{"id":197804,"date":"2015-11-06T14:58:04","date_gmt":"2015-11-06T14:58:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=197804"},"modified":"2015-11-07T14:09:40","modified_gmt":"2015-11-07T14:09:40","slug":"tpp-ignores-global-warming-allows-murder-of-labor-union-organizers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/tpp-ignores-global-warming-allows-murder-of-labor-union-organizers\/","title":{"rendered":"TPP Ignores Global Warming & Allows Murder of Labor Union Organizers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse<\/span><\/p>\n

U.S. President Barack Obama\u2019s capstone to his Presidency, his proposed megalithic international \u2018trade\u2019 treaties, are finally coming into their home-stretch, with the Pacific deal finally being made public on Thursday November 5th.<\/span><\/p>\n

The final Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) proposed treaty<\/a><\/span> would leave each signatory nation liable to be sued by any international corporation that objects to any new regulation, or increase in regulation, regarding climate change, otherwise known as global warming. In no terminology is that phenomenon even so much as just mentioned in the\u00a0\u201cEnvironment\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0chapter. Regarding labor issues, including slavery, the\u00a0\u201cLabour\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0chapter of the TPP contains merely platitudes. (Obama allowed Malaysia into the compact despite its notoriously poor record of non-enforcement of its ban on slavery<\/span><\/a>, because he wants the U.S. to control the Strait of Malacca in order to impede China\u2019s economic and military expansion; it\u2019s part of Obama\u2019s anti-China policy<\/span><\/a>. Almost everything that he does has different motives than the ones his rhetoric claims.) Throughout, the treaty would place international corporations in ever-increasing control over all regulations regarding workers\u2019 rights, the environment, product safety, and consumer protection. But the environmental and labor sections are particularly blatant insults to the public \u2013 a craven homage to the top stockholders in international corporations. The world\u2019s richest 80 people own the same amount of wealth as the world\u2019s bottom 50%<\/span><\/a>; and Obama represents those and other super-rich and their friends and servants in the lobbying and other associated industries. But he also represents the even richer people who aren\u2019t even on that list, such as King Salman of Saudi Arabia, the world\u2019s richest person<\/span><\/a>. It\u2019s people such as that who will be the real beneficiaries of Obama\u2019s \u2018trade\u2019 treaties. The public will be harmed<\/span><\/a>, enormously, wherever<\/span><\/a> these treaties<\/span><\/a> become law.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The full meaning of the terms that are set forth in the TPP agreement won\u2019t be publicly known for at least four years<\/span><\/a>, but the explicit terms that were made public on November 5th, and that will be presented to the 12 participating nations for signing, are entirely consistent with what had been expected on the basis of wikileaks and other earlier published information.<\/span><\/p>\n

The 12 participating nations are: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, United States, and Vietnam. Three countries were excluded by U.S. President Obama, because the U.S. doesn\u2019t yet control them and they are instead viewed as being not allied with the main axis of U.S. international power: U.S., Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and Israel. Those three outright-excluded countries are Russia, China, and India. (India, of course, has hostile relations with Pakistan, which is Sunni and therefore part of the Saudi-Qatar-Turkey portion of the U.S. international core, basically the Sunni portion of the core. By contrast, Russia and China have been determinedly independent of the U.S., and are therefore treated by President Obama as being hostile nations: he wants instead to isolate them, to choke off their access to markets, as much as possible. This same motivation also factored largely in his coup to take control of Ukraine<\/span><\/a>, through which Russia\u2019s gas passes on its way into the EU, the world\u2019s largest gas-market.)<\/span><\/p>\n

6 nations that Obama had invited into the TPP were ultimately unwilling to accept Obama\u2019s terms and so were excluded when the final text was published: Colombia, Philippines, Thailand, Taiwan, South Korea, and Indonesia.<\/span><\/p>\n

The phrases \u201cglobal warming\u201d and \u201cclimate change\u201d don\u2019t appear anywhere in the entire TPP document, nor does \u201cclimate\u201d nor \u201cwarming\u201d \u2013 it\u2019s an area that\u2019s entirely left to international corporations in each one of the separate participating nations to assault as much as they wish in order to gain competitive advantage against all of the other corporations that operate in the given nation: i.e., something for each corporation to sacrifice in order to be able to lower the given company’s costs. That raises its profit-margin. This also means that if any international corporation claims to be subjected in any participating nation, to global-warming regulation or enforcement which poses a barrier or impediment to that corporation\u2019s profits, then that corporation may sue that given nation, and fines might be assessed against that nation (i.e., against its taxpayers) for such regulation or enforcement. National publics are no longer sovereign.<\/span><\/p>\n

The \u201cLabour\u201d chapter is a string of platitudes, such as, \u201cArticle 19.7: Corporate Social Responsibility: Each Party shall endeavor to encourage enterprises to voluntarily adopt corporate social responsibility initiatives on labour issues that have been endorsed or supported by that Party.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

President Obama\u2019s Trade Representative, his longtime personal friend\u00a0Michael Froman,<\/span><\/a>\u00a0organized and largely wrote Obama’s proposed trade treaties: TPP for the Pacific, and TTIP and TISA for the Atlantic. Froman told the AFL-CIO and U.S. Senators that when countries such as Colombia systematically murder labor-union organizers, it\u2019s no violation of workers\u2019 rights \u2013 nothing that\u2019s of any concern to the U.S. regarding this country’s international trade policies or the enforcement of them. On 22 April 2015, Huffington Post, one of the few U.S. news media to report honestly on these treaties, bannered\u00a0“AFL-CIO’s Trumka:\u00a0USTR Told Us Murder Isn’t A Violation,\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and Michael McAuliff reported that, “Defenders of the\u00a0White House push for sweeping trade deals argue they include tough\u00a0enforcement of labor standards. But a top union leader scoffed at such\u00a0claims Tuesday, revealing that [Obama] administration officials have said privately\u00a0that they don\u2019t consider even the killings of labor organizers to be\u00a0violations of those pacts.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In other words: This is, and will be, the low level of the playing-field that U.S. workers will be competing against in TPP etc., just as it is already, in the far-smaller existing NAFTA (which Hillary Clinton had helped to pass in Congress during the early 1990s). (Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama, all campaigned for the Presidency by attacking Republicans for pushing such \u2018trade\u2019 deals. Their actions when they gain power, contradict their words. America and virtually the entire world has become rule of a suckered<\/span><\/a> public, by perhaps as many as a thousand psychopathic aristocrats who own the international corporations and \u2018news\u2019 media, and who regularly do business with each other though they wall themselves off from the public. Typically, at their level, it makes no real difference which country their passport is from.) “Trumka said that\u00a0even after the Obama administration crafted an agreement to tighten labor\u00a0protections four years ago, some 105 labor organizers have been killed,\u00a0and more than\u00a01,300 have been threatened with death.\u201d The Obama Administration is ignoring the tightened regulations that it itself had managed to get nominally implemented on paper. “Pressed for\u00a0details about Trumka\u2019s assertion that murder doesn\u2019t count as a\u00a0violation of labor rules, Thea Lee, the AFL-CIO deputy chief of staff,\u00a0told HuffPost that USTR officials said\u00a0in at least two meetings where she\u00a0was present that killing and brutalizing organizers would not be\u00a0considered interfering with labor rights under the terms of the trade\u00a0measures.\u201d Furthermore: \u201c’We documented\u00a0five or six murders of Guatemalan trade unionists that the government had failed\u00a0to effectively investigate or prosecute,’ Lee said. ‘The USTR told us that\u00a0the\u00a0murders of trade unionists or violence against trade unionists was not\u00a0a violation of the labor chapter.\u2019\u201d That U.S. Trade Representative, Michael Froman, is the same person Obama has negotiating with foreign governments, and with international corporations, both Obama’s TPP, and his TTIP & TISA.<\/span><\/p>\n

The most important chapter in the TPP treaty is\u00a0\u201cDispute Settlement,\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0which sets forth the means by which corporations will sue countries for alleged violations of their stockholders \u2018rights\u2019 to extract profits from operations of those corporations in the signatory countries. The underlying assumption here is that the rights of international stockholders take precedence over the rights (even over the sovereignty<\/i> rights) of the citizens of any participating country.<\/span><\/p>\n

Instead of these suits being judged according to any nation\u2019s laws, they are allowed to be addressed only by means of private arbitration \u201cPanels.\u201d The Dispute Settlement chapter contains “Article 28.9: Composition of Panels.\u201d Section #1 there is simply: \u201cThe panel shall comprise three members.\u201d Each of the two Parties will appoint a member; one for the suing corporation, and the other for the sued nation; and both of those members will then jointly select a third member \u201cfrom the roster established pursuant to Article 28.10.3\u201d; and this third member will automatically \u201cserve as chair.\u201d Article 28.10.3 says that anyone who possesses \u201cexpertise or experience in law, international trade, other matters covered by this Agreement, or the resolution of disputes arising under international trade agreements\u201d may be selected for the roster, so long as the individual meets vague criteria such as that they \u201cbe independent of, and not be affiliated with or take instructions from, any Party.\u201d No penalty is laid out for anyone on the roster who lies about any of that. Basically, anyone may become a person on the roster, even non-lawyers may, and even corrupt individuals may, especially because there are no penalties for anyone on the roster, none at all is stated.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then, \u201cArticle 28.19,” section 8: “If a monetary assessment is to be paid to the complaining\u00a0Party, then it shall be paid in\u00a0U.S. currency, or in an equivalent\u00a0amount of the currency of the responding Party or in another\u00a0currency agreed to by the disputing Parties.\u201d There is no appeals-process. If a nation gets fined and yet believes that something was wrong with the panel\u2019s decision, there is no recourse. No matter how much a particular decision might happen to have been arrived at in contradiction of that nation\u2019s laws and courts and legal precedents, the panels\u2019 decisions aren\u2019t appealable in any national legal system. Whatever precedents might become established from these panels\u2019 subsequent record of decisions will constitute no part of any nation\u2019s legal system, but instead create an entirely new forming body of case-law in an evolving international government which consists of international corporations and their panelists, and of whatever other panelists are acceptable to those corporate panelists. Voters have no representation, they\u2019re merely sued. Stockholders have representation, they do the suing, of the various nations\u2019 taxpayers, for \u2018violating\u2019 the \u2018rights\u2019 of stockholders.<\/span><\/p>\n

The roster of authorized panelists available to be chosen by any corporation\u2019s panelists in conjunction with by any nation\u2019s panelists, is\u00a0customarily composed of individuals who move back and forth between government and private-sector roles, through a \u201crevolving door,\u201d so that on both ends of that, the ultimate control is with the owners of the controlling blocs of stock in various international corporations.<\/span><\/a>\u00a0This is the newly evolving world government. It will not block any nation from legislating protections of workers, or of consumers, or of the environment; it will simply hold a power to extract from any participating nation\u2019s taxpayers fines for \u2018violating\u2019 the \u2018rights\u2019 of stockholders in international corporations. Citizens will increasingly be held under the axe, and the top stockholders in international corporations will be holding it. This isn\u2019t the type of world government that was anticipated by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Albert Einstein, the founders of the U.N., and by the other early (pre-1954) proponents of world government. But, since 1954, the plans for this anti-democratic form of emerging world government were laid; and, now, those plans are the ones that are being placed into effect.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thus, on 26 October 2015, the United Nations Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order, the international legal expert Alfred de Zayas, headlined,\u00a0“UN\u00a0expert calls for abolition of Investor-State dispute settlement\u00a0arbitrations.\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0That\u2019s the system, otherwise called \u201cISDS,” which already exists in a few much smaller international-trade treaties, and which is now being introduced on the largest scale ever in TPP and in Obama\u2019s other proposed treaties. The U.N. press release, calling for its \u201cabolition\u201d or explicit outlawing, said:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“In\u00a0his fourth report to the UN General Assembly, Mr. de Zayas focuses on\u00a0the adverse human rights impacts of free trade and investment agreements\u00a0and calls for the abolition of Investor-State dispute settlement\u00a0mechanism (ISDS) that accompanies most of these agreements.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOver the past twenty-five years bilateral international treaties and\u00a0free trade agreements with investor-state-dispute-settlement have\u00a0adversely impacted the international order and undermined fundamental\u00a0principles of the UN, State sovereignty, democracy and the rule of law.\u00a0It prompts moral vertigo in the unbiased observer,\u201d he noted.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFar from contributing to human rights and development, ISDS has\u00a0compromised the State\u2019s regulatory functions and resulted in growing\u00a0inequality among States and within them,\u201d the expert stated.”<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Earlier, on 5 May 2015, I headlined,\u00a0“UN Lawyer Calls TTP & TTIP \u2018a dystopian\u00a0future in which corporations and not democratically elected\u00a0governments\u00a0call the shots\u2019.\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0I close now by repeating the opening of that report:<\/span><\/p>\n

The Obama-proposed international-trade deals, if passed into law, will lead to <\/i>“a dystopian future in which corporations and not democratically elected\u00a0governments call the shots,\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/a> says Alfred De Zayas, the UN\u2019s Special Rapporteur on Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

These two mammoth trade-pacts, one (TTIP) for Atlantic nations, and the other (TTP) for Pacific nations excluding China (since Obama is against China), would transfer regulations of corporations to corporations themselves, and away from democratically elected governments. Regulation of working conditions and of the environment, as well as of product-safety including toxic foods and poisonous air and other consumer issues, would be placed into the hands of panels whose members will be appointed by large international corporations. Their decisions will remove the power of democratically elected governments to control these things. \u201cRed tape\u201d that\u2019s imposed by elected national governments would be eliminated \u2013 replaced by the international mega-corporate version.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

De Zayas was quoted in Britain\u2019s Guardian on May 4th as saying also that, <\/i>“The bottom line is that these agreements must be revised, modified or terminated,\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/a> because they would vastly harm publics everywhere, even though they would enormously benefit the top executives of corporations by giving them control as a sort of corporate-imposed world government, answerable to the people who control those corporations.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse U.S. President Barack Obama\u2019s capstone to his Presidency, his proposed megalithic international \u2018trade\u2019 treaties, are finally coming into their home-stretch, with the Pacific deal finally being made public on Thursday November 5th. The final Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) proposed treaty would leave each signatory nation liable to be sued by any international corporation that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":149073,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[115,30,1036,960,1035,535,698,1034,59,753,987,981,844,843,694],"class_list":{"0":"post-197804","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"tag-barack-obama","9":"tag-big-brother","10":"tag-breaking-news","11":"tag-china","12":"tag-daily-news","13":"tag-global-news","14":"tag-hillary-clinton","15":"tag-independent-media","16":"tag-military","17":"tag-police-state","18":"tag-russia-today","19":"tag-saudi","20":"tag-tisa","21":"tag-tpp","22":"tag-ttip"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}