Few people know that the European member states taken as a whole is one of the biggest arms exporters in the world. On the international stage Europe likes to present itself as a continent that stands for democracy and peace, but this façade does not correspond to reality.
Did you know that the EU wants to allocate more than 40 billion euros to the research, development and procurement of new arms? That the arms industry is trying to hijack the European Defence policy? Read all about it on this page.
Devinder Sharma, NEW DELHI, Nov 28 2013 : "India, a country which lived in the shadows of a ship-to-mouth existence when food would go directly from the ship to hungry mouths has over the years emerged self-sufficient in food production. This historic turnaround was possible only because India had adopted the two planks of what I call a remarkable famine-avoidance strategy: providing farmers with an assured price support for their produce, and introducing a food procurement system that provided for a guaranteed market and at the same time helped get food to the poor in the deficit regions through a network of ration shops. Withdrawing the price support for farmers or freezing it at the de-minimis level of 10 percent as applicable under the Agreement on Agriculture will make farmers vulnerable to the vagaries of the market."
Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) has obtained from Wikileaks a complete copy of the consolidated negotiating text for the IP Chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). (Copy here, and on the Wikileaks site here: https://wikileaks.org/tpp/) The leaked text was distributed among the Chief Negotiators by the USTR after the 19th Round of Negotiations at Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei, in August 27th, 2013.
World trade growth has not returned to its pre-crisis rate; it fell to just 2% in 2012, and Unctad points out that imports to developed regions, including the US and Europe, are still below 2007 levels. It suggests this downward trend "highlights the vulnerabilities developing countries continue to face at a time of lacklustre growth in developed countries".
by Martin Khor In the recent public debate surrounding the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA), an issue that seems to stands out is the investor-state dispute settlement system (ISDS).
Swets files for bankruptcy 23.09.14 | Bookseller staff 51 20 398 Netherlands-based information services provider Swets is insolvent and has filed for bankruptcy, according to German book trade magazine Börsenblatt. Swets, based in Lieden, describes itself as "the global market leader in content management services for libraries and publishers." Founded in 1901, it has local offices in 27 countries, including the UK.
In sum the draft confirms the will to impose greater regulatory "convergence" and "harmonization" of future regulations between the EU and the US in the only interest of transnational corporations and the financial industry. The vagueness of the draft would allow the Commission great freedom to achieve this. Social, labour and environmental rights in both sides of the Atlantic are under fire.
With the help of governments and their intelligence agencies, the global arms trade continues to be a controlling and corrupting force throughout the world.
There is a ruler — Jeff Bezos, even though he has stepped down as CEO — and there are lesser officials, not just senior vice presidents but fulfillment center managers, human resources employees, and the heads of Amazon’s delivery service partners, which, while legally separate entities, pop up in Amazon’s wake and often exist solely to carry out its delivery needs, the separation so fictitious that many of their drivers wear Amazon-branded uniforms and drive Amazon-branded vans.
Proposed negotiations on e-commerce in the WTO are inconvenient for developing countries, for our SMEs and for people in general. by Sally Burch, dec 2017
European Trade Commissioner, Cecilia Malmström has made a bad choice in appointing Jan Eric Frydman as Special Adviser on EU-US Trade Policy. Frydman, whose ongoing work for Swedish law firm Ekenberg & Andersson creates potential conflicts of interest, has a strong pro-ISDS background and a tricky revolving door history. He's part of the problem, not the solution.