June 22, 2012 at 12:33:56
On June 12, a leaked copy of the investment chapter
for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was made public. This copy was analyzed
by Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch and has been
verified
as authentic. This agreement has been
negotiated IN SECRET for 2-1/2 years and no information has ever been released
until this leak. So why have the details of this negotiation been so secret? This
agreement has been framed as a "free trade" agreement and yet out of 26 chapters only two have anything to do with trade. The
other 24 chapters grant new corporate privileges and rights, while limiting
governments and protective regulations.
If implemented,
this agreement will hard code corporate dominance over sovereign governments
into international law that will supercede any federal, state, or local laws of
any member country. This TPP agreement alone should set alarm bells ringing, but if
one steps back and looks at the larger picture, the future ramifications look
even more ominous. After completing this reading, see what your conclusions
are.
This
video is a must see for anyone who wishes to more fully understand the
implications of this secretly negotiated agreement. This article will also show
how if this agreement is considered in the context of other recently passed
legislation and developments, and the "dots are connected", the results would
be total
corporate global governance
with an accompanying police state. In this new system the role of elected governments would be to serve as subservient agents
for the transnational corporations, while the armies, police, and courts would serve
the interests of these transnational corporations. The status of the member states would be
locked-in, similar to countries once
they are inside the Eurozone.
The TPP is being negotiated by some of the same cast
of characters that brought us NAFTA, CAFTA and other so called free trade
agreements. Some of the provisions in this document include the establishment
of a parallel system of justice to be administered by 3 attorneys
with no conflict of interest limitations.
This 3 attorney tribunal could order sovereign governments to use taxpayer
money to pay these transnational corporations for any environmental or regulatory
costs that these corporations expended to meet local standards. Many existing
laws would need to be rewritten and no new regulatory laws could be passed.
Governments that tried to pass regulations such as
limits on the financial industry using risky bets such as derivatives would have
the burden of proof to defend such regulations in a court system controlled by
the corporations. The taxpayers would pay should a corporation prevail in one
of these "private courts". In fact over
$350 million
of taxpayer money has already been paid out to corporations under the NAFTA
style deals, because of zoning laws, toxic bans, timber rules and other
regulations. This TPP agreement is like NAFTA on steroids. This corporate
tribunal bears a resemblance to the private US Supreme Court approved
binding
arbitration that corporations use to severely limit an individual's or a
group's right to sue for damages. With binding arbitration we essentially have
a "
private
corporate court system " outside of any government judicial system where the
corporations choose the arbitrators and pay for their services. This creates an
apparent conflict of interest because
the arbitrators know that if they do not
rule
favorably to the corporations in the majority of cases, they will not be
hired back.
The kangaroo
courts setup by this TPP agreement will have binding corporate guarantees with
both trade and cash sanctions. These cash sanctions would effectively transfer
taxpayer money to transnational corporate coffers.
Can
you imagine the excesses we will see in the financial industry as they
challenge regulations within their own private court system forcing governments
to pay or eliminate them?
The result of these corporate tribunals will be
to setup a race to the bottom, where if one country chooses not to regulate
something, then the corporations would be able to sue the other nations inside
of the TPP to have taxpayers cover their losses for any such regulations. These
other countries would be vulnerable to corporate led lawsuits to be decided in
the corporate tribunals.
So how could such an extreme agreement that
literally gives corporations everything they could possibly want have
been negotiated with little or no resistance? The answer is
that the ONLY way this agreement could ever pass is if everything is
done in secret and the details never see the light of day.
Lori Wallach , the director
of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch recently said:
"These agreements are a little bit like Dracula. You drag
them in the sunshine, and they do not fare well. But all of us, and also across
all of the countries involved, there are citizen movements that are basically
saying that this is not in our name. We don't need global enforceable corporate
rights. We need more democracy. We need more accountability."
These talks have
been so secret that Senator Ron Wyden, chairman of the Trade Committee in the
Senate which has jurisdiction over trade
agreements has been denied any access to information on the negotiations for
over 2-1/2 years. This is a man who is on the Intelligence Committee and has
access to nuclear secrets, yet he cannot see this TPP agreement? On the Democratic
side, Senator Wyden has introduced
legislation
to force the Obama administration to make the details of these secret
negotiations available to the Senate Committee.
On the Republican
side, Representative
Darryl
Issa has also questioned the Obama administration's extreme levels of
secrecy on this agreement. This is not a liberal cause, this is not a
conservative cause, this is a common cause. It is vital that the public be
aware of this TPP agreement because BOTH of the 2012 presidential candidates
are supporting this agreement. Since TPP
was negotiated under the watch of the Obama administration, and Mitt Romney has
indicated that he wants to quickly complete negotiations of this bill, the
results of the next election will be irrelevant to the future status of this
bill.
With the corporate
takeover of sovereign governments, we see the very essence of a global fascist system.
When most people think of fascism, they think of Hitler brown shirts marching
through the streets, however, that is not the real definition of fascism. Fascism
was defined by President Franklin Roosevelt:
"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the
growth of private power to a point where it comes stronger than their
democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of
government by an individual, by a group"
Polls
show that most Americans from both major political party believe that money exerts
far too much influence on public officials, effectively making these elected
officials the "hired servants" of the wealthy elites. Both the Tea Party and
the Occupy Movement believe that there is too much influence of money on our
legislators. Our representatives are essentially the puppets while the
corporate elites are the puppeteers. What this TPP agreement does is to take this puppet
metaphor to the international level. Our elections have been reduced to the
people choosing who will be the "hired servants" of the power elites from a
list preapproved by these same elites.
This TPP agreement
is nothing less than a power grab by the largest corporations on the planet to
establish a legal framework for global corporate government making all sovereign
governments subject to international law enforced by corporations.
Passage of this bill would essentially be
corporate coup against all member states.
So while this TPP
agreement should frighten anyone who is still breathing, the threat does not end
as the corporations make their ultimate grab for power. Here are some of the
other forces
that are potentially focusing the power of the corporate state.
National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (NDAA)
With the passage of the NDAA, our legislators
overrode
constitutional
protections so that Americans who are "suspected" of providing "material
support" to a terrorist organization can be
detained
indefinitely on American soil, without access to legal counsel, and without
any charges being filed. Think about this for a minute, you do not even have to
be charged with a crime and you can be locked up indefinitely? What exactly
does "material support" mean? Exactly what is a terrorist?
Some states
have actually declared that people who secretly video record animal
mistreatment as "terrorists", even if no property damage was done. If
nonviolent protests can be declared as terrorist acts, it does not take a great
leap of the imagination to see how NDAA might be applied. Imagine if the
government used NDAA legislation against journalists or whistleblowers such as
Julius
Assange ,
Russ
Tice , or even
Daniel
Elsberg ? How will we ever know what is happening in a corporate state if
the corporations are successful in indefinitely detaining those who would shed
light on their activities?
This NDAA is another example of dangerous legislation
being passed in darkness. This bill was signed by Obama on December 31, 2011, during
the Christmas break when the media attention would be minimal. In an effort to divide
the opposition to the indefinite detention of Americans, Obama promised that
his administration would never use the provisions. The questions most people
should be asking is:
"what is to prevent
any future president or even Obama himself from using indefinite detention, and
if there is no need for concern over this, why was it necessary to make that
signing statement?"
Progressive and conservative groups such the ACLU, Gun
Owners Foundation, Tea Party Movement, Institute of the Constitution, US
Justice Foundation, Tenth Amendment Center, Occupy Wall St, and many other groups are
joining
forces to fight this legislation. On social media, resistance in the form
of a Facebook group called "
Recall
Every Congressman Who Voted for NDAA " has been formed.
Now, in
the context of the TPP, think of how useful this NDAA law could be to a global
corporate government in silencing its critics.
Citizens United
Ruling
Americans have long had a sneaking suspicion that
there was a "hidden hand" directing our government in Washington and the
states, and they were right. The "hidden hand" was actually the corporations,
unions, and other self-serving special interests that contribute literally
$billions to our politicians in order to influence legislation that will favor
them. This has happened even with limits that had been placed on these groups
that prevented them from directly contributing to campaigns. Thursday January 21 2010, will go down in
history as a dark day. This is the day that a divided Supreme Court, in the
Citizens United v. FEC ruling, removed all limits on corporate political
campaign spending.
If you thought our politicians were corrupt and
beholden to
corporations before, things are about to get a LOT WORSE now that
all limits have been removed. Justices Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas and
Kennedy swept aside decades of legislative restrictions on the money from
corporations in political campaigns and ruled that companies can use
corporate
funds to support or oppose candidates. This ruling will certainly take
its place in history alongside other shameful rulings such as Dred Scott v.
Sandford, and Plessy v. Ferguson. These 5 justices opened the floodgates of
unlimited funds to influence elections. The strangle hold the banks have over
the nation's wealth will now be amplified by this Supreme Court ruling now that
all limits on campaign financing by corporations have been removed.
This black day will
go rightly go down in history where the Supreme Court officially validated the
takeover of the government by the corporations. The 2012 primary election cycle
has already seen where approximately 4 dozen people have contributed massively to
the super PACS and decided the outcome of the elections. This type of money
influence will cut both ways regardless of which political party you support.
One donor has stated that he is willing to spend $100 million in this election
cycle. This one single donor "donated" the same amount as 2 million families
sending a check for $50. This type of funding by large donors undermines the
very foundation of our government and creates an environment conducive to
corruption.
Now in the context of the
TPP, think of the impact that huge global corporations will have on governments
with their ability to spend unlimited money anonymously.
Corporate domination of media
Media
ownership has now become so concentrated that six corporations
effectively
control US media today. These companies are Time Warner, Walt Disney,
Viacom, Murdoch's News Corp, CBS Corporation, and NBC Universal. With this type of concentration, it becomes
very difficult to find diversified news in order to form independent opinions.
One aspect of this concentration is the increasing number of negative political
ads, many of which have no accountability as to their factual accuracy. This
will end badly if we do not stop the media from undermining the foundations of
our election system. This concentration of media ownership allows billionaires
and corporations to ensure that the politicians who will work to pass self
serving legislation favoring these wealthy elites are elected to office.
One
place where the corporate media has not met with great success in controlling
is the independent media on the Internet. Attempts have been made to control
access to it, to create "
toll
system " , as well as extreme
copyright rules. We have seen a veritable alphabet soup of acts designed to
enhance corporate profits and limit the flow of information. Some examples
include
PIPA ,
SOPA ,
CISPA ,
and it seems as soon as they are knocked down due to public resistance, another
threat arises. For now, the Internet has remained free and a diverse source of
information, but vigilance must be maintained.
Now, think of the effect that the
loss of an open Internet and the
increasingly concentrated media ownership will have on the electorate when
combined with the unlimited funding that the Citizens United ruling allows, as
well as the power that the transnational corporations could gain under TPP.
Increasing Use of
Drones for Domestic Surveillance
The
use of drones for domestic surveillance is becoming more
and more common. The FAA has approved
drones for use over the United States and projects that
30,000
drones will be over our skies by 2020. The EPA is actually using drones
to
monitor cattle ranchers in Iowa,
police and universities
are using them, and
cities
are using drones to keep an "eye on things". New much smaller drones the size of
birds and
insects
are now in development. These smaller
drones will be cheaper to produce and deploy which will likely raise the 30,000
estimate significantly and will be much harder to detect. Under a government
subservient to the corporations, these drones would effectively be controlled and
"regulated" by the corporations.
Can you
imagine the misuse of this technology to violate any privacy we may have left
and to conduct clandestine surveillance?
Militarization of Police Forces
The
militarization
of our police forces is proceeding rapidly. After 9-11, the Department of
Homeland Security gave generous grants to police forces across the nation. Some
of the purchases included
riot
gear ,
armored
personnel carriers , and even acoustic weapons for small towns with hardly any violent crime. A nexus has
formed between vendors of military equipment and the nation's police forces.
There are certainly consequences to this militarization of police forces. Once
a police officer is deployed into a situation with full riot gear and military
training, the chances of violence increases significantly even when the
protests remain peaceful. There is significant
evidence
of this during the Occupy demonstrations.
The roles of police
and military are totally different. The police are trained to protect lives,
the military is trained to take lives.
Consider
how these same military trained riot police would be used when they are under
the effective control of the transnational corporations and how they would be
utilized to silence their critics.
Privatization of
Prisons
The
privatization
of prisons is expanding rapidly. In most societies prisons are run by the
state where the incentive is to have fewer prisoners with a lower recidivism
rate. In a private system the perverse incentive is to maximize the number of
prisoners, and raise the recidivism rate in order to maximize profits. This
results in higher
numbers of prisoners, broken families, poor healthcare for inmates, and few
resources spent to prepare inmates to reenter society. This has contributed to
the shame of the US having
largest
prison population on the planet whether measured in absolute numbers or on
a per capita basis, with most prisoners serving time for non-violent crimes.
The private for profit prison industry is growing and has actually influenced
immigration
legislation in Arizona in order to gain more inmates and raise profits.
Think of the
impact that private prisons, private policing, private
contractors providing soldiers for hire, all with loyalty to $$$ instead
of
their country. We will quickly devolve into a fascist controlled state.
This aspect of corporate control should be one of the most
frightening to everyone who holds freedom and democracy dear.
Lack of Prosecution for Financial Fraud
If a criminal gets away with committing a crime, there is a strong likelihood
that they will commit it again. The
lack
of prosecution for the major financial fraud that brought about the 2008
economic collapse almost guarantees that it will happen again. Justice Department
officials have stated that these are difficult and complex cases. However, during
the Savings & Loan crisis, there were thousands of successful
felony
convictions , despite the fact that it was 1/70 the size of the 2008 crisis.
In fact when the 50 Attorneys General were close to starting their own
prosecutions due to the lack of any federal action, the Obama administration
stepped in and negotiated its own agreement.
To paraphrase
David Petrovich ,
the Executive Director for Society For Preservation of Continued Homeownership:
"This
agreement granted immunity to the big banks for the criminal robosigning where they forged documents and fraudulently
tried to present them in courts across the country. This was essentially
another bailout of the banks only this time the bailout was not in the form of
money, but rather where changes were made in the law to retroactively
transform banks' illegal behavior into legal behavior. (Watch how this concept
of "retroactive" immunity comes up again.) Think about what would happen if you
or I forged notarized signatures and tried to pass them off in court. We certainly
would serve prison time. Yet, these huge banks were let off the hook even after
forging tens of thousands of these signatures and illegally foreclosing on
peoples' homes."
We also recently
had the spectacle of the Senate Banking Committee "
questioning "
one of its
largest
donors . While wearing presidential seal cuff links, presumably to show his
powerful connections, JP Morgan chair Jamie Dimon, easily handled all the
softball
questions asked of him. Dimon lost
over $3 billion (and growing) on risky derivative bets and yet these same
senators actually had the audacity to ask him for input and advice on
regulating his bank. Think about the implications of total immunity from
prosecution for financial crimes in an environment where the TPP has been
approved and global corporations are the effective government.
Lack of Protection for Whistleblowers
The
increasing
prosecution
and harassment of whistleblowers has a chilling effect on government
transparency . The government often prosecutes the whistleblower rather than
the crime that the whistleblower reveals. The Obama campaign in 2008 promised
to protect whistle blowers, but instead he has been waging a
relentless war
against them. Bradley Manning was
declared
guilty by Obama BEFORE he was even charged with any crime, yet the shooting
of the journalists by the US helicopter crew and their
callous
statements during the shooting was ignored. When William Binney blew the whistle on the
NSA's huge surveillance program, the
FBI
raided his home in an effort to quiet and intimidate him. Corporations as
well as government also often
retaliate
against whistle blowers. In a corporate
state, how would the citizens know about the activities of the corporations if
there is no protection for whistleblowers?
Corporate Spying on Americans
The
information
William Binney made public dramatized the huge scale of the (at that time )
illegal surveillance that was being done on Americans. It also included the
fact that AT&T as well as other communication companies were deeply
involved in this illegal spying on US citizens. Later, as
lawsuits
against the corporations started to look like they would be successful, the Obama
administration claimed state secrets to kill the lawsuits. Since the telecommunications industry is
another VERY large "contributor" to political loyalists, Congress showed its
gratitude by passing
legislation
to grant the telecommunication companies retroactive immunity. (This concept
retroactive immunity comes up again.) The questions that should come to mind are:
"if no crime was committed, why were the
corporations granted retroactive immunity, or if crimes were committed, why
were these corporations granted retroactive immunity?" Think of the implications of this in a corporate state, with the
increasing use of smaller and smaller drones in an environment that allows corporations
to legally spy on you. Then also consider this concept of governments granting
retroactive immunity for criminal actions in order to please their major
corporate donors. How will the transnational corporations use these "tools" to maximize their profits or
to silence opposition?
Summary
What we see is a confluence of forces that has the
potential to solidify a shift towards corporate fascism and encase it in
international law. Governments will merely be the tools of the corporations to
provide a degree of separation from the inevitable police state that will accompany
this corporate global governance. Sovereign governments even with all their
failings still have at least some concern for the general welfare of their
citizens. Corporations by their very nature have only one purpose and that is
to generate profits. If an individual whose sole purpose was to blindly enhance
profits, without any regard to the standards of what is wrong and what is right
in society, would likely be considered a sociopath by mental health experts.
If the TPP were to be enshrined into international
law, these same sociopath corporations would now lord over sovereign
governments, indifferent to criminal law, and beyond the control of
nation-states.
They would have the ability to utilize the militaries of some
states to wage war on other "less complaint" states.
Doug Casey of Casey Research recently
wrote :
"It's
most unfortunate, but the US and its allies will turn into authoritarian police
states. Even more than they are today. Much more, actually. They'll all be
perfectly fascist -- private ownership of both consumer goods and the means of
production topped by state control of both. Fascism operates free of underlying
principles or philosophy; it's totally the whim of the people in control, and
they'll prove ever more ruthless. "
There
are those who would say that it is unpatriotic to be against corporations, however
should corporations be in the business of governing? An open public debate on the future role of
corporations is needed.
It is vital that the details of this TPP agreement
become widely known and circulated. Once it sees the light of day, it will be defeated
because people will oppose it. Sorry, corporations really are NOT people, they
are merely state created entities.
What Can You Do?
Get
money out of politics
Until we get money out of politics, corporate
control of our government will continue and
because of the Citizens United ruling, will most likely increase.
Attempts at a corporate coups such as this TPP agreement will continue and will
keep resurfacing in various re-invented forms until one day one will be
successful. We have already seen this pattern with the repeated attempts to
impose limits the Internet.
There are organizations that are working towards
eliminating the corrupting influence of money. Find out more about them and
support their efforts. Some of them include.
Public Citizen
http://www.citizen.org
Common Cause
http://www.commoncause.org
United Republic
http://unitedrepublic.org
End the secret TPP negotiations
Until we bring this process into public view, there
is the danger that it will be passed quickly and secretly with little or no congressional
or public input. Once the details of these agreements are made public, the TPP
will defeated, or at the very least modified.
There are organizations that are fighting this TPP
agreement and they deserve your efforts and support. Some of them include:
http://www.citizen.org/tpp
http://www.citizenstrade.org/ctc/
http://www.straight.com/article-688656/vancouver/prointernet-community-must-fight-tpp-weekly-update-openmediaca
We have reached a crossroad where either we allow
the corporations to take control of our
nations, or we stop them in their attempts. Take an evening off from the TV and
make the effort to make a difference so that you leave your children a better
future. Don't expect others to do this vital task.
Rudy Avizius
http://www.endtheillusion.org
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