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Monkey-Wrenching the Globalization Gang

I went to Bretton Woods, but all I got was this lousy t-shirt. Amazingly, it's not a 'one size fits all' and it's not full of holes.

Walking through the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods two years ago, in the New Hampshire mountain resort and official birthplace, in July 1944, of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and of plans for an international trade organization - eventually embodied by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)/World Trade Organization (WTO), I thought about the genocide of Indigenous Peoples in that part of the USA, now called "New England", perpetrated by Puritans and other settlers who viewed them, as historian Douglas Leach put it, as a "graceless and savage people, dirty and slothful in their personal habits, treacherous in their relations with the superior raceĀ…fit only to be pushed aside and subordinated"(i).

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Global Notebook 8-02-05

GLOBAL

Memos suggest Gitmo trials are rigged

SYDNEY – Leaked e-mails from two former U.S. prosecutors, obtained by the Australian Broadcast System, claim that the military commissions set up to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay have been rigged, fraudulent and thin on evidence against the accused. In March 2004, the e-mails were sent to supervisors in the Pentagon’s Office of Military Commissions, echoing previous charges made by international lawyers, U.S. military officers, the American Bar Association, the Australian Law Society, Amnesty International and Britain‘s Attorney General.  read more

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How Trade Trumps Culture

I come from New Zealand. Most people here will know that New Zealand has three main objectives in international trade and the World Trade Organization (WTO) - they involve agriculture, agriculture and agriculture. However, despite two decades of neoliberal policies that have radically changed our country, there is still more to life in New Zealand than butter, sheep and export markets.

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Global Notebook 10/04

 

US Loses War Crimes Exemption
NEW YORK – Facing strong opposition, the US has abandoned its quest to obtain UN Security Council exemption from war crimes prosecution against soldiers for a third consecutive year. Washington needed nine “yes” votes in the 15-member council, but more than seven countries vowed to abstain. First adopted in 2002, to the chagrin of human rights advocates, the current exemption ran out June 30.

 

In the past, the Bush administration threatened to veto UN peacekeeping missions if the resolution giving it immunity from the new International Criminal Court (ICC) wasn’t adopted. UN ambassador James Cunningham declined to say whether it would carry out the threat. read more

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Global Notebook 6/04

US Weapons Make Colombia Murder Capital
BOGOTA – A RAND Institute report, “Arms Trafficking and Colombia,” concludes that US Plan Colombia is largely responsible for making the South American nation’s murder rate the highest in the world, at 77.5 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. The gun culture has created a cross-border refugee and drug crisis that is destabilizing the region, from Panama to Venezuela, Brazil, Peru, and Ecuador.

 

About 85 percent of Colombia’s murders are committed with small arms. The report, released April 23, says that most of them come from the US, either directly through Plan Colombia, or indirectly through old stockpiles of US weapons supplied to El Salvador, Honduras, and the Nicaraguan Contras during the 1980s and 90s. read more

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Global Notebook 12/03

Left-leaning Latinos Fuel Resistance
CARACAS — Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez was scheduled to speak at the UN in late September. But he abruptly cancelled his US trip. The main reasons given were security concerns and a lack of enthusiasm for UN summits. "A dialogue of the deaf,” Chavez called them, arguing that the world body is fundamentally undemocratic and should be democratized.

Meanwhile, weeks of rising anger and police violence in Bolivia climaxed in a September 29 general strike by unionists, backed by peasants, students, and merchants. Two days later, miners joined, paralyzing production. As a result, President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada resigned and fled to Miami. The confrontation, inspired by Evo Morales, popular leader of Indian coca farmers, involved a deal that would have sold Bolivian natural gas to the US and Mexico, via a Chilean port. read more