US - The corporate forces that have screwed up our present have big plans for our future. Last October, the International Industrial Conference heard from 250 business leaders from around the world. There is no more land for agriculture.
Fresh water is in limited supply.
In the first three cases brought before the World Trade Organization, the WTO's panel of three all-powerful judges deliberated in secret and upheld the complaints of corporations. Meanwhile in the US, the Federal Communications Commission deregulated payphones nationwide in October. The cost for activating 2.1 million public phones has since risen from 20 or 25 cents to 35 cents - a respective 40 or 75 percent hike. Communications activists complain that increasing the costs of public phones places a hardship on the poor and poses a danger to public safety as well. The move to service a wealthy minority of cellular phone users is creating a growing communications gap between the rich and the poor.