A Global Ban on Left-Wing Politics

[Addison]

That’s what the new rules being smuggled into trade agreements are delivering.


By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 5th November 2013

Remember that referendum about whether we should create a single market with the United States? You know, the one that asked whether corporations should have the power to strike down our laws? No, I don’t either. Mind you, I spent ten minutes looking for my watch the other day, before I realised I was wearing it. Forgetting about the referendum is another sign of ageing. Because there must have been one, mustn’t there? After all that agonising over whether or not we should stay in the European Union(1), the government wouldn’t cede our sovereignty to some shadowy, undemocratic body without consulting us. Would it?

The purpose of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is to remove the regulatory differences between the US and European nations. I mentioned it a couple of weeks ago(2). But I left out the most important issue: the remarkable ability it would grant big business to sue the living daylights out of governments which try to defend their citizens. It would allow a secretive panel of corporate lawyers to overrule the will of parliament and destroy our legal protections. Yet the defenders of our sovereignty say nothing.

The mechanism is called investor-state dispute settlement. It’s already being used in many parts of the world to kill regulations protecting people and the living planet.

The Australian government, after massive debates in and out of parliament, decided that cigarettes should be sold in plain packets, marked only with shocking health warnings. The decision was validated by the Australian supreme court. But, using a trade agreement Australia struck with Hong Kong, the tobacco company Philip Morris has asked an offshore tribunal to award it a vast sum in compensation for the loss of what it calls its intellectual property(3).

During its financial crisis, and in response to public anger over rocketing charges, Argentina imposed a freeze on people’s energy and water bills (does this sound familiar?). It was sued by the international utility companies whose vast bills had prompted the government to act. For this and other such crimes, it has been forced to pay out over a billion dollars in compensation(4).

. . .

http://www.monbiot.com/2013/11/04/a-global-ban-on-left-wing-politics/

[djean111]

1. TPP - wonder when we will be admonished that yes, corporations are people, and are even

better than mere people. No vote for anyone who supports it.

[bvar22]

44. TPP = Trans Pacific Partnership.

This is the new "Free Trade" treaty with over a dozen Pacific Rim Countries,
including Mexico & Canada.
People are beginning to find out obout THIS treaty.

This OP is about ANOTHER even larger and even further under the radar "secret" Trade Deal with the Corporate Owners in Europe,
The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

Together, or individually, this will be the Final Solution (or "Uniquely American Solution") for the American Working Class.
"They" don't need us anyway.

"Would you like some fries with that?"




[font color=white].........................[/font][font size=4]The Graven Image[/font]

[Scuba]

2. What have we heard from "the most transparent President"?

[G_j]

3. of course

because the hippies were and are right!
plain and simple..

[Scootaloo]

9. Except about that whole "dropping out" thing...

Being right doesn't count for shit unless you do something about it. And while the hippies were off telling squirrels how right they were about everything, the people with the wrong ideas ran for office, voted, wrote laws, were seated as judges, etc.

As always, that generation just assumed someone else would shovel shit, and they could take credit for having pointed out the turds.

[Curmudgeoness]

11. Wow, you have no idea what you are talking about

when you refer to my generation as no doing anything. There was a lot more activism from my generation than I have seen since. Sadly, we have gotten old and we are getting tired of fighting and were hoping to be tag-teamed by the younger generation.

[Scootaloo]

14. Ever considered maybe you're just delusional?

It's a rough question to ask, but seeing as how absolutely nothing the hippies believed in panned out I think that it bears asking. Especially given how much of your time is spent puttering around patting yourselves on the back for being so fucking unquestionably awesome, and demanding others do the same.

where were the hippy voters?
where were the hippy candidates?
Any hippy appointees?
Were there ever any organized hippy groups bringing pressure to Washington?
Did hippies make sure to follow their parents into labor unions to protect those hard-fought rights?

You probably console yourself at the "movement's" failure by claiming it was all "the man" could do to stop you. Hell, you almost certainly think that the fact hippies are seen as a joke is because of some deep-rooted fear the "Powers That Be" have of you. Let me break it to you though - The Powers That Be were - and are - far more frightened of nonwhite equality than they have EVER been of entitled white boomer kids. But you know what? Everyone knows who Martin Luther King is. Everyone knows Malcolm and Rosa and Medgar. Russel Means is not an unknown name, nor is Cesar Chavez.

People know these names because even though "the man" worked very hard to crush them - and very certainly killed more of them than ten Kent States - They won. At least, they won enough to count as forward movement for their causes.

Can you name a hippy in their class? Seriously, can you? I can't, but hey, I "have no idea what I'm talking about." Even those of us who engaged in Occupy know damn well that the lack of major success as due to internal problems, and not some shadow conspiracy out to get us (who needs a shadow conspiracy when you have the Seattle Police Department being completely open and honest with you while they try to break your femur?)

Know what hippies got us? Their exeunt from involvement cleared the way for the "Conservative revolution." Their contributions are why American protest and activism consists of holding up a sign, singing a chant, then going home to catch the game. Your parents' generation foguht for what they had. Their parents were beaten bloody to take what little ground they managed. All you guys did was point out that you didn't like something, then stood around waiting for your parents to fix it for you.

[Comrade Grumpy]

19. I think hippies have influenced our culture in ways your bitterness cannot see.

There was that whole sexual revolution thing, and women's rights, for instance. I think there were some hippies involved in that.

And, of course, they were part of the antiwar movement. That may not have been an immediate success, but that, and the results of the war itself, certainly chastened our imperial impulses for a few years.

And they certainly played a role in the slow-moving breakdown of the drug prohibition consensus.

As for the labor unions, their main interactions with hippies seemed to consist of beating them up.

I really don't understand your need to denigrate an entire generation. Seems, uh, classless.

[Scootaloo]

25. By point...

There was that whole sexual revolution thing, and women's rights, for instance. I think there were some hippies involved in that.

Certainly there were. 'Course, that movement has some roots far deeper than those participants, as you surely know. Saying women's rights is a hippy thing is sort of like saying that gay rights is an Obama thing.

And, of course, they were part of the antiwar movement. That may not have been an immediate success, but that, and the results of the war itself, certainly chastened our imperial impulses for a few years.

Not really. We were still involved in Laos and Cambodia. Our money kept getting funneled to dictators in South Korea, Indonesia, and the Phillippines to "contain the commies." At the same time we were arming and armoring Shah Reza in Iran against his own people, while we were fomenting a right-wing insurrection in Afghanistan (that was under Carter, the peacenick do-gooder). And hten of course our attempt to retake Iran, then our cozying up to Iraq (Carter again, at least initially) in order to get a lot of Iranians dead... Of course I'm sure you already know the catalogue of Reagan's wars. So i guess it comes down to how long you define "a few years," because there...really wasn't a break between fleeing Hanoi and these others.

Any lag in the fighting came from the double impact of having lost a war against a peasant army and a severe drain on the war chest. Protestors, hippy and otherwise, had been protesting Vietnam for almost a decade, to no impact. I see "we made the war end!" the same way I see the right's accusation that "the left cost us the war!" - both sides are simply unable to accept that the Vietnamese won, and instead try to make domestic Americans the deciding factor of the war's outcome.

And they certainly played a role in the slow-moving breakdown of the drug prohibition consensus.

As nonviolent drug incarceration rates have skyrocketed , with ever-harsher laws seeming to always be popular. congratulations on sort of almost legalizing marijuana in two states, that's... something, sure. Wake me when I can buy coke to make old-timey coca cola without getting a nightstick up my ass, okay?

As for the labor unions, their main interactions with hippies seemed to consist of beating them up.

Yeah? That sucks. Know what else sucks? Wage stagnation and constant erosion of rights that have ground 80% of Americans into poverty, or near-poverty, no matter how hard they work.

I really don't understand your need to denigrate an entire generation. Seems, uh, classless.

It becomes tiresome to see people who accomplished so little that they are by habit compelled to steal credit from others for themselves, demanding that people praise them for having existed in the 60's. Congratulations hippies, you were right about stuff, do you want a fucking dog biscuit? 'Cause just 'being right' doesn't accomplish either jack nor shit.

[Egalitarian Thug]

42. So you're saying that America's hard right turn to stupid was the hippies fault?

[bvar22]

45. Thanks for the gratitutous Hippie Punching, Cartman.

---bvar22 & Starkraven
Living well on a LOW taxable income
and stuff we learned in the 60s.

Sorry you missed the 60s.
I would be bitter too!

[RobertEarl]

24. Good Gawd, where to begin?

Guess who got Obama elected? Hippies.

Guess who got the EPA, and the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts in place? Hippies.

Guess who kept us from another Vietnam? Until Bush and his band of criminals invaded, world peace was our gift to you.

Guess who has made sure Equality became such a great force?

And all this without your help. Indeed, even against people like you hippie punchers. We have changed this world, us hippies, no thanks to people like you. Indeed, we could have done even more, were it not for your style of politics and way of thinking.

[Curmudgeoness]

26. Well, maybe I am delusional.

All that LSD during my formative years, ya know. But I am cognizant enough to know that arguing with you on this will be the same as a debate with the Tea Party. But I will tell you that many of your listed heroes were supported by our generation. We stood beside the blacks against segregation, we stood beside Chavez and many others fighting for justice. We fought for birth control and rights for women. Why do you think that you don't have to worry about being drafted and sent to Iraq and Afghanistan? We shed light on the unfairness of the draft. And there were little things, like how women do not have to wear dresses to work and school anymore. Do you know that we had to fight that little battle, going in to school wearing pants, getting sent home to change, over and over, until they gave up.

The Conservative revolution came about due to circumstances and the failure of the Carter Administration to stem inflation, lower interest rates, and correct the economy. People were scared shitless by gasoline rationing and interest rates sky high. None of this was a result of hippies.

The hippies and the counterculture made a lot of small contributions to your life, but you don't want to see it. You talk like the hippie movement was a bunch of entitled white kids, but you should know that it was actually a working class movement. Most of us were lower and lower-middle income kids. Our fathers worked in the mills. Our mothers were able to stay home because the union jobs paid enough for our fathers to support the family. And we appreciated it.

We also had the best music ever.

[RobertEarl]

36. Jimmy Carter was no damn hippie!

I bet he is now, tho. He'd be quite welcomed.

Did you ever the hear about LBJ growing his hair long?
When someone showed him a pic of Rummy, Cheney and that gang with their shaved heads, he said screw them. Let his freak flag fly, he did.

And yeah.... our music. Wow.

Peace to you, sister, love child. Peace to you.

[liberal_at_heart]

38. It is because of them that African Americans and women gained more rights.

I think you are the delusional one.

[Enthusiast]

40. I am more disappointed in you than I can say.

[msanthrope]

43. Truth, regarding the self-involved, to the self-involved is never

taken well. Excellent post.

[ancianita]

12. Yeah, see that's the rewrite the RW is successfully putting on you right there. Not.True.

Hippies were fucking everywhere -- in protests, pouring blood on military draft files, occupying university building during university shutdowns, going into the Peace Corps, civil rights marches, Take Back The Night rallies and Stonewall, getting shot and beat up. You didn't hear about all that? Hmm...maybe some History X crowd that Howard Zinn wrote about has been doing some history scrubbing...like with this latest "official" consensus on the validity of the Kennedy assassination report...oh dear...guess we've been finally, unequivocally codified...

[Scootaloo]

15. I love this

Okay. The Harrisburg Seven are hippies now, huh? The entire civil rights movement... all hippies? Stonewall, that's hippies too.

What I see, to be totally honest, is a pack of entitled underachievers taking all the credit for other peoples' work. You're like the Carlos Mencia of history or something, what the fuck? Either that or you think everyone who was metabolizing glucose during the 60's and 70's was by default a hippy or something - whose credit you're still taking, which still isn't cool.

[Comrade Grumpy]

17. Okay, you hate hippies. Got it. But what about those fucking beatniks?

What a bunch of losers.

[Scootaloo]

18. I don't, actually

As I said initially, they have no shortage of good ideas. The world would be a great place, if those ideas were instituted. But... they never were. And given that far more unlikely movements, more threatening movements, DID make considerable headway at the same time, I find it really hard to buy that the lack of implementation is because of a shadowy secret-y cabal of do-badders plotting against the hippies (at least, no more than the CIA plots against everyone, anyway...)

And from what I see, most self-declared hippies are far more concerned with heaping praise upon themselves for having converted oxygen to carbon dioxide at some point in the period between 1964 and 1976, than with actually getting shit done. That's fine, I guess, live how you want, but stop fucking demanding I praise you for having been live at the time - and by the same token, stop stealing credit from other people. Goddamn, that's just shameful.

[Comrade Grumpy]

22. I was alive at the time. Were you?

And no plots against hippies? I'm not a big conspiracy freak, but you ought to read a bit about the Nixon presidency.

It's all kind of amorphous though, ain't it? There were many liberatory currents running through the sixties. Hippies or "hippy values" certainly contributed to many of them. At least political hippies, which overlapped with student radicals, who, yes, were involved in the civil rights movement, the gay rights movement, the women's rights movement, the support for national liberation.

Then there were hippies who were totally apolitical. Sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll. Not too much political consciousness there.

Of course, some of those apolitical hippies were literally drop-outs, going to communes and getting back to nature and such. That seems to have percolated through the culture as well, although replete with much woo-woo silliness.

And since we're trashing whole generations here, how's Occupy doing?

[ancianita]

23. Backing off from demands and stealing ... see? Hands are up, okay? Seriously. You don't know what

you're talking about. You need to read something.

[ancianita]

21. Knew you would love what you make up from it, anyway. I said they didn't drop the fuck out...

...dropping out is what's done when doing hallucinogens. They did those, too.

Who said "all."
Who said "entire."
They were everywhere, I said. Because I was alive then.

They should get positive credit, not just your Carlos Mencia version here, with toss-off RW stereotyping of a time you weren't even alive in.

Get over your own hating. Not cool.

[Scootaloo]

29. I'll stop 'hating' when I stop constantly stumbling over self-fellating hippies

Demands for praise and recognition are a sure sign that neither are deserved.

[ancianita]

30. Nice dysfunctional formula you got there. If you read more about them, you'd see that

credit-where-credit's-due talk isn't self-fellating at all.

Here, let me help...let's start with some basic, sourced site.

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

With 139 footnotes, 50+ further readings, you'll probably consider it fellating as hell.

[jtuck004]

27. You are incorrect. The "dropping out" referred to leaving the uptight society to itself and building

another life elsewhere. We did a lot of shoveling shit, growing food, making homes, creating governments (not like what passes for one today) making art - lots of things we were never given credit for, nor did we seek it.

Unlike the 36%, or record 21.6 million 18-31 year olds still living at home today, we went out into the streets and fields. Sometimes we froze, sometimes we were hungry, but at least more of us tried.

Not enough left to build the momentum. It's very hard to get people to leave the plantation when they are given food and trained to be obedient, punished when they are not.

Harder still when you don't know where you really are, or what. It's even worse today.

[G_j]

37. wow

first of all, you have some real people here in this thread who know what they are talking about, and as a few others have said, you obviously don't. You have a lot of misplaced hatred. As Ken Kesey once said, it's your prerogative to have a bad trip, but it's my prerogative not to join you.

You act as though its our fault greed won out over other values. You can't force people not be greedy shit heads. You are pissed at the hippies because the hunger for power and wealth of some, is destroying lives and the planet? It's not our fucking fault. Sure we have good ideas, but you can't force people to be good.

It's sadly ironic that us hippies never saw the accumulation of power and wealth as a worthy goal. In the mean time, the sociopaths were gathering all the power and wealth around them and destroying the planet. We lay down our bodies in front of their bulldozers were beaten, arrested and endlessly ridiculed, by people like you.

[Fumesucker]

4. ...

[ancianita]

13. .....killer!

[G_j]

39. poyfect!

[blkmusclmachine]

5. Trojan Horse. But Obama loves it, so it MUST be all good, no?!!

[Scootaloo]

6. Lawyers don't do much good if you're hanging from a lamppost

Not advocating, mind you... but when you piss off the rabble - and it wil happen, even Americans have a limit to the abuse they will take - that's the result. Because once pissed, the mob realizes it's a mob, and that its target is alone and friendless.

Just something the corporatocrats might want to keep a memo on. Somewhere near their day planner and office drink bar.

[rhett o rick]

7. This is fast track to total servitude for the 99%. nm

[rhett o rick]

8. See other articles on the TPP in the Progressive Group

www.democraticunderground.com/126999

[Phlem]

35. +100000!

-p

[awoke_in_2003]

10. Not Another Free Trade Agreement...

t-shirt from the 90s and still valid today.

[L0oniX]

16. Both parties need corporations more than votes. Poor people don't/can't contribute to campaigns.

You can always say a bunch of bull shit to get elected but you can't get your bull shit out there without money from corporations ...and you can't vote Goldman Sachs out of office anyway.

[RKP5637]

33. Sad, but quite true. USA, Inc., Corporations 1st, "We the people" last. n/t

[Overseas]

20. K&R. Well said.

[dlwickham]

28. just curious-who is enforcing these decisions?

[NealK]

31. K&R n/t

[WilliamPitt]

32. .

[Phlem]

34. Seems like a ban on left wing politics in this thread.

Please "Pray" for the self righteous.



-p

[Enthusiast]

41. Stand up against the TPP and the TTP!

Fuckers.