Transcript: WikiLeaks - €100,000 reward for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)

TRANSCRIPT [ For quotation purposes, confirm audio beforehand.] SOURCE - VIDEO [11:00] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABDiHspTJww&t=1m34s ---------------------- ꕤ ---------------------- WikiLeaks is raising €100,000 reward for the Trans-Atlantic Trade & Investment Partnership (TTIP) Narrator WikiLeaks is raising a €100,000 reward for Europe's most wanted secret: the Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership (TTIP). John Pilger Investigative Journalist This is something enormous. It is about a final control, and it's the United States saying: there maybe another power in the world, but we will be the ultimate power. Julian Assange Editor in Chief Wikileaks The TTIP is the most important thing that is happening in Europe right now. It's a secretive deal, being negotiated between Europe and the United States. Narrator Once signed, it will cement a key part of the US government's plan to create a new global block that will ensure the dominance of its largest companies, and to understand why, we need to go back to the 1950s. [COMMERCIAL CLIP - CHEVROLET] After the second world war, the United States accounted for half of the world's economy. Its influence was unmatched by any country and it was able to write the early rules of international trade to its advantage. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) was created in this context, and the US dicated rules that favoured American business. But as economies like China and India joined the WTO, it became a more democratised arena and the US found it harder to control its decision making. John Pilger Investigative Journalist At the WTO Doha rounds, India spoke up and Brazil spoke up, and the US lost control. Pascal Lamy WTO Chief I think it's no use beating around the bush. This meeting has collapsed. Narrator The US felt it needed a new strategy to maintain its global dominance, so in the classical American style, they went big. To bypass the WTO, they're creating the biggest international agreements that the world has ever seen. They're called the Three Big Ts: the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) ; the Trans-Atlantic Trade &  Investment Partnership (TTIP); the Trade In Services Agreement (TiSA); and they're all being negotiated in secret, right now. John Pilger Investigative Journalist We only found out when WikiLeaks was able to leak parts of them. John Hilary Executive Director War on Want What's interesting when you look across all of these deals, whether it be TTIP, TPP or TiSA, China is excluded. But also Brasil, Russia, India, South Africa. They're all excluded, because those are the emerging economies. Matt Kennard Centre for Investigative Journalism What is not often understood is that these agreements are part of a geopolitical war. This is a new war which is taking place between the United States and China. The United States is very scared of the rise of China, so it has moved to militarily encircle it through what is called 'the pivot to Asia'. And now it's moving onto doing that economically. Julian Assange Editor in Chief WikiLeaks The basic idea which comes across from reading US strategy papers, is the construction of a new grand enclosure, and to put inside this grand enclosure: the United States; 51 other countries; 1.6 billion people; and two-thirds of global GDP; to integrate Latin America away from Brazil and towards the United States;  to integrate South-East Asia away from China and towards the United States; and  to integrate Western Europe, pulling it away from Eurasia as a whole and towards the Atlantic. Narrator Of the Three Big Ts, WikiLeaks has revealed four (4) chapters of the TTP, which affects twelve (12) countries and the Americas and South-east Asia. We also obtained and released the core text of TiSA, which affects fifty-two (52) countries, including the EU. But nearly all of TiSA is still secret. When signed, TTIP will cover half of global GDP and will affect every European State, yet European parliamentarians have serious restrictions in accessing the proposed agreement Jean Lambert Member of the European Parliament Green Party Yeah, I found it incredible as well, but - for something that is a trade agreement, not a matter of life and death in terms of security where maybe you can understand some restrictions (and we don't even like those very much), but for a trade agreement? You know, that we can't actually make notes about what it is that we're reading; issues that we might want to take away to look into, which actually might reassure us, you know, if we really were able to sort of take this away and look at it in depth. John Hilary Executive Director War on Want We don't have access to the key documents, the most important ones. Because the devil is in the detail, when it comes to trade agreements, you kneed to know exactly what's in the text, so that you can assess what the impact's going to be. Julian Assange Editor in Chief WikiLeaks If EU parliamentarians want to see the TTIP, they have to call the US embassy and make an appointment. Appointments are only available two (2) days a week for two (2) hour time slots. Only two (2) parliamentarians are permitted at once. They go to the US embassy, they have to hand in every electronic device, so they cannot possibly make a copy. They must agree to keep everything confidential and they are led to a secure reading room where two (2) US embassy guards watch everything that they do. How can EU parliamentarians possibly understand what they're negotiating for Europe under these circumstances? Narrator The world's biggest corporations don't have the same problem. They have been receiving VIP access from day one, and have had abundant influence in the negotiations. John Pilger Investigative Journalist People - the likes of you and I - are excluded. Governments, to a great extent, are excluded. Those who are included are the multinational corporations. Matt Kennard Centre for Investigative Journalism These agreements are basically corporate ownership agreements. The funny thing about free trade agreements as we understand them is they often have nothing to do wiht trade, in the sense of the mutual lowering of tarrifs. What they are about is enshrining an investor rights regime in the respective countries, and ensuring that corporations can run wild in the respective economies, with very, very little regulation or impingement by government or authorities. Claire Provost Centre for Investigative Journalism These treaties will have huge, huge, implications, for literally almost every critical issue that individual citizens in our community would care about: health, education, the environment, privacy, and access to medicines, and the list could go on. Narrator One of the most criticised aspects of TTIP is a system called the Investor State Dispute Settlement, or ISDS. It's a secretive, international tribunal that allows companies to sue states over virtually anything that they can claim affects their investment. Claire Provost Centre for Investigative Journalism If a protest affects their profits, they can sue. If laws affect their profits, they can sue. If new regulations might impact where or what they want to do with their money, they can sue. John Hilary Executive Director War on Want This is a new power which will be handed over to the US corporations to sue the governments of Europe in a parallel judicial system which is available to them alone. So, people have no access to it. Domestic firms have no access to it. Governments have no access to it. It's just the foreign investors; in this case, US corporations. Narrator Based on ISDS history, critics argue that European state sovereignty and democracy are at serious risk. Previous law suits include Swedish company Vattenfall suing the German state for $3.7 billion for phasing out nuclear energy. British-American tobacco sued Australia for passing a law limiting cigarette advertising. The French company Veolia sued Egypt for raising the minimum wage. TTIP advocates say that in order for the EU and the US to become a single market, regulatory barriers need to be eliminated. This way, for example, a US seatbelt manufacturer already selling seatbelts to domestically wouldn't need to test for safety a second time as the EU would agree to recognise the US safety standards. They argue that this would save costs, create jobs and lower prices for consumers, but just how safe are US standards? John Hilary Executive Director War on Want So, in the US, seventy percent (70%) of all processed food sold in supermarkets contains genetically modified ingredients. Whereas in the European Union, we've said quite clearly we don't want GM ingredients in our food chain. Similarly, in the US 90% of all beef is produced using growth hormones which have been found to be carcinogenic in humans, so they're banned in the European Union, and what the US government is saying is that, under TTIP, under the free trade rules they want to bring in, European consumers don't get the right to choose. Narrator TTIP includes all of the most important public sectors in Europe, including education, water, railways, postal services, and, most controversially, it also includes public health services. Matt Kennard Centre for Investigative Journalism What is so scary about this is that corporations want to lock in their power. So they not only want increased power, they want to make impossible for sovereign governments to reverse the changes which are going to give them power. So, for example, with TTIP, if it passes with ISDS in it, the privatisation of the National Health Service (NHS) which is happening in the UK can never be reversed. John Pilger Investigative Journalist What is democratic about an enormous imposition of power on countries whose citizens have no way of knowing what's going on, of debating it, or influencing their government in its decision. That's anti-democratic. Julian Assange Editor in Chief WikiLeaks The history of these agreements shows that they're very difficult to change, unless people can see what's in them, and that's why they're kept secret. Because when the contents are revealed, it generates an opposition. Narrator: WikiLeaks has had considerable delaying the TPP and opening up the debate around it, and the TiSA, by releasing the draft texts. A publication of an earlier proposed US-EU agreement, the ACTA, killed it entirely. WikiLeaks is raising a €100,000 reward for Europe's most wanted secret: the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Help the world become a more transparent place. Do your part. Go to: www.wikileaks.org/ttip-reward SOURCE - VIDEO [11:00] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABDiHspTJww&t=1m34s ꕤ

This and That

This and That What's happening? Discovered a Turkish controlled 'exclave' in Syria -- guessing it's this place. According to the Treaty of Ankara signed between France and Turkey in 1921, Turkey controls the tomb and no mention is made of the land beneath it. So it's not really a territory within a territory, like I imagined?   Checking elsewhere, it states it's 'smaller than a city block', so it's not just a few feet by a few feet like I first thought when I read about the tomb.  It's some kind of tiny 'territory' after all.  Looks like it's going to shape up as an excuse for Turkey to take 'action' against Syria if the IS group attack this territory. Encountered a creepy photo of what was allegedly the FSA group getting a child to behead what I suppose was a Syrian loyalist:  bound, hand and foot (I think), on his side, with his head resting, raised on some kind of block.  The child held something above his head, swinging.  Not sure what it was.  Imagined it was an axe.  But I'm now guessing it was a sword, seeing it's the Middle East.  Elicited a degree of revulsion. Stumbled on some information on the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA).   Trying to recall what it was, got it mixed up with the other agreements. This one relates to:   "liberalizing the worldwide trade of services such as banking and transport" [wikipedia] It's just another in agreement upon agreement that gives the US control right around the globe. "The EU and the US are the main proponents of the agreement, and the authors of most joint changes."  [wikipedia] But it doesn't end with the US and the EU.  A host of other countries are involved in this and end result is that something like two-thirds of 'trade of services' will be subject to the provisions of this agreement. Apparently, nobody finds the spread of US control at all frightening and they're happy to sign up.  Guess that goes back to being corporate controlled governments doing the bidding of big business, instead of primarily being engaged in representing the people of the nation they're supposedly serving as an elected government in a 'democracy'. Add to that unpleasant picture the fact that this is a 'secret' agreement that was supposed to stay quiet for 5 years after signature.  More information on that is available at the WikiLeaks.org site.  Not sure what I can and can't link to without being in breach of some law or other, so search away.  Easily found. The secrecy of the agreement and the two-thirds of 'world trade in services' being subject to the agreement were the really big red-flag aspects in my view.  But there's also a lack flexibility to respond to changes in world finance that binds governments who sign up for this, and probably other stuff I don't remember or care to know. How outrageous is it that 'democratic' governments are *hiding* what they're signing their entire countries up for! The WikiLeaks site pointed out that the US is pushing for cross-border exchange of data that includes personal and financial information.  So I take it this is yet more surveillance and foreign control.  The G20 ministers meeting resulted in either sign-ups or agreements to sign up for banking data exchange on what is probably a global scale once all the US puppets sign up, so the G20 erosion of liberties could be TISA related -- or just an added round of more of the same erosions. Highly doubt that this will ever affect me personally, in a direct way.   But this affects everybody in terms of the climate their government is creating:  one of secrecy, one of perhaps 'duty' and subordination to foreign interests, one of inability to put national interests first given constraints of such agreements, one of inability to freely act or legislate in future due to provisions of such an agreements, one of divulging citizens' data to foreign interests and therefore conducting what amounts to surveillance on behalf of a foreign power or powers, and so on.  And if you put all of that together, it's like coming under control of some foreign invader state that already controls much of the world.  A world that is shaping up to be one large prison controlled by the US through control of currency, global institutions, defence agreements, the EU, mass surveillance arrangements and various trade agreements. [Image source:  rachelcarsoncouncil.org] If you imagine US control as a vice; it's a vice that's constantly squeezing to erode national sovereignty and to erode civil liberties, right around the world.  It's literally suffocating.