Category Archives: TPP

The TPP–Fast-Tracked & Now Finalized Despite Massive Opposition: What’s Left For Us to Do

Have we all woken to the sad but stark truth of what is happening today in the USA, and in the world…our voices are continually being marginalized, if not just being erased, by the corporatists:

According to Sum of Us: “In spite of millions of us coming together, our representatives have ignored our voices and just finalised text for the disastrous TPP deal.”

Petitions, Slogans

It seems like we’ve been fighting the TPP forever! But here we go again.

Sum of Us offers hope: “Every one of the 12 TPP countries still has to ratify the deal before it goes into force, which means there’s still a great chance for us to stop it.

Please sign their petition here–Say No to the TPP!

From the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

“Now, the deal is finally done and the text still won’t be available for another 30 days.

Well enough’s enough. The time for whitepapers and presentations is past. The USTR has failed us, so now it’s time for the public to rise up and take their message about the TPP’s threats to user rights to Congress, which has the ultimate authority to approve or reject the deal for the United States. To be effective we’ll need to deliver that message in terms that are clear, and in-your-face—literally. So, that’s what we’re planning: to display signs and banners about how the TPP threatens digital rights and freedoms around the world, during demonstrations that are to be held in Washington, DC from November 14 to 18, 2015, while trade ministers are attending an APEC meeting in the Philippines.”

They are running a campaign to find effective slogans for banners via tweets:

“We don’t want to just tell Congress what EFF thinks about the TPP. We specifically want them to know what you think. So, we’re crowdsourcing the production of messages that you’d like us to use on the placards that we take to Washington, DC. You can contribute your messages via Twitter by quoting this tweet. (Not sure how to quote a tweet? Click the Retweet icon under the post, then type your message in the “Add a comment” field, then click the Retweet button.)”

Please visit their site for more information.

Reminder re. TPP

In case you’d forgotten, the TPP is the secret deal negotiated in secret, finalized in secret, viewed by Congress in secret, fast-tracked in June despite all our protests and petitions–and leaked in part by Wikileaks, but with most of the text still being secret. People don’t know exactly what’s in it, and many governments don’t either, apparently–it’s the multinational corporations who are fighting to have their way over cheap labor, monopolies on expensive drugs, patents on everything, suing governments over access to their own natural resources, even at the very local level, so people will no longer have control over their own food, water, or medicines, privatizing water, gagging protesters and forbidding protests, censoring journalists, activists, and whistleblowers, censoring the Internet, and other unbelievable licenses and violations and rollbacks of rights, who were sitting at the negotiating table.

This means elections, people, Constitutions, governments won’t matter–multinational corporations and their own self-reflecting private trade “tribunals” will. A cause for concern for all countries, worldwide, whose governments are caving in to the TPP.  Please see these posts and videos for more reminding information:

Brief video from Wikileaks:

Detailed article linked from Co-Creating Our Future on Planet Earth: RT: What is the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Why You Should Care

Brief video from 2013, from Flush the TPP.org on how corporations like Walmart helped write the TPP:

Brief video from June 2015 from StormCloudsGathering:

Video from June 2015 from AMTV, Christopher Greene:

Don Quijones/Wolf Street: Uruguay Does Unthinkable, Rejects Global Corporatocracy

(Re-posted (in part), with thanks, from Wolf Street, links to full article below.)

September 22, 2015

The historic decision is met by a wall of media silence.

By Don Quijones, Spain & Mexico, editor at WOLF STREET.

Often referred to as the Switzerland of South America, Uruguay is long accustomed to doing things its own way. It was the first nation in Latin America to establish a welfare state. It also has an unusually large middle class for the region and unlike its giant neighbors to the north and west, Brazil and Argentina, is largely free of serious income inequality.

Two years ago, during José Mujica’s presidency, Uruguay became the first nation to legalize marijuana in Latin America, a continent that is being ripped apart by drug trafficking and its associated violence and corruption of state institutions.

Now Uruguay has done something that no other semi-aligned nation on this planet has dared to do: it has rejected the advances of the global corporatocracy.

The Treaty That Must Not Be Named

Earlier this month Uruguay’s government decided to end its participation in the secret negotiations of the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA). After months of intense pressure led by unions and other grassroots movements that culminated in a national general strike on the issue – the first of its kind around the globe – the Uruguayan President Tabare Vazquez bowed to public opinion and left the US-led trade agreement.

Despite – or more likely because of – its symbolic importance, Uruguay’s historic decision has been met by a wall of silence. Beyond the country’s borders, mainstream media has refused to cover the story.

This is hardly a surprise given that the global public is not supposed to even know about TiSA’s existence, despite – or again because of – the fact that it’s arguably the most important of the new generation of global trade agreements. According to WikiLeaks, it “is the largest component of the United States’ strategic ‘trade’ treaty triumvirate,” which also includes the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the TransAtlantic Trade and Investment Pact (TTIP).

TiSA involves more countries than TTIP and TPP combined: The United States and all 28 members of the European Union, Australia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Iceland, Israel, Japan, Liechtenstein, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan and Turkey.

Together, these 52 nations form the charmingly named “Really Good Friends of Services” group, which represents almost 70% of all trade in services worldwide. Until its government’s recent u-turn Uruguay was supposed to be the 53rd Good Friend of Services.

Please visit Wolf Street for the entire article.

Charleston Shooting — Another False Flag?

Updated June 22, 2015: Much like the Boston bombing, apparently the Charleston shooting took place during an Active Shooter Threat Training drill, as noted per a local Law Enforcement schedule–see Dahboo7’s post & videos here: Boom! Charleston Shooting Happened During Federal “Active Shooter” Drill.

The loss of nine precious lives in Charleston — like the loss of thousands of precious lives in the 9/11 Trade Center massacres/demolitions — do they point to something other than what mainstream media points them to being?

We are living in an age of false flags — inside jobs painted to look like they’re emanating from an outside “enemy,” whether a foreign “terrorist” or a “home-grown extremist” or a “lone gunman” — and Extreme Deception, and there is good reason for us to be skeptical, to take a step back, and reassess what we’re seeing.

For those of us paying attention to the steady rollout these days of disturbing events covered by the Mainstream Media–remember, they are selectively oblivious, they absolutely do Not cover All the horrors we are currently experiencing, leaving out such major chunks from current reality such as obvious Chemical Aerosol Assaults raining down on us everyday, Community Harassment of Individuals which hundreds of communities around the US are being conscripted into, obvious street/store/community COINTELPRO activities against activists, and Covert Electronic Assaults of Individuals with EMR and Sonic Neuroweapons, otherwise known as Non-Lethal Weapons, concealed from public oversight by wrongful Secret classifications, and pointing to Covert “Deterrence Operations” against activists as well as Covert Weapons Testing and Training for the US Air Force and DOD–there almost seems to be a script being played out, a script that more and more rolls out the not-s0-New World Order, and brings us closer and closer to full-scale totalitarianism.

These analysts and commentators offer some insights excavating the event and worth looking at:

Charleston Church Shooting: The Larger Covert Op by Jon Rappaport

June 18, 2015 NoMoreFakeNews.com

“Long-term covert ops sometimes disguise themselves by claiming that the hidden cause of a problem is the cure. So it is with psychiatric drugs, like SSRI antidepressants, which push people into committing murder. In the aftermath of these killings, leaders call for expanded psychiatric screening—which will result in further prescription of those very same drugs.” (The Underground, Jon Rappoport)

Police report the suspect in the Charleston church shooting, Dylann Roof, has been captured.

This is the latest in a string of crimes in which black-white conflict has been highlighted, pressed, argued, and used, for the purposes of: fanning flames of racial discord, exercising further gun control, and fatuously claiming that universal psychiatric screening and drugging is an answer.

In this brief article, I focus on black-white conflict. (Please read the rest of the article at Jon Rappoport’s blog.)

Charleston: Do You See What You Are Told To See or What There Is To Be Seen? Who and What is To Be Believed? by Coalition of the Obvious

We did not have long to wait on this latest “event”…

Cue the Absolutely & Profoundly Disingenuous Creatures from a Netherworld:

Photo source -- by National Journalimage by (Olivier Douliery – Pool/Getty Images)

“The shooting prompted Obama to reiterate his position on combating gun violence in America.

“I’ve had to make statements like this too many times,” Obama said. “We don’t have all of the facts, but we do know that once again innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun.”

Ta da!!!

FBI investigating “Thank Goodness!” — “Charleston Police Chief Greg Mullen says the FBI will be involved in the investigation of a shooting at a historic black church that killed nine and is being called a hate crime”.  http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/the-latest-on-charleston-shooting-hate-crime-investigation/ar-AAbL8UE?ocid=UP97DHP

(Please visit the Coalition of the Obvious blog for the rest of the article, complete with photos of several “lone gunmen”.)

Charleston An Unreal Event to Detract from TPP by 108Morris108/The Truth Behind The News

 What You Missed Because of the Church Shooting in South Carolina by Anthony Antonello

Boston Bombing: Naomi Woolf Reveals Fake News/False Flags Naomi Wolf, filmed at the 2014 Free State Project’s Liberty Forum

“All over the world we know the State Department engages in theater and events…with protesters…I believe a law has been passed that now makes it legal to propagandize American citizens…so what this means is… we have entered an era where we need to assess these events to see if they are real or not real, and in fact it is kind of crazy not to.”

The Peace Team/peaceteam.net: Stand Strong Against Fast Track and the TPP

Note and call to send a petition, links below, from The Peace Team at peaceteam.net (makers of Citizen United, the movie):

“Today the so-called Patriot Act as it was expired, proving yet again
that we can have any policy change we want if only you will continue
to speak out. Just one click of a mouse does it whenever we or anyone
else sends out an action alert. The more we speak out, the more
policy change we get.

Of course we knew that the fight to stop the secret corporate power
grab called the Trans Pacific Partnership was not over, and that the
real fight was always going to be in the US House.

Please keep speaking out:

No TPP Action Page: http://www.peaceteam.net/no_tpp.php

And here is the petition text:

At a time when the approval rating of Congress is barely 9%, do
members of the House, who are all up for re-election, really want to
push that number closer to zero, by waving through a secret trade
deal that is in reality mostly not at a trade deal at all?

Enough of the American people now know from leaks that the so-called
Trans Pacific Partnership is primarily about corporations seizing
unprecedented rights and powers, for example the right to sue for
“anticipated lost profits,” without the protections of the US legal
system.

What they are asking you to blindly wave through on a Fast Track
basis is the right for foreign business corporations to trump US
sovereignty and laws to protect us, not to mention the fact that even
as a trade deal it is the worst deal ever.

No more NAFTAs, especially not in such evil secrecy.

—END PETITION TEXT—

Please submit the action page above. And after you do, feel free to
request one of our beautiful 4 color “Expressway To Trade Hell TPP”
bumper stickers. You can have one for no charge, not even shipping,
just by submitting the form on the return from the action page. Or
you can get one directly from this link.

Expressway To Trade Hell TPP bumper stickers:
http://www.peaceteam.net/all_bumper_stickers.php

Of course, if you can make a donation of any amount, this is what
makes it possible for us to send free stickers to anyone who can’t
make a contribution right now.

And as we continue to stand strong against Fast Track and the
dreadful Trans Pacific Partnership, we are putting together a
political theater action to figuratively burn members of the US
Senate in effigy, starting in San Francisco, and intended to travel
from city to city around the country.

Please stay tuned and active.

You may forward this message to any friends who would find it
important.

Contributions to The People’s Email Network or ActBlue are not
tax-deductible for federal income tax purposes.

If you would like to be added to our distribution list, go to
http://www.peaceteam.net/in.htm”

The Pen: Action Page: The Trans Pacific Partnership is Toxic and They Know It

Posting The Pen’s new letter and call to action re. TPP: Please click on the action page link below and sign to send a note to your Congress reps. and local newspaper.

*******************

Dear —-,

We are having an amazing impact on defeating the so-called Trans
Pacific Partnership, but only because tens of thousands of our own
participants, and many others, continue to speak out against it every
chance we get.

And we know we’re having an impact because John Boehner was on TV
Sunday morning literally begging for Hillary Clinton to throw her
support to it. Imagine that, begging for Democrats to help support
this toxic turkey, so fewer Republicans have to suffer the inevitable
blowback. Does this mean he would support Hillary Clinton for
president in return?

If you need to know more about why this thing is so bad, please read
the link in the petition text on the action page itself below about
the ties to multi-national corporations.

So let’s keep submitting and keep the pressure on:

TPP Is Toxic Action Page: http://www.peaceteam.net/tpp_toxic.php

And here is the petition text:

This last weekend the House Majority Leader said this on Meet The
Press about the so-called Trans Pacific Partnership:

“We’ve got the majority here in the House and the Senate, but we
can’t do this by ourselves.”

Since when did a party in total control of Congress not have the
power to pass anything they want?

And the answer is, since someone tried to browbeat members of the
House in particular into passing one of the most repulsive and
deceptive measures ever, to abdicate all meaningful congressional
authority over trade policy, and by top secret agreement to surrender
the interests of the American people to the tender mercies of
multi-national corporations.

This is one toxic hot potato. Drop it. And leave it dropped.

—END PETITION TEXT—

And after you submit the action page, feel free to request one of our
“Expressway To Trade Hell TPP” bumper stickers. We will send you one
for no charge, not even shipping. And you can request it directly
from this page.

All Bumper Stickers: http://www.peaceteam.net/all_bumper_stickers.php

Of course, if you can make a contribution of any amount, this is what
makes it possible for us to send free bumper stickers to anyone who
cannot make a donation right now.

You may forward this message to any friends who would find it
important.

Contributions to The People’s Email Network or ActBlue are not
tax-deductible for federal income tax purposes.

If you would like to be added to our distribution list, go to
http://www.peaceteam.net/in.htm

Or if don’t want to receive our messages, just go to
http://www.peaceteam.net/out.htm

Celebrate Chinese New Year, Malcolm X/Speak Out Against War, the Patriot Act, Endless Spying, the TPP

News & Views

It’s Chinese New Year–either today or on Feb 21–according to various sources–which latter is also Malcolm X’s birthday.

Chris Hedges has an article on Malcolm X and his vision for the end of capitalism, his life, his views on truth and freedom at Black Agenda Report (originally at TruthDig): Malcolm X was Right About America

Adam Curtis has a (few minutes long) short film looking back at 2014, worth revisiting now in February, at the cusp of a New Year, on Non-Linear Warfare: A New System of Political Control, all about “contradictory stories” fed to us so no coherent narrative of protest can form.

Electronic Frontier Fund‘s Year in Review, by Nadia Kayyali and Mark Rumold, all about NSA Spying and about EFF’s fight to bring secrets to light:What We Learned About NSA Spying in 2014…

Here’s a peek into the year ahead through the lens of astrology–wasn’t it the Catholic Church which stripped astrology from astronomy sometime in the Middle Ages (and yet the Pope’s hat has symbols from astrology on it) from Simon Vorster at Wake Up World–and it’s reassuring and rejuvenating–Yes, it’s the Year of the Sheep! 2015 in Astrology: The Year of Manifestation

Happy New Year! Let’s hope this is indeed the year the Sheep rise. Change in the world depends on us. Every action we take makes a ripple in the universe. Let’s make those ripples count…

Act Now to End the Patriot Act, Stop Mass Surveillance, End Spying

This from Defending Dissent, drop in at the link below to send a letter: The USA PATRIOT Act granted the government powerful new spying capabilities that have grown out of control—but Section 215, the provision that the FBI and NSA have been using to collect the phone records of millions of innocent people, expires on June 1.

This is an important opportunity for us to demand reform.

Tell Congress: it’s time to end out-of-control spying. Do not reauthorize Section 215!

Rise Up Against War & EverMore War

A whole coalition of anti-war groups are joining together to hold a No-War intervention in DC this spring. The Soapbox People’s Network has the scoop:

““Spring Rising” is four days of creative resistance; theater, teach-ins; rallies and marches marking the anniversary of the United States’ “shock and awe” attack on Iraq and its invasion and occupation in a completely illegitimate, immoral war.  Together we will use this time to oppose the plans and calls for growing military intervention.

As we send this invitation to you the Congress is calling for more war. The President has just told us a new global “war on terror” may be unlimited in space and time.

  • Are you, like us, stunned and enraged by more war on the world?
  • Did you or your organization join in the protests against police violence and murder, because Black Lives Matter?
  • Are you with the Dreamers working for rights for all people to live without fear?
  • Are you one of the many who have dropped everything to protest the global destruction of the environment because of our dependence on fossil fuels which is also a reason for our wars?
  • Are you agonized over the ongoing U.S. military support for Israel, the recent killing of 2,000 Arab men, women, and children last summer in Gaza?
  • Are you furious about the killing and terrorizing of Muslims in the U.S?

Then, join us! Your participation in Spring Rising is urgently needed now to organize protests, participate in teach-ins and to put your art and performance on mass display. Together we can create the vibrant resistance needed to show that terrorizing the world is not in our interest and “not in our name.”” Click Cindy Sheehan’s site link here for more.

Sign World Beyond Wars wonderful Declaration of Peace here.

Join Peace Action to send a letter to Congress telling the President you don’t want to fund a new war against ISIL or anyone else: Stop Endless War

Speak out against the TPP

Currently, the White House is sending around an email & video lauding the TPP as “progressive” and emblematic of “Trade in the Twenty-First Century” & crucial in efforts to boost small businesses in America which export and trade worldwide. However, Public Citizen informs us otherwise:

“The Obama administration also has used this sales pitch, often on the basis that the majority of U.S. exporters are small and medium enterprises (SMEs). But that fuzzy logic ignores the fact that 99.7 percent of all U.S. firms qualify as SMEs — while only 3 percent of those are exporters.*

This means that even if the TPP actually were to succeed in boosting exports — which similar pacts have not done — it is large corporations that would disproportionately benefit, not small businesses.”

Let’s not forget the TPP is being conducted In Secret, In Secrecy. Attempts are being made to pass laws In Secret. Only 500 corporate representatives from corporations worldwide are in on it. Not America’s small businesses. Not everyday Americans. The broad scope of TPP is known, but the exact rules being made are being made in secret. Why on earth would any of us ask our Congress representatives to vote on something we don’t know anything–or enough–about? That alone should stop us in our tracks.

Once more, several groups are calling on us to call our members of Congress to make sure they know US citizens are not interested in a secret deal which promises big corporations carte blanche both here domestically in the US and worldwide, and threatens to destroy the autonomy of local and state governments, in addition to governments worldwide, send More American jobs abroad, stifle citizen expression, and gag journalists, whistleblowers, and activists, while stealing natural resources and foisting monopolies on us. Check in here at Public Citizen or MoveOn or Electronic Frontier Fund or Friends of the Earth or all of them, to send letters online automatically to your Congressperson, call, or sign a petition. If TPP is fast-tracked, we might as well ask Congress to vacate. Or vacation. Indefinitely.

Public Citizen’s information page on TPP

Electronic Frontier Fund‘s information page on TPP

MoveOn‘s 3-minute video on TPP, which went viral : What Happens if TPP is Fast-Tracked & Passed

Staff article on TPP at The Daily Bell: As TPP Sails Forth, it Drags the West into Uncharted Waters

 

Corporate Media Lies, Internet Censorship, Fast Track TPP, and Imaginary Terrorists in America

Keep Speaking Out to Congress to Save the Internet, post-FCC victory–Join the Fight for the Future

As everyone’s been noting, we’re at a historic high in our tremendous fight to save the Internet. The FCC has acceded to re-classifying the Internet as a Title II service, making it a utility, just like electricity or gas, that you obtain from your telecommunications provider. But Comcast and the other big cable companies have kicked into high gear, hitting on members of Congress now with accelerated lobbying campaigns, trying to bring their Internet Slow Lanes back to the table. Here’s where we step in and contact Congress. We have until February 26–and we here in the US are literally working for the whole world on this. Everyone on the planet will be affected by what transpires next. Please call, email, call, email, and make sure the Internet stays ours and stays free, and doesn’t become the privileged property of the very rich cable owners and their ilk: Click here to visit Fight for the Future, to get a customized link for your zipcode and your Congressfolks.

Stay Aware, Corporate Media Lies are Beginning to Unravel All Over the Place

The latest casualty is Brian Williams, famed NBC News Anchor, caught on-camera recently on XFinity ads touting NBC News as doing its “dead level-best” to bring us the news–while his utter fabrications regarding stories from Iraq and Katrina unravel online. See more on the Iraq debacle here, and more on made-up stories of terrorizing gangs attacking or surrounding him in New Orleans here.

It is no small thing that the credibility of a major news anchor is being openly and freely questioned, by other major news outlets. This follows on German reporter Udo Ulfkotte’s major revelations of All western corporate media being mass-controlled by the CIA and other secret agencies, see his story here. He has a book out–this has to be fascinating reading.  Let’s hope this is the beginning of the End of Western Media Piracy, and that more and more top journalists and journalistic outfits telling lies will be exposed openly–although most of us who read the Real-Media-Today (alternative media that is Not part of the controlled-opposition) know what corporate-media has been doing to us, the mass of Americans and Europeans is yet to catch up. Here’s to More Exposures, More Revelations, More Confessions, and More Awakenings among the so-called “journalists” in Corporate Media, including among its top echelons in such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR, and others.

Stories, Stories Everywhere, Not a Drop to Drink: “The Imaginary Terrorist”

We’re living in a time when rather terrible fiction is freely touted as fact, by Master Fictioneers running our governments, and when the real Facts are hidden, shredded, shrouded, masked, twisted, covered over, tortured, and cremated. So the real truth of what is happening around us everyday is being rabidly hidden. More on this subject will be pursued in these pages under Human Rights–for now, please read about The Imaginary Terrorist from Gordon Duff–All of us whistleblowers, activists, writers, journalists, truthtellers who speak out, who protest, who challenge the lies of mainstream media and expose the hidden truths are being labeled “extremists” and “potential terrorists” in desperate efforts to silence us–We are The Imaginary Terrorist: America’s “Blacklist” Conspiracy of Silence.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership Should Neither Be Fast-Tracked, Nor Passed At All

Petitions: Tell Congress to Stop Obama’s Secret Trade Deals

Congress: Don’t Betray Democracy! Stop TPP Fast Track

Many many close observers inform us what the ruthless TPP will really do: grant Unlimited rights to Very-Large US corporations to sue governments, domestically and worldwide, to prevent them from placing any kind of deterrents on stealing their land, their water, their natural resources, and their labor, and from imposing any kind of product or monopoly in their markets–such as, for instance, GMO crops to supplant indigenous crops, and costly US drugs to supplant native or generic medicines.

In addition, as Food and Water Watch tells us, “Trade deals like the TPP (the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or “NAFTA on steroids“) are known to hurt workers and our environment. Jobs would be sent overseas, more unsafe food would be imported and fracking would be promoted. And most troubling of all? Corporations could sue local governments for putting regulations in place that hurt their profits — and not even within our own court system. Secretive international trade tribunals could dictate whether or not we can ban fracking or label GMOs in our own communities.”

For more on the horrors of this ill-meaning legislation, aimed to benefit the small coterie of billionaires who run the big corporations, and eventually crush governments and peoples into submission worldwide as they try desperately to set up a global, totalitarian government (yes, the still-creeping-about Enwo), please see Thom Hartmann’s article on Truthout and Mike Gaworecki’s article on Alternet. Also see Thom Hartmann’s notes on how the corporate media has completely left out any coverage of TPP.

Then drop in at Fight for the Future or Food & Water Watch to sign a petition, and once more, please call, email, call, email members of Congress. As humans with respect for ourselves and respect for the diversity and sovereignty of all beings in all nations worldwide, let us in the USA Not let this monstrosity of a proposed bill pass, either fast-tracked, or At All.