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Trans-Pacific Partnership outside WTO and without China
The World Trade Organization (WTO) has failed. In December, the Doha Round is turning ten years old, with nothing to celebrate[i]. Formal negotiations of the Round expired in 2005, without any agreement, and informal negotiations stalled in 2008. Indications...
Revolutions are Revolting
Revolutions are rarely what they appear to be. There was precious little Russian participation in the Russian Revolution. Let’s instead call it what it was; the hijacking of a nation by mostly non-Russian armed insurrectionists bankrolled by Wall Street....
Is there a Role for Human Rights in a Free Trade World?
Up to 50,000 people a day die from poverty related causes with 22,000 of these fatalities being children under the age of five. The plight of the world’s most impoverished and vulnerable people have been further aggravated by the current global financial...
Tackling Financial Exclusion in Europe
The term financial exclusion was first coined in 1993 by geographers studying the impact bank closures had on those left unable to access basic banking services. During the 1990s there was a significant increase in research focusing on people experiencing...
South Sudan, Independence and Oil
After half a century of ferocious hostilities between the Khartoum-led North and South of Sudan that resulted in 2 million people fatalities in the South and forced a further 4 million to flee the region, the conflict was finally brought to a close through...
WikiLeaks Faces Down The Banks
Whilst WikiLeaks has built its worldwide reputation on government and more unconventional methods of waging warfare it says 50 per cent of its whistleblower input is related to neither. What founder Julian Assange describes as ‘an ecosystem of corruption’...
Julian Assange: Dead Man Walking?
Loathed by some and loved by others Julian Assange is a man in a suitcase as he keeps one step ahead of an international posse out to settle scores. The Australian founder of WikiLeaks is renowned for embarrassing mainly but not exclusively western...
The Real Terror of Flying
Present-day hysteria about child abuse, pornography and the photographing of children has led to absurd situations with sinister overtones. Parents are dragged through court for taking a bath time fun picture of their child. A young father photographing...
Who Owns the American Dollar?
I have never heard anyone question who owns the U.S. dollar as it seems obvious; the state owns and manages it. Not so quick: It belongs neither to the government of the United States nor, being a republic, to its people. The actual dollar has...
