Yes. Anyone who has read even a few of its clauses realizes it is not about free trade - in fact it is about the opposite: seeing that the current status of power is fixed, so that all the current mega-corporations maintain their hierarchical power status and no new innovations or entrepreneurs are allowed to rock the boat - forever.
It is also about making sure that no locality - whether it be a town, state, nation, continent, or global movement - ever has the right to pass laws regarding its clean water, clean air, pollution, ethical labor laws, or even ethical beliefs (even when these arise from the beliefs of virtually the entire population of a country and underlie its culture and religion, for instance Malaysia's laws trying to regulate or reduce the open import of alcohol, or meat that is proscribed or has not met the standards the rest of the country is expected to pass).
Americans who defer to the "free trade" label should not be fooled. Treaties of this type are not meant to make things fair for anyone but the mega-interests that control much of what happens in the world now, and who want to be sure they can continue to control at least as much in future. They don't ever want to see their grasp on resources and power diminish. Their worst nightmare, it seems, is for the majority of those living in that space, or any locality, to have any say in what its land, forests, minerals, agricultural potential, energy wealth, or even investment potential may be - whether that be in increasing or prohibiting development.
They will affect our most-cherished freedoms. If these treaties continue to make headway, we will no longer have a say as to whether the destruction of our communities' air, land, and water are things we're willing to live with. We will have no choice. We will not be able to prevent extractive industries from fracking our land, selling our groundwater, or polluting our natural capital since to do so would be "taking" from them profits they had expected to earn under the new laws.
And in the new globalized legal world they've created, they will win - and already have.
It is not enough to try to create pockets of local resistance to the larger economic-legal infrastructure that has been solidifying around us. Creating alternatives and local refuges where this system does not prevail are key, but they will not be able to survive in a larger system dedicated to their demise.
Civic society will have to fight this onslaught both locally and globally - even at the same time that it is attempting to create alternative models for future societies. Thankfully, this is being explored widely - globally, and in depth - across many disciplines: economics, ecology, political economy, permaculture, engineering, appropriate technology, sustainability, agroforestry, and many more.
Do what we can, where we can. We live in interesting times.
Marcy Wheeler (blog: Emptywheel) has covered this extensively and provided numerous official and blog sources debunking this false assertion by the NSA, in fact proving that only a single case of the 54 was due to unique intelligence provided through NSA spying, and that single case involved a Somali citizen sending money to repel a (US-backed) Ethiopian invasion force. SO, clearly, the massive collection and trawling through millions of innocent people's lives warranted that result.
That, in fact, is what the evidence so far supports. Given that the Guardian continues to methodically analyze and publish (in redacted form) materials Snowden shared with them, if Putin's government (or the Chinese government, whom the right-wing press also project as having forcibly taken the data) had access to everything Snowden had - which, importantly, included information Snowden did not intend to publish but kept as a safety measure - then we would by now see at least some evidence of this, not excluding making it public and crowing about it.
Instead, this has not been the case. If high-level/high stakes discussions among the three governments had been taking place we would not have witnessed the embarrassing one-way demands the Obama administration tried to force on Putin, after he had expressly announced (publicly, from which there was no backing down), that Russia did not have an extradition treaty with the U.S. and that it did not intend to extradite Snowden, and that in fact it was the U.S. government's revocation of Snowden's visa that stranded him in Russia to begin with. The extreme U.S. embarrassment came when Eric Holder felt compelled to write to the Russian government explaining that the U.S. did not intend to torture Snowden or bring charges that would result in his execution (already-existing Espionage Act charges notwithstanding). This is not the type of public dialogue that would occur if there were a high-stakes, mutually informed discourse taking place.
Yes - that is exactly what is happening, and how convenient when we don't have to officially do it ourselves. And we are sharing this information - in both directions - not just for all the things we designate as counter-terrorism, but - not to waste any intel - any other kind of 'crime', even if it's not violent, or against our country; even if it's just someone using marijuana or protesting against corporate interests.
Yes. Anyone who has read even a few of its clauses realizes it is not about free trade - in fact it is about the opposite: seeing that the current status of power is fixed, so that all the current mega-corporations maintain their hierarchical power status and no new innovations or entrepreneurs are allowed to rock the boat - forever.
It is also about making sure that no locality - whether it be a town, state, nation, continent, or global movement - ever has the right to pass laws regarding its clean water, clean air, pollution, ethical labor laws, or even ethical beliefs (even when these arise from the beliefs of virtually the entire population of a country and underlie its culture and religion, for instance Malaysia's laws trying to regulate or reduce the open import of alcohol, or meat that is proscribed or has not met the standards the rest of the country is expected to pass).
Americans who defer to the "free trade" label should not be fooled. Treaties of this type are not meant to make things fair for anyone but the mega-interests that control much of what happens in the world now, and who want to be sure they can continue to control at least as much in future. They don't ever want to see their grasp on resources and power diminish. Their worst nightmare, it seems, is for the majority of those living in that space, or any locality, to have any say in what its land, forests, minerals, agricultural potential, energy wealth, or even investment potential may be - whether that be in increasing or prohibiting development.
They will affect our most-cherished freedoms. If these treaties continue to make headway, we will no longer have a say as to whether the destruction of our communities' air, land, and water are things we're willing to live with. We will have no choice. We will not be able to prevent extractive industries from fracking our land, selling our groundwater, or polluting our natural capital since to do so would be "taking" from them profits they had expected to earn under the new laws.
And in the new globalized legal world they've created, they will win - and already have.
It is not enough to try to create pockets of local resistance to the larger economic-legal infrastructure that has been solidifying around us. Creating alternatives and local refuges where this system does not prevail are key, but they will not be able to survive in a larger system dedicated to their demise.
Civic society will have to fight this onslaught both locally and globally - even at the same time that it is attempting to create alternative models for future societies. Thankfully, this is being explored widely - globally, and in depth - across many disciplines: economics, ecology, political economy, permaculture, engineering, appropriate technology, sustainability, agroforestry, and many more.
Do what we can, where we can. We live in interesting times.
Marcy Wheeler (blog: Emptywheel) has covered this extensively and provided numerous official and blog sources debunking this false assertion by the NSA, in fact proving that only a single case of the 54 was due to unique intelligence provided through NSA spying, and that single case involved a Somali citizen sending money to repel a (US-backed) Ethiopian invasion force. SO, clearly, the massive collection and trawling through millions of innocent people's lives warranted that result.
That, in fact, is what the evidence so far supports. Given that the Guardian continues to methodically analyze and publish (in redacted form) materials Snowden shared with them, if Putin's government (or the Chinese government, whom the right-wing press also project as having forcibly taken the data) had access to everything Snowden had - which, importantly, included information Snowden did not intend to publish but kept as a safety measure - then we would by now see at least some evidence of this, not excluding making it public and crowing about it.
Instead, this has not been the case. If high-level/high stakes discussions among the three governments had been taking place we would not have witnessed the embarrassing one-way demands the Obama administration tried to force on Putin, after he had expressly announced (publicly, from which there was no backing down), that Russia did not have an extradition treaty with the U.S. and that it did not intend to extradite Snowden, and that in fact it was the U.S. government's revocation of Snowden's visa that stranded him in Russia to begin with. The extreme U.S. embarrassment came when Eric Holder felt compelled to write to the Russian government explaining that the U.S. did not intend to torture Snowden or bring charges that would result in his execution (already-existing Espionage Act charges notwithstanding). This is not the type of public dialogue that would occur if there were a high-stakes, mutually informed discourse taking place.
Yes - that is exactly what is happening, and how convenient when we don't have to officially do it ourselves. And we are sharing this information - in both directions - not just for all the things we designate as counter-terrorism, but - not to waste any intel - any other kind of 'crime', even if it's not violent, or against our country; even if it's just someone using marijuana or protesting against corporate interests.
Thank you for this article. There are too few pointing out the obvious and keeping the revelations we've learned front and center.