Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Trans-Pacific Partnership says if a corporation claims its true, it must be true

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Trans-Pacific Partnership says if a corporation claims its true, it must be true

Click here to access article by Pete Dolack from Systemic Disorder.

Dolack scores again with more stuff that he has dug up from Wikileaks and other sources.

However the following concluding paragraphs bothers me because it contain some very false, or at the very least, misleading statements:

Where ever you are, voicing your opposition to the TPP to your elected officials, and joining a local or national group in opposition, is critical. The U.S. government is pushing the hardest, and attempting to insert the most draconian rules, to cement the control of U.S.-based multi-national corporations over the world’s resources and markets, and the other governments are willing to throw overboard what sovereignty remains to them so that their multi-national corporations get a slice of the pie.

Allowing the TPP to pass means nothing less than an end to democracy and a world where corporate power and money becomes more dominant than ever, where corporate profits are elevated above all other human concerns, codified in law.

First of all, "voicing" your opposition will do very little unless you also inclose a check for at least $10,000 along with your message. The sad reality is that the US government is essentially "owned" by rich capitalists because they finance it. Any semblance to democracy was lost in the 19th century.

We lost most real elements of "democracy" from the very beginning of our nation's creation by early capitalists like Alexander Hamilton, merchant and war profiteer Robert Morris, and land speculator George Washington. The final triumph of this ruling class was really marked by two main events in the late 19th century: first, the many massacres of workers trying to organize for reasonable working hours, benefits, safety standards, and making child labor illegal; and second, by the crushing of the Populist Movement spearheaded by farmers in the Midwest who were merely looking for ways to prevent predatory lending practices and the theft of their farms by bankers and merchants. (By far the best source of information about the Populist Movement is Democratic Promise by Lawrence Goodwyn.)

Thus, by the late 19th century, the capitalist class, popularly known as robber barons, had accomplished their takeover of the government. They soon established control over the money supply in 1913 by stealthily creating the Fed. Since then, the history of the United States of America has been mainly the history of the consolidation of power of a ruling class composed of financial and industrial capitalists, and the subsequent development of their Empire that we see today marked by many wars, a huge military establishment and 1000 foreign military bases abroad, militarized police forces at home, and tight ruling class control over all ideological and information services.

Now we see capitalists going global, doing what they did within their nations and attempting now to do it to the entire world. However, we are faced with another growing menace to our survival. There is another capitalist gang forming to challenge the US Empire consisting of the BRICS nations led by Russia and Cbina. Both sides have nuclear weapons.