Citizens Media Resource: This Is the Mother of All Screw Jobs, and Americans Don't Even Know About It

Here's a story that will make your blood boil...two of them, actually, must-reads to get a handle on this colossal rip-off and what it means. The first story will warm you up, and the second story below explains how 'free trade' means freedom for the transnational corporations to monopolize, pollute, ignore rules, etc. at the expense of the people of all these countries, who are being cut down to a powerless slave class...Is the Obama administration about to sell us down the river?

Why So Secretive? The Trans-Pacific
Partnership as Global Coup

From truth-out.org
By Andrew Gavin Marshall, Occupy.com
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is the most secretive and “least transparent” trade negotiations in history. Click to read more at truth-out.org

The Trans-Pacific Partnership: What "Free Trade" Actually Means

From truth-out.org
By Andrew Gavin Marshall, Occupy.com

To discuss “free trade agreements” or the “free market,” we must first identify the theoretical versus the functional definitions of these terms – because theoretical definitions look at what those terms should mean, whereas functional definitions look at what the terms mean actually.

The theoretical definition of a “free market” is one in which every individual actor in the realm of exchange exists in a state of equality of opportunity; where all compete with one another to produce the best products at the cheapest prices for consumers, thus the most innovative and efficient producers succeed while others fail, unregulated - and unhelped - by the state. Within “free markets,” what we call “free trade agreements” are meant to reduce barriers such as tariffs, subsidies and regulations so that market "competitors" can freely move products and goods across borders and compete in an ever-expanding global “free market."

The functional, or technical, definition of a “free market” is one in which the state regulates the market – the realm of economic exchange and activity – for the benefit of large transnational corporations and banks.

Click to Continue reading at truth-out.org

Wish List of Research

1. Who makes money on war? And on military buying, protecting and occupying? Yeah, we already know, but let's audit this with excellent research that lays out who profited and continues to profit from our invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afganistan....or any other military activity and occupations, past or present. We have at least 823 foreign bases that the U.S. admits to; those are paid for by taxpayers, and the military bases are there principally to guard the oil for Exxon-Mobil. I believe we will find that taxpayers spend a huge amount on corporate welfare and subsidies to giant corporations, whose profits obviously are more important than the lives and limbs that are sacrificed in military actions. While we are at it, we should study who makes money from natural disasters, and how they get handed huge government contracts---in a no-bid rush, of course, since it is an emergency. There are capitalistic exploiters who feed off this as an industry; they are just not so long-established as what President Eisenhower called "the military-industrial complex."

2. Economic impact of legalizing use and sale of marijuana. There's another economic stimulus and revenue raiser. It would be regulated for safety and legal for individuals and small outfits to grow and sell. With the chance for broad participation, and the exclusion of monopolistic takeover of the market, many Americans would have the opportunity to be entrepreneurs.

Citizens Media Resource

Saturday, December 1, 2012

This Is the Mother of All Screw Jobs, and Americans Don't Even Know About It

No comments:

Post a Comment