The broad definition of GCSB security
The broad definition of security is long-standing, introduced around the same time as the SIS botched break in of Aziz Choudry’s house in Christchurch at the time of an APEC meeting there.
The broad definition of security is long-standing, introduced around the same time as the SIS botched break in of Aziz Choudry’s house in Christchurch at the time of an APEC meeting there.
Ground control to Major Tom? Your circuit’s dead, there’s something wrong. Can you hear me, Major Tom? Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Apologies to the late lamented David Bowie. But the bullshit from the National government on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) since the Trump administration formally pulled out in January is really off the planet (apologies, I don’t usually swear in blogs, but I couldn’t find a suitable acronym).
‘The hype leading into the meeting of ministers from the eleven remaining Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement countries in Hanoi today assumes…
As Prime Minister Bill English heads off to Japan with trade minister Todd McClay in their quest to revive the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) minus the USA, ‘the silence from Labour is deafening’, Auckland University law professor Jane Kelsey observes. ‘In an election year, they had hoped the TPPA was dead and buried. Now there is nowhere for them to hide.’
Just let it die. Let the TPPA die. Not a dignified death, because it doesn’t deserve that. But at least let the corpse be buried in some deep hole, wrapped in the American flag, without the threat of being disinterred and shrouded in some surrogate garb.
The governments and corporate lobbies that champion these deals are in a state of denial and desperately trying to rescue their bankrupt model. This year we begin work with others internationally to set a new agenda for international economic agreements that really work for people as part of a new economic paradigm.
Blaming TPPAs collapse on a xenophobic megalomaniac allows the media to continue to ignore the real dynamics behind Trump’s victory, Brexit, the rejection of TTIP and resistance to CETA in the EU. The model is broken.
The idea from Prime Minister Bill English that New Zealand and other countries might proceed with Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement without…
The failure of the TPPA was just one of many signs that this limb of the neoliberal paradigm is in crisis. 2016 saw the paralysis of the US-EU negotiation known as TTIP, well before Trump’s election. The Belgian regional parliament of Wallonia vetoed the ratification of the lesser-known Canada-EU deal (CETA), setting conditions for their approval, leading European activists to embrace the slogan: ‘we are all Wallonians’.
We will have a better idea next week when the political leaders of the TPPA countries meet on the side of the APEC leaders’ summit in Peru, one of Obama’s last appearances as president on the global stage. There will be lots of brave rhetoric, so we will have to decipher the noise from behind the scenes.