaxaca -- The Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT) confirmed yesterday that natural varieties of maize, which is cultivated in the Northern Sierra of Oaxaca are "contaminated" with genetically modified (GM) maize. (La Jornada)
10/1	Justice, Not War -- A momentous decision confronts us as a nation: Do we define the violence of Sept. 11 as an act of war or as a crime against humanity? If we define it as war, it couches the issues in nationalist sentiment and separates us from the people of other nations. (Washington Post)
10/1	Mexico President vows to support U.S. 'all the way' -- Mexican President Vicente Fox said on Friday that Mexico was prepared to go "all the way" to help the United States hunt down those responsible for Sept.11 suicide attacks on New York and Washington. (Reuters)
10/1	Fund organized for Mexican victims -- At least 15 Mexicans are listed as missing in the World Trade Center attacks, though Mexican Foreign Secretary Jorge Castaneda has said the number of those killed but not identified could be far higher. (Associated Press)
9/30	Feinstein tries to put student visas on hold -- Sen. Dianne Feinstein said yesterday she will push to suspend all new foreign student visas for six months while officials improve immigration tracking to keep terrorists from sneaking into the country. (San Francisco Chronicle)
9/30	Border crossers need new ID cards -- Thousands of Mexican citizens could be turned away from the U.S. border next week for failing to replace their border-crossing cards with new counterfeit-proof visas. (Arizona Republic)
9/30	With war in the air, home is but a dream -- the Mexicans say, if the attacks have socked the American economy, then they have pummeled the already anemic Mexican job market.
9/30	Bishop Arizmendi asks Mexican indigenous people to "bury their weapons" -- A Chiapas bishop asked the Tzotzile indigenous community in Los Altos de Chiapas to stop buying arms and to "bury" the ones they already have. (Associated Foreign Press)
9/30	Collective passion -- This is a war against terrorism, everyone says, but where, on what fronts, for what concrete ends? No answers are provided, except the vague suggestion that the Middle East and Islam are what "we" are up against, and that terrorism must be destroyed. (La Jornada)
9/28	Powell settles a score -- According to the Europeans, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell admitted to them that he fell into the trap that Sharon set for him during his last visit to Jerusalem. Powell agreed at that time, that Israel alone would be the one to decide whether the result, not the effort, gives Arafat a passing grade to the next stage of the Mitchell Report. (Ha'aretz)
9/28	Terrorist attacks bad news for Mexican economy -- Mexico was already in an economic slump when terrorists attacked the United States. Now things here will almost certainly get worse. Perhaps no country in the world is more dependent on the U.S. economy than Mexico. (Associated Press)
9/28	In patriotic time, dissent is muted -- The surge of national pride that has swept the country after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 has sparked the beginnings of a new, more difficult debate over the balance among national security, free speech and patriotism. (New York Times)
9/27	Arafat, Peres move on new peace talks -- Israel and the Palestinians have agreed to take the first steps to ending a year of violence, boosting U.S. chances of Arab support for its fight against terrorism. (Toronto Star)
9/27	Breakthrough in Mexico: Kuk Dong workers win independent union -- Workers at the Kuk Dong factory in Atlixco, Puebla, Mexico have finally won their independent union and a signed collective agreement. This is a precedent-setting victory that could open the door to worker organizing in Mexico's maquiladora sector where, to date, independent unions have not been tolerated. (CLR and Maquiladora Solidarity Network)
9/27	Jackson still undecided on trip to Afghanistan -- Jesse Jackson has been invited by the Taliban and members of the Pakistani government to negotiate the situation peacefully. Bush and Powell are urging Jackson not to go. (CNN)
9/27	Boost for Bush on 'fast track' trade deal -- A compromise proposal to give President Bush "fast-track" trade negotiating authority has been hammered out by key members of the US Congress. The agreement could hand a significant victory to the administration, which has said that launching new world trade negotiations is a vital part of a package of economic measures needed in the wake of the September 11 attacks. (Financial Times)
9/27	A widow's plea for non-violence -- I have heard angry rhetoric by some Americans, including many of our nation's leaders, who advise a heavy dose of revenge and punishment. To those leaders, I would like to make clear that my family and I take no comfort in your words of rage. (Chicago Tribune)
9/27	Muslim college students in US report threats -- In recent days, at least five Middle Eastern students have been assaulted on U.S. college campuses while several others have received threats. (Reuters)
9/27	Coffee glut and drought hit Nicaragua -- A devastating drought and plummeting coffee prices have driven Nicaragua into one of its worst economic crises in years, bringing scenes of hunger, malnutrition and misery to its impoverished countryside. (Washington Post)
9/26	Energy future rides on U.S. war: Conflict centered in world's oil patch -- Beyond American determination to hit back against the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks, beyond the likelihood of longer, drawn-out battles producing more civilian casualties in the months and years ahead, the hidden stakes in the war against terrorism can be summed up in a single word: oil. (San Francisco Chronicle)
9/26	The wartime opportunists -- Fast track and the Free Trade Area of the Americas. A corporate tax cut. Oil drilling in Alaska. Star Wars. These are some of the preposterous "solutions" and responses to the terror attack offered by corporate mouthpieces. (Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman)
9/26	Bush seeks trade negotiating authority vote this year -- President Bush wants Congress to consider renewing presidential trade negotiating authority before adjourning this year in order to help stimulate the economy. (National Journal's CongressDaily)
9/26	US govt misuses WTC/Pentagon attacks to defend fast track and new WTO round -- The Bush administration began a new drive Monday to persuade Congress to grant President Bush the authority to negotiate trade agreements, telling lawmakers passage would help the fight against global terrorism. (Associated Press)
9/26	US offers trade deals for allegiance -- The Bush Administration in The US is making aggressive use of economic measures, including trade deals and threats of sanctions, in a "carrot and stick" approach to winning key international support in its war on terrorism. (Australian Financial Review)
9/24	Coming protests are principled to some, 'un-American' to others -- Despite the cancellation of World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington this week, several groups of demonstrators say they are coming nonetheless for what they are calling a demonstration for peace and against the growing likelihood of American military intervention abroad. (Fox News)
9/24	Peace and justice threatens to "disappear Zapatista bases" -- On August 20, in San José Bascán, four families were expelled by PRIs from the Emiliano Zapata Ejidal Union, with the complicity of the PRD organization Kichañob. (La Jornada)
9/24	Mixed operations bases beefed up in Chiapas -- In response to the wave of assaults and ambushes against members of the Public Security Police in Chiapas -- which has resulted in two deaths in the last 15 days, as well as dozens of civilians wounded and injuries to two state police officers -- the Mixed Operations Bases (BOM) presence in the area has been reinforced. (CNI Online)
9/24	Opposition to Bush's war -- After President Bush's "win this war" speech to Congress Thursday night, Senate majority leader Tom Daschle and Senate minority leader Trent Lott strode to a podium where Lott declared, "Tonight, there is no opposition party." On the streets of America, however, there is an opposition. (The Nation)
9/24	Nike lies low, despite upbeat report -- Terrorist attacks on the East Coast last week dashed any plans for fancy video clips, star athlete appearances, or new product presentations that typically accompany annual Nike gatherings. (Associated Press
9/24	New Nike panel to tackle company's factory issues -- Nike, criticized for working conditions at its factories outside the United States, will create a committee to oversee the company's labor, environmental and diversity policies. (Seattle Times)
9/24	Hamas said ready to temporarily suspend suicide attacks -- Members of the militant Hamas group and other Palestinian officials said on Saturday that Hamas was willing to suspend suicide attacks inside Israel "in the coming period" unless it was provoked by Israel. (Reuters)
9/24	Third-world imports besiege Mexico farmers -- For Rodrigo Hernandez, ground zero in the war over globalization is not Genoa or Seattle, but a stretch of freeway slicing through a desolate swamp. It's where he and hundreds of other farmers last month dumped 400 tons of pineapple they couldn't sell. (LA Times)
9/24	Attack on America: Intelligence gathering and human rights restrictions -- There can be no doubt that an enormous lapse in our national intelligence efforts has occurred. In response to public criticism, some officials have decried certain human rights restrictions which they claim have impeded the ability to taken action and to obtain needed information from "unsavory persons." Specifically, they are referring to U.S. legal prohibitions against assassinations. (Jennifer Harbury)
9/23	International opinion opposes US military strike - poll -- International public opinion opposes a massive U.S. military strike to retaliate for suicide attacks on America by hijacked aircraft, according to a Gallup poll in 31 countries whose results were released on Friday. (Reuters)
9/23	Those at towers margin elude list of missing -- Most of the people listed as missing in the twin towers disaster were part of the World Trade Center's life as an elite corporate community. Determining who was missing among them after the terrorist attack, however painful, would not be that hard. (New York Times)
9/22	Sharon feels US anger after Arafat seizes the diplomatic high ground -- George Bush's chances of building an American-led war coalition including Arab and Muslim countries abruptly improved yesterday when Yasser Arafat bowed to intense diplomatic pressure and announced a unilateral ceasefire. (The Independent)
9/22	The nuclear threat: West's worst scenario -- A leading authority on Pakistan's nuclear programme has given warning of a "nightmare scenario" in which a destabilised Pakistan lost control of its nuclear weapons to supporters of the Taleban. Any military action against Muslim terrorists within Afghanistan will have to take account of that. (The Times)
9/22	Empire's terrors -- The root causes of last Tuesday's catastrophe are multilayered. First, there is the issue of crushing poverty in the global South. Take, for example, the Middle East, the apparent home of the suicide pilots of Sept. 11. (San Francisco Bay Guardian)
9/22	Why do you think these attacks happened? -- To answer the question we must first identify the perpetrators of the crimes. It is generally assumed, plausibly, that their origin is the Middle East region, and that the attacks probably trace back to the Osama Bin Laden network. (Chomsky interview)
9/21	In the Gaza Strip, Anger at the U.S. Still Smolders -- "We are against terrorism," said Abd al-Raof Abu Daka, a captain with the Palestinian police force in the southern town of Rafah, who watched as his headquarters was hit. "We don't like Americans to die. But the Israelis are hitting us with American weapons." (New York Times)
9/21	Debate over targets highlights difficulty of war on terrorism -- Though President Bush has vowed to attack not only terrorists but the countries that harbor them, his administration continues to grapple with the diplomatic and military complications of translating that pledge into action. (Washington Post)
9/21	US 'lacks knowledge to launch land war' -- "The US armed forces do not have a single soldier or officer who speaks Pushtu [the principal language of the Taliban]," said a senior Western military official. "They will have to first hire hundreds of Pushtu speakers. That shows how much they lack on the ground for this upcoming battle in Afghanistan." (Inter Press Service)
9/20	Killing bin Laden will not stop terrorism, says Congress report -- Senior American counter-terrorism experts believe that killing or capturing Osama bin Laden and destroying his power base will not achieve very much, because there are plenty of other people and groups willing to take his place. (Independent Digital)
9/20	Congresswoman Barbara Lee speaks out -- Let's pause for a moment... and let's look at using some restraint before we rush to action." Because military action can lead to an escalation and spiral out of control. (DaveyD.com)
9/19	U.S. widens policy on detaining suspects -- The Bush administration today announced a major expansion of its power to detain immigrants suspected of crimes, including new rules prompted by last week's terrorist attacks that would allow legal immigrants to be detained indefinitely during a national emergency. (New York Times)
9/19	Tougher enforcement by INS urged lawmaker wants continual checks of visa holders' status, more staff at borders -- The brutal attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center have reignited a debate about whether the country's borders are too open, with some key lawmakers calling for tighter control of immigration and analysts predicting a slowdown in the Bush administration's drive for a new foreign guest-worker program. (Washington Post)
9/19	September 11 and its aftermath -- Critics of war across the U.S. and around the world are working hard to communicate with people who, for the moment, mainly seek retribution. We address some of the many questions that are being asked. (Z Magazine)
9/19	Officals say no action yet on WTO Qatar meeting -- Trade officials said on Wednesday work was continuing to prepare the World Trade Organisation's ministerial meeting in Qatar in November despite the terror attacks in the United States. (Reuters)
9/19	Concerns rise that peace is not on table -- As clouds of war gather over the land, pacifists from coast to coast are desperately preaching peace, hoping to stop any violence before the United States rains death on whomever it deems responsible. (Los Angeles Times)
9/19	Like terror network, bin Laden's money trail reaches around the globe -- As recently as seven months ago, U.S. authorities detailed in open court an extensive network of companies and bank accounts established by Osama bin Laden and his terror group -- enterprises as diverse as road construction and peanut farming. (Associated Press)
9/19	Battling backlash: Hatred puzzles S.F. man who fled Iran decades ago -- When one of City Blend Cafe's regular customers heard that owner Nick Heydarian was getting hate calls in the wake of last week's terrorist attacks, she baked him a pie. (San Francisco Chronicle)
9/19	Protest starts against Starbucks on fair-trade coffee -- Protests against the world's leading retail coffee chain, Starbucks Corp., began this week in the United States and Europe to promote fairly traded coffee - coffee where the grower is guaranteed a minimum price that is typically above the market price. (Associated Press)
9/19	Nuclear Safety -- What happens if a suicide bomber drives a jumbo jet into one of America's 103 nuclear power reactors? (The Nation)
9/19	The harm done to innocents -- In December 1998, I met a waiter in the quiet Egyptian port of Suez. As I sipped tea in his cafe, he pulled up a chair to chat, as Egyptians often do to welcome strangers. Not long into our amiable repartee, he looked me in the eye. "Now I want to ask you a blunt question," he said. "Why do you Americans hate us?" (Boston Globe)
9/18	U.S. Contacts Sudan, Cuba for Help -- The Bush administration has been in contact with Sudan and Cuba -- both on the U.S. terrorist list -- in search of cooperation in last week's terrorist attacks, the State Department said Tuesday. (New York Times)
9/18	Israel defies Western appeals over 'closed military area' on Arab land -- Israel has openly defied Western pleas to avoid extending its conflict with the Palestinians in the aftermath of the attacks on the United States by confirming that its army is to turn a large tract of Arab land on the West Bank into a "closed military area." (The Independent)
9/18	'Suicide hijacker' is an airline pilot alive and well in Jeddah -- Abdulrahman al-Omari, a pilot with Saudi Airlines, was astonished to find himself accused of hijacking -- as well as being dead -- and has visited the US consulate in Jeddah to demand an explanation. (The Independent)
9/17	Muslims, Arab Americans report more threats, vandalism -- Muslim and Arab-American leaders continue to receive widespread reports of violence and vandalism against members of their community, even during the holy days of Friday for Islam, Saturday for Judaism and Sunday for most Christian groups. (The Cincinnati Post)
9/17	Israel's policy of isolation and violence -- The Palestinian people are under siege -- they have been for some time, as slowly, under Israeli government orders, the Israeli army tightens the closure, cutting off towns and villages from their water supplies, food sources, fields, medical treatment, schools and places of work. (Palestine Monitor)
9/17	Can't we all just get along? -- A military bombing is the worst thing that America could do in response to Tuesday's terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, says historian and Boston University professor emeritus Howard Zinn. (Salon.com)
9/17	Talk of war leads to calls for peace -- Caught between patriotism and pacifism, many Northern California residents are recoiling at the official rhetoric of "ending" countries that harbor terrorists. (San Francisco Chronicle)
9/17	The Belly to do what needs to be done -- I've been hearing a lot of talk about "bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age." Ronn Owens, on KGO Talk Radio today, allowed that this would mean killing innocent people, people who had nothing to do with this atrocity, but "we're at war, we have to accept collateral damage. What else can we do?" Minutes later I heard some TV pundit discussing whether we "have the belly to do what must be done." (Z Magazine)
9/17	Two Asian men are murdered in suspected race-hate shootings -- Two Asian men were murdered in the United States in what appeared to be the first misguided revenge killings for last week's terror attacks. (The Independent)
9/17	Preliminary list of Anti-Arab hate crimes -- A partial list of incidents: Two Muslim girls beaten at Moraine Valley College in Palos Hills, Illinois. Two Arab boys assaulted the offenders in defense of the two students. (American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee)
9/17	Violence breeds more violence -- In the field of conflict resolution, there are two types of violence, hot and cold. Hot violence is the death and chaos of this past Tuesday in New York and Washington. Hot violence is the Columbine High School massacre, the Oklahoma City bombing. The unspeakable horror is up close and visible; witnesses' emotions are felt; outrage is immediate; media are quick to the scene. Cold violence has little of that. (Los Angeles Times)
9/17	CIA's tracks lead in disastrous circle -- So, we've come full circle. The CIA, which originally helped train Osama bin Laden and many of the other terrorists who have turned against us, now will have its powers expanded to do more of the same. (Los Angeles Times)
9/17	Israeli tanks enter West Bank town -- Palestinians accuse Israel of escalating the violence Israeli tanks with helicopter support have thrust into the centre of the Palestinian-ruled town of Ramallah in the West Bank, killing a member of the Palestinian security forces and wounding 15 others in several hours of fighting. (BBC)
9/16	In Arizona, gunman kills immigrant -- An Indian-immigrant gas station owner was shot to death and a Lebanese-American clerk was targeted, but not injured, by gunfire at another Mesa gas station, police said Sunday. (Associated Press)
9/16	Bush is walking into a trap -- Retaliation is a trap. In a world that was supposed to have learnt that the rule of law comes above revenge, President Bush appears to be heading for the very disaster that Osama bin Laden has laid down for him. (The Independent)
9/16	America widens its war targets -- US preparations for military strikes are increasing Senior US officials have issued warnings that up to 60 countries supporting perceived terrorists face the "full wrath" of American military might. (BBC)
9/16	Time for intellectual honesty: There are many Islams -- What is most depressing, however, is how little time is spent trying to understand America's role in the world, and its direct involvement in the complex reality beyond the two coasts that have for so long kept the rest of the world extremely distant and virtually out of the average American's mind. (Edward Said, Counterpunch)
9/16	IMF, World Bank postpone annual meetings -- The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are postponing their annual meetings later this month because of security concerns following the terrorist attacks against the United States, officials said Friday. (Associated Press)
9/16	The Palestinian people, as a whole, portrayed as supportive of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon -- Yesterday and today, following the inhumane use of passenger planes as flying missiles to attack people visiting and working in the World Trade Center buildings in New York and in the Pentagon in Washington, most of the media broadcast footage depicting Palestinians celebrating. (Nigel Parry)
9/16	Getting used to the idea of double standards -- "Pakistan was the condom the Americans needed to enter Afghanistan," he said. "We've served our purpose and they think we can be just flushed down the toilet." The old condom is being fished out for use once again, but will it work? (Tariq Ali, Counterpunch)
9/16	War on Whom? -- The sorrow and anger builds across America. Talk radio tonight was filled with calls for carpet-bombing every Arab country. Many want revenge, blood. But a surprising number of people have called for us to not add to the killing of more innocent humans. (Michael Moore)
9/16	Howard Zinn: Violence Doesn't Work -- The images on television have been heartbreaking. People on fire leaping to their deaths from a hundred stories up. People in panic and fear racing from the scene in clouds of dust and smoke. (The Progressive magazine)
9/16	Inevitable ring to the unimaginable -- If the attacks on America have their source in the Islamic world, who can really be surprised? An estimated 200,000 Iraqis, according to the Health Education Trust in London, died during and in the immediate aftermath of the slaughter known as the Gulf War. (John Pilger, ZNet)
9/16	Taliban plead for mercy to the miserable in a land of nothing -- If there are Americans clamoring to bomb Afghanistan back to the Stone Age, they ought to know that this nation does not have so far to go. This is a post-apocalyptic place of felled cities, parched land and downtrodden people. (New York Times)
9/16	Who is Osama bin Laden? -- The history of Osama Bin Laden and the links of the Islamic "Jihad" to the formulation of US foreign policy during the Cold War and its aftermath. (Centre for Research on Globalisation)
9/16	Terrorists are made, not born -- "How much anger can prompt a group of people to do this?" asked my friend David Handschuch, a New York Daily News photographer, after firefighters pulled him, legs shattered, from the rubble at the World Trade Center. (Salon.com)
9/16	Chomsky: On the Bombings -- The terrorist attacks were major atrocities. In scale they may not reach the level of many others, for example, Clinton's bombing of the Sudan with no credible pretext, destroying half its pharmaceutical supplies and killing unknown numbers of people (no one knows, because the US blocked an inquiry at the UN and no one cares to pursue it). (ZNet)
9/16	Death, Downtown -- I was supposed to fly today on the 4:30 PM American Airlines flight from LAX to JFK. But tonight I find myself stuck in L.A. with an incredible range of emotions over what has happened on the island where I work and live in New York City. (Michael Moore)
9/16	Japanese American Citizens League urges caution in aftermath of terrorist attack -- JACL is deeply alarmed over reports that some Arab Americans and Muslims have already been targeted and mistreated by their fellow Americans as perpetrators of yesterday's tragedy. (Press Release)
9/16	As We Grieve, Let Us Remember that Vengeance Offers No Relief -- In the midst of this tragedy we are urging our fellow citizens and our national leaders to remember that vengeance offers no relief, that retaliation can never guarantee healing, and that to meet violence with violence breeds more rage and more senseless deaths. Only love leads to peace with justice, while hate takes us toward war and injustice. (Global Exchange)
9/16	Bush's Faustian deal with the Taliban -- Sadly, the Bush administration is cozying up to the Taliban regime at a time when the United Nations, at U.S. insistence, imposes sanctions on Afghanistan because the Kabul government will not turn over Bin Laden. (Los Angeles Times)
9/13	Urgent Action: Letter to US Elected Officials - US Must Respond Fairly and Responsibly -- Along with people in the US and around the world, I am grieving the tragic loss of lives that occurred on September 11. My deepest sympathies are with the victims' families and loved ones. (Global Exchange)
9/13	San Francisco business owners denounce hate crimes against Arab and Muslim-owned businesses -- During a time of national crisis, local businesspeople call for the protection of Arab and Muslim community's civil liberties. (Global Exchange Press Release)
9/13	ACLU fears intrusive policies, racial profiling -- As shock turns to rage over Tuesday's horrific attacks, civil rights experts worry that some of America's fundamental freedoms will be the next victims of the terrorist assault. (San Francisco Chronicle)
9/13	The high price of disengagement -- At 8:45 a.m. on a brilliantly clear Tuesday morning in New York, a fatal combination of history, ignorance and power caught up with America. Thousands have probably died as a result. What remains to be seen is whether the same combination will now prove fatal to thousands more. (San Francisco Chronicle)
9/13	Crowd in Illinois demonstrates at mosque as backlash -- Police turned back 300 marchers -- some waving American flags and shouting "USA" -- as they tried to march on a mosque in this Chicago suburb late Wednesday. (Associated Press)
9/12	The awesome cruelty of a doomed people -- The entire modern history of the Middle East - the collapse of the Ottoman empire, the Balfour declaration, Lawrence of Arabia's lies, the Arab revolt, the foundation of the state of Israel, four Arab-Israeli wars and the 34 years of Israel's brutal occupation of Arab land -- all erased within hours as those who claim to represent a crushed, humiliated population struck back with the wickedness and awesome cruelty of a doomed people. (The Independent)
9/12	Atrocities may be designed to provoke America into costly military adventure -- Mr bin Laden had a kind of religious experience during the Afghan war. A Russian shell had fallen at his feet and, in the seconds as he waited for it to explode, he said he had a sudden, religious feeling of calmness. The shell -- and Americans may come to wish the opposite happened -- never exploded. (The Chief Suspect)
9/12	U.S. energy plan spells danger for Colombian labor -- The proposed energy policy of the George W. Bush administration is bringing to light an economic reason for the United States' growing involvement in Colombia's civil war. It is not drugs, but coal. (Inter Press Service)
9/11	As We Grieve, Let Us Remember that Vengeance Offers No Relief -- As an international human rights organization committed to social justice, Global Exchange condemns in the strongest terms the attacks that occurred on September 11. Along with people in the US and around the world, we are grieving for the tragic loss of lives. Our deepest sympathies are with the victims' families and loved ones. (Global Exchange)
9/10	Democracy Not Hipocrisy: Art in Action Southwest Roadshow Connecting Our Struggles: Prisons, Immigrant Rights and Environmental Justice -- The Democracy Not Hypocrisy/Art in Action Road Show will travel to border towns and other impacted communities to offer theatrical presentations that incorporate art and politics to link these issues together. (Global Exchange)
9/10	Vote on Trade Negotiating Authority suffers another delay -- House Speaker Hastert Wednesday said a vote on presidential trade negotiating authority is not likely to be scheduled until next month, bumping back yet again the expected timetable for a floor contest over the controversial legislation. (National Journal's Congress Daily)
9/10	Zoellick praises NAFTA -- Trade Representative Zoellick told reporters at a briefing Wednesday that he regards the North American Free Trade Agreement as a model for a how a developing country and a developed country can work together. (National Journal's Congress Daily)
9/10	Daschle still sees 'possibility' that Senate will consider TPA -- Senate Majority Leader Thomas Daschle (D-S.D.) said Sept. 5 that there was a "possibility" that the Senate could consider a bill to renew the president's trade promotion authority to negotiate trade pacts subject to an up or down vote in Congress. (Bureau of National Affairs)
9/10	RUGMARK Announces New Grassroots Action Kit -- Helping to end the exploitation of children in the Third World just got easier. RUGMARK's new Grassroots Action Kit, a tool for individuals to help move children from carpet looms to schools, is hot off the presses. (RUGMARK)
9/7	The Swoosh is coming! -- Demonstrators prepare to protest Nike's annual meeting in Portland and the Center for Cultural Exchange's decision to rent space to the company. (Casco Bay Weekly News)
9/6	Prize-winning Mexico author off on coast-to-coast Zapatista teach-in tour - late dates still open -- Mexico author John Ross, dubbed the 'new John Reed' by the Mexican daily La Jornada, will hit the road this Autumn on a coast-to-coast Zapatista teach-in tour featuring his latest work, 'The War Against Oblivion - Zapatista Chronicles'.
9/6	Bush, Fox Talk Immigration Reform -- Mexican President Vicente Fox, the first state visitor of the Bush presidency, challenged the United States on Wednesday to strike an agreement on immigration by year's end. President Bush said "there is no more important relationship" than with Mexico but did not embrace Fox's ambitious deadline. (Associated Press)
9/5	Globalization's Diverse Foes -- Dave Zirin and Pete Capano have never met, but they share a common struggle. Zirin has been organizing meetings with his Latino neighbors in Washington's Mount Pleasant community, talking to them about fighting the Goliaths of globalization, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Capano has been spreading the word about the two institutions in Lynn, Mass., arranging a bus caravan to head to Washington with fellow union members eager to give the world's bankers an earful. (Washington Post)
9/5	Conditions Are Not in Place for Dialogue Renewal: Pablo Salazar and Felipe Arizmendi -- The 15 minutes which Vicente Fox said would be enough for him to resolve the Chiapas conflict have dragged out now for nine months. The problem has not been resolved, and, on the contrary, the peace process has been plunged into one of its worst crises of the eight years of the armed uprising. (La Jornada)
9/5	More of the Same for the Indigenous Peoples and Dialogue -- On September 1, President Fox affixed his little star for the dialogue process and the recognition of the rights of the indigenous people. The message is clear: he believes he has already done everything, and, from his perspective, the only thing left is for the other side to accept the evidence the powers are presenting to them. How little does he know the indigenous peoples and their history of resistance and dignity. (La Jornada)
9/5	Mexico Curbs Neighbors' Migrant Flow -- The number of Central American migrants crossing from Guatemala into Mexico on their way to the United States has plummeted by about 40% in recent weeks because of an aggressive new policy on deporting migrants, border officials and relief agencies say. (LA Times)
9/5	Mexico Reacts to Fox's Address -- President Vicente Fox asked Congress to put aside political squabbling and help him build the new and improved Mexico he has spent nine months promising. But many Mexicans both in and out of politics say it's taking the president too long to make his lofty goals a reality. (Associated Press)
9/5	Defense Sec. General Ricardo Vega Garcia spoke before congress on Monday -- Defense Secretary General Ricardo Vega Garcia on Monday spoke before members of the lower house National Defense Committee, becoming the first defense secretary in the nation's history to appear before a committee at Congress. (The News)
9/4	Separate and Unequal on the West Bank -- There is no way to understand the current Palestinian uprising without examining the moral, economic and social reality that Israeli settlement policy has created in the last 34 years. (New York Times)
8/31	Mexican NGOs Say WTO 'Mini Ministerial' Would Hamstring Anti-Globalization -- Non-governmental organizations in Mexico are charging that authorities here are organizing an informal conference of World Trade Organization ministers with little transparency in an apparent effort to limit opportunities for anti-globalization advocates to organize. (International Trade Daily)
8/31	World cannot ignore the plight of the Palestinian people -- No international conference against racism can avoid discussing the racist practises of the Israeli state against the Palestinian people. (ANC Today)
8/30	D.C.'s Answer to IMF, World Bank Protests: Miles of Chain-Link -- The D.C. police are old hands at crowd control, but they never went this far before. They never boosted their arsenal with a weapon as tricky and volatile as a great big shiny silver chain-link monster anti-protester peace device, a fence designed to keep globalization-haters from getting at globalizers among the bankers and trade ministers gathering at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. (Washington Post)
8/30	A Coffee Crisis' Devastating Domino Effect in Nicaragua -- With no land and no work, thousands of coffee-field hands here can plant only one thing: themselves, on the roadside, as they beg for food, jobs or attention to their needs. (New York Times)
8/30	Coffee glut, feudal traditions combine to starve communities -- In an effort to help Vietnamese peasants develop a new cash crop, both the World Bank and the French government invested heavily in the Asian country's coffee industry. (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
8/30	World takes caffeine hit -- Coffee has fallen to its lowest price in decades, plunging growers into poverty -- yet demand in the West is at record levels. (The Observer)
8/30	US investigates sale of American arms to Israel -- An American government watchdog is investigating the sale of US-made arms to Israel amid growing concern over Israel's policy of assassinating Palestinian individuals and its use of heavy weaponry. (The Independent)
8/30	Travels in a land without hope -- In his 25 years as a foreign correspondent, Robert Fisk has reported from many of the world's worst trouble-spots; few have filled him with such foreboding as Gaza, where he recently spent several weeks. These are his impressions of a region convulsed by hatred (The Independent)
8/29	Fast Track a way to dump democracy -- Congress is threatening to bargain away our democracy in order to accelerate passage of new trade agreements. When Congress returns from its August recess, it may consider giving the president what is known as "fast-track" authority to negotiate trade agreements without ordinary congressional and public oversight. (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
8/29	A Call to Action to Globalize Justice -- Global Justice Week of Action: Sept. 26-Oct. 1, 2001 in Washington, D.C. America's unions will unite with a broad range of activists from around the world to insist on transforming the rules and institutions of the global economy to ensure that they work for working people. (AFL-CIO)
8/29	Fox talks development for Chiapas -- One day after he offered to talk with Mexico's rebel groups, President Vicente Fox toured rebellion-plagued Chiapas state with a message that focused on self-reliance and development, not on uprisings. (Associated Press)
8/29	Israeli army occupies Beit Jala, fierce clashes break out -- The Israeli army invaded the Aida refugee camp in the West Bank Tuesday morning, widening its incursion into the autonomous zone of Bethlehem-Beit Jala, witnesses said. (Associated Foreign Press)
8/29	Two Palestinians Killed -- With the completion of the Intifada's eleventh month, Israeli military forces continued its escalation of aggression against the Palestinian people. Israeli forces in the early hours of the morning re-occupied Palestinian controlled parts of Beit Jala and beefed up their military presence. Incursions were also made into Bethlehem, Beit Sahour, Dura, and Rafah. (Law Society)
8/29	Results of crackdown at border called mixed -- A congressional report says the U.S. government's 7-year-old crackdown along the Southwest border has served mainly to steer undocumented migrants to dangerous mountains, deserts and rivers but has produced no persuasive evidence that illegal entries have fallen along the 2,000-mile boundary. (LA Times)
8/28	Activists counter Gap jingles with a groove of their own -- With artists like LL Cool J, Luscious Jackson and Aerosmith performing their hit singles, and even improvising new music, especially for Gap commercials, young consumers are getting the message that the Gap is hip and supported by popular musicians nationwide. (BehindTheLabel.org)
8/28	American-owned power plants slated for construction in northern Mexico will provide plenty of electricity for Californians -- and plenty of pollution for local residents -- Cashing in on California's energy woes earlier this summer, local power producers began exporting record amounts of energy to the north. At the same time, the Mexican government has begun encouraging American power companies to build plants in the area, a campaign that has already yielded at least two new plants slated for construction. (Mother Jones)
8/27	KWRU observes 5th anniversary of the signing of Welfare Reform: Linking welfare reform and poverty in the United States to the FTAA and IMF policies -- In September, KWRU will send a delegation of poor, homeless and unemployed families to participate in the upcoming protests against IMF, World Bank and free trade policies during the annual meeting of the IMF and World Bank in Washington DC. (Kensington Welfare Rights Union)
8/27	Greetings from Zapatista land -- It is not every day that a California software engineer gets to grill a gathering of masked Zapatista rebels about their method of trash collection. That an Iowa State professor can draw them out about the "dreams and hopes" of their children. That a New Jersey high school teacher can query them on how they cope with paramilitary threats, or that a Seattle grant writer can talk to them about women in combat. (Time Magazine)
8/27	The Fox government has failed the Indians, says López Barcenas -- The spaces for the indigenous in the Fox government have, little by little, been closed off, and the presidential commitments to the Indian peoples and to the EZLN have remained nothing but words, asserted Francisco López Barcenas. (La Jornada)
8/23	It's the Real Thing: Murder -- In July, the United Steelworkers of America and the International Labor Rights Fund filed suit in US court against Coca-Cola and some bottlers in Colombia on behalf of their workers, alleging that the companies "hired, contracted with or otherwise directed paramilitary security forces." (The Nation)
8/23	Retail Notebook: Seattle Coffee's Fair Trade product coming to Safeway -- The Seattle Coffee Co. has agreed to begin selling Organic and Fair Trade Certified coffee in about 1,400 Safeway stores throughout the country. (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
8/23	City rejects trade pact -- The Boulder City Council judged a proposed free trade agreement as bad for local government and the World Bank to be a detriment to poor nations. (Daily Camera)
8/23	Government accused of militarization in Chiapas -- Human rights organizations on Thursday charged the military had not diminished its presence in Chiapas since President Vicente Fox assumed office, saying the Army was continuing a campaign of low-intensity warfare against Zapatista rebels and the state's indigenous population. (The News Mexico)
8/23	As illegal immigrant numbers grow, so do benefits -- With the number of illegal immigrants at a historic high, many state and local officials have recently proposed or approved benefits for them that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. (Washington Post)
8/23	Border Patrol plans beacons in Arizona desert to help immigrants in trouble -- The Border Patrol plans to place six beacons in the Arizona desert that would allow illegal immigrants to push a button to send a signal for help. (Associated Press)
8/23	Mexican state to declare two border regions off-limits -- Prompted by the deaths of people trying to reach the United States, a Mexican state is declaring more than 100,000 acres of mountain and desert near the border as "high risk" and off-limits to migrants. (Associated Press)
8/23	Bush toes tightrope on illegal residents -- Caught in a political tug-of-war over illegal immigration, President Bush sought yesterday to convince liberals and conservatives that his plan to give legal status to millions of people will be equitable -- but not all-encompassing. (San Francisco Chronicle)
8/23	Texas hospitals provide nonemergency care to illegal immigrants, defying attorney general -- Several public hospitals in Texas are still offering undocumented immigrants a full range of health care services, two weeks after the state attorney general said hospitals must not use public money to provide nonemergency health care to illegal immigrants. (Associated Press)
8/22	Adoption of controversial Indigenous Rights Law and military mobilizations: Tension and fears in Chiapas -- This year, events in the state of Chiapas and Mexico have called into doubt the Federal Government's will to construct peace in the country. (Press Release)
8/22	Autonomous counsel criticize the arrival of hundreds of soldiers at San Cayetano barracks -- The autonomous municipal counsel of San Andrés Sakamch'en criticized the increase of military movement in the San Cayetano barracks, two kilometers from the Aguascalientes at Oventic. "This causes tensions in our communities, because it is feared that Mr. Vicente Fox is preparing a military attack against the EZLN and their support bases." (La Jornada)
8/22	Against Neoliberal Globalization -- We, two hundred and seventy men and women from social organizations, networks and movements, from thirty-nine countries and from all the continents on our planet, have met together in Mexico -- a nation victim to neoliberalism, but also a land of popular resistances like that of the zapatista indigenous -- in order to analyze the dynamic which continues to follow a globalization of capital... (First International Encuentro of Social Movements)
8/22	Union says Coca-Cola in Colombia uses thugs -- An American labor-rights group and the United Steelworkers union have filed a suit in the United States that accuses Coca-Cola and some bottlers here of using a right-wing paramilitary group to intimidate and, in some cases, assassinate labor organizers. (New York Times)
8/22	Fumigation and worse in Colombia -- "Who in the US benefits from fumigating Colombians?" the man asked me pointedly in the crowded community hall. The community was in a paramilitary-controlled part of Putumayo. Putumayo is a southern department of Colombia where the guerrilla insurgency is strong, where much coca is grown, where paramilitary massacres, disappearances, and assassinations are frequent, and where Plan Colombia is focused. (ZNet.org)
8/22	A Way out for Colombia -- I didn't go to Colombia looking for understanding, although it was there for me in the form of razor-sharp analysts who do their work under fire. I didn't go looking for hope either, although I found some of that too, in the very same people. (ZNet.org)
8/21	Big-league caps and labor flaps -- Making little headway after a month on the picket line, the nearly 300 strikers at the baseball cap factory here are looking to be rescued by an unlikely savior: a year-old anti-sweatshop group formed by 82 colleges and universities, including Brown, Columbia, Georgetown and Ohio State. (New York Times)
8/21	Growing military harassment in Chiapas -- NGOs declared yesterday that after the approval in Federal Congress of the constitutional reforms on indigenous rights and culture last April, there has been an increase of harassment activities by the military and paramilitaries in communities in Chiapas. In the last four months there have been at least 104 military actions. (La Jornada)
8/21	Civil organizations report military reinstatement in Chiapas -- Militarization in Chiapas increased immediately following the approval of constitutional reforms in regards to indigenous matters. Since April there has been at least 104 recorded military operations in 16 municipalities and there has been reinstatement of some military bases. (El Universal)
8/21	NGOs accuse Fox of reactivating the war in Chiapas -- The militarization in Chiapas has increased in the last few months because the current Fox cabinet, instead of generating peace conditions, are reactivating the low-intensity war and "returning to the strict old Zedillo times" claims the non-government organization Global Exchange, a human rights organization, and The Center of Economic and Politic Investigation for Community Action (Ciepac).
8/21	Ministers to meet in Mexico for crisis trade agenda talks -- Trade ministers from 19 countries and trading groups have been summoned to Mexico City for a two-day crisis meeting to try to break the logjams threatening the launch of a new global trade round. (Bloomberg)
8/21	Political polarization as the Indigenous law is proclaimed -- Political polarization was manifested when the Diario Oficial de la Federación [Official Journal of the Federation] published the text of the constitutional reforms on Indigenous Rights and Culture. (La Jornada)
8/21	Jorge Castaneda: Mexico's Man Abroad -- For almost 150 years, Mexico's foreign policy was essentially defensive. Nonintervention and self-determination were its twin pillars. Today, as Mexico democratizes and becomes a key player in the global economy, its approach to the world is correspondingly changing. (LA Times)
8/21	Conflict deepens despair for Palestinians in Gaza -- The Gaza Strip has been destitute ever since waves of refugees inundated its once-placid towns 53 years ago during the birth of Israel and the flight of Palestinians from their homes. But rarely has Gaza, now teeming with more than 1 million people, sunk to its present depth of misery. (Washington Post)
8/21	South African rally against US draws thousands -- Waving anti-American and anti-Israeli signs, some 2,000 South African workers demonstrated Thursday against the United States for threatening to boycott a U.N. conference on racism. (Associated Press)
8/21	Israeli police 'carry out routine, organised cruelty' -- The Arabs called it a "day of rage" but the Israelis were the ones demonstrating their rage outside Orient House yesterday. The Palestinian youth who dared to hold up a Palestinian flag made of paper was seized by six border guards and plain-clothes police, kicked, beaten, punched in the face and back and then kneed in the groin in front of us all. (The Independent)
8/21	Gap sweatshops challenged by persistent activists -- On May 6, 2000 nineteen nonviolent activists were arrested at the Fashion Fair mall by a force of over 100 Fresno City police officers, with a police helicopter hovering overhead and a squad of riot clad officers blocking the mall's entrance. The criminal proceedings are still winding their way through court, with no end in sight. (Fresno Alliance)
8/21	Delegations to Mexican Consulate offices for Kukdong campaign -- Responding to a call by Campaign for Labor Rights, working in coalition with USAS and workers at the Kukdong factory in Atlixco, Mexico, people in over 25 cities in the United States formed delegations and visited their local Mexican consulates. (Campaign for Labor Rights)
8/21	Cuban exile group fractured as hard-liners quit board -- After more than 40 years of standing solidly against Fidel Castro, the leading organization for Cuban exiles, the Cuban American National Foundation, was sundered today as nearly two dozen board members resigned. They contended that the group had forgotten its purpose and softened its line on Cuban issues. (New York Times)
8/21	Six million disenfranchised voters? Perhaps we should do something about it -- If you believe that the toothless report issued last week by the National Commission on Federal Election Reform will have even the slightest impact on future elections, then you probably also believed Commission co-chair Jimmy Carter's abrupt about-face on his scathing assessment of President Bush. (Arianna Huffington)
8/20	Israeli tanks beaten back from Jenin after raid -- Israeli tanks began withdrawing from the Palestinian-ruled West Bank town of Jenin on Tuesday after a three-hour night-time attack in which troops raided key Palestinian Authority buildings, witnesses said. (Reuters)
8/16	Neocolonial Invitation to a Tribal War -- "What we feared has come true," Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling writes in Israel's leading newspaper. Jews and Palestinians are "regressing to superstitious tribalism.... War appears an unavoidable fate," an "evil colonial" war. This prospect is likely if the U.S. grants tacit authorization, with grim consequences that may reverberate far beyond. Editorial by Noam Chomsky. (Los Angeles Times)
8/16	Innocents face endless cruelty without end -- Editorial by Edward Said. (London Observer)
8/14	Labor Groups Join Coalition to Eliminate Sweatshops -- The continuing fight against exploitative conditions in garment factories took a new turn yesterday when labor unions from around the world formed a new coalition to undertake the biggest campaign to fix the problem of overseas sweatshops. (New York Times)
8/14	Jewish settlers like apartheid rulers, Red Cross official charges -- The lifestyle of Jewish settlers in the Palestinian territories resembles that of whites under the former racist apartheid system, the head of the Danish Red Cross said here Wednesday. (Agence France-Presse)
8/9	Why You Should Oppose Fast Track Trade Negotiating Authority -- Eight reasons why you should oppose Fast Track. (Global Exchange)
8/8	Open Letter to the World Bank and IMF -- An open letter to the heads of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund inviting them to participate in a series of public debates about the global economy. (Global Exchange)
8/8	Case against Sharon Mounts: Ongoing War Crimes Under Scrutiny -- The Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment held a press conference on [July 16] on the recent start of legal proceedings against Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for his role in the massacre of civilians in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in 1982. (Law Society Press Release)
8/5	Reform and an Evolving Electorate -- The report of the National Commission on Federal Election Reform, issued last week, has the unmistakable earmarks of political compromise. Led by former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford and populated by notables from both major parties (with a few eminent civilians thrown in), the commission endorsed an array of election reforms that will not rock many boats. (The New York Times)
8/4	Quest for Mideast Peace: How and Why It Failed -- (New York Times)
8/2	8 Palestinians Killed in Nablus -- Medical teams combing through the debris of an Israeli strike against leading Palestinian militants on Tuesday had to use tweezers to collect the tiny fragments of their flesh and bones. (Reuters)
8/2	Israeli Army Acknowledges Abuse -- The Israeli army said Monday that a group of soldiers beat a Palestinian traveling in a taxi, forced the passengers to beat each other, and slashed the tires of a vehicle. (Associated Press)
7/31	Dole Food's labor history is bumpy -- There has been a series of legal actions involving the company's workers. The Dole Food Co.'s unexpected layoffs of 1,900 workers in the southern San Joaquin Valley again has put a focus on the firm's labor relations record. (Sacramento Bee)
7/31	ICFTU to Stage Global Day of Action -- Trade union leaders from around the world, meeting in a special session of the ICFTU Steering Committee held in conjunction with the G8 Summit in Genoa, took the decision to mark the launch of the next Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Doha, Qatar by staging a Global Unions' Day of Action by the Work-places of the World on November 9 2001, the opening day of the WTO Conference. (ICFTU OnLine)
7/31	The Shadow of Globalization: The coffee connection -- Thousands of miles from Boston's breakfast tables and fast-food restaurants, at the other end of a global trade network, Guatemala's farmers are barely scraping by. (Boston Globe)
7/31	Struggling Kenyan coffee growers wonder where all the money goes -- Americans pay $12.99 a pound for Kenyan coffee, but the farmer takes home only a penny a pound. Despite the popularity of coffee, and consistently strong profits for U.S. corporations like Starbucks, growers around the world are going broke, nowhere more so than in Kenya. (Associated Press)
7/31	Hard Times for Coffee Farmers -- Latin America is littered with monuments to the boom-bust history of tropical cash crops: the moldering palaces of rope-fiber growers in the Yucatan, Central America's abandoned banana plantations, the crumbling mansions of sugar barons in Cuba. But no bust has been crueler than the current collapse of coffee prices. Few have sparked such massive displacement of small-scale farmers and crops, or posed such a threat to the environment. (Associated Press)
7/31	'Cause coffees' produce a cup with an agenda -- 'Shade-grown,' 'fair trade' and other eco-friendly, socially aware blends of java are attracting consumers. (USA Today)
7/31	Low coffee prices spark job losses in El Salvador -- Rock-bottom prices in the international coffee market have caused some 30,000 job losses in El Salvador, a top industry official said on Thursday. (Reuters)
7/31	Exodus of rural coffee workers alarms Nicaragua -- A rural exodus, provoked by a crisis in the coffee industry, now threatens to overwhelm urban centers in northwestern Nicaragua. Hundreds of unemployed coffee workers and their families live in provisional housing, and at least six children have died from hunger in recent weeks, according to local press reports. (Reuters)
7/26	Mexico 73rd in environmental sustainability among 122 nations -- Environmental unsustainaibility issues such as deforestation, lack of infrastructure, over-exploitation of resources, inadequate laws and institutions, and extreme poverty put the viability of the Plan Puebla-Panama at risk. (La Jornada)
7/26	A timeline of events from the San Andres Accords to the Indigenous Rights Law -- Originally published by La Jornada, Mexico.
7/26	Camp David Peace Proposal FAQ -- Frequently Asked Questions about the Camp David Peace Proposal of July, 2000. (Jerusalem News)
7/25	Anti-globalization effort scores points; Protesters' influence grows despite violence -- From Genoa, Italy, to the Bay Area, these are heady yet bewildering times for the growing throngs of people who are taking to the streets to denounce free trade. Last weekend's Group of Eight summit was yet more proof that the anti-globalization movement has become the biggest left-of-center force for social protest in decades. (San Francisco Chronicle)
7/24	Stay home for a while -- Plenty of old hands were saying someone would die at Genoa. The signs were clear in the escalating militarization on both sides. But the members of the Landless Movement of Brazil (MST) could tell you that Carlo Giuliani, the young man shot dead as he protested at the G8 summit, is not the first casualty of the movement challenging neoliberal globalization around the world. (The Guardian)
7/24	The real enemies of the poor -- The needless point-blank police shooting of a protester was not the only outrageous official act as the leaders of the world's seven rich countries (plus Russia) met in Genoa, Italy, over the weekend. (Salon magazine)
7/24	Genoa Summit meeting: The political aftermath -- After three days of compliments from his guests at the protest-besieged Genoa summit meeting, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was heckled as soon as he set foot beyond the 13-foot-high metal and concrete walls encircling the world leaders. (New York Times)
7/24	Leaders vow steps on world poverty -- After a midnight police raid on the headquarters of their loudest critics, leaders of the world's richest industrial democracies ended a riot-marred summit Sunday with plans to meet next summer in a remote park in the Canadian Rockies. (Los Angeles Times)
7/24	Italy grapples with aftermath of violence -- After three days of compliments from his guests The industrialised world's leaders left behind a city in which one person had died, 500 had been injured and nearly 200 had been arrested. The Italian government meanwhile will end up spending L100bn (Euros 51m, Dollars 44m) clearing up the devastation. (Financial Times)
7/24	Committee backs immigrants' residency -- A study group headed by Secretary of State Colin Powell and Attorney General John Ashcroft has recommended that the United States grant guest-worker status and possibly legal residency to some of the millions of undocumented Mexican immigrants. (Associated Press)
7/24	ACLU refutes Attorney General's statements on Supreme Court-ordered -- The American Civil Liberties Union today sharply criticized an apparent attempt by the Department of Justice to delay the release of indefinitely detained immigrants whom the Supreme Court recently ordered released. (ACLU)
7/23	A world headed in the wrong direction -- As the leaders of the world's rich nations leave Genoa, Italy at the conclusion of the G-8 Summit, many Americans are wondering what led to the lethal confrontations between police and a small percentage of the more than 100,000 demonstrators who protested at the event. (Knight Ridder)
7/23	U.S. Intelligence: Israel will attack -- The CIA believes Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has decided to launch a retaliatory full-scale attack on Palestinian-controlled territory if there is another suicide bombing attack, several former Agency and other U.S. intelligence officials said. (UPI)
7/23	Police blitz on G8 protesters' headquarters leaves dozens injured -- An overnight raid by Italian police on the headquarters of the anti-globalization movement Genoa Social Forum (GSF) left dozens of activists wounded before a Group of Eight summit ended here, witnesses and hospital officials said Sunday. (AFP)
7/23	Genoa Update -- In Genoa they sought to send a message. Oppose us and you will pay a high price. And the simple fact is that we need to recognize that if the context of our actions leaves world rulers the option to do so, they most certainly have the military means to make good their threats. In Genoa they set loose their police, aroused beyond even normal levels of violence by grotesque fascist imagery, to brutalize dissent via torture and shooting. (ZNet)
7/23	Business as usual: Mexico's president ignores old-style labor repression -- When workers at the Kuk Dong assembly plant went on strike earlier this year, the result was business as usual -- state police stormed the factory to break the strike, and the company fired hundreds of workers. (San Francisco Chronicle)
7/23	Signs of voting reform encouraging -- Now that Republican leaders in the U.S. House have stalled the only serious chance for federal campaign finance reform before the 2002 election, it is easy to despair over the prospect of ever creating a fair and functional election system in this country. (The Capital Times)
7/23	The Court Becomes the Government's Accomplice in Torture: Judgment Against Campesino-Ecologists Affirmed -- It appears that the First Circuit Court sanctions the coverup regarding the illegal character of the confessions obtained under torture, overlooking the evidence on this clear violation of human rights, which was the sole basis of the case against the ecologists. (Press Release, Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez Center for Human Rights)
7/23	Coca-Cola (Coke) to be sued for human rights abuses in Colombia -- The United Steel Workers Union and the International Labor Rights Fund will file suit tomorrow, July 20, in US District Court for the Southern District of Florida (Miami) against Coke and Panamerican Beverages, Inc., the primary bottler of Coke products in Latin America. (United Steel Workers/International Labor Rights Fund)
7/20	Global Exchange statement on the reports of physical force being used in Genoa, Italy at G-8 Summit
7/20	Killing of demonstrator clouds G8 Summit -- Italian police shot dead an anti-globalization demonstrator on Friday, bleakly sweeping aside the worthy words of world leaders on the opening day of a Group of Eight summit. (Reuters)
7/19	Knowledge, Power, Banking -- "Knowledge is power" isn't just a slogan tossed around by polo-necked post-modernists. It's a maxim by which international capital lives. Want proof? Later this month, the World Bank will launch a prototype website that demonstrates amply their aim to control the Third world by controlling what is, and is not, officially thinkable. (Znet)
7/19	Mexican court upholds sentences -- A Mexican appeals court has upheld the drug and weapons convictions of two anti-logging activists, prompting rights groups Wednesday to pledge to take the case to an international court. (Associated Press)
7/19	Imprisoned environmentalists refuse to withdraw accusations against soldiers -- According to Rodolfo Montiel, interviewed via telephone from prison in Iguala, the upholding of his sentence and that of fellow campesino environmentalist, Teodoro Cabrera, demonstrates the role played by the military in their case. "I've refused to withdraw the accusation made against the soldiers by whom we were tortured" he stated. (La Jornada)
7/19	U.S. backs monitors in the Mideast -- U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell joined the foreign ministers from the Group of Eight nations in backing the deployment of neutral monitors to help calm tensions between Israel and the Palestinians. (MSNBC News Service)
7/19	World Bank accused of fraud in internet scheme -- The World Bank has misused funds and is seeking to mislead public opinion through its 'Development Gateway' Internet initiative, according to charges submitted Wednesday to the lending agency's fraud unit. (IPS)
7/19	More courts grant advertisements protection under First Amendment -- Should a company have as much right to free speech about its products as people have to air their political views? The courts' longtime answer has been no. Even though the First Amendment bars laws "abridging the freedom of speech," the courts have deemed advertising to be an exception. (Wall Street Journal)
7/18	Other people's money -- It wasn't true when Richard Nixon said it, but it is true today: We are all Keynesians now -- at least when we look at our own economy. We give anti-Keynesian advice only to other countries. (New York Times)
7/18	Suffering a violent form of "restraint" -- We are told repeatedly that Israel is showing "restraint" or a "measured response." This campaign began after the June 1 discothhque bombing in Tel Aviv, when Israel did not take the expected retaliation. Reporters and U.S. officials tripped over themselves praising Israel's "restraint." (Philadelphia Inquirer)
7/18	Israeli-Palestinian team to help prosecution of Belgian war crimes case -- A new Israeli-Palestinian coalition will help Belgian attorneys prosecuting those responsible for the 1982 Sabra and Shatilla massacre, in which at least 700 Palestinian refugees died. (Jerusalem Post)
7/17	World Bank Evaluation Team Requests Written Input From Indigenous Peoples and NGOs -- After years of pressure from indigenous peoples and NGOs, the World Bank's quality control arm, known as the Operations Evaluations Department (OED), is finally starting a review of the way Bank operations have affected indigenous peoples during the 1990s. (Bank Information Center)
7/17	Bush forgoes trying to bar Cuba deals by foreigners -- In a setback for the Cuban exile lobby and its Congressional allies, President Bush said today that he would not activate the harshest sanction of a law that seeks to punish foreigners for investing in property in Cuba that was confiscated by the Havana government. (New York Times)
7/17	U.S. reportedly weighs legalizing Mexican illegals -- U.S. officials are weighing a plan to legalize the status of the more than 3 million Mexicans living illegally in the United States, The New York Times reported on Sunday. (Reuters)
7/16	Under the guise of security: House demolitions in Gaza -- The view from Ahmed Khalil Abu Samra's window is a bleak one. To one side is an Israeli military post. To another, towards the Palestinian town of Dayr al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, lie Abu Samra's wrecked greenhouses and the remnants of uprooted olive and fruit trees. (Middle East Report)
7/16	Israeli war plan revealed -- Israeli generals are planning for a possible massive invasion of Palestinian territories if the current Mideast cease-fire fails, says a published report denied by Israeli officials. (Associated Press)
7/16	Bush to extend suspension of Cuba sanctions -- President Bush said Monday he intends to suspend for another six months a law that would let Americans sue people using U.S. property confiscated after Fidel Castro took power in 1959. (AP)
7/16	President tightens sanctions on Cuba -- President Bush ordered toughened enforcement of long-standing sanctions against Cuba on Friday and said he would also expand support for human-rights activists on the island. (LA Times)
7/16	Good Morning, Colombia -- For more than a year, critics of our government's drug war aid package to Colombia (now hovering at $2 billion) have been warning of the mission creep that threatens to embed us ever deeper in that country's 4-decade-old civil war. (Arianna Huffington)
7/16	Racism flourishes in Colombia Oppression: Racial prejudice is rampant in Colombia where 11 million blacks are social and political outcasts, an exile says -- African-Americans and others should know something about the war in my country, Colombia. It's not about drugs. It's about greed and the struggle for local control. (Baltimore Sun)
7/15	How Bush Took Florida: Mining the Overseas Absentee Vote -- A six-month investigation by The New York Times of this chapter in the closest presidential election in American history shows that the Republican effort had a decided impact. Under intense pressure from the Republicans, Florida officials accepted hundreds of overseas absentee ballots that failed to comply with state election laws. (New York Times)
7/15	Activists embrace web in anti-globalization drive -- The Internet, e-mail and mobile phones mean protesters can spread their message with unprecedented ease, even to decry the globalization that the Web itself embodies. Many protest Web sites have targeted the Group of Eight summit in Genoa, Italy, from July 20-22, to highlight their anti-globalization message. (Reuters)
7/15	Tearing down the U.S.-Mexico border -- Since the passage of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, the U.S. Border Patrol has grown into the nation's largest uniformed law enforcement agency with nearly 9,600 officers. (San Francisco Chronicle)
7/15	Fourteen dead on the border — for what? -- Last month, 14 men and women left their coffee farms in Veracruz, Mexico, and began traveling north. Days later, their bodies were found on the hardpan of the Sonora desert. They died of agonizing dehydration, like hundreds of others trying to cross the same border over the last few years. (Pacific News Service)
7/13	Mexico OKs Indian Rights Bill -- An Indian rights bill won approval from a majority of Mexican state legislatures, but the law appeared unlikely to satisfy leftist Zapatista rebels. (Associated Press)
7/13	Nike buffs image with Webcast of Vietnam factory -- Nike Inc. on Thursday unveiled an Internet video tour of a factory in Vietnam that emphasized good pay, benefits and working conditions in an effort to lay to rest allegations that its products are made in sweatshops. (Reuters)
7/13	Nike posts factory tour video on web -- Nike Inc., which has come under fire for the conditions of its overseas factories, is offering a 12-minute online video tour of its contracted shoe facilities in Vietnam. (Associated Press)
7/13	How Nike bought Brazil -- Brazil's Congress is often entertaining. But no moment has quite reached the level of farce that occurred when the footballer Ronaldo was hauled up in front of parliamentary investigators. In January, the striker travelled to Brasilia to be cross-examined on the role that Nike has in the national team. (The Guardian)
7/13	From football-crazy lad to 'martyr' -- Two facts are not in dispute. One is that a Palestinian schoolboy, Khalil al-Mugrabhi, 11, loved football more than anything else in life. The other is that on Saturday evening an Israeli soldier shot him through the head. (The Guardian)
7/13	Israel rebuked for razing Arab homes -- Britain and Russia yesterday joined in overwhelming criticism of Israel by the international community for demolishing Palestinian homes in Gaza and the West Bank. (The Guardian)
7/12	Shade grown coffee seeks 'green' spotlight in U.S. market -- Traditional shade grown coffee is seeing revived interest as a way of helping the environment while at the same time fetching a better price. (Reuters)
7/11	Immigrants battle to stay in high school -- When Wan Shan Hu was introduced as Lafayette High School's valedictorian at graduation last month, some parents in the the audience grumbled that it was always an immigrant who got the award. Others booed outright. (New York Times)
7/11	Legalizing abuses in Colombia -- The human rights record of Colombia's army has improved somewhat in recent years. In part this is because its abuses have been privatized -- paramilitary groups with close links to many members of the armed forces are now committing the bulk of the murders of civilians. (New York Times)
7/11	Study finds ballot problems are more likely for poor -- A Congressional study has found that the votes of poor people and members of minorities were more than three times as likely to go uncounted in the 2000 presidential election than the votes of more affluent people. (New York Times)
7/11	Youth tackle democracy's troubles -- Opposition is a sin in American politics. Never mind that most great change throughout our history has come from brave opposition to the political powers that be (one thinks of women's suffrage, one thinks of the civil rights movement). The moment someone appears to stand in opposition to precious "unity" or "bipartisanship" he's considered to be acting counterproductively, or worse, unpatriotically. (St. Cloud Times)
7/11	Tomato pickers protest rotten deal -- A handful of tomato pickers from Immokalee are refusing to back down in their dispute with tomato growers and Fortune 500 franchise Taco Bell over a one-cent pay hike. In September they plan to bolster ongoing protest action with a march from Florida to California. (New California Media Online)
7/10	A new glass ceiling: Undocumented children can't qualify for college aid -- Diego, whose last name has been withheld at his request, didn't know he was any different from his American friends until they started getting drivers' licenses and after-school jobs - privileges that aren't open to him because he lacks a Social Security number and a green card. Now he faces a more significant barrier: paying for college. (Boston Globe)
7/9	Dispute Settlement: EU welcomes suspension of US sanctions following resolution of WTO banana dispute -- The European Union on 2 July welcomed the United States' decision of 1 July 2001 to suspend the increased customs duties it imposed on certain EU exports in 1999 as a result of a long-running dispute over bananas. (European Union's Directorate General on Trade)
7/9	No instant solution for coffee growers' crisis -- The market price of coffee has hit its lowest level for 36 years amid fears that increased production in South-east Asia and record output in Central America will lead to a worldwide glut. Prices, which were already low because of oversupply, have fallen further as weather forecasters have predicted mild weather for the harvesting period in coffee-growing areas of Central America. (The Independent)
7/9	Jose Bove takes his magic potion to the West Bank -- Jose Bove thrust out his walrus moustache, threw a defiant scowl at the Israeli policemen and soldiers barring his way, linked arms with his friends and then started to shove at the wall of muscle and guns before him. (The Independent/UK)
7/9	Border agents testing launchers -- Tucson-area Border Patrol agents could be using a weapon designed to disable rather than kill if a pilot program under way in San Diego is successful. The "pepper ball launchers" are designed to give agents an alternative to firearms in confrontations with illegal immigrants and smugglers, said James Jaques, a U.S. Border Patrol spokesman in San Diego. (Tucson Citizen)
7/6	IMF slaps 39-million-dollar fine on Ghana for lying -- The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has slapped a 39-million-dollar fine on Ghana for misrepresenting the state of the economy, an official was quoted as saying Wednesday. (Agence France-Presse)
7/6	Arabs hope, doubt Sharon will face war crimes court -- Slobodan Milosevic's appearance before the war crimes court in The Hague has rekindled Arab hopes that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will also be prosecuted over the 1982 massacre of Palestinians. (Reuters)
7/6	Legislation presents a fresh chance for better Cuba ties -- Could it be? Is it possible that the U.S. will finally abandon its anachronistic 40-year-old embargo to Cuba under the Bush administration? (New York Daily News)
7/6	Bill to ease embargo offered — Coalition backs Cuba measure -- A coalition of liberals and farm state members introduced a measure in Congress on Tuesday designed to ease the sale of food and medicine to Cuba -- a cause that gained partial success last year. (Miami Herald)
7/5	Israel affirms policy of assassinating militants -- Israel's security cabinet decided today to press ahead with a policy of assassinating suspected Palestinian militants in an effort to stop persistent killings of Israelis, officials said. (New York Times)
7/5	U.S. tightens Cuban embargo -- The Bush Administration appears to be increasing enforcement of parts of the economic embargo against Cuba this year, denying visas to Cuban officials wanting to come to this country and more carefully scrutinizing Americans who fly to the island through third countries like Canada. (South Florida Sun-Sentinel)
7/5	Which road to Qatar: Food first or export first? -- As we approach Qatar, there is consensus that actually existing globalisation is unfair, unjust, and at the root of creation of new poverty and deepening inequality. There is, however, difference abut where do we go from here. (Diverse Women for Diversity)
7/5	Death penalty ignites a musical coalition -- Michael Franti has questioned the death penalty for as long as he can remember. Drawn to both underground music and radicalism since his teens, Mr. Franti considers his opposition natural. He has organized events supporting Mumia Abu-Jamal, perhaps the most famous convict on death row in the United States, and for years has criticized the criminal justice system on panels and in interviews. (New York Times)
7/5	Starbucks target of protests — again -- Starbucks President Orin Smith was not really surprised to learn his company was to be the target of nationwide protests Monday and Tuesday by the Organic Consumer Association -- despite the coffee retailer's previous pledge to meet many of the group's demands. (Associated Press)
7/5	The Coffee Quandary: Why does a vente latte still cost $4 when bean prices are plunging? -- Drinking exotic coffee may be the new national pastime, but producers are fighting off one serious caffeine headache. In the past year, overproduction has caused the price of unroasted coffee to plunge more than 40 percent, devastating the small farmers who produce most of the world's crop. (Newsweek)
7/3	FTAA "draft" text made public today is missing vital information -- Some text of a controversial trade agreement government officials promised to release in mid-April was made public today, but the version that was released lacks vital information and represents only a fraction of the entire pact, Public Citizen said today. (Public Citizen)
7/3	U.S. aid fuels a dirty war against unions -- In mid-March, Valmore Locarno Rodriguez and Victor Orcasita were riding from their jobs at the Loma coal mine in northern Colombia. Locarno and Orcasita were president and vice president of the union at the mine, a local of Sintramienergetica, one of Colombia's two coal miners' unions. As the company bus neared Valledupar, 30 miles from the mine, it was stopped by 15 gunmen, some in military uniforms. (In These Times)
7/3	Six students found guilty of telling the truth about Plan Colombia -- Six students stood trial from June 20 to June 22, 2001 in Washington DC for a nonviolent demonstration against the Sikorsky Corporation, manufacturer of the Black Hawk helicopter. The six students, all from Oberlin College, locked themselves around a pillar inside the Sikorsky Corporation's conference at the National Guard Memorial Museum on April 2, 2001 to protest the $221 million profit Sikorsky is making off the "War on Drugs" in Colombia. (Six Oberlin Students)
7/3	63 Colombian trade unionists murdered since beginning of this year -- The UN's International Labour Organisation (ILO) should send a special Commission of Enquiry to Colombia without delay to investigate the widespread murder and abduction of trade unionists there. That is the call today from global unions representing more than 160 million workers worldwide.
6/29	Search ends for renowned Indian rights leader in Colombia -- Indian rights leaders said Tuesday they have called off a 10-day search in Colombia's northern mountains for a beloved Indian leader allegedly abducted by paramilitary gunmen. The largely symbolic search for Kimy Pernia, which involved hundreds of people, ended Saturday without any new evidence about the leader's fate, Juan Houghton, a spokesman for an Indian rights group involved in the search, told The Associated Press. (Associated Press)
6/29	Tattooed tribes keep a vigil for kidnapped chief -- Nearly 1,000 indigenous people have defied the Colombian government's security warnings and are keeping a public vigil for their kidnapped leader, Kim Pernia Domico. (The Independent)
6/29	Toxic Drift: Monsanto and the Drug War in Colombia -- A prominent U.S. Senator and other government officials from both Washington and Bogotá stood on a Colombian mountainside above fields of lime-green coca -- the plant sacred to Andean Indians, but also the source of the troublesome drug cocaine. They were awaiting a demonstration of aerial herbicide spraying, part of the U.S. drug war in Colombia. (CorpWatch)
6/29	Colombian Indians resist an encroaching war -- More than 1,000 of Colombia's indigenous people have traveled to Tierralta, where the country's northern plains give way to lush mountains, to protest a war that is consuming their land, language and people. (Washington Post)
6/28	Anti-globalization protesters charged -- Riot police charged anti-globalization protesters gathered in a city park on Sunday following a midday march down a main boulevard. At least 32 people were slightly injured and 19 were arrested. (Associated Press)
6/28	Proof of police provocation in the Barcelona demo against the World Bank -- On Sunday June 24 about 50,000 people (according to the organisers, or 20,000 according to the media) participated in a demonstration through the centre of Barcelona (Spain) against the World Bank. (Jordi Martorell)
6/28	Anti-drug plan causing refugees -- Plan Colombia, the anti-drug strategy promoted by President André Pastrana, and the escalation of the war are the driving forces behind the displacement of thousands of Colombians, said the Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement (CODHES) today. (Inter Press Service)
6/28	Participants at a forum on biodiversity reject the Puebla-Panama plan -- The participants at the First Week for Cultural and Biological Biodiversity, taking place in San Cristobal de las Casas, expressed their complete rejection of the Puebla-Panama Plan (PPP), considering it "a new type of colonialism allowing transnational businesses to benefit while the underclass suffers." (La Jornada)
6/27	Gap to cut hundreds of jobs -- Clothing titan Gap Inc. said yesterday that it will cut 500 to 700 jobs, mostly at its San Francisco headquarters, to weather a slowing economy and declining sales. (San Francisco Chronicle)
6/27	Young voters gather for reform -- Political fire and brimstone rained down Sunday at Florida A&M University as seasoned activists tried to light the fire beneath young people from over 30 states. (Tallahassee Democrat)
6/26	Chiapas mayors protest modified bill -- Seventeen mayors and thousands of residents from Mexico's southernmost state gathered to protest changes to an Indian rights bill aimed at restoring peace to the troubled region. (Associated Press)
6/26	Seattle failure weighs on future of new trade talks -- While huge diplomatic momentum is gathering behind the idea of a new round of global trade talks, fundamental differences between rich and poor nations and the United States and its trading partners over what should be on the agenda are clouding the talks before they can begin, just as they did in Seattle in December 1999. (New York Times)
6/25	Free trade and sweatshops: Is global trade doing more harm than good? -- Perhaps the fundamental question about globalization is whether it helps or hurts workers, particularly in developing countries. Insight asked Kevin Danaher of Global Exchange and David Henderson of the Hoover Institution to engage in an e-mail debate. (San Francisco Chronicle)
6/25	Police, anti-World Bank protesters clash in Spain -- Spanish police swinging batons clashed with anti-globalization protesters in central Barcelona on Sunday after dozens of people smashed shop windows. (Reuters)
6/25	Body bags stockpiled for Genoa summit -- Italian authorities have ordered 200 body bags as they step up preparations for a violent confrontation at next month's G8 summit in Genoa, say Italian media reports. (BBC News)
6/25	NAFTA agency ripped for not taking action on Tijuana toxic site -- Border activists yesterday criticized an environmental monitoring agency created by NAFTA for failing to take any significant action more than a year after it began investigating a Tijuana toxic waste site. (Copley News Service)
6/22	Atrocity survivors ask Belgian Court to indict Ariel Sharon -- Palestinian survivors of a massacre in Lebanon nearly 20 years ago asked a Belgian court yesterday to indict the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, for crimes against humanity over his role in the carnage. (The Indepedent)
6/22	Colombians search for missing leader -- Pernia, a leader of the Embera Katio tribe who gained international notoriety for heading a campaign against a hydroelectric project near the group's lands, has been missing since June 2. His tribe believes he was abducted by right-wing paramilitaries who are battling guerrillas and their suspected collaborators in the nearby mountains of Cordoba state. (Associated Press)
6/22	U.S. agency to probe use of F-16s against PA -- The U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) has began an investigation into the American military aid programs to the Middle East, following a complaint filed by a Congressman regarding the Israeli use of F-16 fighters against Palestinian targets. (Ha'aretz)
6/21	U.S. Congress exempts itself from Cuba cigar import regulations -- Members of the U.S. Congress have exempted themselves from U.S. Department of the Treasury regulations that determine the value of Cuban produced products that can legally be brought back to the U.S., according to the New York-based U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council Inc. (Bloomberg News)
6/19	Rum war tests U.S. foreign policy -- Concealed in the shadows of more-highly publicized foreign-policy issues is the defense of intellectual property rights and a recent World Trade Organization panel's ruling that a provision in an appropriations bill is inconsistent with the United States's trade commitments to protect intellectual property. The issue is particularly sensitive because it involves Cuba and the United States has been a global champion of protecting intellectual property. (Miami Herald)
6/19	Central America Joins Mexico in Plan -- Mexico and Central America hope to build both literal and metaphoric bridges between their countries with a sweeping new economic development plan. Plan Puebla-Panama, known as the "Plan of the three P's," promotes tourism, trade, education, and environmental care while facilitating travel between the countries and connecting power grids from Mexico's Puebla state to Panama. (Associated Press)
6/19	Fox in El Salvador: "Zapatismo in process of deactivation", There is no longer a conflict in Chiapas "we have a blessed peace" -- "There is no longer a conflict in Chiapas, we have blessed peace" affirmed president Vicente Fox Quesada, and suggested in defense of the Plan Puebla-Panama (PPP), to "not give any more space or power to the zapatismo," a movement which according to him was "in the process of deactivation." (La Jornada)
6/19	PRODH denounces the Puebla Panamá Plan and Fox' visit to El Salvador -- Once more Vicente Fox made yesterday a series of declarations regarding the Chiapas conflict that not only demonstrate his lack of sensitivity on the subject, but also the imposition of the unilateral decision of the federal government to impel the Puebla-Panama Plan (PPP), a development plan that will take into account the economic interests of the transnational companies and the United States, but not those of the communities that populate those territories and which in theory are supposed to be its main beneficiaries. (PRODH Communique)
6/19	Coffee crisis sends Mexico producers to death in Arizona -- Serving as grim proof of the severity of the social crisis in Mexico caused by low international coffee prices, most of the immigrants found dead in the Arizona desert last week came from coffee-producing areas. (Dow Jones Newswire)
6/18	Colombian Indians resist an encroaching war -- More than 1,000 of Colombia's indigenous people have traveled to Tierralta, where the country's northern plains give way to lush mountains, to protest a war that is consuming their land, language and people. Their stand has taken the form of a largely symbolic search for Kimy Pernia Domico, a leader of the Embera Katio tribe that controls strategic stretches of northwestern Colombia. Domico was seized here June 2 by three gunmen presumed to be members of the right-wing paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). He has not been seen since. (Washington Post)
6/18	Americans blamed in Colombia raid -- Three American civilian airmen providing airborne security for a U.S. oil company coordinated an anti-guerrilla raid in Colombia in 1998, marking targets and directing helicopter gunships that mistakenly killed 18 civilians, Colombian military pilots have alleged in a official inquiry. (San Francisco Chronicle)
6/15	Judge Halts Kern County Prison Project -- A Kern County judge has abruptly halted a $335-million prison project in Delano, ruling that the state Department of Corrections must reconsider the potential environmental impact. The decision, issued last week by Kern County Superior Court Judge Roger Randall, requires the state to reopen issues ranging from water use to effects on the financially strapped city's infrastructure. (LA Times)
6/15	Case study: Monitoring a source of Nike's sweatshirts -- March 2000 The Kukdong factory in Atlixco, Mexico begins making sweatshirts for Nike; aims to produce 1 million pieces by the end of the year. May 2000 PricewaterhouseCoopers audits Kukdong; reports child labor violations and worker/management communication problems. (Christian Science Monitor)
6/14	Colombian Indians to search for kidnapped leader -- Colombian Indians announced Tuesday they will send search parties into the wilderness to look for an internationally renowned tribal activist believed to have been kidnapped by right-wing paramilitaries. (Associated Press)
6/12	Latino immigrants pay a price for free trade -- Roberto Chavez was 8 years old when he began fantasizing about the inevitable day he would follow his brother to the U.S., then return to his poor Mexican village smelling of money. What he did not know, in fact never could have imagined, was that the Los Angeles employer that helped him buy a home and raise five children would ship his job to Mexico after 15 years of loyal service. (LA Times)
6/11	The wrong way to fix the vote -- If you liked the way Florida handled the presidential vote in November, you'll just love the election reform laws that have passed since then in 10 states, and have been proposed in 16 others. (Washington Post)
6/11	The backslap backlash -- Washington is still aghast at how a presumed Bush team player can, by one dramatic action, expose the sham of an administration's supposedly invincible people skills and the unfairness of its policies. But such indeed has been the coup -- a "coup of one," as Trent Lott might say -- pulled off by Jenna Bush. (New York Times)
6/11	$300 million bond issue would pay for new voting equipment -- Voters next year would be asked to approve $300 million in bonds to buy modern new election equipment under a bill passed Wednesday by the state Assembly. The author, Speaker Robert Hertzberg, D-Van Nuys, said the upgrades are needed "so we don't have in California what happened in Florida." (Associated Press)
6/11	Colombia hit by huge protests -- Tens of thousands of teachers, state workers, and students have protested budget reforms mandated in agreements between Colombia and the International Monetary Fund. (Associated Press)
6/10	Colombians protest bill on cuts in services -- Thousands of teachers, doctors and union activists demonstrated across the country today, blocking roads and clashing with the police to protest a bill backed by the International Monetary Fund that could slash funds for health and education. (Reuters)
6/9	Guatemalan officers found guilty -- A tribunal on Friday found three military men and a priest guilty of the 1998 slaying of Roman Catholic Bishop Juan Gerardi and ordered a criminal probe into three other military officials in the case. (Associated Press)
6/9	Guatemala: Gerardi trial - justice is possible -- Today's ruling by the Guatemalan judiciary sentencing four people to 30 years in prison for the 1998 murder of Bishop Juan José Gerardi gives an encouraging signal that justice can be obtained through the Guatemalan courts, Amnesty International said today. (Amnesty International)
6/9	A sorry summit sequel -- You want democracy? said (Canadian) Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. We'll give you democracy. And so, as the tear gas began to dissipate outside the April Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, the Democracy Clause was born. (Globe and Mail)
6/9	Xaxaca and Zacatecas state legislatures reject Indian Rights bill -- The legislatures of the Mexican states of Oaxaca and Zacatecas were the first to vote against the Indian Rights Bill approved by the national legislature, but which was later rejected by the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) and Mexican indigenous organizations. (EFE)
6/9	Cuba, denied rum brand, could make "Coke" - expert -- Cuba, fighting a trademark war in which it has lost the U.S. rights to its most famous brand of rum, is entitled to start making Coca-Cola in retaliation, a legal expert said Thursday. (Reuters)
6/9	Cupid hard-worked in Cuba marrying foreigners -- Spanish septuagenarian Joaquin Perez probably came to Cuba attracted by the legendary beauty of its women and anxious to find company for his twilight years. (Reuters)
6/9	New trial of the Eldorado dos Carajás massacre -- We would like to invite you to attend the trial of the accused policemen who participated in the massacre of Eldorado dos Carajás, in which 19 landless workers were killed, in 1995. The trial will be held in Belém, at the large room of the Belém's Court of Justice, beginning on June 18. (MST National Board)
6/9	Playing into Castro's hands -- Sometimes one's enemies can be one's best friends. That's what Cuban President Fidel Castro must be thinking as Sens. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) introduce legislation to allocate $100 million in aid to Cuban opposition groups, with the objective of fostering democracy in Cuba. (Washington Post)
6/7	California Governor Gray Davis recently appointed Gap Chair Donald Fisher to be a member of the State Board of Education -- Write a letter in opposition to the Sweatshop King!
6/6	Sherritt may be back to haunt U.S. -- Sherritt International Corp.'s presence in Cuba has made chairman Ian Delaney a thorn in the side of the United States, a country he's blacklisted from entering. (Toronto Star)
6/6	Funneling immigrants to their deaths -- In recent years, thousands of Cubans have left Cuba and attempted to enter the United States illegally. Many attempt the journey on homemade rafts, traveling the 100-mile distance from the northern coast of Cuba to the Florida Keys. Such rafts can be used because the Gulf Stream draws rafts north from Cuba toward the Florida Keys before flowing away from the Florida coast and farther out to sea. (LA Times)
6/5	World Bank urges an end to collective contracts, labor benefits in Mexico -- A new World Bank report on Mexico, entitled "An Integral Agenda of Development for the New Era," was formally presented in Mexico on May 21. The report includes specific recommendations on labor policy for the government of President Vicente Fox, most notably proposals for increasing the "flexibility" of Mexican labor. (Mexico Solidarity Network)
6/5	Florida vote rife with disparities, study says rights panel finds Blacks penalized -- Florida's conduct of the 2000 presidential election was marked by "injustice, ineptitude and inefficiency" that unfairly penalized minority voters, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has concluded in a report that criticizes top state officials -- particularly Gov. Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Katherine Harris -- for allowing disparate treatment of voters. (Washington Post)
6/5	Rights Commission's report on Florida election -- The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights conducted the most extensive investigation to date concerning allegations of irregularities occurring during the November 2000 presidential election in Florida. The investigation, utilizing the Commission's subpoena power, comprised 3 days of hearings, over 30 hours of testimony from over 100 witnesses and a systematic review of more than 118,000 sheets of paper. (Washington Post)
6/4	Reform for the rest of America -- In an attempt to promote their narrow agenda, some supporters of McCain-Feingold have discouraged a campaign finance debate that considers important democratic values related to inclusion, participation and equality. (Washington Post)
6/4	Civil Rights imperiled: Conservatives poised to capture the courts -- One of the key issues at stake in the 2000 presidential election was control of the Supreme Court in particular and the federal judiciary in general. Nothing more than the fateful Supreme Court decision in Gore v. Bush, the 5-4 verdict that stopped the counting of the ballots in Florida, demonstrates the power of the courts to crush the aspirations of Africans in America and other oppressed people. (Black World Today)
6/1	DynCorp in Colombia: Outsourcing the drug war -- A U.S.-made Huey II military helicopter manned by foreigners wearing U.S. Army fatigues crash lands after being pockmarked by sustained guerrilla fire from the jungle below. Its crew members, one of them wounded, are surrounded by enemy guerrillas. Another three helicopters, this time carrying American crews, cut through the hot muggy sky. (CorpWatch)
5/31	Botched name purge denied some the right to vote -- Kelvin King was turned away from the polls here in November when records showed that he was ineligible to vote as a convicted felon. County election officials learned days later that King's civil rights had been restored eight months earlier. (Washington Post)
5/31	Look to ourselves for an end to migrant deaths -- Last week's discovery of 14 dead Mexican migrants in Arizona's scorched desert predictably elicited official expressions of sorrow as well as outrage directed at professional smugglers. But such political posturing is a smoke screen: The deaths are not surprising and the smugglers are not to blame. (San Diego Union-Tribune)
5/30	Simulating democracy can be a virtual breeze -- Few media eyebrows went up when the World Bank recently canceled a global meeting set for Barcelona in late June -- and shifted it to the Internet. Thousands of street demonstrators would have been in Spain's big northeastern port city to confront the conference. Cyberspace promises to be a much more serene location. (FAIR)
5/29	Mexican election a boost for Fox -- In the first major election since President Vicente Fox took office, an alliance led by his National Action Party appeared headed toward a sweeping victory Sunday in the Yucatan state governor's race, according to exit polls. (LA Times)
5/29	Mexican State OKs Indian Bill -- Veracruz has become the first state to ratify a government-sponsored Indian rights bill opposed by many of Mexico's Indians. The bill was approved by Veracruz's legislature on Thursday, despite protests from Indian groups that it had been watered down by the Senate, which made revisions before both houses of Congress passed it last month. (Associated Press)
5/25	Helms-Lieberman Bill vs. Cuba -- The Helms-Lieberman bill or the "Solidaridad Act of 2001" was introduced May 16, 2001, and is now appearing at www.congress.gov. The final section, Section 8, requires careful attention because it contains the seeds of a special agenda if this bill turns into law.
5/25	Devastating Picture of Immigrants Dead in Arizona Desert -- Local and federal officials painted a devastating picture today of a smuggling operation that killed at least 14 young Mexican immigrants in Arizona, saying a "coyote" had apparently abandoned more than two dozen men in one of the country's most brutal and desolate stretches of desert on Saturday with little water and no preparation. (New York Times)
5/25	At Border, Fortification Conflicts With Compassion -- With the death toll of illegal Mexican immigrants rising, the Bush administration is faced with a central conflict: How to create more humane conditions at the border while increasing enforcement with more guards and patrols. (New York Times)
5/25	New Targets -- We anti-globalists oppose imperial trade arrangements. We reject that the rich get richer. We repudiate that the poor get poorer. We laugh at pundits claiming that globalization positively entwines world centers via new modes of communication and travel. We guffaw at the claim that globalization expands democracy and participation. (Znet)
5/24	12 illegal immigrants die in Arizona desert -- Twelve illegal immigrants who crossed the Mexican border perished as they tried to traverse barren Arizona desert in 115-degree heat and reach a highway, the Border Patrol said yesterday. Eleven more were rescued, and the authorities were searching for others. It was the largest number of illegal immigrants to die at once in the Southwest desert in recent years, and a stark reminder that as the Border Patrol has cracked down on better-known crossings into California and Texas, more and more people seeking to slip into this country are turning to the vast, unpatrolled deserts and deserted mountains in Arizona. (New York Times)
5/23	September 2001 mobilization -- The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank will be holding their Joint Annual General Meetings in Washington, DC from September 28 to October 4, 2001. We call on activists from all over the world to come to Washington during that week to be involved in education and advocacy work, and to protest and expose the illegitimate policies and actions of the institutions and officials who continue to claim the right to determine the course of the world economy.
5/23	The dark side of coffee -- Coffee lovers are slurping more java than ever, retail prices and corporate profits are at an all-time high, but in many coffee producing countries farmers are broke and field hands are going hungry. (San Francisco Chronicle)
5/23	Cappuccino crisis -- Coffee is more fashionable than ever. And yet many coffee growers are facing ruin because of soaring production and a worldwide glut. Exporters are meeting in London to try to establish a cartel to push up prices. (Economist)
5/23	Voter march: More life than some can handle -- As we began to make our way to the Voter March East gathering in Lafayette Park, a group of college-age youth walked past us, sneering and rolling their eyes. They were about half a block ahead of us when one of males turned around and shouted, "Get a life"! (American Liberal)
5/22	World Bank, fearing violence, scraps Spain meeting -- The World Bank on Saturday said it had canceled a conference on how to fight poverty due to take place in Spain next month because of concerns anti-globalization groups would try to disrupt the event. "Despite our efforts to approach some of the groups that plan to demonstrate and include them in the conference, the intention of many of these groups...is to interrupt it," the World Bank said in a statement. (Reuters)
5/22	Advocates to meet in Dallas: They push to hold business accountable -- Home Depot Inc. has stopped selling endangered rain forest lumber. Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp. have withdrawn from an industry group that's fighting efforts to stop global warming. Voluntary actions? Not exactly. These and other American companies have been under siege in recent years by a growing political movement that practices what it calls "corporate accountability campaigns." (Dallas Morning News)
5/22	Human rights lost and found -- When Guatemala's Mynor Melgar, one of the most prominent human rights lawyers around today, stepped to the podium to receive Global Exchange's first annual Human Rights award, he was greeted by a long and heartfelt standing ovation. (WorkingForChange.com)
5/22	Silenced by a plastic bullet -- Democracy is about the right to speak out, but our country is now responding to peaceful protestors with unprecedented clouds of toxic tear gas and a new form of repression: plastic bullets.
5/22	Kukdong update: Independent union leader beaten by CROC supporters -- On May 15th, SITEKIM (the independent union in the Kukdong factory which has recently filed for legal registration) leader Ivan Diaz Xolo was assaulted outside the factory's new cafeteria by three CROC supporters. (Campaign for Labor Rights)
5/22	Senators will propose $100 million in assistance to Cuban dissidents -- Trying to redirect the political debate on Cuba, two powerful U.S. senators will unveil a bill today designed to send $100 million in U.S. aid over the next four years to opposition groups and individuals inside Cuba. Sens. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., and Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., will sponsor the "Cuban Solidarity Act," which would authorize the Bush administration to provide communications equipment such as telephones and faxes, along with food and cash, to nongovernmental groups on the island. (Miami Herald)
5/22	2004 Presidential campaign begins -- Both Helms and Lieberman received significant campaign contributions from the Cuban-American National Foundation (the CANF) in the last election. Lieberman met with CANF officials during the election and pledged to support them. Today Lieberman made good on his promise when he and Helms co-sponsored a bill in Congress that would appropriate $100,000,000 in aid to Cuban dissidents. (Cuba e-news)
5/21	Florida net too wide in purge of voter rolls politics: Thousands were wrongfully called felons. -- Harry Sawyer, election supervisor in Key West, was stunned when Florida officials sent him a list of 150 convicted felons to cut from county voter rolls in mid-1999. Among those named: an election employee, another worker's husband--and Sawyer's own father. None was a felon. "It was just a mess," Sawyer said. (LA Times)
5/21	Urgent Action: Guatemala Harbury/Bamaca case: Threats to key witness and his children continue -- Please make calls and send letters to the Guatemalan Embassy on behalf of Otoniel De La Roca Mendoza and his children. The threats and intimidation against him and his family are escalating, and we fear that someone will be very seriously injured or worse.
5/21	Trade unions: workers unite on the internet -- A stimulating presentation at a recent gathering at the University of Toronto on the theme of union growth by Richard Freeman, professor of economics at Harvard University and the London School of Economics Centre for Economic Performance, may provide an escape route for unions. They believe unions can stage a comeback by the effective use of information technology. (Financial Times)
5/21	Group's goal: fair price for coffee -- Americans spend $18 billion a year on the 450 million cups of coffee they buy daily, while the average coffee farmer abroad earns less than $3 a day, according to the Boston-based poverty relief organization Oxfam. (Boston Globe)
5/21	Mourning coffee: World's leading java companies are raking in high profits but growers worldwide face ruin as prices sink to historic low -- The cost of a single cappuccino in the Bay Area is two bucks and rising, but you would never know it from the misery on the mountainsides where those coffee beans are grown. (San Francisco Chronicle)
5/21	Coffee with conscience: Fair Trade offers farmers a better deal, Network ensures cooperative farmers get paid higher price -- The 3 de Mayo cooperative is more or less typical for coffee farms. Lush hills, horrible roads, poverty. But there's also something out of place, something unusual. There's hope in the air. (San Francisco Chronicle)
5/21	Near-monopoly of retail market a key factor in windfall profits -- Coffee farmers around the world may be feeling the pinch, but there are boom times elsewhere in the business. U.S. corporations are making windfall profits on coffee -- Starbucks, for example, reported a 38 percent rise in profits this year, caused in part by decreased raw-materials cost and increased prices for its coffee drinks. (San Francisco Chronicle)
5/21	GM coffee seen as threat to poorer farmers -- Millions of small-holding coffee farmers could see their livelihoods destroyed by a genetically modified coffee being developed, a report published today claims. (Financial Times)
5/21	Coffee's bitter taste -- A cup of coffee in London or New York may cost as much as $3, roughly the equivalent of the net weekly income of a small coffee farmer in some African countries. Clearly, such a disparity between the price for consumers and producers' income is unjustifiable. At the first World Coffee Conference today, producer countries, leading coffee companies and consumer nations must make a co-ordinated effort to provide long-term solutions. (Financial Times)
5/21	Oxfam urges plan to aid world's coffee farmers -- British development agency Oxfam has called for a world initiative to help coffee farmers hit by a slump in international prices. Failure to tackle the crisis in the coffee market would consign millions of farmers and their families to extreme poverty, Oxfam said in a report released on Wednesday. (Reuters)
5/21	Bitter coffee: How the poor are paying for the slump in coffee prices -- (PDF 80kb) During the past year Oxfam has been monitoring the impact of falling coffee prices on communities across Africa and Latin America, talking to those most affected by the crisis. The picture that emerges is uniformly bleak. (Oxfam)
5/21	Robbing coffee's cradle - GM coffee and its threat to poor farmers -- (PDF 438kb) The coffee crop relied upon by more than 60 million people for all or part of their livelihood is under threat.i The market for this most valuable agricultural commodity has been volatile and fragile for decades, overproduction is crippling the coffee market and driving prices to all-time lows. Now industrial applications of GM coffee are poised to fundamentally change coffee production at the risk of putting millions of smallholder growers out of business. (ActionAid)
5/21	Hard pressed Guatemala coffee farmers demand credit -- Hundreds of small-scale coffee growers on the verge of bankruptcy marched on Guatemala's Congress on Monday to demand creation of a fund that would give them access to cheaper credit. (Reuters)
5/21	Tracing coffee's passage from Guatemala to coffee houses in this country, and how the fair trade movement could transform farmers' lives -- An international network of activists wants to see that wealth spread more evenly among coffee vendors, distributors and growers. And they say they've discovered a way for coffee drinkers to affect the global economy and transform farmers' lives, coffee with a special label marked Fair Trade. Daniel Zwerdling has this story for NPR News and American Radio Works. (National Public Radio Weekend Edition)
5/18	Starbucks is brewing Fair Trade certified coffee -- May 18, 2001, is the first day Starbucks is brewing Fair Trade Certified coffee in all its cafes as the Coffee of the Day, in recognition of Fair Trade Day May 19. In a time of great industry crisis, this is a victory for farmers who gain a fair price through Fair Trade. Now that they have brewed it as Coffee of the Day once in their cafes, we need to keep up the pressure. Demand that they brew Fair Trade Coffee of the Day at least once a week!
5/18	'Fair Trade' Coffee perking up life -- Loma Linda's 100 families are among a small number of coffee growers worldwide who benefit from the fair trade program. And in today's seriously depressed coffee market, it has been a godsend, paying them at least twice the price of regular coffee. (Chicago Tribune)
5/18	Coffee crisis begins to boil -- Hannah Waweru, a 90-year-old coffee farmer in Kenya's central highlands, can barely afford a cup of the drink she supplies to the developed world. (Financial Times)
5/17	Institutionalized electoral racism must go -- Thank you, Florida, for exposing as fraud the much-vaunted sanctity of the vote in this country and placing electoral reform back on the country's agenda. Reports indicate that black and Haitian American voters were harassed by police, their names removed from the rolls, and their ballots left uncounted by outdated machines. (Tom Paine)
5/17	With polls ebbing, Fox reviews first 6 months -- With uncharacteristic formality, the president emphasized that his government had advanced toward fulfilling its promises to end corruption; bring peace to Chiapas, the troubled state; restore public security; and consolidate the growing democracy. (New York Times)
5/17	Mexico to give survival kits to border jumpers -- If they can't stop illegal immigration to the United States, officials of the new Mexican government say their citizens at least shouldn't die in the process of trying. So starting next month, the administration of President Vicente Fox will distribute up to 200,000 survival kits to those planning to immigrate illegally to the United States this summer. (San Francisco Chronicle)
5/17	Mexican Church Warns Of Growing Paramilitary Presence In Chiapas -- The archdiocese of the Mexican town of San Cristobal, in Chiapas state, on Thursday warned that the influence and numbers of paramilitaries in the troubled region could increase due to the breakdown in peace talks between the government and Zapatista guerrillas. (EFE)
5/17	PRD calls for discussion of original draft of Indians Rights law -- Mexico's leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) will sponsor the original draft of an Indians Rights Law to Congress in an attempt to remove revisions to the measure added during the recent legislative process. (EFE)
5/17	Mexico to announce new strategy for peace in Chiapas -- Mexican government peace mediator Luis Hector Alvarez said Monday that the government will announce a new strategy to help meet the demands of indigenous people and Zapatista guerrillas in southern Mexico. (EFE)
5/16	Labor-rights group: Nike not living up to 1998 promises -- Three years ago, Nike chairman Phil Knight stood before the National Press Club and told the world he was so tired of labor-rights groups criticizing the athletic shoe company he founded that he was going to personally make sure conditions improved at Nike factories around the world. (AP)
5/16	Is Nike still doing it? -- San Francisco-based Global Exchange's 115-page report recounts six vows Knight made in a May 12, 1998 speech at the National Press Club, and charges that the Oregon-based athletic apparel corporation has failed to live up to either its words or their spirit. (Mother Jones)
5/16	Investigative report: Still waiting for Nike to do it -- In 1998 Nike founder Philip Knight promised to the public that his company would soon would soon undertake a series of reforms in its labor policies. Noting his company's products had become "synonymous with slave wages, forced overtime and arbitrary abuse," Knight announced that Nike would adopt new labor policies on health and safety, child labor, and independent monitoring, among other issues. Now, a detailed investigation by Global Exchange, titled "Still Waiting for Nike to Do It," shows that workers making Nike products continue to work for wages insufficient for supporting a family, are forced to work long overtime hours, and face harassment, violent intimidation and firing if they organize to defend their rights or tell journalists about abuses in their factories. (Global Exchange)
5/16	Mexico's Indians urge states to reject rights reform package -- Indian communities are urging state lawmakers to reject the final version of constitutional reforms for indigenous rights, saying the proposals have been too watered down. (Reuters)
5/16	Big donors enjoy greater access to Texas High Court, new report finds -- A new report analyzing appeals filed with the Texas Supreme Court from 1994 through 1998 concludes there is a direct correlation between the amount of money an appellant contributed to the justices and the likelihood that the appellant's case would be heard by the court.
5/15	South Africa offers help mediating peace with Colombia Rebels -- South Africa's deputy president said Monday his country was prepared to help Colombia negotiate its way out of a 37-year conflict -- including by serving as a mediator with leftist guerrillas. (AP)
5/14	Cuban hospitality: U.S. minorities take Castro up on offer of free med school -- Fidel Castro last year made an incredible pitch to low-income Americans: Come to Cuba, study medicine for free, become a doctor. (Dallas Morning News)
5/14	The fight for the Americas -- As tens of thousands gathered in Quebec City on the morning of April 21, 2001, preparing to march en masse in protest against the free-trade agenda of the Summit of the Americas, Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians electrified the crowd with her speech, responding to controversy around the aggressive tactics of some activists. (The Nation)
5/11	Oppose the nomination of Otto Reich! -- President Bush has nominated Otto Reich to the post of Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs. This is the highest ranking U.S. administration official for policy regarding North, South, and Central America. The nomination still faces confirmation by the Senate. The appointment of Otto Reich is dangerous for the people of Colombia and all of Latin America and the Caribbean. (Colombia Peace Project)
5/11	Journalism and democracy -- I understand "Unimpeachable Source" is now an oxymoron in Washington, as in "McCain Republican" or "Democratic Party." But once upon a time in a far away place--Washington in the 1960s--I was one. Deep Backgrounders and Unattributable Tips were my drugs of choice. (Bill Moyers)
5/10	IMC on the FTAA: The only place you saw the truth -- Last month, as the corporate media churned out predictable misinformation, the Independent Media Center provided a voice for a diverse group of people mobilizing across the hemisphere against the FTAA and the so-called Summit of the Americas. Corporate media, by contrast, spent as little time as they could get away with on the subject. (San Francisco Bay Guardian)
5/10	Jury tampering: The legacy of Texas 'Tort Reform' comes to Washington -- Citizens charmed by George W. Bush's approach to economics (them that has gets, the rest can form a line) or the environment (smoke gets in your eyes, arsenic in your water) should be equally engaged by the former Texas governor's approach to "reforming" the legal system: never trust a jury. (Tom Paine)
5/9	The real energy solution -- Ronald Reagan, bless his perpetually wagging head, had a childlike devotion to the notion that "deregulation" was the castor oil of the American economy. From S&Ls to airlines, from telecommunications to energy, just give corporations a big dose of Dr. Reagan's deregulation elixir and, by golly, the system would miraculously unclog. He liked to call it "the magic of the marketplace." (Alternet)
5/8	Cuban tourism boom fuels growth, social problems -- Tourism, the new linchpin of Cuba's fragile economy, grew 12 percent in the first four months, leaving the Caribbean island on target for a record 2 million visitors in 2001, Havana said Monday. (Reuters)
5/8	The Times and the FTAA -- For some reason last Friday night, I was home watching "Washington Week" on PBS, perhaps the most insipid political talk show in the country, the one where reporters ask other reporters questions whose answers they already know. (The Progressive)
5/8	Bush warns of 'new kind of protectionism' -- President Bush warned Monday the drive to attach labor and environmental standards to trade deals represents a "new kind of protectionism" that is hampering his ability to pursue open trade. In a nine-minute speech to the Council of the Americas, an influential business group, Bush urged Congress to give him the trade negotiating authority he needs to pursue a free trade agreement among North and South American nations. (Reuters)
5/7	Bush Calls More Open Trade a 'Moral Imperative' for U.S. -- Renewing his quest for wider trade-negotiating authority from Congress, President Bush said today that open trade was not just an avenue for greater prosperity but was "a moral imperative" for the United States. (New York Times)
5/7	Florida lawmakers approve election system overhaul -- Florida legislators overwhelmingly approved today a wide-ranging package of changes in the state's election system, outlawing the punch-card ballot system blamed for much of the chaos that delayed the outcome of the 2000 presidential election. (Washington Post)
5/7	Tribunal Internacional juzga crímenes contra los sin tierra -- El gobierno de Paraná fue encontrado culpable, por unanimidad, de violación a los derechos humanos. Este es el veredicto que dictó el "Tribunal Internacional de los Crímenes del Latifundio y de la Política Gubernamental de Violación de los Derechos Humanos en Paraná", que se realizó en Curitiba, Brasil, el 1 y 2 de mayo.
5/7	Free Trade? Someone always has to pay -- To hear the punditry tell it, the protesters who turned out in Quebec a few weeks ago and, more recently, at the International Monetary Fund meeting in Washington on Apr. 28-29, are largely irrelevant to the debate over free trade. A serious force for change? Not this ragtag bunch. (Business Week)
5/7	Declaration by the National Indigenous Congress about the Law of Indigenous Rights -- WHEREAS 509 years of history have signified nothing but exploitation, discrimination, and misery to our peoples, who are the primordial inhabitants of this nation; and whereas this Mexican Nation, born from our seed and heart, was built by powerful rulers in denial of our existence and of our supreme right to walk along our own path... (Indigenous National Congress)
5/7	Globalize democracy -- American arrogance and power is obvious to the rest of the world, leading to fears of us as a "rogue state". Under corporate mind management, many Americans believe otherwise. But recent actions give us cause to wonder about ourselves. (Coastal Post)
5/4	Summary of the Saipan sweatshop litigation -- Here's the latest update on the Saipan lawsuit from our lawyers. The struggle continues. Keep pressuring the GAP, JC Penney, Lane Bryant, Dayton Hudson, Abercrombie and Fitch and Levis!
5/4	Achievements of the Landless Workers' Movement in Brazil -- The achievements of the Landless Workers' Movement in Brazil since the collapse of the military dictatorship have been truly inspiring, not only in spearheading the struggles for the rights of the dispossessed in a country with enormous riches tainted by a shocking concentration of wealth and land ownership, but also in helping to construct the basis for a productive and more just society.
5/3	Treason in Congress -- A long-awaited Indian rights measure passed by Mexico's lower house of Treason has been finally accomplished. The Congress of the Union has turned its back on the Indian peoples by passing a Law of Indigenous Rights that violates the San Andrés Accords and casts doubt over Vicente Fox's willingness for peace, as well as that of the legislators of every political party. (La Jornada)
5/3	President Fox challenges detractors of the Indian Rights Law to offer proposals -- President Vicente Fox called the Indian Rights Law, passed by the Congress on Saturday, a "great step forward, a giant step" towards achieving peace in Chiapas. Before mounting his horse at his ranch in San Cristobal, he affirmed that he would keep working as long as needed to resolve the conflict. (La Jornada)
5/3	Indigenous Law proposal approved by Senate: One step forward, two steps back -- The constitutional changes regarding indigenous issues which were approved by the Senate of the Republic - along with the vote of all the parties, to the shame of the PRD - is closer to the Zedillo Law than to the Cocopa Law in its fundamental aspects. (La Jornada)
5/3	Learn from Cuba, World Bank says -- World Bank President James Wolfensohn Monday extolled the Communist government of President Fidel Castro for doing "a great job" in providing for the social welfare of the Cuban people.
5/3	Thanh Phong Village Fund Established -- PRESS RELEASE -- Global Exchange, a non-profit human rights organization in San Francisco, has announced the establishment of a peace and reconciliation fund for the families of survivors of the Thanh Phong Village massacre. Former U.S. Senator Bob Kerrey's recent revelation of his role in the killing of some 13 unarmed women and children in the village in 1969 has focused world attention on the small hamlet in Vietnam.
5/3	Report Calls for UN, IMF Overhaul -- The United Nations, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund are outdated institutions that need to be overhauled, a U.N. think tank said Wednesday. The three organizations, set up at the end of World War II, have not changed despite the end of the Cold War and a move toward globalization, the United Nations University report said.
5/2	World Bank land reforms collide with civil society -- As they seize, occupy and farm idle lands, poor communities in developing countries are placing land reform on the international policy agenda. But market-assisted land reforms, championed by institutions such as the World Bank, are threatening sustainable land redistribution in a growing number of countries, a food and development policy non-governmental group here warns.
5/1	Rebels Reject Indigenous Bill -- Mexico's Zapatista rebels broke off all contacts with the government Monday and called upon supporters to protest against an Indian rights bill that he says fails to meet rebels' demands. (The Guardian)
5/1	Measure on Mexican Indians' Rights gets mixed reviews -- A long-awaited Indian rights measure passed by Mexico's lower house of Congress was received today as a reasonable compromise by its supporters and a dangerous "deception" by its critics. (Washington Post)
5/1	EZLN Communiques -- The communique' is off. So the "unholy trinity" (which, as its name indicates, is made up of four: Diego, Jackson, Chucho and Bartlett) have been up to their old tricks in the Senate? The war in Chiapas doesn't matter to them? Of course it matters! That's why they drew up this reform. (EZLN)
5/1	Constitutional denial -- The constitutional denial of Indigenous claims and fundamental rights is deeply rooted in the history of our country. In 1824 the first constitution, the same that gave birth to the present Mexican State, actually treated us as foreigners. (La Jornada)
5/1	Eight Americans in Havana are medical students with a mission -- With 10 days' notice, they walked away from their lives. They were eight Americans--all twentysomething, all low-income minorities and all now committed to spending the next six years in Communist-led Cuba. Their mission: to become doctors for America's urban and rural poor in an exchange program that is both pioneering and politically charged. (LA Times)
4/30	Labor leaders joining forces in opposition to trade plan -- The nation's labor unions are joining with their international counterparts in an escalating campaign to fight President Bush's efforts to create a free trade zone throughout the Western Hemisphere. (New York Times)
4/27	U.S. Pondered Faking Blast, Blaming Castro -- Seeking a pretext to invade Cuba, senior U.S. administration officials under the late president John Kennedy contemplated blowing up a U.S. navy ship in Guantanamo Bay, faking casualties and blaming it on Cuban President Fidel Castro, declassified papers show. (Associated Press)
4/26	Amnesty International USA Sues CIA for Information About Colombia's Notorious 'Pepes' -- Amnesty International USA (AIUSA) today filed a lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in an effort to obtain all records which mention or relate to the paramilitary death squad know as "Los Pepes" (Perseguidos por Pablo Escobar, or People Persecuted by Pablo Escobar).
4/26	Indian Rights Bill Gains Victory -- A sweeping Indian rights bill meant to help end the Zapatista rebellion in southern Mexico has gained its first major victory. Mexico's Senate approved the proposed constitutional change in a unanimous vote Wednesday. (AP)
4/25	Urgent Action: Violence in Paraná State -- Please send letters of support to the International Tribunal on the Crimes Against Landless Workers in Paraná state, which will take place on May 2. Paraná has been one of the Brazilian states with the greatest levels of human rights violations against rural workers. On May 2, approximately 1,500 rural workers were brutally attacked by the police, on their way to the state capital, Curitiba.
4/25	Fair Trade Coffee Puts Farmer Grievances At Top Of Agenda -- Ah coffee -- that wonderful black swill loved by students and professionals alike. Every morning it tempts you with promises of good mood and energy -- a warm caffeine-filled hug to help you get started on your day. It is the second most valuable, globally-traded commodity behind petroleum and it employs over 20 million farmers and workers in over 50 countries. (McGill Tribune)
4/25	Human Rights Delegation to Guerrero: June 2-10, 2001 -- As the world focuses on the conflict in Chiapas, another war is being waged in Southern Mexico in the state of Guerrero. Over the past 11 years over 600 activists from various democratic organizations have been murdered or disappeared within the state. (Global Exchange)
4/24	Protests A Success Of Sorts -- Those who want to dismantle the global trading system are unlikely to prevail, and they may fail to prevent the FTAA from coming to fruition. But the protesters and their sympathizers, especially in the labor and environmental movements, are forcing the powers that be to confront some of the issues they are raising and change a number of the system's rules. (Washington Post)
4/23	At Free-Trade Summit, Bush Needs To Win Over Brazil -- Across the Western Hemisphere, millions of people like Mendonca and Bailey are voicing such concerns as their governments negotiate a U.S.-sponsored plan to create the world's biggest free-trade zone -- one that would link markets of 800 million people from the Arctic to Argentina. (AP)
4/22	In Quebec's Streets, Fervor, Fears and a Gamut of Issues -- The old streets of the city were mobbed for a second day yesterday with people protesting the proceedings of the third Summit of the Americas. (New York Times)
4/22	Colombia Massacre Warnings Unheeded -- As searchers comb mountain hamlets for the bodies of those killed in an Easter week chain saw massacre, fresh charges have surfaced that Colombia's U.S.-backed military is turning a blind eye to rightist paramilitary violence. (AP)
4/20	For Activists Today, It's Marks, Not Marx -- The door of Bernard Pollack's apartment at George Washington University is covered with "No More NAFTAs" signs. You knock, ready to meet a campus hippie. Instead, Pollack is wearing a dress shirt and tie, hair neatly combed behind his ears. (Washington Post)
4/19	Nothing 'Free' About Expanded Trade Agreement -- As the Summit of the Americas convenes -- and protesters converge -- on Quebec today, a central focus of both groups will be the misnamed "Free Trade Area of the Americas." We say "misnamed" because the proposed agreement has little to do with trade and even less to do with freedom -- at least the freedom of people. (Houston Chronicle)
4/19	"The Chainsaw Massacre" is not a movie in Colombia -- "The Chainsaw Massacre is not a film in Colombia," said government ombudsman Eduardo Cifuentes, referring to the April 12 paramilitary massacre in Alto Naya, 650 kilometers (404 miles) southeast of here. (Agence France Presse)
4/19	Drug War's Secret Alliance/Right-wing Gunmen Say U.S.-backed Government Troops Helping Them Drive Rebels From Colombian Coca Fields -- The U.S.-backed campaign to eradicate drug production in this nation's cocaine heartland is being carried out with the covert cooperation of paramilitary warlords, according to paramilitary leaders. (SF Chronicle)
4/19	U.S. and Europeans Agree on Deal to End Banana Trade War -- The United States and the European Union reached an agreement yesterday that ends a costly trade war over European banana imports, a dispute that pushed Chiquita Brands International to the brink of bankruptcy and led to punitive tariffs on a range of European goods. (New York Times)
4/18	Human Rights Watch Blasts NAFTA Labor Accord -- Mexico, the United States, and Canada have ignored critically important labor rights obligations under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Human Rights Watch said in a comprehensive new study released today. (Human Rights Watch)
4/16	NAFTA Lite? Hemisphere-Wide Trade Pact Faces Opposition From Brazil to Capitol Hill -- Oh, what a giddy moment it was in the history of globalization when the leaders of the United States and 33 other Western Hemisphere countries gathered in Miami 6 1/2 years ago for the first "Summit of the Americas." (Washington Post)
4/13	Free Trade Agreement Of The Americas Bodes Global Resource War If Mexico's Experience Is Any Measure -- Bhopal came to Cordoba Veracruz nearly ten years ago next month -- but outside of the damaged and dying citizens of this industrial city 150 kilometers east of Mexico City, the world has taken little notice. (John Ross)
4/10	'Wall of Shame' -- Quebec is putting up a new wall to separate Canadians from national leaders who will attend the Summit of the Americas here on April 20 to 22. Thousands of police officers are coming to back up what is being called Quebec's "wall of shame," and many Canadians are asking whether such separation is necessary, or is anti-democratic overkill, infringing not only on the rights of protesters but also on the character of a country known for tolerance and civility. (New York Times)
4/10	Americas ministers set 2005 FTAA deadline -- Western Hemisphere trade officials, after a week of intense negotiation, on Saturday set Jan. 1, 2005 as a target date for reaching an agreement to create the world's largest free trade zone stretching from Canada to Chile. In an unprecedented move, top trade officials representing 34 nations in North and South America and the Caribbean, also pledged to release the current draft text of the pact in response to labor, environment and consumer advocacy groups' calls for transparency in trade negotiations. (Reuters)
4/9	Lawyers shun summit -- Quebec prosecutors are threatening to quit a special eight-member team set up by the provincial government to prosecute protesters arrested at the Summit of the Americas this month. (Montreal Gazette)
4/5	Argentine groups ready protests for FTAA meeting -- Argentine groups ranging from labor unions to student organizations said Tuesday they were preparing a rough welcome for ministers arriving in the capital this week for talks on a pan-American free-trade deal. (Reuters)
4/5	Canadians Sue Over NAFTA Bias Clause -- Canadian activists and labor leaders Wednesday filed a constitutional challenge to a controversial clause in the North American Free Trade Agreement that allows private firms to sue governments over alleged trade discrimination. (Los Angeles Times)
4/5	Cuba Welcomes U.S. Med Students to Free Six-Year Program -- A U.S. flag was flown and "The Star-Spangled Banner" played yesterday as Cuba welcomed eight U.S. citizens here to study medicine courtesy of the communist government. (AP)
4/5	Cuba Medical School Welcomes 8 Americans -- The first American students who will study medicine courtesy of Cuba's communist government were welcomed Wednesday to the Latin American School of Medicine with the music of the U.S. national anthem. (Sun Sentinel)
4/3	Caribbean Banana Earnings Slip: Farmers In The Windward Islands Plan -- Amid increasingconcern over the future oftheir preferential access to the European market, banana exporters in the Windward Islands have seen their problems compounded by a fall in income from sales to the European Union. (Financial Times)
4/3	The FTAA Places Corporate Rights Above Human Rights. -- Global Exchange Position on the FTAA.
4/3	The Banana Wars; Solving The U.S.-EU Trade Dispute -- The European Union has finally committed to an open and competitive banana market. In January it passed a law to open the banana market no later than Jan. 1, 2006. Dole applauds this step. The United States has long wanted it. So have we. (Washington Times)
3/30	Zapatista Leaders Make Their Case to Mexico's Congress -- In an act of political theater that brought Mexico's fledgling civil rights movement center stage, masked commanders of the rebel Zapatistas took the floor of Congress today to defend a proposed constitutional amendment guaranteeing new rights for the country's 10 million Indians. (New York Times)
3/29	Zapatistas Dance of Democracy Picks Up Tempo -- The Zapatistas are dancing with the future of Mexico. In a last-minute effort to salvage peace, the Mexican Congress has agreed to receive a delegation from the rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army. Today, for the first time in history, masked but unarmed rebels will appear before Congress.
3/29	22 Convicted of Harassing Workers -- "But it's not an acceptable outcome to have people walk free. They will pay some money and don't serve time in jail, and on the other side of the equation, you have five families whose lives have been destroyed." (Miami Herald)
3/29	Big Business At Your Service -- WTO rules could force governments to privatise their basic functions. The United States does not grow many bananas. Yet under a virtually unknown trade agreement it won a case challenging the European Union's support for small Caribbean banana producers. The dispute was initiated under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (Gats), after pressure from banana-growing multinationals and a large donation from Chiquita to the Democratic party in the US. (Guardian)
3/29	Guatemalan Rights Probe Tied To Trade -- The U.S. Trade Representative held hearings Friday on worker rights and union intimidation in Guatemala, a closely watched case that marks the first time the government office has initiated a probe that might result in suspending trade benefits. (Miami Herald)
3/27	Brazil Flexes New Muscle in Another Trade Fight -- First came a bitter trade dispute with Canada in which President Fernando Henrique Cardoso threatened, "If they want war, then war is war." Now Brazil's leaders are standing firm on another trade-related foreign policy issue, this time with the United States. (New York Times)
3/27	Stop the Big Business Raid on the San Francisco Budget! -- The biggest corporations in San Francisco -- PG&E, Chevron, Bechtel, Gap, Levi Strauss, General Motors, Eastman Kodak, Safeway, Charles Schwab, Hearst Corporation, Giants, Macy's, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Shorenstein, Pacific Bell, among many others -- are pursuing a lawsuit against the people of San Francisco. These corporations do not want to pay business taxes. If they get their way, San Francisco city government could lose over $250 million a year, and be forced to pay back taxes of $800 million or more. (SF People's Budget Collaborative)
3/26	Groups Gear Up to Battle Hemispheric Pact -- Environmental and labor groups that took to the streets of Seattle two years ago to protest global corporate power are preparing for a new clash over a far-reaching free-trade agreement for the Western Hemisphere. (LA Times)
3/26	Trip to Guerrero Bronco: Where The Gun Is As Common As The Belt -- Executions, kidnappings, assault, revenge... This is not the news of the first few days of 2001 in Guerrero; but rather the interminable story of a state forgotten by the Federation of Mexico. The region is home to 13 of the 100 poorest municipalities in the country, where for decades political corruption has erected an empire of impunity, where the poor left behind intermix with economic empires and political strongmen, and where AK-47 bullets are the law of the land. (La Jornada)
3/22	Brazil Ready To Block FTAA Start -- Brazil is prepared to unilaterally block the early start of the hemisphere-wide Free Trade Area of the Americas, Foreign Minister Celso Lafer said Thursday. (Associated Press)
3/23	Copter Stoppers -- Just before dawn on February 12, two dozen people lined up at the main gate of Sikorsky Aircraft, a defense contractor based here, and blocked the main entrance to the plant. Across the street, 75 people held banners proclaiming "Sikorsky kills Colombians." (In These Times)
3/23	Sign-on from Third World Network: Tell IMF to Leave Asia Alone -- The Chiangmai Initiative, a move designed to establish an Asian financial facility to provide assistance to countries whose currencies are under attack, is in danger of unravelling.
3/23	September 2001 Mobilization! -- The IMF and World Bank will be holding their Joint Annual General Meetings in Washington, DC from September 28 to October 4, 2001. We call on activists from all over the world to come to Washington during that week to protest and expose the illegitimacy of the institutions and officials who continue to claim the right to determine the course of the world economy.
3/23	U.N.: Grave Human Rights Violations In Colombia -- Massacres, kidnappings and torture led to "grave, massive and systematic" violations of human rights in Colombia last year, the U.N. rights chief said in a report Tuesday. (Associated Press)
3/23	Argentina Struggles To Contain Political Fallout From Austerity Plan -- The Argentine government found itself Monday struggling to contain political fallout from the announcement three days earlier of major public spending cuts, as the first protesters took to the streets. (Associated Foreign Press)
3/23	Waging Chemical Warfare in Colombia -- In the name of the war on drugs, the United States is spraying hundreds of square miles in Colombia with tons of herbicide in a grotesque magnification of a crop-eradication program that no prudent backyard gardeners would use on their suburban quarter-acre. (Washington Post)
3/23	Bush Changing Plan To Fight Drugs In Colombia -- In testimony before the House budget panel Powell argued it was not enough to destroy Colombia's coca crops. "We have to provide alternative sources of income, alternative crops, democracy, nation building, preparation of military and police forces to handle the kind of challenges they face in the Andean region," he said. (United Press International)
3/23	Mexico Congress Offers Rebels Forum -- Signaling a possible breakthrough in the country's stalled peace process, Zapatista rebels on Thursday accepted an invitation from Mexico's Congress to speak before lawmakers to promote an Indian rights bill. (Associated Press)
3/22	Zapatista Rebels Say They Will Leave Mexico City -- Blaming "caveman politicians" for failing to act quickly on an Indian rights bill or to let them address Congress, the Zapatista rebels announced Monday that they will head back to their jungle strongholds this week. (Associated Press)
3/22	Cuban-Americans covet Latam post in Bush government -- The likely nomination of a conservative Cuban American to the top Latin America policy job in the Bush administration has Cuban exiles overjoyed and Liberal Democrats up in arms. (Reuters)
3/22	Kuk Dong Workers Establish an Independent Union -- Kuk Dong Workers Establish Independent Union -- participants suffered no reprisals for their meeting last Sunday.
3/19	Communiqué from the Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee -- Ever since the EZLN made public its decision to march to Mexico City, it has been clear about the march's objectives.
3/20	Starbucks To Change Milk Product -- Starbucks Coffee Co. has begun efforts to serve only milk free of genetically modified ingredients such as bovine growth hormone, the company president said Friday. (Associated Press)
3/20	Local Coffee Sellers Offer a Fair Trade Brew -- The Fair Trade coffee movement is catching on in Santa Cruz County, in an attempt to give Third World farmers a living wage for the coffee beans they grow. (Santa Cruz Sentinel)
3/20	Flying the Fast Lane to Havana -- Weekly charter from L.A. is easy and legal, but old rules keep most Americans underground. (LA Times)
3/20	Armed Conflict Frightens Investors -- Investment is scared off by the state's intractable struggle with various powerful armed groups; the financial sector is still dogged by weak balance sheets and is reluctant to lend; and exporters are perturbed by the threat of recession in the US, Colombia's biggest trade partner. (Financial Times)
3/20	Media, Legislators, Research Spur Rethinking of Drug War -- For years, government has fought the war on illegal drugs with a steely focus on the supply: destroying crops, intercepting shipments, jailing smugglers, arresting dealers. And for years, Congress wasn't swayed by critics such as Sen. Paul Wellstone and Rep. Jim Ramstad, who argued that equal effort be focused on demand -- including drug and alcohol treatment. (Houston Chronicle)
3/19	AFL-CIO Statement: Global Fairness and the Free Trade Area of the Americas -- Last year, the AFL-CIO launched an ambitious Campaign for Global Fairness -- a multi-year, multi-issue campaign to build international solidarity, educate our members, incorporate workers' rights into international trade and investment agreements, and hold corporations accountable for their actions globally and locally.
3/16	Cuba Sanctions Needed, Powell Says -- U.S. sanctions against Cuba should stay as long as President Fidel Castro is in power, with the exception of money transfers that bypass the government, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Wednesday. (Reuters)
3/16	More U.S. Aid Sought for Cuban Dissidents -- Anti-Castro activists hope Bush will boost grants, which critics call ineffective. (Washington Post)
3/14	Zapatista Rebels Rally in Mexico City: 2-Week Trek Culminates in Rally for Indian Rights in Mexico City -- The Zapatista rebels took their cry for Indian rights to the heart of Mexico's capital today, as roughly 100,000 supporters filled the city square for an act of political theater that has transfixed the nation. (New York Times)
3/14	Words of the EZLN -- When we say "we are," we are also saying "we are not" and "we shall not be." That is why it is good for those who, up above, are money and the ones who peddle it, to take note of the word, to listen to it carefully, and to look with care at what they do not want to see.
3/13	Misery Without Borders -- California's army of migrant farm workers has become the latest high-risk group for HIV infection, carrying the AIDS epidemic back to Mexican villages that will soon be facing a full-blown public health emergency. (East Bay Express)
3/12	Nafta's Powerful Little Secret -- Their meetings are secret. Their members are generally unknown. The decisions they reach need not be fully disclosed. Yet the way a small group of international tribunals handles disputes between investors and foreign governments has led to national laws being revoked, justice systems questioned and environmental regulations challenged. And it is all in the name of protecting the rights of foreign investors under the North American Free Trade Agreement. (New York Times)
3/9	Gangster Union "Wins" In Rio Bravo -- On March 2, in a government-run union election, the workers at Duro Bag Company in Rio Bravo, Tamaulipas, Mexico were robbed of their legal, constitutional and human right to be represented by a union of their own choosing. The election was blatantly undemocratic.
3/9	US Congressional Commission Pushes for Deeper IMF, World Bank Reforms -- Members of a US congressional commission which last year recommended radical reforms at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) have urged the new Bush administration to push for deeper reforms at the institutions. (Inter Press Service)
3/8	San Francisco Labor Council Passes Resolution on FTAA -- Whereas: A "Summit of the America's" of all Western Hemisphere countries, excluding Cuba, will convene April 18-22 in Quebec City, Quebec, to further negotiations on the Free Trade Area of the Americas... (San Francisco Labor Council)
3/8	U.S. Trade Representative Sued for Hiding Documents -- An environmental group filed suit Wednesday to force the Bush administration to release U.S. negotiating documents for a proposed free trade agreement covering most of the Western Hemisphere. (Reuters)
3/8	Brazil Dances To Its Own Tune On Free Trade Timeline -- Hope springs eternal for free trade advocates across the Americas now that a new administration is in Washington. But one of the key players in the talks to create a hemisphere-wide zone of free-flowing goods and services has something to say about just how quickly such an agreement should be put into place. (Dow Jones Newswires)
3/7	Gap Campaign Update
3/7	Schakowsky's Statement on Plan Colombia Before Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources -- I have stated on numerous occasions that our current policy toward Colombia and the billions of dollars we are poised to spend in addition to the over $1 billion appropriated last year will not achieve the stated goal of reducing the flow of illegal drugs to the United States.
3/6	Americas Trade Pact In Doubt -- With the Summit of the Americas less than seven weeks away, evidence is building that negotiations toward a hemispheric free- trade area are coming unglued. (Globe and Mail)
3/1	MIT Graduate Student Jonah Peretti and Vada Manager, Director of Global Issues Management at Nike, Discuss Sweatshop Controversy and Personalization of Nike Shoes -- There's a new gimmick on the Nike Web site that's been getting lots of attention lately. The sportswear manufacturer has a program called Nike ID that lets people design and personalize their own shoes. Well, recently, an MIT graduate student ordered shoes, but the company refused to fill the order. The reason? He asked for the word 'sweatshop' to be stitched on the side. (Today Show)
2/28	Profits Raise Pressures on U.S.-Owned Factories in Mexican Border Zone (part 2) -- This is the second of a two-part series in the New York Times examining the maquiladora industry along the US-Mexican border.
2/28	Chasing Mexico's Dream Into Squalor (part 1) -- This is the first of a two-part series in the New York Times examining the maquiladora industry along the US-Mexican border.
2/28	U.S. Bars Cuban Envoy From University Lecture -- The United States has barred a senior Cuban U.N. envoy from delivering a lecture on "Cuba after Castro" at a Pennsylvania university, saying the speech was unrelated to his diplomatic duties.
2/28	Greenwashing on Trial -- In a lawsuit that could have far-reaching implications for corporate "greenwashing" campaigns, a San Francisco man will soon take on Nike Inc. over its public claims about conditions in its Asian factories -- factories which the company's critics call sweatshops.
2/28	Update from struggle at Kuk Dong factory in Atlixco de Puebla, Mexico -- Thirty-nine Kuk Dong workers, including two of the leaders of the independent union organizing effort whose illegal firings precipitated the original strike at Kuk Dong in early January, arrived at the factory early this morning to demand their unconditional reinstatement.
2/26	Announcing the International Gender and Trade Network -- The International Gender and Trade Network is made up of seven regional networks (Africa, Asia, Caribbean, Europe, Latin America, North America, and Pacific) of gender advocates involved in research, advocacy and economic literacy around issues of trade and development.
2/26	Abuse Rife in Indonesian Nike Plants -- Sexual and verbal harassment, limited access to medical care and compulsory overtime are commonplace in Indonesian factories making goods for the US clothing and footwear giant Nike, according to a report released yesterday.
2/26	Mexican Rebels Begin Protest March to the Capital -- Piling into a caravan of vans, trucks and buses accompanied by human rights monitors and foreign sympathizers, the Zapatista rebels set off today from this colonial town where their insurrection began seven years ago on what they called a March for Dignity.
2/25	Rebels Start March to Capital -- A caravan carrying 24 masked but unarmed commanders of the rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) left San Cristobal de las Casas in the southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas on Feb. 25 to begin an unprecedented march on Mexico City.
2/25	Under a New Moon, Resurgent Zapatistas Launch Risky 12 State Trek to Mexico City for Indian Rights -- The Denver Colorado cafe was packed to the rafters on a snowy Saturday night, all eyes glued to the video screen where raw footage of the New Year's eve takeover of a Chiapas military base by Zapatista rebels was being displayed. Cheers erupted as the unarmed but ski-masked Indians pushed aside the automatic weapons of the troops and declared the camp closed.
2/21	Kukdong Update -- On February 6, around 70 workers who showed up to return to work were made to sign their affiliation to the CROC and then told by human resources that the company would get back to them after reviewing their files, since "nobody could be trusted," and that the company would only hire those workers that were "convenient."
2/21	Nike Failing to Secure Fundamental Rights at Mexican Factory -- Reports from Mexico indicate that a campaign of intimidation and reprisals against the independent union is still in effect at the Kuk Dong factory in Mexico, a supplier of Nike, Reebok, and U.S. Universities.
2/21	Make Your Mark On Our Trainers? Sure, No Sweat -- Mr. Peretti had been intrigued by Nike's on-line service that allows you to customise your own shoe. "It's about freedom to choose and freedom to express who you are," reads the website, "It's about time you had a say in what you're wearing. MAKE YOUR MARK!" Mr. Peretti thought he would, so he sent off an order for a pair of Zoom XC USA running shoes, and asked them to stitch the word "sweatshop" just below the Nike swoosh.
2/21	Nike Acknowledges Abuses in Indonesian Plants -- Image-savvy Nike, the world's leading athletic shoe and apparel seller, will release a report on Thursday detailing how its Indonesian factory workers are sexually and verbally harassed, have limited access to health care and are forced to work overtime.
2/21	Quebec City Crackdown -- Aside from the Summit's usual declarations on security and terrorism, human rights and democracy, the main focus of this year's meeting will be to finalize the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) agreement.
2/21	President Orders Intervention in Favor of Montiel and Cabrera -- The President of Mexico, Vicente Fox Quesada, has ordered the Secretary of the Interior, Santiago Creel Miranda, to intervene in favor of the rural workers Rodolfo Montiel Flores and Teodoro Cabrera Garcia, imprisoned since May 2, 1999. The two men were arrested due to a conflict over environmental protection of the Petatlan and Coyuca mountain ranges in the state of Guerrero.
2/21	Brazil's MST: Taking Back the Land -- Eron Domingos de Rocha used to work in a shoe factory in the Franca district of Sao Paolo. He earned 220 reales a month there (about US$110) -- not enough, he says, to "allow you to survive." Then he met an organizer with Brazil's Landless Workers Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra -- MST), who convinced him that there was a better way of life.
2/21	Colombia's Neutral Find No Peace -- The small hand-painted sign at the entrance to this remote mountain village is the first clue to the hope, frustration, and defiance within. "We say 'no' to injustice," reads the sign nailed to two tree branches next to the bumpy dirt road that leads into town. "We don't carry arms or participate with any armed actors."
2/21	It's Government by and for U.S. Corporations and Their Values -- One might argue from history -- the 19th century Populist movement, the 20th century progressives and the New Deal -- that the government's takeover by business interests is normal and cyclical, with a "progressive" or liberal reform counteraction foreseeable in 2004 or 2008.
2/21	Sweatshops Still In Business: Reform Law Fails To Slow Abuse By Garment Makers -- In the year since Gov. Gray Davis signed a bill that was supposed to curtail sweatshop abuses in California, clothing makers are violating wage laws at an even higher rate.
2/16	Oil Rigged -- The public face of U.S. policy toward Colombia has long been the war on drugs. Colombia, according to widely reported CIA estimates, produces 90 percent of the U.S. cocaine supply and 65 percent of U.S. heroin imports. U.S. officials say the aim of Plan Colombia, a $1.3 billion aid package signed by President Clinton last year, is fighting "narco-guerrillas" and eradicating coca crops. But that's just part of the agenda. Plan Colombia is also about oil.
2/15	Mexico-USA: The Agenda -- The new presidents of Mexico and the United States of America have taken office at the same time. The most striking difference is that Vicente Fox has reached the presidency with a clear popular mandate, while George W. Bush has entered the White House under a cloud of suspicion, having lost the popular vote and gained the presidency thanks to a five-four vote by the Supreme Court.
2/15	Profits Raise Pressures on U.S.-Owned Factories in Mexican Border Zone -- Juan Tovar Santos, an assembly- line worker in this border city, will not forget the time he traveled to Alcoa's annual shareholders meeting in Pittsburgh and confronted the chief executive about working conditions in Alcoa factories here.
2/15	Chasing Mexico's Dream Into Squalor -- Often looking as if he had slept in his clothes, Salvador Durón does not cut the most distinguished figure. But even with his gray stubble and grease-stained fingers, he is welcomed like a king into the shantytowns at the edge of this teeming city on the border with the United States.
2/14	Sugar's First Family -- With 600,000 acres of sugar cane fields and sugar mills producing 1.8 million tons of raw sugar every year, the state of Florida provides a quarter of the sugar produced in the United States. Louisiana, Hawaii, and Texas are also sugar cane states, but none of them surpasses Florida.
2/14	Let Yankee Tourists Shower Dollars On Cuba's Poor -- In her final press conference as Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright's message to the Cuban people was succinct. In reference to the aging Fidel Castro she said, "I wish them the actuarial tables." It was an odd statement on behalf of a superpower that could have used the previous eight years to exercise considerable influence on its small island neighbor.
2/13	EZLN Communique -- The Mexico Solidarity Network sponsors a delegation of international accompaniment for the Zapatista March to Mexico City from February 24 to March 10, 2001. With this historic journey, indigenous people throughout Mexico will raise a banner for dignity, respect and justice. The MSN will organize ground transportation and lodging for people looking to travel along side the caravan.
2/13	EZLN Communique with Itinerary -- The CCRI-CG of the EZLN is releasing the details of the route it will be following to Mexico City during the months of February and March, 2001. As you will see, the route will take in the territory of 2 more states of the federation: Guanajuato and Guerrero.
2/13	A Plea For Peace -- I am a former governor of Choco, the most impoverished department of Colombia. In 1998, I tried to declare Choco a neutral zone, a territory of peace, free from the combat ravaging my country. Because of my work for peace, I was kidnapped by people who identified themselves as paramilitaries. Death threats were leveled at my family and me. Fearing for our lives, we fled to the United States in July 2000. We now live here in exile.
2/13	Colombia Set For Peace Talks -- Smiling as he shared the microphone with a camouflage-clad guerrilla commander, President Andres Pastrana announced Friday that stalled peace talks with the nation's largest rebel army would resume next week.
2/13	New York Times Covering for Colombian Death Squads -- The human rights situation in Colombia is in a state of "alarming degradation," according to United Nations human rights observers (Associated Press, 1/20/01), but you won't learn about it in the New York Times.
2/13	Free Trade Area of the Americas: Argentine Foreign Minister Recognizes -- In a meeting held on Wednesday, 15 November, with a broad delegation of Argentine civil-society organizations led by Nobel Prize Winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Foreign Minister Adalberto Rodríguez Giavarini acknowledged society's right to know what is being negotiated in the creation of the Free Trade Area of the Americas and to influence that process democratically.
2/11	Report On The World Social Forum -- The first meeting of the World Social Forum/World Anti-Davos Forum (WSF) was held in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande del Sul, Brasil, from January 25-30, 2001. The WSF was a response to the secretive high-level meetings held annually in Davos, Switzerland between business leaders and government.
2/10	Frontline: Interview with Francisco Aruca -- Now considered a moderate Cuban-American, Aruca conspired against the revolutionary government in Cuba in the late 1950s, and was sentenced to jail. After escaping, he came to the U.S. In 1979, Aruca founded Marazul Tours, a travel agency that provides service to Cuba. He also is a radio commentator on Miami's Radio Progreso.
2/8	Beef Ban Begets Brazilian Backlash Canada's Prohibition Due To Mad Cow Scare Prompts Intense Reaction -- Restaurant owners are dumping Canadian ducks in the trash. Protesters in the capital delivered a cow to the Canadian Embassy and offered to barbecue it. Politicians urged a ban on imports of Canadian goods.
2/7	Mexican Indians Attack Biopiracy -- Iladia Rodriguez waved her leathery arms and let out a furious stream of complaints in her native language. The 70-year-old Maya Indian needed no translation to convey her contempt for one foreign word that punctuated her testimony.
2/7	Freedom House Welcomes Release of Czechs from Cuban Jail -- Freedom House today welcomed the release of prominent Czech citizens Ivan Pilip and Jan Bubenik from illegal detention in a Havana jail, where they had been held for more than three weeks on charges of meeting with dissidents to "foment rebellion" and "encourage uprising."
2/7	Freed Czechs fly home from Cuba after confession -- Two prominent Czechs, jailed in Cuba after seeing anti-Castro dissidents, were on their way home Monday night after a public confession earned their release in a case further souring ties between the one-time Socialist allies.
2/7	Beatings and Other Abuses Cited at Samoan Apparel Plant That Supplied U.S. Retailers -- Workers at a factory in American Samoa that made apparel for the J. C. Penney Company and other retailers were often beaten and were provided food so inadequate that some were "walking skeletons," a Labor Department investigation has found.
2/7	Ros-Lehtinen to Chair House Council -- For the first time, a Cuban-born member of Congress will head the House subcommittee responsible for international operations and human rights, a position that could give Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen increased influence in issues pertaining to Cuba.
2/7	Trade Feud on Bananas Not as Clear as It Looks -- In the simmering eight-year trade feud over bananas, the two sides have publicly staked out simple positions: the European Union maintains import quotas to protect the fragile economies of former colonies where bananas are grown, while the United States is foursquare for unfettered trade.
2/7	How to Battle Sweatshops -- Around the world, abusive labor conditions are so common that there sometimes seems no hope of improvement. Some 250 million children are put to work in poor countries, and at home the Labor Department recently reported that nearly two-thirds of cutting and sewing shops in Los Angeles fail to comply with the minimum wage laws.
2/3	Junked Workers Give Nafta Its Final Test -- Plant managers called them the "jonkeados" -- the junked ones. They were workers who got so sick, so chronically disabled, that they were given special jobs. But they weren't put on "light duty," to tide them over until they could go back to the line. Instead, these workers were put under even greater pressure, harassed and assigned tasks so unpleasant "that we knew they were just waiting for us to quit and leave," according to Joaquin Gonzalez.
2/3	Deregulation Disaster -- The rush to deregulate has intensified during the past 25 years as lobbyists for airlines, cable television, financial institutions, and telephone, natural gas, and electrical utilities have succeeded in convincing compliant local, state, and national legislative and regulatory bodies to let corporations escape consumer protections.
2/2	Don't Let Politics Cloud Cuba Offer -- In the two years since opening its Latin American School of Medical Sciences, Cuba has filled its classrooms with more than 3,400 students from 23 countries. Most of them come from Central and South America. A few of the students are from nations in sub-Saharan Africa.
2/1	Trade Pact Talks To Speed Up -- President Bush will move quickly this spring to speed negotiations on a free-trade agreement covering the Western Hemisphere, his nominee for U.S. trade representative, Robert Zoellick, told a Senate panel yesterday.
1/31	Update on KUKDONG Factory Situation in Puebla, Mexico -- On January 9, hundreds of workers at the KUKDong Factory in Atlixco, Puebla, Mexico staged a work stoppage and took over the plant to protest the firing of five fellow workers who had led rank-and-file opposition to poor food in the cafeteria, low wages (about $30 for a 45-hour work week), and the company9s failure to pay a Christmas bonus as required by Mexican laws.
1/30	Mexico Rebel Chief Says the Fight Is Now for Peace -- There was a different kind of fight in the rebel leader's voice. The urgency was unchanged from the day seven years ago when he first declared war against the Mexican government on behalf of a ragtag mob of Indians called the Zapatista National Liberation Army. Their cause, the pursuit of equal rights for all of Mexico's 10 million indigenous people, remained their primary goal.
1/30	Reality Check For Socially Conscious Labeling -- The threat of public demonstrations helped persuade companies such as Starbucks and The Home Depot to stock products with environmental or socially conscious seals of approval. But the initial success of the certified products movement, which has put "Fair Trade" coffee and "sustainably grown" lumber in stores nationwide, has not satisfied some environmentalists and social activists.
1/30	"Anti-Davos" Forum In Brazil Vows Global Fight -- "Corporations are transnational and we need to be transnational too if we're going to beat them," Kristen Moller, director of the U.S.-based Global Exchange, told a packed conference room at the alternative meeting in Porto Alegre, the capital of Brazil's southernmost state Rio Grande do Sul.
1/30	Statement By Leonard Peltier -- January 20, 2001, was a sad day for all of us. I know that this denial of clemency has affected many of you as much as it has affected both my family and myself. It is a terrible feeling and disappointment knowing that this nightmare has not ended and will continue for many months to come.
1/29	Rights Group Scores Success With Nike -- A year-old labor rights group formed by students and universities has registered its biggest success thus far by getting Nike Inc. to press managers at a Mexican apparel factory to rehire hundreds of workers after a three-day strike.
1/29	Soaking the Poor: S.F.'s Bechtel Wants the Bolivian People to Pay for its Bad Water Investment -- According to Bolivian news reports and documents obtained by the Bay Guardian, Bechtel is threatening to use a 1992 trade agreement between Holland and Bolivia to sue the Bolivian government, seeking at least $25 million in damages and future lost profits. If the company follows through with its threat, a secret tribunal set up by the World Bank will hear the case.
1/29	$80 Billion Peso Program for Mexico's Southeast -- The federal government has an ambitious economic development program for Mexico's marginalized Southeastern region. The program aims to pull the zone forward economically from being the region with the highest rate of poverty in the country.
1/25	WTO Considers Qatar as Site of Next Ministerial Meeting -- The WTO formally accepted Qatar's offer to host the follow-up to the 1999 Seattle meeting. WTO Director-General Michael Moore said the event,which may launch a round of trade talks, will be held in Doha, Qatar's capital, Nov. 5-9.
1/24	Mexico to ask Bush to solve 'intolerable' border violence -- Mexico will bring up a "broad agenda of immigration issues" during U.S. President George W. Bush's planned visit in February, and may ask for an end to border-sealing operations, Mexico's top diplomat said Monday.
1/23	Nike Letter to Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) -- In a letter to one of its chief critics, Nike Inc. proposed that a monitor be appointed to investigate a Korean-owned sweatshirt factory in Mexico where striking workers were allegedly beaten.
1/23	Police raid strike at Nike factory in Mexico; Nike refuses to take responsiblity -- Eight-hundred workers producing Nike sweatshirts for export to U.S. colleges and universities have gone on strike against a company paying 75 cents per hour, demanding that their rights be respected. They have called on Nike to send a fully authorized representative to the scene to publicly ratify a resolution to the conflict that recognizes their newly-formed Kukdong Workers' Coalition.
1/23	At the Millennium, a New Definition of Human Rights -- "The statistics of poverty and inequality in our world are shocking and shameful," Prime Minister Bertie Ahern of Ireland said. "Half the world's population struggling on less than $2 a day, over half a billion on less than $1.
1/23	Protesters and Politicians Work Together to Score a Victory Against the World Bank and IMF -- Six months after 20,000 people descended on Washington, DC to protest the policies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the institutions took their first real hit ever from the US Congress when legislators voted to require the Fund and the Bank to change some of the conditions they impose on borrowing countries.
1/23	Chiapas's New Threat: Biopiracy -- During the last 500 years, the indigenous people of Chiapas have faced many attacks. They have endured colonization, impoverishment, marginalization, and, in the six years since the Zapatista rebellion, constant harassment by Mexico's federal armed forces. Now, the indigenous peoples of Chiapas are faced with a new attack--subtler, but no less dangerous: biopiracy.
1/23	Java with Justice Goes Mainstream -- For years the corporate accountability movement has struggled to answer the frequent question: "I'd be happy to stop buying from Nike or Gap, but what should I buy instead?" Now--at least when it comes to coffee, the second most valuable traded commodity in the world--we have a response. Because of organized citizen pressure, people can go to their local café or supermarket and buy Fair Trade coffee.
1/23	Washington's Colombia Consensus Begins to Crack -- The Washington elite's consensus around the US's role in war-torn Colombia is starting to crumble. During the past few months, several prominent policy-makers and opinion-shapers have openly questioned US military support for Colombia, and these new divisions could prove essential for defeating expected requests for even more military aid.
1/23	Ending the Cuban Embargo: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back -- This fall President Clinton signed a $78 billion agriculture spending bill containing an amendment that lifts the US's unilateral sanctions against the sale of food and medicine to Cuba. The media heralded the move as the first major opening in US-Cuba relations in decades.
1/23	2000 In Review: Letter from the Global Exchange Founders -- As we look back over 2000, we feel greatly heartened by what we see, despite the reality of some setbacks. As students of history and human nature, we know that the greatest resistance to change often occurs just before the most important victories.
1/23	Haitians Return Aristide to Power -- In late November, as the confusion surrounding the US presidential election preoccupied the world, the citizens of Haiti returned former president Jean Bertrand Aristide to power in a free and fair election--and hardly anyone noticed.
1/23	Unraveling the Myths of the Middle East -- The images coming from Israel and Palestine recently are hauntingly familiar. Scenes of boys throwing rocks at soldiers, the soldiers firing back, the ambulances, and the blood all recall the first intifada that began in 1988. But at the same time the photos and footage also bring to mind an earlier conflict: the South African anti-Apartheid struggle.
1/20	Clinton Pardons McDougal, Cisneros -- In one of his final acts, President Clinton on Saturday pardoned more than 100 Americans, including his former Whitewater business partner Susan McDougal and former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros, officials said. The list also was notable for the number of people it did not include. Among them, Leonard Peltier, convicted of killing two FBI agents on an Indian reservation in 1975.
1/19	Bush administration to support, expand Plan Colombia -- The incoming administration of President-elect George W. Bush wholeheartedly backs US assistance to an ambitious peace, anti-drug and development plan for Colombia and would like it expanded, Secretary of State-designate Colin Powell said Wednesday.
1/19	Machete Massacre as Colombia Tries to Revive Talks -- The Colombian government's top negotiator arrived in rebel-held territory to revive peace talks to end a four-decade civil war which claimed another 25 victims in a machete massacre on Wednesday.
1/19	Global Exchange presents speakers for Black History Month -- In the spirit of Carter G. Woodson, Global Exchange presents speakers who challenge the conventional thinking about African Americans and promote a strategy to break the chains of miseducation.
1/19	Declaration of Nicaragua Jubilee Coalition -- Between the 18th and 21st of December, Nicaragua's entry into the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative will be discussed in Washington. HIPC was designed in 1996 to relieve the debt of the 41 most heavily indebted countries in the world, including Nicaragua. (en Español)
1/17	The Lure of a Better Life -- Black graffiti spray-painted on a grimy wall in downtown Bogotá asks, "Why Haven't You Gone to Miami?" Some days, a group of student artists from the prestigious Los Andes University drag a battered suitcase emblazoned with the same message through the capital's streets.
1/11	Fox's Plan for Chiapas Peace is Suspect -- This week, amid growing criticism of Fox from the Zapatista high command, the newsmagazine Milenio published an explosive leaked army memorandum which suggests the President is following a military blueprint called "Chiapas 2000."
1/10	Labor/Trade-Latam: Unions Want FTAA Put to Popular Vote -- Giving in to the demands of the United States in the creation of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) would be tantamount to suicide, warned central trade unions from the Southern Cone countries.
1/10	Canada Seeks Review of NAFTA's Chapter 11 -- Canada is seeking a review of the controversial Chapter 11 of the North American free-trade agreement, which allows companies to sue member countries to protect their investments.
1/9	Ecuador Afraid as a Drug War Heads Its Way -- Every country bordering Colombia fears that as the conflict there worsens and United States involvement grows, violence and coca cultivation will spill across the frontier into their territory. But in this dingy Amazon border town, that dreaded scenario has already become a reality.
1/9	No, You Can't -- Governor's elections in Tabasco are still up in the air as rival parties declare interim governors and former governor Roberto Madrazo flees the country.
1/9	Mexican President Orders Closure of Second Military Base in Chiapas -- President Vicente Fox has ordered the closure of two military bases and has released 17 Zapatista prisoners in attempt to meet conditions set by the Zapatista rebels to restart peace talks.
1/8	Put a Close to This Sad Chapter -- A call for clemency by Kevin Mckiernan, who covered the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation for National Public Radio From 1973-1976, and was present at the notorious South Dakota shoot-out 25 years ago.
1/8	Driven Mad By Itch -- Since the coca fields in the south of Colombia have been sprayed with poison as part of the war on drugs, a remarkably high number of children have fallen ill.
1/8	Bush Should Start Over in Colombia -- Earlier this month I traveled to Colombia to learn more about this war-torn country, whose military is getting nearly $2 million per day from the United States as part of an aid package that passed last June after narrow approval in the Senate.
1/8	To the Editor -- I am mildly amused by the assertion that Cuba's use of the death penalty is the over-riding reason for Panama's refusal to extradite Cuban exiles accused of conspiring to assassinate Dr. Fidel Castro Ruz in Panama last week.

Visit our News Archives for other years:
2002 2001 2000 1999 1998