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<DIV dir=ltr><FONT style="FONT-SIZE: 20pt" size=5><B>Trans-Pacific Partnership:
Economic Stalking Horse for Military Predominance</B></FONT><BR><FONT
size=4><STRONG>Taken from "The Militarization of Ligeralism" by Norman
Pollack<BR><BR></STRONG></FONT><A
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/10/the-militarization-of-liberalism/"
target=_blank><FONT
size=4><STRONG>http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/10/the-militarization-of-liberalism/</STRONG></FONT></A><BR><BR><FONT
size=4><STRONG>by NORMAN POLLACK<BR><BR>Trans-Pacific is actually a good deal
worse than one imagines. Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global
Trade Watch, and Ben Beachy, its research director, have written an article in
The Times, "Obama’s Covert Trade Deal," back on June 2, 2013, which, if taken
seriously (apparently it has not been), would or should have stopped it in its
tracks—and exposed the hollowness of Obama’s liberalism, as conventionally
understood. Secrecy fits nicely into the jigsaw puzzle of
authoritarianism, along with surveillance and other measures which violate the
principles of democratic government, and in this case it is Trans-Pacific’s most
prominent feature. Wallach and Beachy pull no punches: "The Obama
administration has often stated its commitment to open government. So why
is it keeping such tight wraps on the contents of the Trans-Pacific Partnership,
the most significant international commercial agreement since the creation of
the World Trade Organization in 1995?" Good question—a "covert trade
deal"?<BR><BR>One’s initial guess as to why, consistent with other precedents
established by Obama, is that in the guise of a trade agreement the US is
attempting to impose conditions on the region, including on non-trade matters as
well, which cover all bases on political-economic hegemony, thereby
accomplishing two things: the projection in detail of constraining practices,
uniformly applied, that conduce to the welfare of American capitalism; and the
projection of power in the form of a tightly woven sphere of influence that,
although not strictly part of the agreement, would have military significance in
the campaign to isolate and contain China. If I might suggest, good
trading partners make good military allies, as in the discussions to create a
trade agreement with EU members currently underway. What emerges with
Trans-Pacific goes beyond the economic factor per se, to what appears as a
relationship of dictated power and dependence, what in franker times we labeled
as imperialism, and although Obama is not often shy about the practice itself
(never admitting its true nature) the reason for secrecy is compelling: the
stench reaches even off the page; secrecy because the agreement’s provisions
cannot stand the light of day.<BR><BR>(Detailed Provisions, Anti-Regulatory,
Benefiting US Capital<BR><BR>The writers state: "The agreement, under
negotiation since 2008, would set new rules for everything from food safety and
financial markets to medicine prices and Internet freedom. It would
include at least 12 of the countries bordering the Pacific and be open for more
to join." Significantly, Congress, which has "exclusive constitutional
authority to set the terms of trade," has been excluded from the trade process,
its members denied "repeated requests…to see the text of the draft agreement" or
even "to attend negotiations as observers," a clamping down of secrecy extended
to "other groups" affected by the rewriting of "broad sections of nontrade
policies," their demands for the public release of the "nearly complete text"
rejected. Even the Bush administration, the writers point out, "hardly a
paragon of transparency, published online the draft text of the last similarly
sweeping agreement, called the Free Trade Area of the Americas in
2001."<BR><BR>Secrecy, however, is highly flexible. One set of rules
applies to Congress and the people, another to mega-business and banking—again
faithfully following the Obama paradigm of selective treatment of the wealthy
and powerful. They note, "There is one exception to this wall of secrecy:
a group of 600 trade ‘advisers,’ dominated by representatives of big businesses,
who enjoy privileged access to draft texts and negotiators." (Italics,
mine) The stench is getting greater, for slipped into a trade agreement
are matters which, for this colossal region (equal to or greater than other
spheres of influence), define rules of conduct the mirror-image of what Obama
has done for, or rather to, salient features of the US political economy.
"This covert approach," they continue, "is a major problem because the agreement
is more than just a trade deal. Only 5 of its 29 chapters cover
traditional trade matters, like tariffs or quotas. The others impose
parameters on nontrade policies." Here I may be overly suspicious, but I
detect the following strategy: Place in the agreement desiderata not yet
achieved in the US, thus forcing changes here–obviously unpopular, that might
not otherwise take place—so as to stay in compliance. They say as much, in
a single sentence: "Existing and future American laws must be altered to conform
with these terms, or trade sanctions can be imposed against American
exports." It is hardly likely that we would draft provisions that would
hurt ourselves.<BR><BR>One area dear to American capital is copyright
protection. In early 2012 there was heated debate over the Stop Online
Piracy Act, which would have penalized "even the most minor and inadvertent
infraction of a company’s copyright," creating an "uproar" which "derailed the
proposal." No longer. The case is instructive of corporate planning
onto a wider plane: "But now, the very corporations behind SOPA are at it again,
hoping to reincarnate its terms within the Trans-Pacific Partnership’s sweeping
proposed copyright provisions." (Italics, mine) If you are temporarily
stalled at home, enlarge the playing field, force others into obedience, and
celebrate with victory at home. It gets worse—although the writers fail to
make any connection whatever, Trans-Pacific makes a mockery of Obama’s health
care plan by the protection it affords to mega-pharmaceuticals in preventing
restrictions on price-maintenance (the industry representatives influencing the
drafting process). Incidentally, we see how the writers cracked the
secrecy walls: "From another leak, we know the pact would also take aim at
policies to control the cost of medicine. Pharmaceutical companies, which
are among those enjoying access to negotiators as ‘advisers,’ have long lobbied
against government efforts to keep the cost of medicine down. Under the
agreement, these companies could challenge such measures by claiming that they
undermined their new rights granted by the deal." (Italics, mine)<BR><BR>As for
outsourcing, they write: "And yet another leak revealed that the deal would
include even more expansive incentives to relocate domestic manufacturing
offshore than were included in Nafta—a deal that drained millions of
manufacturing jobs from the American economy." Take that, liberals and
progressives, into your pipe and smoke it! Yet Obama remains untouchable
in those quarters. Nor, in this itemization, would one want to leave Wall
Street out—for what is an Obama /Democratic program without partiality on that
end, in this case the internationalization of exotic financial instruments, as
if 2008 had never happened? Thus they write: "The agreement would also be
a boon for Wall Street and its campaign to water down regulations put in place
after the 2008 financial crisis. Among other things, it would practically
forbid bans on risky financial products, including the toxic derivatives that
helped cause the crisis in the first place." (Italics, mine)<BR><BR>At some
point, Congress will have to vote, at which time the text would be made
public. "So why," they ask, "keep it a secret?" And their answer,
which bears on Obama’s enlargement of Executive Power, as well as his
deviousness (no disrespect intended!), is this: "Because Mr. Obama wants the
agreement to be given fast-track treatment on Capitol Hill. Under this
extraordinary and rarely used procedure, he could sign the agreement before
Congress voted on it. And Congress’s post-facto vote would be under rules
limiting debate, banning all amendments and forcing a quick vote." Even
Mayor Daley in his heyday would have blushed at such ramrod tactics.
Wallach and Beachy close: "Whatever one thinks about ‘free trade,’ the secrecy
of the Trans-Pacific Partnership process 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." But why be
surprised? When I speak of Obama’s incubatory tyranny I have
examples like this in mind, in and of themselves not definitive, yet that they
can happen puts us on notice of the need to correlate the cases, examine the
underlying interrelatedness, and, above all, recognize even a single one—be it
assassination, surveillance, or deregulation–would not be possible without
summoning the full political-institutional structure of society to bring it
forward.<BR></STRONG></FONT><BR></DIV></DIV></DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>