March 2, 2016

The movement against TTIP/CETA transatlantic agreements is strengthened

The pan-European movement against transatlantic agreements met at a conference this weekend in Kassel, Germany. The 500 representatives of the various initiatives of citizens and social organizations discussed the continuation of the resistance, the strategy and prospect of the movement.

As a first step, they decided to organize a big demonstration on April 23 in Hanover, on the eve of Obama's visit, where he and Merkel will open the doors of the global exhibition of industry-the largest of its kind that is being conducted for many years in this city .

Then, they will increase pressure on the negotiators of agreements with various events and decentralized local protests, before the international day against the agreements, which this year will be the 5th of November.

It was also decided to be organized a major conference of the movement at the beginning of the next year, on the formulation of alternatives to the current neoliberal policies for trade and economy. The movement of citizens Stop TTIP-CETA, aims not only to react and criticize the plans of its opponents, but also to present a complete and positive proposal to the societies on both sides of the Atlantic, on the possibilities of an alternative economy and a fair trade.

The important fact for the movement was the failure of the 12th meeting of the negotiators in Brussels to find common ground, although Martin Schulz, the President of the European Parliament, had secured the majority through various tricks in order to proceed in a resolution for further negotiations. The pressure that has been exercised last October through large demonstrations in European capitals - 250,000 protesters participated in Berlin - and more than 3.2 million citizens' signatures, had a significant effect on this.

This gives time to the movement to confront its biggest problem. That is, to convince the northern European unions of workers to stand against the agreements. Currently, only the German unions have taken a position against them. The movement has also failed so far to exert enough pressure on the Social Democrats MEPs, so that the majority of them in European level to vote against. Only the majority of Austrian and the British Social Democrat MEPs have stand against, so far.

The intermediate political objective of the movement for 2016 is to stop the completion of CETA, because the EU is interested to close by the end of the year the agreement with Canada before TTIP with US. But this is a difficult goal, because the movement cannot focus its struggle on a specific field, as due to the secrecy of the negotiations does not know the exact plans of the negotiators.

Normally, TTIP negotiations should had ended, but it was not possible because of the resistance movement. The EU and the US will try, therefore, to complete the TTIP before the end of the US President Obama term. As said the head of the European negotiators Garcia Bercero (after the failure of the 12th meeting), the intention of the EU is to try to close the negotiations in 2016, provided that a common ground will be found. The negotiators are under pressure, not only by the movement, but also by time, because the negotiations could be dangerously extended, in case that will not be completed before the new US presidency. Therefore, it seems that the discussions will be continued in the interim period until the next meeting, so that the negotiators save some time.

By the action of the movement, the EU was forced to change position in relation to the arbitration courts provided for by the Agreement (ISDS), and in which courts, the corporations and investors will resort against states and governments, in case that these will apply laws and measures directed against their profitability. The EU no longer accepts to be private, ie decisions to be taken through negotiations between the parties lawyers' groups in restricted procedures, as proposed in the beginning. After resolution of the European Parliament last July, the EU requires trials to be public, with regular judges, transparent and with revision process.
Whether the negotiators will find a common ground, will depend on the compromise that will succeed the different interests of the US and the EU. The US is more interested in access to the European market for agri-food products, where the marketing of almost 40% of American products is not allowed (for non-labeled modified-GM-organisms, chlorination of poultry and pork, growth hormones in cattle, cloned animals, etc., which are not authorized in Europe, due to the precautionary principle). Europeans - mostly Germans - are interested for access to US public procurements, where the services in many sectors are obliged to order goods and services only from domestic companies. While German Government, is seeking to conclude the negotiations in 2016, aims at a "substantial and balanced agreement." "The quality of the agreement takes priority over speed," said the representative of the Federal Ministry of Finance.

Since the peace movement during the "cold war", as well as the anti-nuclear and ecological one, there was no other such broad movement in Europe, especially in Germany, as the current movement against transatlantic agreements. The EU is experiencing an instability, not only because of economic or refugee crisis, but also because of the political crisis stemming from the persistence of European elites to the neoliberal recipe that govern transatlantic agreements. Nor the representative democracy is respected, as national parliaments do not know anything of those agreed behind closed doors. So, this results to the reaction of millions of citizens who decide to take the matter into their own hands. Thinking globally, they start acting locally, and demand a different policy on the international trade and the international economy, without seeking a return to the national level, since the movement is connected interstate.

This movement of citizens aspires to achieve what the opposition parties, or, the Leftist, ecological parties, have failed to achieve. That is to propose a different idea for the human communities and the European and US society. A democratic economy of solidarity and needs, with fair trade, in the context of a real democracy of citizens, not a "supposed" democracy of delegation.

http://failedevolution.blogspot.gr/2016/03/the-movement-against-ttipceta.html

March 1, 2016

Trump is only a reserve of the establishment

Although there is a general perception that billionaire Donald Trump is actually anti-establishment, in reality, he is probably a reserve of the establishment. In many cases the dominant system is using its power (e.g. media propaganda) to distort even simple logic. The first fundamental question one should ask is: how is it possible a billionaire, who made his fortune inside this system, to be anti-establishment?

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Although it is certain that the neocons and the US deep state prefer Hillary as the next president, Trump is not someone who couldn't handle. No matter what he says, it wouldn't be too hard to be pushed by the neocons in another dead-end war.

Furthermore, Trump's rhetoric is concentrated around a racist delirium. He avoids to take direct position on social matters, issues about inequality, etc. Of course he does, he is a billionaire! Trump will follow the pro-establishment agenda of protecting Wall Street and big businesses.

And here is the fundamental difference with Bernie Sanders. Bernie says no more war and he means it. He says more taxes for the super-rich and he means it. Free healthcare and education for all the Americans, and he means it. In case that Bernie manage to beat Hillary, the establishment will definitely turn to Trump who will be supported by all means until the US presidency.

http://failedevolution.blogspot.gr/2016/03/trump-is-only-reserve-of-establishment.html

February 29, 2016

As expected: The billionaires lanch anti-Sanders propaganda

As The Intercept reports “A Super PAC called Future 45 started airing an ad this week saying Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders would hurt small businesses and kill jobs by raising the minimum wage and increasing taxes.”

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it is remarkable how the dominant system of the neoliberal lunacy uses the same arguments everywhere. In Greece, the parties of the establishment (mostly New Democracy and PASOK), were attacking Tsipras (when SYRIZA was in opposition), by saying that he will destroy more jobs by increasing taxes, in case he get elected.

What they didn't say to the people, is that tax reliefs dictated by Greece's creditors, concern exclusively the big capital. During the five years of the most brutal neoliberal policies imposed by the troika creditors, the small-medium businesses have been eliminated through more taxes. These are policies designed to destroy the small-medium sector, opening the road to the multinational cartels. Nothing has been done accidentally. Everything is well designed.

Eventually, the euro-dictatorship proceeded in a financial coup against Greece, in order to force Tsipras to surrender, signing a third catastrophic memorandum according to creditors' desires.

Now, the billionaires in the US have been mobilized, using the propaganda mechanism in full force against Bernie Sanders. They use exactly the same arguments. Just think of it: Bernie was the one who forced the Fed to reveal that it supplied, in total, more than $9 trillion (!) to Wall Street firms, commercial banks, foreign banks, corporations and some highly questionable off balance sheet entities. Yet, these unbelievable hypocrites still wonder about where he will find the money to fund his social program! At this point, common sense falls to zero.

http://failedevolution.blogspot.gr/2016/02/as-expected-billionaires-lanch-anti.html

February 27, 2016

The neo-colonial booming industry of private mercenaries

In the 15 years since the declaration of a ‘war on terror’ and the invasions of first Afghanistan and then Iraq, the world has witnessed an enormous proliferation of private military and security companies (PMSCs) seeking to profit from instability and conflict. Hundreds of companies have been established in the past few years alone, and there now exists a vast private industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Sadly, rather than introducing binding regulation of the industry, the British government has decided to allow the mercenaries to regulate themselves.

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Many of these private soldiers are not what we would call "fortune hunters". They are simply people who have been left out of the production process. As this new industry of private armies is booming, it's one of the few options to work. As mentioned already in several previous analyses, one of the main reasons that people are left out of the production process, especially in the developed countries, is the rapid hyper-automation of production. Robots are increasingly penetrating even in sectors which are not related with industry or construction.

This is another sign of a saturated system which struggles to find new fields in order to fuel its obsolete machine. While millions of jobs being lost, companies continue to function on the logic of maximizing profits. The result: business on the corpses of devastated countries with thousands killed or displaced. Well, it won't last too long because hyper-automation will penetrate in this brutal industry too. As mentioned already:

We see a rise of private armies that act in various battlefields, like in Ukraine, exactly because in the absence of the nation-states and the national armies, someone has to protect the natural resources and the new means of production for the dominant elite. But when the arms industry will fully automate the new weapons, private armies will only serve as assistance to fully automated war machines. We already see the test fields of the weapons of future˙ the drones in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. It's not accidental that the arms industries demonstrate new weapons designed to be used inside urban areas for suppression of potential riots. There will be no "outside enemy" in the future. The threat for the dominant system will come from the interior, the big urban centers. Soldier-robots will protect worker-robots and resources.

The machine already works beyond its limits. Hyper-automation is simply incompatible with this obsolete profit-chasing model which must change yesterday. And let's hope that it's not too late.

http://failedevolution.blogspot.gr/2016/02/the-neo-colonial-booming-industry-of.html

February 25, 2016

WikiLeaks: How "Merkozy" was pressing Berlusconi to follow the hellish Greek path

Fresh revelations by WikiLeaks include, among other things, intercepted by NSA communication of Berlusconi's personal advisor on international relations, Valentino Valentini, which describes concerns on the Italian financial crisis expressed by French President Sarkozy and German Chancellor Merkel to the Italian Prime Minister, and show that they pressured Berlusconi to take action.

Merkel and Sarkozy pressured the PM to announce strong, concrete palliatives and then to implement them in order to show that his government is serious about its debt problem.

... EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy had urged Italy to undertake policies aimed at reducing the impression within the EU that the country is weighed down with an enormous debt ...

This is the final proof on why Berlusconi had to be replaced by the banking/corporate puppet-technocrat Mario Monti. It is also another evidence that the Greek "model" is the desirable to be imposed throughout eurozone by the Brussels bureaufascists and the Berlin directorate.

http://failedevolution.blogspot.gr/2016/02/wikileaks-how-merkozy-was-pressing.html

February 24, 2016

How women started to smoke

What Bernays had created was the idea that if a woman smoked it made her more powerful and independent. An idea that still persists today. It made him realize that it was possible to persuade people to behave irrationally if you link products to their emotional desires and feelings. The idea that smoking actually made women freer, was completely irrational. But it made them feel more independent. It meant that irrelevant objects could become powerful emotional symbols of how you wanted to be seen by others.

http://failedevolution.blogspot.gr/2016/02/how-women-started-to-smoke.html

February 23, 2016

Europe in a situation of nervous breakdown

The remarkable "union" is ready to break into pieces. It has been proved that the clowns who run the euro-circus are totally incapable to deal with the refugee crisis. A crisis for which are responsible to a great extent because of West's bloody wars and interventions in the Middle East and elsewhere.

This is a natural development for a corrupted empire whose leaders have learned only to serve bankers and lobbyists.

A strong tendency of isolationism is what characterizes now many European countries, who start to act totally independently, ignoring common decisions. The banking/corporate puppets managed to create a repulsive Europe. Yet, they insist on the policies of destruction, as if they want to drive the EU into a suicide mode. Obviously, they have been occupied by total denial.

The centrifugal dissolving forces inside the rotten euro-structure are reaching now nation-states, triggering further separatist tendencies inside them. While the UK starts seriously thinking about Brexit, it is not certain that the Scottish have abandoned the dream of independence. Furthermore, Catalonia certainly insists on independence from Spain.

Nationalism and xenophobia rapidly grow. Fascists have started the pogroms against refugees. Everything resembles the darkest past.

The most alarming incidents recently, are the "celebrations" of German crowd as refugee shelter was burning down, and the situation in the Greek borders at Idomeni. Nothing can wake up the puppets who insist on the usual agenda. It seems that they are addicted to catastrophe ...

http://failedevolution.blogspot.gr/2016/02/europe-in-situation-of-nervous-breakdown.html

February 22, 2016

The European industry of sell-off public property

Privatisations of state-owned assets have become a central plank of EU/Troika agreements with debtor nations such as Greece, Ireland, Italy, Spain and Portugal, but there has been little examination of their track record nor an examination of who really benefits. This report puts a spotlight on the legal and financial corporate giants making millions out of the new wave of privatisations across Europe.

European citizens have witnessed a wave of privatisations in their countries in recent years. Transnational Institute (TNI)’s report, Privatising Europe, published in 2013 showed how the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) used the economic crisis as a way to push through privatisation programs in indebted EU countries, despite major popular opposition. Three years on, this briefing examines the consequences of those privatisations. It puts a spotlight on the process, the corporate players that have profited, and examines whether the sale of state-owned assets has delivered on the promises used to justify their privatisation.

The question remains therefore why the Troika insists on making privatisation a cornerstone of the austerity packages it has imposed on European debtor nations. Not only do the privatisations fail to deliver the revenues and efficiency that justify them, they are also fuelling nepotism, corruption and profiteering by small privileged groups at a time when the social costs of austerity are more blatant than ever. They are therefore exacerbating a social crisis of growing inequality and leading to social unrest and growing disaffection with the political system at national and European levels.

The fact the EU institutions are responsible for overseeing the implementation of privatisation programmes makes their capacity for good governance an additional concern, especially in the current circumstances where there is an increased transfer of sovereignty from member states to bureaucrats in Brussels.

The fact that the European Commission (and the Troika) persists in its privatisation agenda despite the evidence of its failures and the growing economic and social costs suggests two possible motives. One, that the European Commission is so ideologically wed to neoliberal policies that it unwilling to even consider the concrete evidence of the economic, social and political costs of privatisation for its own member states. Or two, that there is such a powerful corporate industry at work in support of privatisation, from the advisers to the corporations that buy up state assets, that it is impossible for the EU institutions to reverse course. Either motive or the likelihood that both are true reflects very badly on the European Union. It also goes along a way to explain the growing disaffection and popular resistance to the privatisation agenda and more broadly to the whole European Union project.

http://failedevolution.blogspot.gr/2016/02/the-european-industry-of-sell-off.html

February 20, 2016

Lobby-occupied bureaucrats attempt to bypass the enormous popular opposition against ISDS

ISDS (investor-state dispute settlement system), is included in thousands of international agreements. It allows companies to sue governments if policy changes – even ones to protect public health or the environment – are deemed to affect their profits. These lawsuits bypass domestic courts and take place before an international tribunal of arbitrators, three private lawyers who decide whether private profits or public interests are more important. Across the world, investor-state tribunals have granted big business billions of dollars from taxpayers’ pockets – often in compensation for public interest measures.

When the European Commission proposed to include this powerful legal regime for corporations in the trade deal under negotiation with the United States, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership TTIP, this triggered massive opposition: over 97% of a record 150,000 participants rejected such corporate privileges in a public consultation. Criticism also mounted in EU member states and the European Parliament. ‘ISDS’ has become “the most toxic acronym in Europe”, according to EU trade chief Cecilia Malmström.

In an attempt to get around the enormous opposition generated by ISDS, the European Commission chose a different label when, in autumn 2015, it released a revised proposal for all the EU’s ongoing and future investment negotiations, including TTIP. Instead of the ‘old’ ISDS system, the Commission promised a ‘new’ and allegedly independent system, supposed to protect governments’ right to regulate: the Investment Court System or ICS.

The analysis in this report shows that the proposed ICS does not put an end to ISDS. Quite the opposite, it would empower thousands of companies to circumvent national legal systems and sue governments in parallel tribunals if laws and regulations undercut their ability to make money. It would pave the way for billions in taxpayer money being paid out to big business. It could curtail desirable policymaking to protect people and the planet. And it threatens to lock EU member states forever into the injustices of the ISDS regime.

http://failedevolution.blogspot.gr/2016/02/lobby-occupied-bureaucrats-attempt-to.html

February 20, 2016

Varoufakis: They want to transfer memorandum to Paris!

In his recent interview, former Greek Minister of Finance, Yanis Varoufakis, stated that the goal of the Troika (ECB, IMF, European Commission), is to transfer the memorandum (the catastrophic neoliberal policies imposed to Greece and others) to Paris!

He also referred to the reasons of creating DiEM25, the new pan-European political party, explaining that the problems and the crises are pan-European. He also stated that Social-Democracy has been bankrupted in Europe and that the Left is still under a regime of collective and total defeat.

He also said that the target of DiEM25 will be to transform EU - which was created as a cartel - into a space of common benefit and Democracy, because when the corporate capitalism will collapse, it is not certain whether it will be replaced by a humanistic society.

http://failedevolution.blogspot.gr/2016/02/varoufakis-they-want-to-transfer.html