Global News and Analysis

Source: The Guardian Unlimited

Treaty negotiated in secret between 12 nations ‘would trample over individual rights and free expression’, says Julian Assange

WikiLeaks has released the draft text of a chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, a multilateral free-trade treaty currently being negotiated in secret by 12 Pacific Rim nations.

The full agreement covers a number of areas, but the chapter published by WikiLeaks focuses on intellectual property rights, an area of law which has effects in areas as diverse as pharmaceuticals and civil liberties. read more

Source: The Nation

In 1494, Spain and Portugal were in serious competition over other peoples’ lands. This bothered the church, and Pope Alexander VI made it his duty to write up the Treaty of Tordesillas, which dictated that Spain was free to attempt to conquer lands west of an imaginary line on the Atlantic, and Portugal could attempt the same for all lands east of that line, essentially creating eastern and western hemispheres.

A little more than two decades later, Spain’s influence in what it thought was a new world grew nearly as much as its avarice. It wanted more lands, and all the resources that came with those lands. Ferdinand Magellan, who was Portuguese, offered his services to King Charles of Spain. His plan was to sail west, as the treaty obliged—but to sail so far west that he would essentially reach the Eastern Hemisphere, and attempt to conquer those lands for Spain. He eventually landed in what we now call the Philippines. read more

Source: The Nation

Will the country will take a step toward democracy, or remain mired in corruption and repression?

Four years after a military coup deposed democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya, Hondurans have a chance with their November 24 elections to restore a measure of democracy. The stakes are high: either Honduras will plunge deeper into its vortex of violence and repression, or it will have a fighting chance to begin to re-establish the rule of law and construct a viable economy. On a broader level, the Honduran elections will test whether Latin America’s transition to democracy and social justice will be permitted to advance—in what Secretary of State John Kerry still refers to as “our backyard.” read more

Source: Americas Program

A decision of the Chilean Supreme Court has suspended operations at Barrick Gold’s gold mine, Pascula Lama. Monsanto had to halt construction of a seed plant in Cordoba because of widespread opposition from the population. Large extractive companies begin to reap a harvest of defeats.

“Under democracy, it’s the peoples that are the disappeared,” stated Mercedes Maidana, who defines herself as a ‘nomadic colla‘[1] that still works the land despite living in a city in northern Argentina. With that phrase, she established a thread between past dictatorships and current political regimes at the conference “From extractivism to re-building alternatives”, held in Buenos Aires in late August.[2] read more

Source: Truthout

During the latest episode of the Washington farce that has astonished a bemused world, a Chinese commentator wrote that if the United States cannot be a responsible member of the world system, perhaps the world should become “de-Americanized” — and separate itself from the rogue state that is the reigning military power but is losing credibility in other domains.

The Washington debacle’s immediate source was the sharp shift to the right among the political class. In the past, the U.S. has sometimes been described sardonically — but not inaccurately — as a one-party state: the business party, with two factions called Democrats and Republicans. read more

(IPS) – Some 2,400 kilometres from New York City, where victims of Haiti’s cholera epidemic are suing the United Nations in a U.S. federal court, the disease continues to burn through the populace with no end in sight.

In a single week between Oct. 19 and Oct. 26, the Pan-American Health Organisation reported 1,512 new cases and 31 deaths. New cases are reported in all 10 departments.

At the Cholera Treatment Centre run by Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders in Delmas 33, a commune in Port-au-Prince Arrondissement, nurse Viola Augustine says the clinic is so packed it cannot accept new patients. read more