A British court recently ruled that Donegal International, a “vulture fund” that makes short and long-term investments for huge profits, has the right to profit from its purchase of millions of dollars worth of Zambia’s debt – acquired for a tiny fraction of its face value eight years ago. This bizarre legal and financial tangle is a clear example of global profiteering at its worst.
FPIF asked Anuradha Mittal of the Oakland Institute and Gawain Kripke of Oxfam whether international trade is good for agriculture or not. In her essay, Mittal argues that free trade is hazardous to farmers and farming. In his essay, Kripke sees a role for trade in sustainable development. While they agree on many points, here they also take issue with each other’s positions.
FPIF asked Anuradha Mittal of the Oakland Institute and Gawain Kripke of Oxfam the following questions:
FPIF asked Anuradha Mittal of the Oakland Institute and Gawain Kripke of Oxfam the following questions:
Faced with growing public opposition to the U.S. war in Iraq, the Bush administration has been desperately trying to divert attention to Iran. Washington has gone so far as to make a series of dubious and unfounded charges that blame the Iranian government for the difficulties facing American forces fighting the Iraqi insurgency.
On April 14, 2007, if the organizers of Step It Up accomplish their goal, they will hold not only the largest climate change action in the United States but also the most widespread.
Hopes for the Kyoto Protocol are fading, and carbon trading is a farce. To arrest climate change, industrialized states can either "bite the bullet" and adopt socially responsible policies to dramatically cut fossil fuel use and useless consumption. Or they can hope for a "silver bullet"—some new techno-fix that might let them continue to pollute and avoid human extinction. The silver bullet may be winning.
As the fables about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and clandestine ties with al-Qaida began to unravel following the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, the flagship of U.S. news reporting, The New York Times, took itself to task for its failure to challenge its news sources. “Information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged,” the Times wrote in May 2004. “Articles based on dire claims about Iraq trended to get prominent display, while follow-up articles that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried. In some cases, there was no follow-up at all.”
The much-anticipated UN plan for Kosovo’s final status unveiled in part last week is a crucial step to resolve the long-standing conflict over the restive province in what used to be Yugoslavia’s southwest. While avoiding the controversial word “independence,” UN Special Envoy Matti Ahtisaari presented the outlines for a new Albanian majority state with a period of international supervision and substantial autonomy for the minority Serbs.