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Europe’s Stark Choice: Resignation or Revolution

By Don Quijones | Testosterone Pit | April 14, 2013

Two years ago this May, Madrid’s Puerta del Sol and Barcelona’s Plaza Catalunya, Spain’s two most important city squares, were occupied by thousands of indignant protestors. For many of the nation’s highly educated but disillusioned youth, enough was enough, and for a short while it seemed that a new era of political mobilization beckoned.

A few weeks later, however, such hopes were brutally dashed when the riot division of Catalonia’s police force, the Mossos D’esquadra, unleashed the untamed fury of the state upon the protestors’ makeshift camp, under the rather dubious pretext of ridding the city of a health and safety risk (this is Europe, after all!). The message was clear: all attempts to resist the new European economic reality, no matter how peaceful, would be brutally suppressed.

In little more than an hour, a whirlwind of police violence cleared the square of all the occupants and pretty much all of their belongings, many of which were never returned. All the while, a thick, dense ring of shell-shocked protestors and curious bystanders gathered around the square, looking on in a mixture of bewilderment, fear and anger.

And I was one of them. As I strolled around the square, with one wary eye on the aggrieved protestors and the other on the fearsomely armed and highly unpredictable mossos d’esquadra, a placard caught my attention. Its message was beautifully simple: “No soy anti sistema, el sistema es anti yo” (I’m not anti-system; the system is anti-me).

The placard was held aloft by a small child riding on his father’s shoulders. The cynical realist within me knew full well that the boy, who must have been no more than five or six years old, was merely channeling his father’s thoughts. But that didn’t stop my more romantic side from imagining that the child was, in actual fact, eloquently speaking out for his soon-to-be lost generation.

For if there is one thing of which you can be sure about present-day Europe, it is that its political and economic systems are not meant to serve or protect the interests of the youth; on the contrary, they have been designed to gradually erode their last-remaining freedoms and rights and, by leaving them the tab for the transgressions and greed of the global banking sector, deprive them of all hope of ever attaining the standards of living once taken for granted by their parents or grandparents.

Spain is a perfect case in point: In the two intervening years since the country’s 15-M moment, the economy has spiraled into a bottomless depression. Official youth unemployment in the country has reached a mind-boggling 60 percent. Thousands of Spanish savers and pensioners have been robbed of their life savings, victims of the national banks’ cunning (and, it goes without saying, unpunished) preferentes sleight of hand.

All the while, taxes continue to skyrocket and essential welfare spending has been mercilessly sacrificed on the altar of bank recapitalization. Countless of the nation’s homes have – and continue to be – repossessed, to later be given away at a fraction of their value to wealthy international property speculators.

Perhaps worst of all, the country’s current government, which took the reins of power six months after the inception of the 15th May movement, has proven itself to be the most corrupt and incompetent in living memory.

But Spain is by no means unique; it is, if anything, a mere symptom of what is happening throughout the eurozone. From Cyprus to Portugal and from France to Slovenia, an all-out war has been declared against the continent’s industrious middle classes.

And now, with Winter turning to Spring, and Spring soon to Summer, the people of Europe face the starkest of choices: resignation to the EU’s neoliberal, neofeudal agenda, and with it, the gradual elimination of the few remaining freedoms and opportunities we still enjoy; or a spirited last-stand against the encroaching totalitarianism of the European superstate.

Before you make your choice (if, of course, you are European), let me first make a few of my own personal observations vis-a-vis our current situation and future outlook.

1. In case you hadn’t noticed, we are already owned, lock, stock and smoking barrel, by the international cartel of too-big-to-fail banks.

2. Pretty much all our political representatives and institutions, whether at the national or EU level, have also been bought off by the same banks, whose agents – the national central banks, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the ECB, the European Commission, the IMF, OECD and World Bank – now stand head and shoulders above all other players in the global political order.

3. Said banks are, to all intents and purposes, bankrupt, both financially and morally. They are also quite literally a law unto themselves. By allowing them to continue to operate in a mark-to-model fantasy world as well as gorge themselves on virtually interest-free central bank credit and regular transfusions of tax-payer funds, our politicians have shown all too clearly on which side their bread is buttered. As such, as long as the current financial system remains in place, the banks and their senior executives will be free to continue bleeding dry our national economies and personal bank accounts.

As Golem XIV recently wrote in his blog, there now exists an official list, drawn up by the Financial Stability Board, of 28 banks that are now free to operate beyond any legal jurisdiction. Like HSBC, they can consort with and engage in business with some of the world’s most wanted criminals, at absolutely no risk of legal action. And as Golem notes, this month (April 2013), we can look forward to the announcement of “another list, this time of Globally Systemically Important Insurers (G-SIIs). They too will be above the Law.”

4. Democracy has absolutely no role, beyond a figurative one, in the European Union. The continued survival and expansion of the European superstate supersedes all other concerns, whether moral, political, social or economic. As such, no genuine form of democracy or civic political engagement will be allowed to take root. As in Stalinist Russia, complete power and authority will reside in the hands of faceless, unaccountable apparatchiks, all doing the bidding of the large global banks and conglomerates.

5. As the real economy (i.e. everything that is not the stock exchange) continues its descent into the abyss, businesses will continue to close down, jobs will continue to vanish at an alarming rate and taxes will continue to rise. What’s more, at a politically expedient moment, the final nail will be driven deep into the coffin of Europe’s welfare state system, once the envy of the world. Needless to say, the newly privatized healthcare, education and pension systems that will take its place will be the sole preserve of the upwardly mobile (i.e. not us).

Instead of paying for essential public services and utilities such as health care, education, pensions and infrastructure, the public’s ballooning tax burden will be directed toward two purposes: keeping the big banks afloat and sustaining the ever-expanding police-state apparatus that will be needed to keep the collapsing civic society in line. Put simply, we will be forced to finance our own enslavement.

6. Most importantly of all, the global financial system’s days are already numbered. Put simply, the system is buckling under the combined weight of unsustainable debt, unpayable pension schemes and a derivatives market whose total value dwarfs global GDP by magnitudes that exceed all human logic.

The question is, once it does collapse, who’s going to pick up the pieces and rebuild a new, more sustainable system in its ashes? Will it be us, the people, or will it be the same bankers, central bankers and heavily compromised political half-wits that got us here in the first place? Will we bravely stake our claim to a new future, or resign ourselves, in fear and despair, to the global bankers’ totalitarian nirvana?

Whatever choice Europeans make in the coming months and years, one thing is clear: the human, social and economic costs will be tremendous either way. For the unpleasant truth is that we have allowed ourselves to be led so far down the rabbit hole of exponential debt that reemerging into the light of day will take years of collective struggle and sacrifice.

Don Quijones is a freelance writer and translator based in Barcelona, Spain. His blog, Raging Bull-Shit, is a modest attempt to challenge some of the wishful thinking and scrub away the lathers of soft soap peddled by our political and business leaders and their loyal mainstream media.

Also by Don Quijones: Spain’s Descent Into Banana Republicanism

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April 14, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Economics, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Obama’s betrayal of social security

By  Dave Lindorff | This Can’t Be Happening! | April 13, 2013

What’s wrong with the Obama administration’s proposal to change the way Social Security checks are adjusted for inflation from using the Consumer Price Index (CPI) to instead using something called a “chained” CPI?

Let’s start with the fundamental problem: Social Security is not a cause of the federal budget deficit, and will not be for years, even if nothing is done to raise more revenue for the program.

Sure the US will eventually have to come up with more money to pay the benefits earned by retirees in the Baby Boom generation, but that problem of an eventual shortfall in Social Security tax revenues can be easily solved by simply eliminating the cap — currently $113,000 in annual income — that is subject to the FICA tax. If the cap were completely eliminated, so that all income was subject to the tax, as is the case with the Medicare tax, the shortfall would be nearly eliminated. Any remaining shortfall could be erased too, by extending some kind of FICA tax to unearned income from investments. My favorite is one that is common in Europe: a small — say 0.25% — tax on short-term stock and bond trades.

But there is a bigger problem with this Obama proposal to cut both Social Security benefits and Medicare funding: Adopting a long-time Republican proposal, it only looks at those programs in isolation, and concludes that they need to be cut. Our Nobel Peace Prize-winning president does not look at the biggest and most wasteful spending in the entire federal budget, which is the military. That bloated white elephant, which this year is sucking up close to $800 billion, not counting the interest on money borrowed to pay for past wars and armaments, could be cut in half or even by three-quarters, and it would still leave the US military budget larger than any other nation’s in the world. The US would be no less safe in that case. In fact, it would be a hell of a lot safer because we would no longer have US troops stationed expensively and provocatively in 1,000 foreign locations.

Nobody in Congress is talking about slashing military spending and spending the savings on medical care, Social Security, education and other pressing needs. The public needs to demand this.

But let’s leave those two points aside for a moment, important as they are.

What the Obama administration is calling for — a switch from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ CPI to a new chained-CPI to determine inflation adjustments in Social Security checks each year — is a brazen attempt to cut benefits for the elderly without admitting it. This is unconscionable, and as poorly reported as the story has been, the American people, regardless of age, are smart enough to be solidly opposed to the idea. People old enough to be drawing Social Security benefits, or who are close to filing for Social Security, know it’s stealing from them. But younger people, who almost all have parents or grandparents who are depending on Social Security, also know intuitively that this is a bad idea, and are opposed to it.

Chained-CPI has long been a favorite scam among Republicans and conservative Democrats, who are in thrall to business interests that want to reduce the payroll taxes they have to pay into the Social Security system. But their claim that it is a “more accurate” way to measure inflation’s impact on the cost of living is clearly a fraud and a lie.

The rationale behind a chained-CPI calculation of inflation is a theory that when the price of some good or service rises too much, people supposedly switch to a cheaper alternative, so that alternative should be substituted in the “market-basket” used to calculate the cost of living.

Now sometimes that may be true. When gasoline prices soared during the Bush invasion of Iraq, many people downsized their cars to cut their gasoline bills. That move to smaller cars also cut families’ overall transportation expenses because small cars are generally cheaper than big ones. A chained-CPI would account for this by substituting small cars in the market basket, and might also lower the allocation for gasoline, since people would be buying less.

But the theory falls down, especially when it comes to older people, who drive a lot fewer miles than those who are commuting every day to work, and who also tend not to buy new cars. The old gas-guzzler they have, which doesn’t get many miles put on it in a year, is kept on the road and repaired as needed. They continue to buy whatever gasoline it takes to drive the thing.

Old people and the disabled also spend vastly more on health care than most other people, and the cost of that health care is rising much faster than most other things. That’s a point the CPI, chained or not, doesn’t factor in. And the elderly and disabled have little choice about making substitutions on health care. They don’t — and shouldn’t — change doctors. And if you need an operation, you go where your doctor practices. If you need heart medication or cholesterol-lowering medication, you buy what is prescribed, whatever it costs. If you need Medi-gap insurance to cover your health needs, you buy it, whatever the inflated premium. Even Medicare itself has become more expensive at a pace well above the inflation rate!

Housing is another problem area. Young people, if their rent goes up, can move to cheaper digs. Old people can’t do that so easily. If they are in some kind of senior housing, it’s probably the only one in their neighborhood, and they’re not going to move to some place cheaper where they don’t know anyone, or where they are too far from their family, or to the son or daughter who lives nearest and who has been helping them out as needed. Nor should we expect them to move just to save money. If they are in their family home, it is where they are comfortable. It would take a lot to make them move, so they probably won’t.

Food is another area where the elderly have a harder time making substitutions. As people get older, they tend to get much more set in their ways. A young person can decide that buying salmon is too expensive, so they’re going to switch to mackerel or sardines, but an older person can get very fussy. They may not know how to cook a new fish, and won’t even try to switch. They may not even be doing that much cooking, and are relying on prepared foods that can be put in a microwave. There’s not much room for switching there.

All in all, this chained-CPI proposal from the White House is a disgusting betrayal by a president who swore as a candidate that he would stand firm against any cuts in Social Security or Medicare.

There are only two proper responses to this betrayal. One: we must demand that there be no cuts in Social Security or Medicare benefits, or increases in the taxes paid by those already paying taxes into the program or receiving benefits, until the military budget is first cut by at least 50 percent. Two: We must demand that no change be made in the way Social Security benefits are adjusted for inflation unless or until the government conducts an honest, unbiased and transparent academic study to develop a valid market basket for the elderly and disabled, to determine what their actual costs of living are, and how they are impacted by inflation.

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April 14, 2013 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , | Leave a comment

Potential Cost Of A Nuclear Accident? So High It’s A Secret!

By Wolfe Richter | Testosterone Pit | March 13, 2013 

Catastrophic nuclear accidents, like Chernobyl in 1986 or Fukushima No. 1 in 2011, are very rare, we’re incessantly told, and their probability of occurring infinitesimal. But when they do occur, they get costly. So costly that the French government, when it came up with cost estimates, kept them secret.

But now the report was leaked to the French magazine, Le Journal de Dimanche. Turns out, the upper end of the cost spectrum of an accident at a single reactor at the plant chosen for the study, the plant at Dampierre in the Department of Loiret in north-central France, would amount to over three times the country’s GDP. Financially, France would cease to exist as we know it.

Hence, the need to keep it secret. The study was done in 2007 by the Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN), a government agency under joint authority of the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Environment, Industry, Research, and Health. With over 1,700 employees, it’s France’s “public service expert in nuclear and radiation risks.” This isn’t some overambitious, publicity-hungry think tank.

It evaluated a range of disaster scenarios that might occur at the Dampierre plant. In the best-case scenario, costs came to €760 billion—more than a third of France’s GDP. At the other end of the spectrum: €5.8 trillion! Over three times France’s GDP. A devastating amount. So large that France could not possibly deal with it.

Yet, France gets 75% of its electricity from nuclear power. The entire nuclear sector is controlled by the state, which also owns 85% of EDF, the mega-utility that operates France’s 58 active nuclear reactors spread over 20 plants. So, three weeks ago, the Institute released a more politically correct report for public consumption. It pegged the cost of an accident at €430 billion.

“There was no political smoothening, no pressure,” claimed IRSN Director General Jacques Repussard, but he admitted, “it’s difficult to publish these kinds of numbers.” He said the original report with a price tag of €5.8 trillion was designed to counter the reports that EDF had fabricated, which “very seriously underestimated the costs of the incidents.”

Both reports were authored by IRSN economist Patrick Momal, who struggled to explain away the differences. The new number, €430 billion, was based on a “median case” of radioactive releases, as was the case in Fukushima, he told the JDD, while the calculations of 2007 were based more on what happened at Chernobyl. But then he added that even the low end of the original report, the €760 billion, when updated with the impact on tourism and exports, would jump to €1 trillion.

“One trillion, that’s what Fukushima will ultimately cost,” Repussard said.

Part of the €5.8 trillion would be the “astronomical social costs due to the high number of victims,” the report stated. The region contaminated by cesium 137 would cover much of France and Switzerland, all of Belgium and the Netherlands, and a big part of Germany—an area with 90 million people (map). The costs incurred by farmers, employees, and companies, the environmental damage and healthcare expenses would amount to €4.4 trillion.

“Those are social costs, but the victims may not necessarily be compensated,” the report stated ominously—because there would be no entity in France that could disburse those kinds of amounts.

Closer to the plant, 5 million people would have to be evacuated from an area of 87,000 square kilometers (about 12% of France) and resettled. The soil would have to be decontaminated, and radioactive waste would have to be treated and disposed of. Total cost: €475 billion.

The weather is the big unknown. Yet it’s crucial in any cost calculations. Winds blowing toward populated areas would create the worst-case scenario of €5.8 trillion. Amidst the horrible disaster of Fukushima, Japan was nevertheless lucky in one huge aspect: winds pushed 80% of the radioactive cloud out to sea. If it had swept over Tokyo, the disaster would have been unimaginable. In Chernobyl, winds made the situation worse; they spread the cloud over the Soviet Union.

Yet the study might underestimate the cost for other nuclear power plants. The region around Dampierre has a lower population density than regions around other nuclear power plants. And it rarely has winds that would blow the radioactive cloud in a northerly direction toward Paris. Other nuclear power plants aren’t so fortuitously located.

These incidents have almost no probability of occurring, we’re told. So there are currently 437 active nuclear power reactors and 144 “permanent shutdown reactors” in 31 countries, according to the IAEA, for a total of 581 active and inactive reactors. Of these, four melted down so far—one at Chernobyl and three at Fukushima. Hence, the probability for a meltdown is not infinitesimal. Based on six decades of history, it’s 4 out of 581, or 0.7%. One out of every 145 reactors. Another 67 are under construction, and more are to come….

Decommissioning and dismantling the powerplant at Fukushima and disposing of the radioactive debris has now been estimated to take 40 years. At this point, two years after the accident, very little has been solved. But it has already cost an enormous amount of money. People who weren’t even born at the time of the accident will be handed the tab for it. And the ultimate cost might never be known.

The mayor of Futaba, a ghost town of once upon a time 7,000 souls near Fukushima No. 1, told his staff that evacuees might not be able to return for 30 years. Or never, for the older generation. It was the first estimate of a timeframe. But it all depends on successful decontamination. And that has turned into a vicious corruption scandal. Read…. Corruption At “Decontaminating” Radioactive Towns In Japan.

April 13, 2013 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Economics, Environmentalism, Nuclear Power, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Trans-Pacific Partnership: Free Trade vs. Democracy

By Cliff DuRand  | Americas Program | April 12, 2013

As closed-door negotiations concluded in Singapore on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, opposition begins to build in many countries. At the urging of the United States, Canada and Mexico have joined the nine countries in the talks and now Japan has announced it too wants to be part of this new free trade pact of Pacific rim countries, described by its critics as “NAFTA on steroids”.

Going into its 17th round of negotiations, the Obama administration aims to wrap up an agreement by October, hoping to push ratification through the Senate on a fast- track basis. Called Trade Promotion Authority, fast track would mean an up or down vote without amendments or even hearings on the agreement presented to it. It is a profoundly anti-democratic procedure because it shuts down debate.

But from start to end, TPP has been thoroughly anti-democratic. On the first day of the Singapore talks a broad range of civil society organizations issued an open letter to Congress calling for greater transparency in the proceedings. The agreement is being hammered out in secret discussions among trade ministers. Even Senators have been denied a look at its draft provisions.

However, some 600 transnational corporations are in the inner circle. They are writing the rules for trade in their own interests without any democratic input from the people whose lives will be profoundly affected. If adopted, TPP will deny citizens their democratic rights to shape public policies on a host of domestic issues, conceding those decisions to the large corporations.

Some sections have been leaked. They reveal “an agreement that actually formalizes the priority of corporate power over government,” according to Lori Wallach of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. Only 5 of the 29 chapters have to do with trade. Wallach says the rest of the draft “include[s] new rights for the big pharmaceutical companies to expand, to raise medical prices, expand monopoly patents, limits on Internet freedom, penalties for inadvertent noncommercial copying, sending something to a friend. There are the same rules that promote off-shoring of jobs that were in NAFTA that are more robust that literally give privileges and protections if you leave. There is a ban on ‘buy American’ and ‘buy local’ or ‘green’ or sweat-free procurement. There are limits on domestic financial stability regulations. There are limits on imported food safety standards and product standards. There are limits on how we can regulate energy towards a more green future – all of these things are what they call ‘Behind the Borders’ agenda. And the operating clause of TPP is: ‘Each country shall ensure the conformity of its domestic laws, regulations and administrative procedures with these agreements.’”

Global Class War

Free trade is about more than trade. It is about favoring corporations over the democratic rights of citizens and the sovereignty of nations. As the former Director-General of the WTO, Renato Ruggiero, said in 1995, “We are no longer writing the rules of interaction among separate national economies. We are writing the constitution of a single global economy.”# What is being created is a global governance order in which corporations are the citizens, not flesh and blood humans like you and me. With free trade, corporations are making an end run around democracy.

TPP is the latest offensive in a global class war. For nearly 40 years now, since the mid 1970s, corporations have been rolling back the popular gains of the New Deal era and the 1960s. Democracy has been the target of a class war to restore the class power of capital. And there has been weak resistance, at best, by the popular classes. But the stakes have become increasingly clear to more and more. Indeed, on the issue of free trade, there is now a broad public sentiment against this aspect of the corporate offensive.

The US has become the world advocate of “free trade,” promoting it through trade agreements like NAFTA and other bi-lateral agreements as well as through global governance institutions it has sponsored such as IMF, World Bank and WTO. The US has promoted free trade for much the same reason Great Britain promoted it in the 19th century, viz. the economically strongest country in the world benefits from free trade. It is the weaker countries that seek tariff protection for their infant industries, protection from competition with cheaper and higher quality imports. That protection is what enabled the US to industrialize in the last half of the 19th century. But then when the US became economically strong enough to compete regionally and eventually globally, it became an advocate of free trade and demanded that others abandon protectionism.

The justification for free trade rests on the theory of comparative advantage. This is the view that if countries trade free of government impediments, the market will tend to direct each to export that which they can produce most efficiently and import what can be produced more efficiently and thus more cheaply elsewhere. The invisible hand of the market will guide each to specialize in producing what they have a comparative advantage in. Thus a rational production and trading system will emerge that maximizes efficiency.

Free trade agreements like NAFTA were sold to the US public by appealing to consumer’s interest in having access to cheaper goods imported from Mexico. What was deliberately soft-pedaled was their interest as workers in having jobs. Organized labor opposed NAFTA, fearing it would pit US workers in competition with low wage Mexican workers. Independent presidential candidate Ross Perot warned of “a giant sucking sound” as jobs would be off-shored to Mexico.

But the Clinton administration said US exports to Mexico would create new jobs. And so, ignoring opposition from its traditional base in the unions, new Democrat Clinton pushed ratification of NAFTA through the Senate as his first priority. Perot proved to be correct as US companies shifted production to low wage Mexico – until even lower wage Chinese workers were brought into play when China joined WTO. But Clinton was also right as cheaper consumer goods from abroad filled the shelves of Wal-Mart with bargains welcomed by US workers who found their wages reduced. Free trade proved to be a mixed blessing.

Capital Becomes Global

One important point about free trade that is often overlooked is that it is not only about the free, frictionless movement of goods and services across borders, unrestricted by tariffs, quotas and regulations. It assures the free movement of capital, as corporations are freed to invest abroad. The mobility of investment capital is of utmost importance, with profound economic consequences and consequences for democracy.

Unable to find sufficiently profitable venues for investment in the overdeveloped US economy, large corporations have increasingly moved abroad. They sought not just new outlets to sell their commodities, but low wage workforces that would decrease their production costs and thus boost their profits. Frequently that would involve locating different stages of the productive process in different countries so as to take optimal advantage of local conditions. The assembly lines of US industry were disaggregated and disbursed across the globe.

Global assembly lines emerged. These global production chains have become a signature feature of contemporary capitalism. Components may be manufactured in Singapore, transported to China for subassembly and then shipped to Mexico for final assembly before sale in the United States. Although global assembly lines are geographically dispersed, they overcome the limitations of the fixed assembly lines of the Fordist era in that they no longer have to rely on a fixed labor force that can organize itself to effectively claim a share of the surplus they create.

Instead, the global assembly line gives capital the flexibility to seek out the lowest wage workforce and friendliest business environment available anywhere in the world. This has been made possible by the development of a global computerized network of instant communications via satellite. That and the computerization of banking have made money transfers and the movement of capital both easy and instantaneous. The communications network also allows the decentralization of technological development and design. Technicians can work at points distant from the processes of production to which they address themselves. And the entire process can be coordinated by management located anywhere on the globe. The limitations of space and time have been overcome by digital communications and cheap energy for transporting goods to their ultimate consumers.

For such globalized production to be possible, capital must be able to flow freely across national borders and products have to be able to move with minimum friction across those borders, unhampered by tariffs or quotas or non-uniform standards. In other words, there must be free trade for transnational capital to optimize accumulation.#

But transnational corporations also need legal protection of their investments. They need protection from expropriation of their assets, laws and governments that can ensure their property is secure. A crucial part of free trade agreements is protection of what are called investor rights. This involves more than just protection from expropriation, as happens with revolutions. It also involves protection from governmental actions that might reduce the value of their property or potential profits by environmental and health regulations, labor laws or other such measures even though they might be for the public good. What in US law is called “regulatory takings” are seen as tantamount to expropriation.

When such governmental actions do occur, free trade treaties give the foreign corporation the recourse to sue. The suit is not adjudicated in a national court, but by a transnational body of experts operating in secret. States are expected to enforce its decisions on their own nation’s taxpayers and consumers. This favors investor rights (i.e. the interests of transnational corporations) over the democratic rights of a nation.

Super NAFTA

As corporations have globalized, morphing into transnational corporations, they have promoted free trade agreements to get national governments to assist them. But when “investor rights” trump the democratic rights of citizens, the transnational corporations become the real citizens of the emerging global order. TPP is a further step in this direction, making an end run around a number of important issues –banking regulation, extension of patent protection, food inspection, environmental protection, food sovereignty, internet freedom, health care, job creation policies, and more, denying voters the opportunity to decide such matters when they impinge on corporate profit making.

Here are a few of the issues around which opposition to TPP is beginning to emerge.

* Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres, MSF) is concerned that TPP would “enhance patent and data protections for pharmaceutical companies, dismantle public health safeguards enshrined in international law and obstruct price-lowering generic competition for medicines.” The intellectual property provisions would give pharmaceutical companies prolonged monopoly protection for medicines and delay access to cheaper generic versions. This would have disastrous consequences in poorer countries.

* Internet freedom is also in danger. The Council of Canadians and OpenMedia have warned that the TPP would “criminalize some everyday uses of the Internet,” including music downloads, making no distinction between commercial and non-commercial copyright infringement. The TPP imposes a “three strikes” system for copyright infringement, where three violations would result in the termination of a household’s Internet access.

* Japanese farmers are concerned that TPP will force removal of protections from Japan’s agriculture needed to maintain food sovereignty for the country. They are protesting Japan’s decision to enter into TPP negotiations at all.

* Guaranteed compensation for loss of “expected future profits” from health, labor or environmental regulations.

* Corporate performance requirements are banned.

* Capital mobility is to be guaranteed, preventing capital controls in event of a financial crisis. TPP will require countries to let capital flow in and out without restriction, not allow the banning or regulation of risky investments like derivatives and credit-default swaps and will prevent the formation of much-needed public banks

Democratic sovereignty

Most fundamentally what is at stake with TPP and existing free trade treaties is the sovereignty of nations and the ability of their peoples to make democratic decisions. This is a concern on both the Left and the Right, suggesting the possibility of a broad coalition opposing TPP, bridging our otherwise polarized politics.

A major NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll from September of 2010 revealed that “the impact of trade and outsourcing is one of the only issues on which Americans of different classes, occupations and political persuasions agree,” with 86% saying that outsourcing jobs by U.S. companies to poor countries was “a top cause of our economic woes,” with 69% thinking that “free trade agreements between the United States and other countries cost the U.S. jobs.” Only 17% of Americans in 2010 felt that “free trade agreements” benefit the U.S., compared to 28% in 2007.

Arthur Stamoulis, executive director of Citizen Trade Campaign  said: “If they were to negotiate an agreement that put human rights ahead of corporate profit, creating more just and sustainable social policy, the TPP could be a tool for incredible good. But if you look at who has a seat at the table, with the public shut out and more than 600 corporate lobbyists included, there is nothing to indicate that’s the deal we’re going to get.”

The developing opposition to the corporate coup that the TPP represents has the potential to win. It’s about time for the people to win one victory in the corporate class war. Our first chance in this campaign will be over granting fast track Trade Promotion Authority. And that battle will be followed by the fight over Senate approval of TPP itself. This is one that we can win. The stakes are high. The alternatives are democracy or plutocracy.

******

Cliff DuRand is a Research Associate at the Center for Global Justice and a contributor to the CIP Americas Program http://www.cipamericas.org. He is co-author and co-editor of Recreating Democracy in a Globalized State (Clarity Press, 2012). Contact him at global.justice.cliff@gmail.com

For More Information:

Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch  http://www.citizen.org/trade

on TPP http://www.citizen.org/TPP

Citizens Trade Campaign www.citizenstrade.org

A coalition of labor, environmental, religious, family farm, and consumer organizations united in the pursuit of socially and environmentally just trade policies.

It’s Our Economy www.itsoureconomy.us

It’s Our Economy seeks to educate, organize and mobilize Americans to shift the power from concentrated capital to the people.  http://itsoureconomy.us/occupy-the-tpp-stop-the-global-corporate-coup/

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April 13, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

IRS Plans to Cut Back Auditing of Large Corporations

By Noel Brinkerhoff and Danny Biederman | AllGov | April 11, 2013

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has decided to spend less time auditing multi-million dollar corporations.

Under a new plan revealed to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), the IRS will expend 18% less effort auditing businesses with assets of $10 million or more compared with just two years ago.

The agency also sees itself devoting 14% less time for specialized revenue agents to conduct corporate audits in FY 2013, compared to what was allocated in FY 2011.

There has been less of a drop in the rate of individual taxpayer audits—5.3% in FY 2012, moving to 7% due to an increase in number of filed returns.

TRAC—which obtained the IRS planning document through a Freedom of Information Act request—noted that the reductions were decided upon before sequestration, which could result in the IRS implementing more cuts in the months ahead.

The IRS responded to the release of the TRAC report by pointing out that its budget was cut by $1 billion in 2010, and that its staff was reduced by 7,000 employees in 2011. It insisted that it maintains a fair balance between individual and corporate audits.

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April 11, 2013 Posted by | Economics, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , | Leave a comment

Spanish police to shield politicians’ residences from home eviction victims

MercoPress | April 10, 2013

Spanish police will erect barriers around politicians’ residences to shield them from protests over the growing number of home evictions and to call for changes to mortgage laws.

The Interior Ministry said it ordered police to keep demonstrators at a distance after protests outside the houses of senior members of the governing People’s Party, including the Madrid home of Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaría.

Property foreclosures rose nearly fourfold in the four years since 2008 compared to the previous four-year period, court data shows. Last year, foreclosure cases opened by the courts increased 18% from 2011 to nearly 92,000 as the country suffered its second recession in five years and one in four workers were unemployed.

Around 200 people descended on Sáenz de Santamaría’s home on Friday, including several victims of evictions who related their stories to the crowd using megaphones.

Protest groups, coordinated by the Platform for Mortgage Victims (PAH in Spanish), argue their demonstrations are peaceful, though officials, including Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, have condemned what they call “acts of intimidation.”

PAH wants changes to Spain’s mortgage laws, which allow little margin for struggling homeowners to negotiate with banks than in other countries. Nor can mortgages be eliminated by personal bankruptcy.

The People’s Party infuriated campaigners by amending a bill to ease mortgage regulations on Monday, removing a measure calling for such debts to be cancelled once houses are repossessed.

Hundreds of banner-waving protesters demonstrated at People’s Party headquarters all over the country on Monday evening after it emerged parliament would not debate the measure in an open session. The bill was triggered automatically after 1.5 million people signed a petition.

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April 11, 2013 Posted by | Economics, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , | Leave a comment

British miners celebrate Thatcher’s demise

Press TV – April 9, 2013

The Durham Miners’ Association is celebrating the death of Baroness Thatcher as a “great day” for coal miners, local media reported.

“It looks like one of the best birthdays I have ever had. There’s no sympathy from me for what she did to our community. She destroyed our community, our villages and our people”, said David Hopper, general secretary of the Durham Miners’ Association.

“For the union this could not come soon enough and I’m pleased that I have outlived her. It’s a great day for all the miners, I imagine we will have a counter demonstration when they have her funeral”, he added.

“Our children have got no jobs and the community is full of problems. There’s no work and no money and it’s very sad the legacy she has left behind”, Hopper said.

“She absolutely hated working people and I have got very bitter memories of what she did. She turned all the nation against us and the violence that was meted out on us was terrible. I would say to those people who want to mourn her that they’re lucky she did not treat them like she treated us.”

Darren Vaines, 47, a former miner who worked at Ackton Hall Colliery near Pontefract, West Yorkshire, and was on strike for the entire 12 months of the dispute.

“It’s a very strange emotional feeling because her death brings back a lot of memories and opens up a wound that has never really healed. The cut went so deep people have never been able to forget about it. It’s something they can never get out of their system”, he said.

Chris Kitchen, general secretary for the National Union of Miners, said: “We’ve been waiting for a long time to hear the news of Baroness Thatcher’s demise and I can’t say I’m sorry.

“I’ve got no sympathy for Margaret Thatcher and I will not be shedding a tear for her. She’s done untold damage to the mining community. I don’t think Margaret Thatcher had any sympathy for the mining communities she decimated, the people she threw on the dole and the state she left the country in.”

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April 10, 2013 Posted by | Economics, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

It’s All About Resistance

By David Macaray | Dissident Voice |  April 9th, 2013

It’s almost impossible to overstate the importance of old-fashioned “resistance.” Indeed, without resistance (e.g., pushing back, taking an aggressive stand, demonstrating that you’re willing to fight, etc.), things can get out of hand very quickly, whether we’re talking about international relations, social intercourse, basic economics, children or adults.

Take the typical school yard bully for example.

The thing that keeps these bullies going is that no one resists them. No one is willing to fight back—either by instantly reporting them to a teacher, or (taking matters boldly into their own hands) by punching them squarely in the nose. And experience has taught us that when you appease a bully, two things happen, both of them bad: the bully continues his dominance, and his bullying tends to become more frequent and ambitious.

On Sunday, April 7, the Los Angeles Times ran a disturbing front-page story on the topic of worker victimization. The article pointed out that employers now believe (especially since the recession) that they are firmly in the driver’s seat, that the economy has become such a lopsided “buyer’s market” that they can now pretty much force their employees to do anything they wish. After all, who or what is going to stop them?

It’s sad to report, but businesses have won. They’ve increased their production demands, they’ve extended employees’ work hours (after having laid off a number of them), they’ve taken to issuing ultimatums (If you don’t like it here, quit), and they’ve done all this while, simultaneously, having kept wages relatively stagnant. As for traditional benefits such as pensions, bonuses, sick leave and paid vacations, forget about it. Most of those have been abolished.

Clearly, things have shifted dramatically. Companies are now running roughshod over their employees—not those in upper management, mind you, and not those who hold computer science degrees from Stanford University, but the regular folks, those with high school diplomas who just want to work for a living and are fully cognizant that they have “jobs” rather than “careers.”

Welcome to the underbelly of technology. Companies electronically time your potty breaks, they electronically measure your output, they spy on you with cameras, they force you to attend indoctrination meetings and film you as you listen, and they send out emails threatening to fire you if you show up late to work. Things have shifted so dramatically, management now expects to run the table every time they pick up a pool cue.

Which brings us to the role of labor unions. It’s no accident that this draconian work environment coincides with the precipitous drop in union membership. It’s no accident and no coincidence, because the one thing a labor union brings to the workplace is resistance—resistance in the form of worker representation and adult supervision. It’s that school yard dynamic all over again.

A union contract requires a company to follow certain rules. Despite all their squawking, if management didn’t fully understand the rules and didn’t see the basic wisdom and fairness in them, they wouldn’t have signed that contract. I’ve personally negotiated five contracts, and believe me, only a stupid or wildly reckless management team is going to shoot themselves in the foot.

Yes, union jobs offer about 15-percent higher wages and benefits, and yes, union safety programs are infinitely superior to non-union programs, and these by themselves are tremendous advantages to becoming a union member. But a union also offers something less tangible. A union contract provides an employee with dignity—with the expectation of coming to work and being treated with respect. And that is no small thing.

If anyone is able to name another institution that can provide America’s working class with the built-in dignity and economic advantages a union can, I’d love to hear it, because it ain’t the federal government and it ain’t philanthropic organizations. This is all about resistance. Without resistance, workers have no leverage. Resistance is everything. And without labor unions, the bullies will continue to win.

~

David Macaray, a Los Angeles playwright and author (It’s Never Been Easy: Essays on Modern Labor), was a former union rep. He can be reached at: dmacaray@earthlink.net.

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April 9, 2013 Posted by | Economics, Solidarity and Activism | , , , | Leave a comment

Who Will Save Social Security and Medicare?

By Shamus Cooke | Worker’s Compass | April 7, 2013

Before Social Security and Medicare existed, the elderly were either completely dependent on their children or were left to beg in the streets. These programs thus remain sacred to the vast majority of Americans. They allow the elderly dignity and independence instead of poverty and insecurity.

Attacking these programs has always been political suicide for the assailant; not even the smoothest talking politician would squirm into an aggressive stance.

But now the gloves are off. Obama and the Democrats are aligning with Republicans to strike the first major blows against Social Security and Medicare. This long hidden agenda is finally in full view of the public. The decades-long political agreement to save these programs is dead, and the foundation of American politics is shifting beneath everyone’s feet.

The New York Times reports:

President Obama next week will take the political risk of formally proposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare in his annual budget…

Many liberals are scratching their heads in astonishment, asking “How could this happen?”

The truth is that every liberal and labor leader knew this was in the works for years; they just kept their mouths shut in the hope that Obama could successfully push the blame entirely on the Republicans.

Throughout the summer of 2011 Obama worked with Republicans in the first attempt at a ‘Grand Bargain’ that included cuts to Social Security and Medicare. The Washington Post published an article entitled “Obama’s Evolution” about that summer:

… the major elements of a [Grand] bargain seemed to be falling into place: $1.2 trillion in [national programs] agency cuts, smaller cost-of-living increases [cuts] for Social Security recipients [cuts by dollar inflation], nearly $250 billion in Medicare savings [cuts] achieved in part by raising the eligibility age [of Medicare]. And $800 billion in new taxes.

Labor and liberal leaders kept quiet about this so they could push their members to vote for Obama in 2012. They also kept quite in the fall of 2011 when Obama released his budget proposal that included hundreds of billions of dollars worth of cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.

But hiding the most recent betrayal was next to impossible, and every liberal group is now suddenly “shocked” to see Obama officially and publicly on record to pursue the cuts.

The most craven of the liberal groups will continue to spew rotten rhetoric that only blames Republicans for the cuts while making excuses for Obama’s behavior, claiming that he merely buckled under intense Republican pressure and felt the need to “compromise.”

But it’s all nonsense. No working person who votes Republican wants to cut Medicare and Social Security. Obama could have shattered the Republican Party at its kneecaps by broadly exposing their plans to cut Social Security and Medicare. Instead he insisted on co-leading the attack.

These cuts have nothing to do with Obama’s courage or backbone. It’s a matter of political and economic ideology, and the policy that flows from it.

To reverse this policy one cannot make excuses for the president or ignore his “treacherous” behavior. A criminal offensive requires a powerful counterattack. And although labor and liberal groups are reluctant to attack “their” president, the members of these groups share a different perspective.

In an attempt to connect with the rank and file, the president of the AFL-CIO, Richard Trumka, said of Obama’s Social Security cuts:

These cuts are bad policy. And the only way we’re going to stop them is if President Obama and all members of Congress hear that we’re not going to tolerate them. Sign our petition to the president NOW.

The trouble is that petitions are not capable of stopping the years-in-the-making bi-partisan attack. Trumka knows this. He is thus faking opposition to a policy that he’s partially responsible for, since his miseducating of the AFL-CIO membership led to an ignorance that Obama exploited — union members couldn’t mobilize against something they didn’t know was happening.

But now the secret is exposed, and working people will expect the leaders of their organizations to wage a serious fight against these policies.

Those in the labor movement interested in organizing against this anti-worker offensive should consider actively building the coming August 24 demonstration called by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and The King Center for Washington, D.C. where they are planning to place the demand for jobs to end poverty squarely on the Obama government. Once working people are mobilized to fight independently for their own interests, it will be far easier to add demands around Social Security and Medicare to the list, since working people overwhelmingly support these programs. The AFL-CIO has endorsed this demonstration. Now they will have to seriously mobilize for it.

If we don’t fight back now, then when?

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April 8, 2013 Posted by | Economics, Progressive Hypocrite, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , | Leave a comment

US welcomes the resumption of oil production in South Sudan, will host economic conference

Sudan Tribune |April 6, 2013

KHARTOUM – The United States has welcomed the resumption of oil production in South Sudan, saying it signaled an important step in implementing a cooperation agreement it signed with Sudan last September.

The Sudanese government announced on Friday that the first barrels of oil would begin to flow through the pipelines to Port Sudan on Saturday.

“We congratulate both countries on this important step in implementing the cooperation accords they signed on 27 September 2012”, the US embassy in Khartoum said in a statement on Saturday.

“We welcome the spirit of cooperation between Sudan and South Sudan and urge the leadership of both countries to continue the full and immediate implementation of the agreements”, it added.

South Sudan took with it nearly three quarters of the oil wealth when it seceded from the north in July 2011, but remains dependent on Sudanese infrastructure to pump its oil to export markets.

The resumption of oil production marks the first stage in the implementation of a wider cooperation agreement signed by both countries in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

South Sudan halted oil production last January following a dispute with Sudan over transportation fees.

In an increasingly bitter argument, the South also accused Sudan of diverting oil for its own profit.

Speaking to the press on Friday, Sudanese government spokesman Barnaba Marial said oil production would restart in Tharjiath oilfield in Unity state’s Koch county before being pumped north to Port Sudan via a 1,400 kilometre-long pipeline.

Another oilfield in the Heglig/Panthou area in Pariang county is also expected to resume production in the coming days.

Both countries have suffered a severe economic downturn as a result of the loss of oil revenues, with South Sudan depending on oil for 98 per cent of its revenue.

The worsening economic crisis following the oil shutdown forced both countries to cut back on spending, as well as introduce a raft of austerity measures.

The two countries as a result of the oil shutdown had to cut back on spending in their institutions by introducing austerity budgets.


US to host economic conference on South Sudan

Sudan Tribune | April 5, 2013

WASHINGTON – The United States State Department announced on Friday that it will host a conference this month for discussions on economic challenges facing South Sudan and ways to help the country face it.

In a press release the US said that the forum taking place on April 16 is held in coordination with the United Kingdom, Norway and the European Union.

“These governments and international financial institutions, including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the African Development Bank, are working with the Government of the Republic of South Sudan to explore concrete options to help bridge the fiscal gap exacerbated by the oil shutdown of the past year, as well as plans to diversify South Sudan’s economy to allow for sustainable long-term growth,” the statement said

“The South Sudan Economic Partners Forum is an opportunity for representatives of governments and international financial institutions to discuss strategies to address South Sudan’s economic challenges with South Sudanese Government officials and offer support for sound government policy-making”.

The announcement comes weeks after Khartoum and Juba reached an agreement by which oil flow from landlocked South Sudan would resume.

South Sudan, which relied on oil revenues for around 98 percent of income, pumped around 350,000 barrels per day (bpd) before a row over transit fees and Khartoum’s move to seize part of the oil prompted it to shut production last year.

The country which became independent in July 2011 must pump its oil to the Red Sea via a pipeline across former civil war foe Sudan to Port Sudan to sell it on international markets.

Both countries stand to receive billions of dollars that will help ease the sharp economic crisis they faced throughout the oil shutdown.

Yesterday the Sudanese finance minister predicted that Khartoum will receive around $2 billion in transit fees from South Sudan.

The US has been unhappy with South Sudan’s decision to suspend oil production and warned Juba that many western countries are not in a position to bail them out given the global economic crisis.

“A percentage of something is better than a percentage of nothing,” former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters about importance of reaching an oil deal last year after meeting with South Sudan president Salva Kiir.

In December 2011 the US hosted the International Engagement Conference for South Sudan in Washington which discussed issues connected to the strategic development priorities of the Juba government and highlighted opportunities for engagement with private and public sector investors.

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April 7, 2013 Posted by | Economics | , , , | Leave a comment

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