The Art of the "T.T.Ps" with Frankie and his Wife Philis #GMOs: How Eugenics is the Real Politik.

Quote; "The terms of Obama’s proposed TPP ‘trade’ treaty with Asian countries won’t be made public until the treaty has already been in force for at least four years. The terms of Obama’s proposed TISA (Trade In Services Agreement) with 52 nations won’t be made public until the treaty has already been in force for at least five years. Obama’s proposed TTIP treaty with European countries has been so successfully hidden, that even the number of years it will be kept from the public isn’t yet known. Hello, international fascism — all in secret, until too late for the public to do anything.

There is even speculation that “The Ed Show” was cancelled by the Democratic Party’s propaganda-operation owned by Comcast Corporation, MSNBC, because its star, Ed Schultz, was that cable-news network’s only host who covered Obama’s proposed ‘trade’ deals; and he was highly critical of them — he was critical of them notwithstanding that his employer,

Comcast is one of the few companies that have been brought in behind closed doors – where our elected Representatives don’t even get to go – to help review and consult with leaders about the global trade agreement. Comcast is hungry for the power they would receive from the TPP because it would gut regulations for all industries, so they had to silence the only voice on their new network that had the courage to talk about how horrible the trade deal would be for American citizens.

But in Europe, things are being rushed, just in case secrecy breaks and the treaty fails to pass. The European Union is already secretly imposing provisions from the secret Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) treaty, even before anyone has signed it, and even before it has been formally approved in any nation. This was revealed over the last weekend in two places:

On the night of October 17th, Phillip Inman of the online version of the Guardian bannered (in an article that the Guardian  declined to publish in its printed edition), “Prospect of TTIP already undermining EU food standards, say campaigners,” and he reported that, 

Nick Dearden, director of anti-poverty group Global Justice Now, says the EU’s chief trade counsellor, Damien Levie, has let slip that free trade means undermining current minimum standards agreed by the EU.

Dearden says that according to a report in the  [subscription-only] newsletter Washington Trade Daily, Levie told a conference held by US free market thinktank the Cato Institute [which is owned by America’s passionately anti-regulatory billionaire oil-investors, the Koch brothers] that genetically modified crops and chemically washed beef carcasses were being allowed into the EU ahead of a deal.

According to the report, Levie said EU member states “have been stepping up case reviews and approving new genetically modified organisms [GMOs] with five new products approved so far”. …

Levie … told the Cato Institute conference that neither side wants to reach anything less than a comprehensive economic agreement. He conceded the deal could founder on resistance from the US to include financial services in the deal and Washington’s reluctance to open local and state procurement to bids from EU businesses.

Previously, information that was made public by wikileaks had made clear that in the negotiations over the TTIP, the U.S. has been the most aggresssive nation pushing for the ability of international corporations to shape national laws — this being the position that’s also favored by the Koch brothers.

On October 18th, Lauren McCauley at Common Dreams headlined “TTIP Already ‘Rewriting the Rule Book’ for EU Food Standards, New Report Finds,” and stated that a progressive British organization, Global Justice Now, issued a study on October 18th, which noted that:

US officials successfully used the prospect of TTIP to bully the EU into abandoning plans to ban 31 dangerous pesticides with ingredients that have been shown to cause cancer and infertility.

A similar fate befell regulations around the treatment of beef with lactic acid. This was banned in Europe because of fears that the procedure was being used to conceal unhygienic  practices. The ban was repealed by MEPs in the European Parliamentary Environment Public Health and Food Safety Committee after EU Commission officials openly suggested TTIP negotiations would be threatened if the ban wasn’t lifted.

On climate change, the European Fuel Quality Directive which would effectively ban Canadian tar sands oil [the world’s worst oil from a global-warming standpoint] has foundered in the face of strong US-Canadian lobbying around both TTIP and the EU-Canada CETA deal.

As I reported on 2 February 2014:

[The proposed] Keystone XL Pipeline wouldn’t contribute to U.S. energy-production, but instead to exports of the global-warming-dirtiest oil, from Canada, to Europe and South America. It would transport Alberta Canada’s tar-sands oil — half of which is owned by the Kochs — south to two Koch-owned refineries near the Texas Gulf Coast for transshipment mainly to Europe. President Obama is thus trying to get Europe to relax its anti-global-warming standards to permit their importation of this oil, which is the world’s absolute worst oil from the global-warming standpoint.

Furthermore, “Currently, most Canadian tar sands exports are mainly limited to the U.S. Midwest market by a lack of transportation infrastructure.” This fact (the lack of “infrastructure” or transportation facilities to move the oil to the international market) keeps down not only the price the Kochs can get for their oil (since it can’t currently be sold on the international market); it also greatly lowers the sheer volume of it that they can sell (at any price), because the local Midwest oil market is small. Keystone XL would thus also enormously increase the annual sales-volume of this currently deeply landlocked oil.

Moreover, if this filthy oil isn’t sold out fast, it won’t ever be sold at all; and here is why, as explained by no less than the Oil & Gas Sector Analyst at the world’s largest bank (in terms of assets):

He says, “Between 60 and 80% of current fossil fuel reserves listed on global markets cannot be burned if we are to limit the rise in global temperature to 2 degrees [Celsius, or 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit],” and that’s the temperature-rise 97% of climatologists endorse as being the cut-off point that mustn’t be exceeded if the climate is to avoid going haywire with soaring heat and destroying the planet’s biosphere as humans have always known it.

So: U.S. President Obama has been aggressively pushing for the largely-Koch-owned Canadian tar-sands oil to be allowed into European markets in order for that portion of their — and Exxon’s, etc. — oil reserves to be sellable at all, because it otherwise might not be.

The Koch brothers are generally considered to be the biggest fundraisers for the U.S. Republican Party. On 5 January 2012, the Washington Post headlined, “Koch-backed political coalition, designed to shield donors, raised $400 million in 2012” and Matea Gold reported that, “The resources and the breadth of the organization make it singular in American politics,” and that, “Its funders remain largely unknown.” However, one self-admitted member, 

Jack Schuler, a Chicago health-care entrepreneur, attended one of the Kochs’ donor meetings in Beaver Creek, Colo., several years ago and has contributed about $100,000 a year to their efforts since then. “They came across as guys who are putting a lot of their own money into it,” Schuler said. “They are pretty soft-spoken, not screamers or screechers. They provide the leadership, the staff — without the framework, I wouldn’t do it on my own.” 

A large portion of that $400 million went to Republican Mitt Romney’s campaign against Barack Obama’s re-election bid. Obama supports the Kochs financially, though the Kochs preferred the self-declared Republican candidate.

Thus, apparently, the Kochs have already won Obama’s success at defeating the EU’s fuel-quality standards, even if the TTIP gets turned down. The EU did it without needing to go all the way to put in place and effectuate the TTIP.

NOTE: The headline to this article says “Despite the Public’s Overwhelming Opposition,” but the publicly available scientific polling on these secret treaties is also being gamed. Early on, the polls had asked respondents whether they approved of “free trade” or other such vagaries, and the public did. Then the polling just stopped, as if that was that, and Obama’s proposed ‘trade’ deals are popular. But the massive public demonstrations, etcetera, since then, against these treaties, have become increasingly clear that, to the extent people actually come to know about Obama’s proposed ‘trade’ treaties (especially in Europe, which isn’t quite as corrupt as is the U.S. and so fewer people are totally in the dark), they’re strongly opposed, and might even revolt violently if that’s the only way to stop the treaty from being approved. News such as you’re reading here has been submitted to the news-media in all Western countries, but only few publish it. The major advertisers have participated in the committees that drafted these treaties, and probably wouldn’t be pleased if their handiworks were known to the public in time to be blocked from going into effect." Go to: http://rinf.com/alt-news/editorials/europe-secretly-starts-imposing-ttip-despite-the-publics-overwhelming-opposition/

....and....

Quote;"The TPP would require us to allow food imports if the exporting country claims that their safety regime is "equivalent" to our own, even if it violates the key principles of our food safety laws. These rules would effectively outsource domestic food inspection to other countries.

Under the TPP, any U.S. food safety rule on pesticides, labeling or additives that is higher than international standards would be subject to challenge as "illegal trade barriers." The U.S. could be required to eliminate these rules and allow in the unsafe food under threat of trade sanctions.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration already inspects less than 1% of all seafood imports for health hazards. Entering into the TPP with Malaysia and Vietnam, both TPP negotiating parties and major seafood exporters, would increase seafood imports and further overwhelm inspectors' limited ability to ensure the safety of our food. Some TPP countries have serious shrimp and fish safety issues. For example, even with the minimal inspections, high levels of contaminants have been found in Vietnam's seafood.

Under the TPP, food labels could also be challenged as "trade barriers." The TPP would impose limits on labels providing information on where a food product comes from. The TPP also would endanger labels identifying genetically modified foods and labels identifying how food was produced. The TPP would expand the limits on consumer labels already included in existing "trade" agreements, like the World Trade Organization (WTO). But already under the WTO, the U.S. "dolphin-safe" tuna fish label and our country-of-origin meat and poultry labels have been successfully attacked by other countries. And, under the TPP, a foreign meat processing or food corporation operating within the United States could directly challenge our policies that  they claim undermine their expectations - meaning a barrage of new demands for taxpayer compensation." Go to: http://www.exposethetpp.org/TPPImpacts_FoodSafety.html