STWR - Share The World's Resources

That the world is sick is beyond doubt. But how sick is it? Moderately sick, as the champions of the Neo-Liberal Globalisation (NLG) proclaim? Or incurably, terminally, sick, as some extreme critics maintain? Or very sick, but probably not beyond saving, as I believe, based on the work that I have done in the last three years or so on this subject. So, in other words, that Human ‘Civilisation’ faces the most serious crisis in its ten to twelve thousand years History (since the invention of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent of Mesopotamia) is beyond doubt.

The dispute in the UK over the Royal Mail encapsulates a huge question: should profit always be put ahead of people's needs?

What do you call it when those who cross the Mexican-U.S. border get charged thousands of dollars for a ride to a job where their employer makes them pay rent for unspeakably bad living conditions and board for the food they can only buy at the company store and where that employer patrols with dogs, trucks and thugs so the workers can't leave?

Proposed remedies to cure our ailing society are vacuous because no one wants to admit the real problem: economic prosperity.

The UN flagship initiative on corporate responsibility - the Global Compact - is failing to stop corporate human rights violations, says ActionAid ahead of a UN summit on corporate responsibly in Geneva this week. ”These companies are trampling over the lives of thousands of poor people, locking women and children into a vicious cycle of hunger,” said Aftab Alam Khan, Head of Trade from ActionAid during the launch-week of ActionAid’s HungerFREE campaign.

A new UK Prime Minister, a new cabinet, but the same corporate connection. Gordon Brown has made it a priority to boost corporations during his times as UK Chancellor of the Exchequer. The former head of the Confederation of British Industry, Digby Jones, is now Minister for Trade and Investment. Behind this high-profile hiring are a slew of other corporate-related figures in the new Brown government.

Before his untimely death in a plane crash, Commerce Secretary Ron Brown said,

“I’m not Hillary’s mother-f****** tour guide!”