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Names of Advisors Cleared To Access ACTA Documents
1 a bee writes "With the White House claiming national security grounds for failing to release ACTA related information, including negotiating documents and even the list of participants, the spotlight is now on just who does have access. Turns out, according to James Love, hundreds of advisers, many of them corporate lobbyists, are considered 'cleared advisers.' The list looks a who's who of captains of industry."
Why is it that so many 'merkins seem to think that Obama was considered "the second coming"? As far as I could dell, the ones who thought that were about equal in number to those who said that Obama was the New Dark Lord Of Evil (tm).
I.e. nutters.
Most seemed glad of a change because it wouldn't be Bush.
And you know what? It isn't Bush. Even if he screws up as badly as Bush did, it still wouldn't be Bush.
But the same people who seem to forgive Shrub for being as thick as a yard of treacle or making mistakes are exactly the ones who seem to consider Obama to have been "the second coming".
This is the part that confuses me. How on earth can something that deals with copyright be considered a matter of national security? How can anybody in the gov't say that with a straight face even? It's appalling, and it should be challenged in court NOW.
I began to doubt the whole "change" thing back when Obama started to stack his administration with people from Clinton's and even Bush's administration. I guess change is a relative thing.
I was hoping that he brought them in because they know how to get things done, but that he'd force them to get good things done.
In the case of patents, copyrights, and other issues of freedom, it seems I was tragically mistaken.
Can we look back in four years time and think of George Bush as a benevolent caretaker in light of the atrocities commited by the new administration? YES WE CAN! -- It's more and more obvious with each news week that all the glitzy promises and election rhetoric that came Barack Obama was a load of meaningless drivel to deceive people - please don't expect things to be better, lest you sink into complacency and don't notice the BS until it's up to your armpits.
/. crowd to be hold a degree of discernment an order of magnitude higher than that of the average person, yet I urge you all to avoid groupthink and keep your eyes open :)
Things are changing for sure, but NOT for the better; certainly not at all in the direction the American public was led to believe. The whole election campaign looked very surreal from here in New Zealand - our election was on at the exact same time. The Labour party had about 3 television ads that were seldom played on television. National didn't have any television advertisements.
The limits in place in this country to prevent candidates from spending HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS in a clear crusade to brainwash the citizens highlighted the ridiculousness of the Obama insanity, while our puppet media sat there telling us more about Obama than about Helen Clark or John Key.
I sympathize with people that gave in to the herd mentality leading up to the election; these people made an absolutely unprecedented effort to deceive everybody with their silly puppets; because the media climate differs here in NZ it wasn't very hard for us to see through... Heck, every time I watch a video of Obama I feel that it's a movie, it just doesn't feel real.
I expect the
Peace from a New Zealander
This post was made in complete sincere seriousity; as such any attempts to derive humour are doomed to instant failure.
In Scotland we have proportional representation. This system gives us a government that better represents the views of the people, as the proportion of each party more closely reflects the number of people who voted for them. Even better, we actually have six parties with seats, and many more who stand a chance of gaining a seat.
Proportional representation is not perfect, and it has been accused of resulting in weak governments as the main party is usually small compared to the opposition parties; however, I think it's considerably closer to democracy as the Ancient Greeks saw it, than the choice between two similar parties that tends to exist today. Most importantly, it allows me to vote where my conscience tells me, rather than for the lesser of two evils.
The FOIA denial letter is signed by Camen Suro-Bredie. From what I can find, she has been in the USTR office since at least 2004. While President Obama has sent down an executive order that FOIA requests should be responded to in preference to withholding information, that is a new policy and it is going to take some time to get everyone in line with it.
It will be instructive to see how this is handled now that it has been brought out into the daylight. If the Obama Administration overrides Ms Suro-Bredie and releases the treaty that would be a very positive step.
Democracy provides the illusion of control, permitting people to act in ways that seem to benefit themselves as political actors, and thus permitting the hegemony of capitalist industrialist relations to continue as the modus operandi of civilisation, unabated.
Thankfully geology and nature get to play last, and will make harsh hash of this ponzi scheme called capitalist industrialism.
Obama is no different than Roosevelt. Contrary to right wing bullshit, Roosevelt SAVED the ruling class from self destruction. Obama is attempting the same.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I am still crossing my fingers that some low level person who has access to the documents will have the bravery, forethought, and knowledge to carefully leak them to Wikileaks.
Perfect response. I don't see why everyone is overreacting. You guys want Obama to fail don't you? You jump on any little thing and scream "see Obama is a failure, he is just as bad as Bush". Well I call bullshit. I think that objectively it is far too soon to make an assessment, but if I were forced to, I would say that Obama has the potential to be a far better leader then Bush.
If nothing else, I think the PR job he has done is part of being a good leader. If you can't get Americans interested in the debate, lobbyists and special interests will run Washington. Furthermore, he is only one man with limited power. If you thought the "change you can believe in" would entail a complete overhaul of the system when he doesn't in fact have power to completely overhaul the system, then it isn't Obama's fault that you failed to understand the domain he was applying the sentiment to. You might try to blame him for misrepresenting his role as president -- but every candidate does that, if you fail to realize that they are talking about doing things within their powers.
Basically, all you people that are moaning that Obama has failed to bring change and was a big fraud are the people that never supported him in the first place. Before he was elected you were saying the same things. Now you're all pretending that you were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt but that he failed you and disappointed you. He didn't disappoint you, you were always against him. And despite the fact that he is, at least potentially, on his way to a very successful stint as president, you are going to jump over ever little detail ***THAT WAS ACTUALLY SET IN MOTION BY THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION*** and yell, "see Obama hasn't fixed all of Bush's fuck-ups in a mere 60 days, he has failed and lied and politics is dead".
To re-iterate the parent:
In one of his first acts as president, Obama signed a memo saying FOIA "should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails. The government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure."
So Obama hasn't decided to spend political capital to fix this particular mess Bush left him yet... can you blame him? He has a lot of messes to clean up, some of them involve the fate of entire countries, others involve the fate of our economy. Is it so surprising that weighed against those your pet copyright reform issues aren't getting the unrealistic amount of attention you want? Now, if Obama starts taking vacations for entire months at a time, as Bush did August 2001, then I'll start becoming cynical. If Obama hurts the sciences, education and foregn relations with short-sited policies based on stories from thousands of years ago, then I'll call myself a cynic. If Obama panders shamelessly to the richest of the rich when the wealth gap is the highest it has been since the late 1800s, then I will start coming to these forums and launch the types of accusations you guys are making. But I suspect that Obama isn't going to do those things. Bush did. I call that change, and yes, it is change I can believe in.
You might want to hold on to your doubt for a bit longer.
Carmen Suro-Bredie, who signed the letter rejecting the FOIA request, is a hold-over from the Bush Administration. Could be she never got the memo that things have changed. She actually predates Bush: she was chairing hearings about trade agreements in 1992, and apparently has at least 30 years of Federal Civil Service behind her. She has always kept a very low profile: the only biography of her on the web is remarkable for saying very little and providing no dates at all. These are the hallmarks of a career bureaucrat; the kind of person who works hard, not out of any sense of ideals, or for the good of the team, but to assure that their personal situation will be more comfortable next year than it was last year (no matter who is in charge or what the new goals of the organization are).
Now that she has stumbled into the Internet's spotlight, it will be interesting to see if there is any change in her career. Her style doesn't seem to fit well with Obama's approach. OTOH, she has been working the same small patch of ground for more than 16 years, so she might know too much to be easily shown to the door.
The treaty in question has a long way to go before it is ratified. There will be opportunities for Obama to open up the process; let's see if he takes them.
Sure, the wording there from your citation is also important: two thirds of the senators present. If ACTA gets drafted, the 'on-board' senators will simply schedule a weekend or holiday session quietly and hope no one notices. Once in session, even if there's only 3 of them, they could call the vote unanimous of senators present. The treaty portion you quoted simply needs to be re-worded as follows to fix this:
He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the elected Senators concur;
Treaties are a big deal, and cannot be treated with enough seriousness for any country. If this loophole isn't fixed, you can literally kiss your virtual rights goodbye as corporate interests move to change our world to favor their greed and desire for control. Really, people, wake up.