Vandaag is de laatste dag dat u uw commentaar over het handelsverdrag tussen de EU en de VS (TTIP) kunt insturen voor de openbare consultatie. Er staan bepalingen in dat verdrag die strijdig zijn met de democratie en de soevereiniteit van de Europese landen. Het komt in feite neer op de wetgeving die heerste in de koloniën, d.w.z. volledige macht van de koloniale overheersers. In dit geval is de overheerser de VS en het wingewest Europa.
TheAtlantic: "America Fails the 'Rule of Law' Test
The U.S. Army field manual defines "the rule of law" as follows: "The rule of law refers to a principle of governance in which all persons, institutions and entities, public and private, including the State itself, are accountable to laws that are publicly promulgated, equally enforced, and independently adjudicated, and which are consistent with international human rights norms and standards. It requires, as well, measures to ensure adherence to the principles of supremacy of law, equality before the law, accountability to the law, fairness in the application of the law, separation of powers, participation in decision-making, legal certainty, avoidance of arbitrariness and procedural and legal transparency."
Going by that definition, the U.S. government does not operate according to the rule of law. A panel of former executive-branch employees, many of whom served in the U.S. military or the CIA, made this point bluntly in a recent report on drones. "Despite the undoubted good faith of US decision-makers, it would be difficult to conclude that US targeted strikes are consistent with core rule of law norms," they declared. "From the perspective of many around the world, the U.S. appears to claim, in effect, the legal right to kill any person it determines is a member of al-Qaida or its associated forces, in any state on Earth, at any time, based on secret criteria and secret evidence, evaluated in a secret process by unknown and largely anonymous individuals—with no public disclosure of which organizations are considered 'associated forces,' no means for anyone outside that secret process to raise questions about the criteria or validity of the evidence, and no means for anyone outside that process to identify or remedy mistakes or abuses."
Unfortunately, the U.S. government violates "rule of law" norms in other areas too. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court does not operate with "procedural and legal transparency." The Office of Legal Counsel adopts highly contestable yet totally secret interpretations of statutes that dramatically affect policy outcomes. Citizens and corporations are served with secret court orders and often feel confused about whether they are even permitted to consult with counsel. Laws against revealing classified information are not enforced equally—powerful actors routinely leak official secrets with impunity, while whistleblowers and dissidents are aggressively persecuted for the mere "mishandling" of state secrets. The director of national intelligence committed perjury without consequence. President Obama has blatantly violated a duly ratified, legally binding treaty that requires him to investigate and prosecute acts of torture. He also violated the War Powers Resolution by participating in the military overthrow of Muammar Qaddafi without securing the approval of Congress. And he won't even clarify exactly what groups he considers us to be at war with!
The rule of law's erosion in post-9/11 America was begun by the Bush administration and continued by the Obama administration. Congress has failed to stop it. The Washington, D.C., establishment has done far too little to object. Partisan voters all across America have excused the transgressions of their side.
This cannot go on indefinitely without causing serious harm to our country."
The Atlantic is geen links blad, hun slogan is 'of no party or clique'. De VS is een failed state, die zich alleen kan handhaven met geweld en op de ouderwetse manier andere landen binnenvalt en koloniseert. Ieder land dat zich niet wil onderwerpen wordt met alle beschikbare middelen kapotgemaakt. Onze Nederlandse nomenklatura kruipt nog steeds voor de (tanende) macht van de VS. De aankoop van de JSF is zo'n voorbeeld dat aantoont dat Nederland alles slikt en zelfs bereid is dure rotzooi te kopen om onze Amerikaanse 'vrinden' ter wille te zijn. Als TTIP geratificeerd wordt is Europa gewoon een wingewest van de VS geworden. Onze 'democratische' vrinden weten hoe Nederland uit te zuigen. 'Blowjob' Bill is een vulgaire hosselaar en zijn vrouw net zo. Hillary zei dat ze 'broke' waren toen ze het Witte Huis uit gingen.
Volkskrant: "Verzekeraar Achmea heeft de voormalige Amerikaanse president Bill Clinton 600 duizend dollar (ongeveer 440 duizend euro) betaald voor zijn speech in 2011 in het Friese Achlum."
VK: "Een zak vol clichés voor een zak vol geld. Wat het extra wrang maakt, is dat de speech van Clinton over solidariteit ging. Voor 4,4 ton andere mensen vertellen wat solidair is. Een betere omschrijving van asociaal gedrag is er niet."
Dat zijn dan 'democraten'; met de republikeinen is het nog veel erger gesteld. Obama is momenteel bezig om Europa te verzwakken door een burgeroorlog in Oekraïne te veroorzaken en van een mogelijk lucratieve oostelijke handelspartner voor Europa, namelijk Rusland, een vijand te maken. Oekraïne wordt al economisch ondermijnd, door fracking. De totale instorting van Oekraïne met hulp van de VS (en de EU?) kunnen we over een aantal jaren verwachten.
Sargasso: "Het Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is niets anders dan een middel voor multinationals om hun winsten te vergroten. Het parlement moet in navolging van Australië wettelijk vastleggen dat iedere vorm van ISDS afgewezen dient te worden in elke nieuw handelsverdrag."
CommonDreams: "While visiting Poland on Tuesday, President Barack Obama promoted a classically American solution for the tension that Ukrainian upheaval has brought to Europe's eastern border: more guns and more gas.
During a joint press conference with Polish President Bronisław Komorowski, Obama announced a $1 billion initiative to bolster U.S. troops in central and eastern Europe in an attempt to stem further Russian "provocations," despite recent moves by Russian President Vladimir Putin tp withdraw Russian troops from its border with Ukraine."
TheNation: "... the decline of American political power in the world and the decline of American living standards are not only happening at the same time but feeding off each other.
At the moment, the rules of free trade are expressly tailored to US interests.
If the end does come, or even if it already has, the death of “democracy” will not be announced. To justify an irrational, dysfunctional politics, future generations of rulers—much like the present ones—will invoke the aura of democracy long after whatever substance it once contained has been lost."
WashingtonsBlog: "Two weeks ago, well-known economist Tyler Cowen (a professor at George Mason University) argued in the New York Times that wars – especially “major wars” - are good for the economy.
Stiglitz wrote in 2003:
War is widely thought to be linked to economic good times. The second world war is often said to have brought the world out of depression, and war has since enhanced its reputation as a spur to economic growth. Some even suggest that capitalism needs wars, that without them, recession would always lurk on the horizon. Today, we know that this is nonsense. The 1990s boom showed that peace is economically far better than war. The Gulf war of 1991 demonstrated that wars can actually be bad for an economy.
Stiglitz has also said that this decade’s Iraq war has been very bad for the economy. See this, this and this."
BritishJournalOfPsychiatry: "There has been a substantial rise in ‘economic suicides’ in the Great Recessions afflicting Europe and North America. We estimate that the Great Recession is associated with at least 10 000 additional economic suicides between 2008 and 2010. A critical question for policy and psychiatric practice is whether these suicide rises are inevitable. Marked cross-national variations in suicides in the recession offer one clue that they are potentially avoidable. Job loss, debt and foreclosure increase risks of suicidal thinking. A range of interventions, from upstream return-to-work programmes through to antidepressant prescriptions may help mitigate suicide risk during economic downturn."
TheGuardian: "Pentagon preparing for mass civil breakdown
A US Department of Defense (DoD) research programme [Minerva Research Initiative] is funding universities to model the dynamics, risks and tipping points for large-scale civil unrest across the world, under the supervision of various US military agencies. The multi-million dollar programme is designed to develop immediate and long-term "warfighter-relevant insights" for senior officials and decision makers in "the defense policy community," and to inform policy implemented by "combatant commands."
Minerva is a prime example of the deeply narrow-minded and self-defeating nature of military ideology. Worse still, the unwillingness of DoD officials to answer the most basic questions is symptomatic of a simple fact – in their unswerving mission to defend an increasingly unpopular global system serving the interests of a tiny minority, security agencies have no qualms about painting the rest of us as potential terrorists."
LeMondeDiplomatique: "Zombie NATO
In the mid 1990s over lunch with a friend in the State Department, he remarked: “We should have dismantled NATO when we had the chance!” That’s not what happened, and we are currently reaping the consequences of the path not taken.
But even America has budgetary constraints. Government programs are viewed in Congress as a zero sum game. Every dollar lavished on “defence” is subtracted from money targeted to domestic needs. The situation is similar in Europe. Guess who loses!"