The Free

Ecuador rips up 16 toxic treaties.. Corporate Vulture-Courts stole $21 billion

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by Nick Dearden / Global Justice Now Ecuador is the latest country to tear up ‘free trade’ agreements that have so far cost the country $21 billion in damages awarded to foreign companies by ‘corporate courts’, and yielded next to nothing in return, writes Nick Dearden. So the outgoing President Correa did the only sensible thing: in one of his final executive acts this month, he scrapped 16 toxic trade and investment treaties.

These treaties not only failed to attract additional investment, they also diverted millions of dollars of government money to fighting costly lawsuits. We hope other governments will learn from Ecuador’s example.

Ecuador has struck another blow against the power of big business, ripping up 16 trade deals with countries including the US and UK…. Continue reading “Ecuador rips up 16 toxic treaties.. Corporate Vulture-Courts stole $21 billion”

It’s Time to Banish the Police and Burn the Prisons: here’s the Proof

by DR. BONES shared with thanks.. I could write about the newest murder committed by the police, could write about the newest life lost behind bars, but what would be the point? Like cancer and massive debt these things hold no shock value for us anymore.

We’ve come to expect them in our everyday life, stare blankly as body after body goes into a cell or into the ground. We argue about “prison reform” and “better training” yet still the blood flows. Above all, all maintain that while it’s not pretty police and prisons are necessary for any society.These people are, in the parlance of our times, spineless and servile little worms who are hideously, grotesquely wrong. Continue reading “It’s Time to Banish the Police and Burn the Prisons: here’s the Proof”

Why you Can’t be a Feminist if you’re Not an Anarchist

~ from VIOLETREVA shared with thanks

Is every feminist secretly an anarchist?

Feminism is not feminism if it is not antisexist, but also must be:

Antiracist (for wimmin of color)
Anticapitalist (for working class wimmin)
Female+Female love-positive (for lesbians and bisexual wimmin)
Anti-state (against the state control of wimmin’s autonomy, rejecting patriarchal protection rackets)
Anti-hierarchy (against wimmin exploiting other wimmin)

I can’t tell you how many wimmin have been turned away from anarchism — the politics of opposing all hierarchy — due to male violence, male abuse, male threats, male testerics. And that is an awful shame, because wimmin have the greatest chance for achieving anarchy.It’s pretty simple… Forget all your preconceptions about what anarchism is. Forget malestream anarchism with its male fantasies of “let’s kill all the bad people and we will win” because that’s just naive. Men are pretty dumb, let’s be honest. They expect everything to be cleaned up after them. Continue reading “Why you Can’t be a Feminist if you’re Not an Anarchist”