Source: The Nation

US forces used the plight of Afghan women to justify war—but twelve years later, women are still suffering.

In 2003, Malalai Joya was the 25-year-old director of a clinic and orphanage in Afghanistan’s Farah province. She was not a scheduled speaker at a national convention on the post-invasion future of the country, but she took the mic anyway and delivered an electrifying address. Noting the warlords in attendance, she asked: “Why would you allow criminals to be present here?” Two years later, she became the youngest person elected to the Afghan Parliament. Two years after that, having refused to scale back her criticisms, she was booted from her post. An advocate for women’s rights, secularism and nonviolence, Joya argues that neither the warlords who kept her country in despair during the Soviet era nor members of the Taliban should be any part of its government today. In her 2009 memoir, A Woman Among Warlords, she writes of the dangers she’s faced as a result. read more

Source: In These Times

Opponents of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade deal that’s been dubbed “NAFTA on steroids,” made major progress in the House this week, as lawmakers from both sides of the aisle signaled their unwillingness to grant the president authority to “fast-track” the TPP to a Congressional vote. Without fast-track, it’s unlikely that the trade agreement could pass Congress in its current form.

Until now, negotiations on the TPP, a free-trade agreement between 12 Pacific Rim economies including the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, Singapore and Malaysia, have operated under the expectation that the Obama administration would be able to secure fast-track authority—a legislative procedure that would limit lawmakers to a simple up-or-down vote on the completed deal, shortening floor debate and prohibiting amendments. The administration, which strongly supports the TPP, has already asked Congress to vote for fast-track. read more

Source: Truthout

This is an excerpt from the just released 2nd edition of Noam Chomsky’s OCCUPY: Class War, Rebellion and Solidarity published by Zuccotti Park Press.

Free Speech Radio News producer Catherine Komp interviews Noam Chomsky.

Noam Chomsky is amongst the world’s most cited living scholars. Voted the “world’s top public intellectual” in 2005, he is perhaps best known as a critic of all forms of social control and a relentless advocate for community-centered approaches to democracy and freedom. Over the last several decades, Chomsky has championed a wide range of dissident actions, organizations and social movements. In this excerpt from the just-released expanded edition of the Zuccotti Park Press book, Occupy: Class War, Rebellion and Solidarity, Chomsky speaks with Free Speech Radio News about media control, fear, indoctrination and the importance of solidarity. read more

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