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The only way to really describe the World Social Forum that just ended in Brazil is a global political ''carnaval.''
Activists at the second annual World Social Forum rejected the label ''anti,'' saying they were working for democracy and equitable distribution of wealth.
They're often portrayed as obstructionists to trade and the global economy. But the social movement that mobilized thousands in Quebec last month -- and earlier in Seattle and Prague -- is maturing beyond street protests.
In what one attorney called ''an end-run around the Constitution,'' corporations are using a little-known provision of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to challenge public laws, regulations and jury verdicts not only in the United States, but in Canada and Mexico as well. And they are arguing those cases not in courts of law, but before secret trade tribunals.
The Council of Canadians, the Sierra Club and Greenpeace are in court today to appeal a decision to exclude them from participating in a precedent-setting NAFTA dispute. The appeal highlights public concern that NAFTA tribunal's decisions can undo domestic laws and international treaties but exclude the public from the proceedings.
The anti-capitalist campaigner José Bové compared himself to Gandhi when he went on trial yesterday for demolishing a McDonald's restaurant in a southern French market town.
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.
US officials have refused to bust Bayer's monopoly on anthrax drugs, even though generic drugs would save $millions. Bayer's patent was protected under the WTO. Now those rights are challenged.
Fast Track trade authority has squeaked through Congress. Analysts from the Institute for Policy Studies say it is one set back among many victories in a battle that is far from over.
Irma Angelica Rosales, a 13-year-old girl, was raped and murdered on February 16 in the town of Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, just a cross the border from El Paso, Texas. Her very brief life and violent death symbolize everything that is wrong with the social system which U.S. multinational corporations and the U.S. and Mexican government have created on our common border.
The case had been settled only minutes ago, and now jurors for Mendoza v. Contico were seated in a room outfitted with movie theater chairs and plugs for devices like VCRs. They were in the ''Ceremonial Court'' in El Paso, where victorious lawyers often hold post-trial press conferences.
Guadalupe Aguirre had recently moved to Ciudad Juarez, a US-Mexico border city known for a NAFTA-fed manufacturing boom -- and dozens of murders of poor working women -- and she was frightened and frustrated.