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In a major boost for the forces of economic globalisation, US President Bill Clinton has decided to back multinational corporations in a key court challenge to a Massachusetts law designed to promote democracy in Burma.
Tearing a page from the anti-apartheid movement, the two drew up legislation that penalized companies with ties to Burma when those firms competed for Massachusetts state contracts. Using the draft of an anti-apartheid bill, they crossed out South Africa and inserted Burma. Two years later, the measure became law.
China won't sacrifice income support for farmers in talks this week to join the World Trade Organization, officials and analysts said yesterday.
With a history tied to colonial exploitation, union busting, presidential influence peddling, and environmental degradation, it's obvious the banana is much more than a topping for breakfast cereal or a nutritious snack food. The banana has been at the center of a controversial World Trade Organization ruling and just last month the world's top banana producer (Chiquita Brands International) appeared to teeter on the brink of bankruptcy even as it filed a half-billion dollar lawsuit against the European Union.
From April 20-22, Quebec City has the dubious honour of hosting the 3rd Summit of the Americas. The Summit will bring together 34 heads of state -- every head of state in the Americas except Fidel Castro. And despite stringent security measures, including the largest police deployment in Canadian history, a tremendous contingency of anti-globalization protesters will be there to shake up the process.
Canada is asking its own federal court to overturn a North American free trade tribunal ruling that Canada breached trade rules when it banned exports of polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) waste in the 1990s.
Rights activists are unhappy with the Labour Ministry's plan to amend labour laws to introduce 80 hours of overtime every month for factory workers, including those in export processing zones (EPZ).
It turns out that the most effective form of crowd control isn't pepper spray, water cannons, tear gas, or any of the other weapons being readied by Quebec police in anticipation of the arrival of 34 heads of state. The most cutting-edge form of crowd control is controlling the crowds before they converge: this is state-of-the-art protest deterrence -- the silencing you do yourself.
Still, about 70 of the 500 protesters outside the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade were arrested during a ''search and rescue mission'' to retrieve a working draft of the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas.
The meeting of Western Hemisphere trade officials to make progress towards the creation of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) took place in the Argentine capital, which was practically under siege by heavily armed police backed by armoured cars and police dogs on blockaded streets.
Prosecutors say provincial Justice Minister Paul Begin has directed them to delay all bail hearings of arrested protesters for the maximum three full days allowed by law, as a way of keeping them off the street for the duration of the summit, April 20-22.
President Bush pledged to Latin America on Tuesday that after he returns from a hemispheric summit he will intensify his effort to get key trade negotiating authority from Congress.
Two of three foreign spokesmen for the alternative People's Summit, which opened in Quebec City yesterday, were detained for questioning by Canadian immigration officials and granted limited visas to enter Canada.
Reaction to the summit's final declaration ranged from a ''deplorable sham'' to ''a good start, but there's still a lot more work to be done.''