'Toothless' environment protections in secretive global trade pact TPP leaked all over the web Just days after an Australian government minister declared the Trans-Pacific Partnership “ready to be sealed”, another leak from the Salt Lake City round of talks reveals that the parties can't agree to the environmental chapters of the treaties, even though they're voluntary and largely unenforceable. Whistleblowing website …
30% of Canadians will vote Tory until the day they die. When confronted with the actual policies enacted by the Tory government, however, over half of those individuals regularly decry them.
The other 70% of Canadians are vehemently opposed to the Tory government and it's policies. Opposition to the TPP treaty is strong in and organized here...but since the Tories managed to gerrymander enough ridings to get a majority, they have carte blanche and we're screwed.
Steven Harper and his government do not represent anything close to the majority of Canadians. We are forced to obey because men with guns make us, not because the majority asked for him to lead us.
The USA is supposed to put the interests of it's citizens above that of it's plutocrats. That means things like pushing for strong economic protections, sane copyright laws and trade agreements that promote global harmony.
Trade deals like this need to enhance all party nations so that long-term relations are maintained and that the citizens can derive benefit for generations. They emphatically must not elevate the corporate interest of a small group of plutocrats above the interests of regular citizens or harmonious cooperation. That isn't good for the citizens of the USA...and the citizens are the ones who are supposed to be benefiting from all activities their elected representatives - or the appointed staffs they oversee - engage in.
The TPP does not benefit the citizens of any member nation. It benefits only the plutocrats. Why should the citizens - or governments - of any nation support it?
Trevor,
Many of us are screaming as loud and often as we can. But our elected officials have become a wholly owned subsidiary of big business. High election turnout is 30% of the electorate. That's pathetic.
Most of the citizenry eligible to vote are too ignorant / lazy / stupid to bother.
Of those that vote, too many suck from the corporate propaganda teat to realize how they're being screwed.
It's hard enough to get reasonable people to run for public office, let alone get them elected. Throw in the shafting we took from the Citizens United decision and the corporate ownership of nearly all the media outlets, having your voice heard above the din is nearly impossible.
I regret to say the shining beacon on the hill has gone out for the indefinite future. I sometimes think that the only solution might be for every other reasonable nation in the world to declare war on the U.S.
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"Most of the citizenry eligible to vote are too ignorant / lazy / stupid to bother."
I think you have that barse ackwards.
IIRC Thatcher got in after a 40% turn out and the electoral turn out has been at about that level here ever since. (Excuse me for not being interested enough to know the figures.) What that means is the 60% of British electors knew what to expect from politics and 40% are stupid/optimistic/unamerican.
"And yet nobody is being forced to sign it. Is the USA supposed to put other countries' interests before its own?"
They already do... And they put their leashholders' interests far above the people they are supposed to work for.
And now you know why this sorry excuse for a treaty is such a bad idea.
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Disgusting, but I don't consider this too important, given that the USA has shown a marked tendency towards not honoring international treaties they have previously signed - e.g. ignoring arbitrage-, whenever it suits them.
A rogue nation, indeed.
The USA lost the Vietnamese war and it was all over bar the shouting in a very few short years.
Before WW2 the USA was broke. Just before the war the rich were getting richer as usual then during WW2 they became the richest nation in the world and bought up all the bits that Britain hadn't given to the Russians.
China has only become rich because those earlier rich people decided to use slave labour instead of bolshie natives. Or do you think Amazon would still be hiring the people it does if it were possible to outsource their manual labour?
Trevor:
Some of us have had to change colours a few times over the years.
Sadly Joe never managed to lean the party far enough over the other way and Maureen refused to run against Muleroony, and well, John from Cabot Cove is dead.
Trudeau doesn't have the weight his father carried and far too many Canadians despise the idea of a dynasty (not that what PET did was *all* good, re: deficit budgeting)
The NDP are sadly adrift, since the CAW and most of the teachers unions here are no longer unions but investment houses, and the only leader(s) they've ever had with stamina and integrity are dead.
Honestly the result will likely be another Tory government, hopefully a weak minority government. What worries me most is a solid BQ contingent which is highly likely next time round. That house would not be able to refuse the TPP. The *people* might scream blue bloody murder, but neither the senate nor the house would refuse it.
As a society, all over the planet, we need to yell, and yell loudly, NOW at our media, our politicians and anyone else that will listen about this abomination being built in secret, designed to give the corporate world unfettered access to financial controls, natural resources, governmental leverage, slave labour, *and* the capability to hide all these abuses in a wrapper of outright secrecy and lies.
Dammit, I think I've gone and ruined a perfectly good dinner working myself up to this rant.
Um aren't governments the things that, on behalf of the people, allow companies to exist at all?
If a multinational company doesn't like local laws, they have always been free to take their business elsewhere. Even that can, these days, be the sort of threat that large companies can use to undermine democratic processes for their own political benefit.
Large multinational corporations have become like super governments, rendering political governments impotent. Like the floating party in The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, they drift from country to country, plundering the resources as they go, and leaving nothing but a path of destruction behind them. There's the real war of terror.
And this is just politics. Because we all know that the bests songs cost more than the worst, only they don't. And movies don't all cost the same, because they do.
There is more media than any person could experience in 100 lifetimes, what ever happened to supply and demand?
When copyright is the length of an average working human again, perhaps we will see some sanity. When copyright stays with people, perhaps we will see more sanity.
The reality is the fear of the loss of "theoretical" money, is never likely to produce good policy...not even theoretically...
P.
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