News stories by Ignacio Ramonet, page 2

The grave financial crisis and the economic horrors besieging European societies are causing people to forget that climate change and the destruction of biodiversity remain the greatest threats to humanity, as they were reminded only last December at the climate summit in Durban, South Africa. If we do not radically change the dominant modes of production imposed by economic globalisation, we will soon reach the point of no return, after which human life on the planet will become gradually unviable, writes Ignacio Ramonet, editor of "Le Monde diplomatique en español".

The social repercussions of the current economic cataclysm are of an unprecedented brutality: in the European Union, there are more than 23 million unemployed and 80 million poor. The young are the primary victims, writes Ignacio Ramonet, editor of "Le Monde diplomatique en espanol".

Rather than taking any action to address the situation and terrified by recent drops on the stock exchanges, governments are bending over backwards to coddle the markets when what they should do is disarm them and make them submit to strict regulation. How long can we continue to allow financial speculation to set the terms for political representation? What is democracy for, after all? What is the use of voting when the markets dictate what the government should do? asks Ignacio Ramonet, editor of Le Monde diplomatique en espanol.

Two centuries after the abolition of slavery we are seeing the reintroduction of an abominable practice: human trafficking. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates that 12.3 million people each year are taken captive by networks tied to international crime and used as forced labour in inhuman conditions, writes Ignacio Ramonet, editor of Le Monde Diplomatique in Spanish.

One of the most powerful men in the world, director of the largest financial institution of the planet, sexually assaults one of the world's most vulnerable people, a humble African immigrant. In its raw concision, this image sums up with the expressive force of an editorial cartoon one of the central characteristics of our age: the violence of inequality, writes Ignacio Ramonet, editor of "Le Monde diplomatique en espanol".

Fukushima marks the end of the era of atomic energy illusions and the beginning of the post-nuclear age, writes Ignacio Ramonet, editor of "Le Monde diplomatique en espanol".

The Libyan rebels deserve the help of all democrats. Colonel Gaddafi is indefensible. The international coalition that is attacking him lacks credibility. A democracy is not built with foreign bombs. The contradictions implicit in these four statements give rise to a certain uneasiness about Operation Odyssey Dawn, especially to people on the left, writes Ignacio Ramonet, director of Le Monde diplomatique en espanol

The conclusions of the final European Commission report on competition abuses in the pharmaceutical industry, released on July 8, are shocking and have wide-ranging ramifications. And yet the media have largely failed to cover it, writes Ignacio Ramonet, editor of Le Monde Diplomatique in Spanish.

The world's conservative groups and their usual propagandists received the news of the June 28 coup in Honduras with immense pleasure. Although they made critical noises about the coup itself, they swallowed and justified the arguments of those who carried it out, repeating that "President Manuel Zelaya had committed numerous violations of the constitution by wanting to hold a referendum to remain in power," writes Ignacio Ramonet, editor of Le Monde Diplomatique in Spanish.