TTIP: The Most Important Thing You‘ve Never Heard Of

Well, thanks to some encouraging ruckus in the last few months, you may actually have heard of TTIP: the anodynely-acronymed “Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership”. In plain English, it’s a massive trade deal between the EU and North America which could affect everything from healthcare choices to government banking regulations to the air we breathe. (And it gets better, TPP is the US-Asia Pacific counterpart.)

Activists and even some politicians have been up in arms about one particularly nasty element of these behemoths, which together will cover almost 50 percent of global GDP. That element is the proposed secret courts where, in theory, oil companies could sue governments who try to bring in green-friendly policies, tobacco companies could challenge advertising restrictions, and private healthcare providers could pick apart what’s left of national health services. To name a few.

Don’t mention the deal behind the curtain

made a mockery

Click Here: Aston Villa Shop

What we do know, however, are the lessons from recent history. As Saskia Sassen, who has looked at this question for decades, points out: time and again, when global corporations gain rights through free trade deals, citizens lose out–in large part through a negative boomerang effect of job losses and wage stagnation that cheaper goods just don’t compensate for.

mill of UKIP

Exposing and challenging this unaccountable “Nafta on steroids” is just what openDemocracy was made for. And here is where we’re doing it. See what Frances O’Grady, head of the TUC; Saskia Sassen at Columbia University and John Hilary of War on Want have to say about it, along with many others, and join the debate.

Inequities also account for the startling and under-reported fact that 75% of those infected by Ebola in Liberia have been women. Why? Because women fulfil the traditional role of caregivers, that’s part of it and it speaks volumes. But there’s also anecdotal evidence to suggest something even more sinister and calculated at play–that some men might exploit this tradition to keep themselves out of harm’s way. Writing for 50.50 from Abuja, Tooni Akuni makes the rather obvious yet so far largely ignored point that, based on the numbers alone, women must be included in strategies to assess the scope of the outbreak, in designing responses and in implementing interventions.

It now appears inevitable that the Ebola outbreak is going to get worse before it gets better. With over 10,000 infected to date, this is a devastating prognosis. But within that tragedy, there are also thousands of stories of bravery and selflessness. Transformation has published this interview with former child soldier B. Abel Learwellie who, having lost nearly all his family to the disease, is now risking his own life to help treat others. And at Avaaz.org, on this page alone, nearly 4,000 people with badly-needed medical and logistical skills have already signed up to travel to west Africa and risk their lives for people they have never met.