RNs protest fast-track legislation in Sacramento, California in March 2015.
At Common Dreams, Sarah Lazare writes
Food, Water, Health, Life: UN Experts Warn of Threats Posed by Secret 'Trade' Deals
Echoing the protests of civil society organizations and social movements around the world, a panel of United Nations experts on Tuesday issued a stark warning about the threats that secret international "trade" agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) pose to the most fundamental human rights.
"Our concerns relate to the rights to life, food, water and sanitation, health, housing, education, science and culture, improved labor standards, an independent judiciary, a clean environment and the right not to be subjected to forced resettlement," reads the statement, whose ten signatories include Ms. Catalina Devandas Aguilar, Special Rapporteur on the rights of person with disabilities and Ms. Victoria Lucia Tauli-Corpuz, Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous peoples.
In particular, the officials raise the alarm about the "investor-state dispute settlement" systems that have become the bedrock of so-called "free trade deals," included in 3,000 agreements world-wide, according to the count of The New York Times. Popularly known as corporate tribunals, ISDS frameworks constitute a parallel legal system in which corporations can sue state governments for allegedly impeding profits and thereby supersede democratic laws and protections.
The UN experts warn that "ISDS chapters are anomalous in that they provide protection for investors but not for States or for the population. They allow investors to sue States but not vice-versa." Under this framework, states have faced penalties for "for adopting regulations, for example to protect the environment, food security, access to generic and essential medicines, and reduction of smoking, as required under the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, or raising the minimum wage," resulting in a "chilling effect," the officials warn. [...]
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2011—False equivalency watch: Press outraged at perfectly reasonable Illinois redistricting:
You might not have known it, but apparently the Democratic-controlled Illinois state legislature invented gerrymandering this past week. Indeed, the new maps do create the potential for a pickup of several seats for the Democrats.
Democrats are doubtlessly cheering the outcome, which more than anything reverses a previous gerrymander that gave Republicans an 11-8 lead in the delegation out of a state that Democrats have largely dominated at the statewide level. That map was a little creative in itself, as the diagram of the 17th district (right) illustrates.
Who is upset by the new Illinois Congressional map? Well, Republicans are indignant, predictably. Oddly, the U.S. political press also seems a bit disturbed by it. The evidence for that is in their seeming insistence on comparing this remap to the most notorious gerrymander of recent vintage:
From The Washington Post: DeLay lite?
Redistricting experts are already comparing the map to the one passed by Texas Republicans in 2003 under the guidance of then-U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas). |
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