Tagged with US

TTIP could privatise our education system, permanently

378113Over the last year the student movement has seen something of a comeback from the low ebbs of 2012 and early 2013, with new waves of occupations, landmark campaigns such as Occupy Sussex, the inspirational militancy of the 3Cosas cleaners, and a renewed conflict between students and workers’ right to organise, and the management’s will to stifle dissent. What is encouraging about many of these new struggles is that they are organic, creating new campaigns centered on building student-worker solidarity, such as those of the SOAS cleaners and King’s College London’s union-run Living Wage Campaign.

Yet one issue could pass students by altogether, and represents arguably the greatest single threat to hopes of a free, democratic and public education system in the UK. That is of course the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a colossal EU-US trade deal, that has been slowly gathering union and civil society opposition over the last few months. Continue reading →

Gaza genocide will only stop if the political & military cost to Israel is too high

Free GazaAt least 425 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli blitzkrieg on Gaza, including 80 in the last day alone, and nearly 80% of the dead are civilians, 20% of them children. This is the result of launching the world’s fourth military power against 1.8 million Palestinians already blockaded in the largest open-air prison on Earth.

What is really sickening about this is the attitude of Obama (and Cameron) in blaming the victims for resisting aggression whilst backing Israel with impunity whatever the scale of their utterly unjustified civilian killings. US and UK leaders point the finger at Hamas’ firing rockets into Israel as the trigger for the Israeli attack, without which all this appalling bloodshed would never have happened. That is a concoction of fantasy. Continue reading →

The Transatlantic trade deal: a project of the 1%

The EU/US trade deal (TTIP) is a vast power grab on behalf of the world’s biggest corporations, and there’s still time to stop it.

In this new international order – or disorder – the economic, military, political and even moral leadership of the West is increasingly challenged”

Michel Barnier, EU Commissioner, 12 June, on the backdrop to TTIP

“American leadership, exercised through trade, can bolster the foundation of our power – the strength of the US economy, establish the rules of the road that reflect both our interests and our values”

Continue reading →

Unravelling a century of imperialism in Iraq

William Hague has announced there will be no new British military involvement in Iraqand the PM himself gave a guarded answer when asked why he voted for the war in 2003 — something along the lines of, if I knew then what I know now things might be different.

The massive media interest in the situation in Iraq has come from the dramatic and unexpected Isis advance across eastern Syria and much of northern Iraq. Now apparently they are advancing towards Baghdad.

The other big factor in the political debate was Tony Blair’s intervention (repeated in the FT today – £) when he informed anyone who cared to listen that Britain was wrong not to engage in military action in Syria and that he still defends his pursuit of the Iraq war in 2003. Continue reading →

America at war: a record of unparalleled failure

22nd MEU CO addresses his Marines, SailorsIn fifty years of nearly nonstop American warfare, we’ve learned little and achieved less, says Tom Engelheart in the Nation. The US has been involved in wars almost non-stop around the globe for over 50 years since the start of the Vietnam war – “major boots-on-the-ground conflicts and minor interventions, firefights, air strikes, drone assassination campaigns, occupations, special ops raids, proxy conflicts and covert actions.”

He goes on the draw 5 key lessons from these conflicts, though he adds that none are acceptable in what passes for discussion and debate in the US: Continue reading →