Politics & Globalization
International trade agreements force the U.S. and other participting countries to "harmonize" food and envrironmental safety standards to the lowest common denominator. Often these agreements are negotiated behind closed doors, shutting out Congress and the public, while granting corporations and trade associations a seat at the table. It's no surprise that these agreements give transnational corporations "special rights", allowing companies to challenge individual countries' environmental, worker and food safety laws and regulations.
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Rose and Ronnie· Joe volunteer© 2008
If Mohandas Gandhi were a typical North American activist these days, he would probably be wearing a three-piece suit and working in a plush office with his law degree prominently displayed. He would have little time to lead protests, since every other week would be spent meeting with donors - and those power lunches would hardly go well with fasting. He would be careful to avoid salt marches or cotton boycotts, so as not to offend key donors. To sharpen his annual pitch to foundations, he would be constantly dreaming up new one-year projects on narrowly focused topics, perhaps a one-time
Read moreAsk someone who's studied industrialized agriculture and they'll tell you it's bad because large monocultures and confined animals pollute the air and water. Then they'll tell you the food that comes from industry is tasty but unhealthy. They'll tell you it's cheap because it's subsidized by the government with so many subsidies that the big companies ought to give it away.
Then they'll tell you the big guys hog the resources and put farmers out of business rather than helping rural economies. They'll cite the studies that say that rural counties with small farms have less spousal
Read moreWASHINGTON - The average American family has taken a financial tumble and millions in the country go hungry despite President George W. Bush's sunny assessment of the U.S. economy, say federal data and economists.
Stagnant wages and skyrocketing healthcare, education and housing costs, plus greater job instability has pushed America's families right to the limit, and they're borrowing on high-cost credit just to make ends meet.
Tamara Draut, director, economic opportunity program, Demos Bush talked up the nation's wealth last week during a speech in Milwaukee.
''We'
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We speak with Liz McIntyre, author of "Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track your Every Move with RFID" that examines radio frequency identification - a technology that uses tiny computer chips to track items at distance. Major corporations are working right now to install RFIDs on all consumer products. What about in you arm? Or in your kids? We also speak with freelance journalist Annalee Newitz who recently had an RFID implanted in her arm.
"Imagine a world of no more privacy.
"Where your every purchase is monitored and recorded in a database, and
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Jerry Hagstrom
<http://www.grandforks.com/mld/grandforksherald/14030096.htm>
in an article posted on Monday at the Grand Forks Herald webpage (ND), reported that, "President Bush's budget proposal to eliminate funding for the Commodity Supplemental Food program <http://www.fns.usda.gov/fdd/programs/csfp/ , which distributes food
packages to 420,000 mothers, children and the Read more
Wednesday marks World Water Day, an international observance that grew out of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development more than a decade ago. It's a day for repeating the terrible numbers: More than a billion people on the planet don't have access to clean water. Nearly 2 billion don't have adequate sewage and sanitation. Dirty water kills two children every minute.
These heart-rending statistics are driven home with images of thirsty
children and intense warnings about future water wars and the coming water crisis.
It's all Read more
WASHINGTON, DC - Congressional Democrats announced that, despite the scandals plaguing the Republican Party and widespread calls for change in Washington, their party will remain true to its hopeless direction.
"We are entirely capable of bungling this opportunity to regain control of the House and Senate and the trust of the American people," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said to scattered applause. "It will take some doing, but we're in this for the long and pointless haul."
"We can lose this," Reid added. "All it takes is a little lack of backbone."
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North Americans love their heroes, and environmentalists are no exception. The hall of fame includes some of the biggest hitters from our nation's past: John Muir, David McTaggart, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Paul Watson, David Brower, Rachel Carson, and Edward Abbey, to name just a few. Every Earth Day, speakers invoke these legends, yet there are also the lesser lights of the green pantheon: Alice Hamilton, the scientist who studied industrial lead poisoning and founded the modern discipline of occupational health; Crystal Eastman, the settlement-house worker who brought attention to the
Read moreIn the last couple of years, bilateral and regional free trade agreements (FTAs) have become immensely popular with governments disillusioned by the slow pace of trade liberalisation talks at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). At present there are over 200 FTA negotiating processes under way across the globe. While ostensibly aimed at breaking down trade barriers, these agreements are increasingly targeting indigenous peoples' and local communities' traditional knowledge in very real ways.
Traditional knowledge has come up in a dozen or so FTA drafting processes over the last
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