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On the occasion of the 56th Session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), NYIHA MEDIA celebrates the human rights of Women and Girls with the release of a new documentary entitled I WANT TO… by Spanish actress and filmmaker Noelle Mauri.
Connect with NYIHATV on YouTube found at: http://www.youtube.com/user/nyiha1
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SAN FRANCISCO AND OAKLAND CELEBRATE MAY DAY Photos by David Bacon 13 May 2012 |
Among the many different events celebrating May Day in San Francisco and Oakland were the occupation of an intersection in San Francisco's financial district, and an immigrant rights march through East Oakland. Participants in Occupy San Francisco, groups in the Progressive Workers Coalition and Jobs with Justice, several unions and other immigrant rights organizations took over the intersection of Market and Montgomery Streets to make speeches, put on street theater and protest the power of the wealthy 1%. In Oakland, immigrant community organizations and immigrant rights groups in Sin Fronteras organized a loud contingent in a May Day march through East Oakland.
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| Image provided by David Bacon. |
Sin Fronteras has organized the Oakland May Day march every year since the big immigrant rights marches of 2006. This year several unions and participants in Occupy Oakland joined them.
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| Image provided by David Bacon. |
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Corporations Win Big in Battle Against Investment Regulation by Isolda Agazzi for IPS 13 May 2012 |
In a world where governments are increasingly subservient to global finance capital, multinationals are gaining ground in the fight against state regulations that aim to protect the environment, public health or social policies.
According to the most recent data released by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the number of lawsuits brought against governments by companies evoking clauses in bilateral investment treaties (BITs) was 450 at the end of 2011.
These are only the known cases; most are kept secret.
In the many instances in which these lawsuits have been successful, governments have been made to pay fines amounting to tens, sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars or euros.
The highly controversial BITs – which establish the conditions for investment by companies of one country in another state – have handed multinational corporations an arsenal of clauses with which to fight state regulations against harmful investment.
In 2011, Argentina held the record of known cases (51), followed by Venezuela (25), Ecuador (23) and Mexico. Most of the claims against Argentina are related to the 2011 financial crisis and many to the privatisation of water. In total, Buenos Aires has been fined more than one billion dollars by multinational corporations.
Last year, Ecuador was forced to pay fines of 78 million dollars to the United States’ oil company Chevron, which claims that the country’s efforts to protect the Amazon from pollution have negatively affected business.
This year, Argentina may face a new case, after the government moved to regain state control over the country’s biggest oil firm, which had been owned by the private Spanish oil company Repsol for many years.
According to UNCTAD, the year 2011 saw 40 percent of cases decided in favour of states and 30 percent in favour of investors, while the remaining 30 percent resulted in settlements.
Ironically, BITs allow companies to sue governments but not vice versa.
In December 2011, for instance, the Stockholm-based Vattenfall threatened to sue Germany for the federal government’s decision, in the aftermath of the Fukushima catastrophe, to phase out nuclear energy by 2022.
The Swedish nuclear company was poised to rake in compensation amounting to more than a billion euros. Evoking the Energy Charter Treaty – a multilateral agreement that protects investment in the energy sector – Vattenfall first tried, unsuccessfully, to convince the federal government to accommodate its requests.
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Two years after the BP Drilling Disaster, Gulf Residents Fear for the Future By Jordan Flaherty 13 May 2012 |
On April 20, 2010, a reckless attitude towards the safety of the Gulf Coast by BP, as well as Transocean and Halliburton, caused a well to blow out 5,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. As the world watched in horror, underwater cameras showed a seemingly endless flow of oil – hundreds of millions of gallons - and a series of failed efforts to stop it, over a period of nearly three months. Two years later, that horror has not ended for many on the Gulf.
“People should be aware that the oil is still there,” says Wilma Subra, a chemist who travels widely across the Gulf meeting with fishers and testing seafood and sediment samples for contamination.
Subra says that the reality she is seeing on the ground contrasts sharply with the image painted by BP. “I’m extremely concerned on the impact it’s having on all these sick individuals,” she says. Subra believes we may be just at the beginning of this disaster. In every community she visits, fishers show her shrimp born without eyes, fish with lesions, and crabs with holes in their shells. She says tarballs are still washing up on beaches across the region.
While it's too early to assess the long-term environmental impact, a host of recent studies published by the National Academy of Sciences and other respected institutions have shown troubling results. They describe mass deaths of deepwater coral, dolphins, and killifish, a small animal at the base of the Gulf food chain. "If you add them all up, it’s clear the oil is still in the ecosystem, it’s still having an effect,” says Aaron Viles, deputy director of Gulf Restoration Network, an environmental organization active in the region.
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