December, 08 2014, 02:00pm EDT
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Outside Trans-Pacific Partnership Negotiations in Washington, D.C., Hundreds Gather to Protest TPP, Toast the Demise of Fast Track Authority
WASHINGTON
An hour of loud chanting and noisemakers ensured that the chief negotiators from the 12 nations involved in Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) talks today were aware of growing U.S. public opposition to the TPP and the extremely dim prospects that President Barack Obama will ever obtain Fast Track trade authority, Public Citizen said. Hundreds of activists from labor, environmental, consumer, human rights, public health, Internet freedom, faith and family farm groups protested outside the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), where negotiators were meeting.
"U.S. public opposition is focused on TPP non-trade terms being pushed by U.S. officials on behalf of corporate interests that would raise medicine prices, undermine Internet freedom and provide foreign firms operating here special privileges relative to their domestic competitors," said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch. "President Obama will not get Fast Track authority for the TPP because congressional Democrats and Republicans alike oppose such 'diplomatic legislating' and are irate about the actual trade terms, such as disciplines against currency manipulation, that the administration has refused to raise in TPP talks."
"The voices of millions of working, middle-class Americans cannot be ignored," said Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa. "They are tired of being the casualties of bad trade deals that send good-paying jobs overseas. The Teamsters Union will continue to fight against Fast Track authorization and the Trans-Pacific Partnership - American workers cannot pay the price of another bad trade deal."
"We believe in trade," said George Kohl, senior director of Communications Workers of America. "We are fighting against old trade policy that literally guarantees corporate profits at the expense of working families in all nations. In the weeks ahead, we will mobilize like never before against Fast Track authorizing legislation and the TPP, and for 21st century trade that gives workers' rights, environmental issues and other concerns the same standing as corporate profits."
"It's time for all Americans - environmentalists, parents, workers - to come together and make some noise," said Ilana Solomon, director of the Sierra Club's Responsible Trade Program. "We can't let negotiators secretly shape trade pacts behind closed doors that will open up the floodgates for fracking, make environmental safeguards vulnerable to polluter attacks and worsen climate disruption. We're raising our voices to say 'no' to fast tracking a flawed Trans-Pacific Partnership, and 'yes' to protecting our families and communities."
Added Arthur Stamoulis, executive director of Citizens Trade Campaign, "Trade negotiators need to wake up to the fact that Fast Track is dead and won't be resurrected. Voters have had enough of backroom pacts that put corporate profits ahead of human needs, and Congress members increasingly understand that rubber-stamping the TPP would be a fast track out of office."
For more information about the TPP, visit https://www.exposethetpp.org/.
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
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Amnesty Urges War Crimes Probe of Landmines in Russian-Occupied Ukraine
"In every region in Ukraine that was formerly occupied by Russia, we have seen evidence of civilians killed and injured by antipersonnel mines left behind by Russian forces," said one researcher.
Jul 26, 2024
Amnesty International on Friday demanded a "prompt, thorough, independent, and impartial investigation" into the use of antipersonnel landmines, "which litter territories in Ukraine formerly and currently occupied by Russian forces."
The Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor says that Ukraine is "severely contaminated" with antipersonnel landmines, which Russia's troops have used since 2014, but particularly since Russian President Vladimir Putin's full-scale invasion in February 2022.
"Landmines have been documented in 11 of Ukraine's 27 regions: Chernihiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kherson, Kyiv, Luhansk, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Sumy, and Zaporizhzhia," according to the monitor's latest update, published in November. "Russian forces have used at least 13 types of antipersonnel mines in Ukraine since February 2022."
Ukraine is a state party to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production, and Transfer of Antipersonnel Mines and on Their Destruction of 1997 but lacks legislation to enforce its implementation. Human Rights Watch last summer gathered evidence of the Ukrainian military's use of the banned mines. Russia is not a party to the treaty.
Patrick Thompson, a Ukraine researcher at Amnesty, said Friday that "in every region in Ukraine that was formerly occupied by Russia, we have seen evidence of civilians killed and injured by antipersonnel mines left behind by Russian forces."
"They are a daily, deadly threat to civilians. Some have been deliberately placed in civilian homes where they maim and kill," Thompson highlighted. "There must be an effective investigation into all such incidents as possible war crimes."
The group shared just one survivor's story of encountering a mine:
In March 2022, Russian forces evicted Oleksandr* (not his real name) and his mother from their flat in Snihurivka, in the region of Mykolaiv. A Russian military unit took over the entire apartment block until it was forced to withdraw following fierce fighting around Snihurivka in November 2022.
After the Russian retreat, Oleksandr returned to the apartment block to assess how badly it had been damaged. Upon entering the basement, he stepped on a disguised PFM-1 antipersonnel mine that had been placed under wooden planks. The mine exploded, Oleksandr fell, and landed on other disguised mines that had apparently, had been deliberately placed to injure or kill anyone entering the building. He lost both his left leg and arm in the incident.
“The deminers working to clear Ukraine of this threat are carrying out painstaking, dangerous work every day," Thompson noted. "While the scale of the problem is undeniably huge, the biggest obstacle to clearing Ukraine of landmines is Russia's ongoing aggression."
Thompson called on the international community to "commit to sustained financial and technical assistance to help Ukraine get rid of a danger that continues to wreck lives and livelihoods," and to continue fighting for an end to the use of the weapons.
"Countries must uphold the ban on the use, production, stockpiling, and transfer of antipersonnel mines worldwide," he said. "There must be an end to the use of such indiscriminate weapons."
The most recent report from the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine states that the war has killed at least 11,284 civilians there since 2022 and injured another 22,594—though the actual tallies are believed to be "considerably higher."
"The number of civilian casualties is likely particularly undercounted in cities such as Mariupol (Donetsk region), Lysychansk, Popasna, and Sievierodonetsk (Luhansk region), where there was protracted intensive fighting at the start of the armed attack in 2022," according to the report.
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Jul 26, 2024
Despite pushback from the United States delegation, finance ministers at a meeting of the G20 countries in Rio de Janeiro on Thursday agreed on the need to develop a global taxation system in which the richest in the world are taxed at a higher rate—potentially unlocking hundreds of billions of dollars annually to help close the international wealth gap.
Ahead of the G20 Summit scheduled for November, which Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's government will host, the finance officials met this week to discuss economic issues and ultimately agreed to start a "dialogue on fair and progressive taxation, including of ultra-high-net-worth individuals."
The Lula government pushed for a proposal by progressive economist Gabriel Zucman, who serves as a G20 adviser and is a professor of economics at University of California, Berkeley.
Zucman's proposal calls for a minimum 2% tax on the fortunes of the world's roughly 3,000 wealthiest billionaires, which could raise approximately $250 billion globally per year.
"With full respect to tax sovereignty, we will seek to engage cooperatively to ensure that ultra-high-net-worth individuals are effectively taxed," the ministers wrote in a declaration that was viewed by Politico.
"Finally, the richest people are being told they can't game the tax system or avoid paying their fair share. Governments have for too long been complicit in helping the ultra-rich pay little or zero tax."
The agreement to discuss higher taxes for the rich was reached despite objections from Germany and the U.S., whose treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, said that "tax policy is very difficult to coordinate globally."
"We don't see a need or really think it's desirable to try to negotiate a global agreement on that," Yellen said at a press conference before the ministers met Thursday evening. "We think that all countries should make sure that their taxation systems are fair and progressive."
Although the agreement only states that countries will discuss the need for the wealthy to pay their fair share to help fight poverty and fund public education and other services, the global anti-poverty group Oxfam International said the meeting represented "serious global progress."
"For the first time in history, the world's largest economies have agreed to cooperate to tax the ultra-rich," said Susana Ruiz, tax policy lead for Oxfam. "Finally, the richest people are being told they can't game the tax system or avoid paying their fair share. Governments have for too long been complicit in helping the ultra-rich pay little or zero tax. Massive fortunes afford the world's ultra-rich outsized influence and power, which they wield to shield, stash, and supersize their wealth, undercutting democracy and widening inequality."
An Oxfam study released ahead of this week's meetingfound that the richest 1% of people in the world increased their fortunes by $42 trillion over the past decade, while taxation fell to "historically" low rates.
Ruiz called on G20 heads of state to "go further than their finance ministers" at the G20 Summit in November "and back concrete coordination: agreeing on a new global standard that taxes the ultra-rich at a rate high enough to close the gap between them and the rest of us."
"Brazil has kickstarted a truly global approach to tax the ultra-rich. But the work is just beginning and international cooperation is crucial," said Ruiz, adding that the task of ensuring the wealthiest people in the world are taxed fairly must not be left up to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)—"the club of mostly rich countries."
Zucman expressed hope that the agreement between the G20 finance ministers marked a "historic" moment, and called it "an important step in the right direction."
"Our proposal for a common minimum tax on billionaires is now on the map. G20 finance ministers have started to engage with it—and there is no going back," said Zucman. "In its declaration, the G20 finance ministers commit to important preliminary steps. They need to do more and commit to a coordinated minimum tax on the super-rich. We know that it is practically doable—we know the solutions exist. And I'm confident, because there is overwhelming popular demand everywhere to get there."
"The status quo, in which the biggest winners from globalization are allowed to enjoy the lowest tax rates, is simply not sustainable," said Zucman.
The findings released this week by Oxfam highlighted polling that "consistently" found people across the world support raising taxes on the richest individuals.
"Eighty percent of Indians, 85% of Brazilians and 69% of people polled across 34 countries in Africa support increasing taxes on the rich," said the group. "Nearly three-quarters of millionaires polled in G20 countries support higher taxes on wealth, and over half think extreme wealth is a 'threat to democracy.'"
The Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT) applauded the agreement and called on the G20 to "go further in [the] fight to tax the rich."
"To take this forward, G20 should support work on this at the Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation currently being negotiated at the United Nations," said Jayati Ghosh, co-chair of the ICRICT.
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United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Thursday criticized the world's wealthiest countries for expanding fossil fuel production, one day after an analysis in The Guardian showed that five Western countries are leading a global surge in oil and gas development.
Guterres' remarks came as part of a "call to action" on extreme heat at a press conference in New York, after record-setting world temperatures earlier in the week and a series of deadly heatwaves across the world this year.
Guterres, who has long been outspoken on the need for climate action, called extreme heat one of the "symptoms" of a "disease" that is the "addiction" to fossil fuels.
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The U.N. chief's comments may have been based on Wednesday's findings that five Western countries—the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and Norway—have significantly scaled up oil and gas licensing this year, despite their international climate commitments. The findings came from an analysis of industry data conducted by the International Institute for Sustainable Development and published in The Guardian.
The analysis found that the five countries together have licensed or plan to license projects in 2024 that will emit 11.9 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions over their lifetimes. The news renewed discussions about whether countries such as the U.S., though they claim to be climate leaders, should be considered "petrostates"—a contemptuous term formerly reserved for countries such as Saudi Arabia and Russia.
Guterres has long been outspoken on the issue of fossil fuels. At the COP28 U.N. climate change summit in Dubai last year, he spoke forcefully about the need for phasing them out and meeting the 1.5°C target set in the Paris agreement.
"The 1.5°C limit is only possible if we ultimately stop burning all fossil fuels," he said. "Not reduce. Not abate. Phase out—with a clear timeframe aligned with 1.5°C."
The loophole-ridden deal that emerged from Dubai didn't match Guterres' ambitions, but did call for "transitioning away from fossil fuels."
His call to action on Thursday included a four-part plan for dealing with extreme heat: caring for the most vulnerable, protecting workers, boosting resilience, and limiting further temperature rise by phasing out fossil fuels and scaling up renewables.
Leaders across the board must wake up and step up their #ClimateAction.
That means governments – especially #G20 countries – as well as the private sector, cities and regions.
They must #ActNow as though our future depends on it – because it does.
— António Guterres (@antonioguterres) July 26, 2024
Guterres warned that 70% of the global workforce—over 2.4 billion people—is at substantial risk of experiencing extreme heat, and the situation is especially dire for workers in Africa and the Middle East. He called for strong laws to protect workers, which some countries are enacting. The Biden administration recently moved to set the first national workplace heat safety protections in the U.S.
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