Obama Admin Downplays Malaysia Slavery To Grease Trade Deal

tay

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May 20, 2012
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Yes....the American thinker is finally thinking and even points to Bernie Sanders......


The 2016 candidates both in local races (for example, Paul Nehlen vs. Paul Ryan in Wisconsin) and our presidential race are always talking about the horrors of TPP. But the warnings fall on deaf ears because no one knows what TPP is.

What exactly is TPP (Obamatrade)? TPP is a massive, pro-corporate trade agreement among the United States and 11 other countries. So what's wrong with that? Isn't this free trade?

Well, TPP is labeled a trade agreement, but only a fifth actually deals with trade. Of TPP's 30 chapters, six deal with traditional trade issues.

That's one red flag. Another red flag is that TPP, like Obamacare, was negotiated in secret – no peeking, no sharing, no access. This is how our government replaced the greatest health care system in the world with a shoddy third-world version that is destroying our economy: in secret, away from the American people's prying eyes.

Another reason the government was able to push through Obamacare was the sheer size of the bill: 2,700 pages. Congress didn't read it; no one did. In fact, when Obamacare made it to the Supreme Court, the government lawyer suggested that the justices go through the 2,700-page bill to decide which parts were constitutional.

The late Justice Antonin Scalia asked, "What happened to the Eighth Amendment?" (The Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.) "And do you really expect the Court to do that? Or do you expect us to – to give this function to our law clerks? Is this not totally unrealistic? That we are going to go through this enormous bill item by item and decide each one

If our fearless leaders couldn't get through 2,700 pages, they're not going to tackle the 6,000-page TPP. So here we go again.

Or maybe we can stop it this time – block TPP. But first the people have to understand the bill, at least in part. The simplest explanation I've seen is a statement from Senator Bernie Sanders's site.

He breaks out TPP as follows:
This trade deal would make it easier for corporations to shut down more factories in the U.S. and ship more jobs to Vietnam and Malaysia where workers are paid pennies an hour. The TPP is a continuation of our disastrous trade policies that have devastated manufacturing cities and towns all over this country from Newton, Iowa, to Cleveland, Ohio. We need to rebuild the disappearing middle class, not tear it down.
Donald Trump has been trying to make this point, but the details are mind-numbing, and most don't understand the potential impact. Bernie's words make it easy. Instead of paying Americans a living wage to produce a product, the manufacturer will ship those jobs to countries where labor is damn near free. Corporate profits up, Americans jobs gone, donors taken care of.
The TPP would allow foreign corporations to sue federal, state and local governments in an international tribunal for passing an increase in the minimum wage or any other law that could hurt expected future profits.
You read it right: TPP lets the world sue our government. With all the frivolous lawsuits in America, imagine extending that privilege to an "international tribunal" and foreign corporations.
At a time when prescription drug prices are skyrocketing, the TPP would make a bad situation even worse by granting new monopoly rights to big pharmaceutical companies to deny access to lower cost generic drugs to millions of people.
This means that your heart, cancer, diabetic or other necessary medication that you're now getting for a fraction of the cost will skyrocket to the full price of the name-brand drug. Most of us can't even imagine the financial hit we will take on this little gem.
Finally, Bernie mentions some of the bad players in this agreement:
Outrageously, the proposed agreement includes violators of international human rights, like Brunei, where gays and single mothers can be stoned to death and Malaysia where tens of thousands of immigrant workers in the electronics industry are working as modern day slaves.
Do Americans care about this? Well, from Hillary Clinton's campaign, where she's taken millions (maybe billions) from countries with the same horrifying human rights records, maybe not. But if we keep ignoring these countries' abuses, if we strengthen their economies and make them a power in today's world, it will eventually come to our shores. The massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando is just a preview of coming attractions.
So in summary:

  1. 1. TPP will have you compete for jobs with countries paying pennies an hour for labor
  2. TPP will allow foreign corporations to sue federal, state, and local governments in an international tribunal for passing any law that could hurt their future profits.
  3. TPP will force you to pay hundreds of dollars for a name-brand drug where you now buy generic for a fraction of the price
  4. The United States will be in business with countries who execute single women and gays and who run sweat shops on steroids.
And that's just what we know. TPP, like Obamacare, will be the gift that keeps on giving. No one really knows what's in it, but guaranteed it's another Pandora's box. As more of the law leaks out, more of our freedoms and jobs will disappear.

But the saddest part of TPP and of Obamacare is that our government is not just too lazy to read these bills. They're not misinformed. They actually conspire now against the American people. The people have taken a back seat to the oligarchs and governments who have the cash.

I'm not a Sanders supporter, but Sanders at least made a valiant effort to expose Washington's corrupt underbelly. He tried to stop TPP before it finishes off America. But Bernie was up against massive power, the ruling elite, and he lost.

Donald Trump is up against those same powerful people and organizations, against the entire world in large part, because of TPP. These are rich corporations and foreign countries funneling cash into Congress, to the president, and to the Clintons. These are countries and corporations who want complete control over America, our resources, our products, our lives. TPP is a major step in that direction.

In fact, President Obama has threatened to pass TPP in a lame duck session even if Trump wins the election. He probably has the votes to do that – our Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, our House speaker, Paul Ryan, and hundreds of others on the take will come through just as they did for the Iran deal and the Omnibus.

This election really is a binary choice: Hillary Clinton, TPP, and tyranny or Donald Trump and a stake through TPP's heart, individual trade deals, and a powerful rejection of a global Big Brother. Bernie started the fight. It's up to we the people to finish it.

Read more: Articles: Understanding the Trans Pacific Partnership
 

Machjo

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Here is a way to correct abuse. American and other developed countries would be required
to pay nation of origin wages, benefits and obey all labor laws that would be in place at home.
In other words full medical, same hourly wage same retirement and safety laws and all
worksafe laws in the home country. All factories would be built to our standards at home as
well. This way the trade deals will deal with quality products and the same cost of production
would apply
No more cheap labor and I would bet most companies would stop shipping jobs overseas

And how would the government enforce its laws in abother jurisdiction?

If free trade is so controversial, why not start with free movement of people. That way, a Malaysian who goes to work in the US would still have to respect US labour laws. The US citizen in Malaysia Malaysian labour laws.

This would allow US companies in the US to hire the best talent which could benefit the tech sector and pay taxes to help US citizens who are unemployed get skills training.

US citizens with skills that are in demand in Malaysia but not the US could also relocate at will. Free cultural exchange to boot.

This would bring wages up on both sides. Then we could gradually drop tariffs.

I'd support just dropping the tariffs right away, but if much resistance, free movement could be a start.

Besides, if it's out of concern for the well-being of Malaysians and not just beggar my neighbour protectionism, then why not free movement?
 

Jinentonix

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Sep 6, 2015
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Isn't it funny how Michelle Obama is "reminded every day" that the White House was built by slaves (Black slaves only in her stupid little world apparently) while her douchebag husband (who has also whined about slavery in America) pushes a trade deal that will essentially globalize slavery.
So it would seem the O'Bummers are perfectly fine with slavery, as long as the slaves ain't Black.
 

tay

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May 20, 2012
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A secretive super-court system called ISDS is threatening to blow up President Barack Obama’s highest foreign policy priority.


Investor-state dispute settlement — an integral part of the TPP trade deal — allows companies to sue entire countries for costing them money when laws or regulations change. Cases are decided by extrajudicial tribunals composed of three corporate lawyers. Buzzfeed, in a multi-part investigation launched Sunday, called it “the court that rules the world.

Although the ISDS process has existed for years, TPP would drastically expand it. The most common criticisms of the system are that it’s secret, that it’s dominated by unaccountable big-firm lawyers, and that global corporations use it to change sovereign laws and undermine regulations. That’s all true.

But here’s what most of the coverage and the critics are missing.

The ISDS system ― which is now written into over 3,000 international trade treaties, including NAFTA ― was designed to solve a specific problem. When corporations invest abroad, they fear that their factories might be nationalized or their products expropriated by governments that also control the local courts. ISDS is meant to give companies confidence that if a country seizes their accounts or factories, they’ll have a fair, neutral place to appeal.

But instead of helping companies resolve legitimate disputes over seized assets, ISDS has increasingly become a way for rich investors to make money by speculating on lawsuits, winning huge awards and forcing taxpayers to foot the bill.

Here’s how it works: Wealthy financiers with idle cash have purchased companies that are well placed to bring an ISDS claim, seemingly for the sole purpose of using that claim to make a buck. Sometimes, they set up shell corporations to create the plaintiffs to bring ISDS cases. And some hedge funds and private equity firms bankroll ISDS cases as third parties.

It’s the same playbook that hedge funds were following when they bought up Argentine, Puerto Rican and other U.S. housing debt for pennies on the dollar. As The Huffington Post reported in May, the financiers were betting they could use lawsuits and lobbying to influence the political system in favor of the creditors like them and reap huge rewards.

Indeed, the damage of ISDS goes far beyond the money that investors manage to extract from public coffers and extends to the corruption of a political system by investors who buy off scholars, economists and politicians in pursuit of whatever policy outcome leads to a payoff.

If these investors are able to cement ISDS as part of the TPP, the opportunities for hedge funds to do what they’ve already done to Argentina will be endless ― possibly even in cities and states under financial pressure in the U.S., like Detroit and Illinois.

So-called third-party funding of “international arbitration against foreign sovereigns” has been expanding quickly, according to Selvyn Seidel, a pioneer in the litigation finance industry and now CEO of the advisory firm Fulbrook Capital Management.

“You can get an award for billions of dollars when that award would never come out in domestic law,” said Gus van Harten, a professor at Osgoode Hall Law School at York University in Toronto. “It’s just a jackpot for speculators.”

Here’s an example. In 2008, the Spanish government, under pressure from the eurozone to cut its budget during the financial crisis, began to reverse generous subsidies for solar energy. Spain reduced support for solar in stages. It changed the definition of its main solar incentive program in 2008, reduced the subsidies through two measures in 2010, placed a moratorium on subsidies for new solar plants in 2011, and added further restrictions in 2013.

Renewable energy activists could only shout into the air. But a group of investors hatched a plan.

Between November 2011 and December 2013, 22 different companies sued Spain in seven different cases over the subsidy changes – not in Spanish courts, but using ISDS.

RREEF, an investment fund subsidiary of Germany’s Deutsche Bank, and Antin, a private equity firm owned by French bank BNP Paribas, purchased their Spanish solar-thermal power plants in 2011, three years after the country began to roll back subsidies. But when they went to ISDS, they claimed they had expected subsidies to continue — not to continue declining.

“It feels like they acquired [the solar plants] in order to sue,” said Lora Verheecke, a campaigner for Corporate Europe Observatory, a Brussels-based research organization. Those two cases are still pending; a tribunal order allowed the RREEF case to advance in June.

The facts suggest that these investment funds made their purchases based not on the potential success or failure of the business they bought, not out of a concern for climate change and its consequences, but with the expectation that the Spanish government would continue its subsidy rollback, allowing the funds to sue in a special court unavailable to Spanish citizens. ISDS represented the purpose of the investment ― or, to phrase another way, the use of ISDS was an asset-building strategy. Spain’s renewable energy subsidies have not been restored. Instead, a cash-strapped government is being forced to spend scarce resources defending a decision that was forced upon it.

Spain isn’t the only government defending these sorts of ISDS claims. Poštová Banka of the Czech Republic bought sovereign debt from Greece in early 2010, well after rating agencies had downgraded the nation’s bonds. Two years later, after European leaders forced a restructuring of all Greek government bonds, Poštová and its shareholder, Istrokapital of Cyprus, filed an ISDS claim, contending that the restructuring cost them millions.

Maybe Poštová bought the distressed bonds knowing that it could use arbitration as a fallback. Or maybe it bought the bonds with the intent to sue and gain a favorable return on its money through ISDS.

In several other cases, investors appeared to opportunistically purchase a company that had the ability to file an ISDS claim at exactly the right time.

In 2004, through one of its investment funds, the French bank Société Générale purchased a 50 percent stake in a public-private partnership to distribute electricity in the Dominican Republic. The purchase included intermediary companies from California, Delaware, Nevada and the Cayman Islands, and the corporate structure is nearly impossible to ascertain. Because of the complex structure, the listed purchase price was only $2 U.S. (SocGen explained to arbitrators that it also arranged a “deferred purchase fee”).

And the heart of the dispute ― the Dominican Republic’s alleged failure to pay negotiated compensation ― occurred years before SocGen made its purchase, according to the country, which argued SocGen was merely “buying a claim.”

Nonetheless, an ISDS tribunal ruled that “the principal objective of the transaction was the potential profitability of the investment.” It found that the Dominican Republic’s violations were ongoing and, through a settlement, awarded SocGen $26.5 million.

Since Greek and Roman times, the wealthy have placed bets on the outcomes of court cases. Under English common law, financing someone else’s lawsuit, known as champerty, was illegal. But the modern version of that, litigation finance ― which began in Australia in the 1960s ― has spread widely over the past two decades. Investors seeking higher returns on their savings have looked to courtrooms instead of stocks or bonds, agreeing to bankroll cases and taking a portion of the cash awards if they win.

Third-party funding shields corporations from the upfront costs of litigation, making it easier to sue. Since companies generally don’t have to disclose that they’ve received third-party funding for an ISDS case, and since international arbitration usually proceeds in comparative secrecy, pursuing a claim through ISDS can shield companies from the public criticism that accompanies challenging a law in regular courts. “You can actually ask for enormous amounts of money without anybody criticizing you,” said Verheecke of Corporate Europe Observatory.

With ISDS permitted under some 3,000 treaties, there are a huge number of opportunities to sue. And “unlike some other legal systems, the default remedy is a cash payment,” said Todd Tucker, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute with a decade of experience researching trade and investment policy. The awards are also uncapped, meaning they can be enormous. If a corporation sought damages on future profits in perpetuity and the arbitrators agreed, the sovereign would have no recourse. Dozens of cases have resulted in awards of over $100 million, according to a 2016 report from van Harten, the law professor.

Those possibilities have the ISDS claim-financing industry booming. Hedge funds, private equity firms and institutional investors are flocking to fund lawsuits as they would any other speculative asset, according to experts in the field. And the lack of transparency means that lawyers acting as arbitrators or advocates in one case could be unnamed investors in other cases, and nobody would ever know.

Defenders of ISDS argue that the outcome of any case is uncertain and that companies win only about one-quarter of the time. But that’s only the cases that have been publicly identified and it doesn’t include settlements, where the corporation can also extract a monetary award. If funding ISDS suits was really such a bad bet, the industry probably wouldn’t be expanding so quickly.

Fulbrook Capital Management’s primer on the litigation finance industry, updated this year, includes a section entitled “International, the name of the game.” It lists numerous big-city hubs for arbitration: London, New York, Paris, Toronto. About ISDS in particular, the primer reads, “Investment claims against Sovereigns are often subject to Treaty and, within the Treaty, subject to arbitration. This promotes investments. … While investors are known to shy away from financing claims in ‘third world’ courts, particularly claims against the host court’s sovereign, they view international arbitration in a far more favorable light.”

Between 2009 and 2015, rulings in 16 ISDS cases have noted the existence of third-party funding, according to a report from Jean-Christophe Honlet, a partner at the global law firm Dentons. But the scale of third-party funding for ISDS cases is probably significantly larger than that number suggests.

The International Council for Commercial Arbitration suggests that at least 60 percent of ISDS cases “enquired about (but not necessarily sought or obtained) third-party funding before their cases were lodged.” Just this month, Canadian gold mining company Rusoro won a $1.2 billion claim against Venezuela that was “third-party funded,” according to Global Arbitration Review.

Burford Capital, Bentham IMF and Gerchen Keller are among the biggest litigation finance firms, working closely with these investors and specialized law firms to pursue commercial claims. Burford has publicly stated that it has tested ISDS cases. While its chief marketing officer, Liz Bigham, would not reveal statistics on how many cases have been funded, she said via email, “Burford is a pioneer in the provision of arbitration finance and has been active in the field for well over a decade.” She added that “commercial claimants involved in international disputes — as well as the law firms that serve them — see the tremendous benefits of shifting the significant cost and risk of pursuing claims off their own balance sheets.”

British law firm Freshfields is an adviser to Burford, and they have worked together on arbitration claims. Vannin Capital, another litigation funder, recently hired two Freshfields lawyers. The powerhouse law firm is one of the top three for ISDS cases, according to Corporate Europe Observatory.

The financing firms provide clients with a full litigation package at the outset, complete with what treaties to exploit and which law firms to hire. They even recommend arbitrators.

Often, the best country for international investors to sue is one that’s already in trouble. When a country uses emergency economic measures to protect its citizens, investors can argue that those measures conflict with an existing trade treaty. The subsequent flood of lawsuits can further hurt the country’s credit ratings and raise the cost of capital, while undermining its ability to attract future investment.

No country has been sued more in ISDS tribunals than Argentina. Of the 696 ISDS cases in the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) database, at least 59 were brought against that one country. Since late 2001 and early 2002, when it defaulted on international debt and unpegged its currency from the U.S. dollar, Argentina has been forced to pay out $980 million in ISDS awards, in addition to the millions it spent to defend itself in arbitration.

Currently, some 60,000 bondholders are using ISDS to seek higher payouts on the value of Argentine debt. They claim they’re due $1 billion in lost profits because of the damaging effect of Argentine government policies.

Although bondholders are not traditional investors ― in the sense that they don’t actually build factories or sell services in a host country, they too have repeatedly used arbitration to get the highest returns on their debt purchases. UNCTAD has warned that if those holding bonds that have lost value can access the ISDS back door to sue countries for monetary damages, then no country could ever escape its debt.

Once a venue of last resort for corporations wronged in a foreign jurisdiction, ISDS is now a playground where investors with no connection to the initial investment can get rich. Even the arbitrators seem to be growing queasy at the prospect of investors using ISDS like a casino parlor. In a 2015 case against Turkmenistan, arbitrators ordered Muhammet Cap to disclose whether it had received third-party funding to bring the case and what the terms of any such funding were.

Giving financiers the ability to extract taxpayer dollars from around the globe transfers wealth upwards. It’s another way the rich get richer by accessing tools unavailable to most citizens. That has massive follow-on effects for economic and political power worldwide, including right here in the U.S.

Now, upcoming trade agreements would dramatically expand this system. Public Citizen estimates that 9,000 new companies would gain ISDS rights to sue the United States under TPP alone. That’s 9,000 new opportunities for financiers to reach down into state and local coffers, in addition to the federal government, to grab cash. TPP would also expand the “minimum standard of treatment” clause, which sets up the most flexible type of ISDS claim, to cover financial services companies, meaning almost any change in the expected future profits of a bank could be challenged. “TPP was a win for the banks on ISDS,” said van Harten, the law professor.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Investors could be forced to prove discrimination in national courts first before proceeding to arbitration.

Or national courts could exercise judicial review over ISDS awards. The largest ISDS award in history, $50 billion to a web of companies all owned by Russian oil magnate Mikhail Khodorovsky, was actually set aside by a Dutch court in April, the first time that has happened in a treaty-based ISDS case. Arbitrators — who generally come from a very small group of international corporate lawyers — could be made independent of the process, with set salaries, security of tenure and no financial ties to litigants. The definition of investor could be tightened, giving only companies that contribute to economic development the right to access ISDS.

But the easiest way to fix ISDS is to throw it out. Several countries, including India, Indonesia and Ecuador, have told their trade partners they’re considering terminating bilateral treaties because of ISDS. Some experts question whether the system is necessary even in the situations it was originally designed for.

“You’re usually talking about very rich investors that have the power to purchase insurance against these kind of political risks,” said Verheecke. “There’s no reason why it should be the taxpayer [who] pays.”
 

Danbones

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIBM0I_c_X4
Kim.com
it is so screwed...you have to hear it to get all....

The us charges you illegally in another country, takes all your money so you can't defend yourself, and in the process breakes a SLEW of laws which their Victim has not yet been shown to have done.

where are our amerishills today?
 

tay

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Malaysia passes child sex crimes law, does not ban child marriage


A Malaysian MP said girls as young as nine were "physically and spiritually" ready for marriage, as the Muslim-majority Southeast Asian country passed a law on sexual offences against children without criminalizing child marriage.

Shabudin Yahaya, a member of the Barisan Nasional coalition, made the comments in response to a proposal by an opposition member of parliament to amend the Sexual Offences Against Children bill to include a ban on child marriages.

The proposal was voted down by the majority of parliament.

"They reach puberty at the age of nine or 12. And at that time, their body is already akin to them being 18 years old. So physically and spiritually, it is not a barrier for the girl to marry," Shabudin said on Tuesday during a debate on the bill.

He also said there was "nothing wrong" with a rape victim marrying her rapist as she would then not face a "bleak future".

Shabudin's comments sparked outrage on social media, with some opposition politicians asking for him to be fired.

In a statement on Wednesday, Shabudin said his comments were taken out of context, and that marriage was not a "back door exit to legalize rape." He said he rejected the motion to ban child marriages as it was contrary to provisions in sharia law.

Under both civil law and Islamic law, girls and boys younger than 18 can be married. Civil law sets the minimum age of marriage at 18, but those above 16 can be married with the permission of their state's chief minister.

Under Islamic law, children younger than 16 can get married if the Shariah courts allow it.

The law passed on Tuesday makes no mention of child marriage.

It criminalizes "grooming" - touching and befriending children as a prelude to sexual abuse - and spells out penalties for making and possessing pornography involving those under 18. A special court will also be set up under the new law to deal with child sexual abuse cases more quickly.

The maximum penalty under the law is a jail term of up to 30 years and six strokes of the whip for making, possessing or distributing child pornography.

The new law comes into effect ten months after British pedophile Richard Huckle was found guilty of abusing up to 200 babies and children, mostly in Malaysia.

Reuters reported last year that most complaints of child sexual abuse in Malaysia do not lead to successful prosecutions, largely due to weaknesses in the criminal justice system.

Only 140 of the 12,987 cases of child sexual abuse reported to police between 2012 and July 2016 resulted in convictions.

"The law is more stringent now... but not enough," Teo Nie Ching, the opposition MP who proposed the ban child marriages, told Reuters.

She said offenders would use the absence of a ban on child marriages to get away with crimes as marital rape is not a crime in Malaysia.

There have been several cases over the years of rapists marrying theirs victim, including those under 18, to avoid prosecution.

Malaysia passes child sex crimes law, does not ban child marriage | Reuters