Water Cannons Used Against Peaceful Anti-TTIP Protestors: the Next ACTA Revolt?

Glyn Moody (946055) writes "The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), potentially the world's biggest trade agreement, has been negotiated behind closed doors for nearly a year now. Apart from what we learn from a few official releases — and an increasing number of leaks — we still don't really know what is being agreed in the name of 800 million people in the U.S. and EU. When a peaceful anti-TTIP protest was held outside yet another closed-doors meeting in Belgium, the local police sent in the water cannons and arrested nearly 300 people in what seems an extreme over-reaction. Will TTIP turn into the next ACTA revolt?"

Comments

Silly Peasants

[smittyoneeach]

Expecting government to be accountable to you, and stuff.

Re:Silly Peasants

[thaylin]

You and I have a vastly different idea of the democratic process.. I mean if we dont know whats in it, and cannot vote on it, then there is no democratic process involved.

Re:Silly Peasants

[Jane Q. Public]

You and I have a vastly different idea of the democratic process.. I mean if we dont know whats in it, and cannot vote on it, then there is no democratic process involved.

The fact is that in the U.S., the process is supposed to be kind of democratic, but in practice since Bush and Obama have been in office, it has taken a pretty big hit.

There are three things at issue here. The first is that while it has not been definitively decided by courts, it is generally asknowledged that treaties do not trump the Constitution in regard to internal matters. The second is that treaties have to be ratified by the Senate before they are legal. (Of course, when the Constitution was written, the Senate more directly represented the States.) The third thing to consider is that in recent years these trade agreement talks have been taking place in secrecy in order to give The People no way to let their Senators know what they think about it.

So yeah, it is kind of a democratic process. But our Federal government has done its best to minimize the democracy part.

Re:Silly Peasants

[geezer nerd]

The same kind of process is currently on-going with respect to the TPPA (Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement). Negotiations have been going on behind closed doors for years. Only a few leaks give a hint as to what is coming.

So far, the leaks indicate that the US has let loose the corporate dogs, particularly in big Pharma and Agriculture, to snarl and threaten the peaceful existence of the smaller countries involved.

Re:Silly Peasants

[Jane Q. Public]

The whole point of these trade agreements is to gain broad economic advantages instead of narrow special interests, protectionism, and subsidies. Opening up the negotiating process would allow all those vested interests and rent seekers to apply pressure to preserve their privileges, and end up sabotaging the process.

You are hopelessly naive.

In practice, these "trade agreements" (like SOPA, for a good example) have been notoriously wide open to special interests, but closed to the public. In fact, public interest groups (like EFF and others) ended up finding out about any of them because of leaks by industry, not the government.

Whatever "the point" is, it most definitely has not been done that way.

Re:Silly Peasants

[ShanghaiBill]

we have a Republic, not a Democracy. If we can keep it.

A republic is a country that is not a monarchy. Whether a country is a republic or not is orthogonal to whether it is a democracy.

Examples of countries that are republics:
The United States of America
North Korea
China
France
Germany
Cuba

Examples of countries that are NOT republics:
Canada
Saudi Arabia
Japan
Britain
Norway

I think the term you are looking for is "representative democracy", which may be either a republic or a monarchy.

Re:Silly Peasants

[TubeSteak]

They are accountable. When the negotiations are done, each country can either accept it or reject it through a democratic process.

Votes by elected representatives = Republic
An actual democratic process would involve a national referendum.

Of course, the idea of the public voting terrifies the type of people who write these treaties,
because it's so easy for the public to latch onto any one aspect and torpedo the entire thing.

Re:Silly Peasants

[Connie_Lingus]

I think the term you are looking for is "representative democracy", which may be either a republic or a monarchy.

yeah...a "representative democracy" the way choosing Coke or Pepsi counts as selecting your favorite beverage.

with the two-party stranglehold its neither a democracy nor representative.

Re:Silly Peasants

[AK Marc]

From your link:
A republic is a form of government in which power resides in the people, and the government is ruled by elected leaders run according to law, rather than inherited or appointed

Kim Jong Un replaced his father. Castro is expected to be succeeded by a family member without vote as well. Yet you listed both of those as "republics". I think "not monarchy" is too narrow. The power comes from the people (democracy), not divine (monarchies) or guns (dictatorships). Your definition would have violent dictatorships listed as "power by the people", which doesn't sound quite right. And Canada is tuled by elected leaders and run according to law. So again, your take disagrees with the statements within your cite.

Re:Silly Peasants

[ausrob]

OK, how about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)? Or the current Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)? There are more examples, but hopefully you get the point. Even proposed US laws like PIPA/SOPA and current laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) can make their way into other countries by way of other seemingly unrelated economic trade agreements. For example, Australia has adopted DMCA like provisions as part of the Australia–United States Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA - incidentally modeled on NAFTA) between 2004-2006.

Re:Silly Peasants

[king neckbeard]

If you want to have broad economic advantages, you have a free trade agreement. A free trade agreement is simple. We let the people trade and we don't interfere. These agreements are to dangle the economic importance of free trade on a string to extort.
Sure is a nice economy you have there. It would be a shame is suddenly everyone were to stop allowing your goods into our country. Why don't we have a nice talk over here about some changes you're going to love.

Re:Silly Peasants

[TheGratefulNet]

each country can either accept it or reject it through a democratic process.

no, sorry. firstly, countries don't accept or reject things, PEOPLE IN POWER in those countries do.

secondly, well, fuck it, we all know that we lose when it comes to private deals, big money and big spying.

we lost. we will always lose. david won't win against goliath; only in story books does that happen.

yes, we're fucked.

Re:Silly Peasants

[JamieMcGuigan]

George Bush Jr replaced his father George Bush Sr. after Bill Clinton took bat for the Democrats. Hillary Clinton was only narrowly beaten by Obama on the subsequent Democrat turn, though Secretary of State does put her incharge of foreign policy. Maybe its just a statistical glitch, but while the mechanism is democracy, the result for the last 25 years has actually been two alternating US dynasties.

Re:Silly Peasants

[s.petry]

You are confusing a type of Government with what someone chooses to call themselves. I'd suggest starting at reading the US Constitution followed by the definition of a Republican type of Government. Long ago we were a Republic, which if you really want to learn something go read Plato's book by the same name. We were very much formed in the image Socrates gives in that book for a perfect form of Government. Corruption happens, and by definition we are now either an Oligarchy or Despotism (depending on which scholars you read)

I'm not just being pedantic, this is very basic information that people _should_ be learning in elementary school along with critical thinking skills. You know, skill like being able to realize that someone is bullshitting you by calling themselves a Republic while acting like a Dictatorship... *sigh*

Re:Silly Peasants

[s.petry]

I agree with everything except your time line. The process has been breaking more and more every year since Nixon. I'm sure it has been deteriorating longer, but I lack hard evidence to back that. I can assure you that even Reagan was a turd, just look at his executive orders and "accomplishments". Outside of the Soviet break up (which would have happened anyway) he did more damage than Nixon could ever have dreamed of. The joke called "Trickle Down" being one of the most asinine things, I have every heard anyone say (and sadly idiots fall for this trash).

Re:Silly Peasants

[Simon Brooke]

The whole purpose of these treaties are to carve out new opportunities for special interests and rent seekers to harvest wealth from the small folk like you and me. Whatever you think of the benefits of free trade, these treaties are created to prevent it, and for no other reason.

Re:Silly Peasants

[rtb61]

Now that is in fact a pretty accurate statement. The TTIP, TPP, SOPA et al pretty much where all not trade agreements but all pretty much conspiratorial corporate takeovers of the democratic process, basically, touching treason as they hard government representatives acting against the interests of the citizens in favour of multi-national corporations, 'er' persons (corporate bullshit thing) who are citizens of no country and owe allegiance to no nation.

The fear the internet and what it is doing to re-democratise nations and are looking to lock in corporate autocracy. This prior to us putting justice back into the system and hanging those mother fuckers high, well, actually confiscation of illegally gained assets from gross tax and extreme evasion and applying appropriate imprisonment for many and varied corporate crimes.

Re:Silly Peasants

[JaredOfEuropa]

If ACTA is anything to go by, I'm not at all convinced about these "broad economic advantages"; ACTA was full of advantages for narrow special interests, and they weren't our interests.

The problem with secret negotiations is political realities: once a compromise has been reached, it is pretty much set in stone: no one will want to go back to the table to propose further amendments (effectively restarting the negotiation), and no government who was involved in the proceedings will agree to the deal and then allow it to tank in their national democratic process. Besides, most of the countries involved have no democratic process to directly influence the acceptance or rejection of trade agreements. The government has already been appointed, usually with a house majority, and in most cases a ratification will sail through with perhaps a couple of rider bills to get the opposition to agree.

Open negotiations however provide more democratic control, especially over nasty rider bills in the treaty itself. If you know what is being negotiated, protesters and voters can at least tell their governments: "We will not ever allow you to agree to that part".

Protests were Illegal.

[mythosaz]

The law in Belgium states that it is illegal to hold public protests without authorisation from the municipality.

The video on this site, shows the round-up, and it seems, VERY VERY controlled and peaceful on both sides.
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/ttip-...

Nice people, the Belgish...

Re:Protests were Illegal.

[tomhath]

I like what's printed on the back of their jackets "Police Politie". I take that to mean polite policeman :^)

But yea, forming a human chain in front of the building got the protesters arrested.

Re:Protests were Illegal.

[mythosaz]

I see the smiley, but in case someone else misses it -- it's just their bilingual logo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...

Re:Protests were Illegal.

[Zombie]

Wow, you guys could have googled that.

The Flemish, who make up 60% of the population (not 50% as grandparent claims), speak Dutch. The existence of local variants in the language are no basis for a claim that there a multiple languages. Otherwise you'd have very few English speakers in the world.

Belgium is a trilingual country; there is a small population of German speakers.

Brussels is a bilingual region. It is geographically located in the Dutch-speaking Flanders, historically Flemish and Dutch speaking, but currently more an international city.

The Secrecy Sucks

[ebno-10db]

has been negotiated behind closed doors for nearly a year now

There is no excuse for the closed door policy. This is an agreement that could affect hundreds of millions of people, but they're not allowed to know what's going on? It'll be dumped in a "take it or leave it" form. Congress and parliaments openly debate bills, why the secrecy here? Because they're afraid that people will object to certain provisions? Good. It's the right of people to know how agreements that will affect them are being negotiated. Would that make the agreemnet impossible to agree on? Tough, that'll be because it's an agreement people don't want. Try again. Sorry if the democracy stuff makes your lives harder.

Re:The Secrecy Sucks

[mythosaz]

Numerous Senate and Congressional meetings occur behind closed doors.

We're hardly fully transparent.

Translucent on a good day...

Re:The Secrecy Sucks

[jklovanc]

Congress and parliaments openly debate bills,

Only after they have gone through committees and had a lot of "behind closed doors" discussions. This agreement will be debated by every government that needs to enact it.

It'll be dumped in a "take it or leave it" form.

There is a third option; send it back for revision.

why the secrecy here?

Do you really think is is a good idea for every proposal or wording to be debated in the open? Most of these idea/proposals will not make it into the final draft yet having to publicly defend them will just distract from the work at hand.

Because they're afraid that people will object to certain provisions that never get into the final draft.

FTFY

The problem with public review of every proposal is that it stifles creativity. Try having a creative discussion when every proposal must be perfect before it is presented. It does not work.

Re:The Secrecy Sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with public review of every proposal is that it stifles creativity.

I'm 100% okay with stifling the "creativity" of these government thugs. 99% of the time they're trying to take away our rights; their "creativity" won't be missed.

Though, your statement is a load of bullshit to begin with. Public debate can and should be part of the process. Always. That's what it means to live in a free & open society. Do you honestly think it's okay for these scumbags to be debating legislation behind closed doors, getting bribed by industry assholes, and for people to have no real idea what's happening? I don't.

Re:Protests were Illegal (and last Thursday)

[WoOS]

Yes, if you look at the first video on http://www.ttip2014.eu/blog-de... around 0:20 you will see in the background a protestor holding out his hand to get it tight. Looks to me extremely civilized from both side. I don't see any overreaction. And if - possibly - the protest was unauthorized, participants might be offered a trip to the next police station for IDing. Civil disobidience has its price.

And now before the US side claims that there is no freedom in Europe if protests need to be authorized: If authorization is denied, you can sue against it on a quick track. That's the reason why even the extreme right, which most people would like to deny protesting rights, can do it again and again.

So TTIP might be bad and all but exagerating things just to prolong the attention (Protest was already last Thursday) is not the way to go.

Every Frickin' Time!

[rmdingler]

We try to have these other governments over, and you goddamn kids can't act right for even one night.

Isn't it obvious?

[viperidaenz]

USA media companies want to make copyright infringement an extraditable offence in all the signing countries, so they don't have to go through the pain they're having with Kim Dotcom.

First time I read the English acronym

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't even know what it's called in English! known as "Grand Marché Transatlantique" here. But we vaguely know what's coming, mainly that big corporations will be allowed to sue sovereign states so that they can overrule the rule of law.. which is ridiculous, but we should know we can't write off things because they sound so stupid and ridiculous and "they'd never dare do that".

I'm sure a lot of media bickering will be done regarding what hormones can be in food or such and such old issues. About the only real piece of news was about one year ago when France "stood up" to the Man and got Culture exempted - i.e. books, television, movies etc. Like accepting the rest does not matter! All that France, EU, US have won is there will be less opposition from celebrities, writers, artists etc.

But as I said it's not what we have to care about. "Officially" that TTIP is set to come online by 2015. For all I care it's the date that European Union will become a dictatorship. I didn't thought that would come so early.
Of note is that European elections (for the "parliament") are this Sunday, so be sure to show up at the vote! DON'T vote for a party that supports that thing (even if simply by omission), or is actively "negociating" it while never communicating about it at all. Don't vote for a mainstream "socialist" party, they're selling themselves and selling you to oligarchical interests. e.g. maybe it's a better idea to vote "Die Linke" than "SPD".
If you don't want to vote left-wing please vote for a right-wing non-nazi party or list that say negative stuff about the treaty or Europe in general.

SPIRIT OF 1848

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

We need a few more of 1789, too...

They feed you bullshit about "reign of terror"...

What of the terror that lasted under these estates, from late Roman times, through the so called "Enlightenment"?

Belgian police

[Anonymous Coward]

After checking some local newspaper: the protest was allowed, but the protester did go outside of the previously allowed area automatically enticing a police action. However the videos i have seen look like the matter was handled in a very professional and controlled manner. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sff3GjtSZRw

Re:Protests were Illegal (and last Thursday)

[AK Marc]

Even in the US protests have some constraints. Not on private property, no disruption of over people, etc.

Only in "free speech" zones, and all that. There's nothing "illegal" about having a protest on private property. The difference is that on private property, the owner can request you leave. But nothing that prevents you from holding a protest on your own private property or someone else's with permission (or even without permission, in some cases). But the government is working on banning protests, especially in areas where it's inconvenient.

Kennedy said it best

[skribe]

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.