This sounds like something the YesMen would do. Fact is though, this is just business as usual - Ahni

At a Wharton Business School conference on business in Africa that took place on Saturday, November 11, the WTO announced the creation of a new, much-improved form of slavery for the parts of Africa that have been hardest hit by the 500-year history of free trade there.

From the Article:

The initiative will require Western companies doing business in some parts of Africa to own their workers outright. Schmidt recounted how private stewardship has been successfully applied to transport, power, water, traditional …

In simple rites held under historically significant circumstances, the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal: Second Session on the Philippines was convened in the Hague, the Netherlands last October 30, upon the appeal of Philippine human rights and people’s organizations. The first session on the Philippines held twenty six years ago in 1980, in Antwerp, Belgium had indicted the United States-backed Marcos dictatorship of grave crimes against the Filipino people.

The government of Mrs. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has reacted to the filing of charges by victims of grievous human rights violations with the dismissive remark of Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita, a former military general, …

The agreement is said to be worth $73 million dollars in cash, land and forest tenure. (click here for highlights) It has now been initialed, opening the doors to ratification by the Lheidli T’enneh. This is the first treaty under the B.C. Treaty process and has been 13 years in the making so the three parties to the agreement wanted to celebrate.

Two hundred and fifty people turned out to the Civic Centre in Prince George to witness the historic event.

Premier Gordon Campbell said that for 2 centuries the relationship between B.C. and the First …

Natives: Now united, bands say blockades are not out of the question
Ian Bailey, The Province
Published: Sunday, October 29, 2006

B.C. risks native protests, uncertainty and a black mark on its reputation before the 2010 Olympics — all due to flaws in the present treaty process, natives are warning.

Chiefs, elders and representatives of more than 40 native communities yesterday signed a “unity protocol” in Nanaimo to highlight their concerns about treaty positions taken by Ottawa and Victoria that they say work against them.

The groups said that First Nations communities are losing patience with the situation that they say has confounded a …

Today Pacific Island nations at the Pacific Island Forums have welcomed and endorsed the Pacific Plan, a blueprint for neo-colonialism in the south Pacific.

The Governments of Australia, the Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Republic of the Marshall Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu and Vanuatu, and representatives of Palau and Tonga. New Caledonia, French Polynesia Timor-Leste and Tokelau endorsed the Pacific Plan which is mainly based around implementing a number of trade liberalisation agreements notably Pacific Island Countries Trade Agreement (PICTA), the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA) and the Pacific Agreement on …

by Peter O’Neil; CanWest News Service; Vancouver Sun
Wednesday, August 02, 2006

OTTAWA - Federal, provincial and aboriginal negotiators have concluded what would be the first final agreement under the costly 13-year B.C. treaty process.

“It’s quite historic,” said Mark Stevenson, chief negotiator for the Lheidli T’enneh First Nation, a 312-person community living in and around Prince George, B.C.

If the deal is formally endorsed by the governments of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell, the community will get $27 million up front, $400,000 a year over 50 years, 4,330 hectares of land, fishing and logging rights, and a constitutionally protected …

By George Lakey
Training for Change (6/02)

Otpur (”Resistance” in Serbian) began as hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands of young people took to the streets to rid their country of dictator Slobadan Milosevic. Impatient with the cautious ways of many of their pro-democracy elders, the youths organized in coffee bars and schools, posted graffiti almost everywhere, and used their street actions to embarass the regime.

Milosevic counter-attacked. His police routinely beat up the protesters, in the streets and more thoroughly in the police stations. His spies were everywhere. His monopoly of the mass media meant that the Otpur was described …

An Online Activist Community for Ethical Globalization

In 2006, we will launch our next public entrepreneurship project, promoting good global citizenship and governance.

The explosive growth and success of e-advocacy in the United States has demonstrated the internet’s capacity to unite large numbers of citizens around effective actions and advance a broad agenda. Yet while internet and text message usage climbs steeply around the world, there are few groups like MoveOn.org in other countries, and no transnational equivalent. Res Publica seeks to address pressing global issues of peace, justice and the environment with effective and edgy transnational actions, to build …

Published on Wednesday, May 24, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
by Walden Bello and Soren Ambrose

As economists and politicians debate what to do about the latest challenges facing the IMF, civil society groups have a straightforward answer: take the IMF off life support.

For over 25 years the world has had one answer for countries that find themselves in a financial crisis: take the IMF policy medicine and get on the debt treadmill that comes with IMF and World Bank loans. This path has worked very well – for big corporations in wealthy countries which walk into countries through the doors …

By Siv O’Neall

Manipulated again!

The emptiness behind the slogan free trade has been pointed out again and again by numerous NGOs, by Progressive Internet sites and by individual objectors to the obscene power of the transnational corporations. It needs however to be stressed constantly until the corporate empire falls and IN BOLDFACE CAPITALS, that the free trade concept which the rich countries are holding forth as the savior of the world from poverty, increasing unemployment and horrendous inequality is just a legerdemain, an empty illusion. It is a way of duping all of us into believing that something positive is coming …