| The global food price crisis - a critique of orthodox perspectives
Capitalist industrial agriculture, with its wrenching destabilisation and transformation of land, nature, and social relations is responsible for today's food crises, argues Walden Bello.
Torture: America's policy, Europe's shame
The degrading treatment meted out to prisoners of the United States-led "war on terror" over seven years has yet to be subject to proper legal scrutiny and accountability. But the responsibility is Europe's too, say Jan Egeland & Mariano Aguirre.
Netanyahu speaks: The Israel-Palestine ball remains in Obama's court
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu used the term 'Palestinian state' to pacify Obama, but his vision of the state amounts to a flag and an anthem, with no concessions from the Israeli side.
Obama’s overture to Islamic world
President Barack Hussein Obama’s address from Cairo on the relationship between the US and the Islamic world lays the foundation for a radical change in western attitudes towards Muslims, writes Praful Bidwai.
Avoiding a green bad deal
Investing our hopes in green growth or new technological fixes will not avert the climate crisis. So what will? asks Oscar Reyes.
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As the United Nations launches the 2009 World Drug Report this week, more than 40 international groups and experts worldwide issue a call to action that presses governments to adopt a humane approach to drug policy.
In spite of attempts to violently suppress protests of the indigenous Amazonian population, the Peruvian government was compelled to withdraw a series of decrees that would give transnational companies unfettered access to the Amazon's riches. 
The world is looking at China to save it from depression, but China has built its export based economy on the backs of its rural population, argues Walden Bello, which is too poor to absorb the industry's output now that global demand has slumped.
UN conference was convened to find new ways of dealing with the global financial and economic crises and give voice to those most affected by them. But the rich countries have opposed any real change, and the result is an anemic UN document.