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Act Out! [111] - How & Why the UN Fails + A Very Unhappy Birthday to Corporate Personhood

Act Out! [111] - How & Why the UN Fails + A Very Unhappy Birthday to Corporate Personhood
Wed, 5/10/2017 - by Eleanor Goldfield
This article originally appeared on Occupy.com

This week on Act Out!, Saudi Arabia is an authoritarian, theocratic regime that routinely tortures, imprisons and executes dissenters. On top of that, they also are vehemently anti-woman. The guardian system in Saudi Arabia requires that a woman receive permission to do everything – from getting an education to traveling. Women are also not allowed to drive cars or leave the house without head-to-toe covering. When they do manage to make it out of the house, they are forbidden from interacting with men: all shops, transportation and public areas are gender-segregated. Based on this, it seems odd, even ludicrous, that Saudi Arabia would get a seat on a UN Council tasked with upholding and forwarding women’s rights around the globe. Not only did that happen, but Saudi Arabia also has a seat on the UN Human Rights Council. Then again, so do the U.S. and many other human rights violators, from Brazil to China. What gives? Does this international body really work, despite its hypocrisies? Or could there be a better, more powerful iteration that actually holds human rights violators accountable, rather than periodically wagging a finger at them – then putting them in charge of human rights?

Next up, we talk to Move to Amend's national director Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap about a very unhappy birthday: namely, the 131st anniversary of the Supreme Court case that launched a series of precedents for corporate personhood. Kaitlin outlines the history, the present fight that Move to Amend is waging, and the role of Amendments in overturning the Supreme Court’s backwards thinking.

 

 

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Article Tabs

Journalists have a responsibility to plainly tell the truth about how truly different the Democrats and the Republicans are today, especially with both democracy and the rule of law at stake this November.

From Hungary and Poland to Italy and Spain, today's anti-abortionist movements are feeding one another—while also driving a growing counter-movement.

Agriculture, the service economy, sexual exploitation, manufacturing, construction and domestic work drive today's enslavement around the world.

Thanks to the Electoral College, leftists have perhaps the final say this November over whether democracy can hold on for at least another four years, or if fascism will take root and infect all facets of the federal government for decades to come.

What remains unknown is whether post-truth Republicans will succeed in 2024 as the Nazis did in 1933.

Journalists have a responsibility to plainly tell the truth about how truly different the Democrats and the Republicans are today, especially with both democracy and the rule of law at stake this November.

From Hungary and Poland to Italy and Spain, today's anti-abortionist movements are feeding one another—while also driving a growing counter-movement.

Agriculture, the service economy, sexual exploitation, manufacturing, construction and domestic work drive today's enslavement around the world.

Thanks to the Electoral College, leftists have perhaps the final say this November over whether democracy can hold on for at least another four years, or if fascism will take root and infect all facets of the federal government for decades to come.

History shows there are no “one-day” dictatorships. When democracies fall, they typically fall completely.

Thanks to the Electoral College, leftists have perhaps the final say this November over whether democracy can hold on for at least another four years, or if fascism will take root and infect all facets of the federal government for decades to come.

Posted 3 weeks 1 day ago

What remains unknown is whether post-truth Republicans will succeed in 2024 as the Nazis did in 1933.

Posted 1 month 2 weeks ago

Agriculture, the service economy, sexual exploitation, manufacturing, construction and domestic work drive today's enslavement around the world.

Posted 2 weeks 1 day ago

History shows there are no “one-day” dictatorships. When democracies fall, they typically fall completely.

Posted 3 weeks 3 days ago

Journalists have a responsibility to plainly tell the truth about how truly different the Democrats and the Republicans are today, especially with both democracy and the rule of law at stake this November.

Posted 1 day 13 hours ago

Thanks to the Electoral College, leftists have perhaps the final say this November over whether democracy can hold on for at least another four years, or if fascism will take root and infect all facets of the federal government for decades to come.

History shows there are no “one-day” dictatorships. When democracies fall, they typically fall completely.

Agriculture, the service economy, sexual exploitation, manufacturing, construction and domestic work drive today's enslavement around the world.