Letters to the Editor: The counterrevolution will not be televised
The counterrevolution will not be televised
Dear Editor:
A global revolution has been taking place over the last 100 years or so. Colonial power and economic control exercised by the major powers is being replaced over time by national governments, many with considerable popular support and democratic representation. A number of global institutions and organizations both governmental – such as the UN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Mercosur, and the Economic Cooperation Organization – and non-governmental, such as OXFAM, Doctors Without Borders, Union of Concerned Scientists, and Greenpeace – have been formed to advance the essentially revolutionary and progressive causes of national sovereignty, environmental protection, legal justice, economical and political self-determination, and civil rights for women and other disadvantaged populations. The importance of these causes has been formally acknowledged by the international community in documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Charter of the United Nations, and the Kyoto Protocols.
What makes these charters, agreements and protocols revolutionary, is the fact that they primarily serve the needs of people, rather than capital. They tend to empower people in their quest for a higher quality life, which is usually in conflict with the need of corporations and centers of financial power to acquire more capital.
Naturally, the financial kingpins would rather retain people as units of production, rather than treat them as humans, each striving for a better life. As a class, they are not about to stand by and watch too much democratic cooperation erupt without advancing some agreements and protocols of their own. These are Counterrevolutionary. Some of these are military, NATO for example, and some are economic, such as the International Monetary Fund (INF), and NAFTA.
The latest of these is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). This doozie was written a couple years ago, but was classified . Portions were leaked by WikiLeaks in 2012. But according to The Progressive, (Vol.78, No 3, March 2014) more than 600 corporate advisers had access to the treaty’s text, including Halliburton, Monsanto, Walmart, and Chevron. President Obama has been seeking “fast track” authority to push this deal through. However Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, to his credit, promised to oppose this authority.
As reported by Fairness and Accuracy in Media, Extra!, (Vol.27, No.3), Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, described TPP as a “stealthy delivery mechanism for policies that could not stand public scrutiny.” Wallach noted that “only two of the 26 chapters of this corporate Trojan horse cover traditional trade matters.”
The rest embody the most florid dreams of the 1% – grandiose new rights and privileges for corporations and permanent constraints on government regulation. They include new investor safeguards to ease job offshoring and assert control over natural resources, and severely limit the regulation of financial services, land use, food safety, natural resources, energy, tobacco, healthcare and more.
The pro-TPP Petersen Institute admitted that it would have almost no real benefit to the overall US economy. A study by the Center for Economic Policy Research shows that the bottom 90 percent of American families would experience a net economic loss (The Progressive, March 2014)
With the exception of The Ed Show and Melissa Harris-Perry on MSNBC, there has been no mention of this important story on national commercial television. According to Extra!, former White House trade representative Ron Kirk told Reuters (12/14/13) that revealing TPP’s provisions would jeopardize its political fortunes. They obviously are afraid we might have a better idea!
This is just one more example why we shouldn’t expect the counterrevolution to be televised!
Let’s not let them cram this down our throats! Contact FlushTheTPP.org or citizen.org for more information.
Urmas Franosch
Mammoth Lakes
