by: Nancy Spannaus
April 21—In his drive for fascist dictatorship and war, Adolf Hitler knew he had to remove any roadblock that could be raised by the parliament. Using the hoked-up Reichstag Fire fraud, Hitler rammed through his Enabling Act which permitted him, in the name of the “emergency,” to make the laws himself. Once that authority was ceded “temporarily,” the die was cast.
Barack Obama is taking a page from Hitler’s book with his current drive for “Fast Track” authority for his secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free-trade deal.What Obama wants to sign is no partnership, but yet another of his attempted direct attacks on the growing economy of China. Otherwise, the deal is being kept hidden, because it is also an attack on the United States economy and people.
Should he succeed in ramming through such Fast Track authority, Obama will be enabled to enact a largely classified, top-secret agreement on trade that will rip up U.S. laws and those of other sovereign nations in the interests of the fascist financiers dominating Wall Street. Fast Track means Congress will be sidelined, never seeing the deal until it’s done—and a major step will be taken toward British puppet Obama’s planned war in the Pacific—specifically, against China.
Put simply, “Fast Track” is Obama’s chosen path toward consolidation of a global Wall Street-City of London dictatorship, and toward World War III. To stop it, he must be removed constitutionally from power.
The TPP Monster Negotiations for the TPP have been going on among 12 nations bordering the Pacific Ocean for a number of years. According to Lori Wallach, Public Citizen Global Trade Watch director, the agreement has largely been drafted. It was the intent of the Obama Administration to ram through the legislation in 2014—until heavy opposition from the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate, including then-Majority Leader Harry Reid, led to it being pulled from the agenda.Democrats, labor unions, and many civic groups are not buying the Obama Administration’s argument that “this time” the free-trade deal will not lead to the outsourcing of millions of American jobs, as American workers are forced to “compete” with workers in countries, such as Vietnam, making 60 cents an hour.“It is a race to the bottom, a chasing of lower wages abroad,” charged Democratic Party Presidential pre candidate Martin O’Malley in an interview with NPR April 20. “And I am appalled by the notion that we’re not allowed, as Americans, to read this agreement before our so-called representative institution of the Congress votes on it.”Indeed, until Wikileaks provided the Investment Chapter of the agreement to the New York Times in early March, the opponents of the bill didn’t know the half of it. Again, the content of the TPP is being negotiated in secret.
Specifically, according to the text provided by Wikileaks, the TPP has 29 secret clauses, which are not to be revealed until four years after either the agreement is signed, or the negotiations fail! That means, of course, that, even if Congress got a chance to read and debate and vote on the bill, as the U.S. Constitution provides, the Members would be deprived of the content of a vast portion of the bill.
According to Wallach, only five of those secret provisions even deal with trade. The most notorious of them known at this time, is the one which establishes the Investor-State Dispute Resolution System, a “corporate tribunal” Richard Nixon, pulls Congress’s Constitutional author which would permit any foreign investor from a TPP country to drag the United States, or any other country, before an international tribunal of three corporate attorneys, who would determine if U.S. laws were violating the terms of the treaty. If these corporate attorneys so determined, the U.S. laws (for example, a restored Glass-Steagall Act) would be thrown out! There would be no appeal from the decision of this tribunal, which could override the laws (i.e., sovereignty) of any nation or state, for the benefit of the corporate interests involved.
Wallach, in an interview with CSPAN’s Washington Journal April 20, asserted that this provision would allow the enforcement of provisions that would override U.S. patent and copyright laws, undermine the negotiated prices for medications under Medicare and other government medical programs, and roll back those financial reforms that have been passed. Other protections for U.S. (or other national) workers could also be nullified, such as preferences for jobs to go to Americans.Taking Congress’s PowersEven though many of these provisions, permitting corporations to rip up legal protections for U.S. workers and industry, are being kept secret, Obama and his Wall Street backers are well aware that “free trade” does not sit well with the American population. Thus, the drive for Fast Track.The Fast Track law, first enacted under President ity over trade agreements, substituting Executive power. Congress basically gives the President the ability to negotiate the agreement—without any Congressional involvement—to write the implementing legislation, and then hand it over to the Congress for an up or down vote, within 90 days. Only 20 hours of debate are permitted under Fast Track authority; no amendments to the legislation are permitted.
In short, the President—acting on behalf of Wall Street—has dictatorial powers.It is for this reason that Democrats, in particular, are up in arms against Obama’s push to get Fast Track authority for the TPP. Only by relying on the Republicans in the Senate, was Obama able to get a bill drafted that will be heard in the Senate Finance Committee on April 23—a move the would-be dictator hopes will begin a rapid dash for passage in both Houses.
While House Democrats have been mobilizing intensively against the deal for months, recent statements from prominent Senate Democrats—such as New York’s Chuck Schumer—suggest that the drive for Fast Track may have problems in the Senate as well. “I don’t believe in these agreements anymore,” said Schumer on April 16. “I’ve changed.”
Although Schumer went on to say that he might eventually support the trade deal, if it passed along with legislation that would allow a crackdown on alleged currency manipulation, he seemed to be strongly against Fast Track. Pressure from within his own state is also growing, as shown by an attack on the Fast Track authority published April 19 in Politico by New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. The use of the new tribunals exposed by Wikileaks would “allow large multinational corporations to sue a signatory country for actions taken by its federal, state or local elected or appointed officials that the foreign corporation claims hurt its bottom line,” he said.Schneiderman warned members of Congress from New York to take note. “This should give pause to all members of Congress, who will soon be asked to vote on fast-track negotiating authority to close the agreement,” he said. “But it is particularly worrisome to those of us in states, such as New York, with robust laws that protect the public welfare.”
Free Trade =
New Auschwitzes
April 21—Barack Obama’s attempt to steamroll Congress into giving him Fast Track authority is another example of him following the trail of Bush Family fascism. George H.W. Bush devised the “free trade” pact called NAFTA in 1990—a pact finally pushed through in 1992—as a service to his Wall Street/City of London backers. The expanded TPP pact would do the same on a much larger scale.
Lyndon LaRouche denounced the NAFTA free-trade policy as intending to create an “Auschwitz below the border.” That it has done, not only by its sanctioning of slave-labor maquiladora operations, but by mandating the destruction of agriculture by phasing out tariffs. Mexico is now a nation desperate for the food it can no longer produce, bereft of modern infrastructure, unprotected from financial, drug, and corporate predators.Devastation has also been wreaked by NAFTA on the U.S. side of the border. The Economic Policy Institute estimates 700,000 jobs lost to runaway shops in Mexico, but even more widespread was the impact driving down wages and benefits in the United States, as employers used the threat of outsourcing to cow workers into submission.
Meanwhile, both the labor unions and a large contingent of Democratic Congressmen are rallying to stop the drive for Fast Track and the TPP. Two large rallies have been held in Washington over the last week, featuring spirited attacks from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and others. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has vowed that his organization will pull funding from any Congressman who supports the atrocity. The horrors brought on by NAFTA are a living reality to the now-decimated labor movement
War on China Beyond the assault on the general welfare of the American population and the U.S. Constitution, in the interests of Wall Street, Obama has another target in mind—China.
From the outset, the TPP was conceived as a means of economic warfare against China, which has been specifically excluded as a potential negotiating partner in the agreement. This contrasts sharply with the Chinese open-ended approach to trade deals, which won the support of the APEC nations last November over Obama’s TPP.
Obama’s hostile intent toward China—already evident in the militarization of the Pacific with the “Asia pivot”—was open for all to see in his State of the Union this year, when he declared that the U.S. would not let China “write the rules” for trade. In his current push to get Fast Track authority, he has reiterated that attack on China.But China’s approach, as evidenced by its recent long-term trade agreement with South Korea, focuses on the reciprocal lowering of trade barriers and supply bottlenecks over a long period, to actually increase trade and production in each nation. It does not involve granting multinational banks and corporations power over nations.Obama’s outlook not only directly contradicts the Chinese approach, but is part of the pattern of economic warfare that has characterized this Wall Street-owned President. As he did with his attempted sabotage of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Obama is determined to smash the process of global cooperation being carried out by the BRICS nations, a process in which China is playing the leading role.There is no negotiating with this President, who is in the pocket of Wall Street and the City. As long as he remains in power, no one is safe.
Posted By: Rhea Razon
