TPP, Democracy Reform, Paul WInter on Leonard Peltier

Coalition Organizing to Stop Passage of TPP Free Trade Pact in Lame Duck Session of Congress
Interview with Melinda St. Louis, international campaigns director with Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, conducted by Scott Harris
After the full text of the proposed 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade deal was released by the Obama administration in November, a broad coalition of opponents including labor, environmental and consumer groups asserted that the actual provisions in the pact were worse than originally feared. They cited an extension of intellectual property rights in the pact that will increase the cost and reduce access to critical life-saving drugs; the off-shoring of thousands of U.S. manufacturing jobs to cheaper labor markets; and the flooding of the U.S. market with unsafe and unlabeled imported food.

Another divisive element in the TPP, the Investor-State Dispute Settlement regime, or ISDS, allows multi-national corporations to challenge local, state and federal public health, environmental, consumer and labor laws as well as court rulings, if a claim is made that they impinge on business profits. These corporations can then demand taxpayer compensation for lost profits.

President Obama, who is strongly backing passage of the TPP, hopes to bring up the trade deal for a vote in the lame-duck session of Congress after the national election on Nov. 8, but before the new Congress and president are sworn into office in January 2017. But as things now stand, that may be difficult as GOP Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell announced recently that he would not schedule a vote on the TPP agreement this year. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Public Citizen’s International Campaigns Director Melinda St. Louis, who discusses the organizing being done across the U.S. to stop a lame- duck session vote on the controversial free trade deal.

For more information, visit Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch at citizen.org/trade and citizen.org/tpp.

Campaign Launched to Make Democracy Reform Focus of 1st Presidential Debate
Interview with Rahna Epting, chief of staff with the group Every Voice, conducted by Scott Harris

More than 30 democracy reform groups across the U.S. are calling on the moderator in the first presidential candidate debate, on Sept. 26, NBC’s Lester Holt, to require Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump to talk about how they plan to make our democracy work for all Americans.

The campaign dubbed, “First Debate Democracy,” supported by groups including Common Cause, People for the American Way, MoveOn.org and DEMOS, is now collecting petition signatures that will be delivered to Holt, the NBC Nightly News anchor. Those backing the campaign are urging Holt to pose pointed questions to the candidates on the corrupting influence of unlimited and unaccountable money in U.S. politics, a situation made worse by the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision – as well as the attempt in many states to suppress the right to vote in targeted communities of color.

Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Rahna Epting, chief of staff with the group Every Voice, who explains the goal of the campaign and why she believes the presidential candidates should discuss their views on the widely-held perception across the U.S., that the structure and mechanics of America’s democracy are broken, and in urgent need of repair and reform.

Learn more about the “First Debate Democracy,” campaign by visiting Every Voice Center at everyvoice.org.

Paul Winter’s New Song Supports Movement to Free Political Prisoner Leonard Peltier
Injustices against native Americans are the focus of attention today, with the ongoing protest against the Dakota Access pipeline at the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota. And, a decades-old travesty of justice is in the news again, as activists are working to convince President Obama to grant executive clemency to the American Indian Movement’s long time political prisoner Leonard Peltier, who has been incarcerated for the past 41 years.

Peltier was convicted of killing two FBI agents on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge reservation in 1975, during a time of extreme state repression and sentenced to two life terms. He was convicted despite the fact that there was no evidence tying him to the crime and his trial was riddled with lies, inconsistencies, withheld exculpatory evidence, and blatant bias towards the indigenous community.

Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Paul Winter, a Connecticut-based musician and leader of the Paul Winter Consort, which has performed around the world, incorporating sounds of nature, such as whale songs and wolf howls, into their music. Here, Winter talks about why he wrote and produced a musical tribute to Leonard Peltier as a way of engaging more people in the struggle to win his release from prison. Peltier turned 72 on Sept. 12 and is in poor health.

View “ALL MY RELATIONS: Voices for Leonard Peltier” EP – Paul Winter Consort & Friends on youtube at youtube.com/watch?v=EayiDodhcLs; youtube.com/watch?v=Y7bG3ewQW3c; on Facebook at facebook.com/paulwintermusic/.

For further information about Leonard Peltier, and the work being done toward gaining his freedom, see the following organizations on these sites: whoisleonardpeltier.info/; freepeltiernow.org. To sign the petition to free Peltier, visit Amnesty International Petition.

This week’s summary of under-reported news
Compiled by Bob Nixon
A year after Germany opened its doors to hundreds of thousands of refugees from war torn Syria, Iraq and other nations, German Chancellor Angela Merkel suffered an embarrassing defeat in her home district.( “Angela Merkel’s Party Beaten by Rightwing Populists in German Elections,” The Guardian, Sept. 6, 2016 ; “What Does Alternative for Germany (AFD) Want?” BBC, Sept. 5, 2016)
Across Asia, so called, “special economic zones” have fueled export growth and foreign investment in poor nations. But workers are heavily exploited in these zones and blocked from organizing unions. The International Labor Organization has called these zones “a symptom of the race to the bottom in the global economy.”(“Inside the Corporate Utopias Where Capitalism Rules and Labor Laws Don’t Apply,” In These Times, July 25, 2016)
In the historic U.S. Supreme Court decision, Gideon vs. Wainwright, the high court enshrined the constitutional right of indigent defendants to receive legal counsel. However fifty three years after the ruling, the Guardian newspaper reports the rights of indigent defendants is under increasing threat as incarceration rates have risen over 400 percent and up to 90 percent of those awaiting adjudication are mired in poverty.(“The Human Toll of America’s Public Defender Crisis,” The Guardian, Sept. 7, 2016)

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