TPP Secretly Cracking Down On Internet Freedom

Yes. If this passes and the people wake up, it might make everybody realize finally that the corporations are taking over. It might re-ignite the Occupy Movement.

 

Unfortunately, the corporations are waaay ahead of the occupy movement. I don't think the occupy movement has what it takes yet. In fact, I think the corporations....obviously in bed with the political establishment, the media and the intel community....are so ahead of the game that it would be nearly impossible to organize a massive uprising that could really bring down the house of cards. What I think would really need to happen is so drastic that I don't even dare type out the words. But nothing like that will happen until it suddenly hits almost everyone that they and their families, schools and communities are totally fucked. When everyone realizes that they have been completely played and then they are told "Oh, sorry....we can't undo this so shut up and get back to work or go to jail!"....then maybe people will get pissed on a large scale. It's happening in certain other countries but, of course, we don't see it on the news in the U.S.

 

but big business has been in charge for a long time now...Everything we see is either facade or diversion.

 

But they want to make it absolute....

 

Last nite, I was listening to NPR and they had an hour-long segment on the TPP. I haven't heard much of it, but what I heard was very interesting.

A caller asked "Free trade deals have never helped the average American. Prove me wrong!". And no one seemed able to prove him wrong.

I found it amazing that the business guys on the show just could not understand why anyone could be against the TPP, since NAFTA has worked out so well. What planet do these guys live on?

Also, the Republican Party is just full of hypocrisy. Whenever the UN is mentioned, they go ballistic and talk about attacks on our national sovereignty. But with the TPP, which really is an attack, they are just falling over themselves to support it. Disgusting.

 

a sense of deja vu

 

It now appears that the TPP will not get fast-track authority, because Sen. Harry Reid has vowed not to bring it to the floor for a vote. This means that there will be hearings and the American public will find out why the negotiations have been so secret. They will find out that Obama and his trade representative have been selling out the average American to benefit rich investors around the world. They will find out that the TPP creates jobs, but not in America.

Some now are beginning to think that the TPP will not become law during the rest of Obama's administration, but if our next president is a Republican, it will come back to bite us.

 

Well good job Harry Reid.

And what he's a democrat who slow down this TPP stuffs?

 

What's scary is that there are so few in Congress, in either party, who seem to grasp that "free trade" agreements only help the rich and are an attack on our sovereignty.

Sen. Reid, a Democrat, did not say why he opposes fast-track, but I am very glad he blocked it.

 

That's because the individuals who are the politicians, are only human, and in addition are lazy too.

They have tons of time off, but instead of using that time to read through bills and thoroughly understand them and their legal speak, they go and play political posturing games with each other, and divert all their time into how they're going to fund their next election campaign while maintaining a certain image.

^That is what has got to change in politics, especially in America, there has to be a more intellectual, and higher integrity with the actual job, rather than just it's symbolism - ergo, the status of the job.

 

Sunfighter

It seems to have been for awhile - and it’s usually been driven by some ideology.

This is my take on things.

Free trade was seen as one of the ways of uniting countries against communism after WWII (GATT 1948, Marshal Plan) and tying them to the largest economy of the time – America, as was setting the dollar as the world currency at Bretton Wood. While another means was US military ‘protection’ and the US’s huge military budget and police actions around the world.

But these policies were going have long term detrimental effects on the US.

There were warnings given

In 1960 Triffin testified before the United States Congress warning of serious flaws in the Bretton Woods system… It was largely ignored until 1971, when his hypothesis became reality, forcing US President Richard Nixon to halt convertibility of the United States dollar into gold, an event with consequences known as the Nixon Shock.

“The famous liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith bluntly told President Johnson about such expansions of free trade as the Trade Expansion Act 1962 -“If we are screwed on tariffs, this will have an enduringly adverse effect on the balance of payments” (The last time the US posted a trade surplus was in 1975)

And everyone knows the famous speech by Eisenhower about the creation of the military/industrial complex where he warns about the acquisition of unwarranted influence in government. Well in my opinion the MIC morphed into the corporate state of America today with wealth a dominant influence in US politics.

However the 1950’s the US was riding high economically and on a wave of anti-communism (influencing policy in both the Republican and Democratic parties). So we had this ideology wedded to ‘free trade’ (as a means to an end) and the growing influence of wealth reinforcing the belief in ‘free trade’ for its own ends.

What happened with the decline in Soviet influence was that the tail began to wag the dog – free trade as a means to an end (winning the cold war) became the ends in itself with the widespread belief that what was good for corporate American was good for America and what American corporations wanted was a ‘free market’ including ‘free trade’.

By the 1980 the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and the US Treasury Department were dominated by free marketeers, as was GATT and the World Trade Organisation.

And by 2000 the ‘free market’ ideology promoted by wealth sponsored propaganda was in many people’s eyes ‘just common sense’, including many in the US Democratic Party.

Of course it was all twisted.

The political history of the 20th century (in the industrialised nations) had been to one degree or another about the curtailment of the adverse effects of 19th century exploitative capitalism (some call it classical liberalism).

People in many nations fought for voting rights, social benefits, safer working conditions, progressive taxation, decent wages etc. The result of that movement was that the economic benefits of production were much more distributed. In many nations that movement reached its zenith in the 60’s.

But the ‘free trade’ movement promoted economic globalisation, which basically allowed back some aspects of exploitative capitalism by promoting the moving of production to nations that had not developed the more distributive systems away from those nations that had.

Again there were warnings take for example the film Rodger and Me (1989).
In this way the long fought for distributive system has been undermined in those places where it had developed. Free markeers argue that to ‘compete’ in the global market the elements of the distributive system need to be dismantled what is needed they say is deregulation, the cutting of welfare, tax cuts that benefit the rich, lower wages, weak government oversight etc etc.

 

What might be done?

Well I don’t think we can’t turn back the clock we have to manage the situation we have.

But I fear the solution would be contrary to the indoctrination of over fifty years of state and wealth sponsored propaganda.

*

If people everywhere around the globe are to have decent jobs with decent wages bringing comfortable and fulfilling live not only for them but for us, then I believe that things have to change.

For as James K Galbriath has pointed out -

We must confront the global inequality crisis. For this, we must, in the final analysis, raise real wages in the countries with which our workers compete, expand their markets for our goods, and reduce their pressure on our wage structure”

In other words a policy that only tries to drive wages and social benefits down only serves wealth, no one else.

*

The US needs to abandon the plutocratic influenced foreign policy it has been pursuing for over fifty years, that tried to impose its form of capitalist doctrine on the world, that first lead to the suppression of left wing socio-economic ideas and then to the imposing of a free market free trade doctrine.

It needs to start doing the reverse.

The ideas of the left need to be championed, New Dealesque, Keynesian and even socialist policies should be encouraged worldwide.

In other words it needs to encourage redistributive politics with the tenacity which it once spent on suppressing it.

A good place to start would be the encouragement of trade unionism around the globe.

Unions have always been opposed by wealth and in all the places ‘free market’ ideas or US foreign policy has had a strong influence, union workers have been harassed or worse with thousands being murdered in Latin American countries over the years.
*
The international systems forced into place by the US at Bretton Wood (in a foolish and doomed attempt to bring about US hegemony) should be scrapped and a tweaked version of Keynes’ original ideas be adopted

Clearing Up This Mess : John Maynard Keynes had the answer to the crisis we’re now facing; but it was blocked and then forgotten.

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008...-up-this-mess/

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The power of wealth needs to be hemmed in and controlled the best way to do this, as has been done in the past is through taxation and regulation. But since wealth has gone global this means the solutions must be global, international agreements, bodies and institutions need to be established for it to be effective.

A good first step would be the closing down of all tax havens.

http://www.taxjustice.net/cms/front_content.php?idcat=2

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And above all we have to start taking the idea of global democracy seriously. Because the world is, like or not, globalised and if we the people of the world don’t take charge someone else will, so far wealth has been to a large extent in the driving seat and has been steering a course in is own narrow and profitable interests. We need to take the wheel and head of in a different direction.

 

what was your original title ty ?

 

(Sorry for the long post, but I think this is good stuff.)

The New York Times recently had an opinion piece by Thomas B. Edsall that was somewhat encouraging. In part, he said

 

I wanted to respond to Balbus but I got the denial that economics was a being of sorts in a general national context. Thus instead of reeling internet freedom in terms of the incentive for more wealth by distinguishing the Keynsian investment for corporate action from the savings to have security about. I believe the administration of this Internet, whatever it be, wants the difference of doing for the laziness of having inventory from the having for the greed of doing of friendly possessing of monetary deeds. I guess I didn't know the legal mumble-jumble alters through the history OR the Keynsian cycles.

 

The secret TPP negotiations are on a very slow track now, mostly due to Sen. Reid refusing to allow a vote on Fast-Track legislation.

A recent incident shows how shady the whole deal is. Froman is the US Trade Rep leading the US into giving up important aspects of our national sovereignty.

 

Here's an update, from www.thenewamerican.com
It appears that if Obama succeeds in getting his way, there will be a wholesale defection from the Democratic Party in the midterm elections. Perhaps the people will actually triumph over the interests of the 1%.

 

Thanks for the update...


Most people I have mentioned this to have no idea of it's existence. This is probably by design. Major media has done no coverage on this as far as I know, or if they have it's in a very twisted fashion... Why doesn't that surprise me?

 

Here's a little more from that same article. It amazes me that the same people who hate the United Nations fall all over themselves to support the TPP.

 

Things are coming to a head concerning the TPP. Soon, Congress will vote on fast-track, widely regarded as necessary to pass this huge, secret treaty. Obama is pushing hard for it. The mainstream Republicans love it, because it will give more power to huge corporations and will enrich the already rich. But a strange grouping of Democrats and Tea Partiers are opposed to it.

Here's what The Hill says about it today