Category Archives: news

The Last Gasp of American Democracy

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Chris Hedges’ regular columns for Truthdig.com are consistently informative and provocative, but his latest piece offers a particularly critical analysis of the current political moment in the United States. In the following excerpt he ruminates on a number of recent actions of our modern corporate totalitarian state:

Via Truthdig:

The object of efficient totalitarian states, as George Orwell understood, is to create a climate in which people do not think of rebelling, a climate in which government killing and torture are used against only a handful of unmanageable renegades. The totalitarian state achieves this control, Arendt wrote, by systematically crushing human spontaneity, and by extension human freedom. It ceaselessly peddles fear to keep a population traumatized and immobilized. It turns the courts, along with legislative bodies, into mechanisms to legalize the crimes of state.

The corporate state, in our case, has used the law to quietly abolish the Fourth and Fifth amendments of the Constitution, which were established to protect us from unwarranted intrusion by the government into our private lives. The loss of judicial and political representation and protection, part of the corporate coup d’état, means that we have no voice and no legal protection from the abuses of power. The recent ruling supporting the National Security Agency’s spying, handed down by U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III, is part of a very long and shameful list of judicial decisions that have repeatedly sacrificed our most cherished constitutional rights on the altar of national security since the attacks of 9/11. The courts and legislative bodies of the corporate state now routinely invert our most basic rights to justify corporate pillage and repression. They declare that massive and secret campaign donations—a form of legalized bribery—are protected speech under the First Amendment. They define corporate lobbying—under which corporations lavish funds on elected officials and write our legislation—as the people’s right to petition the government. And we can, according to new laws and legislation, be tortured or assassinated or locked up indefinitely by the military, be denied due process and be spied upon without warrants. Obsequious courtiers posing as journalists dutifully sanctify state power and amplify its falsehoods—MSNBC does this as slavishly as Fox News—while also filling our heads with the inanity of celebrity gossip and trivia. Our culture wars, which allow politicians and pundits to hyperventilate over nonsubstantive issues, mask a political system that has ceased to function. History, art, philosophy, intellectual inquiry, our past social and individual struggles for justice, the very world of ideas and culture, along with an understanding of what it means to live and participate in a functioning democracy, are thrust into black holes of forgetfulness.

The political philosopher Sheldon Wolin, in his essential book “Democracy Incorporated,” calls our system of corporate governance “inverted totalitarianism,” which represents “the political coming of age of corporate power and the political demobilization of the citizenry.” It differs from classical forms of totalitarianism, which revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader; it finds its expression in the anonymity of the corporate state. The corporate forces behind inverted totalitarianism do not, as classical totalitarian movements do, replace decaying structures with new structures. They instead purport to honor electoral politics, freedom of expression and the press, the right to privacy and the guarantees of law. But they so corrupt and manipulate electoral politics, the courts, the press and the essential levers of power as to make genuine democratic participation by the masses impossible. The U.S. Constitution has not been rewritten, but steadily emasculated through radical judicial and legislative interpretation. We have been left with a fictitious shell of democracy and a totalitarian core. And the anchor of this corporate totalitarianism is the unchecked power of our systems of internal security.

Our corporate totalitarian rulers deceive themselves as often as they deceive the public. Politics, for them, is little more than public relations. Lies are told not to achieve any discernable goal of public policy, but to protect the image of the state and its rulers. These lies have become a grotesque form of patriotism. The state’s ability through comprehensive surveillance to prevent outside inquiry into the exercise of power engenders a terrifying intellectual and moral sclerosis within the ruling elite. Absurd notions such as implanting “democracy” in Baghdad by force in order to spread it across the region or the idea that we can terrorize radical Islam across the Middle East into submission are no longer checked by reality, experience or factually based debate. Data and facts that do not fit into the whimsical theories of our political elites, generals and intelligence chiefs are ignored and hidden from public view. The ability of the citizenry to take self-corrective measures is effectively stymied. And in the end, as in all totalitarian systems, the citizens become the victims of government folly, monstrous lies, rampant corruption and state terror.

Read the full article here: http://www.truthdig.com/report/page2/the_last_gasp_of_american_democracy_20140105

People’s Lawyer Lynne Stewart Released From Prison

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While most of us were celebrating New Year’s Eve last Tuesday, former activist lawyer Lynne Stewart and her family were celebrating her freedom. On December 31, she was granted a compassionate release from a prison in Fort Worth, Texas by a federal judge and the following day she was back home in Brooklyn.

In 2005 Lynne Stewart was found guilty of helping Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman (the client she was defending at the time) communicate with supporters. She was sentenced to 28 months in prison and later resentenced for 10 years. Prior to her conviction Stewart was an attorney who represented many economically disadvantaged and anti-establishment defendants such as members of the Weather Underground and Black Panthers.

In 2005, Stewart was also diagnosed with breast cancer and due to her sentencing, crucial and potentially life-saving surgery was delayed for 18 months. By the time she received treatment, her cancer reached Stage Four and had metastasized to the point that her operating physician commented that her condition was the worst he had seen. By December 2013 she was also diagnosed with anemia, high blood pressure, asthma and diabetes, and was likely to have only 18 months left to live according to her doctor.

Despite the fact that Lynne Stewart never should have served such a sentence for trumped up charges designed to hype the pointless “War on Terror” in the first place, it’s fortunate that such a courageous person deserving of respect won’t die alone in prison. Her release is a victory for her family, friends, and countless supporters who fought tirelessly for her cause, including Justice for Lynne Stewart, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the National Lawyers Guild, independent news outlets including Building Bridges Radio, Law and Disorder Radio, and Black Agenda Report, and public figures such as Desmond Tutu, William Pepper, Mark Lane, and Dick Gregory. In support of Stewart’s release, Gregory had this to say:

“The reason for the prosecution and persecution of Lynne Stewart is evident to us all. It was designed to intimidate the entire legal community so that few would dare to defend political clients whom the State demonizes and none would provide a vigorous defense. It also was designed to narrow the meaning of our cherished first amendment right to free speech, which the people of this country struggled to have added to the Constitution as the Bill of Rights.”

News Video Roundup

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12/11 A short but informative primer on the TPP:

12/11 Abby Martin critiques a New York Magazine article distorting and dismissing CIA drug smuggling operations:

12/12 Retired Marine General Michael Lehnert on why Guantanamo is a mistake and should be shut down:

12/12 Activist pranksters hijack a Shell Oil greenwashing event in Berlin (click “CC” icon for subtitles):

12/13 Joy Camp selling RFID chips in the style of a pharmaceutical commercial:

12/13 James Corbett on how to nullify the NSA and other tyrannical government agencies:

12/14 We Are Change interviews the Florida cop arrested for refusing to remove a Guy Fawkes mask:

Sandy Hook One Year After

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By James F. Tracy

Originally published at the Memory Hole

As the nation approaches the first anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, mainstream media are predictably excluding from their tragedy porn any substantive analysis of the idiosyncratic, misleading, and in some cases flagrantly propagandistic reportage of the event that might call the official story into question.

As with a majority of scandals and coverups over the past several decades where powerful interests are implicated, American journalism has become more and more complicit if not actively involved in delivering dubious information that establishes a dominant narrative, while thereafter failing to vigorously interrogate and amend faulty coverage that leads to vast public misconceptions.

The assassination of JFK, the falsely-reported Tonkin Gulf incident that sparked the costly Vietnam War, and the similarly questionable events of 9/11 that have together brought the US to the present national and geopolitical impasse all come to mind. One is left to ponder how the behavior of a wholly government-controlled media system would differ from our corporate-run consciousness industry that routinely and shamelessly showboats its First Amendment protections.

The consequences of such a communication breakdown are vast, with countless lives and entire nations having been undermined and destroyed. Moreover, the “first drafts of history” become plagued by myth and distortion that eventually cohere as collective memory, thus robbing a people of their self-determination, nullifying their humanity, and ensuring that the cycle repeats interminably.

Those rationally dissenting from the official record and who occupy positions to alter public opinion are usually written off by establishment-controlled media outlets as “conspiracy theorists,” “wackos,” and so on. If such individuals cannot be neutralized through defamation or blackmail, and if they possess information or occupy positions where they are capable of posing a serious and immediate threat to official fictions and thus the power structure itself, they are prone to becoming oddly “suicidal,” (see, for example, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here), or are simply killed outright (e.g. here, here, here, here, here, here, and here and here).

What else won’t we see in the corporate media’s series of heart-tugging memorials devoted to the anniversary of Sandy Hook? The two most recent and obvious indications that the event itself is at the very least a coverup include, first, the wholly unreported story of the Obama administration’s $2.5 million payout (read: bribe) to state and local law enforcement agencies directly involved in responding to the incident, and second, what is by almost any measure the entirely illegal destruction of pertinent evidence in the demolition of the crime scene itself.

Empowered by the internet as their primary means of communication, a broad array of independent researchers have conduced an impromptu “truth commission” that together calls the Sandy Hook narrative presented by corporate news media into serious question. For those with eyes to see and the ability to think critically they have also shamed the mainstream journalists directly involved in (mis)representing the event to the American public.

Yet without a genuinely independent investigation of the incident apart from the oversight and influence of the [Governor Dannel] Malloy and Obama administrations, the broader public will likely never know what actually took place on December 14, 2012 in Newtown Connecticut. As has too often been the case throughout the last half century, the prospects are high that yet another “big lie” has again taken root in the ever-malleable and somnambulent public mind.

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Origin of the Wal-Mart Workers’ Movement

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walmart black friday strike

Wal-Mart’s unfair labor policies have been a concern of workers’ rights activists for decades but they managed to avoid a retail strike until last year. On October 4th 2012, 60 Wal-Mart employees struck in Los Angeles followed by strikes at 28 stores in 12 states five days later. Shortly after on October 10th, pressure was increased when more than 200 workers protested at Wal-Mart’s global headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, as executives met for its annual financial analyst meeting. More than 400 Wal-Mart strikers, mostly coordinated by Organization United For Respect at Wal-Mart (OUR Wal-mart) with support from the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, walked out on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving and traditionally Wal-Mart’s most profitable (and chaotic) day of the year.

Wal-Mart’s intimidation tactics have long suppressed employees’ attempts to organize but previous incidents reflecting growing collective outrage and urgency served as catalyst to make the wave of strikes inevitable. On June 4th 2012, eight Mexican guest workers at Wal-Mart supplier CJ’s Seafood went on strike and filed a complaint with the Labor Department and the Equal Opportunity Labor Commission. Plant managers had forced them to work 24 hour shifts with no overtime, locked employees inside the plant, threatened them with beatings and threatened violence against their families in Mexico. As a result of the strike, Wal-Mart was pressured into suspending CJ’s Seafood as a supplier.

In early September of 2012, around 30 temp workers at a warehouse storing goods for Wal-Mart went on strike without union backing. Conditions of the freight containers they worked in were becoming dangerously hot in the Summer. In addition, the underpaid workers had no access to clean water, were forced to use malfunctioning equipment, denied work breaks, and threatened by supervisors. The following week another 30 employees at a Wal-Mart distribution center in northeastern Illinois walked out after being retaliated against by supervisors for delivering a list of grievances to management. Their petition shared many of the same concerns listed by the strikers in California: dangerous working conditions, unsafe or insufficient equipment, lack of living wages, no overtime pay, benefits and job security, irregular schedules, work speed-ups and wage theft.

While exploitation and unjust treatment of workers are not unique to Wal-Mart and companies they subcontract to, the wild growth of the Wal-Mart empire can be largely attributed to their business model. Besides maintaining strict anti-union policies, by keeping tight control over their supply chain they force costs and responsibilities onto suppliers, squeezing their margins. Predictably, this results in the lowest paid laborers getting hit the hardest while the highest paid CEOs make obscenely inflated profits. According to Federal Reserve data analyzed by Sylvia Allegretto and Josn Bivens, between 2007 and 2010, while the average American family’s wealth decreased 38.8%, wealth of Wal-Mart heirs rose 22% to nearly $90 billion, equivalent to the wealth of 41.5 percent of American families combined. An article for the Progressive Change Campaign Committee by Zaid Jilani highlighted the fact that Wal-Mart CEO Mike Duke received compensation worth $18.1 million in 2011 while the average sales associate at the company was paid $8.81 an hour according to independent market research group IBIS World. Thus, Duke earned 1,167 times as much as his company’s average worker (average CEO-to-worker compensation ratio was 209.4-to-1 in 2011). A 2008 SweatFree Communities report brought to light horrendous working conditions at a Wal-Mart supplier in Bangladesh where sweatshop factory workers were forced to work up to 19-hour shifts, frequently subjected to verbal and physical abuse and paid as little as $20 a month.

Societal harm caused by Wal-Mart is hardly limited to poverty and sub-poverty wage employees, subcontractors, and their families. In 2010 Public Advocate for the City of New York Bill de Blasio and Hunter College Center for Community Planning and Development released “Wal-Mart’s Economic Footprint”, a comprehensive review of over fifty studies on Wal-Mart’s economic impact across the country. Among their findings:
-For every two low wage jobs Wal-Mart creates, three local jobs are eliminated.
-Wal-Mart stores have a strongly negative impact on a community’s existing retailers.
-Large chain stores such as Wal-Mart send most of their revenues out of communities.
-Wal-Mart has thousands of employees who qualify for Medicaid and other publicly subsidized care.
-Wal-Mart likely avoided paying $245 million in taxes 2008 by paying rent to itself and then deducting that rent from its taxable income.
-Wal-Mart has admitted a failure to pay $2.95 billion in taxes for fiscal year 2009.
-Wal-Mart’s average annual pay of $20,774 is below the Federal Poverty Level for a family of four.

Because Wal-Mart is now the largest food seller in the US, it has an outsized impact on our food system influencing which foods are made available, market prices of food and methods used by food producers. Continuing Wal-Mart’s trend of prioritizing profits over people, last year the company made a deal with Monsanto to sell unlabeled GM corn. This decision was made despite protests of 463,000 signatories of a petition from Food and Water Watch urging Wal-Mart not to carry the potentially harmful product.

The National Labor Relations Board recently decided that it will prosecute Wal-Mart for labor rights violations for firing and retaliating against striking workers and those who have been outspoken about working conditions at Wal-Mart. This case shows that actions over the past year and a half have had a significant impact. Nearly a year after the Tazreen factory fire in Bangladesh that killed at least 117 people, Wal-Mart has refused to contribute to a compensation program for survivors and families (55% of the factory’s production was for Wal-Mart contractors). Wal-Mart has also been in the media spotlight for promoting a holiday food drive for its own employees, many of whom are paid under $9 an hour.

To keep the pressure on Wal-Mart, many workers will be walking off the job again for this year’s Black Friday. Learn more about this year’s action and/or participate by visiting the ActionNetwork.org site.

Sources:

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/10/10/walmart_workers_in_12_states_stage#transcript

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/17/warehouse-workers-strike-illinois_n_1891499.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/oct/18/walmart-supply-chain-agencies-accused-wage-theft

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/07/17/534591/walmart-heirs-wealth-combined/

http://boldprogressives.org/why-they-strike-wal-marts-ceo-earns-1167-times-as-much-as-an-average-worker-at-the-company/

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwH0nSyYMDxtNzZlYTBkN2UtNDQyMS00MzhkLTlkZTctMGQ4NjQ5NGNlZTRj/preview?hl=en

http://advocate.nyc.gov/files/Walmart.pdf

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/08/04-0

http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/pressreleases/national-community-labor-and-food-leaders-explain-why-walmart-cant-fix-new-york-citys-food-system/

Judging from footage such as this compilation video of various Black Friday sales last year at Wal-Mart and other stores, many employees may also want to skip work that day for personal safety reasons:

TV is Dying, and Why That’s a Good Thing

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Though television viewership has been in the decline for the past few years, latest statistics compiled in a recent piece by Jim Edwards for Business Insider indicate the trend is accelerating. The article explains how a number of factors including changing technologies, consumer habits, poor business decisions, and an economic slump have contributed to television’s descent. Factors that seems to be skimmed over is lack of quality content and changing tastes, though it does mention that viewership of professional baseball and basketball have been dropping (could it be more people are tired of watching overpaid “bread and circuses” participants?).

I’ve never paid for cable not only because there’s plenty of better alternatives, but because I dislike corporate news and commercials. From what I’ve seen on cable while traveling, the only news without blatant U.S. government/corporate bias were independent news programs on public access, RT, Press TV and a few other foreign news outlets (and those don’t seem to be available in many areas). Though I realize I’m in the minority, I’d like to believe that at least a small subset of those cutting cable cords are doing so because of increased awareness of corporate media lies.

While dwindling viewership is distressing news for many corporate interests, it’s a promising development for independent news, alternative media and those in support of cognitive diversity. Even if many people abandoning cable are following cable programing online, there’s still a greater chance to be exposed to information from sources other than U.S. government/corporations on the internet and social media (regardless of government/corporate efforts to track what people view and say online).

Update 11/27: CNN and MSNBC lose almost half their viewers in one year!

Some of the major findings and statistical charts from Jim Edward’s TV Is Dying, And Here Are The Stats That Prove It:

The TV business is having its worst year ever.

All the major TV providers lost a collective 113,000 subscribers in Q3 2013. That doesn’t sound like a huge deal — but it includes internet subscribers, too.

In all, about 5 million people ended their cable and broadband subs between the beginning of 2010 and the end of this year.

People are unplugging.

Time Warner Cable, for instance, lost 306,000 TV subscribers in Q3, and 24,000 broadband web subscribers, too.

And Tom Rutledge, CEO of Charter Communications, told Wall Street analysts he was “surprised” that 1.3 million of his 5.5 million customers don’t want TV — just broadband internet. “Our broadband-only growth has been greater than I thought it would be,” he said.

Cable TV ratings are sinking.

Cable TV ratings are in an historic slump. Note that the “growth” line, as charted by Citi analysts Jason B. Bazinet and Joshua P. Carlson, is persistently below zero.

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Fewer people are watching TV.

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Even ratings for some major TV events are in decline.

People just don’t watch the World Series like they used to. Recently, viewer decline is led by young people, according to Business Insider’s Sports Page:

World Series TV Ratings

It’s the same with basketball.

Maybe people prefer the NBA to the MLB? Turns out that today’s big stars don’t grab TV eyeballs the way they used to either.

NBA Finals TV Ratings

For the first time ever, the number of cable TV subscribers at major providers is about to dip below 40 million.

Cable TV subscribers ISI Group

Cable and broadband companies are increasingly unable to retain customers.

This chart (below) is the most important chart in this set: It shows the number of net subscriber additions across all types of customers — cable TV, broadband internet and landline phone.

The cable and broadband subscriber business is seasonal. The net number of people leaving or adding services changes with the seasons, because people like to move house in the fall.

It used to be that up to 500,000 new subscriptions would be added across all companies in any given quarter. But now, cable and internet companies are lucky if they get any new subscribers at all. Increasingly, the industry loses subscribers rather than gaining them, according to this data from One Touch Intelligence:

cable tv subscribers

For the first time ever, less than half of subscribers at the major broadband companies now subscribe to cable TV.

What’s happening is that people are giving up on cable TV as a standalone product, and the market is shifting in favor of telco companies like AT&T and Verizon who offer TV as a package with high-speed internet access, according to media equity analysts at ISI Group. (Direct Broadcast Satellite appears to be remaining steady, in part because its customers often live in more rural areas and have fewer alternatives.)

cable tv subscribers

Here is how individual TV providers are affected.

It’s not an across-the-board collapse. But this is what you would expect to see during a technological sea-change: The weaker players are crumbling. The stronger players are picking up some of the pieces … but how long can they also resist the tide?

Cable tv company net adds subscribers

Fewer households actually have TV.

These charts, from Citi Research, show that the total “Nielsen TV Universe” — the number of people who watch TV — is declining. Note that the number of U.S. households is still growing, but growth in the number of households with cable TV is declining.

tv ratings nielsen households

Fewer households have TV because they are watching video on mobile devices instead.

Here’s the big picture: People are spending more of their time on mobile, and less of their time on TV:

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Mobile video is booming.

Even though iPhone and Android phones still struggle to show video seamlessly, the amount of video seen on mobile devices is going through the roof. About 40% of all YouTube traffic comes from mobile.

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Tablets are stealing prime time, the period we used to devote to TV.

In the media industry, iPads and other tablets are sometimes called “vampire” media — they come out at night.

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Ad revenue increases are masking the macro decline of TV.

The collapse of TV is having a counter-intuitive effect on TV ad sales: prices are going up, even though the number of commercials is going down.

The reason? It’s still really, really difficult to gather a large, mass audience in any kind of media, mobile or otherwise. The Super Bowl — on TV — is the only media property than can reach more than 100 million people in a three-hour stretch. That scarcity of large audiences makes TV’s dwindling-but-still-big audience increasingly valuable.

tv audience ratings

The TV business may actually be addicted to the very thing that is killing it.

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Even though cable TV has had its worst year ever, cable TV revenues are still rising because companies are charging the dwindling number of customers more in subscription fees. According to analysts Craig Moffett and Michael Nathanson, those higher prices are “part of the problem” that pushes out poor subscribers — losing the TV business even more eyeballs:

“Of course, the fact that pay-TV revenue is still rising smartly is part of the problem … We have always argued that cord-cutting is an economic phenomenon, not a technological one. … Pay-TV revenue growth reflects rapid pay-TV pricing growth and that is precisely the problem. Rapidly rising prices are squeezing lower-income consumers out of the ecosystem.”

The market does not care that the TV audience is declining.

Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt said in his last-ever conference call that the cable business has been ‘in denial.’

People who are unplugging from both cable TV and broadband internet are likely going to free wifi.

So if fewer people are watching cable TV and fewer people are paying for Internet service, does that mean that we just don’t care about watching our favorite shows anymore?

Not necessarily.

Free wifi — at work, in coffee shops, and on campuses — is making it easier for consumers to get the shows, movies and videos they want without subscribing to any kind of cable or broadband service

Fifty-seven cities in the U.S., including Los Angeles, offer free wifi. Facebook and Cisco have joined to offer free wifi access to customers in any business who check in to Facebook. Facebook’s original free wifi test included just 25 stores in the Bay Area. The company has now expanded it to 1,000.

For some people, there is just no need for a cable or pipe to deliver the internet or TV to their residence specifically, as long as they are within range of a free wifi hotspot.

Read the full article here: http://www.businessinsider.com/cord-cutters-and-the-death-of-tv-2013-11

European Television’s Double Standards

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Lately I’ve been enjoying the program “Double Standards” on the Press TV YouTube channel. It’s a London-based news and satire show hosted by Afshin Rattansi. While it may not be as consistently funny and polished as “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report”, it is on occasion more fearless in its choice of targets and strength of its critiques, as shown in this clip from a recent program on bankers and government lackeys:

Their interviews are also usually more politically substantial, such as this clip from last year featuring Patrick Henningsen of 21st Century Wire discussing the European Commission and UK’s Ofcom regulator’s decision to ban Press TV from European satellite and cable broadcasting:

TPP: NAFTA on Steroids

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by Stephen Lendman

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a trade deal from hell. It’s a stealth corporate coup d’etat.

It’s a giveaway to banksters. It’s a global neoliberal ripoff. It’s a business empowering Trojan horse. It’s a freedom and ecosystem destroying nightmare.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) calls it “a secretive, multi-national trade agreement that threatens to extend restrictive intellectual property (IP) laws across the globe and rewrite international rules on its enforcement.”

More on TPP below. New York Times editors support it. Two decades ago, they endorsed NAFTA.

 

On January 1, 1994, its destructive life began. It’s anti-labor, anti-environment, anti-consumer and anti-democratic.

Corporate giants love it. Why not? They wrote it. Hundreds of pages of one-size-fits-all rules benefit them.

They override domestic laws. A race to the bottom followed. NAFTA was a disastrous experiment. In November 1993, New York editors headlined “The ‘Great Debate’ Over NAFTA,” saying:

“The laboriously constructed agreement to phase out trade barriers among the US, Mexico and Canada, which this page has strongly supported, is likely to have a positive, though small, impact on US living standards and provide a modest boost to the Mexican economy.”

“Some American jobs would be lost to cheaper Mexican labor, other jobs would be gained because American exports would increase as Mexico’s high tariffs gradually disappeared.”

“Economics aside, Nafta’s defeat would suggest that the US had abandoned its historical commitment to free trade and would thus discourage other Latin and South American countries thathave moved toward more market-oriented economies in the expectation of freer world trade.”So-called “free trade” is one-sided. It isn’t fair. NAFTA proponents promised tens of thousands of newly created US jobs.

Ordinary famers would export their way to wealth. Mexican living standards would rise. Economic opportunities would reduce regional immigration to America.

NAFTA’s promises never materialized. Reality proved polar opposite hype. A decade later, about a million US jobs were lost.

America’s Mexican trade deficit alone cost around 700,000 jobs by 2010.

Official government data show nearly five million US manufacturing disappeared since 1994.

NAFTA alone wasn’t responsible. It reflected broken promises, lost futures, and other trade deals from hell to follow. TPP stands out. It’s NAFTA on steroids.

Since 2008, multiple negotiating rounds were held. They continue secretly. Twelve nations are involved.

They include America, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. Others are invited to join.

At issue is agreeing on unrestricted trade in goods, services, rules of origin, trade remedies, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, technical barriers, government procurement and competition policies, and intellectual property (IP).

It’s about eliminating fundamental freedoms. It’s circumventing sovereign independent rights. Corporate power brokers want unchallenged control.

They want global rules and standards rewritten. They want supranational powers. They want them overriding national sovereignty. They want investor rights prioritized over public ones.

They already rule the world. Imagine giving them more power. Imagine no way to stop them.

Imagine a duplicitous president. Obama’s in lockstep with their wish list. He intends giving them everything they want.

Public Citizen is independent. It’s our voice. Its work entails “ensur(ing) that all citizens are represented in the halls of power.”

Its Global Trade Watch (GTW) monitors TPP developments. It calls it “a stealthy policy being pressed by corporate America. (It’s) a dream of the 1%.” It’ll:

• “offshore millions of American jobs,

• free the banksters from oversight,

• ban Buy America policies needed to create green (and many other) jobs (as well as) rebuild out economy,

• decrease access to medicine,

• flood the US with unsafe food and products,

• and empower corporations to attack our environment and health safeguards.”

Hyped benefits are fake. Reality is polar opposite what corporate shysters claim. Everything accruing from TPP benefits them. It does so by undermining what matters most to ordinary people.

Lori Wallach heads GTW. Ben Beachy is research director. Last June, they headlined their New York Times op-ed “Obama’s Covert Trade Deal.”

He’s committed to open government, he claims. His policies reflect otherwise. He’s negotiating TPP secretly.

It’s “the most significant international commercial agreement since the” World Trade Organization’s 1995 creation, said Wallach and Beachy.

Congress has exclusive “terms of trade” authority. Obama systematically refuses repeated congressional requests to release the entire draft agreement being negotiated.

He “denied requests from members to attend (sessions) as observers.” He “revers(ed) past practice” snubbing them.

He “rejected demands by outside groups” to release the draft text. George Bush never went that far.

Obama’s “wall of secrecy” had one exception. About “600 trade ‘advisors,’ dominated by representatives of big business,” got access to what Congress was denied.

TPP overrides American laws. It requires changing them. Otherwise trade sanctions on US exports can be imposed.

Wall Street loves TPP. It prohibits banning risky financial products. It lets banksters operate any way they want without oversight.

Congress has final say. Both houses will vote on TPP. Ahead of doing so, they’ll have access to its full text.

Why later? Why not now? Why not earlier? Why not without enough time for discussion and public debate?

Members won’t get enough time to examine TPP carefully. Maintaining secrecy as long as possible prevents public debate.

Obama wants TPP fast-tracked. He wants it approved by yearend. Until March, Ron Kirk was Obama’s trade representative.

He was remarkably candid. He said revealing TPP’s text would raise enormous opposition. Doing so might make adopting it impossible.

According to Wallach and Beachy:

“Whatever one thinks about ‘free trade,’ (TPP secrecy) represents a huge assault on the principles and practice of democratic governance.”

“That is untenable in the age of transparency, especially coming from an administration that is otherwise so quick to trumpet its commitment to open government.”

On October 30, a newly formed Friends of TPP caucus was formed. Four House co-chairman head it. They include Reps. David Reichert (R. WA), Charles Boustany (R. LA), Ron Kind (D. WI) and Gregory Meeks (D. NY).

They sound like earlier NAFTA supporters. They claim TPP is important for US jobs, exports and economic growth. They lied saying so.

Wallach commented separately. TPP is hugely hugely destructive, she said. It’s more than about trade. It’s a “corporate Trojan horse.” It has 29 chapters. Only five relate to trade.

The others “either handcuff our domestic governments, limit food safety, environmental standards, financial regulation, energy and climate policy, or establish new powers for corporations.”

They promote offshoring jobs to low-wage countries. They ban Buy America. Corporations can do whatever they please. Instead of investing domestically, they can use “our tax dollars” to operate abroad.

They can exploit national resources freely. They’ll have “rights for min(ed) (commodities), oil, gas” and others “without approval.”

TPP includes all sorts of “worrisome issues relating to Internet freedom.”

It provides a back door to earlier failed legislation. It resurrects SOPA, PIPA, ACTA and CISPA provisions. It tramples on fundamental freedoms and national sovereignty.

“Think about all the things that would be really hard to get into effect as a corporation in public, a lot of them rejected here and in the other 11 countries, and that is what’s bundled in to the TPP,” said Wallach.

“And every country would be required to change its laws domestically to meet these rules.”

“The binding provision is each country shall ensure the conformity of domestic laws, regulations and procedures.”

Negotiations are secret. Nothing is discussed publicly. Details leaked out. TPP includes hugely unpopular policies. It forces them on member countries.

It overrides domestic laws protecting people and ecosystems. It’s predatory capitalism at its worst writ large. Obama fully supports it. Lawmakers hadn’t seen it until last year.

They got access to a single chapter. Examining it is severely restricted. Their office is denied a copy. They alone can read it. Their staff is denied permission.

They can’t take detailed notes. They can’t publicly discuss what’s in it. Technical language makes it hard to understand what they read.

Congressional approval is likely. Lobby pressure is intense. “Everything is bought and sold,” said Wallach. “Honor is no exception.”

The reason there’s no deal so far “is because a lot of other countries are standing up to the worst of US corporate demands,” Wallach explained.

For how long remains to be seen. If TPP is adopted, public interest no longer will matter. The worst of all possible worlds will replace it. Corporate rights will supersede human ones. A global race to the bottom will intensify.

Signatory countries will be legally bound to support loss of personal freedoms. Sovereign laws won’t protect against poisoned food, water and air.

Ecosystems will be destroyed. Millions more jobs will shift from developed to under or less developed nations.

Corporate power will grow more exponentially. Fundamental human and civil rights may erode altogether. Not according to Times editors.

On November 5, they headlined “A Pacific Trade Deal.”

A dozen nations want a deal by yearend, they said. They want it to “help all of our economies and strengthen relations between the United States and several important Asian allies.”

It bears repeating. TPP is a trade deal from hell. It’s a stealth corporate coup d’etat. It’s a freedom and ecosystem destroying nightmare. Times editors didn’t explain.

They lied to readers. They betrayed them. They repeated their 1993 duplicity. Millions affected understand best.

An October 8 White House press release lied. It called TPP “a comprehensive, next-generation model for addressing both new and traditional trade and investment issues, supporting the creation and retention of jobs and promoting economic development in our countries.”

“The deepest and broadest possible liberalization of trade and investment will ensure the greatest benefits for countries’ large and small manufacturers, service providers, farmers, and ranchers, as well as workers, innovators, investors, and consumers.”

Times editors endorsed what they haven’t read. TPP provisions remain secret. Leaked information alone is known.

Times editors willingly accept Obama misinformation as fact. Twenty years ago, they got NAFTA wrong. Here they go again.

They’re mindless about secret negotiations. Public concerns don’t matter. Corporate interests alone count.

Subverting national sovereignty is OK. So is empowering transnational giants without oversight. They’ll be able sue countries for potentially undermining future profits.

Times editors support the worst of corporate excess. Doing so shows which side they’re on.

Fundamental freedoms aren’t important. Corporate rights drive The Times’ agenda. Its editors explained nothing about fast-track authority.

Max Baucus (D. MT) chairs the Senate Finance Committee. He supports fast-tracking. Doing so hands congressional authority to Obama.

Proper hearings are restricted. Debate is limited. Amendments can’t be introduced. The Senate can’t filibuster. Congress can only vote up or down.

It can happen virtually out of sight and mind. It can happen with scant media coverage. It can happen with none at all. It can become law with practically no public awareness.

Imagine corporate America getting coup d’etat authority with hardly anyone knowing what happened. Imagine the consequences if it does. Imagine today’s America becoming worse than ever.

Times editors stressed how Obama wants TPP to be “an example for the rest of the world to follow.”

Imagine one more than ever unfit to live in. Imagine a president promising change to believe in promoting it.

Imagine Times editors endorsing what demands condemnation. Imagine not explaining what readers most need to know.

Imagine substituting misinformation for truth and full disclosure. Imagine all the news they call fit to print not fit to read.

A Final Comment

On November 13, Public Citizen headlined “Leaked Documents Reveal Obama Administration Push for Internet Freedom Limits, Terms That Raise Drug Prices in Closed-Door Trade Talks.”

“US Demands in Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Text, Published Today by WikiLeaks, Contradict Obama Policy and Public Opinion at Home and Abroad.”

TPP’s leaked text reveals Obama demands limiting Internet freedom. He wants restricted access to lifesaving medicines.

He wants all TPP signatory countries bound the the same deplorable rules.

He lied claiming TPP reduces health care costs. It has nothing to do with advancing online freedom as he promised. It’s polar opposite on both counts.

According to Public Citizen:

“It is clear from the text obtained by WikiLeaks that the US government is isolated and has lost this debate.”

“Our partners don’t want to trade away their people’s health. Americans don’t want these measures either.”

Obama’s in the pocket of Big Pharma. He’s a Wall Street tool. He represents other corporate interests. He spurns popular ones. He lies claiming otherwise. He repeatedly avoids truth and full disclosure.

He lied about Obamacare. It’s an abomination. It’s a scam. It’s a scheme to enrich insurers and other healthcare giants.

TPP is a global scam. It’s an assault on fundamental freedoms.

Reports indicate around half the House members strongly oppose it. Others lean that way. According to Lori Wallach:

“This could be the end of TPP.”

“All these other countries are like, ‘Wait, you have no trade authority and nothing you’ve promised us means anything. Why would we give you our best deal?’ Why would you be making concessions to the emperor who has no clothes?”

It bears repeating. TPP is a trade bill from hell. It’s a stealth corporate coup d’ etat. Killing it is essential.

The alternative is losing fundamental freedoms. It’s destroying national sovereignty. It’s making healthcare less affordable. It’s undermining what ordinary people value most.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago.

He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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