Slashdot Mirror
The Case Against Ratifying the Trans Pacific Partnership (michaelgeist.ca)
An anonymous reader writes: For the past two and a half months, Canadian law professor Michael
Geist has been writing a daily series on the trouble with the
Trans Pacific Partnership. The 50 part series wrapped up today with
the
case against ratifying the TPP. While the focus is on
Canadian issues, the series hits on problems that all 12 countries
face: unbalanced intellectual property rules, privacy risks, dangers
to the Internet and technology, cultural and health regulation, and
investor-state settlement rules that could cost countries billions
of dollars.
All hail our hallowed corporate overlords...
oh wai....
This is not the Hope you were looking for.
Don't be fooled again! Hillary! is more of the same - where the hell is the transcript of her speeches to the banksters?!?!
... the american empire doesn't care. Canada is a client state, the TPP is a big protectionist agreement for western nation corporations as a hedge against china and russia.
The grand chessboard
This is how Brzezinski views the (supposedly sovereign) nations of Central Asia:
"The last decade of the twentieth century has witnessed a tectonic shift in world affairs. For the first time ever, a non-Eurasian power has emerged not only as a key arbiter of Eurasian power relations but also as the world's paramount power. The defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union was the final step in the rapid ascendance of a Western Hemisphere power, the United States, as the sole and, indeed, the first truly global power..."
"Two basic steps are thus required: first, to identify the geostrategically dynamic Eurasian states that have the power to cause a potentially important shift in the international distribution of power and to decipher the central external goals of their respective political elites and the likely consequences of their seeking to attain them;... second, to formulate specific U.S. policies to offset, co-opt, and/or control the above..." (p. 40)
- "...To put it in a terminology that harkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together." (p.40)
- "Henceforth, the United States may have to determine how to cope with regional coalitions that seek to push America out of Eurasia, thereby threatening America's status as a global power." (p.55)
- "America is now the only global superpower, and Eurasia is the globe's central arena. Hence, what happens to the distribution of power on the Eurasian continent will be of decisive importance to America's global primacy and to America's historical legacy." (p.194)
- "That puts a premium on maneuver and manipulation in order to prevent the emergence of a hostile coalition that could eventually seek to challenge America's primacy..." (p. 198)
- "The most immediate task is to make certain that no state or combination of states gains the capacity to expel the United States from Eurasia or even to diminish significantly its decisive arbitration role." (p. 198)
- "For Pakistan, the primary interest is to gain Geostrategic depth through political influence in Afghanistan - and to deny to Iran the exercise of such influence in Afghanistan and Tajikistan - and to benefit eventually from any pipeline construction linking Central Asia with the Arabian Sea." (p.139)
And ponder the meaning of these statements in a post-9-11 world:
- "Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multi-cultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat." (p. 211)
- "The attitude of the American public toward the external projection of American power has been much more ambivalent. The public supported America's engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. (pp 24-5)
To most Americans the people of the world are just that- people, just like us, with a right to self-determination. To Brzezinski, they are merely pawns on a chessboard. Such an imperialist strategy does not make me feel any safer- how did Napoleon's strategy fare for the French in the long run? Or the Roman emperors for their citizens?
Rome fell, Hitler fell, all imperialist powers ultimately fail, because they follow the over-extended geopolitical strategy advocated by Brzezinski. While our military is busy fighting for oil interests all around the world, who's watching the front door?
duh-doy
We need to kill nafta 2.0 as the first one killed a lot of jobs and with the investor-state settlement rules even more can be cut.
After WTO, NAFTA, et al, I'd say its safe to assume that TPP is designed and built to expedite the globalist race to the bottom, to the detriment of everyone but the oligarchs and their bootlickers.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
Look, that racist Hitler-Trump doesn't like TPP, so you are automagically a racist (like Bernie Sanders) if you don't like it.
Don't be a racist, do what Obama would do, support TPP.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Is there anything actually good about the TPP?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
I see Hillary! followers are already out covering up for her lying ass.
Gotta love a candidate whose only way to get votes is to get you to think with your genitals.
"But shes a WIMMENZEZ!!!"
You can't contradict the wealthy and powerful and stay alive long.
TPP is a secret agreement, developed by parties who are financially biased to make such an agreement, without any discourse or dialogue outside of interested parties.
The lies of NAFTA, having been exposed as lies, have much to do with why this is being done in secret. NAFTA was not developed by party, it was developed in much the same way. Except that people were able to question the alleged benefits before ratification. The so called "naysayers" who warned about not just NAFTA, but many other treaties and Acts have been proven right far too often.
I certainly appreciate the attorney's 50 days/reasons and the detail he goes into. I just don't think it's necessary for at least the US, who needs Congressional approval for a treaty. (I don't know Canada's laws, perhaps they have similar.) Any member of Congress that approves this "treaty" should be impeached, jailed, banished, or some other nice form of punishment for treason.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
The TPP's biggest problem is that it's too big. The treaty covers too much ground any good part is drowned out by the bad, like fine wine mixed with moonshine. Maybe that's the way the authors intended it, a bait-and-switch, where the putative benefits are trumpeted while the potential harm is played down.
ratify the TPP: you have overtly agreed to endorse and promote a system of economic and social inequality predicated on global trade and abusive protectionist copyright. in the coming years you will witness among many windfalls of this endorsement the slow death of your local industries, increasing unemployment, skyrocketing incarceration rates, increased drop-out rates and narcotics dependency in once thriving communities. Your card for arguing stricter drug legislation was spent 30 some years ago at the behest of Washington, and so you have no choice but to champion a legislatively suicidal position --rational albeit-- of addiction treatment, recovery, and community building efforts that will inevitably fail as the TPP works against the interest of entrepeneurs and small business that are and were the lifeblood of the very townships you seek to rescue.
refuse to ratify the TPP: legislative forces will balk, hit pieces will be crafted in the rags you once called independent sources of journalism, and your re-election campaign will find new suffering in opponents with stern short term but absent longterm domestic and foreign policy riding a wave of ephemeral populism. Titans of industry will craft the next TPP and pump cash into their next statesman, and you or your party will need to reiterate, recuse, or condemn your past indiscretions. a distinct lack of heroin overdosed 15 year olds will go duly noted in the annuls of your countries history. somewhere a welder will retire with a meaningful pension and take up either macromet or deck building as a hobby..
Good people go to bed earlier.
Don't worry, the Liberals will ratify it, they already signed the thing. They're busy backpedaling on their promises, one by one (Anyone smoking dope without a worry yet? No?). The only thing I expect to happen is to take away the below-average income people's benefit (the one that rich people don't actually care about, but the liberals advertised it as such, the one that gives below-average single income households with children up to $2000 in tax breaks) because that's money in the bank.
Weird, too, since dope laws doesn't require waiting for a budget to pass, but taking away below-average income benefits does, though in the world of government everything is backwards.
Hopefully the people in this country will slowly realize that they've been sold a lie. Though you'd think they'd have gotten it with the teflon man's "I WILL REPEAL THE GST!"
And, for the record, no, the conservatives and NDP aren't any better either, so don't waste your time calling me a booster for those shit parties, either.
... At least not one that anyone would honestly express outside of the back room and off the record.
The thing is a joke. Trash it and move on.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
There needs to be massive outcry from Google to stop this. As well as Street Demonstrations.
Look, that racist Hitler-Trump doesn't like TPP, so you are automagically a racist (like Bernie Sanders) if you don't like it.
We saw in Chicago what happens when Bernie's Bigots (just look at what the vile things Bernie's Bigots say, especially in social media and online forums, and the appalling names they call anyone, especially women, who support Hilary Clinton, and the insane frequency with which they do it) and Trump's Bigots (examples numerous and obvious) get together. Bigots vs. Bigots ... the only loser(s) are freedom of speech (Trump, as vile as he is, should not be silenced by mob action no matter how disgusting his views ... he should be countered by intelligent speech that decries and exposes his bigotry, not forced to cancel appearances. Way to play into his hands, Bernie supporters), democracy (what will this campaign be like if Bernie's Bigots continue to invade Trump rallies, and Trumps Bigots start to invade Bernie, and perhaps Hilary, rallies?), those on the receiving end of their smear campaigns (mostly Hilary, as a centrist is one thing extremists on both sides cannot abide), and of course the truth (the boldness of the lies has grown over time, with Trump upping the ante once again).
Makes for good television, at least until the blood runs in your street.
The 1% get showered with gold, the 99% with Tea PeePee.
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Mussolini
This article is a Canadian perspective, but it's instructive to see how others see us. The whole point of TPP seems to be to ratify US corporate monopolies that have up to now only been enforced within the US. If TPP is ratified, all of the signatory countries get US-style intellectual property oppression, US-style high pharma prices, and a surveillance state to replaces Internet freedom.
Where the giga-rich wipe their asses with the rest of us!
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Yes all of those were criticized but they still passed. I don't know why it has to be done in secret because even if it's done in the open nobody can do anything about it, people don't get to vote on these things
Twinstiq, game news
anyone can explain how ms. Freeland, who seems like a left-wing anti-plutocrat, signed this deal? I thought she was kind of hot with her wide-hipped sturdy build, but now I don't know anymore.
Earlier this year, I wrote to my Senators and Congressman to urge them to vote against it. Senator Klobuchar told me that it probably wasn't going to come up for consideration until November, and at that time she would be [vague statement]. US citizens: don't get too burned out in the Presidential race to forget to apply a little pressure in Congress at that time.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
is clear... that's about it? cease fire,, in the moms we trust
57,361 CNY is $8,824.97 US.
That's at the bottom here in the USA.
I guess you mean the middle for Third World countries. And it's gonna get worse too. Viet Nam and every other SE Asian country is out for that "great" Chinese pie.
For us Americans, it's a destruction of our living standards. All because more than half of the World's population of 7.2 billion are dirt poor compared to us and are willing to do the work for pennies on the dollar. And the World's economy isn't expanding fast enough to raise all boats - it's a negative sum game for us. The industrialization of the poor World is coming out of the Western workers hide.
And it is breading a LOT of resentment.
You'll see a lot of familiar names.
Here is how much each senator was paid by each backer for fast tracking.
Here's a Hillary specific one about donations to her campaign, since it came up early in the search.
The first 2 charts I found linked in this excellent Guardian story.
Some key excerpts:
because it will finally liberate Canadians from the 'supply-managed' diary monopoly that results in Canadians paying 2x what Americans pay for milk, cheese and yogurt.
Do you know what's ironic? In South Korea they protest free trade agreements with the West too! But it's not the factory workers that protest, it is the farmers, fighting American beef and corn. There are whole elaborate campaigns about "eating Korean produced food" and how it's healthier and safer, complete with demonizing American produce (mad cow disease, etc)... perfectly paralleling the many buy American campaigns that demonizing foreign manufactured goods.
Do you know what's even more ironic? The Slashdot readership are the _WINNERS_ of the TPP... but you are so mindlessly committed to anti-capitalist ideology that you can't see that none of the countries on the list are competitive in anything software related, meaning _YOUR_ market expands, while simultaneously the things you buy become cheaper.
Not only that, but none of them are saying anything about the GMO takeover of essential oils such as castor oil, argan oil benefits, and black seed oil. Once the reality hits that we're destroying our environment then we'll really see the worth in bickering back and forth in useless topics and ignoring the ones that really matter. And to top it off, Hillary doesn't stand a chance in 2016.
Top natural remedies:
Statistically, it all comes out in the wash, everything the other countries give up will be comped in other areas. Your individual lives have no meaning.
The TPP is an expression of American Empire for American Corporate citizens. Human citizens do not factor much in the parts of the TPP I have read (I only managed roughly 1000 pages) where law is referred to as "nullification", "obstruction" and "impediment". I can't see it being good for any nation that signs, even the US. While I was reading it, I found it was overwhelming in its reach.
What I think we are seeing can be best described as "extra-national corporate hedgemony" where nationality isn't as important as having dominance over a nations court system, which is the core of the treaty in the ISDS provisions. The taxpayer is thus co-erced into compensating the company to maintain profit margins for having to obey the law, of which the taxpayer is now *obliged* to do whilst providing a plan as to when the law will be wound back and removed.
There is no concern with common law, which is isolated, only *anything* to do with trade (including labour) where it is framed in such a way that corporate citizens can mold it, with plenty of time to do so. That's in the anti-corruption provisions - which is kind of ironic considering it is making something legal that was illegal.
Empire is irrelevant under the TPP, as is Nationality, more like a Corpocracy driven by a hidden autocracy to whom the wealth is funneled.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.