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Now we know why the corporations and the Obama administration want TPP, a huge “trade” agreement being negotiated between the United States and 11 other countries, kept secret from the public until it’s too late to stop it.

The section of TPP that has leaked is the “Investment” chapter that includes Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) clauses. WikiLeaks has the text and analysis, and the Times has the story, in “Trans-Pacific Partnership Seen as Door for Foreign Suits Against U.S.“:

An ambitious 12-nation trade accord pushed by President Obama would allow foreign corporations to sue the United States government for actions that undermine their investment “expectations” and hurt their business, according to a classified document.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership — a cornerstone of Mr. Obama’s remaining economic agenda — would grant broad powers to multinational companies operating in North America, South America and Asia. Under the accord, still under negotiation but nearing completion, companies and investors would be empowered to challenge regulations, rules, government actions and court rulings — federal, state or local — before tribunals organized under the World Bank or the United Nations.

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Originally posted by THGRRI:
Globalization is necessary and desirable.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by THGRRI:
Globalization is necessary and desirable.

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Uh oh.

WHY?

WHY is "globalization is necessary and desirable"?

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Globalization is necessary and desirable.-THUGR

Uh oh. WHY? WHY is "globalization is necessary and desirable"? - SIGNY

This planet needs to become one.- THUGR

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Ok, I'll bite: WHY does "This planet need[s] to become one"? To prevent war? To solve global problems? To improve trade and the standard of living? What goals do you think that "becoming one" would accomplish?

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Globalization is necessary and desirable.-THUGR

Uh oh. WHY? WHY is "globalization is necessary and desirable"? - SIGNY

This planet needs to become one.- THUGR

Ok, I'll bite: WHY does "This planet need[s] to become one"? To prevent war? To solve global problems? To improve trade and the standard of living? What goals do you think that "becoming one" would accomplish? - SIGNY

Yes. = THUGR

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Globalization is necessary and desirable.-THUGR

Uh oh. WHY? WHY is "globalization is necessary and desirable"? - SIGNY

This planet needs to become one.- THUGR

Ok, I'll bite: WHY does "This planet need[s] to become one"? To prevent war? To solve global problems? To improve trade and the standard of living? What goals do you think that "becoming one" would accomplish? - SIGNY

Yes. = THUGR

Okay, HOW will globalization accomplish this? This time, I'm not going to try to articulate your answer for you.

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Right now I think the powers to be i.e. governments have made a mess of it.

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NPR's Robert Siegel speaks with Larry Summers, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and former U.S. treasury secretary, about his op-ed in the The Washington Post regarding popular support for Brexit and Donald Trump.

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It is clear after the Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s victory in the Republican presidential primaries that electorates are revolting against the relatively open economic policies that have been the norm in the United States and Britain since World War II. If further evidence is needed, one need only look to the inability of Congress to pass legislation on immigration reform and the observation that the last four candidates left standing in the U.S. presidential contest all oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Populist opposition to international integration is also on the rise in much of continental Europe and has always been the norm in much of Latin America.

The question now is: What should be the guiding principles of international economic policy? How should the case be made by those of us who believe that the vastly better performance of the global system after World War II than between World War I and World War II was largely due to more enlightened economic policies?

The mainstream approach to these questions generally starts with some combination of rational argument and inflated rhetoric about the economic consequences of international integration. Studies are produced about the jobs created by trade agreements, the benefits of immigration and the costs of restrictions on trade. In most cases, certainly including the cases for TPP and against Brexit, the overall economic merits are clear. But in this advocacy there is a kind of Gresham’s Law (the economic principle that bad money drives out good) whereby bolder claims drive out more prudent ones, causing estimates to often be exaggerated and delivered with far more confidence than is warranted. Over time, this has caught up with the advocates of integration.

While there is a strong case that the United States is better off than it would have been if the North American Free Trade Agreement had been rejected, the most extravagant predicted benefits have not materialized. And it is also fair to say that claims that China’s accession into the World Trade Organization would propel political liberalization have not been borne out. In any event, the willingness of publics to be intimidated by experts into supporting cosmopolitan outcomes appears, for the moment, to have been exhausted.

The second plank of the mainstream approach is to push for stronger policies to resist inequality, cushion economic disruptions and support the poor and middle class, then argue that if domestic policies are right, the pressure to resist globalization will be attenuated. The logic is right, and certainly measures such as the GI bill, the government’s assurance of available mortgages and the interstate highway system were part of the political package that permitted the United States to underwrite an open international system through the 1960s. But the past eight years have seen the United States at last make significant progress toward universal health insurance, expand a variety of support programs for the poor and bring unemployment below 5 percent. Even still, trade has become ever less popular. It is not that strong domestic policies are unnecessary to undergird global integration; it is that they are insufficient.

A new approach has to begin from the idea that the basic responsibility of government is to maximize the welfare of citizens, not to pursue some abstract concept of the global good. Closely related to this is the idea that people want to feel that they are shaping the societies in which they live. It may be inevitable that impersonal forces of technology and changing global economic circumstances have profound effects. But it adds insult to injury when governments reach agreements that further cede control to international tribunals of one sort or another. This is especially the case when, for legal reasons or reasons of practicality, corporations have disproportionate influence in shaping global agreements.

If the Italian banking system is badly undercapitalized and the democratically elected government of Italy wants to use taxpayer money to recapitalize it, why should some international agreement prevent it from doing so? Why shouldn’t countries that think, likely wrongly, that genetically modified crops are dangerous get to shield their customers from such crops? Why should the international community seek to prevent countries that wish to limit capital inflows from doing so? The issue in all these cases is not the merits. It is the principle that intrusions into sovereignty exact a high cost.

What is needed is a responsible nationalism — an approach where it is understood that countries are expected to pursue their citizens’ economic welfare as a primary objective but where their ability to damage the interests of citizens of other countries is circumscribed. With such an approach, the content of international agreements would be judged not by how much is harmonized or by how many barriers to global commerce are torn down but by whether people as workers, consumers and voters are empowered.

This does not mean less scope for international cooperation. It may mean more. For example, tax burdens on workers around the world are as much as a trillion dollars greater than they would be if we had a proper system of international coordination that identified capital income and prevented a race to the bottom in its taxation. And taxes are only the most obvious area in which races to the bottom interfere with the achievement of national objectives. Others include labor and financial regulation, along with environmental standards.

Reflexive internationalism needs to give way to responsible nationalism — or else we will only see more distressing referendums and populist demagogues contending for high office.

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Sen. Mitch McConnell, I have spent years criticizing your party-centric approach to politics. Often, I’ve said you have placed party over what I considered the overall interests of the country. But now, strangely enough, I find myself aligned with you, hoping that you will hold the line when it comes to promoting an internationalist foreign policy rather than allowing an isolationist one to prevail.

I’m asking you to please hold fast to the belief that America has a critical role to play in the world.

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Please be the force that stands up to President Trump’s “America First” isolationism. In the past, I’ve boldly stated that because of your role in the second impeachment proceedings, your legacy would be defined by a second Donald Trump presidency. That may be true to a great degree; however, your legacy is still being written.

My hope is that you will help prevent the most damaging parts of a Trump presidency from becoming a reality, especially as it relates to America’s role on the world stage as the bright-shining beacon for democracy.

—Gregory Howard, 47250

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Hubby and I were talking about Brexit the other day, and he said something that I recognized- with a little shock- as being true. In essence, he said that the globalists have been working on destroying nations for over 50 years. The push for globalism isn't about multicultural acceptance or "helping" the poor, the real driver of globalism is -of course- profit: creating the ability of transnational corporations to relocate their production lines to cheap labor nations and sell into other nations without fear of tariff. Centralizing banking into a few transnational entities, enforcing neoliberal "austerity" as economic policy. Allowing international currency speculation. Slopping people back and forth across the globe, creating chaos everywhere.

How to go about destroying a nation? By moving its financial decision-making processes to private central banks and the IMF. By requiring trade decisions to be made by secret arbitration panels which rule according to trade deals negotiated in secret. Allowing foreign speculation in national assets. Buying off the top politicians of each nation. Bombing the snot out of some, if necessary, and destabilizing others which resist being incorporated. By creating "refugee" crises and immigration crises which create masses desperate for jobs at any wage.

For those of you who think that I'm a dyed-in-the-wool (fill in the blank) I'd like you to realize that my thinking has evolved over time. Years earlier, I shared the liberal POV on illegal immigrants. I wanted to "help" them. Then, at some point, and with a little reflection, I realized that the liberal POV of "helping" illegal immigrants wasn't really helpful at all. That if we REALLY wanted to help immigrants, and bring them into our nation on helpful basis, we would be doing far, far more than what we're currently doing. In my mind, I generated a whole program of things that we should be doing ... and then quickly realized that (1) We would be treating immigrants better than citizens and (2) Our economy couldn't accommodate the millions of people who would be accessing those programs, and we would sooner rather than later kill the goose that was laying that golden egg.

Here is one of my first posts on illegal immigration (2006), where I am truly mulling over the affect of illegal immigration.

http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=19153

So, what is the cause of such high immigration into the USA? Well, proximately, it was NAFTA, which drove small Mexican farmers off their land by flooding Mexico with cheap, subsidized American corn. But more generally, one the of reasons why liberals feel they should allow illegal immigration - especially from nations south of our border - is the guilt that comes from having our military and intelligence entities support every dictator, landowner, and bankster that we could get our hooks into; and crush every democratic land reform, educational, and social justice movement that tried to change that dynamic. A study of our Central and South American "interventions" is a study of "how to destroy nations". The same could be said of our interventions in the Middle East, starting in 1950.

In another thread which- I unfortunately can't find- FREMDFIRMA and BYTMITE and I were having a conversation about nationalism versus internationalism.

Now I have heard for many years that Marx predicted that capitalism would one day rule the world, destroying every distinction by language, sex, age, custom, nation, or religion; grinding everyone into the same pulp via the grist mill of production, consumption, and profit. Ultimately, he predicted, there would only be one distinction: between the owners of the means of production, and the workers. At that point socialism could arise (note, he didn't say communism) which can only truly exist in international form.

Therefore, any step towards universal international capital is a step closer towards socialism. Globalization should be a GOOD thing, if you support socialism, no? They asked me, rather pointedly, which I preferred: globalization, or nationalism. (IIRC they were somewhat on the side of globalization, but I may mis-remember.)

I did what I sometimes do: I THOUGHT about it. I took my half-digested fears and desires and set them aside, and REALLY thought.

What I concluded was that because there was no MECHANISM for reforming international corporations .... no court you could appeal to, no vote you could conduct that would bind these entities to your policy, no venue to submit your grievances, no higher authority to appeal to and no democracy allowed .... once fully formed, international capital could become a permanent dictatorial fixture. I didn't care, I realized, if nationalism was a step into the past or if I was fighting the inevitable (according to Marx) but that since it was always possible to reform a nation but IMPOSSIBLE to reform transnationals ... I preferred nation-states.

Although I can't find that thread, here is a discussion between libertarians, anarchists, statists, liberals, and myself (I don't know what to call my philosophy) on THE LIMITS OF STATE POWER, where I suggest that an economy of cooperatives, direct democracy, the direction of authority to the lowest possible level of problem-solving, and the dissolution of any unitary executive positions (President, CEO etc) form the basis of a credible future.
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=38196&mid=7
02384

This is my somewhat incoherent argument against globalization and my ideas on a better future. I would be interested in your thoughts.

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Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
'Looks like we've lost India, Russia to China': Trump shares photo of Modi, Xi and Putin

https://www.moneycontrol.com/world/looks-like-we-ve-lost-india-russia-
to-china-trump-shares-photo-of-modi-xi-and-putin-article-13524583.html

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