Stop Water Privatisation

Stop Water Privatisation! Alternatives to the PPIAF
As the World Bank agency, the Public Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (PPIAF) met in the Hague on 23-24 May, hundreds of civil society representatives called on donors to reject the Facility's role in promoting water privatisation and fund public alternatives instead.
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Italy Withdraws From Controversial World Bank Privatisation Fund
The Italian government withdrew its support from the Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (PPIAF), a highly controversial element of the World Bank's water privatisation agenda, on the eve of PPIAF's annual meeting of donors in The Hague, the Netherlands.
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India's Dalit Mini-Revolution: How the BSP won Uttar Pradesh
Praful Bidwai
Dalit leader Mayawati, who grew up in slums, has pulled off a staggering political shift in India's largest state, Uttar Pradesh, where her Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has secured an unambiguous majority in the 403-strong assembly, writes Praful Bidwai.
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Creating history
Praful Bidwai
The BSP's spectacular victory in Uttar Pradesh bids fair to help transform Indian politics by putting redistributive justice and equity on the agenda.
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The 1970s as Context for Terrorist Violence
Saul Landau
After 9/11, George Bush claimed that "He who harbours a terrorist is as guilty as the terrorist." The case of Luis Posada Carriles, star of the US-backed anti-Castro terror campaign in the 1970s, who lives in freedom in Miami shows just how meaningless these words have become.
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Four Dead in Ohio: a rehearsal for Tiannamen Square?
Saul Landau
Newly released documents show that US state and federal officials authorised National Guardsmen to fire with live ammunition at unarmed students in Ohio in May, 1970, killing four and wounding nine others.
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Pakistan in the Region
An interview with Zia Mian
Justin Podur
After the September 11 Pakistan had to ally itself with the US in its war on terror and turn the back on its allies - the Talibans. Zia Mian talks about the delicate political situation in Pakistan, its relation to India and the role it has in the big-power game in Asia.
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Law and Order
Tariq Ali
The recent armed clashes in Karachi, Pakistan mark a deepening of the crisis which began with President Pervez Musharraf's suspension of the supreme court chief justice. A remarkable social movement has sprung up in response, and Justice Chaudhry's popularity shows how thoroughly discredited the country's traditional political class has become, argues Tariq Ali.
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La crisis en Palestina

Gobiernos en crisis
Mariano Aguirre
La situación en Israel, los Territorios Ocupados de Palestina y en Gaza es volátil, con gobiernos débiles en Ramallah y Tel Aviv, incapaces de encarar los múltiples escenarios difíciles a los que se enfrentan, escribe Mariano Aguirre.
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Perspectiva global:

Biocombustibles: el porvenir de una ilusión
Atilio A. Boron
Los publicistas e ideólogos del capitalismo celebran lo que es presentado como el descubrimiento de una inesperada fuente de Juvencia: los biocombustibles, destinados a independizarlo de la fugacidad histórica del petróleo y los hidrocarburos, y a garantizarle una vida eterna de extravagantes derroches mediante la fabricación de combustibles a partir de productos hasta ahora utilizados para la alimentación de los humanos. Atilio Boron desmitifica los biocombustibles y presenta los peligros que plantean.
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