The dangers of the TPP

Erik Loomis of Lawyers, Guns & Money:

I have written a lot about the Investor State Dispute Settlement courts that make up a central tenet of the Trans Pacific Partnership and other trade agreements. These extra-national courts effectively give corporations a new legal system to protect their interests that has no accountability to nations or peoples, no access for those peoples to defend themselves, and no system so that citizens can even know what is going on in them. Corporations can use them to protect their profits so that if a nation passes a law that could affect future profits, the companies can use the ISDS courts to sue for future profits lost. That could mean that minimum wage laws, anti-mining regulations, protections for forests, pollution regulations, etc., could be effectively overturned. And given the power dynamics involved in the world, it’s going to be western companies going after developing world nation laws more often than not. These courts have been around for a long time, but they are growing more powerful today. There are two recent pieces of journalism exploring the many problems with the ISDS courts.

Would Mark Twain recognize the US today? I think he would....

Said almost one hundred and fifty years ago but still applicable: Some men worship rank, some worship heroes, some worship power, some worship God, and over these ideals they dispute and cannot unite -- but they all worship money.    Mark Twain

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Alaska is going up in smoke.

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Delayed drowning involving children.  This can happen after the child seems ok after choking in the pool and pulled to safety.

*Gasp* A woman scientist who agrees with Tim Hunt....

A little late but a nicely drawn comic explaining the TPP and  how trade works.