Possible solutions to the worlds problems
- Thread starter muir
- Start date
It's election season and everywhere there are people spouting absolute mind rot about politics
At some point people are going to have to come to the painful realisation that the political system is broken and that we cannot rely on others to fix the worlds problems for us
The only way the world is going to get fixed is by people working together at grass roots level
We have to start cutting out the middle men. We need to cut out the banks, cut out the government, cut out the big corporations and start pushing our own decentralised economy...a peer2peer economy
We have the technology now with the internet that we can trade among ourselves and become a global community WITHOUT rulers
We have to reject everything the corporate system has to offer including their corrupt politicians
We need to reject their money that is supplied by the central bankers (with interest) and replace it with our own interest free currencies
We need to reject their wars and their war economy
We need to reject all their hateful politics and the hate their media pushes to divide everyone. We need to all start coming together now as one global community regardless of colour, creed, sexual orientation, personality type etc and begin to cooperate among ourselves WITHOUT government and without the corporations that control the governments
This needs to be kickstarted with a tsunami of awareness sweeping the globe about what the source of our problems are (centralised power), what the solution to that is (decentralised power) and how we go about that
We are now at a cross roads where the forces of centralised power are seeking to leads us into a global government run by them that would be a dictatorship powered by slavery and a surveillance police state
But there is another path open to us....we can choose to reject their politics of division and we can start talking about COOPERATION and we can build our own global community
We are standing on the edge of the abyss at the moment looking our doom in the face, but this is also an opportunity; this is an opportunity for mankind to finally grow up and start taking responsibility for itself
If we do not rise to this challenge then we live down to the expectations of the central controllers and as we fight among ourselves we will fall increasingly under their power until we are utterly enslaved
The choice is not over political parties that all represent the interests of big business as the system would have us believe, the real choice is between personal responsibility and the freedom it brings or denying responsibility and walking into slavery
At some point people are going to have to come to the painful realisation that the political system is broken and that we cannot rely on others to fix the worlds problems for us
The only way the world is going to get fixed is by people working together at grass roots level
We have to start cutting out the middle men. We need to cut out the banks, cut out the government, cut out the big corporations and start pushing our own decentralised economy...a peer2peer economy
We have the technology now with the internet that we can trade among ourselves and become a global community WITHOUT rulers
We have to reject everything the corporate system has to offer including their corrupt politicians
We need to reject their money that is supplied by the central bankers (with interest) and replace it with our own interest free currencies
We need to reject their wars and their war economy
We need to reject all their hateful politics and the hate their media pushes to divide everyone. We need to all start coming together now as one global community regardless of colour, creed, sexual orientation, personality type etc and begin to cooperate among ourselves WITHOUT government and without the corporations that control the governments
This needs to be kickstarted with a tsunami of awareness sweeping the globe about what the source of our problems are (centralised power), what the solution to that is (decentralised power) and how we go about that
We are now at a cross roads where the forces of centralised power are seeking to leads us into a global government run by them that would be a dictatorship powered by slavery and a surveillance police state
But there is another path open to us....we can choose to reject their politics of division and we can start talking about COOPERATION and we can build our own global community
We are standing on the edge of the abyss at the moment looking our doom in the face, but this is also an opportunity; this is an opportunity for mankind to finally grow up and start taking responsibility for itself
If we do not rise to this challenge then we live down to the expectations of the central controllers and as we fight among ourselves we will fall increasingly under their power until we are utterly enslaved
The choice is not over political parties that all represent the interests of big business as the system would have us believe, the real choice is between personal responsibility and the freedom it brings or denying responsibility and walking into slavery
We need to not toe THEIR line
We need to start questioning authority everywhere
If enough of us can overcome petty prejudices over race, religion, sexual orientation, gender etc etc and see the bigger picture here and see first of all what a danger we are all in at the moment and secondly what an incredible world we could all build if we decided to be a little more tolerant of the person next to us then we could turn this thing around
Doesn't mean we need a melee in the room, just more people to stand up. You don't need to kill people or riot to stand up for yourself. Maybe we're just saying the same thing. My line is goriness.
Some of the sex lives make this not only possible but easy, however aids takes to long to achieve what it is you wish to achieve.
We are in agreement
We shouldn't use violence...violence is their game. They have al the weapons and they have a violent and cruel mentality so by trying to use violence we are playing their game
We need to peacefully but confidently reject their system and build our own
I'll be discusing some more about how we can do that
But yeah, by rioting we are playing into their hands
We're going to have to be smarter than that
However some people are so heavily brainwashed that you can share insightful information with the for years and make lots of predictions that then come true and yet still they deny you know what you are talking about!
So we are talking about overcoming some serious brainwashing in order to move forward in a positive direction as a global community rather than being splintered the whole time and then driven towards slavery in fragmented groups like people in cattle trucks
I'm not so sure about that... The world leaders would probably know if someone had ill intent, you don't get that far without knowing those things (I assume). The scientists would be vulnerable.
I heard a theory about how they invented it to get rid of the hippies, sounds a bit paranoid, yet possible, haven't tested its validity myself.
Here's a clip about how the monkey serum they were using in vaccines contained viruses implying that AIDs came from the vaccines
I don't believe they are waging war against 'hippies' it is a war against anyone who i not in their small el-ite club
[video=youtube;4CWryNYJgPo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CWryNYJgPo[/video]
http://www.fullcirclenow.net/mission/
The full circle project
[h=2]The Mission[/h] To embark on initiatives to bring mankind Full Circle back into their natural state of abundance through positive common sense action undertaken by the people themselves.
[h=2]Goals of The Full Circle Project[/h] In order to secure a viable, healthy, and abundant future for all life on this planet, devoid of corporate control and economic slavery, we must:
1. Emphasize the importance of physical, mental and spiritual balance of the individual, how to achieve it, and maintain it.
2. Highlight immediate steps necessary to reign in our public trustees and to place the balance of power back into the hands of responsible people.
3. Design action-packs for local workshops, events, and gatherings with the principle objective of supporting effective community initiatives.
4. Educate people on systems of government and central banking, how they work, how they are abused, and how to create beneficial alternatives.
5. Bridge the gap between cultures to alleviate conflict and engage in dialogue.
6. Integrate the wisdom and sanctity of shamanistic traditions into daily life.
7. Cultivate the diversity of human expression to break through current limitations.
8. Find ways to engage with leaders, political figures, and celebrities to create positive outcomes.
9. Consider how to protect natural resources under direct threat.
Please help to make The Full Circle Project a reality Connect with people in your community today
Provides an active hub for people to unite a diverse range of local cooperative initiatives from around the globe with a principle aim: to bring mankind Full Circle into their natural state of abundance.
Using positive common sense action undertaken by the people themselves, the project seeks ways to empower the individual and local communities by gathering together in ever-widening circles of focus and agreement. By examining vital issues and applying effective methods we can usher in a more cooperative and caring society based on honesty instead of deception and abundance instead of scarcity.
Our interactive and dynamic website is coming soon; JOIN NOW and become engaged in wholesome solutions.
The full circle project
[h=2]The Mission[/h] To embark on initiatives to bring mankind Full Circle back into their natural state of abundance through positive common sense action undertaken by the people themselves.
[h=2]Goals of The Full Circle Project[/h] In order to secure a viable, healthy, and abundant future for all life on this planet, devoid of corporate control and economic slavery, we must:
1. Emphasize the importance of physical, mental and spiritual balance of the individual, how to achieve it, and maintain it.
2. Highlight immediate steps necessary to reign in our public trustees and to place the balance of power back into the hands of responsible people.
3. Design action-packs for local workshops, events, and gatherings with the principle objective of supporting effective community initiatives.
4. Educate people on systems of government and central banking, how they work, how they are abused, and how to create beneficial alternatives.
5. Bridge the gap between cultures to alleviate conflict and engage in dialogue.
6. Integrate the wisdom and sanctity of shamanistic traditions into daily life.
7. Cultivate the diversity of human expression to break through current limitations.
8. Find ways to engage with leaders, political figures, and celebrities to create positive outcomes.
9. Consider how to protect natural resources under direct threat.
Please help to make The Full Circle Project a reality Connect with people in your community today
Provides an active hub for people to unite a diverse range of local cooperative initiatives from around the globe with a principle aim: to bring mankind Full Circle into their natural state of abundance.
Using positive common sense action undertaken by the people themselves, the project seeks ways to empower the individual and local communities by gathering together in ever-widening circles of focus and agreement. By examining vital issues and applying effective methods we can usher in a more cooperative and caring society based on honesty instead of deception and abundance instead of scarcity.
Our interactive and dynamic website is coming soon; JOIN NOW and become engaged in wholesome solutions.
The dollar vigilante (TDV) groups (anarchist-capitalists)
http://www.tdvgroups.com/
Welcome to TDV Groups! Below you will see a list of all TDV Groups and their contacts. In order to join a group simply click the group you would like to join, apply and send an email to apply@tdvgroups.com stating the email you use for your paid DollarVigilante subscription or your TDV Groups subscription.
[h=1]What is TDV[/h] [h=1]DEFINITION[/h]
It takes a proper view of government intervention to be able to make the moves that best protect you from government intervention. Here at TDV we have absolutely no illusions about government and its inherent tendency to steal, distort markets and cause physical and economic destruction…
Therefore our analysts can offer the best advice on how to protect your current assets and standard of living. We can also help you grow those assets, too. But again, this is not like other newsletters. We are in a new era. President Nixon essentially replaced the gold standard with the dollar standard. The Dollar Era allowed the Federal Reserve to usher in an Age of Inflation that benefitted financial assets. Getting rich in stocks became relatively easy.
But that age is coming to an end. The dollar itself is on its last legs. Keeping what you have during economic collapse and political instability should be just as much a priority as increasing your wealth. In the coming years, keeping your wealth and liberty will likely become much more important than getting richer. TDV is about much more than just this current crisis, however. It is about freedom and how to achieve it both personally and as people of this planet
Here are areas that are regularly covered in TDV:
http://www.tdvgroups.com/
Welcome to TDV Groups! Below you will see a list of all TDV Groups and their contacts. In order to join a group simply click the group you would like to join, apply and send an email to apply@tdvgroups.com stating the email you use for your paid DollarVigilante subscription or your TDV Groups subscription.
[h=1]What is TDV[/h] [h=1]DEFINITION[/h]
”A dollar vigilante is a free market individual who protests the government monopoly on money and financial policies such as fractional reserve banking and un-backed fiat currencies by selling those same fiat currencies in favor of other assets, often including gold, silver, foreign real estate and bitcoin.”
The Dollar Vigilante (TDV) is not your typical financial newsletter. While we cover all aspects of the ongoing collapse of the US dollar financial system, we do it from a free market view. In fact we are the most thoroughly free market newsletter there is. We can confidently say this because no other conservative, libertarian or free market newsletter wants the state entirely out of the way as we do.
It takes a proper view of government intervention to be able to make the moves that best protect you from government intervention. Here at TDV we have absolutely no illusions about government and its inherent tendency to steal, distort markets and cause physical and economic destruction…
Therefore our analysts can offer the best advice on how to protect your current assets and standard of living. We can also help you grow those assets, too. But again, this is not like other newsletters. We are in a new era. President Nixon essentially replaced the gold standard with the dollar standard. The Dollar Era allowed the Federal Reserve to usher in an Age of Inflation that benefitted financial assets. Getting rich in stocks became relatively easy.
But that age is coming to an end. The dollar itself is on its last legs. Keeping what you have during economic collapse and political instability should be just as much a priority as increasing your wealth. In the coming years, keeping your wealth and liberty will likely become much more important than getting richer. TDV is about much more than just this current crisis, however. It is about freedom and how to achieve it both personally and as people of this planet
Here are areas that are regularly covered in TDV:
- "The Big Picture" - A regular review and analysis of the latest happenings from the entire global financial and political sphere.
- "Economic Analysis" - Coverage of important economic trends that will include the monthly money supply report in which our chief analyst, Ed Bugos, reviews changes in money and banking policies, from an Austrian economics viewpoint, emanating from the world’s major central banks
- Investment and portfolio recommendations on how to keep the wealth you have and increase it in today’s confusing and fast moving times
- Specific stock recommendations in gold and silver stocks as well as other areas which may perform well including agriculture and energy
- "Expatriation of Ass & Assets" - News and information on how to expatriate both your physical self and your financial wealth. From planting flags in a few different countries in which to place your gold and cash to ideas and insights into topics such as the best places to purchase a 2nd home, for incredibly cheap, in order to avoid some of the social uprising about to spread. Other topics of interest include how and where to get a 2nd passport.
- "Survival & Health News & Notes" - News, tips and information on such topics as self-sufficiency (eg. food storage, living off the grid), self-defense, health and other items we consider to be just as important as your financial and residential status – especially if you are going to be in the best shape possible to survive the coming storm
http://wallstreetonparade.com/2015/...age-of-bill-to-overturn-corporate-personhood/
[h=2]Corporate Media Blacks Out Coverage of Bill to Overturn Corporate Personhood[/h]
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 4, 2015
Congressman Rick Nolan, Leesa “George” Friday, and David Cobb at the Move to Amend Press Conference, April 29, 2015
Last Wednesday, the grassroots organization, Move to Amend, held a press conference at the National Press Club to announce that six members of the U.S. House of Representatives were introducing legislation to overturn Citizens United v FEC to make free speech and all other rights guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution available only to “natural persons,” not corporations or limited liability companies. The legislation would also give Federal, state and local governments the ability to limit political contributions to “ensure all citizens, regardless of their economic status, have access to the political process.”
When corporations overturn the will of the people, it’s widely covered by corporate media. When the people fight back, the news is frequently blacked out. As of this morning, we could find no major corporate media outlet or corporate wire service reporting on last Wednesday’s press conference by Move to Amend. That might be because there was evidence presented at the press conference of a groundswell of public momentum to overturn Citizens United, the decision handed down on January 21, 2010 by the U.S. Supreme Court that opened the floodgates to corporate campaign spending in elections along with super wealthy donors.
The press conference revealed that 16 states have passed resolutions asking Congress to overturn Citizens United while almost 600 municipalities and local governments across the country have done likewise. Almost two dozen other states have resolutions pending or introduced.
Congressman Rick Nolan of Minnesota spoke at the press conference, telling attendees that “Good and successful movements in this country have always started with ordinary people who commit to accomplishing great things. And so it was with ending slavery, with child labor laws, environmental laws, women’s suffrage, civil rights, the progressive income tax, Social Security, Medicare, rights for the disabled – you name it – this movement transcends labels, it transcends political parties, it transcends regions and it transcends generations.”
Nolan added that “America’s future and American democracy is dependent upon the success of this movement.” In addition to Nolan, co-sponsors of the bill include Mark Pocan (WI), Matthew Cartwright (PA), Jared Huffman (CA), Raul Grijalva (AZ), and Keith Ellison (MN).
Leesa “George” Friday, who has been part of this grassroots movement since its beginning in 2009, said “Democracy isn’t a gift that we’re given, it’s a right. And with that right comes the responsibility to do a little bit more than just go to the polls every now and then or volunteer for a campaign, write a check or make some phone calls. It means being vigilant about what democracy means; about holding sacred that democracy; and doing the work.”
David Cobb, a member of the National Leadership Team of Move to Amend and the Green Party presidential candidate in 2004, called what has happened a “corporate coup d’etat” and said the group was broadening its strategy to include “Pledge to Amend,” where candidates running for office will be asked to pledge to support a constitutional amendment in order to get the support of voters, the majority of whom despise Citizens United.
The corporate coup d’etat could not have happened, of course, without the vote of five members of the U.S. Supreme Court in the Citizens United decision, which was written by Justice Anthony Kennedy with concurrence from Chief Justice John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
The dissent was scathing. Written by Justice John Paul Stevens (who retired five months later), it was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Stephen Breyer. Stevens wrote:
“The conceit that corporations must be treated identically to natural persons in the political sphere is not only inaccurate but also inadequate to justify the Court’s disposition of this case. In the context of election to public office, the distinction between corporate and human speakers is significant. Although they make enormous contributions to our society, corporations are not actually members of it. They cannot vote or run for office. Because they may be managed and controlled by nonresidents, their interests may conflict in fundamental respects with the interests of eligible voters. The financial resources, legal structure, and instrumental orientation of corporations raise legitimate concerns about their role in the electoral process. Our lawmakers have a compelling constitutional basis, if not also a democratic duty, to take measures designed to guard against the potentially deleterious effects of corporate spending in local and national races.”
The four dissenters also found that:
“The majority’s approach to corporate electioneering marks a dramatic break from our past. Congress has placed special limitations on campaign spending by corporations ever since the passage of the Tillman Act in 1907…We have unanimously concluded that this ‘reflects a permissible assessment of the dangers posed by those entities to the electoral process…’ ”
The view of the dissenters happens to dovetail with the majority view of the American people — meaning that five men in robes can overturn the will of a nation of 319 million citizens.
According to a 2010/2011 Peter Hart poll, 79 percent of Americans “support a Constitutional amendment that would overturn the Citizens United decision and make clear that corporations do not have the same rights as people.” An Associated Press-National Constitution Center poll released in 2012 found that 83 percent of Americans want campaign limits on corporations, unions and other organizations. The poll also found that 67 percent of Americans also want caps on what individuals can spend in campaigns.
In July of last year, Democracy Corps, the polling organization for Democrats, released a survey that found “a deep hostility to Super PACs” and “strong support” for candidates “who battle to reduce the influence of big money and for changes that empower the ordinary citizen…”
The poll was taken among likely voters in 12 states with hotly contested Senate races. On the issue of a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, the survey found overwhelming support, a “73 to 24 percent margin, including majorities in even the reddest states.”
This would not be the first time an out of control Supreme Court had to be reined in. Of the current 27 constitutional amendments, eight were enacted to overturn outrageously out-of-step Supreme Court rulings.
A recent joint analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics and the Sunlight Foundation found just how perverted elections have become under the Citizens United decision. According to the study, in the 2014 midterms, one percent of one percent of the total population of the United States, “accounted for an astounding $1.18 billion in disclosed political contributions at the federal level.”
The study also looked at the zip codes where the wealthiest campaign donors reside. It will come as no surprise that just five zip codes in New York City, ensconced by Wall Street’s plundering herd, coughed up $80 million.
Other groups have joined in the valiant, mushrooming effort to overturn Citizens United. From Public Citizen, to Common Cause, to Free Speech for People, to burgeoning local grassroots movements, there is growing momentum to overturn the gang of five on the Supreme Court. It’s not a matter of if, it’s just a matter of when.
You can be a critical part of accelerating that outcome by taking one or more of the following actions:
As one young woman stated in a Move to Amend film, “we need a democracy movement because we need a democracy.”
[h=2]Corporate Media Blacks Out Coverage of Bill to Overturn Corporate Personhood[/h]
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 4, 2015
Congressman Rick Nolan, Leesa “George” Friday, and David Cobb at the Move to Amend Press Conference, April 29, 2015Last Wednesday, the grassroots organization, Move to Amend, held a press conference at the National Press Club to announce that six members of the U.S. House of Representatives were introducing legislation to overturn Citizens United v FEC to make free speech and all other rights guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution available only to “natural persons,” not corporations or limited liability companies. The legislation would also give Federal, state and local governments the ability to limit political contributions to “ensure all citizens, regardless of their economic status, have access to the political process.”
When corporations overturn the will of the people, it’s widely covered by corporate media. When the people fight back, the news is frequently blacked out. As of this morning, we could find no major corporate media outlet or corporate wire service reporting on last Wednesday’s press conference by Move to Amend. That might be because there was evidence presented at the press conference of a groundswell of public momentum to overturn Citizens United, the decision handed down on January 21, 2010 by the U.S. Supreme Court that opened the floodgates to corporate campaign spending in elections along with super wealthy donors.
The press conference revealed that 16 states have passed resolutions asking Congress to overturn Citizens United while almost 600 municipalities and local governments across the country have done likewise. Almost two dozen other states have resolutions pending or introduced.
Congressman Rick Nolan of Minnesota spoke at the press conference, telling attendees that “Good and successful movements in this country have always started with ordinary people who commit to accomplishing great things. And so it was with ending slavery, with child labor laws, environmental laws, women’s suffrage, civil rights, the progressive income tax, Social Security, Medicare, rights for the disabled – you name it – this movement transcends labels, it transcends political parties, it transcends regions and it transcends generations.”
Nolan added that “America’s future and American democracy is dependent upon the success of this movement.” In addition to Nolan, co-sponsors of the bill include Mark Pocan (WI), Matthew Cartwright (PA), Jared Huffman (CA), Raul Grijalva (AZ), and Keith Ellison (MN).
Leesa “George” Friday, who has been part of this grassroots movement since its beginning in 2009, said “Democracy isn’t a gift that we’re given, it’s a right. And with that right comes the responsibility to do a little bit more than just go to the polls every now and then or volunteer for a campaign, write a check or make some phone calls. It means being vigilant about what democracy means; about holding sacred that democracy; and doing the work.”
David Cobb, a member of the National Leadership Team of Move to Amend and the Green Party presidential candidate in 2004, called what has happened a “corporate coup d’etat” and said the group was broadening its strategy to include “Pledge to Amend,” where candidates running for office will be asked to pledge to support a constitutional amendment in order to get the support of voters, the majority of whom despise Citizens United.
The corporate coup d’etat could not have happened, of course, without the vote of five members of the U.S. Supreme Court in the Citizens United decision, which was written by Justice Anthony Kennedy with concurrence from Chief Justice John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
The dissent was scathing. Written by Justice John Paul Stevens (who retired five months later), it was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Stephen Breyer. Stevens wrote:
“The conceit that corporations must be treated identically to natural persons in the political sphere is not only inaccurate but also inadequate to justify the Court’s disposition of this case. In the context of election to public office, the distinction between corporate and human speakers is significant. Although they make enormous contributions to our society, corporations are not actually members of it. They cannot vote or run for office. Because they may be managed and controlled by nonresidents, their interests may conflict in fundamental respects with the interests of eligible voters. The financial resources, legal structure, and instrumental orientation of corporations raise legitimate concerns about their role in the electoral process. Our lawmakers have a compelling constitutional basis, if not also a democratic duty, to take measures designed to guard against the potentially deleterious effects of corporate spending in local and national races.”
The four dissenters also found that:
“The majority’s approach to corporate electioneering marks a dramatic break from our past. Congress has placed special limitations on campaign spending by corporations ever since the passage of the Tillman Act in 1907…We have unanimously concluded that this ‘reflects a permissible assessment of the dangers posed by those entities to the electoral process…’ ”
The view of the dissenters happens to dovetail with the majority view of the American people — meaning that five men in robes can overturn the will of a nation of 319 million citizens.
According to a 2010/2011 Peter Hart poll, 79 percent of Americans “support a Constitutional amendment that would overturn the Citizens United decision and make clear that corporations do not have the same rights as people.” An Associated Press-National Constitution Center poll released in 2012 found that 83 percent of Americans want campaign limits on corporations, unions and other organizations. The poll also found that 67 percent of Americans also want caps on what individuals can spend in campaigns.
In July of last year, Democracy Corps, the polling organization for Democrats, released a survey that found “a deep hostility to Super PACs” and “strong support” for candidates “who battle to reduce the influence of big money and for changes that empower the ordinary citizen…”
The poll was taken among likely voters in 12 states with hotly contested Senate races. On the issue of a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, the survey found overwhelming support, a “73 to 24 percent margin, including majorities in even the reddest states.”
This would not be the first time an out of control Supreme Court had to be reined in. Of the current 27 constitutional amendments, eight were enacted to overturn outrageously out-of-step Supreme Court rulings.
A recent joint analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics and the Sunlight Foundation found just how perverted elections have become under the Citizens United decision. According to the study, in the 2014 midterms, one percent of one percent of the total population of the United States, “accounted for an astounding $1.18 billion in disclosed political contributions at the federal level.”
The study also looked at the zip codes where the wealthiest campaign donors reside. It will come as no surprise that just five zip codes in New York City, ensconced by Wall Street’s plundering herd, coughed up $80 million.
Other groups have joined in the valiant, mushrooming effort to overturn Citizens United. From Public Citizen, to Common Cause, to Free Speech for People, to burgeoning local grassroots movements, there is growing momentum to overturn the gang of five on the Supreme Court. It’s not a matter of if, it’s just a matter of when.
You can be a critical part of accelerating that outcome by taking one or more of the following actions:
As one young woman stated in a Move to Amend film, “we need a democracy movement because we need a democracy.”
http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/1113.php#continue
[h=1]Theses on Podemos and
the ‘Democratic Revolution’ in Spain[/h]
[h=3]Raul Zelik
(Translation by Eric Canepa)[/h]
Even if one almost always goes wrong with such prognoses, the fact is that the Spanish state is facing the biggest rupture since the end of the Franco dictatorship. In several large cities, the left radical-democratic lists of the Guanyem / Ganemos Initiatives have real chances of winning the mayoral elections in May. In recent months in Catalonia, millions were on the street calling for the democratic right to self-determination, to which Madrid could only answer with new prohibitions. But it is above all the left party Podemos (We Can) that is dominating Spain's political landscape. According to some current polls, Podemos, though founded only in January 2014, is the strongest party today with an almost 28 per cent voter approval, one year before the parliamentary elections.
Guanyem initiative in Barcelona. [Photo by David Samaranch and Cristina Mañas.]
What is more remarkable about Podemos than the poll results, which can merely be volatile snapshots of the moment, is the social mobilization that the organization set in motion. 900 Podemos base groups, so called circles, have formed throughout the whole country. Almost 10,000 people took part in the party's founding congress in October. And in municipal district assemblies hundreds of neighbours discuss the crisis, capitalism, and ‘real democracy’ – and in this case ‘neighbours’ means literally neighbours. Podemos has left the subcultural milieus behind.
The level of debate is astounding, determined as it is, on the one hand, by a pragmatism directed at the 2015 elections and, on the other, by sharp criticism of neoliberalism and bourgeois political routine.
[h=3]Crisis of Representation[/h] Podemos is the expression of a crisis of representation that has gripped many countries with a neoliberal regime since the 1990s. That is, Podemos is not the product of a gradual process of growth but appears to have emerged out of a political vacuum and is expanding in an explosive manner. No existing political structures (such as trade unions, the larger NGOs or the media) have supported the project; the party activists – most of them under 35 – belong to the generation characterized as apolitical, and its immense popularity among the population is not easily explained. In the Spanish mainstream, left positions were decidedly marginal until 2011.
Despite this, Podemos naturally did not come out of nowhere. Its bases are the new anti-institutional protest movements that have repeatedly filled public squares and streets in the Iberian peninsula. That Podemos is more than a fleeting protest party like the Pirates in Germany has mainly to do with the 15M Movement and the Mareas.
The 15M Movement (public square occupations with the demand for ‘real democracy now’), which many on the left at first regarded with suspicion and at the very least was seen to be naïve and tending to apoliticism, has brought forth a new generation of activists and new forms of politics and made possible a tremendous repoliticization – both internally and externally.
The crucial factor in the 15M Movement is its intuitive linking of criticism of capitalism with democratic demands. Starting with the concrete European experience, in which there is no longer a distinction between the economic and social policy of socialists and conservatives, the movement has problematized the systemic limits to democracy in the bourgeois state: i) The democratic process ends where the interests of big capital, that is especially the banks, begins. Before the outbreak of the crisis, Spain's debt ratio was 40 per cent under the German level. Only when Madrid was forced by the EU to bail out private Spanish banks (and thus also German investors), did the state deficit explode. The cuts in healthcare and social services already made by the PSOE governments showed that in an emergency government executives have the function of carrying out underlying power interests. ii) However, political parties also seem to be increasingly standing in the way of democracy. With the ‘political class’, distinguished by professional politics and closed decision-making circuits, a specific social group has emerged with its own strategies of power and self-enrichment. In Spain, the political apparatuses are strongly shaped by the real estate boom of recent decades. The awarding of building permits and construction contracts, as well as state oversight of public savings banks (which have flourished in conjunction with the construction industry) guaranteed the ‘political class’ lucrative (mostly illegal) sources of income.
In contrast to what media reports suggest, the 15M Movement has in no way dissolved itself after the ebbing of the 2011 street protests but has spread throughout society. Thus we have seen the emergence, among other things, of the so-called mareas, protest movement for the defence of the public education and healthcare systems, in which public service employees come together through patients’ initiatives and patient and refugee groups, or the movement against forced evictions – the Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH), a coalition of base groups, which connect direct action, solidarity and case-oriented self-help in a remarkable way. There is also a revival of labour organizations: In Andalusia, for example, activists of the base trade union SAT organized the non-violent redistribution of food purloined from supermarkets. The mareas in the healthcare and education sectors are supported by local groups of various smaller and larger trade unions. And, finally, the Marchas de la Dignidad, nationwide protest marches on Madrid, mobilized a million people in 2014 once again.
These movements made it clear that there is a social majority beyond the political apparatuses. But it also became clear – and this in turn led to thinking processes among the anti-institutional left – that the neoliberal regime has no difficulty in sitting out social protests (as Germany's red-green government did with the Hartz IV protest at the beginning of the 2000s). Since the use of force is no longer an option, as it was for the labour movement of the twentieth century, a central means of pressure in adversarial politics is missing. ‘Citizens' protests’, which duly request permits from the authorities and do not disturb capitalist business as usual, do not affect the neoliberal regime. It is not prohibited to have a different opinion because in the end it has no practical consequences.
[h=3]Transforming Political Power[/h] Against this background, the social movements in Spain faced the question of how these constant mobilizations could be transformed into real power from below, into poder popular. The Podemos and Guanyem inititiatives – and this distinguishes these phenomena from other organizations of the European left – aim not simply at the founding of a new party but at the redefinition of political space. What is at issue is thus not simply new parliamentary political majorities but a transformation of the institutional framework.
The danger of accommodation to the institutions (as in the case of the German Greens, who in the end transformed themselves more than they did politics) has up to now been held at bay through the sheer speed of the movement's growth. The anti-institutional resistance is permeating the institutions with such vehemence that the institutions cannot hedge and absorb the dissidence – at least this is the project's manifest hope.
In this Podemos can certainly be accused of being itself a result of ‘alienated‘ politics. The comparison with the Guanyem initiative in Barcelona makes it clear what this means: The latter is committed – completely within the logic of grassroots movements – to local processes of change from below. Guanyem Barcelona, which will very likely present ex-squatter Ada Colau as a candidate for the mayoral elections there, arose from the Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH). The declared goal of Guanyem is to set into motion a municipal grassroots movement via municipal district assemblies, which will work out a platform for an alternative city government. It is thus expressly not aiming at welding together left groups through negotiations to form a coalition but to circumvent the existing (fragmented) left and at the same time incorporate them through the emergence of a grassroots movement. In terms of method, a path is being consciously taken here which is an alternative to the extant forms of representation.
Podemos is proceeding completely differently in this respect and has had great success – although in so doing it is in conflict with the radical-democratic postulates of 15M: Podemos’ founding group – Pablo Iglesias, Juan Carlos Monedero, Carolina Bescansa, LuÃs Alegre, and Ãñigo Errejón – are Madrid political scientists, most of whom have worked for extended periods in Venezuela or in Bolivia. Its central figure is the 36-year-old Pablo Iglesias, who has made a name for himself on radio and television talk shows as a critic of the neoliberal regime.
The rise of Podemos thus does not completely conform to the grassroots criteria of the 15M Movement. The initiative is carried by a small group, which to be sure intends to subject itself to democratic contestation processes but at the same time has formulated a clear claim to leadership. And it is doubtless also a product of the mass media; without television Podemos would probably be a marginal phenomenon. The grassroots participatory process unfolding with Podemos was thus originally set in motion in a more vertical way.
Podemos’ founding group is pursuing a strategy overtly based on Latin American experiences. The central objective is to transform the general social discontent into an alternative political hegemony and thus launch a mobilization that in turn will open up perspectives going beyond a classic reform policy. In this context we should remember that the political change in Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia was neither the simple result of electoral victories nor the result of revolutions but emerged from the combination of radical rupture, continuity, and transformation. The anti-neoliberal revolts and mass uprising have blocked the neoliberal regime in these countries for almost a decade, but the regime change took place within the existing political system. The opening up of larger transformational perspectives after this was in the last analysis due to the constitutional processes that gave form to the underlying constituent processes (the emergence of alternative popular power). These constitutional processes resulted from the fact that in these countries there was broad popular participation in the discussion of a new social contract. Podemos appears to be pursuing a similar project; it is formulating, at least implicitly, the problem of a democratic revolution that bursts the existing institutions.
[h=3]Two Elements of Discourse[/h] To open up this possibility Podemos’ discourse is based principally on two elements. 1. Relative Indeterminacy: Even if its critique of neoliberalism is unequivocal the consequences drawn from it are indefinite. Podemos’ whole presence appears shaped by this ambivalence. Although its founding circle comes out of the Communist Youth, was active in the milieu of the Izquierda Unida (IU – United Left) or the more left Izquierda Anticapitalista, or positively refers to Chavism in Venezuela, Podemos tries to position itself outside of left-right schemes. Time and again, Podemos stresses that it represents ‘the new’, which cannot be described by concepts linked to ‘the old’. Accordingly, social conflicts are not dealt with as class questions but as a conflict between los de abajo, those ‘at the bottom’ (to which then the ominous ‘middle strata’ explicitly belong, which are becoming increasingly scarce in Spain), and the ‘political caste’. All problems which could damage the ‘Podemos brand’ – in the marketing newspeak that the founders themselves use in describing the party – are dealt with in a similarly ambiguous way. For example, Iglesias positively approaches the concept of patriotism, a concept heavily tainted in Spain, and re-signifies it: “Being a patriot means extending the democratic right to self-determination to all spheres and defending the public services.” At the same time, however, he defends the right of Catalans and the Basque to decide whether they want to belong to Spain, even though he regards independence as not a sensible solution.
2. Momentum: Podemos assumes that the weakness of left politics is not due to faulty analysis but to the lack of a promising counter-project, and as a consequence is committed to targeted political mobilization. The entire political energy is to be concentrated on overthrowing the two-party system, that is, ‘the caste’, in the 2015 elections. This purpose is expressed with a conviction that at times sounds bizarre – now the party is even striving for an absolute majority ‘because there is no alternative to it’.
The dangers of this radical political experiment are obvious. That the indeterminacy of the project has up to now not found expression in turf wars is also due to the fact that all efforts are being concentrated on overthrowing the two-party system. As soon as this goal is achieved or setbacks are suffered along the way, this openness can lead to a crisis at any moment. At least Podemos’ base is more heterogeneous than that of Germany's Pirates: The European Parliament deputy Pablo Echenique, who proposed an alternative, more collective organizational structure at Podemos’ founding congress, recently admitted, with admirable self-criticism, that just a few years ago he had been a supporter of the neoliberal party Ciutadans and had been in favour of the Iraq War. Other Podemos components had been apolitical, internet activists or were active in the Communist Youth.
The danger is also very real that the founding group will become an elitist leadership circle. The new organizational statute, which was discussed in October in the Asamblea di Ciudadanos and then approved in a rank-and-file decision, strongly reduces the party's structure to the leader, Pablo Iglesias. The alternative draft, “Sumando Podemos,” submitted by the European Parliament deputies Pablo Echenique and Teresa RodrÃguez, proposed a three-person collective leadership. It makes sense that the overwhelming majority were for Iglesias’ concept; precisely because Podemos is so heterogeneous the organization needs a strong symbolic identity. Furthermore, in recent years Iglesias has acted coherently and with ethical integrity – and he is therefore capable of integrating diverse currents.
On the other hand, in the process a personalistic leadership structure is being established, which – as can be observed in the last decade in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador – can, it is true, facilitate social mobilization but which then at its core contradicts longer-term democratization processes. Very strong leadership figures foster a culture of opportunism and claqueurs.
[h=3]Long-term Transformation Project?[/h] But the central question is a different one: Does Podemos actually have a transformation project that goes beyond the removal of the Partido Popular (PP) government? I think it does. For what would have to be done has been obvious after the mobilizations since 2011 and the ongoing conflicts with the other nations in the Spanish state:
But even apart from the question of individual cases of corruption IU's organizational structures stand in contradiction to the radical democratic ambitions emerging from society. The political practice of the CP and IU was always marked by the classical logic of representation in which priority is given to the strengthening of one's own organization and its electoral successes over social (self-empowerment) processes. The means to this change – the political organization – has become an end in itself, so that IU, like almost all parties belonging to the Party of the European Left, has become a self-referential electoral alliance. Even if thousands of party members are active in movements, the institutional logic dominates. Radical attempts at reorganization come too late.
Podemos has – up to now – been different: The organization is presently the instrument of a social process that is progressing too rapidly for the party to turn around the relation between the democratic revolt and the institutional form.
This of course does not mean that everything that happened in IU or was done by it in the last thirty years was wrong. Podemos will probably soon be confronted by many of the problems that characterize IU today. For example, how can a balance be found between the emerging political tendencies without internal organizational considerations determining the politics of the organization. But this is probably the central insight of the political process in Spain today: The intervention of the organized left was not at all irrelevant; without the experience of left activists, the 15M Movement would have fallen apart sooner, the PAH never have emerged, and Podemos would probably have been a diffuse liberal internet party like Germany's Pirates. However, a social process is sweeping aside even the organizational forms of the left. The revolutionary-democratic awakening, longed for by a part of Spanish society, cannot be articulated through the bureaucratic corset of the IU. How long Podemos remains the appropriate space for this is to be seen. However, today Podemos is one of the spaces of the democratic revolution in Spain and probably the most important one. •
Raul Zelik is a freelance writer and currently a Fellow at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.
[h=1]Theses on Podemos and
the ‘Democratic Revolution’ in Spain[/h]
[h=3]Raul Zelik
(Translation by Eric Canepa)[/h]
Even if one almost always goes wrong with such prognoses, the fact is that the Spanish state is facing the biggest rupture since the end of the Franco dictatorship. In several large cities, the left radical-democratic lists of the Guanyem / Ganemos Initiatives have real chances of winning the mayoral elections in May. In recent months in Catalonia, millions were on the street calling for the democratic right to self-determination, to which Madrid could only answer with new prohibitions. But it is above all the left party Podemos (We Can) that is dominating Spain's political landscape. According to some current polls, Podemos, though founded only in January 2014, is the strongest party today with an almost 28 per cent voter approval, one year before the parliamentary elections.
Guanyem initiative in Barcelona. [Photo by David Samaranch and Cristina Mañas.]
What is more remarkable about Podemos than the poll results, which can merely be volatile snapshots of the moment, is the social mobilization that the organization set in motion. 900 Podemos base groups, so called circles, have formed throughout the whole country. Almost 10,000 people took part in the party's founding congress in October. And in municipal district assemblies hundreds of neighbours discuss the crisis, capitalism, and ‘real democracy’ – and in this case ‘neighbours’ means literally neighbours. Podemos has left the subcultural milieus behind.
The level of debate is astounding, determined as it is, on the one hand, by a pragmatism directed at the 2015 elections and, on the other, by sharp criticism of neoliberalism and bourgeois political routine.
[h=3]Crisis of Representation[/h] Podemos is the expression of a crisis of representation that has gripped many countries with a neoliberal regime since the 1990s. That is, Podemos is not the product of a gradual process of growth but appears to have emerged out of a political vacuum and is expanding in an explosive manner. No existing political structures (such as trade unions, the larger NGOs or the media) have supported the project; the party activists – most of them under 35 – belong to the generation characterized as apolitical, and its immense popularity among the population is not easily explained. In the Spanish mainstream, left positions were decidedly marginal until 2011.
Despite this, Podemos naturally did not come out of nowhere. Its bases are the new anti-institutional protest movements that have repeatedly filled public squares and streets in the Iberian peninsula. That Podemos is more than a fleeting protest party like the Pirates in Germany has mainly to do with the 15M Movement and the Mareas.
The 15M Movement (public square occupations with the demand for ‘real democracy now’), which many on the left at first regarded with suspicion and at the very least was seen to be naïve and tending to apoliticism, has brought forth a new generation of activists and new forms of politics and made possible a tremendous repoliticization – both internally and externally.
The crucial factor in the 15M Movement is its intuitive linking of criticism of capitalism with democratic demands. Starting with the concrete European experience, in which there is no longer a distinction between the economic and social policy of socialists and conservatives, the movement has problematized the systemic limits to democracy in the bourgeois state: i) The democratic process ends where the interests of big capital, that is especially the banks, begins. Before the outbreak of the crisis, Spain's debt ratio was 40 per cent under the German level. Only when Madrid was forced by the EU to bail out private Spanish banks (and thus also German investors), did the state deficit explode. The cuts in healthcare and social services already made by the PSOE governments showed that in an emergency government executives have the function of carrying out underlying power interests. ii) However, political parties also seem to be increasingly standing in the way of democracy. With the ‘political class’, distinguished by professional politics and closed decision-making circuits, a specific social group has emerged with its own strategies of power and self-enrichment. In Spain, the political apparatuses are strongly shaped by the real estate boom of recent decades. The awarding of building permits and construction contracts, as well as state oversight of public savings banks (which have flourished in conjunction with the construction industry) guaranteed the ‘political class’ lucrative (mostly illegal) sources of income.
In contrast to what media reports suggest, the 15M Movement has in no way dissolved itself after the ebbing of the 2011 street protests but has spread throughout society. Thus we have seen the emergence, among other things, of the so-called mareas, protest movement for the defence of the public education and healthcare systems, in which public service employees come together through patients’ initiatives and patient and refugee groups, or the movement against forced evictions – the Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH), a coalition of base groups, which connect direct action, solidarity and case-oriented self-help in a remarkable way. There is also a revival of labour organizations: In Andalusia, for example, activists of the base trade union SAT organized the non-violent redistribution of food purloined from supermarkets. The mareas in the healthcare and education sectors are supported by local groups of various smaller and larger trade unions. And, finally, the Marchas de la Dignidad, nationwide protest marches on Madrid, mobilized a million people in 2014 once again.
These movements made it clear that there is a social majority beyond the political apparatuses. But it also became clear – and this in turn led to thinking processes among the anti-institutional left – that the neoliberal regime has no difficulty in sitting out social protests (as Germany's red-green government did with the Hartz IV protest at the beginning of the 2000s). Since the use of force is no longer an option, as it was for the labour movement of the twentieth century, a central means of pressure in adversarial politics is missing. ‘Citizens' protests’, which duly request permits from the authorities and do not disturb capitalist business as usual, do not affect the neoliberal regime. It is not prohibited to have a different opinion because in the end it has no practical consequences.
[h=3]Transforming Political Power[/h] Against this background, the social movements in Spain faced the question of how these constant mobilizations could be transformed into real power from below, into poder popular. The Podemos and Guanyem inititiatives – and this distinguishes these phenomena from other organizations of the European left – aim not simply at the founding of a new party but at the redefinition of political space. What is at issue is thus not simply new parliamentary political majorities but a transformation of the institutional framework.
The danger of accommodation to the institutions (as in the case of the German Greens, who in the end transformed themselves more than they did politics) has up to now been held at bay through the sheer speed of the movement's growth. The anti-institutional resistance is permeating the institutions with such vehemence that the institutions cannot hedge and absorb the dissidence – at least this is the project's manifest hope.
In this Podemos can certainly be accused of being itself a result of ‘alienated‘ politics. The comparison with the Guanyem initiative in Barcelona makes it clear what this means: The latter is committed – completely within the logic of grassroots movements – to local processes of change from below. Guanyem Barcelona, which will very likely present ex-squatter Ada Colau as a candidate for the mayoral elections there, arose from the Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH). The declared goal of Guanyem is to set into motion a municipal grassroots movement via municipal district assemblies, which will work out a platform for an alternative city government. It is thus expressly not aiming at welding together left groups through negotiations to form a coalition but to circumvent the existing (fragmented) left and at the same time incorporate them through the emergence of a grassroots movement. In terms of method, a path is being consciously taken here which is an alternative to the extant forms of representation.
Podemos is proceeding completely differently in this respect and has had great success – although in so doing it is in conflict with the radical-democratic postulates of 15M: Podemos’ founding group – Pablo Iglesias, Juan Carlos Monedero, Carolina Bescansa, LuÃs Alegre, and Ãñigo Errejón – are Madrid political scientists, most of whom have worked for extended periods in Venezuela or in Bolivia. Its central figure is the 36-year-old Pablo Iglesias, who has made a name for himself on radio and television talk shows as a critic of the neoliberal regime.
The rise of Podemos thus does not completely conform to the grassroots criteria of the 15M Movement. The initiative is carried by a small group, which to be sure intends to subject itself to democratic contestation processes but at the same time has formulated a clear claim to leadership. And it is doubtless also a product of the mass media; without television Podemos would probably be a marginal phenomenon. The grassroots participatory process unfolding with Podemos was thus originally set in motion in a more vertical way.
Podemos’ founding group is pursuing a strategy overtly based on Latin American experiences. The central objective is to transform the general social discontent into an alternative political hegemony and thus launch a mobilization that in turn will open up perspectives going beyond a classic reform policy. In this context we should remember that the political change in Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia was neither the simple result of electoral victories nor the result of revolutions but emerged from the combination of radical rupture, continuity, and transformation. The anti-neoliberal revolts and mass uprising have blocked the neoliberal regime in these countries for almost a decade, but the regime change took place within the existing political system. The opening up of larger transformational perspectives after this was in the last analysis due to the constitutional processes that gave form to the underlying constituent processes (the emergence of alternative popular power). These constitutional processes resulted from the fact that in these countries there was broad popular participation in the discussion of a new social contract. Podemos appears to be pursuing a similar project; it is formulating, at least implicitly, the problem of a democratic revolution that bursts the existing institutions.
[h=3]Two Elements of Discourse[/h] To open up this possibility Podemos’ discourse is based principally on two elements. 1. Relative Indeterminacy: Even if its critique of neoliberalism is unequivocal the consequences drawn from it are indefinite. Podemos’ whole presence appears shaped by this ambivalence. Although its founding circle comes out of the Communist Youth, was active in the milieu of the Izquierda Unida (IU – United Left) or the more left Izquierda Anticapitalista, or positively refers to Chavism in Venezuela, Podemos tries to position itself outside of left-right schemes. Time and again, Podemos stresses that it represents ‘the new’, which cannot be described by concepts linked to ‘the old’. Accordingly, social conflicts are not dealt with as class questions but as a conflict between los de abajo, those ‘at the bottom’ (to which then the ominous ‘middle strata’ explicitly belong, which are becoming increasingly scarce in Spain), and the ‘political caste’. All problems which could damage the ‘Podemos brand’ – in the marketing newspeak that the founders themselves use in describing the party – are dealt with in a similarly ambiguous way. For example, Iglesias positively approaches the concept of patriotism, a concept heavily tainted in Spain, and re-signifies it: “Being a patriot means extending the democratic right to self-determination to all spheres and defending the public services.” At the same time, however, he defends the right of Catalans and the Basque to decide whether they want to belong to Spain, even though he regards independence as not a sensible solution.
2. Momentum: Podemos assumes that the weakness of left politics is not due to faulty analysis but to the lack of a promising counter-project, and as a consequence is committed to targeted political mobilization. The entire political energy is to be concentrated on overthrowing the two-party system, that is, ‘the caste’, in the 2015 elections. This purpose is expressed with a conviction that at times sounds bizarre – now the party is even striving for an absolute majority ‘because there is no alternative to it’.
“
Against this background it becomes clear why it does not make sense to acuse Podemos of the ambiguity we have described. Podemos has kept its discourse open in a completely conscious way. They are openly building here on the experiences of the constituent processes in Latin America. In the 1990s and 2000s, Latin America's neo-left, especially Venezuelan Chavism, developed discourse figures capable of achieving hegemony (without working through them on the level of theory), which Ernesto Laclau later called “empty signifiers.” Laclau claims that hegemonic politics necessarily implies vagueness because social relations are heterogeneous and projects capable of majority support must accordingly reflect this heterogeneity through ambiguity. Moreover, the relative indeterminacy of a project opens up, to ‘the many’, participatory and democratic space for shaping reality. In the end, a social transformation is only truly open if the result is not predetermined at the outset. Podemos seems to have internalized these considerations. The project's main objective is to open a political space to the social majorities excluded from the real decision-making processes. Just as Chavism, which first attacked the corrupt ‘Fourth Republic’ as enemies and then the ‘escuálidos’, that is, the U.S.-oriented elites, Podemos has similarly chosen a clearly defined, rhetorically easy to handle opponent that unites the heterogeneous popular camp through exclusion: ‘the caste’.In the end, a social transformation is only truly open if the result is not predetermined at the outset. Podemos seems to have internalized these considerations. ”
The dangers of this radical political experiment are obvious. That the indeterminacy of the project has up to now not found expression in turf wars is also due to the fact that all efforts are being concentrated on overthrowing the two-party system. As soon as this goal is achieved or setbacks are suffered along the way, this openness can lead to a crisis at any moment. At least Podemos’ base is more heterogeneous than that of Germany's Pirates: The European Parliament deputy Pablo Echenique, who proposed an alternative, more collective organizational structure at Podemos’ founding congress, recently admitted, with admirable self-criticism, that just a few years ago he had been a supporter of the neoliberal party Ciutadans and had been in favour of the Iraq War. Other Podemos components had been apolitical, internet activists or were active in the Communist Youth.
The danger is also very real that the founding group will become an elitist leadership circle. The new organizational statute, which was discussed in October in the Asamblea di Ciudadanos and then approved in a rank-and-file decision, strongly reduces the party's structure to the leader, Pablo Iglesias. The alternative draft, “Sumando Podemos,” submitted by the European Parliament deputies Pablo Echenique and Teresa RodrÃguez, proposed a three-person collective leadership. It makes sense that the overwhelming majority were for Iglesias’ concept; precisely because Podemos is so heterogeneous the organization needs a strong symbolic identity. Furthermore, in recent years Iglesias has acted coherently and with ethical integrity – and he is therefore capable of integrating diverse currents.
On the other hand, in the process a personalistic leadership structure is being established, which – as can be observed in the last decade in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador – can, it is true, facilitate social mobilization but which then at its core contradicts longer-term democratization processes. Very strong leadership figures foster a culture of opportunism and claqueurs.
[h=3]Long-term Transformation Project?[/h] But the central question is a different one: Does Podemos actually have a transformation project that goes beyond the removal of the Partido Popular (PP) government? I think it does. For what would have to be done has been obvious after the mobilizations since 2011 and the ongoing conflicts with the other nations in the Spanish state:
- The notorious corruption has to be fought, for example by establishing mechanisms of the social control of public projects and administration, introducing salary limits for functionaries, and legally anchoring radical democratic forms of participation.
- The privatization of basic social services and the policy of forced evictions have to be stopped. No economic logic can justify the socialization of speculative losses and their being shifted onto the shoulders of the population.
- The repressive policy against social and independence movements has to be ended and the anti-democratic exceptional laws annulled.
- But most of all Spain needs a constitutional process similar to the process in Latin America. The 1978 constitution is (as is the monarchy established at the time) the result of an elite pact of Francoist, regionalist, social democratic and Eurocommunist party leaderships and thus the expression of a fundamental democratic deficit. It is true that this constitutional pact made possible an opening in Spain after forty years of dictatorship, but it impeded a real break with the power of Francoist elites in the state and economy. A constituent process – that is, not just a meeting of constitutional jurists and politicians but a fundamental social debate as the form of development of a new popular hegemony – could finally bring to a close the unfinished democratization process. In this the derecho a decidir (the right to decide), defended by both social as well as independence movements, could be given a key role as an instrument for the re-democratization of all social spheres.
But even apart from the question of individual cases of corruption IU's organizational structures stand in contradiction to the radical democratic ambitions emerging from society. The political practice of the CP and IU was always marked by the classical logic of representation in which priority is given to the strengthening of one's own organization and its electoral successes over social (self-empowerment) processes. The means to this change – the political organization – has become an end in itself, so that IU, like almost all parties belonging to the Party of the European Left, has become a self-referential electoral alliance. Even if thousands of party members are active in movements, the institutional logic dominates. Radical attempts at reorganization come too late.
Podemos has – up to now – been different: The organization is presently the instrument of a social process that is progressing too rapidly for the party to turn around the relation between the democratic revolt and the institutional form.
This of course does not mean that everything that happened in IU or was done by it in the last thirty years was wrong. Podemos will probably soon be confronted by many of the problems that characterize IU today. For example, how can a balance be found between the emerging political tendencies without internal organizational considerations determining the politics of the organization. But this is probably the central insight of the political process in Spain today: The intervention of the organized left was not at all irrelevant; without the experience of left activists, the 15M Movement would have fallen apart sooner, the PAH never have emerged, and Podemos would probably have been a diffuse liberal internet party like Germany's Pirates. However, a social process is sweeping aside even the organizational forms of the left. The revolutionary-democratic awakening, longed for by a part of Spanish society, cannot be articulated through the bureaucratic corset of the IU. How long Podemos remains the appropriate space for this is to be seen. However, today Podemos is one of the spaces of the democratic revolution in Spain and probably the most important one. •
Raul Zelik is a freelance writer and currently a Fellow at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.
«
As i've been syaing for years on this forum psychiatry is a big con and is medicating people to shut them up as a way to save a corrupt and sick system
http://www.naturalnews.com/049767_Big_Pharma_antidepressants_suicides.html
[h=1]FDA colludes with Big Pharma to cover up deaths in psych drug trials[/h] Tuesday, May 19, 2015 by: J. D. Heyes
Does the habitual use of antidepressants do more harm than good to many patients? Absolutely, says one expert in a new British Medical Journal report. Moreover, he says that the federal Food and Drug Administration might even be hiding the truth about antidepressant lethality.
In his portion of the report, Peter C. Gotzsche, a professor at the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Denmark, said that nearly all psychotropic drug use could be ended today without deleterious effects, adding that such "drugs are responsible for the deaths of more than half a million people aged 65 and older each year in the Western world."
Gotzsche, author of the 2013 book Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Healthcare, further notes in the BMJ that "randomized trials that have been conducted do not properly evaluate the drugs' effects." He adds, "Almost all of them are biased because they included patients already taking another psychiatric drug."
[h=2]Hiding or fabricating data about harmful side effects[/h]The FDA's data is incomplete at best and intentionally skewed at worst, he insisted:
"Given their lack of benefit, I estimate we could stop almost all psychotropic drugs without causing harm - by dropping all antidepressants, ADHD drugs, and dementia drugs (as the small effects are probably the result of unblinding bias) and using only a fraction of the antipsychotics and benzodiazepines we currently use," Gotzsche wrote.
"This would lead to healthier and more long lived populations. Because psychotropic drugs are immensely harmful when used long-term, they should almost exclusively be used in acute situations and always with a firm plan for tapering off, which can be difficult for many patients," he added.
Gotzsche's views were disputed in the same BMJ piece by Allan Young, professor of mood disorders at King's College London, and psychiatric patient John Crace.
"More than a fifth of all health-related disability is caused by mental ill health, studies suggest, and people with poor mental health often have poor physical health and poorer (long-term) outcomes in both aspects of health," they wrote.
They also insisted that psychiatric drugs are "rigorously examined for efficacy and safety, before and after regulatory approval."
[h=2]Pushing kids to suicide[/h]However, as NaturalNews has documented over the years, the ill effects of these very drugs are apparent to anyone with an open mind. Here are just a few of those stories:
In 2011, we reported that the mainstream national psychiatric organizations colluded with Big Pharma to create what had grown to a $20-billion-a-year psychotropic drug empire, a push that began in earnest in 1987.
"The story that people with mental disorders have known chemical imbalances, that's a lie. We don't know that at all. It's just something that they say to help sell the drugs and help sell the biological model of mental disorders," we quoted veteran investigative reporter and author of Mad in America, Robert Whitaker, as saying in an earlier interview.
In 2013, we reported on a study that suggested higher teen suicide rates were tied to an increase in the prescribing of psychotropic drugs.
The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association's Psychiatry, found that 1 in 25 teens attempts suicide in the U.S., and the suicide attempts were tied to the increased use of psychotropic drugs in many of those cases.
The same year, we also reported that a pair of additional studies found psychotropic drugs increased the risk of diabetes threefold and caused a 20-fold increase in attempted suicides.
"The diabetes study, conducted by researchers from the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, TN, between 1996 and 2007, focused on children and young adults between ages 6 and 24 who were enrolled in Tennessee's Medicaid program," we reported.
The second statistic came from an historic review, "Lifetime Suicide Rates in Treated Schizophrenia: and 1994-1998 Cohorts Compared." As the largest study ever to address suicide in schizophrenia patients, it reports disturbing facts about anti-psychotic drugs, which would be better termed "psychotic drugs."
In a chapter in his 2013 book, Gotzsche revealed how Big Pharma companies like GlaxoSmithKline covered up the harmful effects of their psychotropic and antidepressant medications, such as pushing teens into suicide with "happy pills."
Sources:
http://www.bmj.com
http://www.independent.co.uk
http://rt.com
http://www.arafmi.org
http://www.naturalnews.com
http://www.naturalnews.com/049767_Big_Pharma_antidepressants_suicides.html
[h=1]FDA colludes with Big Pharma to cover up deaths in psych drug trials[/h] Tuesday, May 19, 2015 by: J. D. Heyes
Does the habitual use of antidepressants do more harm than good to many patients? Absolutely, says one expert in a new British Medical Journal report. Moreover, he says that the federal Food and Drug Administration might even be hiding the truth about antidepressant lethality.
In his portion of the report, Peter C. Gotzsche, a professor at the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Denmark, said that nearly all psychotropic drug use could be ended today without deleterious effects, adding that such "drugs are responsible for the deaths of more than half a million people aged 65 and older each year in the Western world."
Gotzsche, author of the 2013 book Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Healthcare, further notes in the BMJ that "randomized trials that have been conducted do not properly evaluate the drugs' effects." He adds, "Almost all of them are biased because they included patients already taking another psychiatric drug."
[h=2]Hiding or fabricating data about harmful side effects[/h]The FDA's data is incomplete at best and intentionally skewed at worst, he insisted:
Under-reporting of deaths in industry funded trials is another major flaw. Based on some of the randomised trials that were included in a meta-analysis of 100,000 patients by the US Food and Drug Administration, I have estimated that there are likely to have been 15 times more suicides among people taking antidepressants than reported by the FDA - for example, there were 14 suicides in 9,956 patients in trials with fluoxetine and paroxetine, whereas the FDA had only five suicides in 52,960 patients, partly because the FDA only included events up to 24 hours after patients stopped taking the drug.
He said that he was most concerned about three classes of drugs: antipsychotics, benzodiazepines and antidepressants, saying they are responsible for 3,693 deaths a year in Denmark alone. When scaling up that figure in relation to the U.S. and European Union together, he estimated that 539,000 people die every year because of the medications.
"Given their lack of benefit, I estimate we could stop almost all psychotropic drugs without causing harm - by dropping all antidepressants, ADHD drugs, and dementia drugs (as the small effects are probably the result of unblinding bias) and using only a fraction of the antipsychotics and benzodiazepines we currently use," Gotzsche wrote.
"This would lead to healthier and more long lived populations. Because psychotropic drugs are immensely harmful when used long-term, they should almost exclusively be used in acute situations and always with a firm plan for tapering off, which can be difficult for many patients," he added.
Gotzsche's views were disputed in the same BMJ piece by Allan Young, professor of mood disorders at King's College London, and psychiatric patient John Crace.
"More than a fifth of all health-related disability is caused by mental ill health, studies suggest, and people with poor mental health often have poor physical health and poorer (long-term) outcomes in both aspects of health," they wrote.
They also insisted that psychiatric drugs are "rigorously examined for efficacy and safety, before and after regulatory approval."
[h=2]Pushing kids to suicide[/h]However, as NaturalNews has documented over the years, the ill effects of these very drugs are apparent to anyone with an open mind. Here are just a few of those stories:
In 2011, we reported that the mainstream national psychiatric organizations colluded with Big Pharma to create what had grown to a $20-billion-a-year psychotropic drug empire, a push that began in earnest in 1987.
"The story that people with mental disorders have known chemical imbalances, that's a lie. We don't know that at all. It's just something that they say to help sell the drugs and help sell the biological model of mental disorders," we quoted veteran investigative reporter and author of Mad in America, Robert Whitaker, as saying in an earlier interview.
In 2013, we reported on a study that suggested higher teen suicide rates were tied to an increase in the prescribing of psychotropic drugs.
The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association's Psychiatry, found that 1 in 25 teens attempts suicide in the U.S., and the suicide attempts were tied to the increased use of psychotropic drugs in many of those cases.
The same year, we also reported that a pair of additional studies found psychotropic drugs increased the risk of diabetes threefold and caused a 20-fold increase in attempted suicides.
"The diabetes study, conducted by researchers from the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, TN, between 1996 and 2007, focused on children and young adults between ages 6 and 24 who were enrolled in Tennessee's Medicaid program," we reported.
The second statistic came from an historic review, "Lifetime Suicide Rates in Treated Schizophrenia: and 1994-1998 Cohorts Compared." As the largest study ever to address suicide in schizophrenia patients, it reports disturbing facts about anti-psychotic drugs, which would be better termed "psychotic drugs."
In a chapter in his 2013 book, Gotzsche revealed how Big Pharma companies like GlaxoSmithKline covered up the harmful effects of their psychotropic and antidepressant medications, such as pushing teens into suicide with "happy pills."
Sources:
http://www.bmj.com
http://www.independent.co.uk
http://rt.com
http://www.arafmi.org
http://www.naturalnews.com
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/it...kes-a-bold-step-tells-the-truth-about-the-tpp
[h=2]Senator Reads the TPP and Exposes Its Contents; Other Elected Officials Should Do the Same[/h] Monday, 18 May 2015 00:00 By Kevin Zeese, Popular Resistance | Op-Ed
Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) is one of the few members of Congress who has taken the time to jump through the hoops and read the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). But, he has gone a step farther than other members - he told members of Congress what he read. He told the truth about what the TPP says and why Congress should oppose it in a five page letter to his colleagues. Sessions' action flies in the face of the threats made by the US Trade Representative to prosecute elected officials who tell people what is in the trade agreement. Others should follow his example and get out the truth about the TPP.
The debate in the Senate begins on Tuesday, May 19. This is an opportunity for Senators to tell their colleagues the truth about what is in the TPP. Sessions' "Dear Colleague" letter was leaked and reported in Breitbart. Senators from both parties may want to take a similar approach. Even better, during the debate on the Senate floor there will be an opportunity for amendments that expose problems with the TPP. Senators can tell their colleagues and, through C-SPAN, their constituents the truth about what is in the TPP.
How Senator Sessions Exposed the Truth About TPP
Breitbart has written two articles on Sessions' revelations. In "Critical Alert: Jeff Sessions Warns America Against Potentially Disastrous Obama Trade Deal," they report:
"'Congress has the responsibility to ensure that any international trade agreement entered into by the United States must serve the national interest, not merely the interests of those crafting the proposal in secret,' Sessions' team writes in a document that lays out the top five concerns with the Obama trade deal. 'It must improve the quality of life, the earnings, and the per-capita wealth of everyday working Americans. The sustained long-term loss of middle class jobs and incomes should compel all lawmakers to apply added scrutiny to a 'fast-track' procedure wherein Congress would yield its legislative powers and allow the White House to implement one of largest global financial agreements in our history - comprising at least 12 nations and nearly 40 percent of the world's GDP.' . . .
"The Sessions document then goes point-by-point for five full pages through the TPA trade deal, laying out why it wouldn't help Americans - rather, it would likely hurt American workers - and why the deal doesn't in fact provide Congress with more power over trade despite talking points from the Obama trade deal's proponents . . ."
The second article in Breitbart, "Only Two Republicans Admit They Have Actually Read Secret Obama Trade Deal - Both Unsupportive" reports on a survey they did of Senate Republicans where they asked three questions: (1) Have you read the TPP, specifically the 'living agreement' in the trade deal that allows the deal to be changed and countries added without congressional review? (2) Does the Senator agree with Sen. Sessions' call to make the TPP available to the public? And, (3) Will the Senator vote for fast track Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) if the TPP hasn't been stripped of the 'living agreement' section that would allow countries to amend the deal without Congressional approval, and to even add countries (like China, if they wanted to) to the deal without Congressional approval?
Breitbart reports that one additional Senator, James Lankford (R-OK) was scheduled to read the TPP on Friday, May 16. Interestingly, the Oklahoma legislature recently passed a resolution urging their federal representatives to vote against fast track trade authority.
While the US Trade Representative has threatened members of Congress with criminal prosecution for telling others what is in the TPP, they have made no threat to Senator Sessions. No doubt if they did so, fast track and the TPP would be dead because the years of work by the Obama administration to move this forward in secret would be over, and as the first trade representative in the Obama administration, Ambassador Ron Kirk, told the media "if the American people knew what was in this agreement it would never become law."
The Truth About Trade Is Needed Right Now
We are in the critical phase of debate about the Trans-Pacific Partnership and other rigged corporate trade agreements. While Speaker of the House, John Boehner (R-OH) has promised to publish all bills before they are voted on, he has not even read the TPP and definitely has not required it be made public. While the fast track bill can be read, the TPP is different; elected officials have limited access to it and they are not allowed to discuss what they read. So, the Congress is tying its hands on the TPP and other deals, without knowing what is in them and thereby shirking their constitutional responsibility under the Commerce Clause which directs Congress "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations."
Now, it becomes even more important because President Obama has repeatedly chided members of Congress for being inaccurate about what is in the TPP, even comparing Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) to Sarah Palin talking about death panels. He makes the claim that Congress does not know what it is talking about while keeping the agreement secret and difficult for elected officials and their staff to read. On top of that Obama and his administration consistently put out false and misleading statements about the agreement. One wonders, and I hope the media begins to ask him, whether President Obama has read the agreement? As Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) said in response: "We know exactly what we're talking about. My concern is that he does not understand what's in it."
Obama criticized Warren for claiming that the TPP would undermine federal regulation of banks. If the language of the TPP were released we could see if he is accurate. But, after their argument on this issue, Canadian Finance Minister, Joe Oliver, bolstered Warren's position by claiming that banking regulation that requires banks to invest with only their own money violates NAFTA.
The president has claimed that his deals are the most progressive trade agreements ever and fix the problems of NAFTA "by making labor and environmental provisions actually enforceable." Yet, a leak of the environmental chapter actually shows the opposite - there is no environmental enforcement and the protections are weaker than agreements during the George W. Bush era.
The president also makes the claim that "no trade agreement is going to force us to change our laws." This is an outrageous claim because all previous trade agreements have required the US to harmonize its laws with the agreement. How can they not? The TPP, according to leaks, changes laws around patents and trademarks. How can the TPP say one thing about intellectual property and US law say another? They must be harmonized. Elected officials who have read the text can explain differences between US law and the TPP - what laws will have to change? For example will popular laws favoring buying American products survive the TPP? The Finance Committee refused to approve an amendment that would protect Buy America.
Certainly President Obama knows that his Organizing For America is being completely misleading when in an email: "argued that the term 'fast track' for TPA was a misnomer because TPA would have to go through Congress like any other bill." OFA and Obama know the debate is not whether fast track has to go through Congress in the normal fashion but whether trade agreements will be fast tracked. Why would the president and OFA be so obviously misleading? Are they desperate?
Ralph Nader has suggested that President Obama debate Senator Warren on the TPP. This would be one way to get to the truth, hear both sides debate in public so we can all decide for ourselves whether this is an agreement that should be fast tracked through Congress outside of the traditional congressional process. But a president that has worked for his entire tenure in office to keep the TPP and other rigged agreements out of the public dialogue will certainly not take up this suggestion.
Congress Is in Position to Expose the TPP
Now, at this key moment in the debate, members of Congress who have taken the time to view the TPP are in a position to get out the truth.
The debate in the Senate with its open amendment process is an opportunity to tell the truth about all the issues in the TPP so there can finally be a public debate about trade agreements that will impact every aspect of our lives.
In the House, Republicans should be sharing the comments of Senator Sessions for a solid Republican critique of fast track for the TPP and other agreements. Democrats should be highlighting key senate amendments to their caucus to highlight shortcomings. And those who have read the TPP should share what they learned in order to strengthen opposition to fast track in the face of what will be a massive Obama effort to change their minds.
Those who oppose the TPP have the tools needed to win this debate, stop fast track and stop the TPP and other rigged agreements. If we succeed, we will have the opportunity to rethink global trade in light of two decades of experience with a failed model. It will be an opportunity to develop trade so that it protects the planet and raises the standard of living for people around the world. To achieve that opportunity, the first task is to expose the truth of what is before us.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
[h=2]Kevin Zeese[/h] Kevin Zeese is an organizer with Popular Resistance. Popular Resistance is our primary project, Its Our Economy, Creative Resistance and our radio show are all projects of Popular Resistance. Zeese is also an attorney who has been a political activist since graduating from George Washington Law School in 1980. He works on peace, economic justice, criminal law reform and reviving American democracy. His twitter is @KBZeese.
[h=3]Related Stories[/h]TPP Would Deepen Income DivideBy Roger Bybee, TripleCrisis | Report
TPP's Threat to Buy American Act Adds More Congressional OppositionBy Staff, Communications Workers of America | Press Release
TPP Agreement Poses Threat of Internet CensorshipBy Staff, OpenMedia | Video
[h=2]Senator Reads the TPP and Exposes Its Contents; Other Elected Officials Should Do the Same[/h] Monday, 18 May 2015 00:00 By Kevin Zeese, Popular Resistance | Op-Ed
Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) is one of the few members of Congress who has taken the time to jump through the hoops and read the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). But, he has gone a step farther than other members - he told members of Congress what he read. He told the truth about what the TPP says and why Congress should oppose it in a five page letter to his colleagues. Sessions' action flies in the face of the threats made by the US Trade Representative to prosecute elected officials who tell people what is in the trade agreement. Others should follow his example and get out the truth about the TPP.
The debate in the Senate begins on Tuesday, May 19. This is an opportunity for Senators to tell their colleagues the truth about what is in the TPP. Sessions' "Dear Colleague" letter was leaked and reported in Breitbart. Senators from both parties may want to take a similar approach. Even better, during the debate on the Senate floor there will be an opportunity for amendments that expose problems with the TPP. Senators can tell their colleagues and, through C-SPAN, their constituents the truth about what is in the TPP.
How Senator Sessions Exposed the Truth About TPP
Breitbart has written two articles on Sessions' revelations. In "Critical Alert: Jeff Sessions Warns America Against Potentially Disastrous Obama Trade Deal," they report:
"'Congress has the responsibility to ensure that any international trade agreement entered into by the United States must serve the national interest, not merely the interests of those crafting the proposal in secret,' Sessions' team writes in a document that lays out the top five concerns with the Obama trade deal. 'It must improve the quality of life, the earnings, and the per-capita wealth of everyday working Americans. The sustained long-term loss of middle class jobs and incomes should compel all lawmakers to apply added scrutiny to a 'fast-track' procedure wherein Congress would yield its legislative powers and allow the White House to implement one of largest global financial agreements in our history - comprising at least 12 nations and nearly 40 percent of the world's GDP.' . . .
"The Sessions document then goes point-by-point for five full pages through the TPA trade deal, laying out why it wouldn't help Americans - rather, it would likely hurt American workers - and why the deal doesn't in fact provide Congress with more power over trade despite talking points from the Obama trade deal's proponents . . ."
The second article in Breitbart, "Only Two Republicans Admit They Have Actually Read Secret Obama Trade Deal - Both Unsupportive" reports on a survey they did of Senate Republicans where they asked three questions: (1) Have you read the TPP, specifically the 'living agreement' in the trade deal that allows the deal to be changed and countries added without congressional review? (2) Does the Senator agree with Sen. Sessions' call to make the TPP available to the public? And, (3) Will the Senator vote for fast track Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) if the TPP hasn't been stripped of the 'living agreement' section that would allow countries to amend the deal without Congressional approval, and to even add countries (like China, if they wanted to) to the deal without Congressional approval?
Breitbart reports that one additional Senator, James Lankford (R-OK) was scheduled to read the TPP on Friday, May 16. Interestingly, the Oklahoma legislature recently passed a resolution urging their federal representatives to vote against fast track trade authority.
While the US Trade Representative has threatened members of Congress with criminal prosecution for telling others what is in the TPP, they have made no threat to Senator Sessions. No doubt if they did so, fast track and the TPP would be dead because the years of work by the Obama administration to move this forward in secret would be over, and as the first trade representative in the Obama administration, Ambassador Ron Kirk, told the media "if the American people knew what was in this agreement it would never become law."
The Truth About Trade Is Needed Right Now
We are in the critical phase of debate about the Trans-Pacific Partnership and other rigged corporate trade agreements. While Speaker of the House, John Boehner (R-OH) has promised to publish all bills before they are voted on, he has not even read the TPP and definitely has not required it be made public. While the fast track bill can be read, the TPP is different; elected officials have limited access to it and they are not allowed to discuss what they read. So, the Congress is tying its hands on the TPP and other deals, without knowing what is in them and thereby shirking their constitutional responsibility under the Commerce Clause which directs Congress "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations."
Now, it becomes even more important because President Obama has repeatedly chided members of Congress for being inaccurate about what is in the TPP, even comparing Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) to Sarah Palin talking about death panels. He makes the claim that Congress does not know what it is talking about while keeping the agreement secret and difficult for elected officials and their staff to read. On top of that Obama and his administration consistently put out false and misleading statements about the agreement. One wonders, and I hope the media begins to ask him, whether President Obama has read the agreement? As Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) said in response: "We know exactly what we're talking about. My concern is that he does not understand what's in it."
Obama criticized Warren for claiming that the TPP would undermine federal regulation of banks. If the language of the TPP were released we could see if he is accurate. But, after their argument on this issue, Canadian Finance Minister, Joe Oliver, bolstered Warren's position by claiming that banking regulation that requires banks to invest with only their own money violates NAFTA.
The president has claimed that his deals are the most progressive trade agreements ever and fix the problems of NAFTA "by making labor and environmental provisions actually enforceable." Yet, a leak of the environmental chapter actually shows the opposite - there is no environmental enforcement and the protections are weaker than agreements during the George W. Bush era.
The president also makes the claim that "no trade agreement is going to force us to change our laws." This is an outrageous claim because all previous trade agreements have required the US to harmonize its laws with the agreement. How can they not? The TPP, according to leaks, changes laws around patents and trademarks. How can the TPP say one thing about intellectual property and US law say another? They must be harmonized. Elected officials who have read the text can explain differences between US law and the TPP - what laws will have to change? For example will popular laws favoring buying American products survive the TPP? The Finance Committee refused to approve an amendment that would protect Buy America.
Certainly President Obama knows that his Organizing For America is being completely misleading when in an email: "argued that the term 'fast track' for TPA was a misnomer because TPA would have to go through Congress like any other bill." OFA and Obama know the debate is not whether fast track has to go through Congress in the normal fashion but whether trade agreements will be fast tracked. Why would the president and OFA be so obviously misleading? Are they desperate?
Ralph Nader has suggested that President Obama debate Senator Warren on the TPP. This would be one way to get to the truth, hear both sides debate in public so we can all decide for ourselves whether this is an agreement that should be fast tracked through Congress outside of the traditional congressional process. But a president that has worked for his entire tenure in office to keep the TPP and other rigged agreements out of the public dialogue will certainly not take up this suggestion.
Congress Is in Position to Expose the TPP
Now, at this key moment in the debate, members of Congress who have taken the time to view the TPP are in a position to get out the truth.
The debate in the Senate with its open amendment process is an opportunity to tell the truth about all the issues in the TPP so there can finally be a public debate about trade agreements that will impact every aspect of our lives.
In the House, Republicans should be sharing the comments of Senator Sessions for a solid Republican critique of fast track for the TPP and other agreements. Democrats should be highlighting key senate amendments to their caucus to highlight shortcomings. And those who have read the TPP should share what they learned in order to strengthen opposition to fast track in the face of what will be a massive Obama effort to change their minds.
Those who oppose the TPP have the tools needed to win this debate, stop fast track and stop the TPP and other rigged agreements. If we succeed, we will have the opportunity to rethink global trade in light of two decades of experience with a failed model. It will be an opportunity to develop trade so that it protects the planet and raises the standard of living for people around the world. To achieve that opportunity, the first task is to expose the truth of what is before us.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
[h=2]Kevin Zeese[/h] Kevin Zeese is an organizer with Popular Resistance. Popular Resistance is our primary project, Its Our Economy, Creative Resistance and our radio show are all projects of Popular Resistance. Zeese is also an attorney who has been a political activist since graduating from George Washington Law School in 1980. He works on peace, economic justice, criminal law reform and reviving American democracy. His twitter is @KBZeese.
[h=3]Related Stories[/h]TPP Would Deepen Income DivideBy Roger Bybee, TripleCrisis | Report
TPP's Threat to Buy American Act Adds More Congressional OppositionBy Staff, Communications Workers of America | Press Release
TPP Agreement Poses Threat of Internet CensorshipBy Staff, OpenMedia | Video
If you are british and object to the corruption of the system and its lies you might consider not paying your BBC licence fee and also not listening to the BBC anymore
http://presstv.ir/Video/2015/05/18/411628/BBC-public-funds-propaganda
[h=3]BBC: UK public funding propaganda[/h]
Click on link above for video
http://presstv.ir/Video/2015/05/18/411628/BBC-public-funds-propaganda
[h=3]BBC: UK public funding propaganda[/h]
Click on link above for video