Now Google backs everyone's favorite trade pact: The TPP Global ad provider Google has come out in favor of the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement. The web giant's general counsel Kent Walker noted in a blog post that the agreement "is not perfect" and decried the lack of transparency that has dogged the process, but argues that it "recognizes the Internet …
Country A owns Country B's data, Country A has a dispute with Country B. Country A to Country B, "Fuck You We Own Your Data, access you hospital records now fuckers", hundreds of thousands of people die in country B due to inability of hospitals to service patient needs, those requirements stored in the cloud in Country A.
Country A also has laws allowing it's agents to legally corrupt data in other countries if it is in the national interest of Country A and that includes Country A's corporations profits, and that is a fact especially when Country A is America and everyone else is Country B.
Seriously, how stupid can people be.
NAFTA resulted in the loss of around 5 million U.S. manufacturing jobs and the TPP will dramatically increase the losses.
40 million more U.S. jobs could be sent offshore over the next two decades if the current trend deindustrializing America continues under TPP, notes Professor Alan Blinder of Princeton University.
In addition to sending jobs offshore, the TPP will significantly decrease the wages of non-college degree workers.
TPP is about the global elite not only owning everything but also reducing humanity to a state of grinding poverty. People on the edge of starvation and homelessness are less concerned with liberty and overthrowing the elite and their minions than merely surviving.
40 million more U.S. jobs could be sent offshore over the next two decades if the current trend deindustrializing America continues under TPP, notes Professor Alan Blinder of Princeton University.
“The TPP’s implications on the poor and working class of the United States are grave and serious. From information gathered thus far it is known that the TPP would drive down wages even further,” writes the Rev. Bruce Wright, President’s Commission on Ending Homelessness.
The corporate trade agreement will create a “potentially dramatic increase in poverty, unemployment, and homelessness due to decreasing wages, further joblessness, and increased health costs.”
"TPP is about the global elite not only owning everything but also reducing humanity to a state of grinding poverty."
And with SpaceX to provide the transport, Bigelow to provide the accommodation, we could be within a decade or two of the "haves" living in luxury while the planet is polluted to hell and back and the "have nots" live in squalor. I've seen the documentary (insert dystopian future of choice, there are plenty of variations)
Well the fact is due to automation there is probably going to be a lot less jobs regardless in the future. Instead of having an honest conversation about it instead as usual we fight over other largely irrelevant stuff and a handful of pigopolists in places like Silicon Valley own companies worth billions with 40 employees.
The Internet has revolutionized how people can give away their information to corporations without really noticing, and the TPP promotes the free gathering of personal information in ways that are unprecedented for a binding international agreement
The TPP allows 'merican businesses to turn people into products both at home and abroad. The more ads we sell abroad, the more higher-paying jobs we can offshore. It's that simple.
The way it has been "negotiated" is an affront to democracy EVERYWHERE and for that reason alone it should be slapped down.
What if it has benefits? Does not matter. Our political leaders and their Machiavellian ministers who negotiated and/or supported this need to be told in no uncertain terms that secrecy is not acceptable. After every round of negotiation the whole document should have been published as "draft" for the world to see so the next round has a democratic input. Nothing is perfect, but as it stands my MP (good or useless) can't go and look at it and bring a copy of bits back to me for discussion. It stinks of corruption.
That's a ridiculously old fashioned attitude and a complete misrepresentation of the political process.
No politicians or Machiavellian ministers negotiated this deal.
It was written by a bunch of corporations and their lobbyists and then given to the politicians to sign if they wanted funding for their re-election campaign and some nice directorships after they retire.
The vast majority of internet users have voted. Mostly by not changing their default search engine, and a few by selecting a different search engine.
I would like to say "Don't blame me, I voted for the other guy", but I suspect the other guy read his copy and didn't even bother to tell us what to think.
I suspect that most users are not fully aware of the implications of TPP for them. Most of this blame should be placed on the politicians/criminals and their toadies in the general media who do not want the plebes to know they are about to royally screwed again so the elites can have it better.
"The vast majority of internet users have voted. Mostly by not changing their default search engine..."
Nooo, most people just go with the default, not realising what it entails. As Microsoft before them with IE, so Google should be forced to alert people that there are alternate search engines on first use of search, provide information on the ramifications of each possibility and allow a choice.
But no. Especially while we have so many people in the tech sphere who are so mired in the past (ie: the browser wars) and still have a chip on their shoulders toward Microsoft that they cannot see what has happened with Google - or choose not to.
"I see Google have read it, but I bet most MPs haven't had access to it."
They wouldn't, TTP is US and to the east, TTIP is US and to the west. Different acronym, different countries, but the same shite. And, no, MPs couldn't be bothered to read something with so many words and so few pictures.
As for our privacy concerns, they all* just voted to to for a UK.STASI and to spy on all we do online and via the post, after opting themselves out of course, why would they bother if US corps had access our private lives too?
A pox on them all. I'm not extreeme, so I wouldn't want a big pox on them, small pox should do.
* Some smaller parties didn't, but ConLabs did.
but I bet most MPs
You are mistaking the Eu version with the Pacific one. The Pacific is now public (so we can see what the Eu one will have in it), while the Eu is still NDA-ed.
1. I would not worry about it too much. With the current poll results, UK is going out of the EU so it will have to negotiate its own agreements with the USA outside the scope of the Eu agreement, so the fact that the MP has not seen it is irrelevant.
2. In the absence of Cameron pushing the Eu agreement it is totally dead in the water with the rest of Europe. That is one of the main (and real) reasons why we had as much as an Obama visit to show support. I am surprised that the liberals and greens on the continent have not figured that out and have not started cheering for BrExit for all its worth just because of that.
3. An outside-of-Eu UK will have to "negotiate" its own agreement with USA and frankly, I would prefer not to even contemplate what it will entail. Any ideas of such nasty things as Sugar Tax, Privacy, Democracy, Rule of Law, etc should be abandoned outright and we might as well disband the house of Parliament - the country will end up being run by Macdonalds and Google marketing departments. According to the UK-specific and "improved" version of said treaty (which the rest of Europe will tell USA to shove it where the sun does not shine). So from that perspective, did your MP see it or not is once again - irrelevant.
We're going to get TTIP'd in the arse whether we are In or Out of the EU. I can't see either Red or Blue managing to keep us away from it, in fact I see less chance of us staying out of TTIP if we leave the EU.
For me sticking in the EU means we're protected (just about) from the worst of the governments follies.
TPP is a bad agreement, but it is hardly the only thing holding back USA companies from selling all over the world. ITAR is far worse.
I'm a Canadian, residing in Canada. ITAR regulations made it difficult for me to buy a 9 DOF (gyroscope, 3D accelerometer, magnetic inclinometer) board. Sure, I can see how that might be used in a cruise missile. Those same regulations also showed themselves when I wanted to buy a digital oscilloscope kit (for Arduino) and an educational kit for measuring the capacitance of a capacitor.
I recently tried to buy some 6/64 inch machine screws that are 9/16 inch long from McMaster-Carr. ITAR makes it impossible for them to sell something this potentially damaging to foreign citizens (read terrorists). They can only sell to companies.
The USA is so busy shooting themselves in the foot over foreign terrorism issues, nobody will buy from them because they are too much of a PITA.
Some years ago I needed some 80-pin versions of the old SCSI mini parallel connector, only sold in the USA as far as I could find. So had to fill out various forms, etc, to get clearance to have them exported to me as clearly such connectors are in big demand by terrorists, government spies and pinko-commie-subversives worldwide.
On arrival I saw they were made in Mexico.
But look at the up-side where ITAR has done wonders for the European space industry.
"Some years ago I needed some 80-pin versions of the old SCSI mini parallel connector, only sold in the USA as far as I could find. So had to fill out various forms, etc, to get clearance to have them exported to me as clearly such connectors are in big demand by terrorists, government spies and pinko-commie-subversives worldwide."
Really? SCA connectors have been widely available since at least 1997, they were the standard connector used to provide hot-plug SCSI capability in servers.
SCSI4me has been selling them in the US since at least 2003 and selling abroad without restriction or requirement to fill in export forms, if you couldn't find a UK seller. Granted, they were less readily available in the UK, but that is possibly due to the fact the SCA drives were connected to a backplane, not a cable. I'd venture it was more 'home' users who wanted to use SCA drives and thus required SCA-68pin adaptors
The "sassy black guy" spiel of the drone-and-nuclear-renewal president is really old now.
Meanwhile: PNAC is baaackk (Well, it never went away, really)
The substance of the document is about what one would expect from an iteration of PNAC. The paper cites a highly revisionist history of post-World War II American policymaking, complete with a celebration of America’s selfless motives for every action. Left out is any mention of overthrowing democratically elected and popular governments for US business, or the subsequent blowback for such actions in Latin America, the Middle East, and elsewhere.
For the neocons and liberal interventionists at the Center for a New American Security, the United States has always acted for the benefit of all.
The paper primarily focuses on the economy and defense budget, and American security interests in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Supporting the Trans-pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) are considered the highest priority, as they will bind the main drivers of the US-led “liberal world order”—the US and Europe—closer together.
It was founded by Bill Kristol, a lifelong neocon, and those who signed its original principles in the late 90s included GW Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. Hardly a rogues gallery of liberals...
The fact that Hillary is involved with them, and Kristol has endorsed Hillary over Trump should tell you all you need to know about how the true power brokers in American politics don't care about republican vs democrat as those parties are two sides to the same coin. They make a big show about places where they differ and make it sound like they are in opposition on everything to distract attention from all the things they agree on that is not in the interest of the American people or the world at large. For all the whining from conservatives about how terrible Obama is, and from liberals about how terrible Bush was you'd be hard pressed to find any difference between US foreign policy under Bush vs under Obama.
In the grand scheme of things, issues like abortion, gay marriage or transgender bathrooms aren't all that important to most of us in the US, and US laws around them don't matter at all to those who live elsewhere, but they receive a lot more attention in the US and non-US media (both "mainstream" and "alternative") than bigger issues like "why should the US maintain so many overseas military bases, and get involved in so many conflicts?" that lead to uncomfortable questions like "is such involvement the real reason why we have to worry about the 'war on terror' in the first place?" After all, Switzerland has never had a terrorist attack on their soil, which puts a lie to stupid arguments like "they hate us for our freedom".
"In the grand scheme of things, issues like abortion, gay marriage or transgender bathrooms aren't all that important to most of us in the US..."
Until they provide the impetus for the worst mass killing in US history, one that FINALLY trumps Bath Township AND used legally-purchased guns (the killer was a lone wolf sleeper).
Decades before gay marriages were legalized gay nightclubs existed, so whether or not those laws were changed the shooter would have still had his "impetus" to murder a bunch of people. He could well have gone off in a non-gay nightclub or a shopping mall, someone willing to kill a bunch of people because they're gay probably doesn't need much of a push before he sees killing people because they're drinking or something else he believes is morally wrong.
At any rate if it could somehow be proven that had the US not legalized gay marriage he would have never killed anyone, I'll bet even the most ardent anti-gay conservatives wouldn't want to see the gay marriage law rolled back as a way to appease people like him.
"At any rate if it could somehow be proven that had the US not legalized gay marriage he would have never killed anyone, I'll bet even the most ardent anti-gay conservatives wouldn't want to see the gay marriage law rolled back as a way to appease people like him."
Point is it's an election year. ANYTHING newsworthy WILL alter the political landscape; it's unavoidable. I'm not using the incident as an example for or against, only as an example of people looking for a way to make a guaranteed statement. Frankly, the only reason we haven't seen a nuke go off in anger is because no one of this level of crazy has managed to get their hands on one...YET.
I know I don't speak for all of my countrymen & women, but, on behalf of those who may agree with me, I'd really like to apologize for the two presumptive candidates. If it were up to me, I'd call a do-over, because neither one has the skills or the temperament to be the leaders of the US.
Yes, I will concede that my country has its problems, and we are working on them, so I ask for your patience and understanding while we try to get our crap together.
For at least two decades, I have been asking for a "none of the above" option on all US ballots for all candidates. If this option gets the most votes, the result would be governed by whatever rule that office has in place for if a candidate is elected but dies before taking office. (Different between states, different at the federal level). For some, the state governor may appoint someone, for some the current officeholder stays while a special election is called, and so on. The Presidency gets complex:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_line_of_succession
But, if this happens enough, maybe the political parties might start listening to the ballot box again instead of the big donors and corporations.
Tired of voting for the lesser of two evils. How about trying to not vote for evil?
If I ever invent a time machine, I'm going to go back to when they were crafting the constitution. I'll tell them to make sure to put in a bit for "None of the Above" to appear on every ballot. If a candidate receives less votes than None of the Above then they are immediately disqualified. If no candidates receive more votes than None of the Above then the process has to start over with new people.
If we don't have a winner after 2 votes then one US citizen is selected at random by fair dice roll and they must serve in the role for at least 1 year while new elections are started.
I think that would at least mitigate some of the issues.
"If we don't have a winner after 2 votes then one US citizen is selected at random by fair dice roll and they must serve in the role for at least 1 year while new elections are started."
Not a good idea. You could get an absolute idiot in the White House who leads us into World War III. There ARE worse things to have in the White House than a corrupt politician.
"And keeping on voting for only the two officially vetted and sanitized candidates from the two entrenched parties will somehow dis-entrench them?!"
The point is it's a no-win situation. The two parties are SO entrenched it would take a disaster of unmitigated proportions (I'm talking the level of one of them triggering World War III) or a candidate with Messianic levels of charisma. The parties feed on each other. Trying to feed a third party simply causes one of the two incumbents to get stronger, they stay in power, stomp out the third party and allow the other incumbent to recover. Look what's happened to EVERY third party candidate to appear since Ross Perot. Not one state and only token present in the absolute tally.
"Look what's happened to EVERY third party candidate to appear since Ross Perot. Not one state and only token present in the absolute tally."
Perhaps not at the national level (yet) but at the state level Jesse Ventura was a third party candidate that actually became governor. He didn't do a bad job and it was soooo refreshing to see an elected official that wouldn't apologize or backtrack every time he stuck his foot in his mouth.
What would happen if every eligible voter in the US that was too disgusted with the whole system to vote would, instead, vote for any third party candidate instead of staying home?
It is interesting to follow if the people of the US have the courage to make the first step in taking power back from the few 100 billionaires ruling the world, who seek to enslave us all by taking away our jobs and drive us into a debt driven economy.
Sure is that from September on, the Wall Street backed artillery will start a continuous propaganda barrage to get Hillary in office.
TPP and TTIP aren't just imperfect, they're the single worst trade deals ever negotiated and will subvert democracy around the world in favor of corporate control of law. They will also abrogate world citizen's rights in favor of corporate overlord rights.
Then consider the fact that the US Senate voted to not even allow itself to debate these treaties. That fact in and of itself is unconstitutional, killing the obligation of the Senate to advise and consent:
"[The President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur..."
- Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the United States Constitution.
*Please* read the TPP and TTIP and understand exactly what these abominations will mean to world citizens. Then please take action to make your opinion known!
https://www.readthetpp.com
http://www.sej.org/publications/watchdog-tipsheet/read-secret-ttip-trade-treaty-here
http://stopthetpp.org
https://stop-ttip.org
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"Then consider the fact that the US Senate voted to not even allow itself to debate these treaties. That fact in and of itself is unconstitutional, killing the obligation of the Senate to advise and consent:"
A lawyer would argue no such obligation exists. If the Senate willingly chooses to abdicate responsibility, that acts as tacit consent by default. There's nothing in Article II that says the Senate MUST directly vote on every single ratification and confirmation.
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