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TTIP trade deal could be re-launched under a different name, say EU ministers

independent.co.uk

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Re: TTIP trade deal could be re-launched under a different name, say EU ministers

#21

Post by erhardm »

What really bothers me, as citizen of an european country, why is it possible to have secret deals? If I don't know about such deals how can I call my representative to oppose them? Or encourage them to take the deal if it's a good one.

AFAIK, TTIP was leaked and that's the only way european citizens knew about it.

Why is it legal? Because all I see is corporations trying to make a sweet deal with governments, and the loosing side is always the people.

That's the only incentive I see to make deals secret.

Re: TTIP trade deal could be re-launched under a different name, say EU ministers

#22

Post by BjoernKW »

StavrosK wrote: post #15
krylon wrote: post #3

> European Union ministers today admitted that a giant EU-US trade deal is dead in its current form , with drastic change needed to salvage any hope of a deal going ahead. The devil, as always, is in the fine print - a cynic might read that to mean "TTIP has gotten such a bad reputation we would rather wait a few more years so the public forgets all about it, then try again." In fact, I am tempted to quote Lovecraft…

Offtopic, but does anyone else find Lovecraft too over-the-top? I know that many people like him, but it gets tiresome that everything is nameless, frightful, indescribable, hideous, hellish, monstrous, indescribable, etc. He's not very subtle at all with his descriptions, even a house that was previously established as super creepy gets an "abominable" when referring to it. I found him so over the top that I wanted…

Someone once said that Lovecraft suffered from adjectivitis. I'm fond of his writing and have read pretty much all of his stories but I get the point. Especially when reading several Lovecraft stories in quick succession they can seem repetitive.

I'm surprised words like 'mongrel' aren't featured more prominently in that word cloud. His blatant racism really detracts from some of his otherwise great stories. It's particularly annoying in the Call of Cthulhu where it's almost like from the author's perspective the true evil isn't the monstrous, cyclopean abomination but non-WASPs.

Re: TTIP trade deal could be re-launched under a different name, say EU ministers

#23

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

StavrosK wrote: post #15
krylon wrote: post #3

> European Union ministers today admitted that a giant EU-US trade deal is dead in its current form , with drastic change needed to salvage any hope of a deal going ahead. The devil, as always, is in the fine print - a cynic might read that to mean "TTIP has gotten such a bad reputation we would rather wait a few more years so the public forgets all about it, then try again." In fact, I am tempted to quote Lovecraft…

Offtopic, but does anyone else find Lovecraft too over-the-top? I know that many people like him, but it gets tiresome that everything is nameless, frightful, indescribable, hideous, hellish, monstrous, indescribable, etc. He's not very subtle at all with his descriptions, even a house that was previously established as super creepy gets an "abominable" when referring to it. I found him so over the top that I wanted…

>> does anyone else find Lovecraft too over-the-top?

Does anyone find Metallica over the top? How about Slayer? Cannibal Corpse?

It's the form- it's supposed to be over-the-top. And btw, that's not in an ironic way.

Re: TTIP trade deal could be re-launched under a different name, say EU ministers

#24

Post by acqq »

> Under a similar trade deal the government of Ecuador was ordered to pay German oil company Occidental $2.3 billion for, apparently legally, terminating a contract.

No. Occidental is a US company, the trade deal was US-Ecuador bilateral investment treaty ("BIT"):

http://kluwerarbitrationblog.com/2012/12/19/icsids-largest-a...

Such kind of penalties are planned by TTIP too, and I don't see the major EU leaders rejecting that approach.

Also, don't forget there's at least CETA and TISA, and CETA is to be signed very soon. More demonstrations are needed if EU citizens want to attempt to affect anything!

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/ttip-ceta-tisa-trade-dea...

Re: TTIP trade deal could be re-launched under a different name, say EU ministers

#25

Post by krylon »

pipio21 wrote: post #13
krylon wrote: post #3

> European Union ministers today admitted that a giant EU-US trade deal is dead in its current form , with drastic change needed to salvage any hope of a deal going ahead. The devil, as always, is in the fine print - a cynic might read that to mean "TTIP has gotten such a bad reputation we would rather wait a few more years so the public forgets all about it, then try again." In fact, I am tempted to quote Lovecraft…

There is nothing wrong about trade deals per se. I am not against any trade deals, but against this particular deal with those particular conditions because of some particular reasons.

With TTIP, I kind of got the impression that the "Trade" part was just an excuse to push various policies politicians know very well are not popular with their voters.

Re: TTIP trade deal could be re-launched under a different name, say EU ministers

#26

Post by makomk »

singularity2001 wrote: post #12
krylon wrote: post #3

> European Union ministers today admitted that a giant EU-US trade deal is dead in its current form , with drastic change needed to salvage any hope of a deal going ahead. The devil, as always, is in the fine print - a cynic might read that to mean "TTIP has gotten such a bad reputation we would rather wait a few more years so the public forgets all about it, then try again." In fact, I am tempted to quote Lovecraft…

They have realized that multinational corporations can screw the citizens of the EU just as well through CETA, which is about to get ratified on October 27.

Of course, CETA has vital concessions to EU interests such as banning Canadian companies from marketing Canadian cheese as "parmesan-style" to Canadians.

Re: TTIP trade deal could be re-launched under a different name, say EU ministers

#27

Post by toyg »

krylon wrote: post #3

> European Union ministers today admitted that a giant EU-US trade deal is dead in its current form , with drastic change needed to salvage any hope of a deal going ahead. The devil, as always, is in the fine print - a cynic might read that to mean "TTIP has gotten such a bad reputation we would rather wait a few more years so the public forgets all about it, then try again." In fact, I am tempted to quote Lovecraft…

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, said someone pretty famous on one side of the Atlantic.

Re: TTIP trade deal could be re-launched under a different name, say EU ministers

#28

Post by sehr »

erhardm wrote: post #21

What really bothers me, as citizen of an european country, why is it possible to have secret deals? If I don't know about such deals how can I call my representative to oppose them? Or encourage them to take the deal if it's a good one. AFAIK, TTIP was leaked and that's the only way european citizens knew about it. Why is it legal? Because all I see is corporations trying to make a sweet deal with governments, and th…

The full text is going to be released. I've heard most trade deals are negotiated this way, but I don't know how true that is.

Re: TTIP trade deal could be re-launched under a different name, say EU ministers

#29

Post by cperciva »

erhardm wrote: post #21

What really bothers me, as citizen of an european country, why is it possible to have secret deals? If I don't know about such deals how can I call my representative to oppose them? Or encourage them to take the deal if it's a good one. AFAIK, TTIP was leaked and that's the only way european citizens knew about it. Why is it legal? Because all I see is corporations trying to make a sweet deal with governments, and th…

There are no secret trade deals. What there are is closed-door trade negotiations, because it's impossible to get anything done if every time you open your mouth you have street protests from the industries you're considering removing protectionist measures from.

Re: TTIP trade deal could be re-launched under a different name, say EU ministers

#30

Post by toyg »

lumberjack wrote: post #16

So the US negotiators don't want to concede anything. So then one questions what they had in mind to convince the EU negotiators to go on with the deal...

US elites got used to a very sweet state of things in transatlantic relations post-1989, and it got even better after 9/11. Steamrolling Europeans was almost too easy, because Euroelites had been fully co-opted by the American way.

Unfortunately, 13 years of unpopular wars have taken their toll. There are now two generations of politically-active Europeans who were not invested in the Cold War, and see the US fundamentally as a big bully. Couple that with tight economic times (which, many feel, have been foisted upon us by reckless American finance), waves of unwanted migrants generated by US foreign policy, and the self-inflicted loss of influence of "Airstrip One" Britain over EU matters, and you have a situation where US negotiators likely found themselves surprised by European pushback on all sorts of topics.

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