STOP THE TPP!

The Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement usurps federal, state and local authority, and functions as a global corporate coup.

So what is the TPP? It’s a so-called “trade” agreement that corporations have spent years in secret negotiations setting up, giving them the legal power to overrule federal, state and local laws, subjugating not only the United States, but also the rest of the world to their control. And many members of Congress are lining up to help them.

As Rivera Sun reported for Truthout, Congress, on the whole, has not seen the secret, thousand-page text of the TPP. Yet, congressional members are curiously willing to eschew their right and responsibility to review this international trade treaty and fast-track the legislation without debate or revision. If they vote to fast-track the TPP, they are silencing the people and handing the nation over on a silver platter to corporate domination.

She also goes on to state…”In addition to stating trade rules, the TPP also sets up a corporate-run international tribunal court whose legal task is to overrule federal, state and local laws that restrict trade or give one nation an “unfair advantage” over another. Don’t be fooled by the altruistic-sounding phrase: What this really means is that all labor, environmental, health and safety laws would be reduced to the lowest common denominator. Say hello to lead poisoning and sweatshops. Say goodbye to health benefits and living wages. Also, city zoning laws that keep industrial developments from lowering the value of your home can be gutted by this tribunal court. Factory farms and sludge fields can move in next door. Toxic plants can be located next to the schoolyard. Gone are the fracking bans and GMO-labeling laws we worked so hard to pass. One hundred and fifty years of labor history is being thrown in the gutter by the regressive nature of the TPP.”

Democracy? Say goodbye to 1,000 years of political evolution

Read “TPP v. Democracy” by Dennis Trainor, Jr. at Acronym TV

As Sun also pointed out… “A corporate coup is taking place, in secret and in silence. Our politicians are complicit. Those who vote yes on the TPP are signing the nation over to corporate rule. Those who vote yes on fast-track authority are reneging on their sworn oaths to protect this nation from all threats both foreign and domestic. Those who support the TPP are colluding with a dangerous transnational alliance that seeks dominance over our federal, state and local authority. Every citizen of conscience should resist this corporate coup. Dissent is not only patriotic; it is necessary to defend our nation.”

Learn more about how to stop the TPP at http://www.flushthetpp.org
and at Expose The TPP

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has written in detail about the destructive nature of this deal to communications law and intellectual property rights.

What we know about this was made possible due to the publication of its entire Intellectual Property Rights Chapter by WikiLeaks. Read the original text here.

Use this online tool to contact your elected officials and insist that they VOTE NO on any form of authorization of this bad deal.

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* RECLAIM THOMAS PAINE! *

Thomas Paine was the one truly radical Founding Father of America, a man who changed the face of the world through his writings. Common Sense inspired the American Revolution, Rights of Man defined the French Revolution, and then The Age of Reason called on us to use our ability to reason as the basis for our beliefs and morality.

He is a man largely forgotten and greatly misunderstood, ironically quoted by all and every political faction in America today. Yet his ideas about democracy, equality, slavery, pensions, healthcare and education and morality would have created a very different kind of nation if they had been acted on.

WATCH THE VIDEOS
Produced by writer and actor Ian Ruskin

THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE
Historical theatrical project of Ian Ruskin

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* USTV MEDIA LABOR DAY WEEKEND MUSIC SPECIAL *

USTV Media producer Andy Valeri hosted a special Martin Luther King, Jr. Day celebratory edition of the popular global music radio program Around The Fringe on Friday, January 16th, 2015, heard on WYSO 91.3FM in the greater Miami Valley region of Ohio, and throughout the country and the world live via the internet at www.wyso.org.

The program was a musical celebration of honoring the life and memory of Martin Luther King, Jr, and all those working for peace and justice throughout the ages, through one of the human community’s greatest means of communication - music.

Music playlist from the program…

Orlando Julius - “Selma To Soweto”
The Skatalites - “Freedom Sounds” (Live)
Jimmy Cliff - “World Upside Down”
Elvis Costello & Allen Toussaint - “Who’s Gonna Help Brother Get Further?”
Talking Heads - “Blind”
Thievery Corporation - “Amerimacka”
Barry Ford Band - “Rebel”
Robyn Hitchcock - “Chimes of Freedom” (Live)
The Chambers Brothers - “People Get Ready”
Bruce Springsteen - “Land of Hope and Dreams”
John Lennon - “Give Peace a Chance” (Remix 2005 featuring the Voices of Asia)
Martin Luther King, Jr. - “Beyond Vietnam”, with backing track “Hallo Gallo” by Neu
Bob Marley & The Wailers - “One Love/People Get Ready”
John Legend & The Roots - “Humanity”
Apple Gabriel - “The Times They Are A’Changin’”
Michael Franti & Spearhead - “Hey World (Remote Control Version)”
Keb’ Mo’ - “People Got To Be Free”
Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros - “Johnny Appleseed”
Tom Petty - “I Won’t Back Down” (alternate version)
Martin Luther King, Jr. - “I’ve Been To The Mountaintop” (closing excerpt)
Lenny Kravitz - “Freedom Train”
Martin Luther King, Jr. - “Let Freedom Ring”
Billy Bragg & Wilco - “All You Fascists”

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Adam Smith, from his classic work Wealth of Nations, on the profit of war…

“In great empires the people who live in the capital, and in the provinces remote from the scene of action, feel, many of them, scarce any inconveniency from the war; but enjoy, at their ease, the amusement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies. To them this amusement compensates the small difference between the taxes which they pay on account of the war, and those which they had been accustomed to pay in time of peace. They are commonly dissatisfied with the return of peace, which puts an end to their amusement, and to a thousand visionary hopes of conquest and national glory from a longer continuance of the war”

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“There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to.”

- George Orwell, 1984

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* FOLLOW USTV MEDIA ON TWITTER *

Follow USTV Media and producer Andy Valeri on Twitter at @ustvmedia. Be connected for news, updates, commentary, and interesting and useful links to other notable and informative sources.

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* PEOPLE v. CORPORATIONS - MOVE TO AMEND THE U.S. CONSTITUTION *

Yet again the U.S. Supreme Court has sided with the ruling elite against the interests of the American people. Today in Citizens United vs. FEC they overturned the flimsy federal campaign finance reform laws afforded by the McCain-Feingold law. Corporations can now to spend unlimited money in buying our elections. The Court has legalized corporate bribery of our elected officials.

So if you were already disgusted by the fact that over $5 billion dollars was spent in the 2008 election, watch out. Because the floodgates are now wide open!

And once again, the Court relied on the illegitimate legal doctrine of “Corporate Personhood” in order to justify this profoundly undemocratic decision.

Corporate personhood is the notion that a corporation can claim to be a person, and therefore entitled to basic human rights‚ also described as political and civil rights and have courts overturn laws.

As this decision clearly demonstrates, corporate personhood is not an inconsequential legal technicality. Consider this– the Supreme Court ruled that a corporation was a “legal person” with 14th Amendment protections before they granted full personhood to African-Americans, immigrants, natives, and women.

And literally hundreds of laws‚ perhaps thousands‚ of local, state and federal laws that attempt to protect our environment, our elections, our safety and health, our right to organize have been overturned as a result of this erroneous doctrine.

The world is being destroyed, the federal government is engaged in unending war, and we live in an unjust, unsustainable and undemocratic country.

It’s time to take ourselves seriously– both about what is at stake and what it will require to actually assume and democratically exercise real power. We must address the reality that the federal courts have made real democracy impossible.

It’s time to follow the lead of the American Revolutionaries, the abolitionists, the suffragists, the trade unionists, and the Civil Rights activists and to build a broad-based, multi-partisan democracy movement in the United States.

It’s time to amend the U.S. Constitution to make it clear that only human beings can claim to be “persons” with constitutional rights.

We are under no illusion that this approach will fix the legal system, the political system, the economic system.

But we believe it is time we confront the current Constitutional framework

Are you with us?

1) Go to the website http://www.MovetoAmend.org to announce that you are joining the growing national movement.

2) Contact us at Democracy Unlimited at 707-269-0984 to organize locally to make the promise of democracy a reality.

For More Information on who to contact and how to get involved in this growing movement, go Here

Watch Free Speech Is For People

Visit USTV Media’s “Corporations, Democracy & USA, Inc.” for more information and research on this topic, as well as the Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy (POCLAD).

Another excellent organization taking on the challenge of organizing local communities to assert their democratic rights from being usurped by corporations is that of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) and the Democracy Schools.

A Luta Continua
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