The free enterprise system, aka the free market,aka capitalism, is an economic system, as we all know, that is dedicated to maximizing profits at any cost. Neither ethics, morality, honor, environmental concerns, nor human life itself will be spared by this system and its quest to put profits before people (and everything else).

Andrew Murray the Chair of the Stop the War Coalition opened a conference in London on December 10th describing it as an “historic event” that brings together peace activists from around the world. Indeed, the conference included delegates from the United States, Britain, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, India, the Philippines, Canada, Poland, Greece, Italy, Spain and many other European countries.

On a U.S. tour, award-winning journalist Robert Fisk spoke about his life work as a veteran journalist reporting about the Middle East. Fisk is the Middle East correspondent for the British newspaper, The Independent.

We respect the history of WFTU as well as its course during the 60 years since its foundation. Relying on this rich 60-year route, it is now necessary to move on. To correspond to contemporary demands. To open ways for the coming decade. 

As a high school student, I began listening to the brilliant comedian Richard Pryor. His recent passing reminds me of how he shaped my political consciousness.

It's one thing to say the emperor has no clothes. It is another thing to say that the emperor has no mind or thinks that we have no mind. George Bush is on the hustings defending the occupation of Iraq. And George Bush is determined to prove that George Santayana was wrong when he said (a paraphrase) that those who learn nothing from history are condemned to repeat it.

Washington’s traditional complicity with the Miami extreme right wing is widely known. There, anything linked with anti Cuban terrorism has always been done with the top US authorities’ consent.

In the end, we can only assume the decision wasn't so "agonizing" after all. Last night Stan Tookie Williams was legally lynched by the state of California, at the behest of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger who denied Williams' appeal for clemency.

The political thriller Paradise Now is about a suicide operation in Tel Aviv. From a humanistic perspective Director Hany Abu-Assad presents sensitive subject matter through the lens of Palestinian life under military occupation in the West Bank.

THE recently concluded World Information Summit in Tunisia last month was supposed to address the yawning digital divide: both between nations and within nations. Instead, most of the public focus was in who would control the Internet, not only the information highway of today but also a major channel for global commerce.

The Japanese government is rushing to give shape to a plan for the Japanese Self-Defense Forces and the U.S. forces in Japan to share SDF bases ...Contrary to the government argument justifying the co-use of SDF bases as a way to "reduce burdens on Okinawa," this plan will only spread Okinawans' burdens to all of Japan.

Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez officially signed Friday in Montevideo, Uruguay, the incorporation of his country as a Mercosur “full member” and called for a more “political” block with a greater input of strategic planning.

The US policy of providing cash assistance to Colombia ostensibly for controlling the cocaine trade, a five-year program known as "Plan Colombia," is a failure. Despite Bush administration claims that Plan Colombia has significantly slowed cocaine traffic to the US, a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report provides evidence to the contrary.

I was invited to travel and speak in Venezuela at the International Forum on Free Knowledge held in Maracaibo during Thanksgiving. I also had the chance to speak with directors in many of the organizations charged with carrying out Chavez's vision of a "Bolivarian Revolution."

"Presently, the feverish consumerism of the rich countries is leading to the alarming shortage of a vital source of non-renewable energy in the world, that is, hydrocarbons, whose proven and unproved reserves are depleted and whose market price, only within reach of the wealthy societies, is inaccessible to the overwhelming majority of peoples in the Third World."

According to many contemporaneous media sources, there are almost 300,000 homeless veterans in the United States who are living on the streets or in shelters. The Department of Veterans Affairs has estimated that “more than 299,000 veterans are homeless on any given night; more than 500,000 experience homelessness over the course of a year.”

The exercises incorporate the population in every territory, testing the capacity to move in case of an attack and the state and functioning of shelters...These military exercises aim to prevent invasion or occupation by the organized, practiced, and permanent resistance of the population.

Only few days separate us from the forthcoming election. As this date approaches, the political scene grows tenser, battles of slogans are raging, and political diatribe escalates. Frictions have become more pronounced, some of which are coupled with threats to shed blood, or has indeed been shed.