Obama calls critics of TPP secrecy 'Conspiracy Theorists'
Seeing how well NAFTA turned out, count me a critic.
Obama Blasted for Lumping Critics of Trade Deal Secrecy with 'Conspiracy Theorists'
'If the president is concerned that people don't know what's going on in the negotiations then the president should release the text and remove it from being a state secret.'
- Sarah Lazare, staff writer
Published on Friday, May 2, 2014 by Common Dreams
Critics of the highly-secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations responded with outrage after U.S. President Barack Obama charged they have a "lack of knowledge of what is going on in the negotiations" and dismissed their concerns as "conspiracy theories."
The president made the comments this week during a press conference in Malaysia—one of the stops on his Asia-Pacific tour, aimed at advancing the TPP and the U.S. military "pivot" to the region. His tour has been met with region-wide protests against the economic and military agenda of the U.S.
SNIP...
Bernadette Ellorin, Chairperson of BAYAN-USA—an alliance of Filipino organizations in the U.S., told Common Dreams, "President Obama lacks knowledge of how so-called 'free trade agreements' impact people on the ground. The push-back he has gotten over the TPP comes from people who have long-suffered from these impacts."
"He should go back and talk with the parent-less children in the region, whose parents had no choice but to look for work overseas because they couldn't find work in their own country due to these so-called 'free trade' agreements," she added. "He should go back and talk to the indigenous children whose parents were killed by paramilitary groups because greater foreign investment stipulations in these agreements have led to forced evacuations and militarization of their land for the purpose of large scale foreign mining."
CONTINUED...
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/05/02-5
Cass Sunstein must be right: The United States government is incapable of lying or doing anything criminal.
The people in it, OTOH...
= new reply since forum marked as read
OK, I'm no Manny.. 
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4898981
Brunei's Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah delivers a speech during the official ceremony of the implementation of sharia law.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/01/world/asia/brunei-sharia-law/index.html?sr=sharebar_twitter
Brunei Phasing In Antigay Law; Will Soon Allow Death by Stoning.
http://www.advocate.com/world/2014/04/30/brunei-phasing-antigay-law-will-soon-allow-death-stoning
Or the polite way of telling the DFHs to STFU!
For Sid!
Response to Octafish (Original post)
Comforting, comforting words. Not to defuse the fact that no one I can think of would ever use government service to enrich their cronies by "concealing their roles." As if that could ever happen every day!
Carlyle Group owns and operates NSA contract spy house Booz Allen Hamilton.
Carlyle is War Inc merged with Washington DC, personified.
Background from days when 92-percent of the country stood behind Smirko Bush:
War Is Sell - Washington Elite Benefits from War
Christopher Bollyn
October 31, 2001
War has always been a profitable money machine for shrewd investors with foresight, but the extremely close connections of the Carlyle Group, a Washington-based private equity investment firm and major war profiteer, to the Bush and Bin Laden families raise unavoidable questions of waging war for profit.
Established in 1987 the Carlyle Group was founded by David Rubenstein, a former staff member in the Jimmy Carter White House, and his two partners, Dan D'Aniello and Bill Conway. Today there are 18 partners in the firm and one outside investor. The Washington Post has described Carlyle as a "merchant banking firm" set up "to serve corporations and wealthy families." From the beginning the founders of Carlyle have recruited former politicians as consultants: former President George H. W. Bush is among them, along with a host of other Bush family cronies.
The Bush connection to the Carlyle Group is nothing short of a scandal, according to Larry Klayman, a notable government watchdog best known for pursuing the scandals of former President Bill Clinton. Now that the United States is bombing Afghanistan and allocating huge sums of money for defense, including $40 billion for the "war on terrorism" and more than $200 billion [1994 dollars] for the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), the conflict of interest is "direct," Klayman says. "President Bush should not ask but demand that his father pull out of the Carlyle Group." Carlyle owns many of the companies that will share in the $200 billion JSF deal.
"Carlyle is as deeply wired into the current administration as they can possibly be," Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, said. "George Bush is getting money from private interests that have business before the government, while his son is president. And, in a really peculiar way, George W. Bush could, some day, benefit financially from his own administration's decisions, through his father's investments. The average American doesn't know that. To me, that's a jaw-dropper."
CONTINUED...
http://www.bollyn.com/war-is-sell-washington-elite-benefits-from-war
Turning the NSA on the American people is what Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) warned us in 1976. That was about the last time the United States Congress stood up to the intelligence agencies and enacted reforms.
Wonder what Sen. Church would say about a privatized intel?
PS and most importantly: Thank you, OnyxCollie!
Mineral extraction industries, as the Congo has learned since Belgium left in 1960, are one lucrative industry.
It must be a coincidence that in his last days as president, George Herbert Walker Bush, aka Poppy, helped his future friends at Barrick Gold.
Poppy Strikes Gold
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Originally Posted July 9, 2003
By Greg Palast
EXCERPT...
And while the Bush family steadfastly believes that ex-felons should not have the right to vote for president, they have no objection to ex-cons putting presidents on their payroll. In 1996, despite pleas by U.S. church leaders, Poppy Bush gave several speeches (he charges $100,000 per talk) sponsored by organizations run by Rev. Sun Myung Moon, cult leader, tax cheat—and formerly the guest of the U.S. federal prison system. Some of the loot for the Republican effort in the 1997–2000 election cycles came from an outfit called Barrick Corporation.
The sum, while over $100,000, is comparatively small change for the GOP, yet it seemed quite a gesture for a corporation based in Canada. Technically, the funds came from those associated with the Canadian's U.S. unit, Barrick Gold Strike.
They could well afford it. [font color="green"]In the final days of the Bush (Senior) administration, the Interior Department made an extraordinary but little noticed change in procedures under the 1872 Mining Law, the gold rush–era act that permitted those whiskered small-time prospectors with their tin pans and mules to stake claims on their tiny plots. The department initiated an expedited procedure for mining companies that allowed Barrick to swiftly lay claim to the largest gold find in America. In the terminology of the law, Barrick could "perfect its patent" on the estimated $10 billion in ore—for which Barrick paid the U.S. Treasury a little under $10,000. Eureka![/font color]
Barrick, of course, had to put up cash for the initial property rights and the cost of digging out the booty (and the cost of donations, in smaller amounts, to support Nevada's Democratic senator, Harry Reid). Still, the shift in rules paid off big time: According to experts at the Mineral Policy Center of Washington, DC, Barrick saved—and the U.S. taxpayer lost—a cool billion or so. Upon taking office, Bill Clinton's new interior secretary, Bruce Babbitt, called Barrick's claim the "biggest gold heist since the days of Butch Cassidy." Nevertheless, because the company followed the fast-track process laid out for them under Bush, this corporate Goldfinger had Babbitt by the legal nuggets. Clinton had no choice but to give them the gold mine while the public got the shaft.
Barrick says it had no contact whatsoever with the president at the time of the rules change.(1) There was always a place in Barrick's heart for the older Bush—and a place on its payroll. In 1995, Barrick hired the former president as Honorary Senior Advisor to the Toronto company's International Advisory Board. Bush joined at the suggestion of former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney, who, like Bush, had been ignominiously booted from office. I was a bit surprised that the president had signed on. When Bush was voted out of the White House, he vowed never to lobby or join a corporate board. The chairman of Barrick openly boasts that granting the title "Senior Advisor" was a sly maneuver to help Bush tiptoe around this promise.
CONTINUED...
http://www.gregpalast.com/poppy-strikes-gold/
Wow. So his flock of supporters in the media and elsewhere wanted it known: George Herbert Walker Bush did do something nice when he was President. It just happened to be that it was for a rich, powerful corporation.
The story continues, in which Mr. Palast details how said gold mining company employed fascist tactics to take over the mine, part of which involved bulldozing the miners homes and mines, some with the miners still inside. Let that, uh, sink in. For his trouble in reporting the story, Barrick threatened to sue.
The Truth Buried Alive
—By Greg Palast, From The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (Penguin/Plume, 2003)
Source: UTNE Reader
April 2003 Issue
EXCERPT...
Bad news. In July 2001, in the middle of trying to get out the word of the theft of the election in Florida, [font color="red"]I was about to become the guinea pig, the test case, for an attempt by a multinational corporation to suppress free speech in the USA using British libel law. I have a U.S.-based Web site for Americans who can’t otherwise read my columns or view my BBC television reports. The gold-mining company held my English newspaper liable for aggravated damages for my publishing the story in the USA. If I did not pull the Bush-Barrick story off my U.S. Web site, my paper would face a ruinously costly fight.(1)[/font color]
Panicked, the Guardian legal department begged me to delete not just the English versions of the story but also my Spanish translation, printed in Bolivia. (Caramba!)
The Goldfingers didn’t stop there. [font color="green"]Barrick’s lawyers told our papers that I personally would be sued in the United Kingdom over Web publications of my story in America, because the Web could be accessed in Britain. The success of this legal strategy would effectively annul the U.S. Bill of Rights.[/font color] Speak freely in the USA, but if your words are carried on a U.S. Web site, you may be sued in Britain. The Declaration of Independence would be null and void, at least for libel law. Suddenly, instead of the Internet becoming a means of spreading press freedom, the means to break through censorship, it would become the electronic highway for delivering repression.
And repression was winning. InterPress Services (IPS) of Washington, DC, sent a reporter to Tanzania with Lissu. They received a note from Barrick that said if the wire service ran a story that repeated the allegations, the company would sue. IPS did not run the story.
I was worried about Lissu. On July 19, 2001, a group of Tanzanian police interest lawyers wrote the nation’s president asking for an investigation–instead, Lissu’s law partner in Dar es Salaam was arrested. The police were hunting for Lissu. They broke into his home and office and turned them upside down looking for the names of Lissu’s sources, his whereabouts and the evidence he gathered on the mine site clearance. This was more than a legal skirmish. Over the next months, demonstrations by vicims’ families were broken up by police thugs. A member of Parliament joining protesters was beaten and hospitalized. I had to raise cash quick to get Lissu out, and with him, his copies of police files with more evidence of the killings. I called Maude Barlow, the “Ralph Nader of Canada”, head of the Council of Canadians. Without hesitation, she teamed up with Friends of the Earth in Holland, raised funds and prepared a press conference–and in August tipped the story to the Globe & Mail, Canada’s national paper.
CONTINUED...
http://www.mapcruzin.com/palast-2.htm
And for writing about this, Greg Palast did something very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very bad from the BFEE perspective: He told the truth, including the bits about the buried alive gold miners, as it happens. So, the Big Corporation sued and sued and sued. With their deep pockets, they can buy justice, judges, prime ministers, presidents and whoever and whatever else they need to turn a buck.
TPP is a Globalist dream come true. Odd to see so many act like the destruction of democracy is no big deal.
indeed.
[font size="1"]Conspiratorial Wink (detail) by Michael Samuels[/font size]
The big picture is much different.
It's the government's
responsibility to take care of things related to our lives. Leave them alone so they can do their job!! How can democracy possibly work if people keep sticking their nose in the government's business?We, OTOH, very much appreciate the heads-up. Thank you, Douglas Carpenter!
These times are worse than gangster times or bankster times, these are the people who bankrolled slavery times.
Here are a couple of modern day slavemasters, I mean, bankers, uh, I mean politicians, uh, I mean autocrats...
Baron de Rothschild and Prescott Sheldon Bush, Sr., sharing a moment and a bit o' information in this small world, back in the day. The back of the object they are examining shows typing in a box, similar to what is often used for identifying content on the front of a photograph. Were I to theorize, I'd say they likely are examining an AP wirephoto, based on similar images I have seen in the past. Were I to take a wild guess, I'd venture it's a map showing Interstate construction routes, or less likely as they control so many of them, a bank architectural diagram.
Rothschild and Freshfields founders’ had links to slavery, papers reveal
By Carola Hoyos
Financial Times
Two of the biggest names in the City of London had previously undisclosed links to slavery in the British colonies, documents seen by the Financial Times have revealed.
Nathan Mayer Rothschild, the banking family’s 19th-century patriarch, and James William Freshfield, founder of Freshfields, the top City law firm, benefited financially from slavery, records from the National Archives show, even though both have often been portrayed as opponents of slavery.
Far from being a matter of distant history, slavery remains a highly contentious issue in the US, where Rothschild and Freshfields are both active.
Companies alleged to have links to past slave injustices have come under pressure to make restitution.
JPMorgan, the investment bank, set up a $5m scholarship fund for black students studying in Louisiana after apologising in 2005 for the company’s historic links to slavery.
CONTINUED (with registration, etc) ...
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7c0f5014-628c-11de-b1c9-00144feabdc0.html
Geographers lead such innnnteresting lives.
Not.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-cohen/koreaus-free-trade-agreem_b_4965492.html
Obama's Korean Free Trade Deal is the Prototype for the TPP,
and contains much of the same language...verbatim.
"Obama Admin’s TPP Trade Officials Received Hefty Bonuses From Big Banks"
http://billmoyers.com/2014/02/20/obama-admin%E2%80%99s-tpp-trade-officials-received-hefty-bonuses-from-big-banks/
Study: "Trade" Deal Would Mean a Pay Cut for 90% of U.S. Workers
http://citizen.typepad.com/eyesontrade/2013/09/the-verdict-is-in-the-trans-pacific-partnership-tpp-a-sweeping-free-trade-deal-under-negotiation-with-11-pacific-rim-coun.html
They MUST try to keep this a secret,
cause there ain't enough lipstick to put on this Pig.
The sad thing is that President Obama KNOWS that these deals have been devastating to America's Working Class. He admitted as much in the 2008 Debates when he promised to "immediately re-negotiate NAFTA."
You will know them by their WORKS.
[font color=firebrick][center]"There are forces within the Democratic Party who want us to sound like kinder, gentler Republicans.
I want a party that will STAND UP for Working Americans."
---Paul Wellstone [/font][/center]
[center]
[/font]
[font size=1]photo by bvar22
Shortly before Sen Wellstone was killed[/center][/font]
By comparison for the 7 years before NAFTA inflation adjusted household income had actually declined from $49,764 in 1986 to $48,884 in 1993.
Indeed in the 20 years before NAFTA that income figure went from $48,557 in 1973 to $48,884 in 1993. So inflation adjusted household income increased by $327 in the 20 years before NAFTA and increased by $7,103 in the 7 years after it.
http://www.davemanuel.com/median-household-income.php
And Clinton was better for the middle class than any president since Carter.
Annual increases in average after-tax household income for middle quintile (CBO, Table 3):
1. Bill Clinton – 1.8% (total 15.8%)
2. George W. Bush – 0.4% (total 1.3%)
3. Ronald Reagan – 0.3% (total 1.1%)
4. George H.W. Bush – 0.2% (total 0.7%)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/01/28/if-we-want-more-income-equality-should-we-return-to-the-economy-of-george-w-bush/
Manufacturing employment has been falling since the mid-1950's, while output has steadily increased. The rate of decline did not change after NAFTA. The decline in manufacturing employment has occurred in every developed country. None them have anything to do with NAFTA - other than the US and Canada.
- Hahahahaha! Now everybody's nuts! Yes!!! What a jackass.
Welcome to the New World Order.
~Robert Anton Wilson
[center]
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And censorship of any kind is:
[center]
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If DU no longer stands for truth, your right, I have no place here.......
- More truth from another conspiracy theorist:
[center]
Whom do ************************ you believe?[/center]
- Personally, I'm partial to the classical interpretations of the Constitution as spoken by the founders who wrote it. As I am partial to Yuja Wang when it comes to classical interpretations of piano concertos by Rachmaninoff......
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Sid
Sources matter.
Well, to most people they do...
Sid
All the promise in the world, change, etc. Instead, millions tossed from their homes and banksters laugh.
The Shocking Redistribution of Wealth in the Past Five Years
by Paul Buchheit
Published on Monday, December 30, 2013 by Common Dreams
Anyone reviewing the data is likely to conclude that there must be some mistake. It doesn't seem possible that one out of twenty American families could each have made a million dollars since Obama became President, while the average American family's net worth has barely recovered. But the evidence comes from numerous reputable sources.
Some conservatives continue to claim that President Obama is unfriendly to business, but the facts show that the richest Americans and the biggest businesses have been the main - perhaps only - beneficiaries of the massive wealth gain over the past five years.
1. $5 Million to Each of the 1%, and $1 Million to Each of the Next 4%
From the end of 2008 to the middle of 2013 total U.S. wealth increased from $47 trillion to $72 trillion. About $16 trillion of that is financial gain (stocks and other financial instruments).
The richest 1% own about 38 percent of stocks, and half of non-stock financial assets. So they've gained at least $6.1 trillion (38 percent of $16 trillion). That's over $5 million for each of 1.2 million households.
The next richest 4%, based on similar calculations, gained about $5.1 trillion. That's over a million dollars for each of their 4.8 million households.
The least wealthy 90% in our country own only 11 percent of all stocks excluding pensions (which are fast disappearing). The frantic recent surge in the stock market has largely bypassed these families.
2. Evidence of Our Growing Wealth Inequality
This first fact is nearly ungraspable: In 2009 the average wealth for almost half of American families was ZERO (their debt exceeded their assets).
In 1983 the families in America's poorer half owned an average of about $15,000. But from 1983 to 1989 median wealth fell from over $70,000 to about $60,000. From 1998 to 2009, fully 80% of American families LOST wealth. They had to borrow to stay afloat.
It seems the disparity couldn't get much worse, but after the recession it did. According to a Pew Research Center study, in the first two years of recovery the mean net worth of households in the upper 7% of the wealth distribution rose by an estimated 28%, while the mean net worth of households in the lower 93% dropped by 4%. And then, from 2011 to 2013, the stock market grew by almost 50 percent, with again the great majority of that gain going to the richest 5%.
Today our wealth gap is worse than that of the third world. Out of all developed and undeveloped countries with at least a quarter-million adults, the U.S. has the 4th-highest degree of wealth inequality in the world, trailing only Russia, Ukraine, and Lebanon.
3. Congress' Solution: Take from the Poor
Congress has responded by cutting unemployment benefits and food stamps, along with other 'sequester' targets like Meals on Wheels for seniors and Head Start for preschoolers. The more the super-rich make, the more they seem to believe in the cruel fantasy that the poor are to blame for their own struggles.
President Obama recently proclaimed that inequality "drives everything I do in this office." Indeed it may, but in the wrong direction.
FORUM HOSTS, PLEASE NOTE: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Paul Buchheit is a college teacher, an active member of US Uncut Chicago, founder and developer of social justice and educational websites (UsAgainstGreed.org, PayUpNow.org, RappingHistory.org), and the editor and main author of "American Wars: Illusions and Realities" (Clarity Press). He can be reached at paul@UsAgainstGreed.org.
Original Article: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/12/30-0
What makes me furious is how it's been no New Deal for the 21st Century and all welfare for the wealthy.
been talking about this since "I'm a new Democrat", or "The Professional Left", or "Bipartisanship", and here we are. FFS 
......................................................................
Works the other way around to brother.
-p
Correct on all points but right now Russia and China are at the bottom of my priority list. We've been fucked for way.......... too long.
Like NAFTA it is considered a geopolitical strategy not economic. It's designed to marginalize those who don't play along with the globalized capitalist system. Its copyright provisions alone would pull in millions of people on the planet and force them under DMCA-like provisions.
I write about the geopolitical aspects here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=735212
You can see my other posts in that thread if you are interpreting my tone as supportive of TPP, I was more annoyed with the whole Obama doesn't know crap thing, Obama knows exactly what he's doing. He's not always doing things in support of the workers, despite his rhetoric.
edit: ahah, it seems you were in that thread, I didn't realize. I think my position is consistent.
I would imagine he's riding the wave, maintaining the wave, till it ends. He doesn't have to do a damn thing but keep the status quo.
-p
-p
Can you hear me now?!?
-p
Listen I understand what your trying to direct me too but I'm the one who dealt with it. Spin it however you want, my past circumstances are not going to change. Maybe it was just coincidence? Does that make you feel better? Go find someone else you need to make an example of cause it's not working here.
apologists never cease.
Maybe 3D artists weren't in demand in the 1960's?
Dude, take a nap. I'v been there and done that, your funny.
-p
