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Canadian Government Says Free Speech is for Offending Muslims - Not Opposing Israel - T... - 0 views

firstlook.org/...ecute-advocates-israel-boycott tyranny free-speech BDS anti-BDS Zionists Harper CBC
shared by Paul Merrell on 13 May 15 - No Cached
  • Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, January 8, 2015, on Charlie Hebdo shootings: “When a trio of hooded men struck at some of our most cherished democratic principles, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, they assaulted democracy everywhere . . . They have declared war on anybody who does not think and act exactly as they wish they would think and act . . . . they have declared war on any country, like ourselves, that values freedom, openness and tolerance.”
  • CBC, today: “Ottawa threatening hate charges against those who boycott Israel” The Harper government is signaling its intention to use hate crime laws against Canadian advocacy groups that encourage boycotts of Israel. Such a move could target a range of civil society organizations, from the United Church of Canada and the Canadian Quakers to campus protest groups and labour unions. If carried out, it would be a remarkably aggressive tactic, and another measure of the Conservative government’s lockstep support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. . . . The government’s intention was made clear in a response to inquiries from CBC News about statements by federal ministers of a “zero tolerance” approach to groups participating in a loose coalition called Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS), which was begun in 2006 at the request of Palestinian non-governmental organizations.
  • Has a #JeSuisBDS hashtag started trending yet on Twitter? Under the new Charlie Hebdo standard — it’s not enough to defend free speech; one must praise and even express the speech targeted with suppression — have all of the newfound free speech crusaders begun organizing pro-Israel-boycott rallies in order to defy these suppression efforts? In a zillion years, could anyone imagine the popularity-craving officials who run PEN America bestowing one of their glamorous awards on advocates of the Israel-targeted Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions movement? The answer to all of those questions is and will remain “no,” because (as I discussed last week here with Bob Wright) the Charlie Hebdo ritual (for most, not all) was about many agendas having nothing to do with the free expression banner under which it paraded. In that regard, Stephen Harper is the perfect Poster Boy for how free expression is tribalistically manipulated and exploited in the West. When the views being suppressed are ones amenable to those in power (e.g., cartoons mocking Islam), free speech is venerated; attempts to suppress those kinds of ideas show that “they have declared war on any country, like ourselves, that values freedom, openness and tolerance.” We get to celebrate ourselves as superior and progressive and victimized, and how good that feels. But when ideas are advocated that upset those in power (e.g. speech by Muslims critical of Western nations and their allies), the very same people acquiesce to, or expressly endorse, full-scale suppression. Thus can the Canadian Prime Minister pompously parade around as some sort of Guardian of Enlightenment Ideals only, three months later, to act like the classic tyrant.
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  • Asked to explain what zero tolerance means, and what is being done to enforce it, a spokesperson for Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney replied, four days later, with a detailed list of Canada’s updated hate laws, noting that Canada has one of the most comprehensive sets of such laws “anywhere in the world.”
  • As I’ve argued many times — most comprehensively here — all applications of hate speech laws are inherently tyrannical, dangerous and wrong, and it’s truly mystifying (and scary) that people convince themselves that their judgment is so unerring and their beliefs so sacrosanct that it should be illegal to question or dissent from them. But independent of that, what we see here again is the utter foolishness of endorsing such laws on pragmatic grounds: they will inevitably be used against not just the ideas you hate but the ones you like, and when that happens, if you cheered when such laws were used to suppress the ideas you hate, then you will have no valid ground to object.
  • UPDATE: Various Israel devotees such as David Frum spent the morning insisting the CBC story is false, and now the Canadian government has followed suit, issuing a statement denouncing it. Unfortunately for them, the full email exchange between the CBC reporter, Neil Macdonald, and a spokesman for the Public Safety Department can be read here, and it proves that the CBC story is 100% accurate.
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Benghazi report: Trinkets of treason - 1 views

canadafreepress.com/...54740 Banksters-of-America Saudi-Arabia Saudi-Globalist
shared by Gary Edwards on 28 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 28 Apr 13
     
    The truth is dribbling out, thn=anks to Douglas J. Hagmann and Canada Free Press .....................  We've been aligned and hostage to the Saudi Royal Family ever since FDR met with King Ibn Saud, Feb 14th, 1945 near the end of WWII.  It was at this meeting that FDR promised protection for the Saudi family in exchange for the right to develop Saudi oil and sell that oil exclusively in dollars.  Hence the "petro dollar" - backed by Saudi oil instead of GOLD. That agreement, and our subsequent history of our military and state departments acting to further Saudi interests has dominated America.  Our troops and military resources ae mercenaries fighting for Saudi dominance of the Globalist ruling elites.  Our politicians are bought and paid for by the Saudi Globalist Alliance.  They have sold their souls for power and money, with the destruction of the USA Constitution the only thing standing between the Globalist and their quest to rule the world. excerpt: We are witnessing one of the biggest government cover-ups since Watergate. A cover-up that involves murder, arms trafficking, and lies by high ranking officials under oath. It involves the murderous attacks in Benghazi, and congressional investigators just released a 46-page interim progress report that at least exposes Hillary Rodham Clinton and the White House lying under oath. Where's the accountability? Where's the outrage? Where's the media? A 46-page interim progress report of an ongoing investigation across five House Committees by the U.S. House of Representatives was released on Tuesday, April 23, 2013. The executive summary states that former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton signed off on a reduction of diplomatic security forces suggesting that this reduction of security was, in large part, to blame for the attack in Benghazi on September 11, 2012.  The report emphasizes that this is "inconsistent" with her sworn testimony of January 23, 2013. Simply stated, Hillary Rod
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Declaration For The Americas Moves Toward Signing Without US And Canada - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...204328 OAS Indigenous-people's-rights U.S.-foreign-policy
shared by Paul Merrell on 15 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • Negotiations held over the past 18 years toward resolving historic issues of land dispossession and conflicts over natural resources with indigenous peoples of the Americas are finally expected to reach consensus by May. “We were told there are some states very interested in getting the declaration done so we can move to another stage in the Organization of American States (OAS) and be able to enforce the rights recognized,” said Leonardo A. Crippa, a senior attorney for the Indian Law Resource Center in Washington. “It’s aiming to be completed by May so the text can be submitted for approval to the General Assembly of the OAS, which is meeting in D.C. in June.”
  • This process began in 1989, when the OAS General Assembly approved a resolution to ask the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (IACHR) to prepare a declaration on the rights of indigenous people of North America, South America, Central America and the Caribbean. The IACHR submitted the first Draft American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 1997. Also that year, the Indian Law Resource Center and other indigenous rights groups such as the Native American Rights Fund in Colorado petitioned the OAS to create a working group to discuss issues with member states and work toward reaching consensus on resolutions.
  • “We are doing our best to advise indigenous representatives, have discussions with the OAS, and compose language that is more defined than the U.N. Declaration [on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples] to reflect regional issues,” Crippa said. Yet, as Crippa notes, the United States and Canada, among other OAS states, have not accepted the jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court on Human Rights and continue to refuse to sign onto the draft declaration. A statement released by the U.S. delegation to the negotiations in March states: “The United States remains committed to addressing the urgent issues of indigenous peoples in the hemisphere, including combating societal discrimination against indigenous peoples, increasing indigenous participation in national political processes, addressing lack of infrastructure and poor living conditions in indigenous areas, and collaborating on issues of land rights and self governance.” It also notes that the U.S. “continues to believe the OAS can be mobilized to make a practical difference in the lives of indigenous peoples,” but reiterates that it refuses to sign the declaration.
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  • The study also found that Brazil is the country with the greatest diversity of indigenous peoples in isolation, followed by Peru and Bolivia. The current version of the OAS declaration includes Article XXVI, agreed by consensus in 2005, specifically for indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation to have the right to remain in that condition and to live freely and in accordance with their cultures. “In most cases the key recommendation is to prevent contact either by state agencies, officials, non-government organizations or companies wanting to exploit resources of their lands,” Crippa said. Their ancestors lived on the land long before the current states even existed. Vulnerable and at risk of disappearing entirely, they cannot advocate for their own rights. The study cites the National Environment Commission of Peru’s findings that from 1950 to 1957 a total of 11 indigenous groups disappeared completely from the Amazon, and of those remaining, 18 are in grave danger of disappearing, as they each have fewer than 225 members.
  • “There are regional particulates that are unique and not defined in the U.N. Declaration [UNDRIP],” Crippa said. He used the example of people in the Americas living in voluntary isolation, emphasizing, “We need to protect these peoples from internal armed conflicts, such as in Colombia, where they’re caught in the middle of military, paramilitary and guerrilla forces. It’s a situation of a government of a country trying to control land of indigenous peoples without respect to their rights.” Indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation are groups or individuals who remain untouched by non-indigenous populations. They do not maintain contact with non-indigenous populations, may reject any type of contact, or may have chosen to return to their traditional culture and break relations with non-native societies in favor of maintaining their own ways of life. A provision to protect indigenous communities living in isolation has been approved in the OAS draft declaration, which has no corresponding provision in UNDRIP.
  • When efforts to resolve issues have failed to find remedy in their own country, the IACHR can be appealed to. All 35 member states of the OAS are under the jurisdiction of the IACHR, headquartered in Washington. No country can be a part of the OAS process without ratifying the OAS Charter. “All 35 member countries have signed the Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man of 1948,” said Maria Isabel Rivera, director of Press and Publications for the IACHR. “This means the Commission analyzes all cases and petitions and monitors human rights situations in those countries under the light of the rights recognized in the Declaration.” Countries that have not ratified the convention include the Bahamas, Belize, Canada, Cuba, Guyana, St Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and the U.S. Thus, cases originating in these countries cannot be brought to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, but they can be brought to IACHR in a petition of injustice.
  • The OAS draft declaration recommends protections including legislation that specifically addresses indigenous rights to land, culture and self-determination, and training programs for state employees, who may encounter issues that affect communities living in voluntary isolation. It further recommends studies for projects which take into account people living in isolation nearby, and sanctions for those violating natural resources protections. It also calls for limiting commercial tourism in the territories of people living in voluntary isolation and urges companies, organizations and governments to work in coordination with indigenous groups which aim to protect indigenous rights toward free and prior consent. “Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain, express, and freely develop their cultural identity in all respects, free from any external attempt at assimilation,” the draft also states. “The States shall not carry out, adopt, support, or favor any policy to assimilate the indigenous peoples or to destroy their cultures.”
  • Paul Merrell on 15 Apr 15
     
    Did the U.S. refuse because it wishes to retain the option of exploiting indigenous peoples' lands? 
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As Colombian Oil Money Flowed To Clintons, State Department Took No Action To Prevent L... - 0 views

www.ibtimes.com/o-action-prevent-labor-1874464 Auction 2016 Hillary Colombia human rights Rubiales bribery
shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • For union organizers in Colombia, the dangers of their trade were intensifying. When workers at the country’s largest independent oil company staged a strike in 2011, the Colombian military rounded them up at gunpoint and threatened violence if they failed to disband, according to human rights organizations. Similar intimidation tactics against the workers, say labor leaders, amounted to an everyday feature of life. For the United States, these were precisely the sorts of discomfiting accounts that were supposed to be prevented in Colombia under a labor agreement that accompanied a recently signed free trade pact liberalizing the exchange of goods between the countries. From Washington to Bogota, leaders had promoted the pact as a win for all -- a deal that would at once boost trade while strengthening the rights of embattled Colombian labor organizers. That formulation had previously drawn skepticism from many prominent Democrats, among them Hillary Clinton. Yet as union leaders and human rights activists conveyed these harrowing reports of violence to then-Secretary of State Clinton in late 2011, urging her to pressure the Colombian government to protect labor organizers, she responded first with silence, these organizers say. The State Department publicly praised Colombia’s progress on human rights, thereby permitting hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aid to flow to the same Colombian military that labor activists say helped intimidate workers.
  • At the same time that Clinton's State Department was lauding Colombia’s human rights record, her family was forging a financial relationship with Pacific Rubiales, the sprawling Canadian petroleum company at the center of Colombia’s labor strife. The Clintons were also developing commercial ties with the oil giant’s founder, Canadian financier Frank Giustra, who now occupies a seat on the board of the Clinton Foundation, the family’s global philanthropic empire. The details of these financial dealings remain murky, but this much is clear: After millions of dollars were pledged by the oil company to the Clinton Foundation -- supplemented by millions more from Giustra himself -- Secretary Clinton abruptly changed her position on the controversial U.S.-Colombia trade pact. Having opposed the deal as a bad one for labor rights back when she was a presidential candidate in 2008, she now promoted it, calling it “strongly in the interests of both Colombia and the United States.” The change of heart by Clinton and other Democratic leaders enabled congressional passage of a Colombia trade deal that experts say delivered big benefits to foreign investors like Giustra.
  • The Clinton Foundation, Giustra and the State Department did not respond to International Business Times' requests for comment. Pacific Rubiales has denied that it has engaged in any violence toward union organizers. As Hillary Clinton readies a national apparatus for her likely presidential campaign -- one that will surely depend upon the support of American labor unions -- her family’s relationship with Giustra and Pacific Rubiales, her reversal on the Colombia trade pact and her subsequent move to bless Colombia’s human rights record complicate her efforts to present herself as a champion of worker rights.  These issues were amplified this week when the AFL-CIO cited persistent violence against Colombian union organizers in its push to block a new 12-nation trade deal that Clinton has championed.
  • Paul Merrell on 10 Apr 15
     
    Bribery? We ain't talking about campaign donations here.
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The "Cuban Twitter" Scam Is a Drop in the Internet Propaganda Bucket - The Intercept - 0 views

firstlook.org/...minating-government-propaganda surveillance state propaganda psywar USAID State-Dept. Obama
shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • This week, the Associated Press exposed a secret program run by the U.S. Agency for International Development to create “a Twitter-like Cuban communications network” run through “secret shell companies” in order to create the false appearance of being a privately owned operation. Unbeknownst to the service’s Cuban users was the fact that “American contractors were gathering their private data in the hope that it might be used for political purposes”–specifically, to manipulate those users in order to foment dissent in Cuba and subvert its government. According to top-secret documents published today by The Intercept, this sort of operation is frequently discussed at western intelligence agencies, which have plotted ways to covertly use social media for ”propaganda,” “deception,” “mass messaging,” and “pushing stories.” These ideas–discussions of how to exploit the internet, specifically social media, to surreptitiously disseminate viewpoints friendly to western interests and spread false or damaging information about targets–appear repeatedly throughout the archive of materials provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Documents prepared by NSA and its British counterpart GCHQ–and previously published by The Intercept as well as some by NBC News–detailed several of those programs, including a unit devoted in part to “discrediting” the agency’s enemies with false information spread online.
  • he documents in the archive show that the British are particularly aggressive and eager in this regard, and formally shared their methods with their U.S. counterparts. One previously undisclosed top-secret document–prepared by GCHQ for the 2010 annual “SIGDEV” gathering of the “Five Eyes” surveillance alliance comprising the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the U.S.–explicitly discusses ways to exploit Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other social media as secret platforms for propaganda.
  • The document was presented by GCHQ’s Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG). The unit’s self-described purpose is “using online techniques to make something happen in the real or cyber world,” including “information ops (influence or disruption).” The British agency describes its JTRIG and Computer Network Exploitation operations as a “major part of business” at GCHQ, conducting “5% of Operations.” The annual SIGDEV conference, according to one NSA document published today by The Intercept, “enables unprecedented visibility of SIGINT Development activities from across the Extended Enterprise, Second Party and US Intelligence communities.” The 2009 Conference, held at Fort Meade, included “eighty-six representatives from the wider US Intelligence Community, covering agencies as diverse as CIA (a record 50 participants), the Air Force Research Laboratory and the National Air and Space Intelligence Center.” Defenders of surveillance agencies have often insinuated that such proposals are nothing more than pipe dreams and wishful thinking on the part of intelligence agents. But these documents are not merely proposals or hypothetical scenarios. As described by the NSA document published today, the purpose of SIGDEV presentations is “to synchronize discovery efforts, share breakthroughs, and swap knowledge on the art of analysis.”
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  • (The GCHQ document also describes a practice called “credential harvesting,” which NBC described as an effort to “select journalists who could be used to spread information” that the government wants distributed. According to the NBC report, GCHQ agents would employ “electronic snooping to identify non-British journalists who would then be manipulated to feed information to the target of a covert campaign.” Then, “the journalist’s job would provide access to the targeted individual, perhaps for an interview.” Anonymous sources that NBC didn’t characterize claimed at the time that GCHQ had not employed the technique.) Whether governments should be in the business of publicly disseminating political propaganda at all is itself a controversial question. Such activities are restricted by law in many countries, including the U.S. In 2008, The New York Times’ David Barstow won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing a domestic effort coordinated by the Pentagon whereby retired U.S. generals posed as “independent analysts” employed by American television networks and cable news outlets as they secretly coordinated their messaging with the Pentagon.
  • The GCHQ document we are publishing today expressly contemplates exploiting social media venues such as Twitter, as well as other communications venues including email, to seed state propaganda–GHCQ’s word, not mine–across the internet:
  • For instance: One of the programs described by the newly released GCHQ document is dubbed “Royal Concierge,” under which the British agency intercepts email confirmations of hotel reservations to enable it to subject hotel guests to electronic monitoring. It also contemplates how to “influence the hotel choice” of travelers and to determine whether they stay at “SIGINT friendly” hotels. The document asks: “Can we influence the hotel choice? Can we cancel their visit?” Previously, der Spiegel and NBC News both independently confirmed that the “Royal Concierge” program has been implemented and extensively used. The German magazine reported that “for more than three years, GCHQ has had a system to automatically monitor hotel bookings of at least 350 upscale hotels around the world in order to target, search, and analyze reservations to detect diplomats and government officials.” NBC reported that “the intelligence agency uses the information to spy on human targets through ‘close access technical operations,’ which can include listening in on telephone calls and tapping hotel computers as well as sending intelligence officers to observe the targets in person at the hotels.”
  • Because American law bars the government from employing political propaganda domestically, that program was likely illegal, though no legal accountability was ever brought to bear (despite all sorts of calls for formal investigations). Barack Obama, a presidential candidate at the time, pronounced himself in a campaign press release “deeply disturbed” by the Pentagon program, which he said “sought to manipulate the public’s trust.” Propagandizing foreign populations has generally been more legally acceptable. But it is difficult to see how government propaganda can be segregated from domestic consumption in the digital age. If American intelligence agencies are adopting the GCHQ’s tactics of “crafting messaging campaigns to go ‘viral’,” the legal issue is clear: A “viral” online propaganda campaign, by definition, is almost certain to influence its own citizens as well as those of other countries.
  • But these documents, along with the AP’s exposure of the sham “Cuban Twitter” program, underscore how aggressively western governments are seeking to exploit the internet as a means to manipulate political activity and shape political discourse. Those programs, carried out in secrecy and with little accountability (it seems nobody in Congress knew of the “Cuban Twitter” program in any detail) threaten the integrity of the internet itself, as state-disseminated propaganda masquerades as free online speech and organizing. There is thus little or no ability for an internet user to know when they are being covertly propagandized by their government, which is precisely what makes it so appealing to intelligence agencies, so powerful, and so dangerous.
  • Paul Merrell on 06 Apr 14
     
    Glenn Greenwald drops a choice few new documents. Well worth viewing. 
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The Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Death of the Republic | WEB OF DEBT BLOG - 0 views

ellenbrown.com/...-and-the-death-of-the-republic trade agreements TPP fast-track Investor-State-DisputeSettlement ISDS legislation
shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • On April 22, 2015, the Senate Finance Committee approved a bill to fast-track the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive trade agreement that would override our republican form of government and hand judicial and legislative authority to a foreign three-person panel of corporate lawyers. The secretive TPP is an agreement with Mexico, Canada, Japan, Singapore and seven other countries that affects 40% of global markets. Fast-track authority could now go to the full Senate for a vote as early as next week. Fast-track means Congress will be prohibited from amending the trade deal, which will be put to a simple up or down majority vote. Negotiating the TPP in secret and fast-tracking it through Congress is considered necessary to secure its passage, since if the public had time to review its onerous provisions, opposition would mount and defeat it.
  • The most controversial provision of the TPP is the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) section, which strengthens existing ISDS  procedures. ISDS first appeared in a bilateral trade agreement in 1959. According to The Economist, ISDS gives foreign firms a special right to apply to a secretive tribunal of highly paid corporate lawyers for compensation whenever the government passes a law to do things that hurt corporate profits — such things as discouraging smoking, protecting the environment or preventing a nuclear catastrophe. Arbitrators are paid $600-700 an hour, giving them little incentive to dismiss cases; and the secretive nature of the arbitration process and the lack of any requirement to consider precedent gives wide scope for creative judgments. To date, the highest ISDS award has been for $2.3 billion to Occidental Oil Company against the government of Ecuador over its termination of an oil-concession contract, this although the termination was apparently legal. Still in arbitration is a demand by Vattenfall, a Swedish utility that operates two nuclear plants in Germany, for compensation of €3.7 billion ($4.7 billion) under the ISDS clause of a treaty on energy investments, after the German government decided to shut down its nuclear power industry following the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011.
  • Under the TPP, however, even larger judgments can be anticipated, since the sort of “investment” it protects includes not just “the commitment of capital or other resources” but “the expectation of gain or profit.” That means the rights of corporations in other countries extend not just to their factories and other “capital” but to the profits they expect to receive there.
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  • Under the TPP, could the US government be sued and be held liable if it decided to stop issuing Treasury debt and financed deficit spending in some other way (perhaps by quantitative easing or by issuing trillion dollar coins)? Why not, since some private companies would lose profits as a result? Under the TPP or the TTIP (the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership under negotiation with the European Union), would the Federal Reserve be sued if it failed to bail out banks that were too big to fail? Firestone notes that under the Netherlands-Czech trade agreement, the Czech Republic was sued in an investor-state dispute for failing to bail out an insolvent bank in which the complainant had an interest. The investor company was awarded $236 million in the dispute settlement. What might the damages be, asks Firestone, if the Fed decided to let the Bank of America fail, and a Saudi-based investment company decided to sue?
  • Just the threat of this sort of massive damage award could be enough to block prospective legislation. But the TPP goes further and takes on the legislative function directly, by forbidding specific forms of regulation. Public Citizen observes that the TPP would provide big banks with a backdoor means of watering down efforts to re-regulate Wall Street, after deregulation triggered the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression: The TPP would forbid countries from banning particularly risky financial products, such as the toxic derivatives that led to the $183 billion government bailout of AIG. It would prohibit policies to prevent banks from becoming “too big to fail,” and threaten the use of “firewalls” to prevent banks that keep our savings accounts from taking hedge-fund-style bets. The TPP would also restrict capital controls, an essential policy tool to counter destabilizing flows of speculative money. . . . And the deal would prohibit taxes on Wall Street speculation, such as the proposed Robin Hood Tax that would generate billions of dollars’ worth of revenue for social, health, or environmental causes.
  • Clauses on dispute settlement in earlier free trade agreements have been invoked to challenge efforts to regulate big business. The fossil fuel industry is seeking to overturn Quebec’s ban on the ecologically destructive practice of fracking. Veolia, the French behemoth known for building a tram network to serve Israeli settlements in occupied East Jerusalem, is contesting increases in Egypt’s minimum wage. The tobacco maker Philip Morris is suing against anti-smoking initiatives in Uruguay and Australia. The TPP would empower not just foreign manufacturers but foreign financial firms to attack financial policies in foreign tribunals, demanding taxpayer compensation for regulations that they claim frustrate their expectations and inhibit their profits.
  • What is the justification for this encroachment on the sovereign rights of government? Allegedly, ISDS is necessary in order to increase foreign investment. But as noted in The Economist, investors can protect themselves by purchasing political-risk insurance. Moreover, Brazil continues to receive sizable foreign investment despite its long-standing refusal to sign any treaty with an ISDS mechanism. Other countries are beginning to follow Brazil’s lead. In an April 22nd report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research, gains from multilateral trade liberalization were shown to be very small, equal to only about 0.014% of consumption, or about $.43 per person per month. And that assumes that any benefits are distributed uniformly across the economic spectrum. In fact, transnational corporations get the bulk of the benefits, at the expense of most of the world’s population.
  • Something else besides attracting investment money and encouraging foreign trade seems to be going on. The TPP would destroy our republican form of government under the rule of law, by elevating the rights of investors – also called the rights of “capital” – above the rights of the citizens. That means that TPP is blatantly unconstitutional. But as Joe Firestone observes, neo-liberalism and corporate contributions seem to have blinded the deal’s proponents so much that they cannot see they are selling out the sovereignty of the United States to foreign and multinational corporations.
  • For more information and to get involved, visit: Flush the TPP The Citizens Trade Campaign Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch Eyes on Trade
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America under tyrannical rule: what we must now do - 0 views

canadafreepress.com/...56517 Canada-Free-Press Douglas-Hagmann US-Constitution RiCO-Act
shared by Gary Edwards on 21 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 21 Oct 13
     
    Interesting idea to restore the Constitutional Republic:  File a RiCO action against the US Government for criminal conduct, and try the case in a civil court, in front of a jury of 12 citizens.
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LEAKED: Secret Negotiations to Let Big Brother Go Global | Wolf Street - 0 views

wolfstreet.com/...s-to-let-big-brother-go-global trade agreements TISA privatization data privacy globalization
shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • Much has been written, at least in the alternative media, about the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), two multilateral trade treaties being negotiated between the representatives of dozens of national governments and armies of corporate lawyers and lobbyists (on which you can read more here, here and here). However, much less is known about the decidedly more secretive Trade in Services Act (TiSA), which involves more countries than either of the other two. At least until now, that is. Thanks to a leaked document jointly published by the Associated Whistleblowing Press and Filtrala, the potential ramifications of the treaty being hashed out behind hermetically sealed doors in Geneva are finally seeping out into the public arena.
  • If signed, the treaty would affect all services ranging from electronic transactions and data flow, to veterinary and architecture services. It would almost certainly open the floodgates to the final wave of privatization of public services, including the provision of healthcare, education and water. Meanwhile, already privatized companies would be prevented from a re-transfer to the public sector by a so-called barring “ratchet clause” – even if the privatization failed. More worrisome still, the proposal stipulates that no participating state can stop the use, storage and exchange of personal data relating to their territorial base. Here’s more from Rosa Pavanelli, general secretary of Public Services International (PSI):
  • The leaked documents confirm our worst fears that TiSA is being used to further the interests of some of the largest corporations on earth (…) Negotiation of unrestricted data movement, internet neutrality and how electronic signatures can be used strike at the heart of individuals’ rights. Governments must come clean about what they are negotiating in these secret trade deals. Fat chance of that, especially in light of the fact that the text is designed to be almost impossible to repeal, and is to be “considered confidential” for five years after being signed. What that effectively means is that the U.S. approach to data protection (read: virtually non-existent) could very soon become the norm across 50 countries spanning the breadth and depth of the industrial world.
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  • The main players in the top-secret negotiations are the United States and all 28 members of the European Union. However, the broad scope of the treaty also includes Australia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Iceland, Israel, Japan, Liechtenstein, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan and Turkey. Combined they represent almost 70 percent of all trade in services worldwide. An explicit goal of the TiSA negotiations is to overcome the exceptions in GATS that protect certain non-tariff trade barriers, such as data protection. For example, the draft Financial Services Annex of TiSA, published by Wikileaks in June 2014, would allow financial institutions, such as banks, the free transfer of data, including personal data, from one country to another. As Ralf Bendrath, a senior policy advisor to the MEP Jan Philipp Albrecht, writes in State Watch, this would constitute a radical carve-out from current European data protection rules:
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Analysis: PA 'balking' at war crimes probe - Middle East - Al Jazeera English - 0 views

www.aljazeera.com/...israel-201491273525819720.html war & peace Israel Palestine Gaza ICC war crimes Abbas
shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • After a document obtained by Al Jazeera revealed the Palestinian Authority (PA) has stalled the launch of a formal investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes in Gaza, Palestinian legal and human rights experts remain dubious that the PA ever truly intended to join the International Criminal Court (ICC). In a confidential letter obtained exclusively by Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit, the ICC's top prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, said she "did not receive a positive confirmation" from PA Foreign Minister Riad al-Malki that the request submitted for an international investigation had the Palestinian government's approval. Palestinian officials have, on numerous occasions, threatened to head to the ICC to hold Israel accountable for possible war crimes and crimes against humanity. But their efforts so far, have proved fruitless. In July, a French lawyer filed a complaint with the court on behalf of the Palestinian minister of justice, accusing Israel of carrying out war crimes in the Gaza Strip. This came after a 2009 call for an ICC investigation into Israel's three-week military offensive in Gaza that was later dropped when the prosecutor said Palestine was not a court member. In August, Malki met with ICC officials to discuss the implications of ratifying the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the criminal court. "Everything that has happened...is clear evidence of war crimes committed by Israel, amounting to crimes against humanity," he told reporters in The Hague, referring to the recent 51-day Israeli military offensive on Gaza, which left more than 2,100 Palestinians dead. Six Israeli civilians were killed, along with 66 Israeli soldiers.
  • Two years ago, Palestine became recognised as a non-member observer state at the UN General Assembly. This made it eligible to join the ICC; however, to date, Palestinian officials have not signed the Rome Statute, even though almost 80 percent of Palestinians support going to the court. Senior Fatah official Mohammad Shtayyeh didn't say when the Palestinians would apply to the ICC, but said it would probably happen in another few months. "The indictment against Israel at the ICC and all the accompanying documents are ready," Shtayyeh told Al Jazeera. One of the remaining hurdles, Shtayyeh said, is getting one remaining Palestinian faction - Islamic Jihad - to sign an accession document before the Palestinians can present it. Hamas signed onto the proposal at the behest of the PA in August. "We're not in a situation of setting a deadline or making an ultimatum," he said. "We're following developments in the region and the world, and therefore, we'll wait for answers from the international community. But I believe that by November-December, the picture should be clearer."
  • In response to Al Jazeera's claims, the Palestinian Justice Minister Salim al-Saqqa said that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was serious about going to the ICC and was "awaiting national dialogue" to pursue it. "This issue is our number-one priority," he said. "It is still on the table awaiting a few legal and technical procedures. We have not missed our opportunity to head to the court." So far, the Palestinians have struggled to use the court to pursue their claims, with some attributing this to the PA's use of an ICC investigation as a political bargaining chip. "The PA can go to the ICC in one day," said Shawan Jabarin, the director of Ramallah-based human rights group al-Haq. "Abbas, who has been turned this into a political issue, is balking." Many factors are working against setting off a war crimes investigation at the ICC, not least the international community's apparent opposition to the move. "It is the PA's trump card because the Israelis and the Americans have said it is a red line," said Diana Buttu, a lawyer and former adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).
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  • "When this red line is crossed, then the US said it won't give money to the PA. That's what we call blackmail. But at what point will Abu Mazen [Abbas] say this is a trump card but we will use it?"
  • During US-mediated peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, Washington ensured that the PA would freeze all moves to turn to international organisations until April 2014. "The Palestinian Authority has been consistently pressured by the USA, Israel, Canada, the UK and other EU Member States not to take steps to grant the ICC jurisdiction," Amnesty International said. "Such pressure has included threats to withdraw financial assistance on which the Palestinian Authority depends."
  • But when Israel reneged on its pledge to free a total of 104 veteran Palestinian prisoners in four tranches, the PA responded by joining 15 international treaties and conventions. Israel said this spelled the end of their negotiations with the Palestinians, while the US said that the PA's moves negatively affected attempts to engage both parties in talks. "The PA's hesitancy can be attributed to several factors: The need to preserve it as a trump card, and also a fear of the US and some European countries' reaction," Jabarin said. "The problem is the method being used by Abbas; he has subjected the issue to political bargaining and to the whims of negotiations." Another reason the PA may be hesitant to set a war crimes investigation in motion is the ramifications it may have on some Palestinian factions. The ICC would likely look into Hamas and Islamic Jihad's rocket-firing o
  • In the past week, Israel said it would open a criminal investigation into several instances of what it is calling "military misconduct" in the Gaza war. Israel's swift call for a probe appears to be an attempt to pre-empt any independent investigations into allegations that its military committed war crimes in Gaza. "The PA gave the Israelis enough time to come up with a trick to prevent the court from opening any investigation," said Saad Djebbar, a London-based lawyer. Generally, the ICC launches probes in instances where the country involved is unable or unwilling to launch an investigation itself, Djebbar told Al Jazeera. "If the court tries to open an inquiry, the Israelis can claim they have jurisdiction [to do it themselves] because the ICC's jurisdiction is complementary," he explained. "The ICC is legally bound to allow an Israeli [probe] to continue."
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Sep 14
     
    Which helps explain why, in a recent poll of Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank, the Hamas leader outpolled Abbas by something on the order of 70-30 on the question of who Palestinians would vote for as President if elections were held at that time. 
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