NEXT

Winter steelheaders work the lower Skykomish River of western Washington, the Cascades behind.

These links are fresh as of December 2006. Depending on how any news stories have been archived, their links might not stay good.

Isn't the World Trade Organization primarily an economic concern, not social? Nope. It, and free trade generally, was and still is being protested worldwide because of the social disruption it causes.
In some people's view, "free trade" is just a euphemism for unregulated global corporate capitalism.

1. fullcoverage.yahoo.com/fc/Business/Trade: Yahoo's WTO links
2. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wto: Wikipedia: WTO
3. washingtonpost.com/...html: "How Free Trade Hurts," 12-23-2006, By Byron Dorgan (Democratic senator from North Dakota) and Sherrod Brown Byron (Rep. Brown is a Democratic senator-elect from Ohio).
4. The great alternative site gatt.org, with its links to sites like dowethics.com
5. citizen.org/trade: Global Trade Watch at Public Citizen "promotes democracy by challenging corporate globalization"
6. oxfam.org.uk has dozens of papers about WTO policies. Read "Eight Broken Promises: Why the WTO isn't working for the world's poor"
7. If searched, the BBC has dozens of stories on free trade, including a short history of A century of free trade
8. aflcio.org refers to the Economic Policy Institute's excellent Briefing Paper #147 "The high price of 'free' trade"
9. Economist David C.Korten's classic book "The Post-Corporate World" and lecture "Life After Capitalism" may be the best arguments yet against the WTO. His site, the People-Centered Development Forum, at pcdf.org thankfully has a documents page.
10. physiciansforhumanrights.org reprints Tear Gas -- Harrassing Agent or Toxic Chemical Weapon?
11. wto.org, to be fair
12. usinfo.state.gov/ei/economic_issues/WTO.html: the US Information Agency has their views

On the enviromental issues page there's a list of links dealing with food, agriculture, sustainability, ge/gm foods, Monsanto Corporation, and so forth.

Of all the industrialized world, only the United States has a significant homeless population. The National Alliance to End Homelessness estimates that in 2005 nearly three quarters of a million (750,000) people were at one time or another homeless in the United States.

1. endhomelessness.org: National Alliance to End Homelessness
2. nationalhomeless.org: National Coalition for the Homeless
3. seniorservices.org and scn.org/people/seniors: Hamilton House, both in Seattle
4. ci.seattle.wa.us/CrisisClinic: Community Resources Online from the Crisis Clinic
5. scn.org/crisis: Seattle Crisis Resource Directory from the Peace Heathens
6. Sociology 498G: Homelessness at the U of Maryland provides some statistics and links
7. realchangenews.org: Real Change magazine
8. home.golden.net/~msavage/ootc/54ways/overview.html: "54 Ways You Can Help The Homeless"
9. hope-link.org:  "35 years of service"
10. members.tripod.com/~bmdavidson/index.html: "Homeless People and the Internet"
11. pbs.org/weblab/needcom: Market Research for Panhandlers,
    a strange collaboration between PBS and weblab.org
12. pages.prodigy.com/lemus/vagrant/vagrant.htm, "Where derelicts loiter online," is hilarious,
    but it's from Jim, so what did I expect?
13. ich.gov: US Interagency Council on Homelessness

"A U.S. Justice Department report released on November 30 [2006] showed that a record 7 million people -- or one in every 32 American adults -- were behind bars, on probation or on parole at the end of last year. Of the total, 2.2 million were in prison or jail." -- Reuters
"The U.S. incarceration rate of 737 per 100,000 people is the highest in the world. In contrast, the rates in many Western industrial nations range around 100 per 100,000 people."
"With an incarceration rate of 724 per 100,000 [in 2004], the United States is the unchallenged world leader in both raw numbers and imprisonment per capita. With a global prison population estimated at nine million, the US accounts for about one-quarter of all prisoners on the planet."

"The total number of people doing time for drugs in the United States last year exceeded 530,000."
"Drug war prisoners make up about one-fourth of an all-time high 2,268,000 people behind bars in the US [in 2004]."

"Nearly one in eight drug prisoners in America are behind bars for marijuana-related offenses, according to data released this week [November 2006] by the US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS)."

1. november.org: drug war prisoners
2. crrh.org: hemp
3. deoxy.org/li_thi.htm Zippy
4. mcwilliams.com: medical marijuana, his books online, and more

1. thehungersite.org: "A click at The Hunger Site sends a serving of food..."
2. salt.claretianpubs.org: "Your online resource for social justice," from the Claretians
3. j2000usa.org: Jubilee debt forgiveness
4. heifer.org: give a cow -- "Heifer had 726 active projects in 57 countries and 29 states in FY2006"
5. workingforchange.com: "A Publication of Working Assets"
6. three sites that pay a percentage to good causes:
   goodsforchange.com for Working Assets,
   igive.com "Change online shopping for good," and
   greatergood.com, where "up to 30% of every purchase automatically goes to the cause you select "