People's Democracy

on file

THE shareholder group, led by New York City Comptroller William Thompson Jr, controls 545.8-million dollars of Wal-Mart shares. It cited the retailer’s 11-million dollars settlement in March regarding its use of illegal immigrants to clean stores, the company’s settlement of 24 violations of child labour laws and the investigation into former vice-chairman Mr Tom Coughlin for the alleged misuse of expenses, gift cards and invoices.

 --- Business Line, June 4

LEFTWING politicians and intellectuals attending a conference on terrorism in Cuba accused the US government of harbouring a Cuban exile blamed for the bombing of an airliner in 1976.

They said the Bush administration had a double standard in its post-9/11 war on terror because it refused to extradite former CIA operative Luis Posada Carriles to Venezuela to stand trial for the downing of a Cuban plane that killed 73 people.

Yesterday’s meeting, headed by Cuban president Fidel Castro at Havana’s convention centre, was called to press for Posada’s extradition by the United States, where he was arrested last month for illegal entry while seeking asylum.

Not extraditing him to Venezuela would be an act of great hypocrisy by the US government and president George W Bush.

--- National Herald, June 4

THERE is a chance that imported products like sweet corn, corn blends, soy nuggets, soy granules, tofu, soy drinks, soymilk and others that have flooded the market could have been made from genetically modified (GM) maize/corn and soya. There is no way to know this as India does not insist on labelling for GM foods, nor has it a proper regulatory system in place for screening such imported products.

There has been widespread concern following recent reports that rats fed on a diet rich in genetically modified maize developed organ abnormalities and changes in their blood profile.

Data on the collapse of the immune system and organ abnormalities in rats fed with GM maize (MON 863) have been leaked from secret research carried out by the American multinational food giant, Monsanto. The study is reported to have shown that rats fed on normal maize were healthy. Despite requests from several official quarters, the multinational company is said to have declined to make its 1139-page report public, stating that it "contains confidential business information which could be of commercial use to our companies."

--- The Hindu, June 4

THE US government is running an “archipelago” of prisons around the world, many of them secret camps into which people are being “literally disappeared,” a top Amnesty International officials said on Sunday (June 5).

AI executive director William Schulz criticised the administration of US president George W Bush for holding alleged opponents in “indefinite incommunicado detention” without access to lawyers, in an interview with Fox News on Sunday.

 --- AFP, June 5

THE people at the top of America’s money pyramid have so prospered in recent years that they have pulled far ahead of the rest of the population, an analysis of tax records and other government data by The New York Times shows. They have even left behind people making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Call them the hyper-rich.

They are not just a few Croesus-like rarities. Draw a line under the top 0.1 per cent of income earners --- the top 1000th. Above that line are about 145,000 taxpayers, each with at least 1.6 million dollars in income and often much more.

The average income for the top 0.1 per cent was 3 million dollars in 2002, the latest year for which averages are available. That number is two and a half times the 1.2 million dollars, adjusted for inflation, that group reported in 1980. No other income group rose nearly as fast.

The share of the nation’s income earned by those in this uppermost category has more than doubled since 1980, to 7.4 per cent in 2002. The share of income earned by the rest of the top 10 per cent rose for less, and the share earned by the bottom 90 per cent fell.

--- New York Times, June 5