A Plan Only Banksters Will Love: WikiLeaks Reveals Trade Deal Pushing Global Financial Deregulation

Amy Goodman/Juan Gonzalez Democracy Now!
WikiLeaks released the secret draft text for the Trade in Services Agreement. The deal covers 50 countries and over 68 percent of world trade in services. The draft had been classified to keep it secret during the negotiations and for five years post-enactment. The trade deal aims to cement the deregulatory model of the 1990s by forbidding countries from improving financial regulation and roll back the regulatory structure strengthened after the global financial crisis.

Lean And Mean Health Care

Greg Chern Against the Current
From the May/June 2014 issue of ATC. A thorough look at how the Affordable Care Act will change health care beyond just the consumer interaction. A useful resource for health care consumers, health care workers, and reform activists.

Formal Vs. Informal Economy: Bridging the Gap

Jay Naidoo Daily Maverick (South Africa)
Organised labour, grassroots social movements and progressive NGOs, the workers on the shop floor, the informal workers in our streets, farms and villages, the youth, women and intelligentsia are the best hope of a world that is built on justice, human dignity, social solidarity and inclusive growth.

George Takei: How It Got Better

From a happy home to a Japanese internment camp to Skid Row, nothing could stop George Takei from making it. One of the most outspoken gay actors shares his story.

Bush's Toxic Legacy in Iraq

Peter Bergen CNN
The Bush administration presided over the rise of precisely what it had said was one of the key goals of the Iraq War to destroy: a safe haven for al Qaeda in the heart of the Arab world.

'Freedom Summer' 2014

David Goodman USA Today
50 years after the murder of my brother, Andrew Goodman, voter rights still threatened.

Prosecutor Is Closing in on Gov. Christie

Scott Raab and Lisa Brennan Esquire
Indictments against four cronies are near certain, sources say. Only question is if David Samson, Christie's longtime mentor, will flip.

Moral Mondays Are Back in Business

The first Moral Monday since court struck down the North Carolina General Assembly's new rules — interpreted by many as measures designed to silence the Moral Monday Forward Together movement — singing, praying, chanting, and civil disobedience arrests looked a lot like what we saw from Moral Monday in 2013.

The Raleigh News and Observer reports:

Days after persuading a Superior Court judge to suspend some new rules for the N.C. Legislative Building, protesters were back on Monday, raising their voices by many decibels against a state budget and Republican-controlled agenda they describe as "extremist."

As the demonstrators tested the breadth of the order signed Monday by Judge Carl Fox about the overly broad definition of "disturbing behavior," General Assembly police checked with their attorneys on the depth of their authority to remove the noisemakers from the state building.

About 20 minutes after the N.C. Senate went into session, law enforcement officers began wrapping plastic cuffs around the wrists of 20 demonstrators who had continued singing, chanting and speechmaking after being asked to quietly leave the rotunda area outside the General Assembly chambers.

The scene was reminiscent of last summer, when more than 900 demonstrators were arrested for similar actions.

Read more here.