In The News

The New Chauvinism

George Monbiot August 10, 2005
Following the bombings in London last month, a national consensus has emerged in Britain that a renewed sense of patriotism is necessary to combat terrorism. Codes of citizenship and a shared belief in Britain's values, proponents argue, will reduce the risk of domestic terrorism. While patriotism makes citizens less likely to attack one another, it may also make the state more inclined to...

Death in the Sun

Dan Glaister August 9, 2005
California is well recognized for its wealth of agriculture, but the large number of illegal immigrants who drive the industry are rarely seen or acknowledged. Often forced to work under alarming conditions and minimal wages, an estimated 11 million undocumented aliens work in agriculture across the United States. Although in the past, state authorities have paid little attention to heat-...

CAFTA's Close Call A Warning to US Policy Makers

Edward Gresser August 9, 2005
Passing both the Senate and the House by slim margins, the approval of CAFTA – a free-trade agreement linking the US with the five Central American states and the Dominican Republic – was a narrow victory for the Bush administration. CAFTA will only have a marginal effect on the US economy – so why such a close vote? As Edward Gresser writes, the new initiative addresses protected goods such as...

Free Trade and Poverty

Joachim Bamrud August 3, 2005
Despite years of market reforms, many Latin American countries remain poor. Latin Business Chronicle editor Joachim Bamrud traces the region's poverty and sluggish growth to the continuing protectionism of many countries. President George W. Bush's signing of CAFTA provides Latin America with a new opportunity to abandon import tariffs, which actually hinder domestic growth and the...

Latin America’s Dysfunctional Democracy

Denise Dresser August 3, 2005
Most Latin American nations have democratized over the last ten years in terms of free and fair elections. With falling living standards and stagnating income, however, the region continues to be mired in poverty and democracy remains dysfunctional. Governments have produced skin-deep democracies in which people have a vote, but don’t really have a stake, in which wealth is increasingly...

Reinventing the Union

Gary Fields July 28, 2005
The dramatic split in the AFL-CIO this week was caused by equally dramatic, though gradual, changes in the US economy. In the ‘new economy,’ manufacturing is losing ground to services. At the same time, globalization and technological development have allowed many jobs to be sent overseas, a phenomenon that unions seem powerless to resist. They suffer from low membership in high-technology...

A Thai Remedy for High Health Costs

Nick Cumming-Bruce July 27, 2005
“American companies have outsourced just about everything else but never thought of outsourcing health care,” says Curtis Schroeder, chief executive of Bumrungrad hospital in Thailand. “Now they are.” Bumrungrad in particular, but also some of its rival hospitals are enjoying a new international prominence as patients from the U.S., Europe, Asia and the Middle East flock to Thailand for...