Nearly ten thousand people attended rallies, protests, teach-ins, vigils, and direct actions in Washington timed to coincide with the September 28-29 annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.

Is the apocalypse drawing nigh for the International Monetary Fund? Before the East Asian financial crisis, the IMF had a rather “teflon” reputation. It did rather little to attract press attention, and the press didn’t much report on them. Critiques of the IMF, which were not uncommon, just didn’t seem to stick to the IMF; they slid right off, allowing the institution to linger in the shadows.

The women of the Niger Delta want you to know there is a human cost for our unquenchable thirst for oil and, to get our attention, they have used a novel form of protest: They threatened to disrobe.

Since well before the inception of the Jubilee 2000 campaign, activists have been questioning the term “debt relief.” Is “relief” is really the right word for what we’re seeking?

More and more people are learning, through experience or through burgeoning campaigns, about the inhumanity of water privatization campaigns in the Global South. The story, re-enacted across the world, never loses its sting: the IMF and World Bank pressure governments to sell off publicly-run water systems; for-profit corporations from the North step in; within weeks, water bills skyrocket to unaffordable levels.

From August 24 – September 4, tens of thousands of official delegates, business people, and civil society groups descended upon the smog-laden city of Johannesburg, South Africa for the World Summit on Sustainable Development (also known as “Rio+10” since it took place ten years after the 1992 “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil).