Plutocrats Plan to Dominate the Planet: But the People of Chile Are Fighting for All of Us
Chileans can push for opposition to a secretive, multi-national trade agreement that throws open the floodgates to global corporate domination.
November 15, 2013
| The effort by corporate CEOs to dominate the global economy and global government is reaching the end-game stage.
Corporate
CEOs view government and democracy as their gravest threats and are
constantly seeking to discredit and hamstring both. CEOs are
particularly eager to discredit, destroy, or capture regulation and they
have enlisted enormous support in both major U.S. parties and many of
the world’s dominant parties for these efforts. President Obama has
continued and made worse the effort of President Bush to betray our
nation, our democracy, and our people through the secret draft
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement — a plan which would destroy
jobs, free bankers from oversight, block access to medicine, and more.
This massive new trade agreement between the U.S. and countries
including Chile would cover 40 percent of the global economy.
While
there is no realistic chance of convincing Obama to repudiate the TPP,
there is a chance that the people of Chile will save our democracy and
our national sovereignty. Chile’s national election will occur on
November 17, 2013 and it is widely expected to return former President
Michelle Bachelet to power. If that happens, this politician who also
happens to be a pediatrician who has treated Chagas disease (more on
that shortly) could help deliver a body blow to this noxious plan.
A
bit of background: The U.S. has taken a disgraceful position in the TPP
negotiations in which it sides with corporate interests rather than the
victims of a terrible parasitical infection called Chagas disease that
is epidemic in much of Latin America and a serious problem in the U.S.
as well. Chagas
is wreaking havoc in Chile, which is one of the countries negotiating
TPP. The failure of Chile under its current conservative party’s control
(and the failure of Peru and Mexico) to stand up to the U.S. and expose
and block its effort to stand in the way of vital treatment for victims
of Chagas disease represents a national disgrace by the heads of state
of the U.S., Chile, Peru, and Mexico.
Progressives should urge
Bachelet, should she be elected President, to make the full drafts of
TPP public immediately. She should also demand that the draft TPP be
scrapped and fundamentally changed to build democracy and national
sovereignty and to control the multinational corporations rather than
allow them and their plutocrat panels to dominate and denigrate
democracy and national sovereignty.
The CEOs' audacious
assault on national sovereignty, the rule of law, and democracy through
TPP will effectively remove the possibility of defeating them through
democratic means. The CEOs have had to mount their assualt secretly, for
the peoples of the world would reject the their demands by an
overwhelming margin if they knew what they were up to. But for groups
like Public Citizen and WikiLeaks, we would have woken up to a fait accompli and had no democratic recourse.
WikiLeaks revealed
part of the draft, secret TPP text on November 13, 2013. It deals with
Intellectual Property (IP). WikiLeaks explained the TPP process.
“Since
the beginning of the TPP negotiations, the process of drafting and
negotiating the treaty's chapters has been shrouded in an unprecedented
level of secrecy. Access to drafts of the TPP chapters is shielded from
the general public. Members of the US Congress are only able to view
selected portions of treaty-related documents in highly restrictive
conditions and under strict supervision. It has been previously revealed
that only three individuals in each TPP nation have access to the full
text of the agreement, while 600 'trade advisers' - lobbyists guarding
the interests of large US corporations such as Chevron, Halliburton,
Monsanto and Walmart - are granted privileged access to crucial sections
of the treaty text.”
The TPP negotiations are currently at a
critical stage. The Obama administration is preparing to fast-track the
TPP treaty in a manner that will prevent the US Congress from discussing
or amending any parts of the treaty. Numerous TPP heads of state and
senior government figures, including President Obama, have declared
their intention to sign and ratify the TPP before the end of 2013.”
So
far I've only discussed one obscene example of the Obama
administration’s positions on TPP, but broader analyses of why TPP
betrays our democracy and national sovereignty have been done well by
others, particularly Public Citizen’s Lori Wallach. I applaud her efforts and thank her for providing me with source materials.
The partial draft of the TPP agreement on IP and health contains this provision.
“Article QQ.A.5: {Understandings Regarding Certain Public Health Measures7}
The Parties have reached the following understandings regarding this Chapter:
The
obligations of this Chapter do not and should not prevent a Party from
taking measures to protect public health by promoting access to
medicines for all, in particular concerning cases such as HIV/AIDS,
tuberculosis, malaria, [US oppose: chagas] and other epidemics as well
as circumstances of extreme urgency or national emergency. Accordingly,
while reiterating their commitment to this Chapter, the Parties affirm
that this Chapter can and should be interpreted and implemented in a
manner supportive of each Party's right to protect public health and, in
particular, to promote access to medicines for all.”
The “US
oppose[s]” adding “Chagas” to this list of exceptions. In reality,
vigorous efforts to reduce Chagas (there is no vaccine) should be a high
priority for the U.S. and Latin America (Mexico, Chile, and Peru are
also parties to the TPP negotiations). The U.S., however, is insisting
on excluding Chagas disease from the list of “epidemics” for which a
nation may “protect public health by promoting access to medicines for
all.” This kind of “understanding” clause is designed to provide
guidance on the correct interpretation of TPP. It appears that the
current state of the TPP draft is that the other nations included Chagas
but it was excluded from this clause due to the sole opposition of the
U.S. The provision of “access to medicines for all” is particularly
vital in the case of Chagas disease because early drug treatments of
infected newborns are extremely effective in eliminating the disease in
newborns who were infected maternally.
The combination of
indifference to the victims of Chagas disease and depravity of trying to
prevent governments making available low or no-cost medicines to the
victims – an action that will lead to many more victims (including tens
of thousands of American victims) is so obscene that it brings to mind
what lawyers consider the most perfect and deserved legal insult.
Richard Kluger quotes this passage from Plessy (the Supreme Court decision that upheld racial segregation as consistent with “equal protection of the laws”) in his book Simple Justice (1976):
“We
consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff’s argument to consist
in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps
the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not
by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored
race chooses to put that construction upon it.”
Kluger then comments:
“Of all the words ever written in assessment of the Plessy
opinion, none have been more withering than those ... [of] Yale law
professor Charles L. Black, Jr., who [said that in] ... the two
sentences... ‘The curves of callousness and stupidity intersect at their
respective maxima.’”
The Obama administration’s effort to block
governments from providing medicine to the victims of Chagas disease
represents the intersection of callousness and stupidity at their
respective maxima. The heads of state of Chile, Mexico, and Peru have
disgraced their office by failing to denounce the U.S. position on
Chagas, to make public the TPP documents, and to withdraw from the
treaty negotiations.
Obama has caused the TPP to violate every
standard he has endorsed as president, including secret lobbying. There
is no limit on the political contributions that corporations can make
to influence TPP policy or disclosure of their lobbying positions. The
TPP is bankrolled” by the world’s most powerful corporate interests.
TPP policies are not made by the American people, but they are also not
made by our elected representatives in Congress. Obama’s “fast track”
process for adopting TPP is designed to eliminate normal congressional
powers. Obama knows TPP is indefensible and that Americans would vote
against it. He is desperate to avoid any open, democratic debate
between the people of America and the corporations, most of them
foreign, that TPP seeks to make our unelected, all-powerful rulers.
This
is why President Bachelet could do the world a priceless service by
immediately making public the entire travesty that is TPP.
. .
William Black is the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One
and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of
Missouri-Kansas City. He spent years working on regulatory policy and
fraud prevention as executive director of the Institute for Fraud
Prevention, litigation director of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board and
deputy director of the National Commission on Financial Institution
Reform, Recovery and Enforcement, among other positions.
