Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright's Hard Choice: Half a Million Children was worth it

[Baobab]

60 Minutes anchor Lesley Stahl, interviewing then U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright, said, "We have heard that a half a million children have died [because of sanctions against Iraq]. I mean that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And - you know, is the price worth it?"

MA: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price -- we think the price is worth it."

[Kelvin Mace]

1. And that's what we are getting if she wins

folks.

I am sure there will be someone along now any moment to defend the needless deaths of children.

[polly7]

5. I was called the 'Hanoi Jane of Canada!' for defending those children as victims, just yesterday.

They can KMFCA.

[Kelvin Mace]

9. Really?

How sad. How utterly sad.

[Baobab]

7. competition policy

nt

[lewebley3]

12. Sanders is in favor of drone strikes: No one is in favor of killing children

[Kelvin Mace]

21. So, is HRC, your point?

I am pretty sure we could persuade Sanders that drone strikes are a bad idea. HRC's record of not giving a rat's ass about civilian deaths is well established, thus unlikely to change.

[RufusTFirefly]

2. And there's a special place in hell for anyone who disagrees with her

After all, what's more important? Healthy fossil fuel profits and our continued global economic and military dominance?
Or a bunch of kids who can't even vote in American presidential elections?


Especially now.

[lewebley3]

13. Hillary is a champion the children: She will continue to work for children

[RufusTFirefly]

18. Sorry, but the founder of the Children's Defense Fund disagrees

MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN: Well, you know, Hillary Clinton is an old friend, but they are not friends in politics...

How Hillary Clinton Betrayed the Children's Defense Fund for Political Gain

I admire your fervor, but unfortunately it's not fact based.

[lewebley3]

19. Its based in fact: Hillary is based in fact for the Children

Because someone parts politically with some doesn't wipe
out a history of serving children.

You are not logic based

[frylock]

22. Hillary is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life.

[sulphurdunn]

23. Lol!

Well put.

[frylock]

24. It's what I hear everytime I see this poster.

[RoccoR5955]

3. Let's kill another million or so Hillary.

It'll be worth it!

[Baobab]

6. "excess deaths amenable to health care"

1994-2016


W T O
G A T S


"Helsinki" AND "Nuremberg"

[lewebley3]

15. Hillary has killed no one: your attack is ridiculous

[RoccoR5955]

28. Oh, are you telling me

that her passing of the Iraq war bill did not kill anyone?
Ridiculous!

[cprise]

32. And way before IRW, the Oval Office's first "partners" gave us this:

Bush's lies about Iraqi WMD turned up in the Clinton admin first. The Clintons are old, old friends with neo-conservative bullshit artists, and maintain those relationships to this day:

Clinton supporters never, ever comment on this.

I wonder why.


.

[zalinda]

4. I can't even think about what the US

will be like if Hillary is President. It will be a more depressing place than it already is.

Z

[Geronimoe]

8. America loves its war criminals

Hillary sold more guns and weapons than Condi Rice or Colin Powell and she did some of it through the supposedly charitable Clinton Family Foundation. Heck of s Democrat. American oligarch exceptionalism. How many will die if TPP is signed by Hillary, because we all know she is for it.

[Baobab]

10. Why TPP and not TiSA or TTIP?

Just curious why you mention TPP preferentially when the others are likely to be worse.

[Geronimoe]

11. Europeans are not working for slave wages

[Baobab]

14. So procurement in TTIP means that Europeans wont be working for slave wages here?

??

It may not matter because we are WTO members and the issue of wages and wage parity as far as I know is still not really clear.

Under some circumstances L-1 visa holders may not have any minimum wage applicable at all. Its not at all clear to me. Ive read stuff to the effect that the higher of the two minimum wages if one was applicable was a US propoal at some point in TiSA (2014) but I dont know if it was accepted. The documents which were leaked were not the US proposal. And even if the US proposed that the "highest common denominator" would apply that may be just politics, also, TiSA - although its supposed to be made "GATS-compatible" is not GATS.

Certainly the necessity tests, economic means tests and (fairly loose) wage parity requirements that exist for H1-B visa holders, are absent in GATS, from what I have read..

Quotas apply, apparently, (that explains the small utilization of GATS Mode Four) but as of March - last month, those quotas seem as if they are being challenged by India to WTO.

Ive read in US law journal articles and elsewhere that wage parity is an open question.

This goes back to 2006 or earlier, some LDCs have I think repeatedly come out against wage parity requirements in any form claiming that they will be used as a way of denying them their rights under GATS to perform contracts that they are the winning low bidders on.

In other words they, as well as the underlying minimum wage laws, (which WTO sees as a subsidy to workers which increases the cost of doing business in the country to other WTO members) are in a sense being framed as a non-tariff barrier, or market access barrier.

[lewebley3]

16. If you want higher wages put Dem's in office

[Baobab]

17. US politics may not make one bit of difference to wages in that situation

That's one of the main points of trade deals, taking important business matters out of the realm of national politics so that business can have predictability.

It may be seen as unreasonable for countries to tell foreign companies what to pay their workers - its between them.

You don't see countries going to national bodies or politicians to resolve international trade disputes, do you? That's what the provision of workers under a contract won through an e-tendering system would be.

If changes needed to be made its possible that they would have been needed to have been made at the beginning- in some cases that might men they should hve been made in 1992-1994.

Its assumed that more developed countries will have evolved beyond the need for labor subsidies like minimum wages.

That's why trade deals reserve many discriminatory measures for use by least developed countries only.

The goal of the trading system is economic integration so whatever can be done to increase international trade in services and decrease discrimination against corporations by country is understood to be the goal.

[sulphurdunn]

27. Of course I want national governments

and the unpredictability that goes with them to govern trade policy. Yes, I want international bodies to go to governmental and not corporate bodies to resolve trade disputes. Obviously, we have not "evolved" beyond the need for minimum wages. Corporations are the creations of countries and rightly should remain their creatures. Compromising national sovereignty to increase trade under corporate arbitration and rule making, euphemistically called free trade, has proven a disastrous development for the United States and must be reversed.

[Baobab]

30. Its our position that developed countries dont need trade barriers like subsidies

I'm trying to get people to do some reading and learn how the US presents these issues to the world, especially the developing world in the WTO. Its important.

Google "economic integration" and you'll see why. It has to do with people here's jobs.

We're being presented as having a severe skilled labor shortage and crises in education, health care and IT.

Which are arguably fake.

[Baobab]

31. The marketplace determines wages under FTA ideology

So when the need for workers falls (due to automation) wages fall too.

In this case its not temporary, its a structural change that we're seeing.

A shift to a world where machines will do most and eventually almost all work.

[Baobab]

20. Once we sign a trade deal then they may be frozen due to "standstill" provisions

Unfortunately, you cannot read the specifics in this case - Veolia Propreté v. Arab Republic of Egypt because it isnt public, but its my impression that the "standstill" clauses in trade deals forbid any regulation of conditions which might effect the profitability of an international investor. So it would become imperative to make the changes before signing the agreement unless it contained provisions allowing changes in labour laws or explicitly excluded international trade from the requirements to pay any certain wage.

then they could pay a very low wage or perhaps even nothing at all (food and board) as long as they agreed upon it.

Presumably that would be a condition, but perhaps not, it might be possible that people could be enslaved and rented out via a trade agreement. I don't know. I know that EU agreements specify that the host countries labour conditions laws would apply but I am pretty sure its understood that when phrased that way that doesnt include wages.How could it? that would defeat the entire purpose.

[sulphurdunn]

25. TPP has become a generic term

along with NAFTA for trade deals that fuck the majority of Americans.

[peace13]

26. Heartbreaking!

[bjo59]

29. Yep and that attitude continues on today.

We here in the USA are living in a post-compassion era and only backwards nostalgists don't get that. Compassion is for suckers! Any dupe who feels compassion and acts on it is naive, a "rainbows and unicorns" nitwit, a big "loser"! I think that begins to explain the vitriol incessantly lobbed at Bernie. All the disdainful commentary about "St. Bernard" and "Bernie the Pure" indicates pretty clearly that the Sanders campaign is experienced as an indictment by those "pragmatists'" who made the willful choice to throw their own ethics and morality on the trash heap of history (and reminds them that it was a willful choice).