The Western Alliance
Is Crumbling: EU Is Abandoning U.S. on Overthrowing Assad By Eric Zuesse
The Western Alliance Is
Crumbling: EU Is Abandoning U.S. on Overthrowing Assad
By Eric Zuesse
In his guest column Eric
Zuesse reports that Washington’s world exploitation is encountering opposition.
An Iraqi parliamentarian tells Washington “to give up its hypocrisy.” France’s
Secretary of State for Foreign Trade rejects Washington’s Transatlantic Trade
and Investment Partnership as a device for placing US corporations in control
of France and outside of the reach of the laws of France. TTIP, the minister
correctly declares, eliminates the sovereignty of the participating countries.
The Western Alliance Is Crumbling: EU Is Abandoning
U.S. on Overthrowing Assad
Obama Cannot Defeat Assad without EU’s Help. EU Also
Rejects Obama’s TTIP & TISA Demands. Obama’s Presidential ‘Legacy’ Heads to
Failure
Global Research, October 03, 2015
A member of the Iraqi parliament has said:
The pressure on the Syrian regime, which is fighting
ISIS, must be lifted. They should not try to strengthen the feeble Free Syrian
Army [FSA]. There is no FSA. There is ISIS in Syria and Iraq. You cannot fight
ISIS in Iraq, yet support it in Syria. There is one war and one enemy. The U.S.
should give up its hypocrisy. People are not brainless.
The European publics oppose America’s bombings, which
have poured these refugees from American bombing, into Europe. European leaders
are starting to separate from alliance with the United States.
U.S. Senator John McCain, who, as a fanatical
Vietnam-war bomber-pilot, has always hated Russia even more than does U.S.
President Barack Obama (who got his
hatred from other sources),
is egging Obama on to war against Russia in Syria; he says, “We need to
have a no-fly zone,” where
we prohibit Russia’s planes from bombing areas that are controlled by
American-supported jihadists (which the U.S. government still euphemistically
calls “the Free Syrian Army”). Actually, as Agence France Press had reported on
12 September 2014,“Syrian rebels
and jihadists from the Islamic State have agreed a non-aggression pact for the
first time in a suburb of the capital Damascus, a monitoring group said on
Friday.”ISIS and FSA had
already been close; but now they were and are essentially one-and-the-same;
it’s just not been reported in the U.S. press. The U.S. Government’s
distinctions are thus entirely specious; Obama’s top goal in Syria is clearly
to replace Russia’s ally, Assad, not to defeat the Islamic
State (and the little that still remains of FSA). McCain just wants Obama to go
all the way, to nuclear war against Russia, to overthrow Assad. (Perhaps he
thinks Obama will ‘chicken out,’ and McCain will then criticize Obama for
‘abandoning the people of Syria,’ who have benefited so much from America’s
bombing that they’ve been fleeing Syria by the millions. McCain and other
Republicans are so “pro-life” — for zygotes anyway. When the
Iraqi parliamentarian said, “People aren’t brainless,” he wasn’t referring to
people like that.)
On October 1st, NPR presented
McCain saying, “I can
absolutely confirm to you that they [Russian air strikes] were strikes against
our Free Syrian Army or groups that have been armed and trained by the CIA
because we have communications with people there.” (Oh, a few of them still exist,
even after the’ve been absorbed into the Holy-War group? And the CIA is still
funding them? Really? Wow!)
U.S. pretends that overthrowing Assad would be for
‘democracy.’ But when the Qatari regime, which funds al-Nusra, hired a polling
firm in 2012 to survey Syrians, the finding was that 55% of Syrians
wanted him to remain as President. Then, as I reported on 18 September 2015, “Polls Show
Syrians Overwhelmingly Blame U.S. for ISIS,” and those recent polls were from a British firm
that has ties to Gallup. No question was asked then about whether Assad should
stay; but, clearly, support for him had strengthened considerably between 2012
and 2015, as the Syrian people now see with greater clarity than they possibly
could have before, that the U.S. regime is an enemy, not a friend, to them.
Obama’s, and the Republicans’, pretenses to favor democracy are blatantly
fraudulent.
That’s hardly the only ‘legacy’ issue for Obama — his
war against Russia, via overthrowing Gaddafi, then Yanukovych, and his still
trying to overthrow Assad — which is now forcing the break-up of the Western
Alliance, over the resulting refugee-crisis. An even bigger such conflict
within the Alliance concerns Obama’s proposed treaty with European states, the
TTIP, which would give international corporations rights to sue national
governments in non-appealable global private arbitration panels, the dictates
from which will stand above any member-nation’s laws. Elected government
officials will have no control over them. This supra-national mega-corporate
effort by Obama is also part of his similar effort in his proposed TPP treaty
with Asian nations, both of which are additionally aimed to isolate from
international trade not just Russia, but China, so as to leave America’s large
international corporations controlling virtually the entire world.
As things now stand regarding these ‘trade’ deals,
Obama will either need to eliminate some of his demands, or else the European
Commission won’t be able to muster enough of its members to support Obama’s
proposed treaty with the EU, the TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment
Partnership). Also, some key European nations might reject Obama’s proposed
treaty on regulations regarding financial and other services: TISA (Trade In
Services Agreement). All three of Obama’s proposed ‘trade’ deals, including the
TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) between the U.S. and Asian countries, are the
actual culmination of Obama’s Presidency, and they’re all about far more than
just trade and economics. The main proposed deal with Europe might now be dead.
On September 27th, France’s newspaper SouthWest featured an exclusive
interview with Matthias
Fekl, France’s Secretary of State for Foreign Trade, in which he said that
“France is considering all options, including outright termination of
negotiations” on the TTIP. He explained that, ever since the negotiations began
in 2013, “These negotiations have been and are being conducted in a total lack
of transparency,” and that France has, as of yet, received “no serious offer
from the Americans.”
The reasons for this stunning public rejection had
probably already been accurately listed more than a year ago. After all, France
has, throughout all of the negotiations, received “no serious offer from the
Americans”; not now, and not back at the start of the negotiations in 2013. The
U.S. has been steadfast. Jean Arthuis, a member of the
European Parliament, and
formerly France’s Minister of Economy and Finance, headlined in Le
Figaro, on 10 April 2014, “7 good
reasons to oppose the transatlantic treaty”. There is no indication that the situation has
changed since then, as regards the basic demands that President Obama is
making. Arthuis said at that time:
First,
I am opposed to private arbitration of disputes between States and businesses.
[It would place corporate arbitrators above any nation’s laws and enable them
to make unappealable decisions whenever a corporation sues a nation for alleged
damages for alleged violations of its rights by that nation of the
trade-treaty.] Such a procedure is strictly contrary to the idea that I have of
the sovereignty of States. …
Secondly,
I am opposed to any questioning of the European system of appellations of
origin. Tomorrow, according to the US proposal, there would be a non-binding
register, and only for wines and spirits. Such a reform would kill many
European local products, whose value is based on their certified origin.
Thirdly,
I am opposed to the signing of an agreement with a power that legalizes
widespread and systematic spying on my fellow European citizens and European
businesses. Edward Snowden’s revelations are instructive in this regard. As
long as the agreement does not protect the personal data of European and US
citizens, it cannot be signed.
Fourth,
the United States proposes a transatlantic common financial space, but they
adamantly refuse a common regulation of finance, and they refuse to abolish
systematic discrimination by the US financial markets against European
financial services. They want to have their cake and eat it too: I object to
the idea of a common area without common rules, and I reject commercial
discrimination.
Fifth,
I object to the questioning of European health protections. Washington must
understand once and for all that notwithstanding its insistence, we do not want
our plates or animals treated with growth hormones nor products derived from
GMOs, or chemical decontamination of meat, or of genetically modified seeds or
non-therapeutic antibiotics in animal feed.
Sixth,
I object to the signing of an agreement if it does not include the end of the
US monetary dumping. Since the abolition of the gold convertibility of the
dollar and the transition to the system of floating exchange rates, the dollar
is both American national currency and the main unit for exchange reserves in
the world. The Federal Reserve then continually practices monetary dumping, by
influencing the amount of dollars available to facilitate exports from the
United States. China proposes to eliminate this unfair advantage by making
“special drawing rights” of the IMF the new global reference currency. But as
things now stand, America’s monetary weapon has the same effect as customs duties
against every other nation. [And he will not sign unless it’s removed.]
Seventh,
beyond the audiovisual sector alone, which is the current standard of
government that serves as a loincloth to its cowardice on all other European
interests in these negotiations, I want all the cultural exceptions prohibited.
In particular, it is unacceptable to allow the emerging digital services in
Europe to be swept up by US giants such as Google, Amazon or Netflix. They’re
giant absolute masters in tax optimization, which make Europe a “digital
colony.”
President Obama’s negotiator is his close personal
friend, Michael Froman, a man who is even trying to
force Europe to reduce its fuel standards against global warming and whose
back-room actions run exactly contrary to Obama’s public rhetoric. Froman and Obama have been buddies since
they worked together as editors on Harvard Law Review. He knows what Obama’s real goals are. Also: “Froman
introduced Mr. Obama to Robert E. Rubin, the former Treasury secretary,” who had brought into the Clinton Administration
Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers, and had championed (along with them) the
ending of the regulations on banks that the previous Democratic President,
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, had put into place. (President Bill Clinton signed
that legislation just as he left office, and this enabled the long process to
occur with MBS securities and with financial derivatives, which culminated with
the 2008 crash, and this same legislation also enabled the mega-banks to get
bailed out by U.S. taxpayers for their crash — on exactly the basis that FDR
had outlawed.)
Froman has always been a pro-mega-corporate,
pro-mega-bank champion, who favors only regulations which benefit America’s
super-rich, no regulations which benefit the public. Froman’s introducing the
Wall Street king Robert Rubin to the then-Senator Obama was crucial to Obama’s
becoming enabled to win the U.S. Presidency; Robert Rubin’s contacts among the
super-rich were essential in order for that — Obama’s getting a real chance to
win the Presidency — to happen. It enabled Obama to compete effectively against
Hillary Clinton. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to do that. His winning
Robert Rubin’s support was crucial to his becoming President.
The chances, that President Obama will now be able to
get the support from any entity but the U.S. Congress for his proposed TTIP
treaty with Europe, are reducing by the day. Europe seems to be less corrupt
than is the United States, after all.
The only
independent economic analysis that has been done of the proposed TTIP finds that the only beneficiaries from it will
be large international corporations, especially ones that are based in the
United States. Workers, consumers, and everybody else, will lose from it, if it
passes into law. Apparently, enough European officials care about that, so as
to be able to block the deal. Or else: Obama will cede on all seven of the
grounds for Europe’s saying no. At this late date, that seems extremely
unlikely.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.