As it turns out, Jean Ziegler – author, lecturer, and United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food 2000-2008 – writes a far more concise review of Yash Tandon’s latest book, Trade is War, than I can. Fortunately for me you’ll have to buy the book to read Ziegler’s powerful assessment as it serves as the preface to Tandon’s vital, timely, and unflinching chronicle of world trade as one of the West’s most violent weapons used in its tireless campaign of imperial warfare on the global South.

Deeply and uniquely qualified to “seize the narrative”, Tandon sets about methodically dispelling the narcotic fog of propaganda surrounding neocolonial trade policies generated by the West against the rest. Ugandan by birth, Yash Tandon’s decades spent in global, regional and bilateral trade negotiations on behalf of his own country as well as Kenya and Tanzania has placed him at almost every World Trade Organization (WTO) summit since the first one held in Singapore in 1996.

Amidst the ceaseless welter of colonial narrative streamed and televised like an IV push into living rooms, tablets and cell phones everywhere by corporate media on the very threshold of the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), the African incarnation TIPA and its European analog TTIP, Tandon’s call to arms declares with burning sincerity, “If you do not write your own story, you have no right to independence”. If that’s not clear enough, then perhaps the last sentence of the first paragraph on page one of Tandon’s introduction sufficiently lays bare his thesis: “The WTO is a veritable war machine”.

The next 167 pages – and 18 pages of end notes – are a journey of painstaking historical analysis recounting colonial conquest and plunder whose trajectory brings us to the savagery of extractive neocolonial trade policy in present day Africa generally and the countries of East Africa in particular. Africa is but Tandon’s own historical wellspring yielding up from her aching heart the endless supportive examples drawn from his own lived experience on the front lines of regional and global trade negotiation. The topic of Trade Wars is of truly planetary scale impacting the Least Developing Countries (LDC’s) to the freshly industrialized BRIC nations defending themselves as best they can.

Tandon shifts focus to tactics the WTO deftly utilizes to subjugate the weak such as the proliferation of intellectual property laws (IP) designed to protect big pharma and global seed monopolists like Cargill and Monsanto. This has been — and continues to be — a significant focus of trade policies hammered out in WTO “boiler rooms” behind locked doors well out of public view. As Tandon puts it, “The commodification of ‘knowledge’ – or, turning knowledge into the private property of global corporations – is a product of the emergence of capitalism in Europe”. And, “In the case of hybrid seeds, it is no longer a question of an absence of scientific evidence. There is ample evidence showing that the lives of millions are at risk in order to maximise profits for global mega-seed monopolies”.

After five years of intense negotiations, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) may come to fruition by the end of this year. Much has been written (and rightly so) about the negative consequences of the TPP for American labor. But what are the international implications of the TPP, and in a world awash with bilateral and multilateral trade and investment treaties (there are over 3,200 international investment treaties alone), how is this one different?

The architects of the TPP are structuring the agreement to serve their own interests: protection of intellectual property rights and investor arbitration facilitate the continued dominance of the world’s top corporations, which remain European, Japanese, and most of all American.

Protection of IP rights ensures that advanced knowledge sectors, like the pharmaceuticals industry, maintain their healthy profit margins (and the poor continue to be denied life-saving drugs). US agribusiness will profit from the opening of Japan’s agricultural sector, and Nike will benefit from the further liberalization of Vietnam (where most of its shoes are manufactured).

To understand whose interests are being served, one simply has to note that US trade representatives are accompanied by over six hundred “corporate advisers” to the negotiations, which are shrouded in secrecy. Labor advisers? Zero.

The TPP will also make it easier for transnational corporations to sue governments for labor, environmental, health, safety, and other regulations, in order to gain taxpayer compensation for “loss of future returns” due to “expropriation.” Investor-state dispute settlement mechanisms — already in place in many existing international investment treaties — will be consolidated and strengthened in the TPP to ensure a single, more predictable, standard for the record-breaking number of new cases.

Stigma and under-reporting of suicides

According to WHO, 1.5% of worldwide deaths were caused by suicide in 2012, making it the third highest cause of death in the world. And this is just those deaths confirmed as suicide. WHO admits that the availability and quality of data is poor, with only 60 Member States providing statistics “that can be used directly to estimate suicide rates.” Many suicides, they say, “are hidden among other causes of death, such as single car, single driver road traffic accidents, un-witnessed drownings and other undetermined deaths.” These are just some of the many factors that make accurately assessing the numbers who take their own lives problematic. In countries where social attitudes, or religious dogma, shroud suicide in a stigma of guilt (Sub-Saharan Africa, where suicide is rarely if ever discussed or admitted, for instance), suicide may be hidden and go un-reported; so too in countries where suicide is still regarded as a criminal act: Hungary for example, where attempted suicide carries a prison sentence of five years, or Japan where it is illegal to commit suicide. North Korea, where relatives of a person committing suicide are penalised; Ireland, where self-harm is not generally regarded as a form of attempted suicide; Singapore, where suicide remains illegal and attempted suicide can result in imprisonment; or Russia, where the rate of teenage suicides is three times the world average and where those attempting suicide can be committed to a psychiatric hospital. All of which are pretty strong reasons for hiding suicide attempts and concealing suicide as the cause of death, as well as deterring people from discussing suicidal thoughts.

Whatever the precise number of total deaths by suicide – and all the indications are that it is a good deal higher than WHO says – what is clear is that suicide is a major social issue. The figures of both attempted suicides and committed suicides are increasing; it needs to be openly discussed, the causes understood and more support provided. In the last 45 years, WHO states that suicide rates have increased by 60%, and unless something marvellous happens that drastically changes the environment in which we are living, they predict that by 2020 the rate of death will have doubled – from one suicide every 40 seconds, to someone, somewhere in the world taking his/her life every 20 seconds!

Competition and conformity have infiltrated every area of worldwide society, from education to health care. Everything and everyone is seen as a commodity, to be bought at the lowest price and sold at the highest. Financial profit is the overwhelming motive that drives and distorts action. Materialistic values promoting individual success, greed and selfishness saturate the world; ‘values’ that divide and separate humanity, leading to social tension, conflict and illness. Ideals, which are not values in any real sense of the word, which have both fashioned the divisive political-economic landscape in which we live (which has failed the masses and poisoned the planet), and been strengthened by it. Together with the economic system of market fundamentalism which so ardently promotes them, these ‘values’ form, I believe, the basic ingredients in the interwoven set of social factors that cause a great deal of the ‘mental health issues’, which lead those most vulnerable members of our society to commit suicide. Men, women and children who simply cannot cope with the ‘pressures of life’ anymore, who feel the collective and individual pain of life acutely, are disposed towards introspection and find the world too noisy, its values too crude, its demands of ‘strength’ not weakness, ‘success’ not failure, ‘confidence’ not doubt, impossible to meet. And why should they have to meet them? Why do these ‘pressures of life’ exist at all?

It is time to build an altogether different, healthier model, a new way of living in which true perennial values of goodness shape the systems that govern the societies in which we live, and not the corrosive, ideologically reductive corporate weapons of ubiquitous living which are sucking the beauty, diversity and joy out of life. Values of compassion, selflessness, cooperation, tolerance and understanding; we need, as Arundhati Roy puts it, “to redefine the meaning of modernity, to redefine the meaning of happiness,” for we have exchanged happiness for pleasure, replaced love with desire, unity with division, cooperation with competition, and have created a divided society where conflict rages, internationally, regionally, communally and individually.

The blast is suspected to be a result of an explosion of a bomb that was left over from last year’s Israeli deadly attack on Gaza A blast in the Gaza Strip injured more than 50 people, Palestinian officials said on Thursday. Eyad Bozum, spokesman for Gaza's Interior Ministry, said that the explosion is suspected to be from a bomb left over from last year's Israeli war on Gaza. The incident occured in Beit Lahia neigborhood located in the north of the strip.

"Dozens of people were injured, several of them seriously," Gaza health official Ashraf al-Kidra told the Associated Press on Thursday. A doctor at Al-Awda Hospital, Baker Abu Safia, said that most of the people who were brought to his hospital were women and children.

Last year's 50-day attack on the strip left more than 2,100 people dead, most of whom were civilians. More than 20,000 homes were entirely destroyed because of Israeli heavy shelling.

Cuba will be holding a mass gay wedding as its main event for the annual lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) pride parade there on May 17 - the International Day of Action against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHOT). The event is organised by the National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX), which forms part of an awareness campaign aimed at eliminating prejudice, and granting full legal rights to Cuba’s LGBT couples.

The weddings will not be recognised by the Cuban government, because the revolutionary government has not passed marriage equality laws yet. While this needs to be rectified, Cuba is now a leading Latin America country on LGBT rights. A rainbow revolution is being led by Mariela Castro, daughter of feminist revolutionary Vilma Espin and current president Raul Castro.

Espin is internationally renowned. A sexologist by training, she edits Sexology and Society, a medical journal published in Cuba. In an interview in 2006 with Gail Reed, published in the journal Health and Medical News of Cuba: Espin says that CENESEX’s goals are to contribute towards, “the development of a culture of sexuality that is full, pleasurable and responsible, as well as to promote the full exercise of sexual rights.”

In reality, Cuba has been advancing a very consistently progressive sex and gender rights program. In 2007, Ricardo Alarcon, then president of Cuba’s National Assembly, stated at the assembly meeting, “We have to abolish any form of discrimination against homosexuality... Socialism should be a society that does not exclude anybody.” Homophobic laws began to be repealed in 1973, and by 2011, no mention of homosexuality exists in legislation. The first sex change operation to take place in Cuba was in 1988. Sex reassignment surgery, as part of public health care in Cuba was institutionalized on a large scale in 2008. Like all medical procedures in Cuba, it is free. Assisted reproductive technology for lesbian couples became available in 2008.

In Cuba, For May 17, all across the country, IDAHOT events have been organized. It is only a matter of time before Cuba catches up with Argentina, and legalizes same-sex marriage and adoption rights. In Cuba, homophobia in state policy and popular culture, is low compared to the rest of Latin America and the US. Indeed, thanks to the efforts of the LGBTQI community, CENESEX, and Mariela Castro, today Cuba is more advanced in rainbow rights than most countries in the global South and the US.

As a former correspondent in Greece I am still regularly invited to radio and TV shows in the Netherlands, or to give lectures or talks about the Greek debt crisis somewhere in the country. The latter are usually organized by some kind of foundation or organization of “Hellenophiles.” In addition to Dutch lovers of Greek culture and parents of children who are married to Greeks and who live somewhere in Hellas, those in attendance often include Greeks (and their partners) living in the Netherlands.

Lately, more than ever, I find myself presented at these type of gatherings with deeply unpleasant anecdotes. The stories of Dutch citizens refusing to pay their bills after eating and drinking at Greek tavernas because “they’ve already given enough money to the Greeks by now” have been circulating for some years, and even made it into the national newspapers. But now I find myself being approached by concerned mothers and fathers of half-Greek children who tell me that their daughters or sons have come home from school angry, sometimes even in tears, because their economics teacher, for instance, would unabashedly depict the Greeks as lazy, unreliable, tax-dodging profiteers who can’t be trusted to live up to their agreements and who are threatening the very survival of the EU, and because the teacher would profess, with full conviction, that kicking Greece out of the eurozone is the only solution — the faster the better.

When those half-Greek kids oppose such contentions in class, recounting the stories of their family members in Greece who barely have enough money to buy food, trying to explain that Greece has in fact been extremely “reliable” for the past five years in terms of sticking to the bailout agreements — only to find the public debt rising and the economy reduced to shambles — they were simply laughed at and publicly humiliated. After class, such rituals would often be repeated at the schoolyard. And things are getting worse, they say.

Ever since Syriza won the Greek elections in January, ever since the “messenger boys from Brussels” (the old parties ND and PASOK) disappeared from the Greek political scene, ever since the media developed its obsession with the striking new Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, ever since the new Greek government desperately began trying to do something – however piecemeal it may be — to soften Merkel’s stance and to overturn the catastrophic austerity measures and reforms of the Troika (EU, ECB and IMF), it has become commonplace to openly and shamelessly despise and humiliate Greek people.

Next week, the EU will launch work on its plan to tackle the Mediterranean migrant crisis. The EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini has asked the UN for help to dismantle the smuggling networks.

European ambassadors have drafted a UN resolution, under chapter VII (which allows use of force), to tackle the crisis. For them the military option is the brightest light. As Mogherini said, the EU wants the authority to “use all necessary means to seize and dispose of the [smugglers’] vessels.

“Thus far in 2015, over 60,000 people have tried to cross from Libya to Europe. Of them, close to two thousand have died – a death toll 20 times higher than in 2014,” it continues.

Since 2011, Libya has been ripped apart, its social fabric torn asunder and its state structure largely absent. Nato’s bombardment precipitously destroyed the state and handed over the country to warring militias.

The threat to the refugees is a direct outcome of UN Security Council Resolution 1973, ironically under the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) banner. A new UNSC resolution is not going to be about the protection of the refugees, but to use force to destroy their lifeline. R2P has been ground under by the West’s behavior in Libya.

A recent report by the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC) finally placed the crises in Syria, Iraq, Libya, etc, in a larger context, accentuating the collective Arab tragedy. “These are the worst figures for forced displacement in a generation, signaling our complete failure to protect innocent civilians,” according to Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, the organization behind IDMC.

War and conflicts have resulted in the displacement of 38 million people, of whom 11 million were displaced last year alone. This number is constantly fortified by new refugees, while the total number of people who flee their homes every single day averages 30,000, a third of those are Arabs who flee their own countries.

Yes, 10,000 Arabs, are made refugees every day according to IDMC. Many of them are internally displaced people (IDPs), others are refugees in other countries, and thousands take their chances by sailing in small boats across the Mediterranean. Thousands die trying.

“I am a Syrian refugee from the Palestinian al-Yarmouk camp in Damascus,” wrote Ali Sandeed in the British Guardian newspaper. “When I was small, my grandmother used to tell us how she felt when she was forced to flee to Syria from her home in Palestine in 1948, and how she hoped that her children and grandchildren would never have to experience what it feels like to be a refugee. But we did. I was born a Palestinian refugee, and almost three years ago I became a refugee once more, when my family and I had to flee the Syrian war to Lebanon.”

Add to that the now often repeated but totally misleading wording – that these refugees are coming ”to seek a better life” in Europe – as if their lives were already good but they want it better.

It’s plain nonsense. The issue is not what they flee to but what they flee from. Refugees are on the run from some version of hell.

“We have found that refugee numbers are increasing due mainly to arms trade and wars and therefore we are going to invest in early conflict warning and violence-prevention, in educating experts in these fields, in using smart civilian means including dialogue, mediation and negotiations.

Further, we shall increasingly put up arms embargoes instead of intensifying arms deliveries to these and future conflict areas.”

Humankind has abolished slavery, absolute monarchy, cannibalism and, in principle, child labour. To solve, or at least reduce, the mounting refugee problem, we should begin to discuss how to increase human civilisation by criminalising arms trade and by abolishing war – as stated in the UN Charter Preamble.

But there are taboos on such common sense ideas in all the countries which consider themselves civilised compared with the morally weak and uncivilised countries they destroy, one after the other.