Skip to main content

Home/ Socialism and the End of the American Dream/ Group items tagged USTR

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Paul Merrell

U.S. knocks plans for European communication network | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...ications-idUSBREA331W820140404

surveillance state NSA EU EU-cloud USTR WTO digital-privacy

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • The United States on Friday criticized proposals to build a European communication network to avoid emails and other data passing through the United States, warning that such rules could breach international trade laws. In its annual review of telecommunications trade barriers, the office of the U.S. Trade Representative said impediments to cross-border data flows were a serious and growing concern.It was closely watching new laws in Turkey that led to the blocking of websites and restrictions on personal data, as well as calls in Europe for a local communications network following revelations last year about U.S. digital eavesdropping and surveillance."Recent proposals from countries within the European Union to create a Europe-only electronic network (dubbed a 'Schengen cloud' by advocates) or to create national-only electronic networks could potentially lead to effective exclusion or discrimination against foreign service suppliers that are directly offering network services, or dependent on them," the USTR said in the report.
  • Germany and France have been discussing ways to build a European network to keep data secure after the U.S. spying scandal. Even German Chancellor Angela Merkel's cell phone was reportedly monitored by American spies.The USTR said proposals by Germany's state-backed Deutsche Telekom to bypass the United States were "draconian" and likely aimed at giving European companies an advantage over their U.S. counterparts.Deutsche Telekom has suggested laws to stop data traveling within continental Europe being routed via Asia or the United States and scrapping the Safe Harbor agreement that allows U.S. companies with European-level privacy standards access to European data. (www.telekom.com/dataprotection)"Any mandatory intra-EU routing may raise questions with respect to compliance with the EU's trade obligations with respect to Internet-enabled services," the USTR said. "Accordingly, USTR will be carefully monitoring the development of any such proposals."
  • U.S. tech companies, the leaders in an e-commerce marketplace estimated to be worth up to $8 trillion a year, have urged the White House to undertake reforms to calm privacy concerns and fend off digital protectionism.
  • Paul Merrell on 08 Apr 14
     
    High comedy from the office of the U.S. Trade Representative. The USTR's press release is here along with a link to its report. http://www.ustr.gov/about-us/press-office/press-releases/2014/March/USTR-Targets-Telecommunications-Trade-Barriers The USTR is upset because the E.U. is aiming to build a digital communications network that does not route internal digital traffic outside the E.U., to limit the NSA's ability to surveil Europeans' communications. Part of the plan is to build an E.U.-centric cloud that is not susceptible to U.S. court orders. This plan does not, of course, sit well with U.S.-based cloud service providers.  Where the comedy comes in is that the USTR is making threats to go to the World Trade organization to block the E.U. move under the authority of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). But that treaty provides, in article XIV, that:  "Subject to the requirement that such measures are not applied in a manner which would constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination between countries where like conditions prevail, or a disguised restriction on trade in services, nothing in this Agreement shall be construed to prevent the adoption or enforcement by any Member of measures: ... (c)      necessary to secure compliance with laws or regulations which are not inconsistent with the provisions of this Agreement including those relating to:   ... (ii)     the protection of the privacy of individuals in relation to the processing and dissemination of personal data and the protection of confidentiality of individual records and accounts[.]" http://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/26-gats_01_e.htm#articleXIV   The E.U., in its Treaty on Human Rights, has very strong privacy protections for digital communications. The USTR undoubtedly knows all this, and that the WTO Appellate Panel's judges are of the European mold, sticklers for protection of human rights and most likely do not appreciate being subjects o
Gary Edwards

KeepTheWebOpen.com - 0 views

keepthewebopen.com/open

OpenWeb ACTA

shared by Gary Edwards on 17 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 17 Mar 12
     
    Keep the Web Open and out of the hands of Agenda 21 UN socialists and the tyranny of ACTA. California Representative Darryl Issa has proposed  OPEN - the Online Protection & ENforcement of Ditital Trade Act.  Join the movement to keep the Web Open and sign on today. The background to this urgency is that Obama is trying to run an end around Congress, claiming that he has the authority to sign ACTA: From the Vanguard of Freedom: The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. ACTA is supposed to strengthen intellectual property rights; that is, the rights of artists to protect their creations from being copied and counterfeited, essentially stolen and reproduced without consent. However, many including Congressman Darrel Issa (via his website on this subject) has called ACTA "an unconstitutional power grab started by President George W. Bush and completed by President Barack Obama - despite the White House's January 14 criticism of legislative solutions that harm the Internet and erode individual rights." Says Issa: "…The Constitution gives Congress the power to pass intellectual property legislation - like SOPA and PIPA - and gives the Senate the power to ratify treaties. But the Obama Administration maintains that ACTA is not even a treaty, justifying the exclusion of both American citizens and their elected representatives. It is a practice Vice President Joe Biden decried as a U.S. Senator…" Maira Sutton and Parker Higgins, writing for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an "electronics" rights advocacy organization, say in an article they authored, that "…We Have Every Right to Be Furious About ACTA." Sutton and Higgins write: "…Negotiated in secret, ACTA bypassed checks and balances of existing international IP norm-setting bodies, without any meaningful input from national parliaments, policymakers, or their citizens. Worse still, the agreement creates a new global institution, an 'ACTA Committee' to ove
Paul Merrell

The Island - 0 views

www.island.lk/index.php

Obama trade agreements TPP China warren

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • Barack Obama’s determined, if unbelievably secretive, bid to fast-track agreement on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) ‘not tomorrow, as they say, but yesterday’ is clearly driven by the bitter knowledge that America got well and truly pipped-at-the-post when China launched the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). "Evidence of the relative power of the Chinese and American economies," wrote Pepe Escobar in Asia Times, "was the world’s reaction to China’s launch of the badly needed AIIB to provide development funds for Asia and beyond.   The level of funding necessary for such development has long been denied by the US-dominated World Bank and IMF."   More galling to the self-annointed ‘Indispensable Nation’ was that even its staunch allies, UK and Israel, unhesitatingly got on board AIIB – despite, as Escobar reveals, "the bullying of the US to stop them leaving the US and its cat’s paw in East Asia, Japan, out in the cold." More amazingly, added Escobar, the US actually thought it could write the rules of trade for China and East Asia!
  • Consider for instance, Obama’s speech on May 8, 2015 at a Nike factory in Oregon: "We have to make sure America writes the rules of the global economy and we should do it today while our economy is in a position of global strength. If we don’t write the rules for trade around the world, guess what, China will. And they’ll write those rules in a way that gives Chinese workers and Chinese businesses the upper hand." What is one to conclude from such an unabashed ‘confession’ except that the imperial mind-set is still very much alive and kicking in the 21st Century? The TPP or Trans-Pacific Partnership is being put together in absolute secrecy, so what little has become public knowledge is thanks to Wikileaks. What needs to be remembered is that the US already trades heavily with the other 11 nations included in the TPP talks. Economist and leading commentator Paul Krugman’s blunt assessment: "This not a trade agreement. It’s about intellectual property and dispute resolution; the big beneficiaries are likely to be pharma companies and firms that want to sue governments."
  • And that, precisely, happens to be the bone of contention between Obama and Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has been particularly critical of the so-called ‘Investor State Dispute Settlement’ provisions in the TPP which, she charged publicly, would empower corporations to use international courts to sue the US government and other state institutions of signatory governments that enact regulations and ‘protections’ which impact on the profits of corporations. The Obama administration, for its part, argues that the deal is instead about trade and increasing American exports abroad. It has set up a web page on the US Trade Representative’s (USTR) site listing the benefits of exports from each of America’s fifty states resulting from the TPP. But an obscure government document put out by that very same USTR office adequately makes Senator Warren’s case for her! That document happens to be the USTR’s annual report on "foreign trade barriers" around the world, going country by country to list complaints the US government has about their laws with respect to commerce.
Paul Merrell

Obama Issues Threats To Russia And NATO -- Paul Craig Roberts - PaulCraigRoberts.org - 0 views

www.paulcraigroberts.org/...russia-nato-paul-craig-roberts

surveillance state EU USTR WTO Russia reserve currrencies NATO

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • The Obama regime has issued simultaneous threats to the enemy it is making out of Russia and to its European NATO allies on which Washington is relying to support sanctions on Russia. This cannot end well. As even Americans living in a controlled media environment are aware, Europeans, South Americans, and Chinese are infuriated that the National Stasi Agency is spying on their communications. NSA’s affront to legality, the US Constitution, and international diplomatic norms is unprecedented. Yet, the spying continues, while Congress sits sucking its thumb and betraying its oath to defend the Constitution of the United States. In Washington mumbo-jumbo from the executive branch about “national security” suffices to negate statutory law and Constitutional requirements. Western Europe, seeing that the White House, Congress and the Federal Courts are impotent and unable to rein-in the Stasi Police State, has decided to create a European communication system that excludes US companies in order to protect the privacy of European citizens and government communications from the Washington Stasi.
  • The Obama regime, desperate that no individual and no country escape its spy net, denounced Western Europe’s intention to protect the privacy of its communications as “a violation of trade laws.” Obama’s US Trade Representative, who has been negotiating secret “trade agreements” in Europe and Asia that give US corporations immunity to the laws of all countries that sign the agreements, has threatened WTO penalties if Europe’s communications network excludes the US companies that serve as spies for NSA. Washington in all its arrogance has told its most necessary allies that if you don’t let us spy on you, we will use WTO to penalize you. So there you have it. The rest of the world now has the best possible reason to exit the WTO and to avoid the Trans-Pacific and Trans-Atlantic “trade agreements.” The agreements are not about trade. The purpose of these “trade agreements” is to establish the hegemony of Washington and US corporations over other countries. In an arrogant demonstration of Washington’s power over Europe, the US Trade Representative warned Washington’s NATO allies: “US Trade Representative will be carefully monitoring the development of any such proposals” to create a separate European communication network. http://rt.com/news/us-europe-nsa-snowden-549/ Washington is relying on the Chancellor of Germany, the President of France, and the Prime Minister of the UK to place service to Washington above their countries’ communications privacy.
  • It has dawned on the Russian government that being a part of the American dollar system means that Russia is open to being looted by Western banks and corporations or by individuals financed by them, that the ruble is vulnerable to being driven down by speculators in the foreign exchange market and by capital outflows, and that dependence on the American international payments system exposes Russia to arbitrary sanctions imposed by the “exceptional and indispensable country.” Why it took the Russian government so long to realize that the dollar payments system puts countries under Washington’s thumb is puzzling.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Now that the Russian government understands that Russia must depart the dollar system in order to protect Russian sovereignty, President Putin has entered into barter/ruble oil deals with China and Iran. However, Washington objects to Russia abandoning the dollar international payment system. Zero Hedge, a more reliable news source than the US print and TV media, reports that Washington has conveyed to both Russia and Iran that a non-dollar oil deal would trigger US sanctions. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-04/us-threatens-russia-sanctions-over-petrodollar-busting-deal Washington’s objection to the Russian/Iranian deal made it clear to all governments that Washington uses the dollar-based international payments system as a means of control. Why should countries accept an international payments system that infringes their sovereignty? What would happen if instead of passively accepting the dollar as the means of international payment, countries simply left the dollar system? The value of the dollar would fall and so would Washington’s power. Without the power that the dollar’s role as world reserve currency gives the US to pay its bills by printing money, the US could not maintain its aggressive military posture or its payoffs to foreign governments to do its bidding. Washington would be just another failed empire, whose population can barely make ends meet, while the One Percent who comprise the mega-rich compete with 200-foot yachts and $750,000 fountain pins. The aristocracy and the serfs. That is what America has already become. A throwback to the feudal era. It is only a matter of time before it is universally recognized that the US is a failed state. Let’s pray this recognition occurs before the arrogant inhabitants of Washington blow up the world in pursuit of hegemony over others.
  • Washington’s provocative military moves against Russia are reckless and dangerous. The buildup of NATO air, ground, and naval forces on Russia’s borders in violation of the 1997 NATO-Russian treaty and the Montreux Convention naturally strike the Russian government as suspicious, especially as the buildups are justified on the basis of lies that Russia is about to invade Poland, the Baltic States, and Moldova in addition to Ukraine. These lies are transparent. The Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has asked NATO for an explanation, stating: “We are not only expecting answers, but answers that will be based fully on respect for the rules we agreed on.” http://rt.com/news/lavrov-ukraine-nato-convention-069/ Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Washington’s puppet installed as NATO figurehead who is no more in charge of NATO than I am, responded in a way guaranteed to raise Russian anxieties. Rasmussen dismissed the Russian Foreign Minister’s request for explanation as “propaganda and disinformation.” Clearly, what we are experiencing are rising tensions caused by Washington and NATO. These tensions are in addition to the tensions arising from Washington’s coup in Ukraine. These reckless and dangerous actions have destroyed the Russian government’s trust in the West and are moving the world toward war. Little did the protesters in Kiev, called into the streets by Washington’s NGOs, realize that their foolishness was setting the world on a path to armageddon.
Gary Edwards

The secret corporate takeover of trade agreements | Business | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...e-takeover-of-trade-agreements

New-World-Order TTP

shared by Gary Edwards on 13 May 15 - No Cached
  • The US and the world are engaged in a great debate about new trade agreements. Such pacts used to be called free-trade agreements; in fact, they were managed trade agreements, tailored to corporate interests, largely in the US and the EU. Today, such deals are more often referred to as partnerships, as in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). But they are not partnerships of equals: the US effectively dictates the terms. Fortunately, America’s “partners” are becoming increasingly resistant. It is not hard to see why. These agreements go well beyond trade, governing investment and intellectual property as well, imposing fundamental changes to countries’ legal, judicial, and regulatory frameworks, without input or accountability through democratic institutions. Perhaps the most invidious – and most dishonest – part of such agreements concerns investor protection. Of course, investors have to be protected against rogue governments seizing their property. But that is not what these provisions are about. There have been very few expropriations in recent decades, and investors who want to protect themselves can buy insurance from the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, a World Bank affiliate, and the US and other governments provide similar insurance. Nonetheless, the US is demanding such provisions in the TPP, even though many of its partners have property protections and judicial systems that are as good as its own.
  • The real intent of these provisions is to impede health, environmental, safety, and, yes, even financial regulations meant to protect America’s own economy and citizens. Companies can sue governments for full compensation for any reduction in their future expected profits resulting from regulatory changes. This is not just a theoretical possibility. Philip Morris is suing Uruguay and Australia for requiring warning labels on cigarettes. Admittedly, both countries went a little further than the US, mandating the inclusion of graphic images showing the consequences of cigarette smoking. The labeling is working. It is discouraging smoking. So now Philip Morris is demanding to be compensated for lost profits. In the future, if we discover that some other product causes health problems (think of asbestos), rather than facing lawsuits for the costs imposed on us, the manufacturer could sue governments for restraining them from killing more people. The same thing could happen if our governments impose more stringent regulations to protect us from the impact of greenhouse gas emissions.
  • When I chaired Bill Clinton’s council of economic advisers, when he was president, anti-environmentalists tried to enact a similar provision, called “regulatory takings”. They knew that once enacted, regulations would be brought to a halt, simply because government could not afford to pay the compensation. Fortunately, we succeeded in beating back the initiative, both in the courts and in the US Congress. But now the same groups are attempting an end run around democratic processes by inserting such provisions in trade bills, the contents of which are being kept largely secret from the public (but not from the corporations that are pushing for them). It is only from leaks, and from talking to government officials who seem more committed to democratic processes, that we know what is happening.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Fundamental to America’s system of government is an impartial public judiciary, with legal standards built up over the decades, based on principles of transparency, precedent, and the opportunity to appeal unfavourable decisions. All of this is being set aside, as the new agreements call for private, non-transparent, and very expensive arbitration. Moreover, this arrangement is often rife with conflicts of interest; for example, arbitrators may be a judge in one case and an advocate in a related case. The proceedings are so expensive that Uruguay has had to turn to Michael Bloomberg and other wealthy Americans committed to health to defend itself against Philip Morris. And, though corporations can bring suit, others cannot. If there is a violation of other commitments – on labour and environmental standards, for example – citizens, unions, and civil society groups have no recourse. If there ever was a one-sided dispute-resolution mechanism that violates basic principles, this is it. That is why I joined leading US legal experts, including from Harvard, Yale, and Berkeley, in writing a letter to Barack Obama explaining how damaging to our system of justice these agreements are.
  • American supporters of such agreements point out that the US has been sued only a few times so far, and has not lost a case. Corporations, however, are just learning how to use these agreements to their advantage. And high-priced corporate lawyers in the US, Europe and Japan will likely outmatch the underpaid government lawyers attempting to defend the public interest. Worse still, corporations in advanced countries can create subsidiaries in member countries through which to invest back home, and then sue, giving them a new channel to bloc regulations. If there were a need for better property protection, and if this private, expensive dispute-resolution mechanism were superior to a public judiciary, we should be changing the law not just for well heeled foreign companies but also for our own citizens and small businesses. But there has been no suggestion that this is the case.
  • Rules and regulations determine the kind of economy and society in which people live. They affect relative bargaining power, with important implications for inequality, a growing problem around the world. The question is whether we should allow rich corporations to use provisions hidden in so-called trade agreements to dictate how we will live in the 21st century. I hope citizens in the US, Europe and the Pacific answer with a resounding no. Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, is a professor at Columbia University. His most recent book, co-authored with Bruce Greenwald, is Creating a Learning Society: A New Approach to Growth, Development, and Social Progress
  • Gary Edwards on 13 May 15
     
    Economist Joseph Stiglitz takes on the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) trade agreement, explaining how corporations will use the agreement to side step environmental and regulatory laws of sovereign nations. Amazing stuff. No doubt Wall Street Money is behind these trade agreement. The Banksters are said to own over 40% of the world's corporations and these agreements are designed to establish corporate sovereignty while greatly diminishing state sovereignty. It's the New World Order. "Terms such as 'investor' and 'partner' are taking on new meanings as multinationals manipulate deals to take legal action against sovereign states"
1 - 5 of 5
Showing 20▼ items per page