home / subscribe / donate / tower / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events / faq
The New Print Edition of CounterPunch, Only for Our Newsletter Subscribers! IRAQ: WHAT HAPPENED? Is the bloodbath over? Is the Occupation settling in? Learn the real story from Patrick Cockburn, the war's most experienced reporter. Also in this exclusive bulletin for CounterPunch subscribers: Jeffrey St Clair on the destruction of America; Alexander Cockburn on how the Left loves to scare itself; Ignacio Ramonet on Africa's No to "free trade". Plus "Waterboarded"--Why the CIA destroyed its videos. Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! CounterPunch books and gear make great holiday presents.
Order CounterPunch By Email for Only $35 a Year ! David Vest's Pianorama Tours the Northwest!!
|
Today's Stories January 11, 2008 Dave Lindorff Paul Craig
Roberts January 10, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Bob Wing Michael Donnelly David Macaray China Hand Ayesha Ijaz Khan Rannie Amiri Website of the Day
January 9, 2008 Cockburn /
St. Clair Dave Lindorff John Chuckman James Bovard Alan Farago Russell Mokhiber William S. Lind Peter Morici Josh Reubner Mike Roselle Website of the Day
January 8, 2008 Paul Craig
Roberts Russell Mokhiber Robert Fantina Dave Zirin Shamako Nobel John Ross Brenda Norrell Laura Carlsen Patrick Irelan Evelyn J. Pringle Jonathan M.
Feldman Michael Dickinson Website of
the Day
January 7, 2008 Chris Floyd John Blair Uri Avnery Andy Worthington Binoy Kampmark David Macaray Ralph Nader Michael Donnelly Ron Jacobs Gideon Levy Dave Lindorff Website of
the Day
January 5 / 6, 2008 Douglas Valentine Kevin Young Richard Rhames Saul Landau Marc Lynch Robert Fantina Donna Volatile Jelle Bruinsma Bob Sutcliffe Harvey Wasserman Missy Beattie David Swanson Jacob Hornberger Shepherd Bliss Ron Jacobs Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
January 4, 2008 Cockburn /
St. Clair Jonathan Cook Paul Craig Roberts Stan Goff Dave Lindorff Niranjan Ramakrishnan Allan Nairn Joshua Frank Peter Morici Mary McInnis Website of the Day
January 3, 2008 Fatima Bhutto Pam Martens Joanne Mariner Zoltan Grossman David Domke Norman Solomon Nikolas Kozloff Jacob G. Hornberger Martha Rosenberg Russell Means Website of the Day
January 2, 2008 Jeff Taylor M. Shahid Alam Gary Leupp Paul Craig Roberts Heather Gray Fred Gardner David Macaray Benjamin Dangl
January 1, 2008 Iain A. Boal B. R. Gowani Shahid Mahmood Linn Washington,
Jr. Harvey Wasserman John Ross Website of the Day
December 31, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Tariq Ali Liaquat Ali Khan Wajahat Ali Robert Fisk Ajai Sahni Marwan Bishara Uri Avnery Mark T. Harris Brenda Norrell Website of the Day
December 29 / 30, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Tariq Ali Fawzia Afzal-Khan Gary Leupp China Hand Jacob Hornberger John Chuckman Missy Beattie Ralph Nader Fidel Castro Robert Fantina Greg Moses Catherine Lutz Kristin Van
Tassel Kim Nicolini Phyllis Pollack Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
December 28, 2007 Farzana Versey Wajahat Ali Binoy Kampmark Ayesha Ijaz
Khan Anthony DiMaggio Ray McGovern Jim Goodman Ron Jacobs Russell Hoffman John Murphy Website of the Day
December 27, 2007 Dilip Hiro Murtaza Shibli Stephen Soldz Bill Quigley Paul Craig Roberts Omer Subhani Marjorie Cohn Allan Nairn Jacob G. Hornberger Norman Solomon Patrick Irelan Ben Tripp Website of the Day
Charles Tripp Paul Armentano Rannie Amiri Stanley Heller John Walsh Martha Rosenberg Norman Madarasz Website of
the Day
December 25, 2007 Patrick Cockburn December 24, 2007 Andrea Peacock Tariq Ali Uri Avnery Jill Jameson Steve Melendez Mike Whitney Chuck Munson John Walsh Farzana Versey Richard Neville Website of the Day
Alexander Cockburn Ralph Nader Andy Worthington Ahmad Faruqui Bill Moyers Rev. William
E. Alberts Timothy J. Freeman Anthony DiMaggio Fred Gardner Paul Krassner Seth Sandronsky William Loren
Katz Michael Dickinson Ron Jacobs David Vest Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
December 21, 2007 John Ross Jacob Hornberger Dick J. Reavis Jeff Cohen
Peter Morici Jack McCarthy Raúl Zibechi Steve Early David Macaray Patrick Bond Lakota Freedom Delegation Website of
the Day
December 20, 2007 David Rosen Alan Farago Laura Carlsen Ashley Dawson Wayne Smith Website of
the Day
December 19, 2007 Saul Landau Paul W. Lovinger Norman Solomon Dave Zirin Marjorie Cohn Sen. Russell
Feingold Sonja Karkar Anthony Papa Christopher Ketcham Davey D Website of
the Day
December 18, 2007 R. F. Blader George Wuerthner Steven Higgs Vijay Prashad David Macaray Ralph Nader Eva Liddell Martha Rosenberg Dave Lindorff Peter Morici Website of
the Day
December 17, 2007 Mike Whitney Tom Barry Uri Avnery Greg Moses Allan Nairn Patrick Bond Stephen Lendman Charles Jonkel Laray Polk Stephen Fleischman December 15 / 16, 2007 Peter Linebaugh Howard Zinn Standard Schaefer Raymond J.
Lawrence Alan Farago Saul Landau Jenna Orkin Ahmad Samih
Khalidi Robert Fantina Missy Comley
Beattie Ramzy Baroud James L. Secor Elijah Wald Website of
the Weekend
December 14, 2007 JoAnn Wypijewski John Ross Jacob Hornberger Andy Worthington Allan Nairn Dave Zirin Dave Lindorff Misty MacDuffee Ben Terrall Dr. Mustafa
Barghouthi Website of the Day
December 13, 2007 Paul Craig
Roberts Mike Whitney Ron Jacobs Norman Solomon Peter Morici Sandy Mayes Franklin Lamb Jacob Hornberger Nadim Rouhana Dave Zirin Website of the Day
Allan
Nairn Alan
Farago Ray
McGovern Winslow
T. Wheeler Evan
Jones James
Petras Joel
Hirschorn Joshua
Frank Sherry
Wolf Dan
Bacher Website
of the Day
![]()
![]()
Subscribe Online
|
January 11, 2008 The EU's Free Trade Agenda for Latin AmericaInside the Vienna ConsensusBy JEFF BALLINGER "The Vienna Consensus" has a fairly benign ring to it. It only takes on a threatening aspect when linked to the Washington Consensus of 1989--the 10-point plan for economic reform imposed so disastrously by the International Monetary Fund--in a new report from the Amsterdam-based Transnational Institute. Subtitled "The EU's free trade agenda for Latin America and the Caribbean," the report outlines a cynical ploy by big business to lobby the trade summit here recently. Ever since the 1999 Seattle protests that broke up a meeting of the World Trade Organization, "the Washington Consensus" became activists' shorthand for unbalanced, business-directed global governance. The TNI report delves into the explicit intentions of the EU-Latin America Business Summit--providing a list of recommendations from the conference to the governments' summit--as well as more subtle tactics such as having top decision-makers deliver keynote addresses to the 300 attendees of the Business Summit. This undue influence has led to skyrocketing corporate profits (and salaries) and other forms of corporate excess: Only months ago, for example, Nike offered $103 million a year to the German national football club for rights to produce replica jerseys with the Nike brand prominently displayed. In retaliation, Adidas stole the University of Michigan from Nike for $7.5 million a year, an amount called "almost unfathomable" by Paul King, the University of Washington's senior associate athletic director for business and finance. Accompanying these excesses are inevitably the familiar pattern of environmental degradation, stagnant, poverty-level wages and an eviscerated legal/regulatory apparatus. The neo-liberal "consensus," after all, was to get government out of the way to let the market work its' magic. Resistance may seem quixotic, and hard to justify, yet it goes on, year after year by groups in the so-called developing countries, sometimes in concert with Northern groups such as the Clean Clothes Campaign. I visited the CCC's Vienna office last Spring, to catch up on the local efforts to bring reliable information to consumers and--against all odds--pressure big apparel and shoe brands to improve the workers' lot. While the "shaming" campaigns have largely lost their bite--due to expensive "corporate responsibility" programs that seem to have bamboozled a compliant press--there is still the odd "sweatshop" story that stays in the news for awhile. Such is the case with a Gap sub-supplier in India, caught in October using children who had been sold into virtual slavery. Paradoxically, the CCC has gotten caught in the crossfire when, last year, the Indian government unashamedly backed international jeans suppliers Fibres and Fabrics International and its 100% subsidiary Jeans Knit Pvt Ltd (FFI/JKPL) which had launched a libel action against the group's Dutch and Tamilnadu affiliates. The local CCC office group has been developing ties with the workers attempting to build free trade unions in Cambodia. While it is hard to be optimistic about workers' struggles--even in our own prosperous countries--I do believe that research and resistance can produce results. I have seen it first-hand in Indonesia. In the late-80s, with a small "Human Rights" grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development, we interviewed thousands of workers at 200 factories around Jakarta to monitor compliance with the minimum wage of 87 cents a day. When we found substantial wage cheating (over 50%), even the tightly controlled press unleashed a firestorm of criticism ("World Shoe Giants Rape Worker Rights") of undercutting a legal wage already far short of the poverty level for a single adult. With the help of the international attention, compliance improved and the government-set minimum wage was increased almost 25% a year for the next 5 years. Many workers have led protests and defied serious threats. One Nike contractor was handed a list of two dozen employees organizing a protest in support of the minimum wage ($1.30 a day at the time)--the work of the local military command who interrogated workers for several weeks. All the organizers were fired. Five years later, the Indonesian Supreme Court found that the workers had a legitimate right to protest and should not have been dismissed. By that time, the factory had passed into the hands of the most notorious and reviled Suharto crony, Bob Hasan (now in jail), whose Astra Group was the largest Indonesian producer of Nike shoes. Hasan forced the desperate workers--this was just after the Asian economic crisis--to accept about 20% of the back wages owed to them, while he was donating $18,000 a month to the Indonesian Wrestling Federation. Nike never acknowledged that the contractor had done wrong to fire those workers. To the contrary, the company used every opportunity to denigrate their activism. The courageous resistance of workers and environmentalists in the South is well-documented by cross-border partners from the rich countries--such as the CCC and TNI. As we are seeing in the U.S. Presidential race, the stories of corporate depredations has turned even Republicans against unrestrained "free trade" and orthodox neo-liberalism; trade agreements have become a much harder sell. So it was that during the Business Summit here in Vienna, a "counter-summit" took place at which social movements and Non-Governmental Organizations targeted some of the corporate representatives meeting across town. The "Linking Alternatives 2" Social Encounter Forum presented evidence of BBVA (Spanish bank) endangering fragile Amazonian and Andean ecosystems; Unión Fenosa (electric) labor rights (27 union activists killed during struggle against privatization in Columbia's Caribbean coastal area) and destruction of indigenous people's water resources, and Telefónica was charged with labor rights violations in Peru and irresponsible rate increases in Peru and Chile. In all, 25 cases were discussed, making any kind of "consensus" between businesspeople and government partners ring pretty hollow in the global court of public opinion. Jeff Ballinger is teaching and researching industrial relations at Webster University in Vienna. He can be contacted at jeffreyd@mindspring.com
![]()
|
How the Press Led the US into War ![]() Buy End Times Now! CounterPunch Books of the Crossroads: HOW THE IRISH INVENTED SLANG By Daniel Cassidy AMERICAN BOOK AWARD! ![]() Click Here to Buy! Click Here for Dates & Venues Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz ![]() Click Here to Buy! Saul Landau's Bush and Botox World with a Foreword by Gore Vidal ![]() Click Here to Order! How They Made a Killing on the War on Terrorism ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The Occupation by Patrick Cockburn ![]() ![]() ![]() Humanitarian Imperialism By Jean Bricmont ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() CITY BEAUTIFUL By Tennessee Reed ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |