Image by campact via Flickr
by Karen Hansen-Kuhn
www.iatp.org
October 24, 2013
After being delayed by the U.S. government shutdown, talks for a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) are quietly gearing up again. Tariff barriers between the U.S. and EU are already low, so these negotiations are focused squarely on achieving “regulatory coherence.” Continue reading
by Andrew Gavin Marshall
Writer, Dandelion Salad
andrewgavinmarshall.com
Originally published on Occupy.com
October 24, 2013
In Part 1 of a Global Power Project exposé on the Institute of International Finance (IIF), I examined the founding the institute as a response by leading world banks to organize and manage their interests in relation to the 1980s debt crisis. When the European debt crisis hit headlines in 2010, the IIF was again on the scene and playing a major part. At the center was the CEO of Deutsche Bank, Josef Ackermann.
Josef Ackermann served as CEO of Deutsche Bank from 2002 to 2012, and over the same period served as Chairman of the IIF. Ackermann was also, and still remains, a member of the Steering Committee of the Bilderberg Group and continues to serve on the IIF’s Group of Trustees, a board which includes a number of prominent central bankers including Christian Noyer, the Governor of the Bank of France and Chairman of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS); Jamie Caruana, the General Manager of the BIS; and Jean-Claude Trichet, who was the president of the European Central Bank from 2003 to 2011.
by Finian Cunningham
Writer, Dandelion Salad
East Africa
Crossposted from Strategic Culture Foundation
October 24, 2013
Historic allies, the United States and Saudi Arabia, are in the midst of a full-blown row, after the kingdom’s spy chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan threatened that their strategic liaison was on the rocks.
The sulking sultan is no stranger to maverick mood swings. But there is good reason to believe that the senior Saudi is not merely acting alone, and that this is the obscurantist kingdom’s way of expressing strategic frustrations.
Image by DonkeyHotey via Flickr
by Andrew Gavin Marshall
Writer, Dandelion Salad
andrewgavinmarshall.com
Originally published on The Hampton Institute
October 23, 2013
Obama’s global terror campaign is not only dependent upon his drone assassination program, but increasingly it has come to rely upon the deployment of Special Operations forces in countries all over the world, reportedly between 70 and 120 countries at any one time. As Obama has sought to draw down the large-scale ground invasions of countries (as Bush pursued in Afghanistan and Iraq), he has escalated the world of ‘covert warfare,’ largely outside the oversight of Congress and the public. Continue reading
Image by Robotclaw666 via Flickr
EFForg on Oct 23, 2013
StopWatching.us is a coalition of more than 100 public advocacy organizations and companies from across the political spectrum. This video harnesses the voices of celebrities, activists, legal experts, and other prominent figures in speaking out against mass surveillance by the NSA.
Please share widely to help us get the message out that we will not stand for the dragnet surveillance of our communications. Join the movement at http://rally.stopwatching.us.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a nonprofit civil liberties law and advocacy center that has been fighting the NSA’s unconstitutional spying for years. Learn more at http://eff.org.
Image by Al Jazeera English via Flickr
Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights
Oct. 22, 2013
On 22 October 2013, prominent human rights defender Mr Mohammed Al-Maskati was summoned to Khamis Police Station for interrogation.
by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
warisacrime.org
October 22, 2013
Image by Steve Rhodes via Flickr
There’s a dark side to the flurry of reports and testimony on drones, helpful as they are in many ways. When we read that Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch oppose drone strikes that violate international law, some of us may be inclined to interpret that as a declaration that, in fact, drone strikes violate international law. On the contrary, what these human rights groups mean is that some drone strikes violate the law and some do not, and they want to oppose the ones that do.
with Chris Hedges
Image by pameladrew212 via Flickr
TheLipTV on Oct 18, 2013
Chris Hedges speaks about suing the Obama administration for the NDAA, the conspiracy to use Al Qaeda to strip civil liberties and make a police state, the death of Osama Bin Laden, attack on journalists and more in this Buzzsaw interview hosted by Sean Stone. Hedges investigation of Osama Bin Laden, Mohamed Atta, the Iran-Contra Scandal and War on Terror all come into play in this discussion, leading to the realization that massive change is a necessity in America.
This video may contain images depicting the reality and horror of war/violence and should only be viewed by a mature audience.
Image by frecklebaum via Flickr
by Finian Cunningham
Writer, Dandelion Salad
East Africa
October 21, 2013
MyCatbirdSeat on Oct 21, 2013
by William Bowles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
williambowles.info
21 October 2013
Image by L. S. Lowry by Northshore School of Art via Flickr
Central to us on the left is the dilemma of a seemingly indifferent working class to the changes that impact directly not only on our material well-being but on the corporatisation of our cultural lives. Some argue that it’s down to the prevailing sense of powerlessness as the gulf between those who govern and the governed, deepens and widens. But there is perhaps another explanation for our disenfranchisement; the role of the ‘middle class’ as a mechanism of social control.
Image by MadameChoCho via Flickr
TWND on Oct 21, 2013
Highly radioactive water overflowed barriers into Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station after its operator Tepco underestimated how much rain would fall and failed to pump it out quickly enough.
Tepco has been battling to contain radioactive water at the nuclear complex, which suffered meltdowns and hydrogen explosions following a devastating earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.
Image by Alex Cameron via Flickr
by Michael Hudson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
michael-hudson.com
October 20, 2013
In Extraenvironmentalist #67 we discuss the implications of the bursting global credit bubble with economist and historian Michael Hudson. Our conversation covers many of the themes in Hudson’s new book, The Bubble and Beyond which covers the process of quantitative easing, neofeudalism and more.
by Rick Rozoff
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Stop NATO
October 20, 2013
Image by FJJ via World Can’t Wait via Flickr
Press TV
October 19, 2013
Press TV has conducted an interview with Rick Rozoff, from Stop NATO International Network, from Chicago, over the United States calling for legal immunity for any US soldiers left in Afghanistan beyond the 2014 withdrawal.
What follows is an approximate transcription of the interview.
by Felicity Arbuthnot
Writer, Dandelion Salad
London, England
October 20, 2013
The Nobel Peace Prize brings another surprise – or farce, depending on your view. In relatively recent history, there has been Henry Kissinger (1973) architect supreme of murderous assaults on sovereign nations; the United Nations (2001) whose active warmongering or passive, silent holocausts (think UN embargoes) make shameful mockery of the aspirational founding words.
Image by Mohamed Azazy via Flickr
with Noam Chomsky
MIT ESA on Oct 8, 2013
This event took place on October 4th, 2013 in Kresge Auditorium, MIT, Cambridge.
Egypt has undergone many cycles of change since the revolution in January 2011, and making sense of these radical transformations in the heart of the Middle East has been challenging. We had the privilege of discussing the past, present and future of Egypt’s political landscape with Prof. Chomsky.
Dandelion Salad 