Neoliberalism in Latin America

Neoliberalism as an economic ideology is spreading throughout the world via international financial institutions and transnational corporate hegemony. The effects of this colonial phenomenon is especially acute in Latin America where many nations faced debt crises directly related to the international economic system. In order for many nations in Latin America to deal with this economic crisis, they were forced to cede democratic control of their economies to these international actors. Although democratic procedures exist in most countries in Latin America which are implementing the reforms, real democracy is maimed by international economic interference in policy-making. Procedural democracy legitimizes the damaging effects which ensue from the neoliberal reform process. This is evident when we examine the nature of international lending institutions, the power of international capital, the degradation of worker and peasant lives, and the lack of popular opposition.

Harper's Hollow Promise Doesn't Stop Attacks on Abortion Rights

Most Canadians believe abortion is a settled issue. But the emboldened demands of anti-abortionists show otherwise, as does the January election that sent 100 anti-abortion MP's to Parliament, 78 of them Conservative. The pro-choice movement is closely monitoring the actions and policies of this government, and we will act to prevent any incursions on women's reproductive rights in Canada.

Labour Le Travail: A Significant Collection in Canada's Working Class History

Labour / Le Travail is a bilingual and biannual journal covering a broad range of approaches to studying the working class in Canada. Based out of Newfoundland's Memorial University, L / LT has received international acclaim as a pioneer in Canadian working class history. This journal was born out of the political and socially tumultuous years of the '60s and '70s. Labour / Le Travail emerges from the New Left movement, and it might, as Verity Burgmann alludes, be a product of increased access by working class youth to universities across the country during the ‘50s and '60s.[3] The journal received its intellectual inspiration by a circle of historians inside the Communist Party of Great Britain, such as Eric Hobsbawn and E. P. Thompson.[4]

China: The Impact of Reform & Development

In 1998, the Yangtze River flooded killing more than 3000, demolishing five million homes and inundating 52 million acres of land. The economic losses have been estimated to be greater than $20 billion. There are two reasons for this catastrophe. The first and most obvious – two decades of unconstrained logging combined with destruction of wetlands. Without the basic ecological infrastructure required to manage the annual hydrological cycle, three thousand lives and more than $20 billion was lost overnight. The other reason, elusive in contemporary economic and political discourse, is the awareness of ecological systems as organs within a composite biosphere - a biosphere that possesses both the potential to preserve and expand wealth, as well as the capacity to annihilate it in seconds. Not only is this rather self evident truth marginalized generally, within China, total disregard for such considerations had been institutionalized as we will discover in the final pages of this essay.