Big corporations are staging their biggest power grab yet - with TTIP, the dodgy EU-US trade deal. But this week, we have a chance to deal a blow to those trying to get the deal passed without a fuss.
On Wednesday, MSPs will vote on whether to reject the worst parts of TTIP. They’ll be voting on the part of the deal that lets private companies like McDonald’s sue our government if they raise the minimum wage. [1] The vote won’t stop TTIP. But it’ll send a very clear message - that together we’ll stand against corporate power.
We need our MSPs to be there, and to vote the right way. The vote’s on Wednesday so we don’t have much time. Can you email your MSP today? Click here:
https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/msps-stop-TTIP
It would be a nightmare scenario for corporations is every MSP turned up on Wednesday. They don’t want to have to defend their flagship trade deal. So together, let’s make sure every MSP is there. And let’s get as many as possible to listen to their constituents and vote the right way.
It’s no surprise that public pressure against TTIP is growing across Scotland. This dodgy deal could make more NHS privatisation inevitable. And it could hand American corporations the power to sue our Scottish government if Holyrood passed laws they didn’t like. Plans to de-privatise our services would be scuppered. [2]
The vote this Wednesday is a huge opportunity for us to raise the political stakes on this dodgy trade deal before next year's Holyrood election. The more of us who email our MSPs, the clearer the message: we won’t sit back while our democracy disappears into corporate hands.
Please click here to tell your MSP to turn up on Wednesday and vote to on principle against TTIP:
https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/msps-stop-TTIP
Thanks for being involved,
Jen, Nat, David and the 38 Degrees team
NOTES
[1] The report being discussed on Wednesday is the result of months of work by the parliament to find out whether TTIP really threatens our democracy - and the conclusions are stark.
The report recommends that ISDS, the part of the deal that lets companies sue our government for ‘lost profits’, should be scrapped. It says that TTIP could harm our environment and food safety, and could allow runaway privatisation of our services. MSPs will be voting on whether they agree with this report.
You can read the full report here:
http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/S4_EuropeanandExternalRelationsCommittee/Reports/eur-15-02w.pdf
Or find a handy summary by Global Justice Now here:
http://www.globaljustice.org.uk/news/2015/mar/17/our-response-holyroods-ttip-report
[2] Liz Murray: It’s more than just the NHS that’s at risk in Scotland from TTIP:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/liz-murray/it%E2%80%99s-more-than-just-nhs-that%E2%80%99s-at-risk-in-scotland-from-ttip
Read the full article HERE:
-------The broadcaster then drove the question home, and asked if there had been a “big political cover-up”. Tebbit was vaguely forthcoming: “I think there may well have been. But it was almost unconscious. It was the thing that people did at that time.”Concurrent with this informal admission is a video clip that is equally casual in its admittance of cover-ups and impunity for high-up paedophiles. A short extract from the Michael Cockerell documentary Westminster's Secret Service broadcast by the BBC in 1995 is available on YouTube. The clip shows an interview with Tim Fortescue, a Whip under Edward Heath between 1970 and 1973. In it, he revealed that MPs came to him if they were:“in trouble … it might be debt or it might be small boys. They would come and ask if we could help. If we could, we did, and we would do everything we can because we would store up brownie points … If we can get a chap out of trouble, he will do as we ask for ever more.”Fortescue is referring to the practice known as the little black “dirt book” which contained information about MPs, and which was used as a method of political control. One could almost call the MPs who “got into trouble with small boys” state-sponsored paedophiles.-----
No workfare. No sanctions. Whoever wins we will resist!Read the full article and list of events HERE:
As the general election campaign gets underway we are already seeing politicians calling for more of the same policies. More workfare. More sanctions. Yet we know that these policies have been a total disaster. It is shameful that workfare and sanctions are supported by all the main political parties. This is why we are holding a week of action in the week before the election. We need your help to expose and challenge workfare and sanctions policies and the political lies that underpin them.----------
And from that "revered" Western capitalist mouthpiece, The Wall Street Journal:Anzac Day 25 April 2015: Gallipoli 100 years on
25 April 2015 marks the hundredth anniversary of the start of the British-led military invasion of Gallipoli on Turkey’s Dardanelle Peninsula, which resulted in over 200,000 dead and wounded in an eight-month period.Gallipoli was a military disaster. Yet, a century on, politicians seeking to glorify the First World War, are calling the huge loss of life at Gallipoli "a price worth paying."
As the Australian government spends $300 million commemorating the WWI centenary, and using it to promote militarism and nationalist myths, veterans' groups have condemned the "nationalist circus" that Anzac Day has become.The UK government, which is spending £60 million on its own nationalist circus commemorating WW1, has a number of Anzac Day events, including in London and Turkey. There will of course be little mention of Winston Churchill's role as prime mover of the Gallipoli catastrophe, which lead to his dismissal from the British government a hundred years ago.Rather than celebrating the rewriting of history to promote new wars being waged on this 100th anniversary, it is important to remember what really happened at Gallipoli.The No Glory website aims to capture the reality of what took place, with a dedicated page, Anzac Day 2015 - the Gallipoli disaster 100 years on, that has links to articles, videos, songs etc.Among the features are two conflicting views of The Water Diviner, Russell Crowe's film about Gallipoli, which was Australia's highest grossing film in 2014. One reviewer says the film is anti-war, the other says the opposite.
Read the full article HERE:
The British government gave much consideration to the eventual division of the Ottoman lands once the straits were captured but very little to how the operation might actually be executed. The amateurish preparation and the resulting fiasco are recounted with sharp, taut precision in “Gallipoli: The End of the Myth,” Robin Prior’s near-definitive analysis of the campaign.
The assumption that Britain would simply sweep to victory over second-rate Turkey was just the first of many errors of judgment. At each stumble, when a logical examination of the campaign would have had only one possible conclusion—withdrawal—Britain’s leaders doubled down, eventually committing a half-million troops to the Gallipoli Peninsula in a sequence of bloody landings and operations.
