Politics & Globalization
Where Health, Justice, Sustainability, Peace and Democracy Intersect
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
News
August 3, 2006
Featured stories in this issue...
President Bush Clears the Way for a Global Nuclear Expansion In recent months, President Bush has reversed long-standing U.S. policies, intending to expand nuclear power world-wide. This inevitably expands the threat from nuclear weapons.
Anxiety Rises as Paychecks Trail Inflation "Since peaking in 2003, the real hourly pay of the median worker has fallen about 2 percent. The decline has been closer to 4 percent for people in the upper-middle part of the wage distribution and for those toward the bottom. In essence, most Americans have Read more
President Bush Clears the Way for a Global Nuclear Expansion In recent months, President Bush has reversed long-standing U.S. policies, intending to expand nuclear power world-wide. This inevitably expands the threat from nuclear weapons.
Anxiety Rises as Paychecks Trail Inflation "Since peaking in 2003, the real hourly pay of the median worker has fallen about 2 percent. The decline has been closer to 4 percent for people in the upper-middle part of the wage distribution and for those toward the bottom. In essence, most Americans have Read more
News
July 28, 2006
The July 2006 issue of In These Times [1] magazine carries an enlightening and overdue article about how the Left is funded, or not. The New Funding Heresies [2], written by Senior Editor Christopher Hayes, focuses on the relatively new group of very wealthy liberal and progressive funders called the Democracy Alliance [3]. This group of close to one hundred donors has pledged to individually donate a minimum of $1 million over five years to organizations chosen from a docket that is vetted by the staff and board of the Alliance. In addition, each Democracy Alliance donor Read more
News
USA TODAY
The federal government keeps two sets of books.
The set the government promotes to the public has a healthier bottom line: a $318 billion deficit in 2005.
The set the government doesn't talk about is the audited financial statement produced by the government's accountants following standard accounting rules. It reports a more ominous financial picture: a $760 billion deficit for 2005. If Social Security and Medicare were included as the board that sets accounting rules is considering the federal deficit would have been $3.5 trillion.
Congress has written Read more
The set the government promotes to the public has a healthier bottom line: a $318 billion deficit in 2005.
The set the government doesn't talk about is the audited financial statement produced by the government's accountants following standard accounting rules. It reports a more ominous financial picture: a $760 billion deficit for 2005. If Social Security and Medicare were included as the board that sets accounting rules is considering the federal deficit would have been $3.5 trillion.
Congress has written Read more
News
Orion Magazine
ONE MORNING IN JUNE 2002, a group of twenty unemployed factory workers gathered on a treeless sidewalk in downtown Avellaneda, an industrial suburb of Buenos Aires. They came loaded with poles, plastic sheeting, scrap lumber, and rope. In short order, they raised a tent before a nine-story brick factory known as the Cristalux Glassworks. The factory, recognizable by its billboard-sized bas-relief of a worker blowing glass, had once employed a workforce of twelve hundred. Now it stood abandoned and shuttered.
It was late fall in the Southern Hemisphere, and night temperatures Read more
It was late fall in the Southern Hemisphere, and night temperatures Read more
News
July 31, 2006
Supporters of a defeated Mexican leftist presidential candidate blocked major arteries in the heart of Mexico City and vowed to hold their ground until the electoral court orders a vote recount.
Supporters of Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador rally in Mexico City, blocking major arteries in the heart of Mexico City and vowing to hold their ground until the electoral court orders a vote recount(AFP/Micphotopress/Fernando Castillo)
Hours earlier, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador rallied more than one million supporters in the capital to denounce Read more
Supporters of Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador rally in Mexico City, blocking major arteries in the heart of Mexico City and vowing to hold their ground until the electoral court orders a vote recount(AFP/Micphotopress/Fernando Castillo)
Hours earlier, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador rallied more than one million supporters in the capital to denounce Read more
News
August 1, 2006
So many superrich Americans evade taxes using offshore accounts that law enforcement cannot control the growing misconduct, according to a Senate report that provides the most detailed look ever at high-level tax schemes. Among the billionaires cited in the report are the owner of the New York Jets football team, Robert Wood Johnson IV; the producer of the "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" children's show, Haim Saban; and two Texas businessmen, Charles and Sam Wyly, who the Center for Public Integrity found in 2000 were the ninth-largest contributors to President Bush.
Mr. Johnson Read more
Mr. Johnson Read more
News
August 1, 2006
EXCERPT FROM 'ESCAPING THE MATRIX'
To bring us live wires back to the main topic of building a transformational movement, and to provoke discussion, I am posting this long excerpt from Richard Moore's new book, Escaping the Matrix http://www.powells.com/biblio/61-0977098303-0 (ISBN 0977098303), pgs. 84-93. In contains quotations interspersed within the text, beginning with one from Daniel Quinn. --Peter Montague
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If the world is saved, it will be saved by people with changed minds, people with a new Read more
To bring us live wires back to the main topic of building a transformational movement, and to provoke discussion, I am posting this long excerpt from Richard Moore's new book, Escaping the Matrix http://www.powells.com/biblio/61-0977098303-0 (ISBN 0977098303), pgs. 84-93. In contains quotations interspersed within the text, beginning with one from Daniel Quinn. --Peter Montague
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If the world is saved, it will be saved by people with changed minds, people with a new Read more
News
August 1, 2006
In the popular American imagination democracy is primarily a system of government that enables the people to vote every few years for their elected representatives. President Bush and the Congress reaffirmed this core concept of representative government this month when they moved to extend the Voting Rights Act of 1965 for 25 more years. In important ways, however, it was little more than a hollow gesture.
Back when President Johnson first signed the landmark civil rights legislation into law, he committed the nation to eliminating race-based voting discrimination. The Act gave Read more
Back when President Johnson first signed the landmark civil rights legislation into law, he committed the nation to eliminating race-based voting discrimination. The Act gave Read more
News
May 26, 2006
Is the U.S. becoming a police state? Here are the top 10 signs that it may well be the case.
1. The Internet Clampdown
One saving grace of alternative media in this age of unfettered corporate conglomeration has been the internet. While the masses are spoon-fed predigested news on TV and in mainstream print publications, the truth-seeking individual still has access to a broad array of investigative reporting and political opinion via the world-wide web. Of course, it was only a matter of time before the government moved to patch up this crack in the sky.
Read more
1. The Internet Clampdown
One saving grace of alternative media in this age of unfettered corporate conglomeration has been the internet. While the masses are spoon-fed predigested news on TV and in mainstream print publications, the truth-seeking individual still has access to a broad array of investigative reporting and political opinion via the world-wide web. Of course, it was only a matter of time before the government moved to patch up this crack in the sky.
Read more
News
August 3, 2014
John D. Rockefeller realized 135 years ago that the way to control the oil market was to control the transport of oil. So in 1871, he colluded with the railroad industry to form a cartel called the South Improvement Company. Under their plan, the rate to ship oil would double, and Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company would get rebates for every gallon of oil shipped, even those shipped by its competitors. South would also collect information on the destinations, costs and dates of competitors' oil shipments.
Once word leaked, independent oil producers revolted and managed to stop Read more
Once word leaked, independent oil producers revolted and managed to stop Read more
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