Agenda 21 Meets Global Corporate Takeover in the Trans-Pacific Partnership

July 28, 2012

Susanne Posel
Occupy Corporatism


The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) “is a key trade initiative” that the Obama administration claims is “seeking to support jobs for American workers by boosting American exports to the dynamic Asia-Pacific region, promote manufacturing, innovation, and entrepreneurship, and at the same time, reflect in the agreement important values on key issues such as worker rights and the environment.”

However, the agenda of the TPP is a securitization of customs and border patrol services, telecommunications, corporate competition policy that directly affects immigration, corporate investments, and the addition of intellectual property rights with focus on copyright limitations.

The TPP, held in secret, is in actuality a multi-national trade agreement that seeks to extend intellectual property rights across the globe; creating an international enforcement scheme.

In a White House statement , Obama seeks to incorporate America with Canada and the other TPP countries in a “next-generation regional agreement that liberalizes trade and investment.” The press release explains that TPP will build upon “the commitments of NAFTA.”

The TPP defines intellectual property as:

• Copyright
• Trademarks
• Patents
• Geopolitical indicators

The leaked document drafted as the US TPP Intellectual Property Rights Chapter clearly states that negotiators for Obama are actively pushing for the adaptation of copyright measures that further restrict that is outlined in the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and other similar international treaties.

There is an initiative to control global IP enforcement by the UN under signatory treaty wherein nations will be mandated to enact domestic laws that have been worded to reflect the provisions in the TPP agreement.

As in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA), that places federal agencies in control of digital “locks” and enforcement of over=blown statutory damages on claims of copyright infringement; as well as restricting the US Congress from altering existing IP governances as changes in technology and innovation demands such elasticity.

The restrictive nature of the TPP is evidenced in such obligations as:

•  Strict punishment over temporary use of copyrighted material without the holder’s authorization
•   Import bans on “parallel goods” from foreign nations wherein copyright authorization is required
•   Extend copyright terms beyond 70 years as agreed in the 1994 Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of IP
•   Enact laws that treat copyright violation and technological protection measures as separate offences regardless of proof that copyright infringement has occurred
•   Classify copyright infringement as a criminal offense
•   Complete adaptation of the DMCA Internet Intermediaries copyright safe harbor regime

In June of this year, Senators Sherrod Brown, Jeff Merkley, Ron Wyden and Robert Menendez wrote to the Obama administration requesting transparency regarding the TPP talks. In the correspondence, the Senators conveyed : “Groups essential to the success and legitimacy of any agreements are not being provided the opportunity to provide meaningful input on negotiations that have broad policy ramifications. If Congress and the broader public are not informed of the exact terms of the agreement until the conclusion of the process, then the opportunity for meaningful input is lost. The lack of transparency and input makes passage of trade agreements more contentious and controversial.”

This amicable request has fallen on deaf ears as the Obama administration continues to shroud the TPP talks in secrecy.

The propaganda in the public forum is that the TPP is a sort of Free Trade Act (FTA) which masks the massive profits that corporations stand to gain and the elimination of those currently employed as multi-national business is converted into a weapon of mass destruction .

Outsourcing, which was endorsed by NAFTA over a decade ago, would be enhanced under TPP, where manipulation of governments by mega-corporations could ensure profit margins increase exponentially.

Within TPP is an UN-like tribunal of attorneys that would govern legal disputes, enforce through international judgment complaints regarding governmental regulations and oversee adherence to corporate operations despite independent right of sovereign nations under international mandate.
Ron Kirkland, US Trade Representative for the Obama administration believes that public interest and national sovereignty must be cast to the wayside under global governance that is in line with multi-national corporate agendas that serve the global Elite.

Corporate control over natural resources through the use of international tribunals that will rule over environmental issues, land use, public health, and any and all laws or regulations foreign or domestic that apply. Those tribunals would be seated by private sector lawyers operating under the UN and World Bank (WB) demand for taxpayer compensation of domestic regulatory policies because corporations must be paid back for “expected future profits”.

In basic terms, with the aid of tribunal “courts” corporations can put pressure on governments to weaken their environmental policies at the whim of the multi-national company with the backing of international mandate.

This has happened already in various places around the world:

• Chevron used investor tribunals to invade Ecuador and commit toxic contamination of indigenous areas
• Renco Group Inc used investor-tribunals to pollute Peru with residue from smelter factories without having to clean up their mess
• Pacific Rim Mining Corp, while mining for gold, contaminated natural water sources with cyanide without punitive action against them by coercing governments to rewrite water policies

The TPP rewrites domestic law to fit international accord with corporate interest. Whether it is environmental or social issues, the TPP allows the end result to be in line with the profitability of the endeavor. All globalist schemes are wrapped up nicely in the TPP agreement. By empowering multi-national corporations, as they have done with the central banking cartels, the global Elite are ensured their one world government comes to fruition.

ACTA: An International SOPA

By Sandra Fulton, ACLU Washington Legislative Office

While the Internet community came out in force to protest the free speech and privacy threats posed by the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), an international trade agreement with the same stated goals—and potentially greater threats—was being negotiated behind closed doors. While the First Amendment can be served by intellectual property protections that incentivize content creation, IP laws can easily be misused. Like PIPA and SOPA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (“ACTA”) is another misguided and overbroad attempt to crack down on counterfeiting and piracy over the Internet. There has been excellent analysis of the issue by sources including EFF, Tech Dirt and Ars Technica, but we have also been watching this issue and wanted to summarize what’s at stake.

While many of the worst provisions of ACTA were ultimately watered down (mainly due to pressure from outside groups reacting to leaked drafts), many issues remain, both procedural and substantive. There are four primary problems with ACTA.

1. Tying Congress’s Hands on Copyright Law

     While supporters of ACTA insist it does not change U.S. law (were it technically to change existing law, it would require Senate ratification) opponents have different concerns—namely, that it will reinforce current copyright laws in an area that is changing rapidly and many believe should be updated. Opponents fear that signing the agreement will make it unnecessarily more difficult for Congress to update copyright laws while staying compliant with our new “international obligations.”

2. Lack of accountability

     Unlike PIPA and SOPA, ACTA would establish a new international body to enforce certain IP rules. This body would be made up of unelected members acting outside the purview of any current international institution. So, while SOPA and PIPA at least would have been enforced by U.S. agencies and subject to constitutional checks and balances, ACTA could be used for worldwide crackdowns on Internet activity by a coordinated authority that could work at cross-purposes with the laws and policies of the participating countries.

3. Negotiated in secret

     Despite the fact that such world-wide e-regulation has the potential to impact everyone with a computer, ACTA was negotiated in secret by a small, exclusive group of countries and a few private companies. The first the public heard about the talks was when WikiLeaks released a discussion document in May 2008. Both Presidents Bush and Obama rejected calls from advocates and members of Congress to make ACTA negotiations public, claiming that such disclosure would cause “damage to the national security.” However, a 2009 FOIA request found that the draft had been shared with Google, eBay, Dell, Intel, the Business Software Alliance, News Corporation, Sony Pictures, Time Warner, the Motion Picture Association of America, and Verizon under a nondisclosure agreement. Once the agreement was finalized it was posted to the United States Trade Representative’s website here.

4. Evading Senate approval

     To keep the negotiations secret and avoid having to obtain the Senate’s approval, the president is claiming that ACTA was negotiated within his presidential powers as a “sole executive agreement.” A sole executive agreement is one that the president may enter if the terms will not change U.S. law. However, the extent of the president’s authority to completely bypass Congressional approval and enter into a sole executive agreement is controversial. Earlier this month 50 leading U.S. legal scholars sent a letter to members of the Senate Finance Committee stating,

     the Administration currently lacks a means to constitutionally enter ACTA without ex post Congressional approval. The present issue reaches far beyond the topical matters covered by ACTA, into the fundamental Constitutional issue of separation of powers. If Congress allows the executive to claim that ACTA was authorized by language that clearly does not authorize the agreement, it will be ceding unprecedented power to the executive."

     Senator Wyden (D-OR) has also questioned the president’s authority to treat ACTA as a sole agreement. “There are questions of constitutional authority surrounding whether the administration can enter into this agreement without Congress’s approval,” he said. “Either way, when international accords, like ACTA, are conceived and constructed under a cloak of secrecy it is hard to argue that they represent the broad interests of the general public. The controversy over ACTA should surprise no one.”

     Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) warned participants at the World Economic Forum that ACTA was more dangerous than SOPA and PIPA and.then called into question the president’s authority to negotiate the agreement. He said, “It’s not coming to me for a vote. It purports that it does not change existing laws. But once implemented, it creates a whole new enforcement system and will virtually tie the hands of Congress to undo it.”

International opposition
To date the United States, the European Union (and 22 of its member states), Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, and South Korea have all signed ACTA but none have formally ratified the agreement yet.

At the grassroots and at the highest levels of government, ACTA has sparked protests. In Poland, tens of thousands of people protested across the nation and activists attacked government websites when that country signed the agreement in January. Members of the Polish Parliament wore Guy Fawkes masks to demonstrate their disapproval. Since then, protests have been organized throughout Europe including in Sweden, Germany, Bulgaria, Greece, and the United Kingdom. Notably, Kader Arif, the first "rapporteur" for ACTA in the EU parliament (the member who prepares the official recommendation to the parliament on a legislative proposal), quit his role in disgust, stating,

I want to denounce in the strongest possible manner the entire process that led to the signature of this agreement: no inclusion of civil society organizations, a lack of transparency from the start of the negotiations, repeated postponing of the signature of the text without an explanation being ever given, exclusion of the EU Parliament's demands that were expressed on several occasions in our assembly.

This agreement might have major consequences on citizens' lives, and still, everything is being done to prevent the European Parliament from having its say in this matter. That is why today, as I release this report for which I was in charge, I want to send a strong signal and alert the public opinion about this unacceptable situation. I will not take part in this masquerade.

Arif’s successor, David Martin, recommended against adoption of the agreement, fearing unintended consequences and overbroad enforcement (though he also asked the parliament to consider a replacement).

Post-ACTA: The Trans-Pacific Partnership
Since ACTA’s completion we have learned that part of a new massive trade agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), aims "to ensure an effective and balanced approach to intellectual property rights among the TPP countries.” Talks on the TPP are currently being held between nine Pacific Rim countries: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, and the United States. Like ACTA all negotiations are being conducted behind closed doors with details shared only with Industry Trade Advisory Committees (ITAC). The U.S. ITAC is called ITAC 15 and includes top executives from AT&T, Verizon, the RIAA, the pharmaceutical lobby, and Cisco. All anyone else knows about the agreement comes from a leak of the "intellectual property chapter" that surfaced about a year ago. EFF’s international IP director, Gwen Hinze, told Ars Technica, “I would say it’s ACTA-plus, not ACTA redux,” Secret international trade agreements negotiated between only government and industry is not a trend we want to see catch on.

Healthy democracies depend on transparency and public debate. Good policies are created through the input of experts, advocates, industry, policy makers, and citizens. Circumventing basic checks and balances to fast-track policies that have already been defeated by the public—often called “policy laundering”— is not how representative democracy is supposed to work. Many fear that agreements made in ACTA and TPP will put our civil liberties at risk. At the very least, the president should allow a free and open debate on the measures.

Patent Office Exploring Keeping Patents Secret If They're 'Economically Significant'

by Mike Masnick - TechDirt
Fri, Apr 27th 2012

from the wasn't-disclosure-the-point? dept

We're told, repeatedly, by some patent system supporters that the whole point of the patent system is really about "disclosure." Of course, this is a myth for a variety of reasons. The biggest, of course, is that in many industries, patents are both completely useless to learn anything from and are never used to learn how things are done. This is especially true in software, where you will never hear about anyone learning how to do anything from a patent.

A few years back, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) started publishing nearly all patent applications 18 months after the application came in. This is a pretty common practice around the globe. If a patent system is about disclosure, this makes sense -- and in theory, allows for people to point out prior art or protest certain patents before they're issued. There is a current exception for patents deemed in the interest of national security to keep secret (such as patents on nuclear energy).

However, Francisco George points us to the news that the USPTO is now considering also keeping "economically significant" patents secret too (pdf and embedded below). They're exploring this after being directed by Congress -- and it's not hard to see the lobbyists' fingerprints on the specific request:

By statute, patent applications are published no earlier than 18 months after the filing date, but it takes an average of about three years for a patent application to be processed. This period of time between publication and patent award provides worldwide access to the information included in those applications. In some circumstances, this information allows competitors to design around U.S. technologies and seize markets before the U.S. inventor is able to raise financing and secure a market.

As far as can be told, this directive seems to be saying that because patent applications might do what the patent system is supposed to do -- help disclose ideas -- we should keep the applications secret. The problem, of course, is that pretty much every patent applicant is going to think their patent is economically significant. The reality is that pretty much no one knows if their patents are economically meaningful until years later when a product is actually on the market. This proposal seems to serve no purpose other than helping companies not to disclose ideas while still letting them get patents.


2012-09503_PI

The Secret Republican

Obama Fails Wall Street “Conspirators” Too

by ANDREW LEVINE

 

“Conspiracy theories” have a bad press.  But sometimes conspiracies are real and sometimes conspiracy theories do account for what they purport to explain.  Whether they do or not is an empirical question.  Because real world politics is propelled by multiple, heterogeneous causes, and because political actors seldom rise to a genuinely Machiavellian level, the usual criteria for determining what the best explanations are – elegance, simplicity and the like – are of little use.  Evidence is all.

If no compelling evidence of a conspiracy surfaces, especially over many years and especially too if the purported conspiracy would have had to involve vast numbers of people, that’s an excellent reason to think that there was no conspiracy.   This is why it is more plausible than not, after almost five decades, to believe that Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK on his own.  Only a decade has passed since 9/11 but the fact that no evidence of a conspiracy of the kind “truthers” argue for has yet to emerge is decisive in that case too, especially in light of the manifest incompetence of everyone connected with the alleged plot.

Thanks to the resurgence of what Richard Hofstadter called “the paranoid style” in American politics, conspiracy theories based on little or no evidence have multiplied alarmingly in recent years.   Many of them are manifestly implausible.  For example, the idea that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim is plainly false because it would explain nothing.  Obama has done as much to harm the historically Muslim world as any American president, including George W. Bush, so he would, at the very least, have to be a “self-hating” secret Muslim, an idea that runs counter to the paranoid drift of those who level the charge.  It would make slightly more sense to claim that Obama is a secret al-Qaeda operative, inasmuch as his policies are good for bringing recruits into the al-Qaeda fold.  But those policies are continuations of George Bush’s, and no one is paranoid enough to deem that hapless but villainous soul a double agent.

On the other hand, the idea that Obama is a secret Republican would explain a great deal.  His capitulations and displays of spinelessness, along with his lack of principled conviction, helped bring Republicans to power in the House of Representatives and in many state houses and legislatures.  Moreover, the policies he pursues have been, if anything, to the right of those favored by “moderate Republicans” back in the days before that species went extinct.  But then, of course, it wouldn’t just be Barack Obama who is a secret Republican.  The same could be said for almost the entire Democratic Party at the national level at least since Bill Clinton set the party on its rightward drifting course.

The claim that they are all Republicans, secret or not, expresses a certain truth, notwithstanding the fact that it is literally false.  We know it is false not because it doesn’t make sense of what we observe, but because all the evidence points the other way.

What this shows is not just that conspiracy theories can be true in a sense, even when they are wrong; it also shows that party identifications no longer indicate what democratic theory, in all its many varieties, maintains they should.

The seeds were sown long ago and they took root and thrived as the Cold War wore on.  But it was not until the consolidation of the so-called Reagan Revolution that real democracy all but disappeared from our political life.  We still have competitive elections, and probably always will.  But from that point on, competing parties – the two, semi-official ones — no longer operated in the way that justifying theories of democratic institutions claim they should.

They ceased to be vehicles through which the people or their representatives, aiming at a common good, engage in public deliberation and collective decision-making.  Instead, they became marketing agencies, bought and paid for by corporate interests, selling legislators eager to do their paymasters’ bidding to different (though fluid and sometimes intersecting) constituencies, and to a “moderate” middle, comprising less than 20% of a depoliticized and acquiescent electorate.

As marketers, Republicans and Democrats tailor their respective messages to different blocs of voters.  Republicans tailor theirs to their hardcore base, voters bereft of informed and considered judgment but full of passionate intensity.   Democrats tailor theirs to the apolitical middle.  This is why the celebrated “enthusiasm gap” of 2010 developed, but it may be a winning strategy in the presidential election this time around, given the field of Republican candidates.  Could there be a conspiracy among Republicans to play into Obama’s hands by fielding only dolts?  Not likely, of course; but that conspiracy theory too would explain a great deal.

* * *

In 2008, the financiers and corporate moguls who own both the Democratic and Republican Parties threw their weight behind Barack Obama.  No doubt, most of them would have preferred a Republican; hard as they have tried, Democrats have yet to win over the hearts and minds of our most nefarious “economic royalists.”  But the movers and shakers of our corrupted system, many of them, at least had the wits to realize that popular disgust with the criminality and incompetence of the Bush administration made Republicans more difficult than Democrats to sell even to an acquiescent electorate.

But that doesn’t explain why Obama got more Wall Street and corporate support than Hillary Clinton.  To answer that question, another conspiracy theory suggests itself – one that is more plausible than any of the ones suggested so far, though of course it too is literally false.

It was no secret, except perhaps to his most ardent and deluded supporters, that Obama was vetted and deemed fit to carry corporate America’s banner.   But Hillary Clinton was heir to a family tradition of doing precisely that, and she made no bones about her intentions.  Why not her?

Were our titans of finance and industry more clever than they actually are, and better able to collude, they might have reasoned as follows: “Hillary Clinton is the devil we know.  We can count on her.  But she is even less charismatic than her husband, and he still elicits more enmity than admiration.  On the other hand, Barack Obama is a Rorschach figure upon whom voters eager for “change” – in other words, eager to be rid of us — can pin their hopes.  Moreover, his appeal to the 18 to 25 demographic, and to people of color, is evident.  Therefore he can do what she cannot — disillusion an entire generation along with everyone else who can be rallied to his cause.  Now, what we need to fatten our purses and generally to have our way is a quiescent and therefore acquiescent citizenry.  This Obama is uniquely able to deliver, since nothing fosters quiescence better than disillusionment and cynicism.  Therefore, let us make him our man.”

Until last month, it looked like these imaginary conspirators were on to something, that their reasoning was sound.   Then the world changed.

The events last winter and spring in Wisconsin, Ohio, Maine and elsewhere, important as they were, were only a prelude to what has developed over the past four weeks as indignation again took hold of an awakened citizenry, this time in the belly of the capitalist beast – at Zuccotti Park, within spitting distance of Wall Street.  From there it has spread to countless cities throughout the United States.  At last, we in the Land of the Free – can one say those words these days without irony? –  have done what our brothers and sisters in north Africa and southern Europe and elsewhere, victims of the system in place, have been doing for months – renewing the struggle for equality and justice.

Try as Obama Democrats and their colleagues in the liberal commentariat might, the Occupy movement is not about to go away, and while it may interact constructively with the Democratic Party from time to time, it is not going to allow itself to be coopted by it.  Occupy Wall Street has yet to name the Obama administration an enemy; maybe it never will.  But its dynamic is at odds with the politics Obama, along with all his predecessors for more than three decades, has pursued.

And so Obama, who has failed every constituency that supported him in 2008, has also failed the constituency that sustains him and that he cares about most, the tiny fraction of the top 1% who plotted (not literally, of course) to make him the champion of their interests.  Yes, Obama has worked tirelessly in their behalf — beyond all expectations.   But when it came to promoting acquiescence he turned out to be a bust.

To be sure, the conspirators got what they thought they wanted.  Obama did disillusion multitudes, just as they expected he would.  But he did this by being “bipartisan” to a fault, and since his electoral competition was nothing if not obstinate, that meant ceding everything to them.  Meanwhile, the Republicans had decided that the way forward for them was to bring Obama down, and that the way to do that was to win back Wall Street and corporate America by offering them everything they could dream of and more, enlightened self-interest be damned.  And so it was, in one of those world-changing ironies of history, that Obama, the “change” president, helped make the prevailing situation so intolerable that the long overdue fight back finally came.

What the consequences will be is still unclear and is likely to remain so for a while.  All we can say for now is that politics, the real thing, is back, and that neither Wall Street and corporate America nor our decrepit political class will ever quite be the same.

To be sure, the capitalism that brought about our present sorry state is not about to give way to anything radically better any time soon; and, thanks to Mitt Romney or someone even more risible, Obama probably will win a second term.  But the alliance between corporate America and the American government that has deformed our democracy so profoundly is now shaken.  It may well be in its final days.

If Occupy Wall Street continues on its present track, as it shows every sign of doing, the short-term changes it brings can only be for the good.  As for what happens beyond the short term, all we know for sure is that the future is open and the possibilities endless.  In Greece, where they’ve been fighting back against even more rapacious banks than the ones afflicting our 99% for longer than we have, a general strike is now underway!  Who would have thought it possible?  Wall Street conspirators beware!