Economic Update – “Profits, Families & Sex” – 08.07.16

“Updates on more VW sleaze, Irish bankers to jail, US public pension economics, Yale worker wins back job, Yale exposed. Interview with Dr. Harriet Fraad on post-1970s profit-driven US economy badly damaged intimate life.” Download this episode (right click and save)

Nick Beams – Economic conflicts threaten global trade war

The ongoing stagnation in the global economy, marked by falling investment and the emergence of overproduction in key basic industries, is fuelling the rise of trade war protectionist measures by the major powers, above all the United States. Last week, the US International Trade Commission (ITC) launched an investigation into Chinese steel mills which have been accused by the United …

Over 50 Percent of the World Breathes in Toxic Air

Everyone needs clean air to survive, yet somehow it is not an internationally recognized human right. That probably has something to do with the fact that over half of the world’s population live in areas where they breathe in toxic air. Altogether, that means there are more than 3.5 billion people inhaling dangerous air into their lungs on a daily basis. …

FRAN QUIGLEY – How Corporations Killed Medicine

Along the path toward the creation of a global capitalist system, some of the most significant steps were taken by the English enclosure movement. Between the 15th to 19th centuries, the rich and the powerful fenced off commonly held land and transformed it into private property. Land switched from a source of subsistence to a source of profit, and small farmers were …

Georgina Kenyon – The man who studies the spread of ignorance

In 1979, a secret memo from the tobacco industry was revealed to the public. Called the Smoking and Health Proposal, and written a decade earlier by the Brown & Williamson tobacco company, it revealed many of the tactics employed by big tobacco to counter “anti-cigarette forces”. In one of the paper’s most revealing sections, it looks at how to market …

Abayomi Azikiwe – China-Africa Cooperation: Economic and Geopolitical Implications

Beijing and African Union states to enhance ‘win-win’ partnerships A recently-held gathering on December 5-6 of African Union (AU) member-states and the People’s Republic of China under the banner of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) has placed strong emphasis on greater collaboration between the two regions based on mutual benefit. This meeting was held in Johannesburg, South Africa under …

Koos Jansen – “China is playing the gold game very carefully”

On behalf of Matterhorn Asset Management, Lars Schall talked with one of the prime researchers when it comes to the People’s Republic of China gold policy; Dutch analyst Koos Jansen. They discuss the many tricky details that have to be taken into account; since the Chinese gold buying is pretty much a covert operation. Lars Schall: My first question would …

Big Pharma’s Unlikely Allies: Labor Unions Support Strong Intellectual Property Provisions In Trans-Pacific Partnership – Cole Stangler

When the top pharmaceutical lobby in the U.S. sponsored a Twitter chat on the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in March of last year, labor unions trolled it hard. But not all unions are as repulsed by Big Pharma’s lobbying on trade. Some even support it. Seven different unions — the Boilermakers, Electrical Workers, Fire Fighters, Iron Workers, Plumbers and Sheet Metal Workers, …

Corporate Power, Grassroots Resistance, and the Battle Over the Food System – ELIZABETH FRASER AND ANURADHA MITTAL

For most of history, farmers have had control over their seeds: saving, sharing, and replanting them with freedom. Developments in the course of the 20th century, however, have greatly eroded this autonomy. Legal changes, ranging from the Plant Variety Protection Act (1970) in the United States to the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), …

A Trade Rule that Makes It Illegal to Favor Local Business? Newest Leak Shows TPP Would Do That And More – David Korten

Secret negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade and investment agreement involving 12 nations of the Pacific Rim, are coming to a close, and President Barack Obama will soon submit the final agreement to the U.S. Congress for approval. Presumably, he will urge the deal’s passage with the same unsubstantiated and misleading claims his administration has offered all along: that …