TTIP

France Threatened to Abandon TTIP Corporate Trade Negotiations

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ttipKatherine Frisk – France does not want to play ball. They do not want to join an undemocratic, corporate fascist world where to quote Kennedy:

“It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed.”

In early October Matthias Fekl said:

Europe has offered many compromises, in all areas, and has received no serious offers from the Americans in return. Neither for access to their public markets, nor for access to their agricultural and food markets, which remain closed…

…If nothing changes, that will show that there is no willingness to ensure a mutually beneficial negotiation process,” said Fekl. “France is examining all its options, including abandoning the negotiations all together.

This is dangerous talk. France threatening to pull out of the TTIP places them in the cross hairs of Wall Street and Washington. That is if the main perpetrators are actually IN those locations, or in some other undisclosed location where the authors of this diabolical plot and the main beneficiaries are living in secrecy. Continue reading →

“Sentence First, Verdict Afterwards”: The Alice In Wonderland World Of Fast-tracked Secret Trade Agreements

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`Let the jury consider their verdict,’ the King said, for about the twentieth time that day.
`No, no!’ said the Queen. `Sentence first–verdict afterwards.’
`Stuff and nonsense!’ said Alice loudly. `The idea of having the sentence first!’
`Hold your tongue!’ said the Queen, turning purple.
`I won’t!’ said Alice.
`Off with her head!’ the Queen shouted at the top of her voice. — Lewis Carroll, “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”

tradeEllen Brown – Fast-track authority is being sought in the Senate this week for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), along with the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) and any other such trade agreements coming down the pike in the next six years. The terms of the TPP and the TiSA are so secret that drafts of the negotiations are to remain classified for four years or five years, respectively, after the deals have been passed into law. How can laws be enforced against people and governments who are not allowed to know what was negotiated?

The TPP, TiSA and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (or TTIP, which covers Europe) will collectively encompass three-fourths of the world’s GDP; and they ultimately seek to encompass nearly 90 percent of GDP. Despite this enormous global impact, fast-track authority would allow the President to sign the deals before their terms have been made public, and send implementing legislation to Congress that cannot be amended or filibustered and is not subject to the constitutional requirement of a two-thirds treaty vote.

While the deals are being negotiated, lawmakers can see their terms only under the strictest secrecy, and they can be subjected to criminal prosecution for revealing those terms. What we know of them comes only through WikiLeaks. The agreements are being treated as if they were a matter of grave national security, yet they are not about troop movements or military strategy. Something else is obviously going on.

The bizarre, unconstitutional, blatantly illegal nature of this enforced secrecy was highlighted in a May 15th article by Jon Rappoport, titled “What Law Says the Text of the TPP Must Remain Secret?” He wrote:

It seems like a case of mass hypnosis. . . . Continue reading →

Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTP) Betrayal – Part II

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BATR  November 27 2013

The other leg to the Trans-Pacific Partnership is the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. In Part I scrutiny of the TPP proposal indicates that standards of monopoly amalgamation far exceeded efforts to advance actual competitive trade. From the White House Fact Sheet, the aims of the TTIP are:

• Further open EU markets, increasing the $458 billion in goods and private services the United States exported in 2012 to the EU, our largest export market.

• Strengthen rules-based investment to grow the world’s largest investment relationship. The United States and the EU already maintain a total of nearly $3.7 trillion in investment in each other’s economies (as of 2011).

• Eliminate all tariffs on trade.

• Tackle costly “behind the border” non-tariff barriers that impede the flow of goods, including agricultural goods.

• Obtain improved market access on trade in services.

• Significantly reduce the cost of differences in regulations and standards by promoting greater compatibility, transparency, and cooperation, while maintaining our high levels of health, safety, and environmental protection.

• Develop rules, principles, and new modes of cooperation on issues of global concern, including intellectual property and market-based disciplines addressing state-owned enterprises and discriminatory localization barriers to trade.

• Promote the global competitiveness of small- and medium-sized enterprises.

Opponents of TTIP echo the same loss of national sovereignty, similar to the reservations with TPP. The IPS-Inter Press Service reports on the concerns and consequences.

Continue reading →