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December 28, 2011
GM crops banned in Peru
Peru has banned GM production for 10 years. In a bid to protect its local food producers, the country has approved a law establishing a moratorium on income and production of genetically modified organisms.
Read article on the Farmers Guardian website
December 19, 2011
Argentina tango lessons: Europe's turn for financial danse macabre?
Exactly ten years ago Argentina suffered a full-scale financial and governmental collapse. That was the end-result of over a decade of doing exactly what the IMF, international bankers, rating agencies and global “experts” told us to do.
Read article by Adrian Salbuchi on the Russia Today website
December 10, 2011
Euro crisis: US General Martin Dempsey warns of unrest
The top US military commander, Gen Martin Dempsey, says he is concerned about "the potential for civil unrest" as Europe's financial crisis unfolds. Gen Dempsey said it was unclear the latest steps taken by EU leaders would be enough to hold the eurozone together, adding that a break-up could have consequences for the Pentagon.
Read article on the BBC News website (UK)
December 3, 2011
Chavez Hails Founding of New Regional Bloc
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Friday hailed the creation of a new bloc that groups 33 Latin American and Caribbean countries, calling it a major milestone for the region's development and sovereign policy. Chavez made the remarks when addressing the opening session of a summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC).
Read article on the Chinese Radio International website
December 2, 2011
Have You Heard About The 16 Trillion Dollar Bailout The Federal Reserve Handed To The Too Big To Fail Banks?
What you are about to read should absolutely astound you. During the last financial crisis, the Federal Reserve secretly conducted the biggest bailout in the history of the world, and the Fed fought in court for several years to keep it a secret. Do you remember the TARP bailout? The American people were absolutely outraged that the federal government spent 700 billion dollars bailing out the "too big to fail" banks. Well, that bailout was pocket change compared to what the Federal Reserve did. As you will see documented below, the Federal Reserve actually handed more than 16 trillion dollars in nearly interest-free money to the "too big to fail" banks between 2007 and 2010.
Read article on the Centre for Research on Globalization website
November 28, 2011
Forget Fracking, Vitamin B12 Could Make Fuel Cells Cheaper
Vitamin B12 could replace platinum as a catalyst in fuel cells, and that could lead to a new generation of emission free, low cost hydrogen fuel cells for cars and other vehicles. Aside from helping to reduce the use of petroleum-fueled vehicles, cheaper fuel cells could also help ease some of the pressure to drill for more natural gas. Natural gas is emerging as a low-emission alternative fuel for vehicles, but given the environmental risks and community disruption caused by fracking (a method of drilling that involves pumping chemicals underground), natural gas is not the kind of long term, sustainable solution that fuel cells have the potential to offer.
Read article at cleantechnica.com
Comment: Energy for All – through ending the world's dependency on oil and bringing about a global change to renewable energy – is one of the main goals of the Movement of Life. To learn more about the Movement of Life, and support its campaign for Health, Peace and Social Justice for All, click here.
November 22, 2011
Bush, Blair found guilty of war crimes
A Malaysian tribunal has found former US President George W Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair guilty of committing crimes against humanity during the Iraq war, Press TV reported. The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal found the former heads of state guilty after a four-day hearing. A seven-member panel chaired by former Malaysian Federal Court judge Abdul Kadir Sulaiman presided over the trial. The five panel tribunal unanimously decided that the former US and British leaders had committed crimes against peace and humanity, and also violated international law when they ordered the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The prosecutors at the hearing ruled that the invasion of Iraq was a flagrant abuse of law, and act of aggression which amounted to a mass murder of the Iraqi people.
Read article on the Press TV website (Iran)
Comment: Our organization has long taken a leading role in calling for Bush and Blair to stand trial for war crimes. To read about the formal Complaint we submitted to the International Criminal Court in 2003, charging Bush, Blair and others with causing injury to and the death of millions of people through the "business with disease", war crimes and other crimes against humanity, click here.
November 15, 2011
Activists in Malaysia plan 'war crime trial' of George W. Bush and Tony Blair
Malaysian-led activists will hold a symbolic trial this month for former President George W. Bush and British ex-leader Tony Blair on charges of committing crimes against peace in the Iraq war, the event's organisers said on Tuesday. The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal is an initiative of Malaysia's retired Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who staunchly opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Read article in the Daily Telegraph (UK)
November 5, 2011
Peru's Congress approves 10-year GMO ban
Peru’s Congress announced Friday it overwhelmingly approved a 10-year moratorium on imports of genetically modified organisms in order to safeguard the country’s biodiversity. The measure bars GMOs — including seeds, livestock, and fish — from being imported for cultivation or to be raised locally.
Read article on the Capital FM News website (Kenya)
October 21, 2011
Hundreds demand George W. Bush's arrest at Surrey, BC protest
Hundreds of protesters chanted “Arrest Bush” and “Shame,” calling on the Canadian government to arrest former U.S. president George W. Bush as he arrived at a Surrey hotel on Thursday. Mr. Bush and his predecessor Bill Clinton were among the keynote speakers at the annual Surrey Regional Economic Summit at the Sheraton Guildford Hotel. Human-rights groups including Amnesty International have demanded Canadian authorities arrest Mr. Bush for war crimes.
Read article on the Centre for Research on Globalization website
October 20, 2011
Revealed – the Capitalist Network that Runs the World
As protests against financial power sweep the world this week, science may have confirmed the protesters' worst fears. An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.
Read article on the Centre for Research on Globalization website
October 19, 2011
Ex-president should be arrested, activists say
Several human-rights groups are calling for the arrest of George W. Bush during his upcoming visit to Surrey tomorrow. Lawyers Against War, the Canadian Centre for International Justice, and the Centre for Constitutional Rights have sent a letter to the attorney general of Canada urging him to open a criminal investigation against the former U.S. president for his administration's alleged use of torture on detainees.
Read article at metronews.ca (Canada)
October 12, 2011
Amnesty International Urges Canada to Prosecute George W Bush
For the US President's role in torture, Amnesty International wants former President Bush arrested
Amnesty International announced today its promotion of arrest, prosecution or extradition of former US President George W Bush by Canadian authorities. This announcement comes just ahead of the former President's anticipated visit to Canada on October 20th. “Canada is required by its international obligations to arrest and prosecute former President Bush given his responsibility for crimes under international law including torture,” said Susan Lee, Americas Director at Amnesty International.
Read article on the Business Review Canada website
October 5, 2011
Environmental Disaster in the Gulf of Mexico: The Escalation of BP's Liability
As oil, sickness and contamination persist, Gulf residents and lawyers file thousands of lawsuits against the oil giant.
Read article on the Centre for Research on Globalization website
October 5, 2011
Speculation in Agricultural Commodities: Driving up the Price of Food Worldwide and plunging Millions into Hunger
In late 2006, the price of food and other commodities began rising precipitately, continuing throughout 2007 and peaking in 2008. Millions were cast below the poverty line and food riots erupted across the developing world, from Haiti to Mozambique. While analysts initially framed the crisis in terms of market fundamentals (such as rising population, increased demand for resource-intensive food, declining stockpiles, biofuel and agricultural subsidies, and crop shortfalls from natural disasters), a growing number of experts have tied the massive spikes to financial intermediation.
Read article on the Centre for Research on Globalization website
October 4, 2011
Vladimir Putin wants Soviet-style power bloc to rival EU
Vladimir Putin has said he wants to forge a "Eurasian Union" on the vast swath of territory that used to be the Soviet Union to compete with the European Union and the United States. Speaking six months before he reassumes the Russian presidency for the third time, Mr Putin said he wanted to create a global power bloc that would straddle one fifth of the earth's surface and unite almost 300 million people.
Read article in the Daily Telegraph (UK)
September 26, 2011
Cheney greeted by protesters in Vancouver
Hundreds of protestors gathered at a speaking event by former U.S. vice-president Dick Cheney in his sold-out $500-a-plate appearance at the Vancouver Club in connection with last month's release of his memoir, In My Time. Protestors called on Vancouver police to arrest Cheney for torture, war crimes and crimes against humanity throughout his 8 years in the Bush administration.
Read article on the MWC News website
September 26, 2011
Blair the envoy 'pushed deals worth billions' for investment bank that pays him £2m a year
Tony Blair is facing fresh questions over his role as a Middle East peace envoy after claims that he has used the position to promote lucrative business deals for clients of an investment bank that pays him £2million a year. As a representative of the Quartet –the UN, the EU, the U.S. and Russia – the former prime minister is tasked with fostering peace between Israel and Palestine. But he has also used the post to promote two contracts worth more than £1billion in Palestine with British Gas and mobile phone firm Wataniya – both major clients of JP Morgan, the U.S. investment bank which employs him as a senior adviser.
Read article in the Daily Mail (UK)
Comment: For information on the history of JP Morgan, and its relationship to the Rockefeller family and the Investment 'Business With Disease', click here.
September 20, 2011
Welcome to Boston, Mr. Rumsfeld. You Are Under Arrest.
Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has been stripped of legal immunity for acts of torture against US citizens authorized while he was in office. The 7th Circuit made the ruling in the case of two American contractors who were tortured by the US military in Iraq after uncovering a smuggling ring within an Iraqi security company. The company was under contract to the Department of Defense. The company was assisting Iraqi insurgent groups in the "mass acquisition" of American weapons. The ruling comes as Rumsfeld begins his book tour with a visit to Boston on Wednesday, September 21, and as new, uncensored photos of Abu Ghraib spark fresh outrage across Internet. Awareness is growing that Bush-era crimes went far beyond mere waterboarding.
Read article at alternet.org
September 19, 2011
The call to occupy Wall Street resonates around the world
We need deeper changes to our financial system, or tent cities of people angry at corporate greed will keep appearing
On Saturday 17 September, many of us watched in awe as 5,000 Americans descended on to the financial district of lower Manhattan, waved signs, unfurled banners, beat drums, chanted slogans and proceeded to walk towards the "financial Gomorrah" of the nation. They vowed to "occupy Wall Street" and to "bring justice to the bankers", but the New York police thwarted their efforts temporarily, locking down the symbolic street with barricades and checkpoints.
Undeterred, protesters walked laps around the area before holding a people's assembly and setting up a semi-permanent protest encampment in a park on Liberty Street, a stone's throw from Wall Street and a block from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Read article in the Guardian (UK)
September 17, 2011
Drug deaths now outnumber traffic fatalities in U.S., data show
Propelled by an increase in prescription narcotic overdoses, drug deaths now outnumber traffic fatalities in the United States, a Times analysis of government data has found. Drugs exceeded motor vehicle accidents as a cause of death in 2009, killing at least 37,485 people nationwide, according to preliminary data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While most major causes of preventable death are declining, drugs are an exception. The death toll has doubled in the last decade, now claiming a life every 14 minutes.
Read article in the Los Angeles Times (USA)
September 10, 2011
Court Case Asks if ‘Big Brother’ Is Spelled GPS
WASHINGTON — The precedent is novel. More precisely, the precedent is a novel. In a series of rulings on the use of satellites and cellphones to track criminal suspects, judges around the country have been citing George Orwell's “1984” to sound an alarm. They say the Fourth Amendment’s promise of protection from government invasion of privacy is in danger of being replaced by the futuristic surveillance state Orwell described. In April, Judge Diane P. Wood of the federal appeals court in Chicago wrote that surveillance using global positioning system devices would “make the system that George Orwell depicted in his famous novel, ‘1984,’ seem clumsy.” In a similar case last year, Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the federal appeals court in San Francisco wrote that “1984 may have come a bit later than predicted, but it’s here at last.”
Read article in the New York Times (USA)
August 30, 2011
Shocking new details of US STD experiments in Guatemala
Fresh revelations about 1940s medical tests come to light, including deliberately exposing people to sexually transmitted diseases
Shocking new details of US medical experiments done in Guatemala in the 1940s, including a decision to re-infect a dying woman in a syphilis study, have been disclosed by a presidential panel.
Read article in the Guardian (UK)
Comment: For anybody who has innocently been assuming that criminal experiments conducted by or on behalf of the pharmaceutical, chemical and weapons industries had ceased after those carried out by the IG Farben cartel during WWII, the above story provides definitive proof that this is not in fact the case. Worse still, nor is this latest example even an isolated incident. Between 1932 and 1972, for example, in the notorious “Tuskegee Experiment”, U.S. Public Health Service doctors secretly enticed around 400 poor black men into a study whose aim, unknown to the participants, was to observe the natural progression of untreated syphilis. For 40 years, the men were deliberately never told they had syphilis and were never treated for it. Similarly, in South-West England, scientists from Porton Down sprayed toxic chemicals into the air around Bristol in the early 1960s to analyze how they dispersed, with passers-by and lunchtime shoppers knowingly being exposed and used as guinea pigs. In other tests, British soldiers recruited as volunteers to test "cold remedies" at Porton Down were instead given forms of the sarin nerve agent developed by the Nazis in World War II. To help put a stop to current examples of such deceptions, such as the Pharma Cartel's AIDS Genocide, please support the Call for a Second Nuremberg Tribunal.
August 19, 2011
Study shows powerful corporations really do control the world's finances
For many years conventional wisdom has said that the whole world is controlled by the monied elite, or more recently by the huge multi-national corporations that seem to sometime control the very air we breathe. Now, new research by a team based in ETH-Zurich, Switzerland, has shown that what we’ve suspected all along, is apparently true.
Read article at physorg.com
August 3, 2011
BP disaster one year later
One year after the horrific BP oil spill locals still feel BP isn't managing the situation properly.
When news of the disastrous BP oil well explosion reached the residents of Jean Lafitte, Louisiana last April, Mayor Tim Kerner did the only thing he could think of to stop the oil from destroying his community. He encouraged everyone in his town to join him on the water, working day and night throughout the disaster to clean-up the spill. Now, one year after BP managed to cap the runaway well that fouled the Gulf of Mexico with an estimated five million barrels of oil, most of those people are ill.
Read article at aljazeera.net
Comment: To understand the perceived benefit to the Oil Cartel of this ‘strategy of neglect’, click here.
July 31, 2011
The damning of Tony Blair: Former PM to be held to account on Iraq in Chilcot report on war
Tony Blair is to face scathing criticism from the official inquiry into the Iraq War for the role he played in leading Britain into one of its biggest foreign policy fiascos in modern history.
Read article in the Daily Mail (UK)
Comment: With even Blair’s own sister-in-law now saying he should be tried for war crimes over the invasion of Iraq, it is long since time that he should have been formally charged and brought to trial in the International Criminal Court. To read about the Complaint we submitted to the International Criminal Court in 2003, charging Blair, George W. Bush, and others with causing injury to and the death of millions of people through the ‘business with disease’, war crimes and other crimes against humanity, click here.
June 20, 2011
New Zealand Chafes Over Pharma And Trade Talks
Once again, US trade talks and the behind-the-scenes role being played by the pharmaceutical industry are making headlines. This time, the ruckus is taking place in New Zealand, where there are mounting concerns about the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement, or TPP, which is a trade agreement that aims to integrate eight economies of the Asia-Pacific region. Among the issues is the extent to which the TTP would move beyond intellectual property standards in the World Trade Organization’s Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property, or TRIPS agreement (back story). The US Trade Representative, with backing from 28 US Senators and pharma, is also reportedly taking a hard line on Pharmac, the government entity that manages access to medicines in New Zealand, and reimbursement practices. An important TTP meeting will be held in November. And last month, the senators wrote a letter to US President Barack Obama wrote that “put bluntly, intellectual property equals jobs.” Although as Radio New Zealand notes, these same senators have received $6.5 million in donations from the pharmaceutical industry over the past five years.
Read article at pharmalot.com
June 16, 2011
Bilderberg 2011: The Rockefeller World Order and the "High Priests of Globalization"
Investigative journalist Daniel Estulin’s report of inside sources in this year’s meeting indicated a rather extensive discussion on the role of China, which is hardly surprising, considering this has been a central topic of discussion in meetings for a number of years. China emerged in discussions on Pakistan, as China has become increasingly Pakistan’s closest economic and strategic ally, a trend that is continuing as America continues to spread the Afghan war into neighbouring Pakistan. China is also a major player in Africa, threatening the West’s stranglehold over the continent, in particular through the World Bank and IMF. Most importantly, however, and not unrelated to its role in Pakistan and Africa, China has become the greatest economic competitor for the United States in the world, and as the IMF even admitted recently, its economy is expected to surpass that of the United States by 2016. Bilderberg paid attention to this issue not simply as a financial-economic consideration, but as a massive geopolitical transition in the world: “the biggest story of our time.”
Read article on the Centre for Research on Globalization website
June 15, 2011
Ex-Spy Alleges Effort to Discredit Bush Critic
WASHINGTON — A former senior C.I.A. official says that officials in the Bush White House sought damaging personal information on a prominent American critic of the Iraq war in order to discredit him. Glenn L. Carle, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer who was a top counterterrorism official during the administration of President George W. Bush, said the White House at least twice asked intelligence officials to gather sensitive information on Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor who writes an influential blog that criticized the war.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)
June 11, 2011
Media: The Spreading of False Ideologies into our Culture
Media has become a mirror of the disconnected state that humanity finds itself in. News, current affairs, even the dramas and reality TV shows that entertain us serve to exacerbate the religion of polarity being reflected back to us in all its forms – materialism, hatred, killing, idolization and separation. Almost all television, be it sagas and melodramas or daily news, is as addictive as any drug. This single dimensional ‘pulpit’ from which media preaches to us (often in the centre of our living rooms) actually seeds many of our negative behavior patterns in day-to-day life. Dramas and melodramas aside, we have been led to believe that the news and current affairs programs we watch are true, unbiased, fair. Often this is anything but the case.
Read article on the Centre for Research on Globalization website
June 10, 2011
U.S. Mainstream Media Covers Weinergate, Ignores BilderbergGate
The secret Bilderberg planners are probably having second thoughts about holding this year's conference in Switzerland. They are being met by angry protesters, journalists, and activists who have come from around the world to challenge their claim to secrecy. A number of influential Swiss politicians are also planning to protest the shadowy meeting and bring attention to the fact that important global issues are being discussed by senior Western bureaucrats, heads of states, CEOs, high-ranking politicians and banking ministers without the people's knowledge and consent.
Read article at opednews.com
June 8, 2011
The Lethal-Drug Maker That's Helping End Lethal Injections
Denmark's Lundbeck is the sole remaining supplier of pentobarbital used on death row in the U.S.
In a major victory for opponents of capital punishment, the only company still supplying a drug used in executions in the United States has said that it will take steps to stop states from using it for that purpose. And the Danish Government has issued a similar call in a letter to governors of death penalty states.
Read article in The Atlantic (USA)
June 1, 2011
The Federal Reserve Cartel: The Eight Families
The Four Horsemen of Banking (Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo) own the Four Horsemen of Oil (Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch/Shell, BP and Chevron Texaco); in tandem with Deutsche Bank, BNP, Barclays and other European old money behemoths. But their monopoly over the global economy does not end at the edge of the oil patch. According to company 10K filings to the SEC, the Four Horsemen of Banking are among the top ten stock holders of virtually every Fortune 500 corporation. So who then are the stockholders in these money center banks?
Read article on the Centre for Research on Globalization website
May 25, 2011
Consolidating US Money Power: The Four Horsemen of Global Banking
If you want to know where the true power center of the world lies, follow the money - cui bono. According to Global Finance magazine, as of 2010 the world’s five biggest banks are all based in Rothschild fiefdoms UK and France. They are the French BNP ($3 trillion in assets), Royal Bank of Scotland ($2.7 trillion), the UK-based HSBC Holdings ($2.4 trillion), the French Credit Agricole ($2.2 trillion) and the British Barclays ($2.2 trillion). In the US, a combination of deregulation and merger-mania has left four mega-banks ruling the financial roost. According to Global Finance, as of 2010 they are Bank of America ($2.2 trillion), JP Morgan Chase ($2 trillion), Citigroup ($1.9 trillion) and Wells Fargo ($1.25 trillion).
Read article on the Centre for Research on Globalization website
May 9, 2011
GM maize contaminates non-GM crops in Uruguay
Contamination of traditional maize crops planted near genetically modified (GM) maize fields may be common in Uruguay, where the cultivation of GM maize has been permitted since 2003, scientists have said. A study published in Environmental Biosafety Research (25 March) has found GM seedlings in three traditional maize fields. It is said to be the first report of cross-fertilisation between GM and non-GM maize in South America.
Read article at trust.org
May 8, 2011
The Unwisdom of Elites
The past three years have been a disaster for most Western economies. The United States has mass long-term unemployment for the first time since the 1930s. Meanwhile, Europe’s single currency is coming apart at the seams. How did it all go so wrong? Well, what I’ve been hearing with growing frequency from members of the policy elite — self-appointed wise men, officials, and pundits in good standing — is the claim that it’s mostly the public’s fault. The idea is that we got into this mess because voters wanted something for nothing, and weak-minded politicians catered to the electorate’s foolishness. So this seems like a good time to point out that this blame-the-public view isn’t just self-serving, it’s dead wrong.
Read article by Paul Krugman in the New York Times (USA)
April 23, 2011
ElBaradei urges ICC trial of Bush
Former IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei says former US President George W. Bush and his administration's officials should be put on trial in the "International Criminal Court" (ICC) for waging war on Iraq. ElBaradei in a new memoir, "The Age of Deception," says that the Bush administration officials should face international criminal investigation for the "shame of a needless war" in Iraq.
Read article on the Press TV website (Iran)
April 20, 2011
Schwarzenegger the next EU president?
Arnold Schwarzenegger, who made a seamless transition from Hollywood film stardom to California governor, could have his sights set on a new job as next head of the European Union, US media reported. The Austrian-born former bodybuilder, 63, at loose ends as he tries to figure out what his next act should be, reportedly is being advised by aides to return to his native Europe to run for the EU presidency, Newsweek reported.
Read article at skynews.com.au (Australia)
April 19, 2011
Web creator's net neutrality fear
The inventor of the web has said that governments must act to preserve the principle of net neutrality. Sir Tim Berners-Lee told the BBC that legislation may be needed if self-regulation failed.
Read article on the BBC News website (UK)
Comment: To learn more about the concept of net neutrality and understand why it is important, visit the Save the Internet website.
April 18, 2011
Use of pesticides in Brazil continues to grow
Another year passes and still Brazil maintains its ranking as the world's largest consumer of pesticides, first attained in 2008. An unenviable record, the consequences of which are now starting to become clearer to the wider public.
According to data from the Union of Agrochemical Industries (Sindag), 986,500 tons of pesticides were consumed in 2008 and more than a million tons in 2009 (equivalent to 5.2 kg of agrochemical products per Brazilian per year).
Read article at gmwatch.org
April 13, 2011
BP faces wave of protests at AGM
Oil giant BP is facing a wave of protests as it holds its annual general meeting in London days before the first anniversary of the Gulf of Mexico disaster.
Read article in The Independent (UK)
Comment: The largest oil spill in US history was caused by British Petroleum (BP), a prominent member of the international Oil Cartel. While much of the global media’s attention has focused on the environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, one decisive question has largely been avoided: Who benefits from this crisis? To learn the answer to this question, from a historical perspective, click here.
March 26, 2011
It’s Tracking Your Every Move and You May Not Even Know
A favorite pastime of Internet users is to share their location: services like Google Latitude can inform friends when you are nearby; another, Foursquare, has turned reporting these updates into a game. But as a German Green party politician, Malte Spitz, recently learned, we are already continually being tracked whether we volunteer to be or not. Cellphone companies do not typically divulge how much information they collect, so Mr. Spitz went to court to find out exactly what his cellphone company, Deutsche Telekom, knew about his whereabouts. The results were astounding. In a six-month period — from Aug 31, 2009, to Feb. 28, 2010, Deutsche Telekom had recorded and saved his longitude and latitude coordinates more than 35,000 times. It traced him from a train on the way to Erlangen at the start through to that last night, when he was home in Berlin. Mr. Spitz has provided a rare glimpse — an unprecedented one, privacy experts say — of what is being collected as we walk around with our phones.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)
March 17, 2011
Secretive Plan For a Global Currency
Is the Group of Twenty Countries (G20) envisaging the creation of a Global Central bank? Who or what would serve as this global central bank, cloaked with the power to issue the global currency and police monetary policy for all humanity? When the world’s central bankers met in Washington in September 2008 at the height of the financial meltdown, they discussed what body might be in a position to serve in that awesome and fearful role.
Read excerpt from "The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century" by Ellen Brown on the Centre for Research on Globalization website
March 5, 2011
Che Guevara’s Travelling Companion Alberto Granado Passed Away in Havana
Argentinean biochemistry doctor, writer, and scientist Alberto Granado, a close friend of Ernesto Che Guevara who accompanied him during a trip around Latin America, died suddenly on Saturday in Havana at the age of 88.
Read article on the website of the Cuban News Agency
February 23, 2011
Swiss action against Bush shows strength of human rights
If there is one thing former President George W. Bush should have learned from the atrocious decisions made by his administration, it is that regardless of his insurmountable ego, he does not exist above the law. The global climate has become vigilant in responding to what was unmistakably an attitude of sheer sadism against fundamental and universal human rights during the Bush presidency.
Read article by Maria Michalos in the Washington Square News (student newspaper of New York University/USA)
February 16, 2011
Ecuador: finally, the polluter is commanded to pay
Deep in the Amazonian rainforest yesterday a court reached a judgment that will resonate through the boardrooms of some of the world's richest and most powerful companies. A judge in the northern Ecuadorean city of Lago Agrio ruled that Texaco was responsible for dumping billions of gallons of toxic waste in the rivers of the Amazon rainforest between 1972 and 1992 and that Chevron, which merged with Texaco in 2001, is liable for an $8.6bn (£5.3bn) fine. The pollution of the Ecuadorean Amazon was a dirty business. And Chevron has fought dirty over the past 18 years in an attempt to evade responsibility for the crime. The oil giant has gone to enormous lengths, and considerable expense, to undermine the Ecuadorean legal system and to intimidate the lawyers representing the 30,000 Ecuadoreans bringing the case. And, to no one's surprise, Chevron has not accepted yesterday's verdict gracefully. The firm has described the lawsuit as an "extortion scheme" and refused to pay the fine.
Read article in The Independent (UK)
February 15, 2011
UK sells US enough drugs to execute 100 death row inmates, inquiry told
Enough pharmaceutical drugs have been sold to the US by licensed British wholesalers since last summer to execute 100 death row inmates, a parliamentary inquiry has heard.
Read article in The Guardian (UK)
Comment: As we have pointed out previously on these pages, pharmaceutical companies have a long history of supplying chemicals for killing prisoners. With the industry already having been proven to have supplied the chemicals that killed tens of thousands of prisoners at the Auschwitz WWII concentration camp, it is high time that all modern-day drug companies selling drugs for use in executions are publicly exposed.
February 13, 2011
Bush no longer a free man amid torture charges
Retired heads of state and government often travel to reminiscence with old colleagues or polish legacies by pontificating on prevailing issues. A new trend could turn lawyers into travel agents for the lot. A modest example: Former US President George W. Bush planned a Geneva visit on Saturday. He was to deliver a keynote address at a gala the Jewish Keren Haysods organisation held. Mr Bush and pleasant “mum-next-door-type wife,” Laura, stayed home. The Jewish outfit explained security considerations aborted the trip. Not so, said several United States and Swiss human rights organisations. Mr Bush feared arrests for alleged torture against alleged terrorists.
Read article in the Daily Nation (Kenya)
February 6, 2011
Bush trip to Switzerland called off amid threats of protests, legal action
A planned trip to Switzerland this week by George W. Bush was canceled after human rights activists called for demonstrations and threatened legal action over allegations that the former president sanctioned the torture of terrorism suspects. The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights and several European human rights groups said they were planning to file a complaint against Bush and wanted Swiss prosecutors to open a criminal case against him once he arrived in the country.
Read article in the Washington Post (USA)
January 25, 2011
Global Poverty, Food Riots, and the Economic Crisis
The sugar-coated bullets of the “free market” are killing our children. The act to kill is instrumented in a detached fashion through computer program trading on the New York and Chicago mercantile exchanges, where the global prices of rice, wheat and corn are decided upon. People in different countries are being impoverished simultaneously as a result of a global market mechanism. A small number of financial institutions and global corporations have the ability to determine the prices of basic food staples quoted on the commodity exchanges, thereby directly affecting the standard of living of millions of people around the world. This process of global impoverishment has reached a major turning point, leading to the simultaneous outbreak of famines in all major regions of the developing world.
Read article by Michel Chossudovsky on the Centre for Research on Globalization website
January 14, 2011
Former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld accused of torture
A US rights group has filed a lawsuit charging former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld with involvement in torturing former prisoners in American prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Read article on the Centre for Research on Globalization website
January 9, 2011
Setting the Record Straight on Venezuela and Hugo Chavez
With so much misinformation circulating in different media outlets around the world about Venezuela and President Hugo Chavez, it's time to set the record straight. Venezuela is not a dictatorship and President Chavez is no dictator. Just last evening the Venezuelan head of state participated in a meeting with a group of housing activists, who not only criticized - live on television - government policies and inaction on tenant and housing issues, but also proposed laws, regulations and projects that were received with open arms by Chavez himself. And last week, the Venezuelan President vetoed a law on higher education that had been approved by the prior year's majority pro-Chavez legislature, calling for more "open and wide" debate on the subject, to include critics and those who had protested the bill. That is not the behavior of a brutal dictator. As someone who has been living on and off in Venezuela for over 17 years, I can testify to the extraordinary transformation the country has undertaken during the past decade since Chavez first was elected in 1998. He has been reelected by landslide majorities twice since then.
Read article by Eva Golinger on the Centre for Research on Globalization website
January 7, 2011
Capital punishment and Big Pharma's ethics
Is it acceptable for companies that manufacture drugs used in US executions to know that fact yet deny moral responsibility?
On Thursday, the BBC's Today programme ran a story on Reprieve's investigation into the British execution drug export bonanza. While, originally, it seemed that only sodium thiopental was being sourced in the UK, we recently learned that all three chemicals used in lethal injection have been exported by this country – adding pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride to the deadly mix.
Read article in the Guardian (UK)
Comment: Pharmaceutical companies have a long history of supplying chemicals for killing prisoners. With the industry already having been proven to have supplied the chemicals that killed tens of thousands of prisoners at the Auschwitz WWII concentration camp, it is high time that all modern-day drug companies selling drugs for use in executions are publicly exposed.