from the secret-negotiations-are-always-good-for-the-people dept.
Apparently, Greenpeace got their hands on a version of the TTIP documents and plans to release them to the public at today, Monday 2nd of May, 11:00am (UTC+2) from Netherlands, while at the same time giving a press conference at the re:publica. While Greenpeace is apparently mainly concerned about the loss of the precautionary principle (in Europe, if a product is thought to pose a risk to the population or environment, it is prohibited until proven safe, as opposed to the US where it is permitted until proven harmful. According to Greenpeace (sorry, only in German), this is a reason that in US, 170 genetically manipulated plants are in the agricultural market, while in Europe it is only one.
While these mainly environmental concerns deserve some consideration, the more fundamental issue is that such a far-reaching contract, invalidating many of hard fought-for consumers rights in one coup and affecting half a billion people alone in Europe, is negotiated secretly. This is entirely unworthy of any democratic government system.
The documents are available for download.
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It's looking like, possibly (hopefully), the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) talks between the U.S. and Europe may be falling apart. According to a BBC article, the French Minister of trade is saying that the trade talks "are likely to grind to a halt".
The French minister, who threatened to leave talks last year, said Europe was offering a lot with little in return. It comes a day after Greenpeace leaked documents from the talks. The environmental group released 248 pages of classified documents, which it said showed how EU standards on public health risked being undermined by the major free-trade agreement.
So, in my opinion, the French (and Greenpeace) deserve a toast (and not with a California red). Now all we have to do is do the same with the TPP!
This is what the trade 'deals' mean for our future if not defeated.
takyon: Also at Foreign Policy, The New York Times .
Previously: TTIP Documents Leaked
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2016, @12:44PM
We (USA) are the workers from the Far East trying to take their jobs.
Maybe that's why we don't hear much about TTIP on the campaign trail here!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2016, @01:10PM
I think jobs are the least of our (Europeans) concerns. It's the precautionary principle that the OP mentions (which not only works for GMOs, but on many levels, including privacy) and level of social security (through ISDS) that causes worries to most people here.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2016, @01:11PM
I'm not versed on this agreement, but the pattern itself strikes me as "give people nowhere to turn".
I hope they at least put that much vigor into making sure all corporations start paying their fair share of taxes. (hah!)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2016, @01:29PM
no no no, we're not coming to take their "JOBS" we're coming to take their "JERBS!"
PAY ATTENTION PEOPLE!
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday May 02 2016, @11:14PM
You don't hear about it because big business, which owns the media, don't want you to hear about it. Out of sight, out of mind, in their pockets.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Monday May 02 2016, @12:47PM
The TPP and TTIP are the coup de grace for democracy. The oligarchy will eliminate the last vestiges with those agreements. And every person in Congress will vote to approve it, no matter what the actual constituents say. Some may protest for the sake of appearances, but in the end they will do their masters' bidding.
We have the means to know exactly who and exactly where those masters are. They are not invulnerable, quite the opposite. Their one overriding quality is not competence, but the total lack of scruple. They rely on people like us to enforce their will. If people like us stopped playing along, they'd be done for.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2016, @12:54PM
I for one, welcome our oligarchical robot overlords!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by opinionated_science on Monday May 02 2016, @12:57PM
hard not to be paranoid, when such excesses are taken to hide it from review...
Of course, only the lawyers get rich :-(
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2016, @01:02PM
It is not paranoia when they are really out to get you.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday May 02 2016, @01:13PM
You got it wrong.
That you are paranoid doesn't imply they are not out to get you.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2016, @01:46PM
Have you entertained the idea that maybe it is time to put democracy to bed?
We've had several different incarnations of it and the result is always the same- oligarchy. I'm not certain which control needs to be tweaked, how much more vigilant the population needs to be this time for it to work as advertised. Maybe it's time to demand something more.
People might be willing to risk themselves, but not their families unless it looks like it's the endgame anyway. I don't see much of anything changing until it is the bloody end.
Best start thinking of a new institutions to replace the old. Have some course plotted that works at minimizing corruption from the get-go.
(Score: 1) by Bethany.Saint on Monday May 02 2016, @02:41PM
> Have some course plotted that works at minimizing corruption from the get-go.
Problem is that there is no form of government that prevent corruption from the get-go. As long as people want money, power (influence), and/or sex there will always be corruption.
If you optimize for sort terms (term limits) then those brought into power will corrupt quickly without thinking about the long term future of the country. If you optimize for the long term then you will get some thought to the long term benefits of action, but the corruption will be cultivated and entrenched making it much more difficult to remove.
The only true way to avoid corruption is to have algorithms making decisions. And the algorithms need to be able to modify themselves in order to remove the corruption of the programmers. Then we can give the algorithms a physical form. Then maybe human like features. A sliver body and glowing red eyes. That's the way to solve our problems.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2016, @02:57PM
Obviously, I disagree.
And note I said minimize corruption.
And the tenets have been the same for a while now: you want to diffuse political power. You want a zero sum game between the governors and the governed. You want, as Aristotle put it, to rule and be ruled.
I have my own designs of what I think would work, but more importantly at this point is that people evaluate the long history of government, figure out what works and what doesn't, and progress from there.
Aren't people just algorithms making decisions?
(Score: 1) by Bethany.Saint on Monday May 02 2016, @04:20PM
Was kidding about the algorithms. Reference to AI/Robot uprising tropes. Should have put a grin.
If you have thoughts on how to achieve a less corrupt governing body, please share. Really.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2016, @09:11PM
Actually, in the future, I see algorithms being....
Hold on. Getting ahead of myself.
First, I would like to direct your attention here:
arxiv.org/abs/0907.0455
Yeah yeah yeah, Ig Noble and all that. But the paper does prove a point- general selection (i.e.- elections) criteria are flawed, and as rule promote people to their highest level of incompetence (corruption). This probably more than anything else is why 99% incumbency in elections leads to disastrous results.
So term limits you say? Nope, the paper makes quite clear: you get the best results by choosing people at random.
Demarchy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition [wikipedia.org]
Now, I could go on and on in mind numbing detail (I've been thinking about this for a long time) of how many problems you solve by adopting at least some aspects of this (diminished the influence of money in politics, mitigated by a large degree the tyranny of majority rule, etc.), but I'm more than willing to defend my charges against criticisms.
And, best of all, I've figured out a way to easily transition to this without a revolution: create a third house of congress of three representatives from each state to serve. Give them the power to only debate and vote on bills. And give them essentially the line item veto to amend bills.
That's it.
Oh, and increase the number of elected officials by x% (this will require some finagling to get right, and the percentage will vary with population size) to make buying elections more costly.
You've maintained the better parts of a constitutional republic, but you have direct citizen oversight to stop bad legislation before it begins.
You've also made politics a zero sum game as it's possible for anyone to serve.
(Score: 1) by Bethany.Saint on Monday May 02 2016, @10:33PM
Very interesting. Didn't know about sortition/demarchy at all. It's going to take a bit of pondering. Thanks for the info.
(Score: 2) by https on Monday May 02 2016, @03:09PM
On occasion, yes, but it's a defeatist idea. If you are thinking of new institutions to replace the old, try credit unions instead of banks. If you're completely unable to get around the notion of lending institutions being needed or not in the first place, you can at least stop the profits from concentrating in the hands of an extremely small number of people. "The difference between having an account at a bank and an account at a credit unions? At a bank, things are set up to profit the owners. At a credit union, the owner is you."
Offended and laughing about it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2016, @03:30PM
Well, ideally you'd want a bloodless revolution, but I have doubts that those in the seat of power would be willing to share it without a fight.
Or that revolution looked like an inevitability and they were at least securing some seat at the table.
Always fancied the idea of public banks, but I'm not versed enough in economics to even be incompetent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2016, @04:22PM
I think democracy is fine but we just need to bring back hangings in the public square of politicians who do not put their constituents first. It only takes one or two for the others to get the message.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2016, @06:18PM
Fiiiiiine. I'll do it, i'll become the dictator of universe. You can stop asking. But i tell you, i'm not too happy about it. It's shitty job.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday May 03 2016, @02:52AM
Democracy is the worst form of government ever devised ... except for all the others. - Winston Churchill
Your basic set of options for government:
- Role by nobody (anarchy). This lasts until somebody is powerful enough to take charge, at which point it becomes ...
- Rule by one person (monarchy / dictatorship). This lasts until you get a bad or ineffective monarch, at which point it is usually replaced by ...
- Rule by the masses (democracy / republic / worker's councils / ...). This lasts until an organized cabal forms to take over, at which point it is effectively replaced by ...
- Rule by a relatively small unelected group (oligarchy / theocracy / plutocracy / ...). This lasts until the the infighting among the cabal causes it to effectively break apart, which leads to ...
- Rule by nobody (anarchy), and the cycle continues.
There are no known non-theoretical ways of breaking this cycle. The "western" world is mostly in the late stages of transitioning from democracy to oligarchy.
None of them are perfect. Democracy tends to be the least bad for the majority of people, because at the very least there's a chance for the majority of people to correct things if they go too far off course.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Tuesday May 03 2016, @11:30AM
There is a practical way to break this cycle - to stop playing the game. Stop respecting law and break all societal relationships.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday May 03 2016, @01:25PM
That doesn't break the cycle, that's part of the cycle (the anarchy stage).
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Wednesday May 04 2016, @02:06AM
Not really. Even in the state of anarchy, a player is supposed to have babies and protect and provide for his family. What I am talking about is abandoning the idea of society itself.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday May 04 2016, @02:40AM
If you (and everybody else) reject the idea of society, then each person is deciding on their own what to do, with no social rules or laws or anything else like that. Which means that nobody is in charge, which is the definition of anarchy.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Wednesday May 04 2016, @04:36AM
I see what you mean.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2016, @01:48PM
What is your recommendation?
Voting for Trump? Converting to Communism? At least in that regard, we can't expect to vote and receive a different outcome. We'd be much wiser to adopt such a methology as we couldn't be fooled in that case. We'd already know what to expect view such slogans as Votes you can recount on making hope great again or what have you as propaganda.
It doesn't seem that people really do much of anything if they have a good TV signal, though, and there is enough variety to allow them time to aimlessly channel surf just enough to not know if there is truly nothing on, or if they just missed it due to lingering too long on the other channels.
Of course, that's just a broad generalization. It seems that the youth rebels more than their elders, and the elders are more interested in observing tradition provided that they have a few comforts in life to go with it. Give me convenience or give me death!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2016, @04:29PM
Don't forget TISA. When that one was ratified, things really started to go to hell.
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Monday May 02 2016, @01:03PM
Since it's now 2 hours since the release. Where are the documents?
In the end however. TTIP is bad news anyway you put it and this release most likely only serves to wake up more people to the fact. Btw, how will they screw Americans with TTIP?
"11:00am (UTC+2)" ..Gosh! put in a real time statement like "UTC 09:00" plz.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Jiro on Monday May 02 2016, @02:17PM
EFF has an article from 2015 [eff.org].
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2016, @11:10PM
Also from the EFF: The 3rd puzzle piece, TISA [eff.org].
Although it is the least well-known of those agreements, it is the broadest in terms of membership. As far as we know, it presently includes twenty countries plus Europe (but notably excluding the major emerging world economies of the BRICS bloc), who, with disdainful levity, have adopted the mantle “the Really Good Friends of Services”. Like its sister agreements, TISA will enact global rules that impact the Internet, bypassing the transparency and accountability of national parliaments. The only difference is that its focus is on services, not goods.
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Monday May 02 2016, @07:05PM
Where are the documents?
https://ttip-leaks.org/ [ttip-leaks.org]
"11:00am (UTC+2)" ..Gosh! put in a real time statement like "UTC 09:00" plz.
The real time statement was 11:00am, obviously German local time since the re:publica happens in Germany. The UTC+2 was just additional information because I wouldn't expect everyone to know exactly, in which time zone Germany exists.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 2) by TheB on Tuesday May 03 2016, @03:49AM
Why isn't there a HTML time tag that the browser can automatically translate to local time?
This problem isn't going away anytime soon.
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Tuesday May 03 2016, @09:27AM
Or just go full UTC and be done with it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2016, @02:36PM
I expect this will bring the crazy regional branding laws. Champagne from California and Cheddar from Wisconsin will become illegal, because Champagne is some place in France and Cheddar is some place in the UK.
I wonder if it is at least legit to rename our own cities so that we can still make these products. Maybe that would be cause for war.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 03 2016, @12:39AM
I'm sure you'll enjoy Polish bourbon.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Bethany.Saint on Monday May 02 2016, @02:48PM
I was disappointed to find that the documents were missing the chapter(s) on DRM, IP, patents, etc. These chapters must be double secret!
Document 16 (sort of a comments document) does contain this: