Pages: << 1 ... 373 374 375 376 377 378 379 380 381 382 383 ... 1276 >>
UN Lawyer Calls TTP & TTIP ‘a dystopian future in which corporations and not democratically elected governments call the shots’
Eric Zuesse
The Obama-proposed international-trade deals, if passed into law, will lead to "a dystopian future in which corporations and not democratically elected governments call the shots,” says Alfred De Zayas, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order.
These two mammoth trade-pacts, one (TTIP) for Atlantic nations, and the other (TTP) for Pacific nations excluding China (since Obama is against China), would transfer regulations of corporations to corporations themselves, and away from democratically elected governments. Regulation of working conditions and of the environment, as well as of product-safety including toxic foods and poisonous air and other consumer issues, would be placed into the hands of panels whose members will be appointed by large international corporations. Their decisions will remove the power of democratically elected governments to control these things. “Red tape” that’s imposed by elected national governments would be eliminated — replaced by the international mega-corporate version.
Be Devoted To Justice Not To Order
By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers,
Freddie Gray
The announcement by State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby that the six officers involved in the murder of Freddie Gray will be prosecuted was welcomed with cheers at City Hall and in Freddie Gray’s community, car horns were honked in celebration. The welcome announcement is a first step toward justice for the family of Freddie Gray and a hopeful beginning for the kind of accountability that has been missing in Baltimore when it comes to police violence.
This would probably not have occurred without an urban revolt in Baltimore. We won’t know if it was the mass protest marches of thousands of people or the anger boiling over into rage that led to property damage or both that pressured leadership to press charges. We do know that the week after Freddie Gray’s death, Baltimore police were harassing students at the Mondawmin Mall, making unnecessary arrests of students waiting for their buses. On Monday, the day of Freddie’s funeral, police diverted buses from the mall because of Internet rumors, making it impossible for students to go home. Dressed in full riot gear, police created an escalated situation that began the so-called riots. The previous night, conflicts between baseball fans and protesters had erupted into violence.
Israeli Soldiers Break the Silence on Gaza War
by Stephen Lendman
"Breaking the Silence is an organization of veteran combatants who have served in the Israeli military since the start of the Second Intifada and have taken it upon themselves to expose the Israeli public to the reality of everyday life in the Occupied Territories."
They recount disturbing experiences Israel wants suppressed - horrific crimes of war and against humanity including mass murdering civilians "excused as military necessities, or explained as extreme and unique cases." Truth is polar opposite. Israel operates lawlessly. Killing, persecuting, ill-treating or otherwise harming Palestinians is longstanding practice.
No Israeli commander or government official was ever prosecuted for horrific high crimes demanding accountability.
How the Media Misrepresents ‘Fast Track,’ TPP & TTIP
Eric Zuesse
Both conservative and liberal ‘news’ media misrepresent U.S. President Barack Obama’s proposed international trade-deals as if they were about only such things as lowering tariffs and reducing national trade-protectionism — which are relatively minor surface-features of these huge proposed treaties: TTIP with Europe, TPP with Asia, and TISA (Trade in Services Agreement). All of these proposed Obama trade-deals are actually about transferring to panels of international corporations the powers that currently reside in the various individual nations’ regulatory and legal authorities — i.e., that reside in the democratic governments that are accountable to the population that elected them instead of to the few global billionaires who control the international corporations.
Press Freedom Banned in Ukraine
by Stephen Lendman
Ukraine is a US-installed Nazi-infested fascist police state. Press freedom is banned. Criticizing government policy risks arrest, torture, imprisonment or death.
Last year, independent journalist/RT International stringer Graham Phillips received death threats. Right Sector thugs put a $10,000 bounty on his head.
He was maliciously called a Russian spy. He was arrested, held incommunicado. Later freed, he's lucky to be alive.
So are Russian journalists Oleg Sidyankin and Marat Saichenko. They were detained several days, brutally treated and threatened with death.
OBAMA'S DRONE ASSASSINATIONS AND TPP = TOUGH PATOOTIES, PEOPLE
Allen L Roland, Ph.D
CEO Obama rules Plutocracy through fear, intimidation and secrecy.
Senators Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown have recently sent a letter to President Obama confronting the White House bluntly on the secrecy surrounding the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) and the impact it could have on the American economy and legal system ~ but in the process this letter demonstrates to me that the American people have been completely marginalized and silenced by a growing plutocracy and that corporations are now firmly in control
Obama: "Trust me. The TPP is good for U.S. workers and the environment, but you citizens can't read any of its text. Have I ever misled you?"
Racist Israeli Policies Target Arabs and Ethiopian Jews
by Stephen Lendman
Longstanding Israeli policy is notoriously racist - worse than South African apartheid according to observers familiar with both systems.
Palestinians face ruthless persecution in a nation affording rights to privileged Jews alone. They have virtually none whatever.
They're fair game for whatever harshness Israel has in mind - including lawless imprisonment and mass murder.
Ethiopian Jews fare no better - unwanted because they're black. Citizenship doesn't matter. Persecuting them is standard Israeli practice.
Last week a video emerged showing police beating an Ethiopian IDF member.
On Sunday, thousands of Ethiopian Israelis protested mostly peacefully - against what happened and widespread discrimination.
Hundreds of Israeli social activists and concerned Knesset members joined Sunday's rally. It came three days after an earlier one protesting police beating an Ethiopian Israeli soldier.
Major Media Keep Propagandizing for Hillary Clinton
Eric Zuesse
On Sunday May 3rd, Britain’s Guardian, which has major influence upon Democratic Party opinion-leaders, headlined "Clinton campaign keeps progressives guessing: how far left will she go?” Tom McCarthy ‘reported’ that:
"In three weeks of multi-format politicking – roundtables, speeches, fundraisers, mile markers – Clinton has seized the Democratic banner and run with it, pitching voters on progressive priorities from reproductive rights to income inequality to climate change." The underlying assumption is that the record of Hillary Clinton indicates that her campaign rhetoric reflects accurately both her real beliefs and the policies that she has instituted in her political career. This is a false assumption.
US/Saudi Illegal Blockade Compounds Naked Aggression Against Yemen
by Stephen Lendman
No nation may attack another except in self-defense - only if authorized by Security Council members.
Obama's war on Yemen is naked aggression by any standard. No Security Council authorization exists.
Nor will any be forthcoming post-facto - or any other justification for waging war on a country threatening no others using Saudi-led proxies to do Washington's dirty work.
So it can regain control of a former client state - no matter how many millions of lives potentially are at risk.
Blockading Yemen's borders and airspace compounds America's lawless aggression. Riyadh would never attack Yemen on its own, or any other Arab country without US involvement or permission.
CFR Says China Must Be Defeated, & TPP Is Essential to That
Eric Zuesse
Wall Street's Council on Foreign Relations has issued a major report, alleging that China must be defeated because it threatens to become a bigger power in the world than the U.S.
This report, which is titled “Revising U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China,” is introduced by Richard Haass, the CFR’s President, who affirms the report’s view that, "no relationship will matter more when it comes to defining the twenty-first century than the one between the United States and China.” He says that the report he is publishing argues that "strategic rivalry is highly likely if not inevitable between the existing major power of the day and the principal rising power.” Haass says that the authors "also argue that China has not evolved into the 'responsible stakeholder' that many in the United States hoped it would.” In other words: “cooperation” with China will probably need to become replaced by, as the report’s authors put it, "intense U.S.-China strategic competition.”
<< 1 ... 373 374 375 376 377 378 379 380 381 382 383 ... 1276 >>
