Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

European Citizens’ Initiative against TTIP and CETA

stop-ttip.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 100 posts

Re: European Citizens’ Initiative against TTIP and CETA

#91

Post by DavidEHSmith »

Do YOU understand how the following INFO can be used to IDENTIFY your INFO. DEPRIVERS & to FLACIDATE "your" members of the GLOBAL CORPORATE ECONOMY? * SECRET TPPartnership, CETA & C-CIT TRIBUNALS due INSIDER TRADING; corp. Canada fears China may Blow "Arrangements" between Can. Lobbyists' Clients & Parties' Executives (W.A.D. Accord*)? NON Shareholders HAVE TO PAY the arranged PENALTIES. Repatriating off-shore; profits, goods & services contracts, financing, etc. and co-manufacturing still not on the table? LINE UP to "PREFERRED" IPOs SHOrtens.

What the TREATY of VERSAILLES was to the 20th century PALES in COMPARISON to the TPP, CETA, C-CIT, NAFTA, et al, in the 21st.

(CAN) - Prime Minister Stephen Harper's attempts to maintain the secrecy provisions in the Trans Pacific Partnership, the Canada - China Investment Treaty (C-CIT; FIPPA) & the Canada - European Union CETA may be unravelling by way of the threatened Canadian Senate, et al.

There are several reasons for the secrecy ("omerta") of the dispute resolution tribunals. They are:

1) To Protect the parties to the treaty, &/or, agreement, ie. corporate sponsors, from having to reveal to the non shareholding tax payers the existing arrangements that it has with its own government. For instance, the Canadian W.A.D. Accord suggests that corporate Canada's lobbyists pay considerations to the executives of the political parties for two main reasons:

A) to promote corporate Canada's agenda with governing party(ies) by:

i) reducing its taxes & thus, the "net increase" in taxes for non shareholders & ii) increase its funding for "economic development" which covers the cost of, among other things, the present & future advocacy, ie. lobbying & the cost of the considerations that corporate Canada pays out, etc. It may be regrettable that given the source of the accessed "economic development" funds, ie. those 95% - 99% of Canadians who are non shareholding tax payers there is a great deal of room for discretionary spending & its abuse and B) to protect corporate Canada's agenda by paying the other (non governing) political parties considerations...

...For the FULL ARTICLE, see; Google: "TPP...INSIDER TRADING; David E.H. Smith", & Facebook; "David Smith, Sidney, BC" to the access List of RECENT ARTICLES & CORRESPONDENCES by DEHS.

Re: European Citizens’ Initiative against TTIP and CETA

#92

Post by sirkneeland »

PythonicAlpha wrote: post #85
sirkneeland wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually more likely that your battery will be properly disposed of today than it was a decade ago. Its being integrated into the phone means it is handled in the entire "decommissioning" of the phone (when you recycle it, trade it in or even throw it away where it is fished out by garbage processing companies who make money by salvaging electronics out of garbage and preventing it from going to landfills.

Just theories. The reality is, that very much (if not most) of our electronics garbage goes to Africa, where it goes to wild garbage dumps and young children are destroying their health by burning the valuable materials out of the garbage without any health or environmental measures. Even when the phones are decomposed and parts are recycled, we are very far from recycling 100% of electronic gadgets. Maybe you could…

Sorry, but no. I worked for a very large phone company. These are not theories, they are policies and practices.

Telling me the work of me and my colleagues that I witness with my own eyes is "the media" reflects poorly on you.

Re: European Citizens’ Initiative against TTIP and CETA

#93

Post by hjrnunes »

yeureka wrote: post #81

Reading about TTIP reminds me of the "Estado Novo" - the Portuguese corporatist dictatorship that lasted for a large chunk of the 20th century. Corporation rights above people, that is the way forward...

You are wrong. The "corporations" of Estado Novo were not commercial corporations like Monsanto, or P&G.

The corporations in corporatism are understood to be representatives of the broad professional groups.

There was an assembly - Câmara Corporativa - that was a representative and consultive body that had no decision power but that the National Assembly - the legislative body - had to consult for all the laws that they'd propose.

It was actually a good idea in my opinion. It's a much more transparent way of having the economical, social, syndical, etc "interest groups" or "corporations" participate in the political decision process. A lot better than US style lobbying, as it was completely public and not dependent on money. Besides, that way, there would always be technical and real-world advice for every law passed.

From wikipedia:

Corporatism (also known as corporativism[1]) is the socio-political organization of a society by major interest groups, or corporate groups, such as agricultural, business, ethnic, labour, military, patronage, or scientific affiliations, on the basis of common interests

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism

EDIT: added reference to Wikipedia.

Re: European Citizens’ Initiative against TTIP and CETA

#94

Post by justnotsure »

claudius wrote: post #82
justnotsure wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what about the democratic process? The UK politicians are being punished over the UK/US extradition policy. Who in the EU are you going to punish if one day we wake up with TTIP on our backs? Nobody, because there is no democratic process in the EU. Are you going to vote EU Commission out? The lack of democracy is no.1 problem with the EU. Any person who believes in democracy really can't say I believe in EU at the s…

Hu? The European Parliament is elected directly by the people (a bit too directly for my taste, in fact, I would have much preferred if the 5% minimum had been kept…). The commission is approved by parliament and suggested by the governments of the individual member states. The “corrupt bureaucracy” is put in place by the various offices (commission, council, parliament, CoJ etc.), just as in any other country. What…

> The commission is approved by parliament and suggested by the governments of the individual member states.

The EU parliament approval is done in secret. So you can't hold responsible your elected official for supporting someone you wouldn't support. What is the point of having EU Commisars selected in secrecy? What is the point of having EU Commissars elections where there is only one candidate?

Why they can't simply follow standard democratic procedures? Why all the secrecy and elections over one-candidate? What is it? An USSR polit-biuro?

Re: European Citizens’ Initiative against TTIP and CETA

#95

Post by bayesianhorse »

gpvos wrote: post #21
bayesianhorse wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to lack a basic understanding of the EU, or democracy in general. Volcker can't "push TTIP through without ratification by any kind of elected body". The elected government, eu parliament, in many cases national parliaments will have a strong voice in ratification. This process isn't undemocratic in the least. It's just that the decisions are complex. I'm not strongly in favour of TTIP in its current form, b…

Then a democratic entity has the duty to explain and clarify it to its voters. I am seeing next to nothing of that.

Actually it doesn't. With negotiations that's especially murky, because they are extremely complex and can contain proposals which don't have a chance to go into the agreement.

Explanation/Clarification is not something a voter is entitled to. He can demand it, and usually the media is giving it to him, if at all.

There is also a very good disincentives for politicians to explain "too much". Essentially, when talking to an audience of millions of people, everything you say can be used against you in a court of public opinion. Everything can and will be understood wrongly. That is also partly why effective politicians aren't particularly eager to "tell the truth".

Re: European Citizens’ Initiative against TTIP and CETA

#96

Post by bayesianhorse »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #43
sentenza wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see no reason to distrust the whole of the EU just because they don't reject Karel De Gucht. After all, if Belgium stands behind him, the EU can't do much. If that isn't satisfying for you, I recommend distrusting the EU Commission. That's what I do. Our best hope is to shoot this thing down when it has to be ratified by the EU parliament. During the last legislative period, the parliament has shown that it can and…

Nobody of the public in Belgium stands behind him, if you understand dutch go to the reactions page of an(y) article about him of a popular Belgian newspaper: http://goo.gl/duj8ml (can't do it with Google Translate (the comments use Ajax), i haven't seen 1 positive reaction ! ) The citizens in a lot of EU countries have massively protested, that's why it got rejected, in Belgium, none of the protests even came in the…

"reaction pages" are usually more frequented by haters of whatever the content of the article is about.

Also, it has been shown that the Russians are astroturfing in favor of right and left wing extremists in Europe...

Re: European Citizens’ Initiative against TTIP and CETA

#97

Post by bayesianhorse »

pjc50 wrote: post #51
happyscrappy wrote: post #3

If this is defeated won't individual deals between each country have to be struck? That seems likely to have a worse outcome for Europe as countries will be played against each other.

EU countries cannot make their own bilateral trade agreements.

And they shouldn't. For one thing this would be an anticompetitive move against the other members, and for another, once you import something into one EU country it's really hard to stop it from going into the other countries. So the EU has to approve the regulation of such an agreements...

Otherwise, even without malicious intent on part of a member state, a country like china would just go shopping around the 26 member states and ask who's giving them the best conditions and then do all their trade through them...

Re: European Citizens’ Initiative against TTIP and CETA

#98

Post by bayesianhorse »

ronnyronny wrote: post #59

ttip is an undemocratic attack on civil rights. Devised by big corps for big corps. A destorted result of profit thinking whith forseeable devastating inpact on citizens and environment. There is a simple logic here ...FOR...PROFIT...ONLY... THE FUTURE I imagine them super rich counting there money on the smoking remains of what once WAS our beautifull plannet. PROBABLY BEING DUMB ArSE HAPPY FOR HAVING MADE SUCH A HU…

Could you be so kind as to cite a single violation of civil rights being proposed as part of TTIP?

Re: European Citizens’ Initiative against TTIP and CETA

#99

Post by claudius »

justnotsure wrote: post #94
claudius wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hu? The European Parliament is elected directly by the people (a bit too directly for my taste, in fact, I would have much preferred if the 5% minimum had been kept…). The commission is approved by parliament and suggested by the governments of the individual member states. The “corrupt bureaucracy” is put in place by the various offices (commission, council, parliament, CoJ etc.), just as in any other country. What…

> The commission is approved by parliament and suggested by the governments of the individual member states. The EU parliament approval is done in secret . So you can't hold responsible your elected official for supporting someone you wouldn't support. What is the point of having EU Commisars selected in secrecy? What is the point of having EU Commissars elections where there is only one candidate? Why they can't sim…

The secrecy is a fair point, but both secret votes and one-candidate votes are fairly common e.g. in Germany: both the chancellor and the prime ministers of individual states are voted on in secret in their respective parliaments (Bundes- resp. Landtag). There is also always only one candidate which either receives 50%+1 approval (and then becomes the new chancellor/prime minister) or fails and can either try again or make way for someone else.

I did not perceive this system as particularly non-democratic, especially since the actual MPs are elected in a decent way (not FPTP nor that strange electoral college used in US president elections).

Re: European Citizens’ Initiative against TTIP and CETA

#100

Post by justnotsure »

claudius wrote: post #99
justnotsure wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The commission is approved by parliament and suggested by the governments of the individual member states. The EU parliament approval is done in secret . So you can't hold responsible your elected official for supporting someone you wouldn't support. What is the point of having EU Commisars selected in secrecy? What is the point of having EU Commissars elections where there is only one candidate? Why they can't sim…

The secrecy is a fair point, but both secret votes and one-candidate votes are fairly common e.g. in Germany: both the chancellor and the prime ministers of individual states are voted on in secret in their respective parliaments (Bundes- resp. Landtag). There is also always only one candidate which either receives 50%+1 approval (and then becomes the new chancellor/prime minister) or fails and can either try again o…

OK, I agree it all looks kosher, but here is the kicker: compare powers that the EU Parlament has with Bundestag powers. On another note the whole EU seems to be using German solutions that are just not acceptable for Brits or their economy and this is another major issue with the EU. I.e. why not to have anglosaxon model of transparency and democratic process? It's not German, so forget it? Well, here you have exactly why other nations might not like it -- how would you like to be forced using electoral college because US wishes so? You see the same way Brits might not like being forced using secretive German model. It is as strange to them as the electoral college is to you!

Other notes on democracy and the EU: 1. What is that thing with voting over and over again till they get YES, and once they have it there are no referendums in sight for 10, 20, 30 years? I.e. in the UK they voted for Common Markets in 1970s -- and based on that YES vote they ended up in political union with countries like Germany, having open borders for the whole of Eastern Europe for more than a decade. What does a vote casted for common markets in 1970s has to do with having millions of immigratans in 2014 or anti-City regulations imposed; all the green craze? Who thought about this in 1970s? Why it is such a big deal to have democratic process involved for these phenomenons? 2. 70% of laws in the UK are introduced by EU Commission. Whoever Brits vote-in to the offices of London Government or EU Parlament -- doesn't matter. These 70% of laws are introduced yearly without democratic process. Usually by German-name sounding Commissars. Who think about production for Germany first and trade for UK with places like Australia or Canada -- not at all. It would make much more sense for a country like UK to have political union with Australia or Canada. They share language, customs, political solution and the Queen. Germany doesn't share any of these with UK. So, why bother living in the political union with them under their influence?

Post reply on HN