Global Trade

To the Mapuche Indians in southern Argentina, the Italian clothing manufacturer Benetton is the newest conquistador in 10,000 years of land struggles in Patagonia. Listen online here via FSRN!
Americans consume almost 17 pounds of fresh tomatoes per person every year. It's a $1.4 billion industry. Most are grown in Florida and California but, thanks to a bilateral free trade agreement of 1988 and the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, Canadian tomatoes now command more han 43% of the market, beating imports from Belgium and The Netherlands. But far from nourishing economic health and pleasing the business-oriented palate, this particular globalisation recipe is making a mess of the whole kitchen.
This 1997 report for the Third Trinational Conference in Defense of Public Education, held in Vancouver, Canada, explains Mexico's education crisis in the context of structural adjustment.
Anti-privatisation protestors are expected to descend on the streets of Johannesburg this month as they demand a reversal of the sale of their municipal water supply to French multinational Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux.
Nine days ahead of this month's G8 summit in the Italian city of Genoa, an ever-developing anti-globalization movement prepares to make its presence felt.
Two patents granted in the United States between 2000 and 2002 and another for which an application has been filed have put "maca", a high altitude Andean plant that is used by indigenous people in Peru, at the centre of a new battle against biopiracy, which involves the construction of an international network against the misappropriation of traditional knowledge.
BP says that the offshore drilling accident that is spewing thousands of barrels of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico could cost the company several hundred million dollars. Nobody really knows whether the oil giant is being too conservative about the cost for the April 20 accident, which some experts say could end up as the biggest oil spill in history.