At absolutely no one's request, we hereby announce the winners of Inside corporate America's first annual Golden Vulture Awards:

The Call-My-Lawyer Award to... Sony Corporation.

Only last month, Sony and other media giants won a court injunction in the US against Napster, the website that lets you record music CDs off the internet. (Show me more...)

While reporters ogled celebrities at Barbra Streisand's bungalow during the Democratic Convention in Los Angeles, there was a real display of populism 100 miles to the south in San Diego. There politicians have enrolled two million citizens in a scary economic experiment. This year, San Diego became the first city in California to experience the end of state regulation of electricity prices. (Show me more...)

While reporters this week wasted their papers' budgets in Los Angeles covering the shadow puppetry called the Democratic Convention, America's political future was being decided 80 miles south, in San Diego. (Show me more...)

The doctor didn't mince words. 'Now shut the fuck up and get what's coming to you!' In my exchange with Andre Young, the recording artist known as Dr Dre, this was the example he gave of his copyright intellectual property which he fears is reproduced, without compensation, by ne'er-do-wells using www.napster.com. (Show me more...)

It would give me great pleasure to report, as did the New York Times earlier this month, that Bill Clinton has saved Africa. That big-hearted lug will lend African nations a billion dollars a year for AIDS drugs which -- more joy! -- the pharmaceutical companies have agreed to just give away at 75 percent off list price. (Show me more...)

by Gregory Palast from the MediaChannel 26 July 2000

In April, five people were shot dead in Bolivia, a military policeman was lynched and the president declared a state of siege following a general strike that shut down much of the nation. At the end of it all, for the first time in a decade anywhere in the world, American and British corporate giants, the targets of the protest, were booted out of the Andean nation, a stunning reversal of the march of globalization. (Show me more...)

"He announced with enormous pride that he personally had handed over the check to the government minister for the Pergau Dam bribe"

There's still one bargain left in Rip-Off Britain: the price of a UK minister remains way below the cost of purchasing officials in the USA, even below traditional influence shopping centers in the developing world. (Show me more...)

You want to be a billionaire? Answer this one: What do Blackbeard, the Butcher of Croatia and Bill Gates have in common?

While the money clock ticks away, let me tell you about my weekend. I spent it at the Sheraton Hotel in Brussels, watching the guests shuttle between rooms. It looked a little like love, but maybe it meant nothing more to them than a couple nights of fun. There was Steve Ballmer, new CEO of Microsoft, and a thousand of his closest commercial and government friends, meeting under the guise of the 'European Business Summit'. (Show me more...)

Millions of Britons could be in line for a refund if it is proved that they paid inflated prices for Microsoft's all-pervasive software, ready installed in most computers on sale.
Next Monday 16 leading US law firms will file the billion pound suit on behalf of hundreds of millions of people who bought Microsoft Windows and programs outside the US. (Show me more...)

Give me two good reasons why I should listen to some American tell me about the euro.
All right. Number One: We don't care. There's no emotional baggage here. Frankly, I couldn't care less whether the Queen's nose remains on your coinage or not.
Number Two: Americans invented the euro. And it's time you learnt why. (Show me more...)