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

TRANSCRIPT - VIDEO - Noam Chomsky: You Can't Have Capitalist Democracy

TRANSCRIPT [Text emphasis added] Professor Noam Chomsky:  You Can't Have Capitalist Democracy. I started by saying that one of the relations between capitalism and democracy is contradiction. You can't have capitalist democracy, and the people who really sort of believe in markets (or at least pretend to understand them) - so if you read Milton Friedman and other philosophers of so-called libertarianism - they don't call for democracy they call for what they call 'freedom.' There is a very constrictive concept of freedom. It's not the freedom of a working person to control their work, their lives, and so on; it's their freedom to submit themselves to control by a higher authority. That's called 'freedom', but not 'democracy'. They don't like democracy and they're right; capitalism and democracy really are inconsistent. Actually, what's called libertarianism in the United States, is about as an extreme example of anti-libertarianism that you can imagine. They're in favour of private tyranny – the worst kind of tyranny. Tyranny by private, unaccountable, concentrations of wealth. When they say, “Well, we don't want government interference in the market”, they mean that. They mean - maybe they don't understand it, but if you think it through, it's pretty obvious – the kind of interference in the market they want blocked is the kind that would permit unconstrained tyranny on the part of totally unaccountable private tyrannies, which is what corporations are. It's worth bearing in mind how radically opposed this is to classical liberalism. They like to invoke, say, Adam Smith. But if you read Adam Smith, he said the opposite. He's famous for not, you know, the claim is that he was opposed to regulation – government regulation – interference in markets. That's not true. He was in favour of regulation, as he put it, when it benefits the working man. He was against interference when it benefited the masters. That's traditional classical liberalism. This, what's called 'libertarian' in the United States, which likes to invoke the history that you’ve concocted, is radically opposed to basic classical libertarian principles and it's kind of astonishing to me that a lot of young people - say, college students - are attracted by this kind of thing. I mean, you can, after all, read the classical text. So take, say, Adam Smith. Adam Smith, at the time – he's the icon, you know. He was considered to be a dangerous radical at the time, because he was pretty anti-capitalist in this pre-capitalist era that he was opposed to, and he condemned what he called the 'vile maxim of the masters of mankind': all for ourselves and nothing for anyone else. That's an abomination. Take the phrase 'invisible hand' – everybody's learnt that in high school or college – Adam Smith actually did use the term, rarely. But take a look how he used it. In Wealth of Nations, his major work, it's used once. And if you look at the context, it's an argument against what is now call neo-liberal globalisation and what he argued is this (in terms of England, of course): he said, suppose in England that the merchants and manufacturers invested abroad & imported from abroad; he said, well that would be profitable for them, but it would be harmful to the people of England. However, they will have enough of a commitment to their own country, to England (it's called a 'home bias', in the literature); they'll have enough of a 'home bias' so that, as if by an invisible hand, they'll keep to the less profitable actions and England will be saved from the ravages of what we call neo-liberal globalisation. That's the one use of the term in Wealth of Nations. In his other major work, Moral Sentiments, the term is also used once, and the context is this - remember, England is basically an agricultural country then - he says: suppose a landlord accumulates an enormous amount of land everyone else has to work for.  He says:  well, it won't turn out too badly, and the reason is that the landlord will be motivated by his natural sympathy for other people.  So he will make sure that the necessities of life and the goods available will be distributed equitably to the people on his land, and it will end up with a relatively equal and just distribution of wealth, “as if by an invisible hand”. That's his other use of the term. Just compare that with what you're taught in school, or what you read in the newspapers. And it goes across the board. Like, everybody probably has read the first paragraphs of Wealth of Nations, which talks about how wonderful it is that the butcher pursues his interests, and the baker pursues his interests, and we're all happy, so we should be in favour of a division of labour. Everybody's read that. How many people have read a couple of hundred pages into Wealth of Nations, where he has a bitter attack on division of labour for interesting reasons, and reasons that were standard in the Enlightenment in which he lived (very different from ours)? He says if you pursue division of labour, people will be directed to actions in which they'll complete the same mechanical actions over and over. They'll be de-skilled and that's the goal of management for over over 100 years: de-skill the workforce. He says that's what will happen if you pursue division of labour. He goes on to say, this will turn people into creatures as stupid and as ignorant as a human being can possibly be and, therefore, in any civilised society, the government will have to intervene to prevent any development like this. That's Adam Smith's view of division of labour. Next step – now, here's a research project.  Take the standard edition (scholarly edition) of Wealth of Nations produced by the University of Chicago Press – naturally, on the bicentennial – with a scholarly apparatus (you know, footnotes and everything else) – and take a look at the Index.  There's a scholarly index. Look up 'division of labour'. This part of the book is not referenced. You can't find it, unless you decided to read 700 pages; then you can find it. But that's his concept of the division of labour, and it continues like this – and I'm not extolling, you know, a lot of things that you can harshly criticise, like his advice to the colonies – but, nevertheless, it's a very different picture from what's called 'libertarianism' or 'capitalism' today. Capitalist democracy would self destruct - capitalism would self destruct – and that's why it hasn't been instituted. The masters understand that they cannot survive a capitalist economy – a laissez fair economy. Take a look at the history; it's pretty interesting. So the United States, when it was independent – so it could reject the rules of sound economics and develop. There were other countries that were poised for an industrial revolution and were given the same advice. Like Egypt and India. In fact, India already was the commercial and industrial centre of the world, moreso than England . Egypt was poised for an industrial revolution and it's not impossible that it might have developed as a rich, agrarian society. It had cotton – produced cotton. As I said, that's the main product (like oil today), and it didn't need slaves. It had peasants. It had a developmental government aimed that the industrial development. It could have taken off – just as India could have taken off. But they were not free to reject sound economics because they were ruled by British force. So they were forced to accept sound economics, and Egypt became Egypt, and the United States became the United States. India went through a century of de-development before it finally got independent. That's what happens when you apply laissez fair principles. In fact, that's essentially how the Third World and the First World divided. Take a look at the countries that developed. They are the countries who violated the principles. England, the United States, Germany, France, Netherlands. One country of the south. One country developed: Japan. The one country that wasn't colonised and was able to pursue the same course that the rich countries developed. I mentioned that in mid Nineteenth Century – 1846 - Britain was so far ahead of the rest of the world in industrial development that they did decide that laissez faire would be possible, so that moved to what's called a 'free trade era'. First of all, they imposed sharp constraints on it. They've cut off the Empire. India. India was not allowed. Others could not invest in India, their main possession; and India was not allowed to develop. And there were other restrictions. Pretty soon, British capitalists called the game off because they couldn't compete. By the 1920s, they couldn't compete with Japanese production so they literally closed off the Empire to Japanese exports. It's part of the background for the Pacific War of the 1940s. The United States did the same with a smaller empire in the Philippines. The Dutch did the same with Indonesia. All the imperial systems decided: no more free trade, we can't compete. So they closed off the empire and Japan had no markets, no resources, and they went to war. That's a large part of the background. The United States, in 1945, did move towards laissez fair. In fact it was an important conference (the united states was basically running the world at that point, for obvious reasons) – there was a hemispheric conference called by Washington in February 1945 in Mexico, where the western hemisphere was compelled to adopt an economic charter for the Americas, which banned any interference with market principles. The goal was, in the State Department reports, to oppose the new nationalism in Latin America, which is based on the idea that the people of a country should benefit from the country's resources. That's 'evil', we can't allow that; it's Western and US investors who have to benefit from the resources. So that was the economic charter of the Americas imposed on the countries of the southern hemisphere, with one exception – here. The United States did not follow those policies. Quite the contrary. As I mentioned, there was a massive development of a state based economy with an industrial policy – the kind that created the modern high-tech economy. You can see it right across the river. Take look at MIT, one of the main centres of this **** If you had a look at MIT in the 1950s (when I got there) it was surrounded by electronics-based high-tech firms, like Raytheon and iTech, and huge IT firms. Take a look at MIT today, take a look at the buildings, it's Novartis, Pfizer and so on. The reason's completely obvious: during the 50s and 60s, the cutting edge of the economy was electronics based, so the way to get the public to pay for it was to scream 'Russians!' and to get them to pay higher taxes for the Pentagon, and then the Pentagon would fund the research and development – like my own salary, for example (I shouldn't complain too much) – and, of course, private industry was around there like vultures to pick up the products and the research and to market. Well, since the 70s, the cutting edge of the economy has been moving towards be biology based, so funding – government funding – has shifted. Pentagon funding is declining. Funding from the NIH and other so-called health related government institutions is increasing, and the private corporations understand that. So, now, Novartis, genetic engineering firms and so on, are hanging around trying to pick up the research that you're paying for, so that they can market it and make profits. It's just transparent. It's in front of our eyes, and it takes a very effective educational system to prevent people from seeing it. It's virtually transparent. That's the way this really exists in capitalist democracy, folks. A final word about democracy then, before I have to leave. There's a major attack on democracy all the way through. But by now it's reached the point which is pretty remarkable. Take a look at one of the main topics in the mainstream political science (and we're not talking about radicals). Mainstream political science is comparing public attitudes with public policy. It's a fairly straight-forward – it's hard work but a straight-forward effort. We have the public policy so you can see it. There's extensive polling. Quite reliable generally and consistent in its results. It gives you a good sense of what public attitudes are, and the results of this are published in the major books and articles - with references, if you like. The results are very straight-forward. About 70% of the population – the lowest 70% on the income scale – are literally disenfranchised. Their opinions have no affect on policy. Their elected representatives don't pay any attention to them. That's one of the reasons why many of them don't bother voting: they're not going to pay attention to them anyway. You know, I've read the technical literature to understand it in other ways. As you move up the income scale, you get a little more influence on policy. When you get to the top (and contrary to the Occupy Movement, it's not 1% - it's more like one-tenth of 1%) - when you get to the top where the massive concentration of wealth is, they basically set policies. That's not democracy; that's plutocracy. And that's what we have accepted. The good thing about it is that it's changeable. It's not controlled by force. We are very free in that respect, thanks to victories over the centuries. It's not possible now for a corporation to do what Andrew Carnegie, the great pacifist, did in 1890. That gives a lot of options and you have to make use of them. I'm afraid I've got to leave. [17:35] APPLAUSE VIDEO - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98PSkGSk9kw&feature=youtu.be MIT = Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded 1861. --------------------- end --------------------- COPYRIGHT DISCLAIMER Copyright Disclaimer under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research. --------------------- video credits --------------------- TITLE: A PROGRESSIVE VOICE VIDEO: Leigha Cohen AUDIO: Leigha Cohen & Cynthia Smith VIDO & SOUND EDITING: Leigha Cohen COPYRIGHT: LEIGHA COHEN PRODUCTION 2014 WEBSITE: www. leighacohen.com ---------------------  COMMENT Good talk.   Also relevant to the US free trade agreements that are going down now. Thought I'd transcribe what was said. Nearing the end, I realised someone else may have transcribed this somewhere already. Never mind.  It's a good learning tool, focusing on every word.  Or it can be.  I hope.  LOL Missing word(s) where marked.  It's something of a drama playing audio at any volume level in this place right now, so filling the gaps will have to wait.  Think it was only the one word.  This took ages, but it's heaps easier now that I've figured how to minimise, position & hold my Writer window on top of the running video window, so I don't have to flip screens. *Part re interference in market they want blocked & tyranny reads kind of funny to me.  It's the interference they want blocked so they can get away with tyranny is what he's getting at, I think.  But the sentence seems confusing (to me). *I disagree with the last part, about there not being rule by force.  We are ruled by force & there's nothing we can do.  Look what happens to protesters.  When they're not beaten, imprisoned etc, martial law is imposed and they're beaten and imprisoned if they dare break curfew, I guess.

TPP - Raw Deal - "ultra-neoliberal legal and economic bloc"

Public Media and Utilities Could be Crushed by TPP: Wikileaks Published 30 July 2015 Wikileaks has dropped another TPP bombshell with a leaked letter suggesting the deal could force mass privatizations of state-owned enterprises The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) could force state enterprises such as public utilities to put profits before public welfare and lead to mass privatizations, according to documents published by Wikileaks Wednesday. Under the TPP, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) would be forced to act “on the basis of commercial considerations,” according to the leak. The document also suggests multinational corporations could be empowered to sue SOEs for supposedly uncompetitive actions like favoring local businesses. The bombshell leak centers around a classified letter from the TPP's December 2013 ministerial meeting. SOEs themselves are common in most TPP countries, and advocates say they perform crucial services aimed at supporting public needs rather than turn a profit. Some examples include Canada's main postal operator, Canada Post, and Australia's public broadcaster ABC. The latter is consistently rated by viewers as one of Australia's most trusted sources of news. “SOEs are almost always state owned because they have functions other than those that are merely commercial, such as guaranteed access to important services, or because social, cultural, development and commercial functions are inextricably intertwined,” said Professor Jane Kelsey, from New Zealand's University of Auckland. In an analysis of Wednesday's leak commissioned by Wikileaks, Kelsey concluded the TPP could carve out a “backdoor to privatization” of state enterprises. She argued seemingly proposed regulations outlined in the leaked document ignore “the reality that SOEs and private firms are driven by different imperatives and obligations.” Kelsey's main complaint was with the document's demand that SOEs prioritize “commercial considerations,” pointing out many state enterprises intentionally run at losses for the public good. “Even where SOEs are profit-oriented, a government may elect not to extract full commercial profits, and choose to reinvest in the enterprise to strengthen the asset base or the quality of the services in ways that private investors would rarely do,” she explained. For example, Australia Post is restricted to using its profits to reinvest in improving services, or handing dividends back to Australia's federal government. Australian Greens trade spokesperson Peter Whish-Wilson told The Saturday Paper that the TPP's chapter on SOEs “directly challenges a government's right to own and operate any enterprise such as Australia Post, the ABC or power utilities that compete with corporate entities, but ultimately also the provision of public good services including healthcare, education. “(It's) a direct assault by corporations trying to limit the role of government,” he said. In a statement, Wikileaks said the leaked document proved the TPP will force member states to swallow “a wide-ranging privatization and globalization strategy.” “In this leak we see the radical effects the TPP will have, not only on developing countries, but on states very close to the center of the Western system,” said Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Under negotiation for more than seven years, supporters say the TPP will streamline global trade and promote economic growth. Once the TPP is completed, its provisions will override national laws of its 12 member states, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and the United States. The deal is already being hailed as the largest trade agreement in world history, and will encompass over 40 percent of global GDP. However, the deal's provisions have been almost entirely withheld from the public, prompting critics to argue the agreement is subject to undue secrecy. The few glimpses the public has had into the closed door talks have been leaked drafts of the TPP published by Wikileaks. Independent analysts say the trade deal is a “bonanza” for big business, and a raw deal for consumers. U.S. trade officials have responded by urging the public not to read the leaks, arguing the draft documents may not accurately represent the final document. The controversial deal has already sparked international protests, with activists demanding negotiators open talks to public scrutiny. Warning that the TPP will erect a “'one size fits all' economic system,” Assange said public debate on the trade deal is urgently needed. “If we are to restructure our societies into an ultra-neoliberal legal and economic bloc that will last for the next 50 years then this should be said openly and debated,” he said. http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Public-Media-and-Utilities-Could-be-Crushed-by-TPP-Wikileaks-20150730-0014.html --------------------- COMMENT This isn't democracy; this is corporate control of the state.   Western politicians and governments place corporate interests ahead of vital public interests and public well-being, as if this were already a corporate dictatorship it will definitely become under the TPP. Everything the public, workers, unions, and other activist have fought for over the decades is about to be denied the public, and government is even assigning national sovereignty to corporations, by virtue of placing corporate powers set out in the 'free trade' agreement ahead of national, state, and local authorities' ability to subsequently legislate in the interest of public well-being. In negotiating the TPP, elected government is working against public interest by even entertaining an agreement which lets corporations call the shots: with the threat of corporate lawsuits blocking future lawmaking; by letting corporations block the right to public ownership of vital public services; and by letting corporations dictate that the good of the corporation (profit) must come before the public good. It's criminal that this trade agreement has been kept from the public by politicians, who also hoped to keep the sell-out agreement under wraps for something like 5 years, even after signing. It's ironic that whilstleblower publisher WikiLeaks - whose editor is presently under siege, and under an unprecedented 5-year long attack by US authorities - is the source of information regarding this immense threat from corporate America and friends.  The hide of the politicians acting contrary to their mandate to serve the public, rather than to screw the public (as intended by the TPP), who have acted to keep this agreement from public scrutiny, is really something to behold. And the prospect of life under corporate rule, a la corporate controlled, less than minimum wage, downtrodden, union-less, exploited, underclass hell-hole USA, is positively frightening. So why are the unions silent? SEE ALSO: TRANSCRIPT - VIDEO - Noam Chomsky: You Can't Have Capitalist Democracy

Bill Blunden - 'Mass surveillance is all about money and power'

SOURCE http://www.arabamericannews.com/news/news/id_10801/Mass-surveillance-is-all-about-money-and-power.html Mass surveillance is all about money and power By Bill Blunden | Wednesday, 07.22.2015, 01:37 PM “We are under pressure from the Treasury to justify our budget; and commercial espionage is one way of making a direct contribution to the nation’s balance of payments” -Sir Colin McColl, former MI6 Chief. For years, public figures have condemned cyber espionage committed against the United States by intruders launching their attacks out of China. These same officials then turn around and justify America’s far-reaching surveillance apparatus in terms of preventing terrorist attacks. Yet classified documents published by WikiLeaks reveal just how empty these talking points are. Specifically, top-secret intercepts prove that economic spying by the United States is pervasive, that not even allies are safe and that it’s wielded to benefit powerful corporate interests. At a recent campaign event in New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton accused China of “trying to hack into everything that doesn’t move in America.” Clinton’s hyperbole is redolent of similar claims from the American Deep State. For example, who could forget the statement made by former NSA director Keith Alexander that Chinese cyber espionage represents the greatest transfer of wealth in history? Alexander has obviously never heard of quantitative easing (QE) or the self-perpetuating “global war on terror” which has likewise eaten through trillions of dollars. Losses due to cyber espionage are a rounding error compared to the tidal wave of money channeled through QE and the war on terror. When discussing the NSA’s surveillance programs Alexander boldly asserted that they played a vital role with regard to preventing dozens of terrorist attacks, an argument that fell apart rapidly under scrutiny. Likewise, in the days preceding the passage of the USA Freedom Act of 2015 President Obama advised that bulk phone metadata collection was essential “to keep the American people safe and secure.” Never mind that decision makers have failed to provide any evidence that bulk collection of telephone records has prevented terrorist attacks. If American political leaders insist on naming and shaming other countries with regard to cyber espionage perhaps it would help if they didn’t sponsor so much of it themselves. And make no mistake, thanks to WikiLeaks the entire world knows that U.S. spies are up to their eyeballs in economic espionage. Against NATO partners like France and Germany, no less. And also against developing countries like Brazil and news outlets like Der Spiegel. These disclosures confirm what Ed Snowden said in an open letter to Brazil: terrorism is primarily a mechanism to bolster public acquiescence for runaway data collection. The actual focus of intelligence programs center around “economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation.” Who benefits from this sort of activity? The same large multinational corporate interests that have spent billions of dollars to achieve state capture. Why is the threat posed by China inflated so heavily? The following excerpt from an intelligence briefing might offer some insight. In a conversation with a colleague during the summer of 2011 the EU’s chief negotiator for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Hiddo Houben, described the treaty as an attempt by the United State to antagonize China: “Houben insisted that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which is a U.S. initiative, appears to be designed to force future negotiations with China. Washington, he pointed out, is negotiating with every nation that borders China, asking for commitments that exceed those countries’ administrative capacities, so as to ‘confront’ Beijing. If, however, the TPP agreement takes 10 years to negotiate, the world–and China–will have changed so much that that country likely will have become disinterested in the process, according to Houben. When that happens, the U.S. will have no alternative but to return to the WTO.” American business interests are eager to “open markets in Asia” and “provide the United States with unprecedented opportunities for investment.” At least, that’s how Hillary Clinton phrased it back when she was the Secretary of State. China represents a potential competitor and so American political leaders need an enemy that they can demonize so that they can justify massive intelligence budgets and the myriad clandestine operations that they approve. The American Deep State wishes to maintain economic dominance and U.S. spies have been working diligently to this end. Bill Blunden is a journalist whose current areas of inquiry include information security, anti-forensics and institutional analysis. This story originally appeared on CounterPunch.org SOURCE http://www.arabamericannews.com/news/news/id_10801/Mass-surveillance-is-all-about-money-and-power.html ---------------------- COMMENT Really enjoyed this article. How hypocritical is Hillary Clinton and the US? Interesting to see that intel agencies need to earn their keep. So, Snowden's comment re surveillance being pretty much about: “economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation.”  sounds about right. And it's all for the sake of 'powerful corporate interests' that control the state.

Ellen Brown article: TPP - Death of the Republic

The Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Death of the Republic Posted on Apr 26, 2015 By Ellen Brown, Web of Debt Mark Zuid (CC BY 2.0) This piece first appeared at Web of Debt.     The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.     — Article IV, Section 4, US Constitution A republican form of government is one in which power resides in elected officials representing the citizens, and government leaders exercise power according to the rule of law. In The Federalist Papers, James Madison defined a republic as “a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people . . . .” On April 22, 2015, the Senate Finance Committee approved a bill to fast-track the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive trade agreement that would override our republican form of government and hand judicial and legislative authority to a foreign three-person panel of corporate lawyers. The secretive TPP is an agreement with Mexico, Canada, Japan, Singapore and seven other countries that affects 40% of global markets. Fast-track authority could now go to the full Senate for a vote as early as next week. Fast-track means Congress will be prohibited from amending the trade deal, which will be put to a simple up or down majority vote. Negotiating the TPP in secret and fast-tracking it through Congress is considered necessary to secure its passage, since if the public had time to review its onerous provisions, opposition would mount and defeat it. Abdicating the Judicial Function to Corporate Lawyers James Madison wrote in The Federalist Papers:     The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, . . . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. . . . “Were the power of judging joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control, for the judge would then be the legislator. . . .” And that, from what we now know of the TPP’s secret provisions, will be its dire effect. The most controversial provision of the TPP is the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) section, which strengthens existing ISDS procedures. ISDS first appeared in a bilateral trade agreement in 1959. According to The Economist, ISDS gives foreign firms a special right to apply to a secretive tribunal of highly paid corporate lawyers for compensation whenever the government passes a law to do things that hurt corporate profits — such things as discouraging smoking, protecting the environment or preventing a nuclear catastrophe. Arbitrators are paid $600-700 an hour, giving them little incentive to dismiss cases; and the secretive nature of the arbitration process and the lack of any requirement to consider precedent gives wide scope for creative judgments. To date, the highest ISDS award has been for $2.3 billion to Occidental Oil Company against the government of Ecuador over its termination of an oil-concession contract, this although the termination was apparently legal. Still in arbitration is a demand by Vattenfall, a Swedish utility that operates two nuclear plants in Germany, for compensation of €3.7 billion ($4.7 billion) under the ISDS clause of a treaty on energy investments, after the German government decided to shut down its nuclear power industry following the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011. Under the TPP, however, even larger judgments can be anticipated, since the sort of “investment” it protects includes not just “the commitment of capital or other resources” but “the expectation of gain or profit.” That means the rights of corporations in other countries extend not just to their factories and other “capital” but to the profits they expect to receive there. In an article posted by Yves Smith, Joe Firestone poses some interesting hypotheticals: Under the TPP, could the US government be sued and be held liable if it decided to stop issuing Treasury debt and financed deficit spending in some other way (perhaps by quantitative easing or by issuing trillion dollar coins)? Why not, since some private companies would lose profits as a result? Under the TPP or the TTIP (the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership under negotiation with the European Union), would the Federal Reserve be sued if it failed to bail out banks that were too big to fail? Firestone notes that under the Netherlands-Czech trade agreement, the Czech Republic was sued in an investor-state dispute for failing to bail out an insolvent bank in which the complainant had an interest. The investor company was awarded $236 million in the dispute settlement. What might the damages be, asks Firestone, if the Fed decided to let the Bank of America fail, and a Saudi-based investment company decided to sue? Abdicating the Legislative Function to Multinational Corporations Just the threat of this sort of massive damage award could be enough to block prospective legislation. But the TPP goes further and takes on the legislative function directly, by forbidding specific forms of regulation. Public Citizen observes that the TPP would provide big banks with a backdoor means of watering down efforts to re-regulate Wall Street, after deregulation triggered the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression:     The TPP would forbid countries from banning particularly risky financial products, such as the toxic derivatives that led to the $183 billion government bailout of AIG. It would prohibit policies to prevent banks from becoming “too big to fail,” and threaten the use of “firewalls” to prevent banks that keep our savings accounts from taking hedge-fund-style bets.     The TPP would also restrict capital controls, an essential policy tool to counter destabilizing flows of speculative money. . . . And the deal would prohibit taxes on Wall Street speculation, such as the proposed Robin Hood Tax that would generate billions of dollars’ worth of revenue for social, health, or environmental causes. Clauses on dispute settlement in earlier free trade agreements have been invoked to challenge efforts to regulate big business. The fossil fuel industry is seeking to overturn Quebec’s ban on the ecologically destructive practice of fracking. Veolia, the French behemoth known for building a tram network to serve Israeli settlements in occupied East Jerusalem, is contesting increases in Egypt’s minimum wage. The tobacco maker Philip Morris is suing against anti-smoking initiatives in Uruguay and Australia. The TPP would empower not just foreign manufacturers but foreign financial firms to attack financial policies in foreign tribunals, demanding taxpayer compensation for regulations that they claim frustrate their expectations and inhibit their profits. Preempting Government Sovereignty What is the justification for this encroachment on the sovereign rights of government? Allegedly, ISDS is necessary in order to increase foreign investment. But as noted in The Economist, investors can protect themselves by purchasing political-risk insurance. Moreover, Brazil continues to receive sizable foreign investment despite its long-standing refusal to sign any treaty with an ISDS mechanism. Other countries are beginning to follow Brazil’s lead. In an April 22nd report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research, gains from multilateral trade liberalization were shown to be very small, equal to only about 0.014% of consumption, or about $.43 per person per month. And that assumes that any benefits are distributed uniformly across the economic spectrum. In fact, transnational corporations get the bulk of the benefits, at the expense of most of the world’s population. Something else besides attracting investment money and encouraging foreign trade seems to be going on. The TPP would destroy our republican form of government under the rule of law, by elevating the rights of investors – also called the rights of “capital” – above the rights of the citizens. That means that TPP is blatantly unconstitutional. But as Joe Firestone observes, neo-liberalism and corporate contributions seem to have blinded the deal’s proponents so much that they cannot see they are selling out the sovereignty of the United States to foreign and multinational corporations. __________________ Ellen Brown is an attorney, founder of the Public Banking Institute, and author of twelve books including the best-selling Web of Debt. Her latest book, The Public Bank Solution, explores successful public banking models historically and globally. Her 300+ blog articles are at EllenBrown.com. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_trans-pacific_partnership_and_the_death_of_the_republic_20150426#.VT2JQGZfSsk.twitter COMMENT firewall 1. Banking: Laws that obligate a bank to completely segregate its securities underwriting business from its deposit taking and loan making activities.  These legal firewalls aim to prevent banks from using the depositors' funds in speculative ventures, and thus comply with the statutes such as US Glass-Steagall Act or 1933.  Also called Chinese wall, or ethical wall. http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/firewall.html Glass-Steagall Act Passed in 1933 as the Banking Act, Glass-Steagall was chipped away over the years and eventually repealed during the Clinton Administration with the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_Legislation James Madison - here.  Fourth President USA.  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Thought this was a very good article.  How scary is the TPP? I haven't investigated the Glass-Steagall Act repeal or what regulations were subsequently put in force again after the financial meltdown of 2008, or whenever it was.  Post financial meltdown controls put on financial insinuations are now in danger of being negated by the provisions of the TPP.   Too lazy to look now.  This is enough info for me for the time being. Might have to come back & read about Madison.  Got have a shower.  ;)