As governments take action to fight the COVID-19 pandemic and prevent economic collapse, big law firms are watching the virus too. Yet, their concern is not to save lives or the economy. Instead, the lawyers are urging big business to challenge the social and economic emergency measures that governments around the world have taken to deal with the COVID-19 crisis. 2600 investment protection agreements worldwide have opened the door for transnational companies to sue States for billions of dollar...
May 19, 2020•22 min•Ep 19•Transcript available on Metacast How do we ensure that the economic response to COVID-19 also addresses existing crises, most of all the unfolding climate crisis? How do we build a truly Global Green New Deal that delivers transformation and justice especially in the Global South? This webinar features leading international activists and thinkers, bringing fresh new perspectives on how to embed just transition into our response to the coronavirus pandemic. Panellists: * Richard Kozul-Wright, Director of the Division on Globaliz...
May 18, 2020•2 hr 38 min•Ep 20•Transcript available on Metacast This episode examines authoritarian and repressive state responses to the Coronavirus pandemic, featuring the UN Special Rapporteur on Protecting Human Rights and other global experts and activists. In response to an unprecedented global health emergency, many states are rolling out measures from deploying armies and drones to control public space, to expanding digital control through facial recognition technology and tracker apps. What if these measures become permanent once the pandemic has su...
May 12, 2020•1 hr 28 min•Ep 18•Transcript available on Metacast The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed like never before the perils of governments handing over our right to health and life to corporations. The privatisation of our health has made millions of people vulnerable to infectious diseases and undermined the integrated public systems needed to coordinate an effective response. This webinar brings healthcare experts together with activists at the forefront of struggles for equitable universal public healthcare from across the globe. Panelists speak about ...
May 12, 2020•1 hr 14 min•Ep 17•Transcript available on Metacast A conversation between Rob Wallace, author of Big Farms Make Big Flu and agrarian justice activists from Myanmar, Palestine, Indonesia and Europe. This episode explores how globalised industrial food systems set the scene for the emergence of COVID-19 and the structural connections between industrial agriculture, pathogens and precarious working conditions. It also explores the different realities people face right now, and how these impact ongoing struggles for more just food systems and societ...
May 12, 2020•1 hr 22 min•Ep 16•Transcript available on Metacast What are the likely global impacts of the economic fallout from the Coronavirus pandemic? What would a peoples' agenda look like? How might we be better prepared than in the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis to put forward progressive solutions that address the immediate crisis as well as existing crises of poverty, inequality and environmental destruction? Panellists: - Professor Jayati Ghosh, award-winning economist Jawaharlal Nehru University, India - Quinn Slobodian, associate professor ...
May 12, 2020•1 hr 28 min•Ep 15•Transcript available on Metacast With Sonia Shah, author of Pandemic: Tracking contagions from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond (2017) as well as experts on public health systems and activists on the frontlines responding to the crisis in the Global South. Images from Italy of the army unloading coffins, exhausted doctors and fearful citizens in ever more countries shocked the world and pushed even recalcitrant politicians into action. But the real health disaster could still be ahead of us as the pandemic spreads in countries in th...
May 12, 2020•2 hr 30 min•Ep 14•Transcript available on Metacast This episode is an extract from the first in our series of webinars focused on Covid-19, which featured a presentation by Sonia Shah, author of Pandemic: Tracking contagions from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond (2017), as well as contributions from experts on public health systems and activists on the frontlines responding to the crisis in the Global South. Images from Italy of the army unloading coffins, exhausted doctors and fearful citizens in ever more countries shocked the world and pushed even...
Apr 23, 2020•17 min•Ep 12•Transcript available on Metacast This episode is an extract from the third edition in our weekly webinar series, which featured a dialogue between Rob Wallace, author of Big Farms Make Big Flu and agrarian justice activists from Myanmar, Palestine, Indonesia and Europe. The webinar explored how globalised industrial food systems set the scene for the emergence of COVID-19, and examined the structural connections between industrial agriculture, pathogens and precarious working conditions. It also brought out the different realit...
Apr 23, 2020•17 min•Ep 13•Transcript available on Metacast Two decades ago, and without significant public debate, an obscure international investment agreement entered into force. The Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) gives foreign investors in the energy sector sweeping powers to sue states for millions of dollars over government actions that have supposedly ‘damaged’ their investments. In recent years, the ECT has become increasingly controversial – because of its potential to obstruct the transition from climate-wrecking fossil fuels towards renewable ene...
Apr 15, 2020•41 min•Ep 11•Transcript available on Metacast This is episode two of a series on Border Wars: placing the ‘migration crisis” in perspective. In episode one, we looked at some of the reasons for the building of militarized borders, and examined the systemic causes of migration, showing how people are displaced as a result of corporate crimes, conflict, poverty, climate change. We showed that migration cannot be divorced from the legacy of colonialism and the impact today of corporate capitalism and imperialism. This episode takes a closer lo...
Dec 06, 2019•29 min•Ep 10•Transcript available on Metacast This is episode one of a series on Border Wars: Placing the ‘migration crisis” in perspective. It explores the rise of border walls particularly in the last three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and analyses some of the systemic reasons behind what has been termed the “migrant crisis”. Follow-up episodes will focus on the corporate interests that stand to gain the most from existing migration policies, and explore ways in which communities are reaching out and building bridges instead...
Nov 07, 2019•37 min•Ep 9•Transcript available on Metacast Walden Bello is a TNI associate, a human rights and peace campaigner, academic, environmentalist and journalist who has made a major contribution to the international case against corporate-driven globalization. He is currently a senior analyst at Focus on the Global South, as well as an adjunct professor of sociology at the State University of New York, Binghamton. In our latest podcast he shares his thoughts about China and its role in the global financial system. The discussion is guided by W...
Oct 08, 2019•37 min•Ep 8•Transcript available on Metacast Instead of stemming the flow of narcotics, the global “war on drugs” has only managed to cause untold suffering to millions of people across the world. The voice of communities involved in illicit cultivation have long been excluded from national and international policymaking platforms. What alternative approaches are there to current regime? Is it possible to put human rights first? Guests: Martin Jelsma : Director Drugs & Democracy programme, TNI. Nang Yon : Myanmar Opium Farmers Forum. P...
Aug 13, 2019•25 min•Ep 7•Transcript available on Metacast There is a crisis in Venezuela. The country teeters on the brink of total economic and social collapse. There is civil unrest, hospitals and supermarkets are empty, and there is a very real possibility of an invasion led by the United States of America. The Bolivarian revolution, which is the political process initiated by the late president Hugo Chavez, has not borne its promised fruits. What happened in Venezuela, and what is in store for the country and its people? What lessons are there for ...
Jul 09, 2019•31 min•Ep 6•Transcript available on Metacast This episode of the State of Power podcast examines the case of the resistance against the TAP pipeline in Salento, Italy. Expected to bring 10 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year from Azerbaijan, the pipeline has been hailed as an impressive feat of engineering that will help solve Europe’s energy needs. However, there is no overstating how much the local populations along the pipeline detest this development. We use the resistance against TAP to explore a process we call “pacification”,...
Jun 05, 2019•23 min•Ep 5•Transcript available on Metacast When Transnational Corporations violate the rights of people and communities, it can be almost impossible to hold them to account. That’s why TNI is a long term supporter of the process towards a United Nations Treaty on Transnational Corporations with regard to Human Rights . This episode of the State of Power podcast outlines some of the violations against people and the environment, perpetrated by Transnational Corporations in South Africa: Cases such as the massacre of protesting miners at t...
Apr 30, 2019•22 min•Ep 4•Transcript available on Metacast In 2008, as financial markets fell into chaos, the world got an acute reminder of the limitations of the current neoliberal financial system. We need a systemic reversal, to ensure that public resources serve people and planet, and enhance collective and individual well-being. For this to become reality, we must pursue radical but doable proposals and practices, showing how progressive (local) authorities, social movements, workers and unions, among other engaged actors, can provide democratic a...
Mar 13, 2019•27 min•Ep 2•Transcript available on Metacast The financial crisis of 2008 revealed the limitations of our current neoliberal financial order. As banks and other financial institutions lost their grip on financial markets across the world, it was the world’s governments that stepped in and saved the system on the backs of their taxpayers. If they have the capacity to create public money to save the banks, why don’t democratically elected governments use that same power to create money and involve people in order to solve problems of such as...
Mar 13, 2019•24 min•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast Photo credit: Flickr/ InnovationNorway / CC BY-NC 2.0
Mar 13, 2019•33 min•Ep 3•Transcript available on Metacast 
