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Bilaterals.org: Everything That’s Not Happening at the WTO

(Versions in español and français available below)

In September 2004, a number of organisations initiated a collaborative website to support peoples’ struggles against bilateral free trade and investment agreements: http://www.bilaterals.org. The initiators included the Asia-Pacific Research Network, GATT Watchdog, Global Justice Ecology Project, GRAIN, IBON Foundation and XminY Solidariteitsfonds.

When the site was set up, the collapse of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks in Cancún and the stalling of the US-driven Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) were being celebrated by numerous opponents of neoliberal globalisation. But behind the scenes, powerful governments — especially the US and Europe — were quietly moving to sign far-reaching bilateral free trade and investment deals in order to achieve what they and their transnational corporations (TNCs) had not been able to get at the multilateral level. read more

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The Weather Underground and the American Radical Legacy

From a speech given in Gainesville, Florida, August 5, 2006

Thank you all for coming out today. It’s a real treat to be back in Gainesville talking about the Weather Underground, because this is the place where my book on the group began. This is also the place where my understanding of and involvement in the U.S. radical legacy didn’t start but did take shape. So it is wonderful to be here today with people who were and are my friends and mentors, in and out of the classroom. In particular, I want to thank the Civic Media Center and all connected to it, for providing not just a space but a home for so many wonderful ideas, projects, and people. And I want to thank professor Louise Newman, whose support, encouragement, and brilliance are responsible for a lot of things for a lot of people, not least of which was the initial push for me to write this book. read more

Robin and her son, Jesse

Visit to a Prison within a Prison

Robin and her son, Jesse
Robin Lloyd, videographer, peace activist and chair of the Toward Freedom board, recently spent three months in prison for 'crossing the line' (committing civil disobedience) at the School of the Americas (renamed WHINSEC - Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) ) at Fort Benning, Georgia. She says "the setting of the Danbury Prison Camp in rural Connecticut is beautiful, the food was OK, and meeting a lot of new people was enlightening, but encountering the prison-industrial complex up close and personal was awesomely upsetting.  

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Latin America Now: An Interview with Raúl Zibechi

In this interview, Raúl Zibechi discusses the challenges of the Evo Morales administration in Bolivia, the power and role of Bolivian social movements, projects for regional integration such as People's Trade Agreement and the Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America and the region's new situation after the electoral victories of various "progressive" governments.

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Tahiti: Nuclear cover-up stokes tension with France

Oscar Temaru, the pro-independence president of the Tahiti Nui (Temaru’s preferred name for the French colony known as French Polynesia), dropped a political bombshell in the Pacific country’s parliament on July 28. Temaru released a letter from a respected government health expert in Paris that officially confirmed for the first time what most Tahitians have long known and France has always denied: that French nuclear explosions in their territory have increased cancer rates throughout the Tahitian islands. The revelation has further strained tensions between the Temaru-led coalition government and Tahiti’s colonial masters in Paris. read more

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A War Over Nothing

"See, this war is different from all the ones that our fathers and grandfathers fought. Those wars were for something. This war is for nothing," accused rapist and mass murderer, Private Steven Green said in an interview with Stars and Stripes reporter Andrew Tilghman in February, 2006. "I came over here because I wanted to kill people."