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Venezuela's CANTV: What should a 21st century "socialist telecommunications company look like? http://www.tni.org/interview/venezuelas-cantv-what-should-21st-century-socialist-telecommunications-company-look

New criteria for a “socialist” public company 1.Public – not necessarily state-run, as it also refers to community-driven initiatives2.Equitable – overcoming barriers to access, especially for poorer communities3.Participative – active and informed participation by diverse groups, not just consultation4.Efficiency – looking beyond financial efficiency to include factors such as good working conditions, and a positive environmental record5.Quality – including means of measuring quality beyond the traditional market-driven indicators

6.Accountability – not only to shareholders but mainly to citizens and workers 7.Fair and horizontal labour relations – key to effective public management, with emphasis on training and active involvement of workers8.Sustainability – Financial, social, political and environmental9.Solidarity – Very different to Corporate Social Responsibility. Building solidarity between economic and social sectors nationally and internationally, based on common commitment to social goals.10.Transferability – Examining whether the experience of the company, as a whole or in part, is transferable to other parts of the country, region or world, including options for public-public partnerships (PUPs).

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Statistics are another front of combat in the war on drugs in Colombia http://www.tni.org/briefing/statistics-bazaar

The drugs scene in Colombia is characterized by the fact that it is dominated by a confusion of insufficiently supported statistics and speculative diagnoses which produce policies that reflect this chaos.The manipulation of data and diagnoses that has taken place in Colombia in order to consolidate the “success of the strategy” is now catching on in countries such as Mexico who look to Colombia as an exemplary country. This report looks at what is happening to coca and cocaine statistics in Colombia with the aim of raising a few questions on what the authorities present as the success of drug control in Colombia.http://www.tni.org/sites/www.tni.org/files/download/brief32.pdf

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ENVIRONMENT-MEXICO: Green Areas to the Highest Bidder http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50589

Activists in Mexico complain that the deforestation threatening the environmental health of Mexico has been accentuated by the granting of public areas to private companies.A recent case involves a plan by the government of the state of Nuevo León to hand over 26 hectares next to the La Pastora park in the city of Monterrey to FEMSA, the largest soft drink and beer company in Mexico, whose brewery division was acquired by Dutch brewing company Heineken in a deal in January. The land is to be used to build a football stadium with a capacity for 50,000 people. The plan, backed by the government of the northeastern state of Nuevo León, has run up against opposition from environmentalists, who are preparing for a lengthy political and legal battle.

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POLITICS: Fiction of Marja as City Was U.S. Information War http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50581

For weeks, the U.S. public followed the biggest offensive of the Afghanistan War against what it was told was a "city of 80,000 people" as well as the logistical hub of the Taliban in that part of Helmand. That idea was a central element in the overall impression built up in February that Marja was a major strategic objective, more important than other district centres in Helmand.It turns out, however, that the picture of Marja presented by military officials and obediently reported by major news media is one of the clearest and most dramatic pieces of misinformation of the entire war, apparently aimed at hyping the offensive as a historic turning point in the conflict. 

Marja is not a city or even a real town, but either a few clusters of farmers' homes or a large agricultural area covering much of the southern Helmand River Valley.  "It's not urban at all," an official of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), who asked not to be identified, admitted to IPS Sunday. He called Marja a "rural community". "It's a collection of village farms, with typical family compounds," said the official, adding that the homes are reasonably prosperous by Afghan standards. Richard B. Scott, who worked in Marja as an adviser on irrigation for the U.S. Agency for International Development as recently as 2005, agrees that Marja has nothing that could be mistaken as being urban. It is an "agricultural district" with a "scattered series of farmers' markets," Scott told IPS in a telephone interview.