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Corporatism

Trans-Pacific Partnership – Corporate Coup d’Etat Against Us

August 24, 2013 Jim Hightower, www.hightowerlowdown.net ,
This time we really must pay attention, because TPP is not just another trade deal. First, it is massive and open-ended. It would hitch us immediately to 11 Pacific Rim nations (Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam), and its door would remain wide open to lure China, Indonesia, Russia, and other nations to come in. Second, note that many of those countries already have trade agreements with the US. Hence, this amazing fact: TPP is a “trade deal” that mostly does not deal with trade. In fact, of the 29 chapters in this document, only five cover traditional trade matters! The other two dozen chapters amount to a devilish “partnership” for corporate protectionism.

Global March Against Monsanto: Meet Me In St. Louis

August 23, 2013 Compiled Staff, www.popularresistance.org , , ,
On Saturday, October 12, 2013, an estimated 3.5 Million People will once again, take part, in the 2nd, Global Day of Action against Monsanto, in more than 600 cities, world wide! We invite you to join us, as we march on the Monsanto Global Headquarters in Saint Louis Missouri. This WILL BE the main event! We will be meeting at Stacy Park, at 9750, Old Bonhomme Road, Saint Louis Missouri, 63132. The Rally will begin at 1pm. We will then proceed to march, to the Olive Street Entrance, of the Monsanto, Global Headquarters. Save the Date, Saturday, October 12, 2013, and Meet me in Saint Louis!

S17: Global Solidarity for Global Justice! Stop TPP & TTIP

August 22, 2013 OWS, www.s17ows.org , ,
OWS makes the TPP and TTIP focus of S17. On September 17th, 2011, we came together to Occupy Wall Street to resist the destructive impact of unchecked corporate power and greed on our quality of life. Two years later, instead of responding to the outrage of the 99%, the megacorporations are mounting a counterattack. Companies like American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC); Halliburton; Monsanto; Chevron; Cargill; Pfizer; Exxon Mobil; Citi; Gap, Inc.; Goldman Sachs; and Wal-mart – deregulation-happy banksters, union busters, polluters, human rights violators, factory farmers, outsourcers and sweatshop barons, big box killers of mom and pop retailers, GMO seed pushers, big pharma and war profiteers, have united as the US Business Coalition for TPP to launch a stealth assault on democracy itself – one that will leave our courts and elected officials virtually powerless to reign in their greed-driven attack on the 99%.

Homeowner Groups Call On Administration To Prosecute Bankers

August 22, 2013 Nick Sifuentes, www.popularresistance.org ,
On Wednesday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released the results of a study detailing massive, systemic failures among mortgage servicers which have led to wrongful foreclosures and evictions. Attorney General Eric Holder also announced plans to file new cases stemming from the foreclosure crisis. The Home Defenders League issued the following statement in response: “Today’s revelations by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to the foreclosure crisis—and is especially no surprise to the hundreds of thousands of homeowners who have been illegally foreclosed on as a result of bank error or fraud,” said Cammy Depew, a homeowner and member of the Home Defenders League from Gonzales, Lousiana.

Dirty Energy’s Dirty Tactics: Boulder On The Front Lines

August 22, 2013 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.truthout.org , , , ,
The Boulder community is on the front lines of the struggle for a carbon-free and nuclear-free energy future. It built a broad community coalition that voted democratically to support the energy initiative. It developed excellent models to determine the feasibility of converting to renewables and hired the best consultants to review the work. It has a solid campaign to make clean municipal energy a reality. If Boulder succeeds, other communities will be able to use Boulder's tools and experience to repeat the project in their locale. Already, Minneapolis and Santa Fe, New Mexico, are following suit. It should come as no surprise, then, that Xcel is not leaving without a fight.

Sign Up For “Stop Fast Track” Action Camp, Days Of Action

August 20, 2013 Staff, www.popularresistance.org , ,
President Obama has now formally requested Fast Track (Trade Promotion Authority) from Congress. Fast Track would grant the President the full power to negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership and sign it. The President, through the office of the US Trade Representative and with the help of more than 600 corporate advisers, has been negotiating the TPP largely in secret for the past three years. If the President is granted Fast Track, then Congress would only have the ability to vote on the TPP after the President has signed it. The Constitution gives Congress the responsibility to negotiate trade. If Congress gives this responsibility up, then we will not know what is in the text of the TPP and will not have hearings or debate on it.

Nestlé Exploits British Columbia’s Water Laws To Bottle The Commons

August 19, 2013 Lauren McCauley, www.commondreams.org ,
“Outside of the fact that they are draining the size of a small lake on an annual basis without any sort of accountability,” Muxlow adds, “this is a microcosm of a larger failure with the way B.C.’s water is managed.” Facing mounting environmental cuts and a government effort led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to privatize all of Canada’s drinking water, citizen advocacy group the Council of Canadians is leading a movement to protect the country’s freshwater sources. Arguing that water is part of a “shared commons,” they write, “water is a human right and as such, must be protected from privatization, pollution and bulk exports.”

Companies That Make Money By Keeping Americans Terrified

August 19, 2013 Alex Kane, www.alternet.org , ,
Post-9/11 America has witnessed a boom in private firms dedicated to the hyped-up threat of terrorism. The drive to privatize America's national security apparatus accelerated in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, and it’s gotten to the point where 70 percent of the national intelligence budget is now spent on private contractors, as author Tim Shorrock reported. The private intelligence contractors have profited to the tune of at least $6 billion a year. In 2010, the Washington Post revealed that there are 1,931 private firms across the country dedicated to fighting terrorism. What it all adds up to is a massive industry profiting off government-induced fear of terrorism, even though Americans are more likely to be killed by a car crash or their own furniture than a terror attack.

The Drone Boom

August 18, 2013 Cole Stangler, www./inthesetimes.com ,
"The prospect of defense cuts does not substantially alter the utility of UAVs, says Doug Hardison, strategic development manager at General Atomics[...]We’ve been at war for 10 to 12 years, and we’re pulling back out,” Hardison says. “You’ve got the Arab Spring going on, you’ve got a lot of uncertainty, some ongoing crises, and some potential crises out there. The only way that our nation can stay ahead of those kinds of crises is to be able to see and hear what’s going on around the world. … We can respond before a crisis starts. So in the next 1 to 5 years—and really 1 to 10 years depending on where the world goes—that’s where we see value for the products we build.”

Chris Hedges on “Murdering the Wretched Of The Earth”

August 18, 2013 Chris Hedges, /www.truthdig.com , ,
The belief systems the oppressed embrace can be intolerant, but these belief systems are a response to the injustice, state violence and cruelty inflicted on them by the global elites. Our enemy is not radical Islam. It is global capitalism. It is a world where the wretched of the earth are forced to bow before the dictates of the marketplace, where children go hungry as global corporate elites siphon away the world’s wealth and natural resources and where our troops and U.S.-backed militaries carry out massacres on city streets. Egypt offers a window into the coming dystopia. The wars of survival will mark the final stage of human habitation of the planet. And if you want to know what they will look like, visit any city morgue in Cairo.

Update On Camp-Out Protest At Berkeley Post Office

August 17, 2013 Euna Park, www.berkeley.patch.com , , ,
It's been almost three weeks since the July 27 rally and beginning of the 24-hour camp-in protest to save the landmark building of the Berkeley Post Office. Twenty or so campers have been living in a tiny village of more than a dozen tents next to the Post Office at Allston Way and Milvia Street. "The plan is to stay here until we achieve some kind of victory, namely the reversal in the decision to sell the Post Office," said Mike Wilson from Strike Debt Bay Area, one of the groups organizing the protests.

The Emergent Academic Proletariat And Shortchanged Students

August 17, 2013 Claire Goldstene, www.dissentmagazine.org ,
The phrase “corporatization of the university” captures the reorientation of colleges away from a primarily educational mission and toward one that resembles the financial bottom line. The evidence of this shift is myriad: the growth of for-profit degree-granting institutions, rising tuition and student debt, the pursuit of elevated rankings, disproportionate resources spent on athletic programs and sports facilities, the identification of students as “customers,” assessment of accomplishment in the classroom as that which can be quantified, a small number of highly compensated academic “superstars,” and a swelling cadre of overpaid administrators. According to Stephen Trachtenberg, former president of George Washington University and an unapologetic pioneer of tuition inflation, success for colleges is measured by continuous new construction on campuses and substantial endowments.

A Break In Teach For America’s Ranks

August 16, 2013 James Cersonsky, www.prospect.org ,
While debate over TFA traditionally revolves around the effectiveness of its teaching model—recruits receive just five weeks of pre-service training and commit to only two years of teaching—organizers are focused on TFA’s broader political impact. With formidable corporate funding and partnership, TFA is part of a market-oriented reform movement that involves expanding charter schools to compete with district schools, pegging teachers' job security to students' standardized-test scores, and churning in fresh teachers while weeding out those who “underperform,” regardless of experience. These moves purport to enhance student outcomes; they also increase teacher turnover and destabilize school systems.

Popular Resistance Newsletter – Summer Of Our Discontent

August 16, 2013 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.popularresistance.org , , , ,
Retired CIA Officer, now a peace and justice activist, Ray McGovern recently wrote in an article called The Moral Imperative of Activism that “This is our summer of discontent. The question we need to ask ourselves is whether that discontent will move us to action. Never in my lifetime have there been such serious challenges….” These serious challenges exist in the form of the multiple crises and the obstacles we face in overcoming them. Powerful forces are aligned to maintain the status quo and are adept at preventing disruption of it. Corporations control the political process, the courts, think tanks, the media, education and many non-profits. The vast national security apparatus monitors us and does what it can to prevent effective resistance actions through infiltration of activist groups, as was recently discovered in Washington, DC and Oklahoma.

Charges Against 2 Traders Fault JPMorgan for Lack of Oversight

August 14, 2013 Ben Protess and Jessica Silver-Greenberg, www.nytimes.com , ,
"Federal authorities outlined the breakdown in the bank’s oversight in the two criminal complaints against the employees: Javier Martin-Artajo, a manager who oversaw the trading strategy, and Julien Grout, a low-level trader in London. The employees, accused of manipulating the books to disguise hundreds of millions of dollars in losses, operated for months with scant supervision and the impression that higher-ups of the bank supported them"
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