The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is a proposed “free trade” agreement between the european union and the united states, with the supposed aim of promoting trade and multilateral economic growth. The u.s. government considers the TTIP a companion agreement to the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership). Negotiations, which are held in secret from the public, are on-going and should be finalised by 2020.
The final aim of the exercise may be summed up as the legal recognition of the economic and political supremacy of transnational corporations over national legislation. (For a summary of what is at stake, one may consult the websites War On Want and Global Justice Now).
On the occasion of Carlos Taibo‘s recently published work, Para entender el TTIP. Una visión crítica del Acuerdo Transatlántico de Comercio e Inversiones/To Understand the TTIP. A Critical Vision of the Transatlantic Agreement of Commerce and Investment (Catarata, Madrid, January 2016), we share below, in translation, an interview that he gave on the subject for CTXT (February 3, 2016). (A portuguese language translation of the same interview can be found here).
State terror in egypt: For Giulio Regeni
On the 3rd February, the lifeless body of the italian student and journalist Giulio Regeni was found in a ditch in a peripheral neighbourhood of Cairo. It was then learned that he had been kidnapped by egyptian police on the 25th of January, and subsequently tortured and murdered. His crime, for the authorities, was perhaps to have researched the egyptian labour movement, to have sympathised with the aspirations of the “egyptian revolution” of 2011, to have been in solidarity with those who resist the current Sisi dictatorship.
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