April 30, 2016

What would Politics Without Politicians Look Like?

If you could create a system that was totally based on democratic government without politicians what would it look like?

lets assume that people - everybody- has a lot more time than today, because society basically is automated. We have the Internet and virtual reality so people can "be" anywhere at any time, so we could create a system of direct democracy.

How would that work?

Would it work?

Suppose some people want one system and some people want another?

Direct democracy could shift the balance of power away from corporations and give people some power again, give people standing, when now we increasingly have none..

It could in theory eliminate the principal agent problem posed by politicians and corruption and regulatory and state capture..

April 30, 2016

What is Clinton's Position n the Trade In Services Agreement (TiSA) pending in Geneva- and Education

Education should not be a commodity that is treated like a product- it is a public god which all society should support-

However, formally continuing and endorsing the disturbing trend of privatization promoted by the WTO General Agreement on Trade in Services - the new plurilateral Trade in Services Agreement pits corporatized education against public education and attempts to covert the latter into the former by a incrementally tightening "ratchet" .

To do so it buys into a ideology that says that the government, state, local or federal should never compete with business in any area where some business services are sold, and so it basically attempts to - as its says "capture" each and every law or policy that can be said to change towards deregulation the "autonomous level of liberalisation" mandates that the direction always be towards privatization, and never back towards the public services which it frames as a theft from corporations.

Instead it mandates that governments - especially governments in developed countries which are deemed beyond the need for public services, (and beyond laws regulating business relations of any kind, instead relying on the free market) privatize those areas, things like health care, education, water, etc, that may be partly private and partly public now, it mandates a set of incremental changes to make them fully private. This push is incredibly controversial and millions of peope worldwide have spoken out against these "US style" trade agreements modeled on GATS and NAFTA.

See http://www.eua.be/activities-services/news/newsitem/15-02-05/EUA_Council_statement_on_TTIP_and_TISA.aspx for a statement on such deals in the context of education. and http://www.world-psi.org/sites/default/files/eng_the_really_good_friends_report_tisa.pdf for more on the deal generally. It is expected to cause a boom in international temping as businesses rush to take advantage of the larger wage gradient (key phrase "maximize the value in the supply chains&quot

(This also applies to other services, and effectuates the changes by putting the work up for public bidding internationally, so the winning low bids may be from foreign firms, in the case of the US, bidding for school contracts would likely be done by US, UK and Australian firms as well as other member countries with a high number of English speakers.)

Health care in the US, for example, might be shifted to use far more foreign services and service workers. patients could be sent overseas for care even thouse who had the lower tiers of insurance - another alternative is care delivered over the Internet using remote technology.

Same thing for businesses, many businesses are expected to source some or all of their office services across borders, giving the term "back office" a whole new meaning. this will allow US businesses to concentrate on high value products like smart bombs, and shift low value services to globalized firms to maintain and enhance profitability.

The talks in Geneva started in 2006 and are almost completed. they represent an extension of the 1995 GATS agreement on services, but are "plurilateral" which means they include just a subset of WTO members, approximately 50 nations led by the US which is the strongest and most aggressive advocate for globalization and privatization of services.

April 30, 2016

What is "Brainwashing" and how to recognize a "cult" when you see it.

http://www.culteducation.com/brainwashing19.html

Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism

The University of North Carolina Press/Chapel Hill and London

By Robert Jay Lifton, M.D.

Below is an edited excerpt from Chapter 22 of Robert Jay Lifton's book,"Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of 'Brainwashing' in China." Lifton, a psychiatrist and distinguished professor at the City University of New York, has studied the psychology of extremism for decades.

He testified at the 1976 bank robbery trial of Patty Hearst about the theory of "coercive persuasion." First published in 1961, his book was reprinted in 1989 by the University of North Carolina Press. Scroll down to the read the chapter.


Chapter 22: Ideological Totalism

Topics

Milieu Control
Mystical Manipulation
The Demand for Purity
The Cult of Confession
The "Sacred Science"
Loading the Language
Doctrine Over Person
The Dispensing of Existence

A discussion of what is most central in the thought reform environment can lead us to a more general consideration of the psychology of human zealotry. For in identifying, on the basis of this study of thought reform, features common to all expressions of ideological totalism, I wish to suggest a set of criteria against which any environment may be judged - a basis for answering the ever-recurring question: "Isn't this just like 'brainwashing'?"

These criteria consist of eight psychological themes which are predominant within the social field of the thought reform milieu. Each has a totalistic quality; each depend upon an equally absolute philosophical assumption; and each mobilizes certain individual emotional tendencies, mostly of a polarizing nature. In combination they create an atmosphere which may temporarily energize or exhilarate, but which at the same time poses the gravest of human threats.

Milieu Control

The most basic feature of the thought reform environment, the psychological current upon which all else depends, is the control of human communication. Through this milieu control the totalist environment seeks to establish domain over not only the individual's communication with the outside (all that he sees and hears, reads or writes, experiences, and expresses), but also - in its penetration of his inner life - over what we may speak of as his communication with himself. It creates an atmosphere uncomfortably reminiscent of George Orwell's 1984.

Such milieu control never succeeds in becoming absolute, and its own human apparatus can - when permeated by outside information - become subject to discordant "noise" beyond that of any mechanical apparatus. To totalist administrators, however, such occurrences are no more than evidences of "incorrect" use of the apparatus. For they look upon milieu control as a just and necessary policy, one which need not be kept secret: thought reform participants may be in doubt as to who is telling what to whom, but the fact that extensive information about everyone is being conveyed to the authorities is always known. At the center of this self-justification is their assumption of omniscience, their conviction that reality is their exclusive possession. Having experienced the impact of what they consider to be an ultimate truth (and having the need to dispel any possible inner doubts of their own), they consider it their duty to create an environment containing no more and no less than this "truth." In order to be the engineers of the human soul, they must first bring it under full observational control.

Mystical Manipulation

The inevitable next step after milieu control is extensive personal manipulation. This manipulation assumes a no-holds-barred character, and uses every possible device at the milieu's command, no matter how bizarre or painful. Initiated from above, it seeks to provoke specific patterns of behavior and emotion in such a way that these will appear to have arisen spontaneously, directed as it is by an ostensibly omniscient group, must assume, for the manipulated, a near-mystical quality.

Ideological totalists do not pursue this approach solely for the purpose of maintaining a sense of power over others. Rather they are impelled by a special kind of mystique which not only justifies such manipulations, but makes them mandatory. Included in this mystique is a sense of "higher purpose," of having "directly perceived some imminent law of social development," and of being themselves the vanguard of this development. By thus becoming the instruments of their own mystique, they create a mystical aura around the manipulating institutions - the Party, the Government, the Organization. They are the agents "chosen" (by history, by God, or by some other supernatural force) to carry out the "mystical imperative," the pursuit of which must supersede all considerations of decency or of immediate human welfare. Similarly, any thought or action which questions the higher purpose is considered to be stimulated by a lower purpose, to be backward, selfish, and petty in the face of the great, overriding mission. This same mystical imperative produces the apparent extremes of idealism and cynicism which occur in connection with the manipulations of any totalist environment: even those actions which seem cynical in the extreme can be seen as having ultimate relationship to the "higher purpose."

At the level of the individual person, the psychological responses to this manipulative approach revolve about the basic polarity of trust and mistrust. One is asked to accept these manipulations on a basis of ultimate trust (or faith): "like a child in the arms of its mother." He who trusts in this degree can experience the manipulations within the idiom of the mystique behind them: that is, he may welcome their mysteriousness, find pleasure in their pain, and feel them to be necessary for the fulfillment of the "higher purpose" which he endorses as his own. But such elemental trust is difficult to maintain; and even the strongest can be dissipated by constant manipulation.

When trust gives way to mistrust (or when trust has never existed) the higher purpose cannot serve as adequate emotional sustenance. The individual then responds to the manipulations through developing what I shall call the psychology of the pawn. Feeling himself unable to escape from forces more powerful than himself, he subordinates everything to adapting himself to them. He becomes sensitive to all kinds of cues, expert at anticipating environmental pressures, and skillful in riding them in such a way that his psychological energies merge with the tide rather than turn painfully against himself. This requires that he participate actively in the manipulation of others, as well as in the endless round of betrayals and self-betrayals which are required.

But whatever his response - whether he is cheerful in the face of being manipulated, deeply resentful, or feels a combination of both - he has been deprived of the opportunity to exercise his capacities for self-expression and independent action.

The Demand for Purity

In the thought reform milieu, as in all situations of ideological totalism, the experiential world is sharply divided into the pure and the impure, into the absolutely good and the absolutely evil. The good and the pure are of course those ideas, feelings, and actions which are consistent with the totalist ideology and policy; anything else is apt to be relegated to the bad and the impure. Nothing human is immune from the flood of stern moral judgments. All "taints" and "poisons" which contribute to the existing state of impurity must be searched out and eliminated.

The philosophical assumption underlying this demand is that absolute purity is attainable, and that anything done to anyone in the name of this purity is ultimately moral. In actual practice, however, no one is really expected to achieve such perfection. Nor can this paradox be dismissed as merely a means of establishing a high standard to which all can aspire. Thought reform bears witness to its more malignant consequences: for by defining and manipulating the criteria of purity, and then by conducting an all-out war upon impurity, the ideological totalists create a narrow world of guilt and shame. This is perpetuated by an ethos of continuous reform, a demand that one strive permanently and painfully for something which not only does not exist but is in fact alien to the human condition.

At the level of the relationship between individual and environment, the demand for purity creates what we may term a guilty milieu and a shaming milieu. Since each man's impurities are deemed sinful and potentially harmful to himself and to others, he is, so to speak, expected to expect punishment - which results in a relationship of guilt and his environment. Similarly, when he fails to meet the prevailing standards in casting out such impurities, he is expected to expect humiliation and ostracism - thus establishing a relationship of shame with his milieu. Moreover, the sense of guilt and the sense of shame become highly-valued: they are preferred forms of communication, objects of public competition, and the basis for eventual bonds between the individual and his totalist accusers. One may attempt to simulate them for a while, but the subterfuge is likely to be detected, and it is safer to experience them genuinely.

People vary greatly in their susceptibilities to guilt and shame, depending upon patterns developed early in life. But since guilt and shame are basic to human existence, this variation can be no more than a matter of degree. Each person is made vulnerable through his profound inner sensitivities to his own limitations and to his unfulfilled potential; in other words, each is made vulnerable through his existential guilt. Since ideological totalists become the ultimate judges of good and evil within their world, they are able to use these universal tendencies toward guilt and shame as emotional levers for their controlling and manipulative influences. They become the arbiters of existential guilt, authorities without limit in dealing with others' limitations. And their power is nowhere more evident than in their capacity to "forgive."

The individual thus comes to apply the same totalist polarization of good and evil to his judgments of his own character: he tends to imbue certain aspects of himself with excessive virtue, and condemn even more excessively other personal qualities - all according to their ideological standing. He must also look upon his impurities as originating from outside influences - that is, from the ever-threatening world beyond the closed, totalist ken. Therefore, one of his best way to relieve himself of some of his burden of guilt is to denounce, continuously and hostilely, these same outside influences. The more guilty he feels, the greater his hatred, and the more threatening they seem. In this manner, the universal psychological tendency toward "projection" is nourished and institutionalized, leading to mass hatreds, purges of heretics, and to political and religious holy wars. Moreover, once an individual person has experienced the totalist polarization of good and evil, he has great difficulty in regaining a more balanced inner sensitivity to the complexities of human morality. For these is no emotional bondage greater than that of the man whose entire guilt potential - neurotic and existential - has become the property of ideological totalists.

The Cult of Confession

Closely related to the demand for absolute purity is an obsession with personal confession. Confession is carried beyond its ordinary religious, legal, and therapeutic expressions to the point of becoming a cult in itself. There is the demand that one confess to crimes one has not committed, to sinfulness that is artificially induced, in the name of a cure that is arbitrarily imposed. Such demands are made possible not only by the ubiquitous human tendencies toward guilt and shame but also by the need to give expression to these tendencies. In totalist hands, confession becomes a means of exploiting, rather than offering solace for, these vulnerabilities.

The totalist confession takes on a number of special meanings. It is first a vehicle for the kind of personal purification which we have just discussed, a means of maintaining a perpetual inner emptying or psychological purge of impurity; this purging milieu enhances the totalists' hold upon existential guilt. Second, it is an act of symbolic self-surrender, the expression of the merging of individual and environment. Third, it is a means of maintaining an ethos of total exposure - a policy of making public (or at least known to the Organization) everything possible about the life experiences, thoughts, and passions of each individual, and especially those elements which might be regarded as derogatory.

The assumption underlying total exposure (besides those which relate to the demand for purity) is the environment's claim to total ownership of each individual self within it. Private ownership of the mind and its products - of imagination or of memory - becomes highly immoral. The accompanying rationale (or rationalization) is familiar, the milieu has attained such a perfect state of enlightenment that any individual retention of ideas or emotions has become anachronistic.

The cult of confession can offer the individual person meaningful psychological satisfactions in the continuing opportunity for emotional catharsis and for relief of suppressed guilt feelings, especially insofar as these are associated with self-punitive tendencies to get pleasure from personal degradation. More than this, the sharing of confession enthusiasms can create an orgiastic sense of "oneness," of the most intense intimacy with fellow confessors and of the dissolution of self into the great flow of the Movement. And there is also, at least initially, the possibility of genuine self-revelation and of self-betterment through the recognition that "the thing that has been exposed is what I am."

But as totalist pressures turn confession into recurrent command performances, the element of histrionic public display takes precedence over genuine inner experience. Each man becomes concerned with the effectiveness of his personal performance, and this performance sometimes comes to serve the function of evading the very emotions and ideas about which one feels most guilty - confirming the statement by one of Camus' characters that "authors of confessions write especially to avoid confessing, to tell nothing of what they know." The difficulty, of course, lies in the inevitable confusion which takes place between the actor's method and his separate personal reality, between the performer and the "real me."

In this sense, the cult of confession has effects quite the reverse of its ideal of total exposure: rather than eliminating personal secrets, it increases and intensifies them. In any situation the personal secret has two important elements: first, guilty and shameful ideas which one wishes to suppress in order to prevent their becoming known by others or their becoming too prominent in one's own awareness; and second, representations of parts of oneself too precious to be expressed except when alone or when involved in special loving relationships formed around this shared secret world. Personal secrets are always maintained in opposition to inner pressures toward self-exposure. The totalist milieu makes contact with these inner pressures through its own obsession with the expose and the unmasking process. As a result old secrets are revived and new ones proliferate; the latter frequently consist of resentments toward or doubts about the Movement, or else are related to aspects of identity still existing outside of the prescribed ideological sphere. Each person becomes caught up in a continuous conflict over which secrets to preserve and which to surrender, over ways to reveal lesser secrets in order to protect more important ones; his own boundaries between the secret and the known, between the public and the private, become blurred. And around one secret, or a complex of secrets, there may revolve an ultimate inner struggle between resistance and self-surrender.

Finally, the cult of confession makes it virtually impossible to attain a reasonable balance between worth and humility. The enthusiastic and aggressive confessor becomes like Camus' character whose perpetual confession is his means of judging others: &quot I )…practice the profession of penitent to be able to end up as a judge…the more I accuse myself, the more I have a right to judge you." The identity of the "judge-penitent" thus becomes a vehicle for taking on some of the environment's arrogance and sense of omnipotence. Yet even this shared omnipotence cannot protect him from the opposite (but not unrelated) feelings of humiliation and weakness, feelings especially prevalent among those who remain more the enforced penitent than the all-powerful judge.


The "Sacred Science"

The totalist milieu maintains an aura of sacredness around its basic dogma, holding it out as an ultimate moral vision for the ordering of human existence. This sacredness is evident in the prohibition (whether or not explicit) against the questioning of basic assumptions, and in the reverence which is demanded for the originators of the Word, the present bearers of the Word, and the Word itself. While thus transcending ordinary concerns of logic, however, the milieu at the same time makes an exaggerated claim of airtight logic, of absolute "scientific" precision. Thus the ultimate moral vision becomes an ultimate science; and the man who dares to criticize it, or to harbor even unspoken alternative ideas, becomes not only immoral and irreverent, but also "unscientific." In this way, the philosopher kings of modern ideological totalism reinforce their authority by claiming to share in the rich and respected heritage of natural science.

The assumption here is not so much that man can be God, but rather that man's ideas can be God: that an absolute science of ideas (and implicitly, an absolute science of man) exists, or is at least very close to being attained; that this science can be combined with an equally absolute body of moral principles; and that the resulting doctrine is true for all men at all times. Although no ideology goes quite this far in overt statement, such assumptions are implicit in totalist practice.

At the level of the individual, the totalist sacred science can offer much comfort and security. Its appeal lies in its seeming unification of the mystical and the logical modes of experience (in psychoanalytic terms, of the primary and secondary thought processes). For within the framework of the sacred science, and sweeping, non-rational "insights." Since the distinction between the logical and the mystical is, to begin with, artificial and man-made, an opportunity for transcending it can create an extremely intense feeling of truth. But the posture of unquestioning faith - both rationally and non-rationally derived - is not easy to sustain, especially if one discovers that the world of experience is not nearly as absolute as the sacred science claims it to be.

Yet so strong a hold can the sacred science achieve over his mental processes that if one begins to feel himself attracted to ideas which either contradict or ignore it, he may become guilty and afraid. His quest for knowledge is consequently hampered, since in the name of science he is prevented from engaging in the receptive search for truth which characterizes the genuinely scientific approach. And his position is made more difficult by the absence, in a totalist environment, of any distinction between the sacred and the profane: there is no thought or action which cannot be related to the sacred science. To be sure, one can usually find areas of experience outside its immediate authority; but during periods of maximum totalist activity (like thought reform) any such areas are cut off, and there is virtually no escape from the milieu's ever-pressing edicts and demands. Whatever combination of continued adherence, inner resistance, or compromise co-existence the individual person adopts toward this blend of counterfeit science and back-door religion, it represents another continuous pressure toward personal closure, toward avoiding, rather than grappling with, the kinds of knowledge and experience necessary for genuine self-expression and for creative development.

Loading the Language

The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis. In [Chinese Communist] thought reform, for instance, the phrase "bourgeois mentality" is used to encompass and critically dismiss ordinarily troublesome concerns like the quest for individual expression, the exploration of alternative ideas, and the search for perspective and balance in political judgments. And in addition to their function as interpretive shortcuts, these cliches become what Richard Weaver has called "ultimate terms" : either "god terms," representative of ultimate good; or "devil terms," representative of ultimate evil. In [Chinese Communist] thought reform, "progress," "progressive," "liberation," "proletarian standpoints" and "the dialectic of history" fall into the former category; "capitalist," "imperialist," "exploiting classes," and "bourgeois" (mentality, liberalism, morality, superstition, greed) of course fall into the latter. Totalist language then, is repetitiously centered on all-encompassing jargon, prematurely abstract, highly categorical, relentlessly judging, and to anyone but its most devoted advocate, deadly dull: in Lionel Trilling's phrase, "the language of nonthought."

To be sure, this kind of language exists to some degree within any cultural or organizational group, and all systems of belief depend upon it. It is in part an expression of unity and exclusiveness: as Edward Sapir put it, "'He talks like us' is equivalent to saying 'He is one of us.'" The loading is much more extreme in ideological totalism, however, since the jargon expresses the claimed certitudes of the sacred science. Also involved is an underlying assumption that language - like all other human products - can be owned and operated by the Movement. No compunctions are felt about manipulating or loading it in any fashion; the only consideration is its usefulness to the cause.

For an individual person, the effect of the language of ideological totalism can be summed up in one word: constriction. He is, so to speak, linguistically deprived; and since language is so central to all human experience, his capacities for thinking and feeling are immensely narrowed. This is what Hu meant when he said, "using the same pattern of words for so long…you feel chained." Actually, not everyone exposed feels chained, but in effect everyone is profoundly confined by these verbal fetters. As in other aspects of totalism, this loading may provide an initial sense of insight and security, eventually followed by uneasiness. This uneasiness may result in a retreat into a rigid orthodoxy in which an individual shouts the ideological jargon all the louder in order to demonstrate his conformity, hide his own dilemma and his despair, and protect himself from the fear and guilt he would feel should he attempt to use words and phrases other than the correct ones. Or else he may adapt a complex pattern of inner division, and dutifully produce the expected cliché's in public performances while in his private moments he searches for more meaningful avenues of expression. Either way, his imagination becomes increasingly dissociated from his actual life experiences and may tend to atrophy from disuse.

Doctrine Over Person

This sterile language reflects characteristic feature of ideological totalism: the subordination of human experience to the claims of doctrine. This primacy of doctrine over person is evident in the continual shift between experience itself and the highly abstract interpretation of such experience - between genuine feelings and spurious cataloguing of feelings. It has much to do with the peculiar aura of half-reality which totalist environment seems, at least to the outsider, to possess.

The inspiriting force of such myths cannot be denied; nor can one ignore their capacity for mischief. For when the myth becomes fused with the totalist sacred science, the resulting "logic" can be so compelling and coercive that it simply replaces the realities of individual experience. Consequently, past historical events are retrospectively altered, wholly rewritten, or ignored, to make them consistent with the doctrinal logic. This alteration becomes especially malignant when its distortions are imposed upon individual memory as occurred in the false confession extracted during thought reform.

The same doctrinal primacy prevails in the totalist approach to changing people: the demand that character and identity be reshaped, not in accordance with one's special nature or potentialities, but rather to fit the rigid contours of the doctrinal mold. The human is thus subjected to the ahuman. And in this manner, the totalists, as Camus phrases it, "put an abstract idea above human life, even if they call it history, to which they themselves have submitted in advance and to which they will decide arbitrarily, to submit everyone else as well."

The underlying assumption is that the doctrine - including its mythological elements - is ultimately more valid, true, and real than is any aspect of actual human character or human experience. Thus, even when circumstances require that a totalist movement follow a course of action in conflict with or outside of the doctrine, there exists what Benjamin Schwartz described as a "will to orthodoxy" which requires an elaborate facade of new rationalizations designed to demonstrate the unerring consistency of the doctrine and the unfailing foresight which it provides. But its greater importance lies in more hidden manifestations, particularly the totalists' pattern of imposing their doctrine-dominated remolding upon people in order to seek confirmation of (and again, dispel their own doubts about) this same doctrine. Rather than modify the myth in accordance with experience, the will to orthodoxy requires instead that men be modified in order to reaffirm the myth.

The individual person who finds himself under such doctrine-dominated pressure to change is thrust into an intense struggle with his own sense of integrity, a struggle which takes place in relation to polarized feelings of sincerity and insincerity. In a totalist environment, absolute "sincerity" is demanded; and the major criterion for sincerity is likely to be one's degree of doctrinal compliance - both in regard to belief and to direction of personal change. Yet there is always the possibility of retaining an alternative version of sincerity (and of reality), the capacity to imagine a different kind of existence and another form of sincere commitment. These alternative visions depend upon such things as the strength of previous identity, the penetration of the milieu by outside ideas, and the retained capacity for eventual individual renewal. The totalist environment, however, counters such "deviant" tendencies with the accusation that they stem entirely from personal "problems" ("thought problems" or "ideological problems&quot derived from untoward earlier influences. The outcome will depend largely upon how much genuine relevance the doctrine has for the individual emotional predicament. And even for those to whom it seems totally appealing, the exuberant sense of well-being it temporarily affords may be more a "delusion of wholeness" than an expression of true and lasting inner harmony.


The Dispensing of Existence

The totalist environment draws a sharp line between those whose right to existence can be recognized, and those who possess no such right.

Are not men presumptuous to appoint themselves the dispensers of human existence? Surely this is a flagrant expression of what the Greeks called hubris, of arrogant man making himself God. Yet one underlying assumption makes this arrogance mandatory: the conviction that there is just one path to true existence, just one valid mode of being, and that all others are perforce invalid and false. Totalists thus feel themselves compelled to destroy all possibilities of false existence as a means of furthering the great plan of true existence to which they are committed.

For the individual, the polar emotional conflict is the ultimate existential one of "being versus nothingness." He is likely to be drawn to a conversion experience, which he sees as the only means of attaining a path of existence for the future. The totalist environment - even when it does not resort to physical abuse - thus stimulates in everyone a fear of extinction or annihilation. A person can overcome this fear and find (in martin Buber's term) "confirmation," not in his individual relationships, but only from the fount of all existence, the totalist Organization. Existence comes to depend upon creed (I believe, therefore I am), upon submission (I obey, therefore I am) and beyond these, upon a sense of total merger with the ideological movement. Ultimately of course one compromises and combines the totalist "confirmation" with independent elements of personal identity; but one is ever made aware that, should he stray too far along this "erroneous path," his right to existence may be withdrawn.

The more clearly an environment expresses these eight psychological themes, the greater its resemblance to ideological totalism; and the more it utilizes such totalist devices to change people, the greater its resemblance to thought reform. But facile comparisons can be misleading. No milieu ever achieves complete totalism, and many relatively moderate environments show some signs of it. Moreover, totalism tends to be recurrent rather than continuous. But if totalism has at any time been prominent in the movement, there is always the possibility of its reappearance, even after long periods of relative moderation.

Then, too, some environments come perilously close to totalism but at the same time keep alternative paths open; this combination can offer unusual opportunities for achieving intellectual and emotional depth. And even the most full-blown totalist milieu can provide (more or less despite itself) a valuable and enlarging life experience - if the man exposed has both the opportunity to leave the extreme environment and the inner capacity to absorb and make inner use of the totalist pressures.

Also, ideological totalism itself may offer a man an intense peak experience: a sense of transcending all that is ordinary and prosaic, of freeing himself from the encumbrances of human ambivalence, of entering a sphere of truth, reality, and sincerity beyond any he had ever known or even imagined. But these peak experiences, carry a great potential for rebound, and for equally intense opposition to the very things which initially seem so liberating. Such imposed peak experiences - as contrasted with those more freely and privately arrived at by great religious leaders and mystics - are essentially experiences of personal closure. Rather than stimulating greater receptivity and "openness to the world," they encourage a backward step into some form of "embeddedness" - a retreat into doctrinal patterns more characteristic (at least at this stage of human history) of the child than of the individuated adult.

And if no peak experience occurs, ideological totalism does even greater violence to the human potential: it evokes destructive emotions, produces intellectual and psychological constrictions, and deprives men of all that is most subtle and imaginative - under the false promise of eliminating those very imperfections and ambivalences which help to define the human condition. This combination of personal closure, self-destructiveness, and hostility toward outsiders leads to the dangerous group excesses so characteristic of ideological totalism in any form. It also mobilizes extremist tendencies in those outsiders under attack, thus creating a vicious circle of totalism.

What is the source of ideological totalism? How do these extremist emotional patterns originate? These questions raise the most crucial and the most difficult of human problems. Behind ideological totalism lies the ever-present human quest for the omnipotent guide - for the supernatural force, political party, philosophical ideas, great leader, or precise science - that will bring ultimate solidarity to all men and eliminate the terror of death and nothingness. This quest is evident in the mythologies, religions, and histories of all nations, as well as in every individual life. The degree of individual totalism involved depends greatly upon factors in one's personal history: early lack of trust, extreme environmental chaos, total domination by a parent or parent-representative, intolerable burdens of guilt, and severe crises of identity. Thus an early sense of confusion and dislocation, or an early experience of unusually intense family milieu control, can produce later a complete intolerance for confusion and dislocation, and a longing for the reinstatement of milieu control. But these things are in some measure part of every childhood experience; and therefore the potential for totalism is a continuum from which no one entirely escapes, and in relationship to which no two people are exactly the same.

It may be that the capacity for totalism is most fundamentally a product of human childhood itself, of the prolonged period of helplessness and dependency through which each of us must pass. Limited as he is, the infant has no choice but to imbue his first nurturing authorities - his parents - with an exaggerated omnipotence, until the time he is himself capable of some degree of independent action and judgment. And even as he develops into the child and the adolescent, he continues to require many of the all-or-none polarities of totalism as terms with which to define his intellectual, emotional, and moral worlds. Under favorable circumstances (that is, when family and culture encourage individuation) these requirements can be replaced by more flexible and moderate tendencies; but they never entirely disappear.

During adult life, individual totalism takes on new contours as it becomes associated with new ideological interests. It may become part of the configuration of personal emotions, messianic ideas, and organized mass movement which I have described as ideological totalism. When it does, we cannot speak of it as simply as ideological regression. It is partly this, but it is also something more: a new form of adult embeddedness, originating in patterns of security-seeking carried over from childhood, but with qualities of ideas and aspirations that are specifically adult. During periods of cultural crisis and of rapid historical change, the totalist quest for the omnipotent guide leads men to seek to become that guide.

Totalism, then, is a widespread phenomenon, but it is not the only approach to re-education. We can best use our knowledge of it by applying its criteria to familiar processes in our own cultural tradition and in our own country.

April 29, 2016

How US ‘Free Trade’ Policies Created the Central American Migration Crisis

To strengthen corporate dominance, Washington steadily undermined democracy, encouraged exploitation and nourished anti-union violence in the south.
By Michelle Chen



http://www.thenation.com/article/how-us-free-trade-policies-created-central-american-migration-crisis/

April 29, 2016

Now this is interesting- This looks like possible proof electoral fraud was committed to favor HRC

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511864073


Quote:


That sure makes sense to me...

The original thread is in GD-P at the above URL

April 29, 2016

‘The Opposite of Transparency’:What I didn’t read in the TTIP "reading room" - Katja Kipping

http://www.waronwant.org/media/what-i-didn%E2%80%99t-read-ttip-reading-room


Katja Kipping was one of the first German MPs to gain access to the new TTIP reading room opened in Berlin this week, and she has written up a report of her experience. We thought it was well worth translating from the original,

‘The Opposite of Transparency’.

TTIP, the EU-US free trade deal, has secrecy written all over it. Those responsible for it live in dread of any public scrutiny. If it was up to me, I would give everyone who’s interested the chance to make up their own minds on the text of the agreement in its current form. Sigmar Gabriel, Minister for Economic Affairs and a top cheerleader for TTIP, has now set up a reading room in his ministry where since the beginning of February German MPs can each spend two hours looking at those texts on which consensus has already been reached.

A political friend of mine asked me the day before whether she could come with me into the reading room. I had to say no. After a long, tough struggle with the government, at least MPs are able to read the text, but they are the only ones. We are not even allowed to take security-cleared specialists with us into the reading room. As for members of the public, who will ultimately have to bear the brunt of TTIP, they are to have no access whatsoever to the secret text. Not what transparency looks like in my book!

Access ‘granted’

Even the registration procedure for the reading room speaks volumes. Once I’d registered, I was sent the instructions on how to use the room. The first thing that I noticed was that the terms and conditions had already been the subject of negotiations between the European Commission and the USA. Get your head round that: TTIP isn’t even signed yet, and already individual countries have lost the right to decide who gets to read the texts, and on what terms.

The following extract from the rulebook for MPs who, like me, want to use the reading room reveals the attitude towards democracy that lurks behind TTIP: “You recognise and accept that in being granted access to the TTIP texts you are being extended an exceptional degree of trust.”

Now I’d always thought that elected MPs have a right to information. Yet the TTIP negotiators (and who gave them their legitimacy?) reckon they are GRANTING us access out of the goodness of their hearts. Access as a sign of exceptional trust. Whoever wrote that – did they really think that we MPs would feel flattered? To me it smacks more of totalitarianism. ‘Granting access’ and ‘extending trust’ is not the language you use if you really believe in democracy.

Tuesday 2 February was my day. I’d registered for the reading room. A guard took me in through security and asked me to lock away my jacket and my bag. He checked that I wasn’t taking any camera or mobile phone into the reading room, and then knocked on a door. The heightened level of secrecy made me all the more excited as to what I was going to find, but the room itself was nothing special. There were eight computer work stations, and I was only allowed to sit at the one designated for me. A friendly woman sat in the room. She got me to sign the visitor rules – if you don’t sign, you don’t get in, so I signed. There was a thermos of coffee and a plate of biscuits in the corner. Yet no amount of caffeine or blood sugar would have made it possible to get through the 300 or so pages of text in the two hours I had available to me.

Fodder for crafty lawyers

The criticism has often been made that the TTIP texts only exist in English. Not every MP has grown up using English as a second language, and you can just imagine what would happen if US senators were only granted access to the texts in French. So much for equality between negotiating partners. There were dictionaries in the room but no internet access, and thus no way of using any translation apps, which didn’t make the translation of the technical legal wording any easier.

Even those MPs who have no difficulty reading official English texts are faced with a problem: without a legal commentary you are still in the dark as to the potential impacts of many of the terms used. Let me give an example that I expressly did not see in the reading room, but in an insider report coming out of Brussels.

The US side has assured the EU that there will be no restriction on its ability to introduce ‘science-based regulations’ in future. Any unbiased person might conclude from this that it will still be possible to restrict the use of certain types of genetically modified organisms within the EU. But the USA considers large parts of the EU’s food safety regime not to be ‘science-based’, so a resourceful trade barrister could make use of the clause in question to launch a successful lawsuit against those food safety regulations. For us MPs to have a proper understanding of the potential significance of the terms used, we’d need not only to have the full text of TTIP but also to get all the wording checked by international trade lawyers, and these are precisely the people we are not allowed to have in the room with us. In some cases, however, you don’t need that much imagination to work out how a crafty lawyer could make use of the wording – in the interest of big business, of course.

What I DIDN’T read

Given that Sigmar Gabriel claims that TTIP is going to be of particular benefit for small and medium-sized enterprises in Germany, I was naturally curious to read what the documents had to say about them. Now, I am not allowed to tell you anything about the text that I read. But I never signed anything to say that I can’t reveal what I DIDN’T read. So, for the record: I read nothing that even vaguely supported Gabriel’s claim.

Of course, this is no great surprise. A recently leaked Council document made no secret of the main objective of the EU negotiators in the TTIP talks, namely: access to the massive procurement contracts of the USA. The complex tendering processes involved are not the usual stamping ground of small businesses, either here or there.

The two hours I had in the reading room were obviously not enough to read all the documents. Yet afterwards I realised that nothing I had read would make me rethink any of my previous criticisms of TTIP. I read nothing to alleviate my concern that the US side wishes to make life more difficult for public and community enterprises and to secure better terms for transnational corporations in the battle for public tenders. I also read nothing to calm my fears that EU negotiators are prepared to sacrifice our social and environmental standards for the prospect of winning lucrative contracts for big European firms.

I read nothing that would lead me to reconsider my previous criticism that consumer protection plays no part in TTIP other than to proclaim free market competition to be the highest form of consumer protection that exists.

Crawling with typos

I hope I’m not breaking any state secret if I register my amazement that the documents are simply crawling with typos. The word ‘and’ is regularly written ‘andd’ and ‘the’ often appears as ‘teh’. Either the negotiators are really shoddy workers or this is one of those famous security measures we’ve heard about. Just in case anyone manages to get round the camera ban and copies a screenshot of the secret documents, these specially introduced ‘errors’ will enable the authorities to work out who was the source of any leak.

It is revealing in itself that the Ministry for Economic Affairs is prepared to go to such lengths in order to keep the text of TTIP under wraps. And they have every reason for doing so. Anyone who was going into these negotiations to enhance environmental protection, consumer protection and labour standards would have nothing to fear from transparency. Anyone who’s engaged in selling out democracy, on the other hand, is obviously going to want to avoid public scrutiny. If Sigmar Gabriel and the negotiators are really so convinced of the benefits of TTIP, why don’t they just make the text available to everyone online?

April 29, 2016

Video of Biggest Ripoff of All Time you should download and save this for the future

A story on Naked Capitalism points out this lucky find- A link to the Clinton-era signing ceremony of the bill that repealed Glass-Steagall, which led to the decimation of the financial firewall which protected banks from massive financial shell gaming- leading to the 2008 disaster-

It should be noted the links below will explain that the WTO-GATS caused this disaster!

Don't let them weasel out of that admission!



...




Note them talking about trade in services- this further implementation of the GATS (now called TiSA) will be a disaster for Americans- its been in negotiation for 20 years in one way or another and while that has been happening, key sectors of service economy have been in limbo while they try to get the country to agree to it - and its shift to high profit low wage foreign subcontractors and potentially massive job losses -- hidden - - behind a pile of feel good talk about helping poor nations integrate into the world economy - in order to reverse 'incentivize' that they have created through inaction and dysfunction, multiple crises, for example, in healthcare and public and private education, leading to major problems.


This is what happens when we self-centered narcissists to public office!

April 28, 2016

Why Single Payer has Been 'Forbidden' Since 1994, but they just forgot to tell us about it. Shhh!

The WTO is an international institution created by multilateral treaty in 1995, ostensibly for the purpose of liberalizing trade. WTO agreements create rules governing trade sectors such as tariffs, patent rights, and the dumping of goods on foreign markets. The agreement establishing the WTO also created a Dispute Resolution Body—a kind of “court” for the WTO—and a set of procedures for resolving conflicts between states over their rights and obligations under the treaty.

Member countries agree to implement WTO rules and to submit to the jurisdiction of its dispute resolution system by ratifying and signing on to the treaty. The 21 international agreements the WTO administers were the product of more than a decade of negotiation and comprise thousands of pages. When the U.S. Congress voted in 1994 to pass the legislation (the Uruguay Agreements Act) agreeing to submit to WTO rules, few legislators had read the contents of the agreements. Hence, many sectors of the economy were bound to WTO agreement requirements with little discussion, debate, or understanding (1). One of the most controversial WTO agreements was the docile-sounding General Agreement on Trade in Services. U.S. negotiators were insistent on including services in the WTO treaty, but other nations perceived how farreaching such an agreement could be.

Allowing service sectors to be bound in the same way as goods would dramatically extend the reach of commercial trade rules favoring markets and privatization into areas traditionally seen as essential to the public welfare: education, social security, libraries, mail service, police and fire protection, prison systems, water, energy, telecommunications, transportation, and health care. Illustrating the WTO leadership’s recognition of the expansive nature of the GATS, former WTO Director General Renato Ruggiero said in 1998 that “GATS provides guarantees over a much wider field of regulation and law than [other WTO treaties]; the right of establishment and the obligation to treat foreign services suppliers fairly and objectively in all relevant areas of domestic regulation extend the reach of the Agreement into areas never before recognized as trade policy” (2). The GATS was so controversial that it had to be structured as a “bottom-up” treaty. In other words, its most controversial provisions (called “Market Access” and “National Treatment”; see below) apply only to service sectors that each nation volunteers to bind to them.

Each WTO member country has a document (its “schedule”) that lists the service sectors it is binding to GATS rules (its “commitments”). Once a sector is committed in a nation’s GATS schedule, that nation is obligated to conform nearly all its domestic policies governing that sector (and sometimes even those merely affecting it) to GATS rules. If it does not, the WTO agreements require it to negotiate compensation with international investors adversely affected by its domestic policies or face international trade sanctions (3).366


What the GATS Rules Require

Broadly speaking, there are three “tiers” of GATS rules affecting health care. The first tier of rules, General Obligations and Disciplines, apply equally to all service sectors of all WTO member countries, regardless of whether those sectors are committed in a country’s schedule or not. The second tier, Specific Commitments, apply only to those sectors that a country commits to its schedule. These rules are more far-reaching, and members were given the opportunity to write any exceptions or limitations to them into their schedules. Finally, under GATS Part III, Article XVII, WTO member countries are allowed to negotiate a third “tier” of rules to govern their commitments above and beyond the underlying Specific Commitments rules that normally apply. Citing this provision, the United States has inscribed its Financial Commitments schedule with the “supplemental” rules of the Understanding on Commitments in Financial Services. These rules apply in addition to the underlying GATS Specific Commitments rules on Market Access and National Treatment (described below).



Table 1

Selected rules included in the General Agreement on Trade in Services Rule tier Binding upon Rule content General Obligations (Tier 1) All member states of the World Trade Organization 1. Most-favored nation treatment. 2. Prohibition on “new monopolies” 3. Disciplines on domestic regulation Specific Commitments (Tier 2) Only those service sectors that members choose to bind in their schedules of commitments 1. Open market access obligations 2. National treatment of all foreign service provider Supplementary Voluntary Commitments (Tier 3) Service sectors already scheduled that members choose to make additional liberalization commitments in (financial services in the U.S.) 1. Subjection of public entities to GATS rules 2. “Standstill” of existing exceptions to liberalization 3. Requirement to allow any new financial service 4. Requirement to “endeavor to remove or limit any significant adverse effects” of domestic regulation

General Obligations and Disciplines.
These rules apply to all service sectors of all WTO member countries, regardless of whether or not the sectors have been committed to a nation’s schedule. While these are generally the least controversial provisions, several may have serious implications for reform or regulation of the health sector (4).

Most-Favored-Nation Treatment: This provision requires a member to give service suppliers of any other WTO member no less favorable treatment than it gives service suppliers of “any other country” (4, Art. II).

Prohibition on New “Monopolies”: This provision requires that if a country grants new “monopoly rights” regarding the supply of a service covered in its schedule, the country granting the “monopoly” must enter into negotiations to provide compensation to any other member adversely affected by it. If an agreement is not reached, the affected member may refer the matter to arbitration, and the “monopoly” may not go into force until the compensation required by the arbitration has been made. The term “monopoly rights” is not defined anywhere in the agreement (4, Art. VIII).

“Disciplines” on Domestic Regulation: In sectors where no commitments have been undertaken, the GATS states that a special Council for Trade in Services shall develop “disciplines” that assure that qualification requirements and procedures, technical standards, and licensing requirements for the provision of services are “not more burdensome than necessary to ensure the quality of the service.” Regarding sectors in which commitments have been undertaken, however, it is unclear whether such a “necessity test” is already in force (4, Art. VI).

Specific Commitments. These rules apply only to service sectors that members have volunteered to submit to the rules by inscribing them in their schedules. Members were also given an opportunity to reserve specific exceptions to the rules during the negotiations of their schedules. Rules in this section fall into two broad categories, Market Access and National Treatment.

Market Access: The rules in this section are aimed at preventing governments from limiting the number, type, form, or size of foreign service suppliers in their markets or intervening to affect or regulate the way the firms provide the service. Examples of prohibited measures include (4, Art. XVI):

• Limitations on the number of service suppliers
• Limitations on the total quantity of service output
• Requiring a specific type of legal entity (e.g., nonprofit)
• Limitations on the “total value of service transactions or assets”


National Treatment: This set of rules requires that foreign service suppliers receive, “in respect of all measures affecting the supply of services,” the same treatment that a nation gives to its own service suppliers. It is easy to think of situations in which a country may want to shape policy to favor domestic industry over foreign operations, but the GATS rules go even farther than these requirements. Under the National Treatment rules, any measure that modifies the conditions of competition in favor of a domestic supplier is a GATS violation. In other words, even if a policy has no intent to discriminate against foreign service suppliers—indeed, it can be totally unrelated to service provision at all—if it has the effect of disadvantaging them, it is potentially a violation of the GATS (4, Art. XVII).

Special Rules for Health Insurance. The United States committed health insurance to its schedule under the Financial Services section. Two special sets of rules apply to commitments made under this section. The first is the Annex on Financial Services, a unique set of constraints that apply to all commitments in financial services, no matter what nation makes them. The second is an even more expansive Understanding on Commitments in Financial Services, a set of extreme liberalization rules that are an optional “attachment” to commitments in financial services that the United States has chosen to take. These rules go so far in constraining governments that only developed countries have signed on to them.

The Annex on Financial Services: Most financial services are related to banking and investment, hence the Annex provisions pertain mostly to them. One provision in particular is significant in assessing the impact of the GATS on health care:

• Subjection of “Public Entities” to GATS Rules:

Normal GATS rules make an exception for government services and procurement (with significant limitations). The Annex specifically states that if a nation allows domestic service suppliers to compete with “public entities,” those entities are subject to GATS rules. This will have significant implications for Medicare, as we will see (4, Annex on Financial Services, §1(b)(iii)). The Understanding on Commitments in Financial Services: The most farreaching document in the GATS, the Understanding binds signatory nations to an extreme level of financial services liberalization.

The commitments undertaken by signatories to the Understanding include (interpretation of the Understanding [5] aided by Kevin C. Kennedy, Professor of Law, Michigan State University College of Law):

• The “Standstill” Provision: The signatories pledge that any exceptions to the commitments they have made are limited to existing measures. The implications of this vaguely worded provision are not entirely clear. Some commentators believe that the signatories bind themselves to never enact a limitation on their commitments in the future that was not in effect when the Understanding was inscribed in their schedule. In effect, the level of privatization at the time of the implementation of the Understanding is “locked in” (5).

• New Financial Service: Signatories pledge to allow foreign firms to offer any new financial product in their territory, as long as another WTO member offers it (5, Art. B(7)).

• Domestic Regulation: Signatories pledge to “endeavor to remove or limit any significant adverse effects” on foreign investors of any laws that “affect adversely” the ability of foreign firms “to operate, compete, or enter” the domestic market (5, Art. B(10)).

April 28, 2016

Charts of election lineups still shows Sanders Remains the Only Dem Who Will Beat Trump Within

Charts of election lineups still shows Sanders Remains the Only Dem Who Will Beat Trump Within the typical margins of error. His margin over Trump is much more than Clintons would be.


See what I mean?




cruz-vs-clinton




kasich-vs-clinton




trump-vs-clinton




cruz-vs-sanders




kasich-vs-sanders


and finally



trump-vs-sanders

April 27, 2016

European proposal is DESPERATELY NEEDED IN THE US too to protect Public Services from Dismemberment

By Existing and pending Trade Deals

-----------

27.1.2016
A8-0009/2
Amendment 2
Tiziana Beghin, David Borrelli, Rolandas Paksas
on behalf of the EFDD Group
Report
A8-0009/2016
Viviane Reding

Recommendations to the European Commission on the negotiations for the Trade in Services
Agreement (TiSA)


2015/2233(INI)
Motion for a resolution
Recital I a (new)
Motion for a resolution

Amendment
Ia. whereas the horizontal reservation for
a wide range of public services is not able
to adequately protect public services, since
in some Member States many services of
general economic interest, in particular
social services, health and education, are
in part privately funded;
Or. en
AM1084708EN.doc
EN
PE576.507v01-00
United in diversity
EN27.1.2016
A8-0009/3
Amendment 3
Tiziana Beghin, David Borrelli, Rolandas Paksas
on behalf of the EFDD Group
Report
A8-0009/2016
Viviane Reding
Recommendations to the European Commission on the negotiations for the Trade in Services
Agreement (TiSA)
2015/2233(INI)

Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 – point (a) – point viii a (new)
Motion for a resolution

Amendment
viiia. to include a revision clause that
establishes a mechanism that provides a
party with the opportunity to leave the
agreement, or to suspend or reverse
commitments on liberalisation of a
service, particularly in the event of
infringements of labour and social
standards;

Or. en
AM1084708EN.doc
EN
PE576.507v01-00
United in diversity
EN27.1.2016
A8-0009/4
Amendment 4
Tiziana Beghin, David Borrelli, Rolandas Paksas
on behalf of the EFDD Group
Report
A8-0009/2016
Viviane Reding
Recommendations to the European Commission on the negotiations for the Trade in Services
Agreement (TiSA)
2015/2233(INI)

Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 – point (b) – point i
Motion for a resolution Amendment
i. to exclude public services and
audiovisual services from the scope of
application of the agreement, and to take a
cautious approach to cultural services
without prejudice to the EU’s
commitments in the GATS; to seek
ambitious commitments across parties,
sectors, and levels of government, in
particular the further opening of foreign
markets as regards public procurement,
telecommunications, transport and
financial and professional services;

i. to exclude public services, whether
publicly or privately funded, and
audiovisual services from the scope of
application of the agreement, and to take a
cautious approach to cultural services
without prejudice to the EU’s
commitments in the GATS; to seek
ambitious commitments across parties,
sectors, and levels of government, in
particular the further opening of foreign
markets as regards public procurement,
telecommunications, transport and
financial and professional services;

Or. en
AM1084708EN.doc
EN
PE576.507v01-00
United in diversity
EN27.1.2016
A8-0009/5
Amendment 5

Tiziana Beghin, David Borrelli, Rolandas Paksas
on behalf of the EFDD Group
Report
A8-0009/2016
Viviane Reding

Recommendations to the European Commission on the negotiations for the Trade in Services
Agreement (TiSA)
2015/2233(INI)

Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 – point (b) – point iv

Motion for a resolution Amendment
iv. to reject the application of standstill and
ratchet clauses to market access
commitments and to reject their application
to sensitive sectors, such as public and
cultural services, public procurement,
Mode 4, transport, and financial services;
to allow for enough flexibility to bring
services of general economic interest back
into public control; to maintain the right of
the EU and Member States to modify their
schedule of commitments in accordance
with the GATS;

iv. to reject the application of standstill and
ratchet clauses to all market access
commitments and national treatment
commitments and to reject their application
to sensitive sectors, such as public and
cultural services, public procurement,
Mode 4, transport, and financial services;
to allow for enough flexibility to bring
services of general economic interest back
into public control; to maintain the right of
the EU and Member States to modify their
schedule of commitments in accordance
with the GATS;


Or. en
AM1084708EN.doc
EN
PE576.507v01-00
United in diversity
EN27.1.2016
A8-0009/6
Amendment 6
Tiziana Beghin, David Borrelli, Rolandas Paksas
on behalf of the EFDD Group
Report
A8-0009/2016
Viviane Reding
Recommendations to the European Commission on the negotiations for the Trade in Services
Agreement (TiSA)
2015/2233(INI)
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 – point (b) – point xi a (new)
Motion for a resolution

Amendment

xia. to ensure that the agreement includes
simplified withdrawal procedures;


Or. en
AM1084708EN.doc
EN
PE576.507v01-00
United in diversity
EN27.1.2016
A8-0009/7
Amendment 7
Tiziana Beghin, David Borrelli, Rolandas Paksas
on behalf of the EFDD Group
Report
A8-0009/2016
Viviane Reding
Recommendations to the European Commission on the negotiations for the Trade in Services
Agreement (TiSA)
2015/2233(INI)
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 – point (i) – point v
Motion for a resolution


Amendment
v. to encourage the Member States to
involve and consult their national
parliaments as well as local and regional
authorities and to keep them adequately
informed about the ongoing negotiations;
v. to encourage the Member States to
involve and consult their national
parliaments as well as local and regional
authorities and to keep them adequately
informed about the ongoing negotiations;
to call on the Council to ensure that TiSA
is a mixed agreement;

Or. en
AM1084708EN.doc
EN
PE576.507v01-00
United in diversity
EN27.1.2016
A8-0009/8
Amendment 8
Tiziana Beghin, David Borrelli, Rolandas Paksas
on behalf of the EFDD Group
Report
A8-0009/2016
Viviane Reding
Recommendations to the European Commission on the negotiations for the Trade in Services
Agreement (TiSA)
2015/2233(INI)
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 2
Motion for a resolution

Amendment
2. Requests that the Commission take this
resolution fully into account and respond
within six months of its adoption;
2. Requests that the Commission take this
resolution fully into account and respond
within six months of its adoption , and that
it withdraw from the TiSA negotiations if
all the above recommendations are not
implemented;

Or. en
AM1084708EN.doc
EN
PE576.507v01-00
United in diversity
EN