PROGRESSIVE CALENDAR 11.10.15 TPP ISSUE /3
From: David Shove (shove001umn.edu)
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2015 01:16:08 -0800 (PST)
PROGRESSIVE CALENDAR 11.10.15


*1. Chris Hedges - The Most Brazen Corporate Power Grab in
                           US History*


*2. P C Roberts  - The Re-enserfment of Western Peoples3. K J Noh         -
Why the TPP Must be Opposed at All Costs*
*4. ed -               - PP on the TPP  - bumpersticker poem*

--------1 of 4--------

The Most Brazen Corporate Power Grab in American History
by Chris Hedges
Published on Monday, November 09, 2015 by TruthDig

The release Thursday of the 5,544-page text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership
<http://www.international.gc.ca/trade-agreements-accords-commerciaux/agr-acc/tpp-ptp/index.aspx?lang=eng>—a
trade and investment agreement involving 12 countries comprising nearly 40
percent of global output—confirms what even its most apocalyptic critics
feared.

“The TPP, along with the WTO [World Trade Organization] and NAFTA [North
American Free Trade Agreement], is the most brazen corporate power grab in
American history,” Ralph Nader told me when I reached him by phone in
Washington, D.C. “It allows corporations to bypass our three branches of
government to impose enforceable sanctions by secret tribunals. These
tribunals can declare our labor, consumer and environmental protections [to
be] unlawful, non-tariff barriers subject to fines for noncompliance. The
TPP establishes a transnational, autocratic system of enforceable
governance in defiance of our domestic laws.”

The TPP is part of a triad of trade agreements that includes the
Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trade in
Services Agreement (TiSA). TiSA, by calling for the privatization of all
public services, is a mortal threat to the viability of the U.S. Postal
Service, public education and other government-run enterprises and
utilities; together these operations make up 80 percent of the U.S.
economy. The TTIP and TiSA are still in the negotiation phase. They will
follow on the heels of the TPP and are likely to go before Congress in 2017.

These three agreements solidify the creeping corporate coup d’état along
with the final evisceration of national sovereignty. Citizens will be
forced to give up control of their destiny and will be stripped of the
ability to protect themselves from corporate predators, safeguard the
ecosystem and find redress and justice in our now anemic and often
dysfunctional democratic institutions. The agreements—filled with jargon,
convoluted technical, trade and financial terms, legalese, fine print and
obtuse phrasing—can be summed up in two words: corporate enslavement.

The TPP removes legislative authority from Congress and the White House on
a range of issues. Judicial power is often surrendered to three-person
trade tribunals in which *only* corporations are permitted to sue. Workers,
environmental and advocacy groups and labor unions are blocked from seeking
redress in the proposed tribunals. The rights of corporations become
sacrosanct. The rights of citizens are abolished.

The Sierra Club issued a statement after the release of the TPP text saying
that the “deal is rife with polluter giveaways that would undermine decades
of environmental progress, threaten our climate, and fail to adequately
protect wildlife because big polluters helped write the deal.”

If there is no sustained popular uprising to prevent the passage of the TPP
in Congress this spring we will be shackled by corporate power. Wages will
decline. Working conditions will deteriorate. Unemployment will rise. Our
few remaining rights will be revoked. The assault on the ecosystem will be
accelerated. Banks and global speculation will be beyond oversight or
control. Food safety standards and regulations will be jettisoned. Public
services ranging from Medicare and Medicaid to the post office and public
education will be abolished or dramatically slashed and taken over by
for-profit corporations. Prices for basic commodities, including
pharmaceuticals, will skyrocket. Social assistance programs will be
drastically scaled back or terminated. And countries that have public
health care systems, such as Canada and Australia, that are in the
agreement will probably see their public health systems collapse under
corporate assault. Corporations will be empowered to hold a wide variety of
patents, including over plants and animals, turning basic necessities and
the natural world into marketable products. And, just to make sure
corporations extract every pound of flesh, any public law interpreted by
corporations as impeding *projected* profit, even a law designed to protect
the environment or consumers, will be subject to challenge in an entity
called the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) section. The ISDS,
bolstered and expanded under the TPP, will see corporations paid massive
sums in compensation from offending governments for impeding their “right”
to further swell their bank accounts. Corporate profit effectively will
replace the common good.

Given the bankruptcy of our political class—including amoral politicians
such as Hillary Clinton, who is denouncing the TPP during the presidential
campaign but whose unwavering service to corporate capitalism assures her
fealty to her corporate backers—the trade agreement has a good chance of
becoming law. And because the Obama administration won fast-track
authority, a tactic designed by the Nixon administration to subvert
democratic debate, President Obama will be able to sign the agreement
before it goes to Congress.

The TPP, because of fast track, bypasses the normal legislative process of
public discussion and consideration by congressional committees. The House
and the Senate, which have to vote on the TPP bill within 90 days of when
it is sent to Congress, are prohibited by the fast-track provision from
adding floor amendments or holding more than 20 hours of floor debate.
Congress cannot raise concerns about the effects of the TPP on the
environment. It can *only* vote yes or no. It is powerless to modify or
change one word.

There will be a mass mobilization
<https://www.popularresistance.org/mass-mobilization-to-stop-the-tpp-announced-as-text-is-released/>
Nov. 14 through 18 in Washington to begin the push to block the TPP. Rising
up to stop the TPP is a far, far better investment of our time and energy
than engaging in the empty political theater that passes for a presidential
campaign.

“The TPP creates a web of corporate laws that will dominate the global
economy,” attorney Kevin Zeese of the group Popular Resistance
<https://www.popularresistance.org/>, which has mounted a long fight
against the trade agreement, told me from Baltimore by telephone. “It is a
global corporate coup d’état. Corporations will become more powerful than
countries. Corporations will force democratic systems to serve their
interests. Civil courts around the world will be replaced with corporate
courts or so-called trade tribunals. This is a massive expansion that
builds on the worst of NAFTA rather than what Barack Obama promised, which
was to get rid of the worst aspects of NAFTA.”

The agreement is the product of six years of work by global capitalists
from banks, insurance companies, Goldman Sachs, Monsanto and other
corporations.

“It was written by them [the corporations], it is for them and it will
serve them,” Zeese said of the TPP. “It will hurt domestic businesses and
small businesses. The buy-American provisions will disappear. Local
communities will not be allowed to build buy-local campaigns. The thrust of
the agreement is the privatization and commodification of everything. The
agreement has built within it a deep antipathy to state-supported or
state-owned enterprises. It gives away what is left of our democracy
to the World
Trade Organization <https://www.wto.org/>.”

The economist David Rosnick, in a report on the TPP by the Center for
Economic and Policy Research <http://www.cepr.net/> (CEPR), estimated that
under the trade agreement only the top 10 percent of U.S. workers would see
their wages increase. Rosnick wrote that the real wages of middle-income
U.S. workers (from the 35th percentile to the 80th percentile) would
decline under the TPP. NAFTA, contributing to a decline in manufacturing
jobs (now only 9 percent of the economy), has forced workers into
lower-paying service jobs and resulted in a decline in real wages of
between 12 and 17 percent. The TPP would only accelerate this process,
Rosnick concluded.

“This is a continuation of the global race to the bottom,” Dr. Margaret
Flowers, also from Popular Resistance and a candidate for the U.S. Senate
<http://www.FlowersForSenate.org>, said from Baltimore in a telephone
conversation with me. “Corporations are free to move to countries that have
the lowest labor standards. This drives down high labor standards here. It
means a decimation of industries and unions. It means an accelerated race
to the bottom, which we must rise up to stop.”

“In Malaysia one-third of tech workers are essentially slaves,” Zeese said.
“In Vietnam the minimum wage is 35 cents an hour. Once these countries are
part of the trade agreement U.S. workers are put in a very difficult
position.”

Fifty-one percent of working Americans now make less than $30,000 a year, a
new study
<http://dailycaller.com/2015/10/25/1-in-2-working-americans-make-less-than-30000-a-year/>
by the Social Security Administration reported. Forty percent are making
less than $20,000 a year. The federal government considers a family of four
living on an income of less than $24,250 to be in poverty.

“Half of American workers earn essentially the poverty level,” Zeese said.
“This agreement only accelerates this trend. I don’t see how American
workers are going to cope.”

The assault on the American workforce by NAFTA—which was established under
the Clinton administration in 1994 and which at the time promised creation
of 200,000 net jobs a year in the United States—has been devastating. NAFTA
has led to a $181 billion trade deficit with Mexico and Canada and the loss
of at least 1 million U.S. jobs, according to a report by Public Citizen
<http://www.citizen.org/documents/NAFTA-at-20.pdf>. The flooding of the
Mexican market with cheap corn by U.S. agro-businesses drove down the price
of Mexican corn and saw 1 million to 3 million poor Mexican farmers go
bankrupt and lose their small farms. Many of them crossed the border into
the United States in a desperate effort to find work.

“Obama has misled the public throughout this process,” Dr. Flowers said.
“He claimed that environmental groups were supportive of the agreement
because it provided environmental protections, and this has now been proven
false. He told us that it would create 650,000 jobs, and this has now been
proven false. He calls this a 21st century trade agreement, but it actually
rolls back progress made in Bush-era trade agreements. The most recent
model of a 21st century trade agreement is the Korean free trade agreement.
That was supposed to create 140,000 U.S. jobs. But what we saw within a
couple years was a loss of about 70,000 jobs and a larger trade deficit
with Korea. This agreement [the TPP] is sold to us with the same deceits
that were used to sell us NAFTA and other trade agreements.”

The agreement, in essence, becomes global law. Any agreements over carbon
emissions by countries made through the United Nations are effectively
rendered null and void by the TPP.

“Trade agreements are binding,” Flowers said. “They supersede any of the
nonbinding agreements made by the United Nations Climate Change Conference
<http://unfccc.int/meetings/paris_nov_2015/meeting/8926.php> that might
come out of Paris.”

There is more than enough evidence from past trade agreements to indicate
where the TPP—often called “NAFTA on steroids”—will lead. It is part of the
inexorable march by corporations to wrest from us the ability to use
government to defend the public and to build social and political
organizations that promote the common good. Our corporate masters seek to
turn the natural world and human beings into malleable commodities that
will be used and exploited until exhaustion or collapse. Trade agreements
are the tools being used to achieve this subjugation. The only response
left is open, sustained and defiant popular revolt.
© 2015 TruthDig
<http://www.commondreams.org/author/chris-hedges>

Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com
<http://www.truthdig.com>. Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School
and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York
Times. He is the author of many books, including: War Is A Force That Gives
Us Meaning
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1400034639?tag=commondreams-20/ref=nosim>, What
Every Person Should Know About War
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0743255127?tag=commondreams-20/ref=nosim>,
and American
Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0743284437?tag=commondreams-20/ref=nosim>  His
most recent book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph
of Spectacle
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1568584377?tag=commondreams-20/ref=nosim>.


--------2 of x--------

The Re-enserfment of Western Peoples
by Paul Craig Roberts / November 9th, 2015 Dissident Voice

The re-enserfment of Western peoples is taking place on several levels. One
about which I have been writing for more than a decade comes from the
offshoring of jobs. Americans, for example, have a shrinking participation
in the production of the goods and services that are marketed to them.

On another level we are experiencing the financialization of the Western
economy about which Michael Hudson is the leading expert (*Killing The Host*).
Financialization is the process of removing any public presence in the
economy and converting the economic surplus into interest payments to the
financial sector.

These two developments deprive people of economic prospects. A third
development deprives them of political rights. The Trans-Pacific and
Trans-Atlantic Partnerships eliminate political sovereignty and turn
governance over to global corporations.

These so called “trade partnerships” have nothing to do with trade. These
agreements negotiated in secrecy grant immunity to corporations from the
laws of the countries in which they do business. This is achieved by
declaring any interference by existing and prospective laws and regulations
on corporate profits as restraints on trade for which corporations can sue
and fine “sovereign” governments. For example, the ban in France and other
countries on GMO products would be negated by the Trans-Atlantic
Partnership. Democracy is simply replaced by corporate rule.

I have been meaning to write about this at length. However, others, such as
Chris Hedges, are doing a good job of explaining
<http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/The-Most-Brazen-Corporate-by-Chris-Hedges-American-Hypocrisy_Americans-For-Prosperity_Corporate-Citizenship_Corporate-Crime-151107-882.html>
the power grab that eliminates representative government.

The corporations are buying power cheaply. They bought
<http://www.opednews.com/articles/Almost-200-Million-Donate-by-Paola-Casale-Banking_Congress_Control_Corporations-150620-523.html>
the entire US House of Representatives for just under $200 million. This is
what the corporations paid Congress to go along with “Fast Track,” which
permits the corporations’ agent, the US Trade Representative, to negotiate
in secret without congressional input or oversight.

In other words, a US corporate agent deals with corporate agents in the
countries that will comprise the “partnership,” and this handful of
well-bribed people draw up an agreement that supplants law with the
interests of corporations. No one negotiating the partnership represents
the peoples’ or public’s interests. The governments of the partnership
countries get to vote the deal up or down, and they will be well paid to
vote for the agreement.

Once these partnerships are in effect, government itself is privatized.
There is no longer any point in legislatures, presidents, prime ministers,
judges. Corporate tribunals decide law and court rulings.

It is likely that these “partnerships” will have unintended consequences.
For example, Russia and China are not part of the arrangements, and neither
are Iran, Brazil, India, and South Africa, although separately the Indian
government appears to have been purchased by American agribusiness and is
in the process of destroying its self-sufficient food production system.
These countries will be the repositories for national sovereignty and
public control while freedom and democracy are extinguished in the West and
the West’s Asian vassals.

Violent revolution throughout the West and the complete elimination of the
One Percent is another possible outcome. Once, for example, the French
people discover that they have lost all control over their diet to Monsanto
and American agribusiness, the members of the French government that
delivered France into dietary bondage to toxic foods are likely to be
killed in the streets.

Events of this sort are possible throughout the West as peoples discover
that they have lost all control over every aspect of their lives and that
their only choice is revolution or death.

Paul Craig Roberts is an American economist, author, columnist, former
Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, and former editor and columnist for
corporate media publications. He is the author of *The Failure of Laissez
Faire Capitalism
<http://www.powells.com/partner/36683/biblio/0986036250?p_isbn>*. Read
other articles by Paul <http://dissidentvoice.org/author/paulcraigroberts/>,
or visit Paul's website <http://www.paulcraigroberts.org>.

This article was posted on Monday, November 9th, 2015 at 7:09am and is
filed under Classism <http://dissidentvoice.org/category/class/>, Corporate
Globalization <http://dissidentvoice.org/category/corporate-globalization/>,
Finance <http://dissidentvoice.org/category/finance/>, GMO
<http://dissidentvoice.org/category/foodnutrition/gmo/>, Opinion
<http://dissidentvoice.org/category/opinion/>, TPP
<http://dissidentvoice.org/category/economics/tpp/>.


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Why the TPP Must be Opposed at All Costs
It’s Worse Than You Think
by K.J. Noh
November 8th, 2015
Dissident Voice

The TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the corporate Mega-deal on “free
trade” has been concluded between the partner states, and is now in the
final stages of its ratification.  This deal involves the US and 11 other
countries (Canada, US, Mexico, Chile, Peru; Singapore, Malaysia, Australia,
Brunei, Japan) of the Pacific Rim, representing 40% of global economic
activity.  The text was secretly negotiated by hundreds of corporate
lobbyists.  It has now been released, and Congress will have 90 days to
examine the 6000 page text before approving, which will allow the President
to sign it in to law.

For six years, this corporate-drafted legislation was a pig in a poke.
Nobody knew what was in it–except the hundreds (550) of corporate lobbyists
that had been drafting it for years in total secrecy.  They wouldn’t say
what was in it.  They would only say it was good for you.  They just wanted
you to support it.  Critics were told to shut up on the grounds that they
knew nothing about it.  But the outline that people had been able to
discern through leaks were monstrous.

The text <http://tpp.mfat.govt.nz/text> has been just released—by the
orders of a New Zealand court–and it is, as anticipated, monstrous,
explaining the Manhattan-Project-level secrecy.   It’s a total corporate
giveaway, and despite some pathetic attempts to put lipstick on it, it’s
every bit as bad as we had anticipated, and a little bit worse.    Here are
some of the key issues:

*Subversion of Democracy and Sovereignty:*

ISDS refers to Investor State Dispute Settlement mechanism.  Think of it
really as an Intentional Subversion of Democracy and Sovereignty
<http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/70/285>. This is the
extrajudicial process written into the TPP (Chapter 28
<http://www.mfat.govt.nz/downloads/trade-agreement/transpacific/TPP-text/28.%20Dispute%20Settlement%20Chapter.pdf>),
whereby governments can be dragged before tribunals by corporate lawyers if
they think national (health, environmental, consumer protection, public
policy) laws violate their TPP rights or limit future expected profits.
This is a panel of bespoke-suited corporate lawyers deciding whether
environmental laws, safety regulations, public policy, or labor laws get in
the way of profit or not.  Imagine how they will decide.  Profits or
people?  The outcome, written into the very *raison d’être* of the TPP, is
a foregone conclusion
<http://www.ohchr.org/SP/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=16650&LangID=E>.
These results will be unaccountable and binding.  No appeal is possible.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that corporations want profit the way that
sexual predators want sex: at any cost.  Instead of moderating, controlling
or preventing this, this agreement enshrines into transnational law a
supranational corporate entitlement to profit, regardless of risk or danger
to the state, democratic sovereignty, the people, or the planet.  For that
reason alone, the TPP should be opposed at all costs.  But there’s more.

*Global Immiseration*

Job Loss and proletarianization will be the inevitable results of this
agreement.  Although the pitch from the White House has been that the TPP
is “a high standard trade agreement that levels the playing field for
American workers, and businesses, supporting more made in America exports
and higher paying American jobs”, in fact the logic of neoliberal trade
agreements like TPP drives jobs to wherever they are the cheapest,
decimating labor rights and labor protections along their path.  That
implies the general immiseration of wage workers everywhere as they are
forced into a race to the bottom, to compete with the hungriest and most
desperate in the world.   If you thought NAFTA was bad for jobs, imagine
the Lance Armstrong of neoliberal trade deals: doped-up, ‘roid-flushed,
viscous-blooded, deceitful, win-at-any-cost, brazen, in-your-face,
winner-take-all, corrupt, corporate leviathan.

This final, dolled-and-dressed-up version actually has a chapter on labor
and labor rights (Chapter 19
<http://www.mfat.govt.nz/downloads/trade-agreement/transpacific/TPP-text/19.%20Labour%20Chapter.pdf>),
but don’t let that mislead you. It amounts to a pitiful 13 pages of vapid,
unenforceable boilerplate among 6000 pages of cold-blooded legalistic
scheming.  It’s clearly a threadbare, deceptive ruse appended after the
fact to divert criticism.  The chapter offers nothing substantive or
meaningful
<http://www.globalresearch.ca/tpp-ignores-global-warming-and-allows-murder-of-labor-union-organizers/5487148>,
other than roadblocks to even minimal enforcement of worker’s rights, and
mandated “cooperation” to diffuse adversarial relations.   Threadbare in
reasoning, substance, and ethics, it  gives lip service to social values,
with vapid phrases like  “Signatories *commit* to *acknowledge* the
existence of goals *surrounding *the *possibility *of workers’ rights”,
 then lards itself up with cosmetic boilerplate about consultation,
cooperation, volunteerism, “recognition”, committees.  It then finally
bares its fangs with this:

*No Party shall have recourse to dispute settlement under Chapter 28
(Dispute Settlement) for any matter arising under this Chapter.*

In other words, as a worker, you have no enforceable rights under this
agreement.

The minuscule chapter on “development
<http://www.mfat.govt.nz/downloads/trade-agreement/transpacific/TPP-text/23.%20Development%20Chapter.pdf>”
is even worse.  It has 5 measly pages of the same lazy, woolly, vapid,
rhetorical language on “voluntary measures”, “consultative processes”, and
exhortations for “market-based approaches”, followed by the following
ice-cold, brutal, one-two punch:

* In the event of any inconsistency between this Chapter and another
Chapter of this Agreement, the other Chapter shall prevail to the extent of
the inconsistency.*

* No Party shall have recourse to dispute settlement under Chapter 28
(Dispute Settlement) for any matter arising under this Chapter.*

There are other vanity chapters written about Capacity Building
<http://www.mfat.govt.nz/downloads/trade-agreement/transpacific/TPP-text/21.%20Cooperation%20and%20Capacity%20Building%20Chapter.pdf>,
Competitiveness
<http://www.mfat.govt.nz/downloads/trade-agreement/transpacific/TPP-text/22.%20Competitiveness%20and%20Business%20Facilitation%20Chapter.pdf>,
Regulatory Coherence
<http://www.mfat.govt.nz/downloads/trade-agreement/transpacific/TPP-text/23.%20Development%20Chapter.pdf>,
SME’s
<http://www.mfat.govt.nz/downloads/trade-agreement/transpacific/TPP-text/24.%20Small%20and%20Medium-Sized%20Enterprises%20Chapter.pdf>.
They are written on a similar template of boilerplate vapidity.  It’s clear
that these were added at the last minute for cosmetic purposes, because
they all have the same aspirational rhetoric (about committees,
consultation, cooperation), followed by what we know recognize as the
kill-switch non-access/non-recourse mantra:

*No Party shall have recourse to dispute settlement under Chapter 28
(Dispute Settlement) for any matter arising under this Chapter.*

To misquote the Zapatistas, it is, “For me, everything; for you, nothing.”

*Finance Capital Unleashed*

Envisage unleashing finance capital in a way that makes the financialized
gang rape of the 2008 global meltdown seem like a genteel southern
debutante ball.   It’s clear the current system is precarious, scary, and
unjust, but if existing minimal capital controls are dismantled, financial
taxation prohibited, stabilizing tools undone, and local breakwaters on
finance are removed or challenged, hot money and speculation will flow like
lava from an unleashed volcano.  This is what Chapters 9
<http://www.mfat.govt.nz/downloads/trade-agreement/transpacific/TPP-text/9.%20Investment%20Chapter.pdf>,
11
<http://www.mfat.govt.nz/downloads/trade-agreement/transpacific/TPP-text/11.%20Financial%20Services%20Chapter.pdf>
facilitate, albeit in cloaked, deceptive, corporate-lawyerly ways: the
capacity to undermine
<https://theintercept.com/2015/11/06/ttp-trade-pact-would-give-wall-street-a-trump-card-to-block-regulations/?comments=1#comments>
any financial control or reform.  Look underneath the verbiage to the
intent and design, and these chapters should give you cold sweats and panic
attacks.

*Privatization of the Intellectual and Cultural Commons*

The chapter on IP (Intellectual Property; Chapter 18
<http://www.mfat.govt.nz/downloads/trade-agreement/transpacific/TPP-text/18.%20Intellectual%20Property%20Chapter.pdf>)
was leaked beforehand to universal criticism, opprobrium, and derision.
The final version, largely unchanged, amounts to a corporate middle finger
to global humanitarian and social concerns.  It is an unashamed enclosure,
privatization, commodification of the global commons.  The intellectual,
cultural, artistic commons that form the global heritage of the world serve
a crucial role in generating, sustaining, and innovating a world fit to
live in.   The plan of the TPP, in alignment with other FTAs, is for
corporations to increase their control and possession of these commons,
privatizing, enclosing, and monetizing them to the greatest degree
possible.  It’s clear that the internet and content on it will be
increasingly privatized, enclosed, and surveilled.
<https://www.eff.org/issues/tpp> The right to privacy, open communication,
fair use, reporting, comment, news reporting, teaching, research will be
curtailed: the most restrictive interpretations of US Copyright and
Intellectual Property laws would become the global standard.   Research,
whistle-blowing, investigative journalism could also be criminalized.  TPP
also breathes new life into the corporate wish list of defeated or
outrageous zombie legislation, sneaking them in through the back door and
expanding them to the global commons.

*Structural Violence and Environmental Destruction*

The agreement will result in needless, unnecessary death, suffering, and
risk to the poor, the vulnerable, and the sick. Millions will die because
of reduced access to basic life-saving generic medicines, medical
procedures, dismantled public health measures, or because medicines and
medical services will be made unaffordable.  Public Health systems can be
challenged or privatized, Governments will be sued if they push back on
drug prices or reimbursements. Anti-consumer measures are locked in, and
safety, health, food regulations can be gutted, bypassed, or sued into the
ground.  Environmental protections and climate change policies could be
bypassed or sued into obsolescence.  Protections for health care,
consumers’ rights will eventually become a dim, vague memory.  In a brazen
statement of exclusion, the chapter on the environment, does not even
bother to mention the word “Climate Change”.  This obscene gesture to
everyone who cares about the environment, is clearly a high octane boost to
the fossil fuel industry, in case the planet is just not warming fast
enough for you.

*Escalation to War with China*

When more than 95% of our potential customers live outside our borders, we
can’t let countries like China write the rules of the global economy.  We
should make these rules.
— President Barack Obama

In its racist exceptionalism, the TPP is also a declaration of economic
warfare, and not just of corporations against the people: it’s a concerted
plan to challenge and undermine Chinese economic growth
<https://gowans.wordpress.com/2015/10/17/why-the-trans-pacific-partnership-equals-a-u-s-aircraft-carrier/>,
which has been clearly on an ascendant track, doing a big share of pulling
along the world economy.  China, in case anyone is unclear on the
geography, is in the Asia pacific, but is unambiguously excluded from it
(for spurious reasons).

The TPP is a multi-nation economic aircraft carrier (or if you will, a
slave galleon) set up to do battle against China, a neoliberal battering
ram with all the stops pulled out.  Functioning as the economic arm of the
Pacific Pivot, the TPP creates a powerful economic bloc, press-ganging
pacific rim economies to ally against China en masse, to force an eventual
economic blockade, take down, and submission if necessary.    Secretary of
Defense Ash Carter  alludes
<http://www.defense.gov/News/Speeches/Speech-View/Article/606660/remarks-on-the-next-phase-of-the-us-rebalance-to-the-asia-pacific-mccain-instit>
to this: “But TPP… is probably one of the most important parts of the
rebalance [to Asia]… in terms of our rebalance… passing TPP is as important
to me as another aircraft carrier… it would help us promote a global order
that reflects… our interests”. This consists of a three-part strategy: the
Pacific Pivot (with a doctrine of war (AirSea Battle), custom hardware
(interoperable Ballistic Missile Defense systems, X-band radar, littoral
combat ships, aircraft carriers), aggressive military encirclement (a
necklace of up-armored Strategic Bases), combined with multi-lateral
intelligence sharing, mutual defense agreements and war games) is part A,
and the TPP is part B, the economic encirclement.  Lest we forget, in war,
it’s always the little people who suffer and die.  Keep an eye out for the
legal, cultural, and information warfare to escalate, part C.

It’s acceptable to suspend judgment until the NY Times, the Gray Lady
starts purring approval.  Then like maggots appearing on carrion, you know
it’s seriously putrid.  The Gray Lady has been carrying water and running
interference for this monstrosity from its inception.  Keep an eye out for
new feats of intellectual acrobatics and contortions as it tries to justify
and spin the “good news” of the TPP.

Here’s why every person of conscience needs to continue to oppose this.
You fight the good fight, organize, mobilize, pick your battles, support
the right causes, stand in solidarity and accompaniment to the oppressed
and suffering in general.  But every so often, a mega-coup happens that
pulls the entire carpet out from under you, rendering all your local
struggles useless.  It’s as if you spend your whole time trying to prevent
your house from being robbed, by fixing the locks on your windows and
doors, while the thieves put your entire home on a flatbed truck cart the
entire edifice away.  *Citizen’s United* was one such coup.  TPP is another
one, easily one of the most devastating, certainly the most brazen, and it
has the capacity to undo a half century’s worth of modest gains for labor,
environment, peace, safety, public health, equality, justice in a single
fell swoop.  It will seal the deal on the global neoliberal project, end
whatever fragments of democratic sovereignty are left, hammer shut the
coffin on an alternate vision of the future,  and lock in the alienated,
hyper-commodified, hyper-capitalist  corporate nightmare.  With global
warming on steroids.

It hasn’t been ratified yet, but the deal is in the balance.   Oppose it at
all costs.  Your children, and your children’s children will thank you.

K.J. Noh is a long time activist, writer, and teacher. He is a member of
Veterans for Peace and works on global justice issues. He can be reached
at: k.j.noh48 [at] gmail.com. Read other articles by K.J.
<http://dissidentvoice.org/author/kjnoh/>.
This article was posted on Sunday, November 8th, 2015 at 8:51am and is
filed under Aotearoa (New Zealand)
<http://dissidentvoice.org/category/oceania/aotearoanew-zealand/>, China
<http://dissidentvoice.org/category/asia/china/>, Corporate Globalization
<http://dissidentvoice.org/category/corporate-globalization/>, Employment
<http://dissidentvoice.org/category/labor/employmrent/>, Finance
<http://dissidentvoice.org/category/finance/>, Neoliberalism
<http://dissidentvoice.org/category/neoliberalism/>, Poverty
<http://dissidentvoice.org/category/poverty/>, Privacy
<http://dissidentvoice.org/category/privacy/>, Privatization
<http://dissidentvoice.org/category/neoliberalism/privatization/>,
Resistance <http://dissidentvoice.org/category/resistance/>, TPP
<http://dissidentvoice.org/category/economics/tpp/>


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*PP on the TPP *

We 99.99%
make a big tight circle
around the .01%
and PP down upon them
endless golden showers

--ed

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                                    Jove Shove Trove Grove
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