March 8, 2016

The best health care mess explanation article I've ever read, by far.

Link here

March 5, 2016

GATS-Facing the Facts -Timely info on the 1995 Free Trade Agreement, completion of it coming soon

http://www.citizen.org/documents/GATS-facing-the-facts-final.pdf (and other pubs on the same Canadian NGO's site, which are I think the clearest and most accessible writing on the web about trade deals)


Yes, they really have been negotiating it for 20 years! It keeps falling apart over the controversial public services. Developing countries dont want to give up public healthcare and education and follow the successful US models! But that is what GATS requires!

There is little wiggle room, as we of all people should know.

"Progressive liberalisation" as the entire scheme is called, is being sold to them as a sort of ElDorado, a glittering city of gold and jobs in the developed world, right over the next hill.

They just have to behave like us and give up the crutch of 20h century burdened, obsolete social services like the successful Americans have! Privatization is the ONLY future possible!

It has to be made irreversible, of course. By giving corporations entitlements to policy staying the same forever. (similar kind of legal case in this case, ISDS - in Slovakia - blocking single payer! )

See how the new FTAs all refer back to the original 1995 deal to block new public services and threaten the continued existence of public education in the EU and USA.

Another example India is just joining GATS now, a condition of which is giving up their right to education.

You can read lots of articles on that in the Indian press a discussion we never had here when GATS was being negotiated here at the beginning in the early 1990s.

Groups like the All India Students Association have held huge demonstrations battling the neoliberal Modi government, citing a return to the caste system where only those of hig caste could afford a good education. But the WTO which we signed in 1995, demands that education be opened for international trade and progressively (irreversibly) privatized and globalized.

Basically, its a trade, they give up new public health care and a national right to education, they and their employees get access to bid on contracts via government goods and services procurement e-portals and the private market in places like the US just as if they were a domestic company.

That is called "National Treatment" and "Most Favored Nation" or "MFN" (see http://www.iatp.org/files/MFN_and_the_GATS.htm )

March 5, 2016

Male elephant knocks down house that blocks off water supply, hears baby crying, stops, saves baby

This is the story I thought of when I saw the picture of Trump jr. holding up the dismembered elephant trunk when he was "on safari"..

https://www.google.com/search?q=tusker+saves+baby

When will we pass laws that protect the most intelligent animals - as if they were people?

And their habitat.

March 1, 2016

The reason I think Bernie is being kept out of media coverage actually goes back 20+ years

In the 1990s, the enactment of several intentionally convoluted and difficult to understand trade deals committed the US to the pushing of a global agenda that excludes (as far as I can tell) all (!) of Bernie Sanders platform issues from even being possible, and puts them on the table as bait to use to get other countries to agree to policy changes which we want, such as abolishing their own public services systems and things like constitutional rights to quality health care and education, and replacing them with the allagedly 'successful' US privatized health care and education system. In exchange, the developed countries are being asked to make deeper concessions on trade, and put more on the table, such as so called Mode Four concessions, (jobs) in new trade deals - particularly one that's almost completed the Trade in Services Agreement" which uses a 'negative list" to include all service sectors and "modes of supply" (such as Mode Four) by default, unless a service sector is explicitly"carved out" - in advance, in the "service schedule" filed with the agreement when it is signed, which could be any day now..

So, teams of Americans who represent the public need to be attempting to get these 'carve outs' into these service sectors in the scheduling agreements, now!

This deal is very similar to the 1994 General Agreement on Trade in Services which we signed in 1995, so one can get some idea of the issues involved by looking at the Indian press over the last year, for example, they had to give up the right to free education. In exchange they likely will be able to gain a lot of help from the services liberalisation - it will make it much easier for Indian staffing firms to do business here and elsewhere. They can offer very inexpensive staffing services which likely will be very controversial but unable to change at that point, forever. Obviously New Deal tye stimulus will then become impossible because spending money on infrastructure wont result in the level of local hiring that would have occurrred before the changes which are occurring, which began in 1994 but which stalled repeatedly (The Doha Development Agenda was in part about this but the foreign media made a great effort to keep the jobs part out of the media coverage and the US press does not say a peep about this already. The US media blackout on everything related to these deals is likely the root cause of the lack of coverage of the Bernie Sanders campaign because so many of the planks in his platform are proposed as if the GATS and WTO did not exist!

Which makes it a potential hook that the media fears to cover because no doubt they are afraid talking about single payer would lead to questions about GATS, WTO and TiSA (as well as TTIP and TPP)

This roadblock to serious discssion of these important issues should be the #1 issue for Sanders supporters.. but so far hasn't been seen at all because of efforts by both party leaderships, media, and others I am sure to prevent discussion of it at all. But the crazy ideology behind this, and the existing and pending almost completed secret deals are the real cause of almost all of our crazy, unworkable policies. For example, they are why health care is stuck, and can never get better, as doing that in any way other than globalizing and crapifying health care (which would maintain the high profits and class structure) would violate these deals ideology.

So to get the media blockade on Sanders ended this set of facts has to become known, first. Of course the entire 2007-2009 events were arguably invalidated as far as being a debate without any discussion of this core issue.

----------The impact of services liberalisation on US workers will likely be devastating as wages will be undercut very greatly by the subcontracting firms low wages_________

In countries that don't have really strong unions, such as the US what that will mean to a service sector like K12 education or higher education will be a massive increase in subcontracting by international firms down to the local level, with "disciplines on domestic regulations" which will make us make that transition to globalized competitive bidding for contracts happen on a massive scale. What that means is that millions of Americans will gradually be replaced by much lower paid replacements from developing countries, many of them have advanced educations, and will work for much much less. Since they are temps, its not immigration. We have to adjust whatever rules or laws stand in the way so they are "no more burdensome than necessary to ensure the quality of the service" In exchange many huge US multinational corporations will be able to open branches and factories in other countries in the developing world and be treated as if they are a local company, by law. That is called "National Treatment" Also, more other countries corporations will have to be treated as well as we treat any other country. "Most Favored Nation" Additionally, companies from poorer countries (LDCs) will have extra rights such as the right to discriminate against firms from non-LDC countries to some extent by adopting a slower timetable for the 'progressive liberalisation' (one way irreversible privatization) of their public services.
Thank you.

here is the preamble to a obscure document released by the EU that outlines TiSA. Note that the preambles to all these agreements are non-binding ad sometimes deceptive- Only the actual text is binding..

--------------------


6891/13 ADD 1 DC/asz 2 -

DG C 1 RESTREINT UE/EU RESTRICTED EN (Declassified last year in Brussels, 10 March 2015)
(OR. en) 6891/13 - ADD 1 DCL 1 - WTO 53 - SERVICES 11 - FDI 4 - OC 96 (location in WTO document hierarchy)

Draft Directives for the negotiation of a plurilateral agreement on trade in services


A. NATURE AND SCOPE OF THE AGREEMENT
On substance, the agreement should achieve essentially the same objectives as set out in the Council
Conclusions of October 1999 (12092/99 WTO 131), i.e. the agreement should be comprehensive,
ambitious, should aim at reducing existing imbalances and be fully consistent with World Trade
Organisation (WTO) rights and obligations, notably with regard to the WTO General Agreement on
Trade in Services (GATS). The negotiations should be conducted and concluded with due regard to
rights and obligations under the WTO, taking into account the elements for political guidance of the
8th WTO Ministerial Conference by respecting the principles of transparency and inclusiveness.

In detail, the agreement should seek to bind, in general, the autonomous level of liberalisation of the
parties and provide for opportunities through negotiations for improved market access. The
agreement should also be comprehensive and comply with the requirements of GATS Article V in
terms of sectoral and mode of supply coverage. New and enhanced regulatory disciplines based on
proposals by the parties should be developed during the negotiations.

The agreement should take account of the fact that not all WTO-members are participating in the
negotiations. To prevent an automatic and unconditional multilateralisation of the agreement based
on the effect of the most-favoured-nation principle laid down in GATS Article II:1, the plurilateral
services agreement needs to fulfil the conditions of an Economic Integration Agreement pursuant to
GATS Article V, i.e. have a substantial sectoral coverage and provide for the elimination of existing
discriminatory measures and/or the prohibition of new or more discriminatory measures. The
agreement shall be built on the GATS to ensure a smooth future incorporation of the plurilateral
services agreement into the GATS and it shall incorporate GATS core articles. The agreement shall
provide for market access (GATS Article XVI) for services sectors in the same way as
commitments are undertaken, under GATS. It could go beyond GATS by providing for a horizontal
discipline for national treatment (GATS Article XVII) that would be applied in principle to all

sectors and modes of supply, subject to exemptions. In line with the Council Conclusions of 1999,
by applying this horizontal formula subject to exemptions, the negotiations would be more efficient
and would maximise the results. The agreement should have an overall architecture conducive to its
future multilateralisation and set out the mechanisms and conditions of accession and future
multilateralisation. To ensure that the parties observe mutually agreed rules and commitments, the
agreement shall include an effective dispute settlement mechanism. Due regard shall be given to the
dispute settlement mechanism provided for in the WTO Agreement. The European Union will
ensure that the Union and its Member States maintain the possibility to preserve and develop their
capacity to define and implement cultural and audiovisual policies for the purposes of preserving
their cultural diversity. The high quality of the EU's public utilities should be preserved in
accordance with the TFEU and in particular Protocol N° 26 on Services of General Interest, and
taking into account the EU's commitments in this area, including the GATS.

March 1, 2016

How we lost the ability to have any more New Deals

Recently, a Presidential Candidate put forward the proposition that the US government could stimulate (which?) economic activity by spending lots of money. In the past the US government was able to use infrastructure projects to create domestic jobs for its own citizens. Of course that was true in the 30s and its unambiguous that the United States and other WTO Members can still stimulate the entire global economy by spending lots of money on services.

However, that money likely will soon go to the lowest qualified bidding firms, and its possible that low bidders may hail from all around the world, and purchasers of services may not be allowed to discriminate by country. Winners may not be in the US, thanks to GATS and the pending TiSA, soon there will no longer be a linkage between government spending and job creation. Unfortunately, the neoliberals failed to tell Americans about GATS which leaves many gaps in Americans ability to understand the global services economy, for example on health care.

These changes are irreversible and they make free affordable health care and education FTA illegal . Would somebody please tell America!

March 1, 2016

Why did my explanation of why HRC is against free education stop getting comments in 5 minutes?

in General Discussion (Primaries).

I offered up definitive, authoritative proof.

March 1, 2016

In this thread I'll explain why Hillary Clinton is against free college education in 15 seconds.

The answer is really well illustrated right now using the Internet. Can I ask all of you to take a look at a debate going on right now in India about the commodification of education and India's accession to the WTO. Part of that accession is that India is being asked by the US and other WTO members to sign the WTO "General Agreement on Trade in Services" or GATS, which Bill Clinton signed in December 1994.

You will find if you do a little Googling that signing on to the WTO GATS is alleged to require that Indians give up their constitutional right to public education.

And there is your answer. During the Clinton Administration this horrible trade deal that signs away our ability to vote for and have public services like education, health care and dozens of other important rights was signed but the nation was never told this. The same issue is also the cause of our health care insanity. Our future began to be blocked then in 1994 by this secretive deal hidden in plain sight by a code of silence.

And its still being hidden by an unwritten code of silence today. That's your answer. There is no other answer. The plan is to eventually trade jobs for market access, so they want the public sector to be privatized because procurement can then be forced through a system to globalize it, awarding thse jobs to the lowest qualified bidder firm wherever they are. So no more New Deals to create jobs, those jobs are likely to go wherever skills are highest combined with wages are lowest. To make sure that the process doest favor any one country, they have been working now for decades on "Disciplines on Domestic Regulation". One name for this global scheme is "progressive liberalisation". But its really a global privatization or "disinvestment" scheme as they call it in India. I hope this makes sense to people.

Please ask any questions if you have them. I can't promise to know the answer.

There are four modes of supply in GATS. The process I just described involves trading Mode Four - (Movement of Natural Persons) for Mode Three.


EDIT-- added the following statement

----------------------

http://www.eua.be/Libraries/Publication/EUA_Statement_TTIP.sflb.ashx



The European University Association (EUA) represents over 850 universities in 47
countries, as well as 33 national rectors’ conferences. It is the voice of universities in the
European Higher Education Area and a full consultative member of the Bologna Process. It
is in regular dialogue with the EU institutions and is a forceful and respected advocate in
the full range of higher education (HE) policy fields:

research, knowledge transfer, innovation and regional development
internationalisation, mobility and recognition
governance and funding
institutional capacity building and quality assurance

EUA and its members are fully committed to the cause of international development. They
work with peer organisations in other global regions, notably Africa, Asia, Latin and North
America, promoting the production and exchange of cultural and scientific knowledge and
the sharing of democratic and pluralist values.

EUA holds strongly to the view that HE is a public responsibility, dedicated to supporting
personal fulfilment and social cohesion, as well as to contributing to the satisfaction of
labour market needs. It believes in extending the benefits of HE to as many individuals as
possible, on a lifelong basis, without discrimination on grounds of gender, ethnicity,
disability, sexuality, religion, or the ability to pay.

In this regard, a number of trade agreements currently being negotiated give cause for
concern. They are:

the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between the EU and
Canada, which is nearing completion;
the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) which brings together
the EU and the USA;
and the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA), involving 23 countries and including
the EU EUA has closely followed the TTIP and TiSA negotiations1, as a participant in the European
Commission’s Civil Society Dialogue. Both sets of talks have potentially significant
implications for HE institutions, as well as for regional and national systems within the EU
and the European Economic Area.

TTIP seeks to eliminate non-tariff barriers to the trade of manufactured and agricultural
goods, boosting growth and stimulating job creation. Service sectors feature equally
prominently. TTIP nevertheless goes far beyond the scope of a traditional trade agreement.
It aims at maximising regulatory cooperation between the two largest internal markets in
the world – the EU and the US – and at opening up a single public procurement and
investment space.

TiSA is a plurilateral negotiation: it involves only some of the World Trade Organisation’s
(WTO) members. The EU hopes that in the course of time it will evolve into a multilateral
agreement embracing all WTO member countries. Its focus is solely on services, of which
the EU and the US are the largest global providers.

Both TTIP and TiSA have a strategic motivation. They are designed to set precedents in the
management of global trade, compensating for the perceived failure of the Doha
Development Agenda (DDA) and pre-empting initiatives which might be taken by other
global economic powers.

Both potentially cover HE, adult education (AE), and ‘other’ educational services. In TTIP,
negotiations proceed according to the principle of the negative list, in which all negotiable
items are tabled at the outset, with only rare exclusions. The scope of TiSA is the same as
that of the 1995 General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS).


In the light of information currently available (published and leaked documents, official
briefings, statements by governments and the European Commission) on the ongoing trade
agreement negotiations, EUA notes that:

1. Negotiators regularly offer reassurances that public services will be protected. However,
the GATS definition of a ‘public’ service is not adequate for purpose where higher education
is concerned. HE is not administered by the exercise of government authority in the
manner of defence, justice and police; it is not automatically excluded from trade
negotiations. Moreover, HE fails to satisfy the GATS criteria which allow exemption for
services supplied ‘neither on a commercial basis nor in competition with one or more
service suppliers’. Many HE systems include both public and private providers and many
public institutions depend on a mix of public and private funding. Such hybridity at system
and institutional levels means that trade negotiations such as TTIP and TiSA cannot be
conducted with legal certainty and clarity.

2. The definitions of ‘higher’, ‘adult’ and ‘other’ educational services are also problematic.
The UN’s Central Products Classification code (CPC), which is used in trade negotiations,
gives ‘no explanatory note’ for HE. ‘Other’ is defined in a manner more appropriate to
‘higher’2. The clearest definition is reserved for ‘adult’3, notwithstanding which, the
European Commission has been obliged to canvass Member States to ascertain in what AE
actually consists.



3. The ability of elected national and regional authorities to determine the nature of their
HE provision is cast into doubt by some of the key features of TiSA and, by extension, of
TTIP. The mechanisms of ‘standstill’, ‘ratchet’ and ‘future-proofing’ significantly limit the
scope of legislative action once agreements have been signed. They require that the level
of service liberalisation can never be reduced, that any change can operate only in the
direction of further liberalisation, and that all services to be developed in the future fall
automatically within the scope of the agreements.

4. This particular issue is clouded by the uncertainty surrounding the extent to which the
EU is mandated to negotiate on trade in general, in which it has exclusive competence, and
on education, in which it has only complementary competence. In TiSA, the EU has lodged
a reservation identical to the one it lodged previously in GATS, whereby it ‘reserves the
right to adopt or maintain any measure with regard to publicly-funded education services.’
This, the European Commission believes, offers full reassurance that Member States retain
the right to discriminate in favour of publicly-funded HE. The Commission is reluctant to
consider the possibility that education might be exempted from the scope of trade
negotiations, as the audio-visual sector has been and as many stakeholders believe health
services should be.

5. The domestic policy scope enjoyed by national and regional authorities is further
threatened by the investor state dispute mechanism (ISDS) which is included in TTIP,
although not in TiSA. ISDS gives private corporations the right to sue public authorities
whenever they feel that local legislation impinges on their ability to generate ‘legitimate’
profits. This feature of TTIP is particularly controversial and has drawn 149,000 responses
to a consultation launched by DG Trade.

6. Current trade negotiations have the potential to impinge not only on the learning and
teaching mission of universities, but also on other aspects of HE, such as research and
development, data collection and data flows, intellectual property, e-commerce, and the
recognition of professional qualifications. However, the detail of the negotiations is
shrouded in secrecy and it is impossible for the HE sector to discover the extent to which
its operating environment might change.


EUA accordingly declares that:

A HE benefits individuals, society and the world at large in ways that are not easily
quantifiable. It is a public responsibility to which all citizens have right of access and not a
commodity to be transacted by commercial interests on a for-profit basis. It should not be
subject to international trade regimes.

B Moreover, HE should not be transacted within a framework that puts the systems of
developing countries at risk from corporate ventures located outside their borders.
Developing countries must retain the autonomy to determine how their universities
should participate in the growth of international HE.

C The internationalisation of HE has proceeded at considerable pace in recent years.
Collaborative research, joint curriculum development, staff and student mobility, open and
distance learning have all flourished, on a not-for-profit basis and outside the scope of
trade agreements. A greater degree of global governance is desirable, but it should develop
on the model of the UNESCO-supported academic recognition frameworks, designed and
implemented with full participation by appropriate sectoral bodies.


D Intellectual property rights are inevitably at issue in trade agreements. It is essential
that TTIP and TiSA protect both individuals’ rights to privacy and universities’ codes of
conduct in respect of the openness of scientific collaboration, particularly with regard to
the international transfer and secondary processing of data.

E The global HE context is rapidly evolving. There is an urgent need for the categories of
‘public’, ‘private’, ‘higher, ‘adult’ and ‘other’ to be redefined on the basis of stakeholder
consensus. Knowledge import- and export markets clearly exist and must be regulated to
the benefit of all, but ISDS, standstill, ratchet and future-proofing have no place in this
process.

F The inclusion of items of ‘other education services’ in trade agreements must be
undertaken on a positive list basis, following full consultation with appropriate sectoral
bodies at European level, together with extensive ex ante impact assessment.
G In every other respect, the EU should not make commitments in the categories of HE and
AE. It should make absolutely clear to its negotiating partners that elected Member State
governments reserve the right to determine the character of their HE and AE systems.



EUA President and elected Board members
• Prof. Maria Helena Nazaré, University of Aveiro (EUA President), Portugal
• Prof. David Drewry, University of Hull (EUA Vice-President), United Kingdom
• Prof. Lauritz B. Holm-Nielsen, Aarhus University (EUA Vice-President), Denmark
• Prof. Gülay Doğu Barbarosoğlu, Bogazici University, Turkey
• Prof. Esther Giménez-Salinas, Ramon Llull University, Barcelona, Spain
• Prof. Vaclav Hampl, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
• Prof. Kristín Ingólfsdóttir, University of Iceland, Iceland
• Prof. Stefano Paleari, University of Bergamo, Italy
• Prof. Margret Wintermantel, DAAD, Germany
EUA Council: Europe’s national university associations represented by their Presidents
• Universities Austria
• Rectors' Conference, French Community of Belgium
• Flemish Interuniversity Council
• Croatian Rectors' Conference
• Cyprus Rectors' Conference
• Czech Rectors' Conference
• Universities Denmark
• Estonian Rectors' Conference
• Universities Finland
• Conference of University Presidents (France)
• German Rectors’ Conference
• Greek Rectors' Conference
• Conference of Rectors of Roman Pontifical Universities
• Hungarian Rectors' Conference
• Rectors’ Conference of Iceland
• Irish Universities Association
• Conference of Italian University Rectors
• Latvian Rectors’ Council

• Lithuanian Universities Rectors' Conference
• University of Luxembourg
• Association of Universities in the Netherlands
• Norwegian Association of Higher Education Institutions
• Conference of Rectors of Academic Schools in Poland
• Council of Rectors of Portuguese Universities
• Romanian Council of Rectors
• Serbian Rectors’ Conference
• Slovak Rectors’ Conference
• Slovenian Rectors´ Conference
• Spanish Rectors’ Conference
• Association of Swedish Higher Education
• Rectors’ Conference of the Swiss Universities
• The Council of Higher Education (Turkey)
• Universities UK