Jessica Corbett at CommonDreams writes—Imperiling People and Planet, Warnings Mount That Trump's NAFTA 2.0 Just Another 'Corporate Giveaway':
Environmentalists on Monday slammed President Donald Trump's replacement for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), with Food & Water Watch executive director Wenonah Hauter warning that it "would enshrine and globalize Trump's deregulatory zealotry into a trade pact that would outlast the administration and imperil future efforts to protect consumers, workers, and the environment."
Presented as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), many have noted that Trump's trade deal, as Bloomberg put it, "looks more like a rebranding than a revolution," despite Trump's vows when he was a presidential candidate that he would negotiate a new deal that's dramatically better for American workers. As experts and campaigners comb through the details of the agreement, environmental activists are homing in on provisions they warn would endanger people and the planet.
Calling on Congress to reject the deal, Hauter outlined in a statement how USMCA:
features deregulatory provisions that "would have a dangerously chilling effect on food safety enforcement"; includes "giant giveaways to the agrochemical industry," from rolling back Mexico's GMO rules to enabling companies such as Monsanto and Dow to keep pesticide safety data secret for a decade; and bolsters Trump's industry-friendly agenda with measures that would "encourage more pipelines and exports of natural gas and oil that would further expand fracking in the United States and Mexico.""Based on our initial read, Trump's trade deal poses a considerably greater threat to commonsense regulatory protections," Hauter concluded. "A closer look at the text will undoubtedly reveal a host of pro-polluter, pro-fossil fuel industry, pro-Wall Street deregulation that has been a hallmark of Trump's domestic agenda."
While the agreement, unsurprising, does not mention "climate change" or anthropogenic global warming—including in its chapter on environment—as The Huffington Post pointed out, the deal limits the long-criticized investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) process that corporate powers have used to override local environmental protection regulations.
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“A critical element in nearly all effective social movements is leadership. For it is through smart, persistent, and authoritative leaders that a movement generates the appropriate concepts and language that captures the frustration, anger, or fear of the group's members and places responsibility where it is warranted.” ~~David E. Wilkins, The Hank Adams Reader: An Exemplary Native Activist and the Unleashing of Indigenous Sovereignty (2011)
xPeople upset that Kavanaugh might be denied a lifetime appointment on the court due to the testimony of one witness will presumably be appalled to learn how often people are sentenced to death due to the testimony of one witness.
— Ken Schultz (@KSchultz3580) September 30, 2018On this date at Daily Kos in 2011—At Countrywide, protecting mortgage fraud involved firing whistleblowers:
The thing about a corporation committing widespread fraud is that it tends to involve a lot of people, some of whom will not be enthusiastic about committing fraud and may even try to stop it. Michael Hudson at iWatch News reports on how Countrywide Financial Corp. protected its ability to commit fraud by firing whistleblowers, behavior that continued after Countrywide was bought by Bank of America. In fact, they fired the person in charge of fraud investigations; recently, "the U.S. Department of Labor ruled that Bank of America had illegally fired her as payback for exposing fraud and retaliation against whistleblowers. It ordered the bank to reinstate her and pay her some $930,000."
But Countrywide/Bank of America didn't just get in the way of investigations at the top. At least 17 other former employees allege that they were demoted or fired for raising the alarm about fraud they witnessed.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: We’re back from a relatively quiet weekend, Trump rage tweet-wise. Greg Dworkin and Armando offer their takes on the FBI "investigation," the politics of the vote, and more. Women are forced to—and do—find new ways to express their anger.
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