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To outward appearances, Africa's big moment at the Denver Summit of the Eight in June was President Clinton's trade and investment initiative, offering expanded trade concessions to African countries to support further market oriented economic reforms.

The new century is starting in Porto Alegre. All kinds of people, each in their own ways, have been contesting and critiquing neo-liberal globalisation, and many of them will be gathering in this southern Brazilian city on 25-30 January for the first World Social Forum. This time they won't just be protesting -- as they were in Seattle, Washington, Prague and elsewhere -- against the world-wide injustices, inequalities and disasters created by the excesses of capitalism (see the article by Bernard Cassen).

QUEBEC CITY -- ''Excuse me, but is this Canada?'' Scrawled on the ''Wall of Shame,'' a 10-foot high, 2 and a half mile long fence erected to keep protesters away from George Bush and 33 other leaders gathered at the Summit of the Americas, the slogan just about says it all.

It has been ten years since the creation of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). What started out as a lofty dream of encouraging unity and interdependence among Asia Pacific countries is now at the crossroads. It appears to be headed nowhere with no clear vision of what it intends to achieve.

In Mexico, The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which took effect on January 1, 1994, has resulted in worsening economic and social conditions and increasing violations of human rights for working people, peasants, aboriginal communities and others.

The African Growth and Opportunity Act has now been signed into American law as Title 1 of the US Trade and Development Act which received presidential assent in May 2000. The Act purports to grant certain benefits to Sub-Saharan African economies if African governments enact certain domestic laws, and pursue certain measures.

At the same moment the new U.S. Trade Representative, Robert Zoellick, was urging Congress to grant President Bush new international trade powers, a lawsuit was filed against him down the street in U.S. District Court.

As you already know, the governments of the western hemisphere and their corporate bosses are signing our names to the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas as we speak. This secret treaty's being made to destroy activist victories, privatize public services, and gut public safeguards; to roll back everything that 500 years of resistance has won.

39 NGOs Denounce 39 Pharmaceutical Transnationals' Legal Action Against the South African Government and the Complaint Against Brazil Lodged by the USA with WTO.

Here is a calendar of organizing events on the FTAA.

Although a trade panel is expected this week to order the United States to permit access to all U.S. roads by Mexican trucks, the U.S. should continue to limit access because of the grave dangers many Mexican trucks pose to motorists on U.S. highways, Public Citizen has concluded in a report released today.

On the eve of the Quebec summit of Western hemisphere leaders, Human Rights Watch called for the creation of an independent oversight agency to spur remedial action for workers' rights violations.

More than 60,000 citizens went to Quebec City in late April 2001 to express their concerns about the FTAA. The motivating reasons for going were many, but central to the protest is the concern with the rise of unchecked corporate power, which is increasingly and inequitable defining the world we live in.

We enclose a US-India citizens declaration for a new solidarity and a Citizens Vision Statement for a new Millennium to articulate the India US partnership at the people's level to reverse globalisation.