Forum Post: Mankind: Death by Corporation, Part III - the TPP as Corporate Deathstar
Posted 10 years ago on Aug. 12, 2013, 3:23 p.m. EST by LeoYo
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Mankind: Death by Corporation, Part III - the TPP as Corporate Deathstar
Monday, 12 August 2013 09:28 By Dr Brian Moench, Truthout | Op-Ed
Instead of protecting US citizens, the Obama administration is enabling the ultimate corporate "Deathstar." The TransPacific Partnership will allow corporations "virtually unchecked control of our food supply, our land, air, water, wallets and our future."
A few days ago I was contacted by someone in the EPA and told that I had been nominated to be a potential recipient of an award from the White House, a "Champion of Change" on the issue of the public health consequences of global warming. To find out if I had received one of the awards, which sounded like the Heisman Trophy of public health/environmental do-gooderism, I was asked to fly back to Washington - at my own expense, thank you "Sequester" - with other nominees to attend a ceremony/panel discussion on the issue. I bought my plane ticket, attended the conference, but did not receive the "Climate Heisman." In fact, ironically, because of extreme (global warming) weather disrupting plane flights throughout the Midwest, the whole experience degenerated into a travel nightmare.
The White House staffers who ran the conference seemed like sincere people, trying to work within the system to back us away from the cliff of a climate crisis. But key here is "within the system." It turns out the clean break that must be made from the dirty energy corporations, including those fracking for natural gas, won't happen in time, or perhaps ever, because "within the system" refers to a state where the profitability of those powerful corporations has supremacy over a livable climate and the survival of much of the human race.
In Parts I and II of Mankind: Death by Corporation, we looked briefly at what amounts to ruthless, psychopathic behavior of our largest corporations spanning most major industries. But aided and abetted by "sincere" government officials, corporations are working behind the scenes, rapidly assembling the corporate "Death Star" to be unleashed upon citizens throughout the world, allowing them virtually unchecked control of our food supply, our land, air, water, wallets and our future.
An in-house editorial in the New York Times on July 5, began, "For all its rabid partisanship, Congress has shown time and again that it is willing to come together to deregulate corporate America." This new corporate giveaway is a bill in the Senate sponsored by Democrats and Republicans that would, for all intents and purposes, end the "independence" of independent regulatory agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the National Labor Relations Board. These independent agencies were established to be accountable to Congress - not the White House - with the goal of insulating them from political arm-twisting.
On paper, the Senate bill's "benign" goal is to ensure that new rules appropriately balance costs and benefits.But this is simply a euphemism for more deregulation, which itself is a euphemism for unleashing the corporate hounds on a hapless public. The bill would hollow out protection for investors, patients, consumers and workers. For example, it would essentially eliminate the possibility of the meager financial reforms in Dodd-Frank from ever seeing the light of day.
This bill is just a warm-up act. While the public and the media sleep, the real corporate "Death Star," the TransPacific Partnership (TPP), is being forged in secret. The term "partnership" hardly sounds ominous. But for the last two years TPP negotiations that could have unprecedented consequences to citizens throughout the world have been going on among a dozen Pacific Rim nations. No information has been made available to the press or the public - and only extremely limited access has been allowed to a few members of Congress. But last year a document was leaked to the watchdog group, Public Citizen, revealing the current US position and the reason for the secrecy. The contents are surreal and shocking, and prima facie evidence for how corporations have become the master puppeteers of government.
The leaked document reveals that the trade agreement would subordinate domestic law and policy to a binding international governance system. Specifically, TPP would (1) severely limit regulation of foreign corporations operating within US boundaries, giving them greater rights than domestic firms, (2) extend incentives for US firms to move investments and jobs to lower-wage countries, (3) establish an alternative legal system, creating "investor states" that give foreign corporations and investors new rights to circumvent US courts and laws, allowing them to sue the US government before foreign tribunals and demand compensation for lost revenue due to US laws they claim undermine their TPP privileges or their investment "expectations."
Despite NAFTA's failures, corporations are arm-twisting the federal government to pursue trade agreements as inevitable and necessary for economic progress. But 26 of the 28 chapters of this agreement have nothing to do with trade. TPP was drafted with the oversight of 600 representatives of multinational corporations, who essentially are awarding themselves whatever they want: new ground rules for environmental and public health protection, worker safety, and further off-shoring of what was once a domestic workforce.
Wall Street intends to use the provisions of the TPP to resume gorging themselves on risky financial products such as the toxic derivatives that led to the $183 billion bailout of AIG. TPP is part of Big Pharma's agenda to expand, strengthen and prolong pharmaceutical monopoly protections and constrain the production of generics. Any TPP country could gain access equal to domestic firms' to US government contracts and the US would agree to waive "Buy America" procurement policies for all of the firms operating in the TPP countries. The loss of domestic jobs inherent in that policy would not be offset by American firms having access to government contracts in other countries, as the American procurement market is seven times larger than the combined market in all the other TPP countries.
Eighty-four percent of the seafood consumed by Americans is imported, mostly from TPP nations. In monitoring the safety of imported seafood, the FDA currently only looks for residue of 16 drugs and tests only 0.1% of all imported products. The TPP would lead to even more imported seafood. Already WTO panels have ruled against the US meat country-of-origin labeling requirements and voluntary dolphin-safe tuna labels in challenges brought by other WTO countries. Past trade agreements have included an "equivalence rule" requiring the United States to permit imports of meat, poultry and now possibly seafood products that do not meet US food safety standards.
A leaked copy of the working agreement in Feb. 2011 included provisions that make it easier for copyright owners to sue for violations, make downloading things like music a crime, and encourage Internet Service Providers to institute a "three strikes" policy that would kick users of the internet out after three infringement accusations.
Residents of the West should be particularly alarmed. TPP would allow plunder of our natural resources by foreign corporations allowed to bypass US law. Disputes over Western land contracts for mining and timber, for example, would be settled by international tribunals. Even if you are oblivious to environmental concerns, you should be outraged at the total circumvention of national sovereignty. Foreign investors could bypass our legal framework, take any dispute to an international tribunal and pursue compensation for being denied access to our resources.
It gets worse. Those tribunals would be staffed by private sector lawyers that rotate between acting as "judges" and as advocates for the corporations suing the governments. American taxpayers could be forced to pay those corporations virtually unlimited compensation for curtailing their profits via domestic laws that currently protect our air, land and water. Furthermore, there would be no appeal of decisions made by these tribunals.
All of this sounds like a Glenn Beck conspiracy hallucination. Oh, that we could bury this frightening tale so easily. Unknown to most Americans, predecessors of these tribunals already exist, having been established by the WTO. These kangaroo courts for corporations have already ordered governments to pay over $3.5 billion in investor-state cases under existing US agreements. This includes payments over bans of toxic chemicals, land-use policies, forestry rules and more. More than $14.7 billion remain in pending claims under US agreements alone. Even when governments win, they often must pay for the tribunal's costs and legal fees, which average $8 million per case. Using these "investor-state" privileges, Chevron is trying to evade responsibility for an enormous oil spill in Ecuador; Phillip-Morris is circumventing Australia's cigarette labeling laws; Eli Lilly is attacking Canada's drug patent laws; European firms are fighting Egypt's post-revolution minimum wage increase and South Africa's post-Apartheid affirmative action law. The Canadian Cattlemen for Fair Trade sued the US for a ban on imports of live Canadian cattle after the discovery of a case of mad cow disease in Canada. The TPP would expand the scope of domestic protection policies that could be attacked.
The current cast of TPP characters includes United States, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam and Japan. Any other country that signs on to conform their domestic policies to TPP rules will be invited to join as well. In fact the US has ambitions to extend the TPP to half the world's population.
TPP is much worse than trade agreements like NAFTA, which itself eviscerated middle class jobs and wealth in the US. The clear winners are those who sit in the control towers of international corporations. The clear losers are everyone else. The US Chamber of Commerce can't get it signed fast enough. Mitt Romney urged immediate signing by the United States last year. And the best we can hope for with President Obama is that the gremlins that are his trade advisers haven't yet told him what toxic ingredients they have poured into the TPP stew of which we will be forced to partake.
To the extent that corporations pool resources and expertise toward a common goal, they have been engines to the advancement of civilization. It's hard to imagine an affordable i-phone being created and sold by your next-door neighbor out of his garage, or skyscrapers or aircraft carriers (in case you think those are necessary) being financed or built by the neighborhood gardening club. But when that corporate goal becomes to make money only, and life's most basic necessities - clean air, clean water, non-contaminated food, intact ecosystems, and a livable climate - stand in the way of making that money, many of the most powerful corporations have indeed become a gang of Frankenstein monsters, turning on us with a zombie-like indifference, with diabolical schemes of profitability at our expense, even to the point of dragging us into the abyss of an apocalyptic, uninhabitable world.
So where do we find humans who wear the disguise of accomplished, gifted, and honorable people, and yet when there is money to be made are willing to jump into the corporate phone booth and emerge not as Superman but as Vishnu, from the Hindu scripture Bhagavad-Gita, who declares, "'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds?" We need look no further than last year's presidential race to get a glimpse of a corporate Vishnu.
Mitt Romney was celebrated as an iconic family man - devoted husband and father - a rare politician above moral reproach. His business skills would get us all back to work. But when he operated as a "captain of industry," he was able to rationalize a much different moral compass. I have previously written about the "other" Mitt Romney, so I will only reprise one element of his business career here.
In the early 1990s, while he was a devout and highly respected leader of the Mormon Church, Romney steered his company, Bain Capital, into a lucrative partnership with Philip Morris, helping create a very successful, groundbreaking strategy to boost Russian youth smoking rates. Mitt's not stupid: he knew, if he stopped to think about it, that what he was doing would lead to illness and death for of thousands, perhaps millions. But he was thinking about millions - in dollars, not people. But the depth of Romney's slippery moral transfiguration is only fully understood by appreciating that nothing is more forbidden in the Mormon Church than smoking, something I am personally very familiar with, having been a missionary for the Mormon Church. During the day, Mitt's wallet was being fattened by addicting kids to cigarettes, and at night, Mitt would literally have to interrogate his fellow church members on their Mormon worthiness, which prohibited smoking. Such is the mind of a corporate Vishnu. Mitt has lots of close company - Rex Tillerson of Exxon, the Koch Brothers, Robert Fraley of Monsanto, Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs and hundreds of others.
Some might say that "Death by Corporation" is just another way to tell the age-old story of greed or lust for power. But in today's world, with the global reach of corporations, and their technological capability for destruction, those unrestrained pathologic urges smoldering within just a few key individuals are hurtling us all toward consequences unimaginable, and a future irredeemable.
Copyright, Truthout.
Torturing Animals with Monsanto's Genetically Engineered Feed
Monday, 12 August 2013 14:40 By Katherine Paul, Organic Consumers Association | name.
http://truth-out.org/news/item/18139-torturing-animals-with-monsantos-genetically-engineered-feed
"A Culture that views pigs as inanimate piles of protoplasmic structure to be manipulated however cleverly the human mind can conceive will view its citizens the same way - and other cultures."
–Joe Salatin, Restoring Health, Wealth and Respect to Food and Farming
We associate food with at most, pleasure, at the very least, survival. It's not too different for animals. Lambs turned out on new grass move "quickly over certain grasses to get to others – to nosh on clover and mustard grass, avoiding horse nettle and fescue along the way," writes Dan Barber in A Chef Speaks Out . Wild pigs, capable of seeking out the nutrients they need,"enjoy eating nuts, roots, fruits, mushrooms, bugs, rabbits, and, occasionally, dead animals." But what happens when animals are confined in cramped, filthy environments and force-fed monoculture diets of genetically modified corn and soy?
A lot can happen. Calves are born too weak to walk, with enlarged joints and limb deformities. Piglets experience rapidly deteriorating health, a "failure to thrive" so severe that they start breaking down their own tissues and organs – self-cannibalizing – to survive. Many animals suffer from weak, brittle bones that easily fracture. Dairy cows develop mastitis, a painful udder infection. Beef cattle develop liver abscesses and an excruciating condition referred to as "twisted gut."
It all adds up to a lot of misery for animals unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of industrial agriculture's Big GMO Experiment. The spotlight on animal rights in CAFOs (Confined Animal Feeding Operations) is typically focused on cramped spaces and blatantly inhumane treatment. But some scientists, farmers and veterinarians are talking about another form of animal abuse: stuffing animals with feed grown from genetically engineered crops drenched in glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto's RoundUp.
What they've uncovered should give us all pause. Because the symptoms veterinarians and researchers have observed in animals are not unlike many of the chronic, and increasingly prevalent, health problems plaguing humans today. Digestive disorders. Damaged organs. Infertility. Weak immune systems. Chronic depression. "We've got a real mess," says Dr. Art Dunham, an Iowa veterinarian who has treated farm animals for several decades. Dunham is a staunch believer that GMO crops are wreaking havoc with the health of animals and humans. His daughter, Leah Dunham, who tagged along with her father on many a farm visit over the years, recently wrote America's Two-Headed Pig . Drawing on her father's clinical notes, and the work of scientists like Dr. Don Huber, professor emeritus in plant pathology at Purdue University, Leah Dunham outlines some of the ways in which humans are adding to the suffering of farm animals by feeding them a glyphosate-tainted, GMO diet.
Leah Dunham would like to see the CAFO model drastically overhauled or abandoned. Her father believes it's more realistic to tackle the issue of GMO feed without attacking CAFOs. But father and daughter agree that the problems associated with today's industrial agriculture model extend beyond the health and well-being of animals:
" My father has pored over thousands of research papers in attempts to remedy the underlying causes of the illnesses described in this book. His work has embodied a commitment to healthy lands, creatures, and farms, as well as the hard work necessary to sustain them. After years of listening to him talk about his attempts to solve reoccurring health problems, I realized that most people don't have a clue as to how modern disease complexities affect farm animals. We both hope that this book will help all medical professionals, farmers, and consumers better address the true roots of various medical conditions, including nutrient deficiencies, clostridial infections, diabetes, and Parkinsons disease."
Leah Dunham says consumers are alarmed by news reports that focus on outbreaks of food-borne illnesses. But most are unaware that industrial GMO crops are "damaging our health in other, far more insidious ways – among them, by damaging the health of animals raised for food."
Here are a few examples, from America's Two-Headed Pig , of how Art and Leah Dunham believe genetically modified feeds, and particularly glyphosate, inflict suffering on farm animals.
Skeletal deformities
In his many years of practice, Art Dunham hadn't seen a single case of manganese deficiency in the herds he treated. But that changed in about 2000, when he started seeing more and more calves being born with skeletal deformities – a symptom of a manganese-deficient diet. Initially skeptical, Dunham experimented by adding manganese to the calves' diets. Their health improved. His hunch was confirmed when lab results on some of the dead calves' livers revealed little or no manganese.
Dunham was confused. A diet of corn, soybean meal and hay should contain enough manganese for hogs, dairy and beef cattle. But it started to make more sense when he came across a studyconducted in 2007 by Dr. Huber. Huber found that by spraying manganese on soybeans 10-14 days after the soybeans were sprayed with glyphosate, farmers could increase crop yields. Why? Huber postulated that the glyphosate caused some crops to become manganese-deficient because it was binding to nutrients in the soil and plants. Crops sprayed with glyphosate were less able to metabolize the nutrients needed for proper plant function, which made the plants susceptible to disease.
Could this be why calves fed manganese-deficient crops sprayed in glyphosate showed their own symptoms of manganese deficiency, including enlarged joints, deformed limbs and crippling weakness? The evidence was convincing and the theory plausible, if unproven.
Failure to thrive
It's both disturbing and increasingly common in North America in recent decades, according to Leah Dunham. About five to 10 days after normal, healthy piglets are weaned off their mother's milk, they become gaunt, pale, anorexic. Their health goes south, rapidly. It's called "post-weaning failure to thrive syndrome" or PFTS. It causes piglets to catabolize, or break down, their own tissues and organs, essentially self-cannibalizing. Next comes emaciation. Then euthanasia.
Does a virus cause PFTS? Studies suggest not, says Dunham. More likely, the cause is diet-related, as the disease manifests when the piglets begin eating food. The diet theory is supported by post-mortems showing that the affected piglets have lesions in their stomachs and intestines.
Could PFTS represent another case of something essential missing from the piglets' diets? Possibly. Liver analyses of hogs reveal "rock-bottom" low levels of cobalt. In fact, out of 522 livers tested, none hit the normal range for cobalt, established before GMO feed came on the market. Perhaps not coincidentally, according to Dunham, researchers at Texas A & M University have found that glyphosate ties up cobalt at 102-103 times more than it ties up manganese.
Twisted gut, ulcers and other digestive disorders
Nature intended for cows to eat grass. But today, most cattle spend at least the last six months of their lives on feedlots, where they're fattened up with a combination of grains, mostly corn, and industrial byproducts including corn distiller, a product of the ethanol manufacturing process. This mixture is supplemented with preemptive antibiotics and growth hormones, to keep the stressed animals from getting sick while making them grow larger, faster. It's an unnatural diet that often leads to digestive disorders. Factor in the glyphosate used to grow the GMO corn, and you've got a recipe for a host of painful conditions, from twisted gut to bloody diarrhea, ulcers, and bloat. All of which contribute to a weak immune system, Dunham says.
A cow's stomach has four parts: the rumen, reticulum, omasum, and abomasum. A twisted gut, or medically speaking, a displaced abomasum, occurs when a cow's abomasum fills with gas, causing it to balloon up to the top of the cow's abdomen, where it can become twisted. Remedies can include surgery or repositioning the abomasum by rolling the cow on its back.
That's bad enough. But sometimes trapped gas causes a cow's stomach to bloat. To relieve the animal's pain and keep it "productive," a veterinarian will insert a hollow needle into the cow's rumen to try to release the gas. If the cow doesn't recover enough to then start relieving the gas on its own, it will be fitted with a permanent port, similar to what a chemo patient has in order to receive regular doses of chemotherapy.
According to Dunham, twisted gut and bloat are usually related to inadequate nutrition, which leads to bacterial imbalances in the gut, which cause gas. Not unlike humans, cattle host large quantities of bacteria which they need in order to digest plants and grains and absorb available nutrients from their food. Alter the bacterial content of the cow's gut, and the gut can become extra acidic, irritated and inflamed, says Dunham.
Consumers know that CAFO cows are routinely fed preemptive antibiotics, which alter the animals' gut bacteria. But what many people don't realize, says Dunham, is that the animals are consuming far more antibiotics than just those intentionally administered at the feeding lots. In fact, many of the pesticides, including glyphosate patented under the number #7771736, act not only as broad-spectrum pesticides, but as broad-spectrum biocides. And these antibiotic chemicals are applied to millions of acres of plants that end up in animal feed, Dunham says. The result? Some of the animals' gut bacteria and parasitic organisms are no longer able to carry out important metabolic processes, says Dunham. Is it a stretch to say that force-feeding animals GMO feed amounts to a form of torture? Damaged livers. Too weak to walk. Needles jammed into stomachs. Failure to thrive. All unnecessary suffering, all diet-related.
Leah Dunham stops short of using the word "torture," but in her book, she argues that we can do better:
" As other food advocates have pointed out, we have learned how to dissociate what we spend from the farmers and citizens our food dollars affect. In doing so, we can avoid thinking about how our actions affect actual creatures.
I suspect that one day future generations will remember the last three decades as a ridiculous age in American agriculture. This has been an age during which too many human beings treated animals and children like guinea pigs, feeding them genetically modified, chemically coated, antibiotic resistant experiments, despite the overwhelming evidence that these foods are serious risk factors for illness and disease. In today's world of widely accessible research and technological advances, the ability to produce abundant amounts of food without threatening biodiversity and our basic biological rights should be an expectation, not a goal.
And let's not forget the basic biological rights of the four-legged creatures unfortunate enough to be part of industrial agriculture's CAFO systems.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license.
"Residents of the West should be particularly alarmed. TPP would allow plunder of our natural resources by foreign corporations allowed to bypass US law. Disputes over Western land contracts for mining and timber, for example, would be settled by international tribunals. "
Absolutely. Un. Freakin. Real.
I am confused. I thought I got banned yesterday when I tried to answer a pm and now, today I tried to answer one and it seemed my next post got banned. ANyway, I have come to conclusion you must hold on to a screen name for a week and have positive pts to pm
This is an extremely important issue and am stumped why most of the 8 comments are from the OP. Is it because it will come to fruition under peaceprize so no one wants to discuss? Hell, this thing started before he came to office and it is not a dem/rep thing. BOTH sides of the aisle are gonna work together for a change since it involves the interests of BIG MONEY, the true constituent of our former constitutional republic.
Everyone needs to learn about this and contact their reps and demand some transparency on what is really being negotiated.
They are signing it in October. Its already a done deal. The only sticking points are our drugs and our GMOs.
Im sure the threat of bombs will straighten it out.
A few here will ignore it unless ALEC endorses it. Then they wont shut up about it.
Guess I need to get up to speed. I thought it was still lying in the weeds, didn't know it was ready to sign!!!! If that is so, will have a few more forums to check and inform if they are not up to speed! This is some frightening stuff from what little I've read. Would like to see more factual reporting on this
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/217310/trade-ministers-to-meet-over-tpp-sticking-points
Its no joke. These maniacs in Congress are going to fuck the entire planet this time.
And we still have a few here clinging to their robes begging to be saved.
Huh. We are in a hurry now? Wonder what the rush is. That in itself is scary.
Dont worry. They're from the Government. They're Here to Help.
NDAA will be the final nail in the coffin for us.
Wow. Stinkled on this. Oh well, guess I should be glad they lifted their ban on me, huh?
I was wondering, with as disfunctional as Congress is, with a 10% approval rating, and all the gridlock....
How come no one quits? How come no one says fuck this, I'm out of here.
Either they are bigger egomaniacs than we thought, or the perks are absolutely incredible.
The approval rating doesn't come from the voters of each congressperson. No matter how low an approval rating may be, it says nothing of the approval from an individual congressperson's voters. It only speaks to a collective approval of 535 people of whom a person can only have voted for 3 (two senators and one congressperson) if they had voted for any of them at all. If the approval rating were restricted to just the approval of all who voted for an elected official, they would probably be consistently well over 50% in reflection of the reelection rate.
Interesting point. Just another reason to take statistics with a grain of salt.
I believe that was the reason Olympia Snowe gave for her retirement. Course, that was only one outta 535!!! One of the few that was known for compromising.
Heh, heh I hope ALEC does come out for it then! ANYTHING to give it the negative exposure it demands
Theres no way they arent for it. Their board is made up of the leading corporate donors to all the big political races, they are going to make out like royal bandits on it!!
I dont hear too much from anyone about this deal, just like those 3 deals a couple years ago. Very slick on their part.
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I doubt China will get the memo to join;
http://icps.gwu.edu/2013/07/03/preparing-to-go-to-war-with-china/
Shrieking chicken little liberals. Whining about the end of the world....every single... fucking.... day.
Yes...you discovered the long secret of all corporations. To rape the public..poison them...steal all their money...and laugh while they step on the decaying bodies of the poor.
You are all all beyond ignorant
" To rape the public..poison them...steal all their money...and laugh while they step on the decaying bodies of the poor."
Thats not the goal. The goal is to make money. But that list is the result.
Go read Smedley Butler's "War is a Racket".
Fuck you, calling us ignorant? WTF do you know, that there are infinite resources and economic growth for eternity is good? You're going to die screaming too.