GUEST BLOG: Arthur Taylor – TPPA more akin to a ‘surrender document’ than a fair trade treaty

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In past centuries when a country coveted anothers’ resources, and wanted to subjugate that country’s interests to its own, it might have used, or threatened to use force. That is what wars were all about.

Those who want to dominate the world are a lot smarter now…why spend treasure, manpower and have the ongoing cost of blood, money and protest at home, when you can put a TPPA together, and spin it to a quisling like government as something that it isn’t.

One of the key purposes of the TPPA IS TO PREVENT A FUTURE GOVERNMENT INSTALLED BY AN ELECTORATE who wake up to the fact their country hasn’t been governed in their interest, but that of ‘big business’ for most of the last 50 years.

Many kiwi’s are already wondering why the ordinary persons’ interests are now subservient to that of big business and international conglomerates, and why they are simply working to survive rather than gettihg ahead in life. When are they going to benefit from the ‘rockstar’ economy? In the middle ages they used to call it serfdom.

Just as the serfs rose up and threw off their chains,sooner or later,these quisling-like Governments will be voted out of office, hence the TPPA.

 

Arthur Taylor is a prisoner rights activist and TDBs blogger inside prison.

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

12 COMMENTS

  1. Good words, but I am left a bit confused by the last sentence. Are the serfs going to rebel, kick the government from power or is the TPPA going to block any of those.
    I guess you are saying the latter, which is why we need to quash it before it gets legs.

  2. The ball now lies in Labour’s court – to expressly repudiate the TPPA in its entirety and promise to reppeal it the day they are elected.

    The Gnats have bought us the lousiest deal in their long and sordid history of lousy deals – we must spit it out.

    And if Labour don’t, they’ll be spat out with it.

  3. One of the key purposes of the TPPA IS TO PREVENT A FUTURE GOVERNMENT INSTALLED BY AN ELECTORATE who wake up to the fact their country hasn’t been governed in their interest, but that of ‘big business’ for most of the last 50 years.

    Then it was really stupid of them to include a provision allowing any country to pull out of the TPP at any time on six months’ notice.

    That’s completely fucked that (alleged) purpose.

    • At a substantial cost.

      But really stupid is the defining characteristic of this government – that’s why their incompetence is costing us $20 billion a year. Even more with the TPPA.

    • The corporations can screw up a lot of our infrastructure, vacuum a big share of wealth and profits in 6 months,you can guarantee the corporations will have a clause to defeat the 6 months rule.
      Why should we accept the TPPA when we know its a corporation take over,we dont need 6 months to want out ,we want out now.

  4. Good points, Arthur.

    The tragedy of modern capitalist countries is that the politicians and governments have become beholden to the big business who have become too big, to the wealthy who have become too wealthy and to the corporates who have become too powerful and crafty. These anti democratic forces easily weaken, exploit and corrupt the governments while at the same time ordinary people are cleverly manipulated by the mega media which is owned and controlled by powerful media moguls.

    People need to wise up.

  5. I think you are right Arthur.

    The TPPA changes our governance structure in a way that tilts the field towards multinational corporations.

    I think it is a loss of sovereignty. In theory a country can always leave an international agreement, but the TPPA, like some other international agreements (EU, Euro-zone, NAFTA etc) entrenches a governance structure that in practice will resist change.

    Read about it here https://medium.com/@brendon_harre/some-questions-about-the-trans-pacific-partnership-82d5322664e2#.whh7h8om6

    It includes an excellent 7.45min video of Senator Warren giving a speech to the US Congress on how the TPPA tilts the field against workers, consumers and the ordinary person.

    Also check out the short Robert Reich video on the TPPA:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3O_Sbbeqfdw

    It succinctly (2.15 min) describes the case against the TPPA.

    P.S What I would like is someone to compile a list of ISDS cases (from other agreements) in a given period, with a brief one line synopsis. So that the public can see this is more than governments acting like communists and nationalising businesses which is the current Steven Joyce/government line against the loss of sovereignty argument.

  6. The latest govt thing is making hospitals reduce costs , the staff are stretched already.
    Maybe this is to show hospitals are not managed effectively under DHBs, which would bring the “need” for privatisation under guise of better management of resourses.
    This Government uses taxpayers money to “bribe”Saudi businessmen,wastes money on a flag change that majority dont want,it will cost millions to change flags all over NZ,the referendum will cost millions to enact and its doubted wether government will accept negative outcome.
    Properties in Hawaii and New York are purchased at huge costs to house government appointees, and to accommodate visiting PM when he returns to his American homeland.
    Im sure others more in the know than i am will be able to show more waste by this government, more than enough to cover hospital costs.

    Check overpriced school building contracts.

    List Mps just in parliament to rubber stamp leaders wants.

    On another subject the crossing of the floor over the TPPA by Goff, who by the way wants to be the next Mayor of Auckland, maybe to get Keys support for his bid,instead of an American appointee who used dirty tricks to unseat Len Brown.
    We need a general election now before NZ is totally screwed.

  7. ” Bonnie Faulkner: What is the aim of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Treaty and how is it at odds with the Asian Infrastructure Bank, the AIIB?

    Michael Hudson: I could give a glib answer and say the aim is to reduce the population by 50%, to starve people, abolish pensions and spread poverty. That actually is the effect.

    The cover story pretends to be about trade, but the real agenda is to force privatization and disable government regulation. This reverses what was central to the whole Progressive Era. For the last 300 years, the assumption of Europe and North America was that you were going to have a mixed economy, with governments investing in infrastructure, roads and other transportation, communications, water and sewer systems, gas and electricity. The role of government infrastructure was to provide these basic needs at minimum cost in order to promote a low-cost, competitive economy. That’s how America got rich. That’s how Germany industrialized and how the rest of Europe did. But the aim of the Trans-Pacific Partnership is to reverse and privatize public investment. Its ideology is that the economy should be owned and operated by private owners, private enterprise, whose aim is short-term profit.

    There are a number of related aims: to nullify environmental protection regulations that cost money, to nullify protection of labor, and to nullify attempts to tax natural resources or economic rent. The idea is to turn roads and the transport system into toll roads, which will be owned by foreigners and run at a high charge. The Internet and the water system will be sold off and made into toll systems, to charge for their services and for other basic needs. This will impose a neo-feudal rentier economy throughout the world as the finance, industrial and real estate (FIRE) sector takes over the government sector.

    I think you could say that at the broadest level, the idea is to roll back the Enlightenment and restore feudalism. That may sound like an extreme statement, but people don’t realize how radical the TPP’s investment agreements are. For instance, when Australia raised the charges on cigarettes and included health warnings on the packs, Philip Morris sued, insisting that Australia pay it what Philip Morris would have made if people would have continued to smoke and get cancer at the existing rate.

    When Ecuador tried to sue oil companies for pollution, the oil companies sued, and now the country has to pay the oil company the amount of profit it would make if it continued to produce oil by polluting the land – to an infinite degree. No government anywhere in the world that signs this will be free to regulate the environment or even to enact new taxes on rent-seeking or other private enterprise.

    Essentially, the new buyers of the roads, the water systems, the sewer systems, can use these as rent extraction opportunities without anti-monopoly regulations. That means they can charge whatever the market will bear, and treat foreign countries sort of like New York City cable customers are treated. I live in Forest Hills in Queens. We have one supplier, Time Warner. If I want cable, I have to pay what they charge, and it has nothing to do at all with their cost of production. I have to rent their cable box, not buy one of my own.

    That’s what economic rent is. It’s a revenue above the cost of production. For hundreds of years the economics of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill and Thorstein Veblen wrote about how to create an economy that would produce everything at its actual, technologically and socially necessary cost, without any free lunch, that is, without any kind of unearned income (“economic rent”).

    The aim of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and its European version is to promote unearned rent extraction. Rentier interests have backed a body the kind of junk economics to replace classical economics, against the Progressive Era and social democracy, to create a right-wing ideology that they call free trade. The term is Orwellian doublethink.

    Bonnie Faulkner: Have these rulings by the World Trade Organization been enforced against these countries you mentioned, such as Australia?

    Michael Hudson: I think Philip Morris failed, but it forced the government to spend tens of millions of dollars in legal fees. It’s almost impossible for a poor government like Ecuador or even Australia, to spend the legal fees that it costs to defend themselves against a battery of corporate lawyers. Under the TPP, the referees would be drawn from the corporate sector and its law firms.

    The judgments and rules are made outside of government and outside of laws that voters enact. So corporate oligarchy replaces democracy. Decisions as to how much governments will have to pay corporations in compensatory damages are made by a small group of referees in a revolving door with the corporate sector. In effect, they will work as lobbyists for these corporations. ” http://michael-hudson.com/2016/02/the-commanding-heights/

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