The title of this post is an economics and public health pun in very poor taste. But the story behind it is fairly unsavoury too.
Two academics, David Stuckler at Cambridge University and Sanjay Basu at Yale recently looked into the effects of the IMF’s policy impacts on public service reform in the former Soviet Union, using tuberculosis as an indicator. Their full results are here, but here’s the bottom line: Keep Reading »
There are a number of theories going around about the demise of the WTO talks. Mine are here but a couple of others worth noting are by Martin Khor, here and Devinder Sharma. I particularly like Devinder’s take – which shifts the blame entirely toward the US reluctance to give up cotton subsidies. It’s something we got to discuss a little when Devinder helped to launch Stuffed and Starved in Delhi last week (thanks Devinder!). I’m not sure I agree that the elections in India has nothing at all to do with the outcome, but we’re both agreed that soon enough, the talks will be back from the dead. Indeed, if the Third World Network is to be believed, the corpse of the talks is already being revivified by Lula and Lamy.
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The Financial Times has a nice wee mini-site on the food crisis, here. Some good data to be had, if you’re looking…
Some good-ish news from the world of agribusiness. Monsanto has reported that it’s leaving the recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone business. The Ethicurean asks whether Monsanto’s exit from the market might be because people are worried about the toxic effects of rBGH in their milk. Monsanto, however, insists that “This is really a great product… Business has been strong. Sales have been strong.” So that’s all cleared up then.
A little while ago I hailed a popular victory against a NAFTA-compliance measure that would spray large parts of Northern California with a toxin that hadn’t been tested on people before, to eliminate a threat that wasn’t a threat at all.
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A few days back, I posted a piece from Pambazuka News on the effects of the food crisis on women. Below is the fact-filled source for much of that article, by Women Thrive Worldwide and is well worth a read.
The Effect of the Food Crisis on Women and Their Families
Women Thrive Worldwide
May 2008
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The splendid George Caffentzis has kindly allowed me to share this piece, written for Turbulence in the UK.
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I’m not at all used to the world of punditry, even though it is increasingly what I find myself doing these days. And the confines of soundbites in short mass-media-segments are something I’ve had trouble with before and no doubt will again.
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Here’s something on the WTO now up at Comment is Free.
When the World Trade Organisation talks collapsed in Seattle in 1999, there were parties in the streets, and a wailing and renting of clothes in the corridors of power. The failure of the Doha round of WTO talks in Geneva this week has drawn a more muted reaction from both its boosters and critics. In Seattle, it was possible to tell a story in which the voices of people on the streets mattered, and in which the disenfranchised had scored a victory against an unaccountable front company for international capital. This week’s failure had less to do with global justice, and much more to do with the growing pains of international capitalism.
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