It's the future of world trade, but it's being done in the worst possible way. Here's my feeling on trade:
The US (or any country) has a set of laws and standards for the goods and services sold within its borders and how the companies that produce them are to be run. If quality standards and wages can be lowered elsewhere for production and then the good produced brought here, we should absolutely reject them (or at least impose an appropriate tariff - my rubick? something like child labor earns a ban, not meeting a regulation earns a tariff). We decided that those things were good enough for our people, so why should we let the standards be dropped for someone else? People are people - if someone immigrated from another country where the standards were lowere came here, they'd be subject to our laws, not the laws of their native land. If I build a factory to produce vacuum cleaners in Vietnam without having to pitch in medical or retirement benefits for its workers, it gives me an extremely unfair competitive advantage. Unfair? Yes, it's unfair when you try to distort the natural order of things. So have someone do the math on the missing input costs and penalize imports at that rate. You will end up with two things - goods and services from low-standards countries stop coming in and/or the standards in those countries reach parity with yours. Either way, your domestic production is protected in an appropriate fashion.
TPP sucks because 1.) it's been negotiated in secret 2.) it's been designed to benefit the people who run the companies that negotiated it. In the US, despite what Kennedy said, we believe that the government exists to serve the needs of the people and, (again) despite what the Supreme Court ruled, companies are not people. TPP is fascist in the strictest sense of the word.
SYRIA
There is a lot of posturing by Russia and the US, but I think the same puppetmasters are holding their strings. Or at least I'm trying to reconcile this:
US and Russia in conflict over Ukraine.
US gets EU to impose sanctions on Russia, hurting it economically.
Russia gets financial help from the same central banking system that controls the US.
Without that financing, they wouldn't be able to oppose the US in Syria right now.
I know that, traditionally, the people who control the banking sector have made money by backing both sides in conflicts, but a full-scale war between the US and Russia would completely devastate the planet. The "doomsday scenario" Seed Vault in Alaska just had some of its inventory checked though, so maybe they're prepared for it.
The only wiggle room I can see is that Russia just took the money because it was available, not because they are beholden to central banking interests. Maybe the money was made available to prevent Russia from defaulting and ultimately costing the bankers money; maybe it was made available with the understanding that whatever result Russia achieved in Syria would ultimately line up with the bankers' interests. I see that as a possibility because China, India, and, to a lesser extent, Brazil, have been slowly but surely working with Russia to create a new international banking system for settling debts.
Russia may use its position in Syria to get a bigger role in negotiating world events, but really everything they're doing is for their own security. They just installed anti-aircraft defenses in the new bases in Syria despite the rebel/terrorist groups having zero air power. Likewise, US promised it wouldn't send troops to Syria and just deployed special forces. Maybe they will try to claim that their special forces defeated the real terrorists while Russia and Iran's efforts were ineffective. They're willing to say anything at this point.
SURVEILLANCE
God is dead. Long live Big Brother.
With the decline of the religion in the West, something has to replace the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful concept of God. Enter the surveillance state.
The idea is that the fear of being watched and the knowledge that your actions are recorded and can be used against you (or even fabricated if you do nothing explicitly wrong, because, let's be honest, who's going to audit that stuff to make sure none of it's tampered with? Who will watch those watchmen?) will be used to make sure you are a good little goy.
MIGRANT CRISIS
Hey, let's separate the religious crazies from the religious moderates. Crazies - those would would put a strain on the effort to control the population - will die fighting in the desert, the more cowed - those suitable as civilized wage slaves - will end up in Europe, the really pitiful - those would would present a strain on support - will stay and die without even fighting or die on the journey. Sounds like a good way to cull a herd if you ask me.
Europe will get stressed out from the sudden change and demand some kind of action. EU and UN will gladly step up and say "We'll save you, all we need is more control! These restraints are for your own good, it's so you don't hurt each other." They'll receive a hero's welcome. At least that's what the EU and UN will believe about themselves. Classic Hegelian dialectic: cause a problem, present a solution, reach a new state of balance.
Where do they ultimately want to go with all of this? Probably a smaller more manageable total world population. All of these things point to a single system planet, the new world order as they call it. It's inevitable pretty much - just a matter of who's going to be running it when the last brick is laid.
Ask me what I think about any of the other crazy shit going on.
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Drenki ago
TPP
It's the future of world trade, but it's being done in the worst possible way. Here's my feeling on trade:
The US (or any country) has a set of laws and standards for the goods and services sold within its borders and how the companies that produce them are to be run. If quality standards and wages can be lowered elsewhere for production and then the good produced brought here, we should absolutely reject them (or at least impose an appropriate tariff - my rubick? something like child labor earns a ban, not meeting a regulation earns a tariff). We decided that those things were good enough for our people, so why should we let the standards be dropped for someone else? People are people - if someone immigrated from another country where the standards were lowere came here, they'd be subject to our laws, not the laws of their native land. If I build a factory to produce vacuum cleaners in Vietnam without having to pitch in medical or retirement benefits for its workers, it gives me an extremely unfair competitive advantage. Unfair? Yes, it's unfair when you try to distort the natural order of things. So have someone do the math on the missing input costs and penalize imports at that rate. You will end up with two things - goods and services from low-standards countries stop coming in and/or the standards in those countries reach parity with yours. Either way, your domestic production is protected in an appropriate fashion.
TPP sucks because 1.) it's been negotiated in secret 2.) it's been designed to benefit the people who run the companies that negotiated it. In the US, despite what Kennedy said, we believe that the government exists to serve the needs of the people and, (again) despite what the Supreme Court ruled, companies are not people. TPP is fascist in the strictest sense of the word.
SYRIA
There is a lot of posturing by Russia and the US, but I think the same puppetmasters are holding their strings. Or at least I'm trying to reconcile this:
I know that, traditionally, the people who control the banking sector have made money by backing both sides in conflicts, but a full-scale war between the US and Russia would completely devastate the planet. The "doomsday scenario" Seed Vault in Alaska just had some of its inventory checked though, so maybe they're prepared for it.
The only wiggle room I can see is that Russia just took the money because it was available, not because they are beholden to central banking interests. Maybe the money was made available to prevent Russia from defaulting and ultimately costing the bankers money; maybe it was made available with the understanding that whatever result Russia achieved in Syria would ultimately line up with the bankers' interests. I see that as a possibility because China, India, and, to a lesser extent, Brazil, have been slowly but surely working with Russia to create a new international banking system for settling debts.
Russia may use its position in Syria to get a bigger role in negotiating world events, but really everything they're doing is for their own security. They just installed anti-aircraft defenses in the new bases in Syria despite the rebel/terrorist groups having zero air power. Likewise, US promised it wouldn't send troops to Syria and just deployed special forces. Maybe they will try to claim that their special forces defeated the real terrorists while Russia and Iran's efforts were ineffective. They're willing to say anything at this point.
SURVEILLANCE
God is dead. Long live Big Brother.
With the decline of the religion in the West, something has to replace the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful concept of God. Enter the surveillance state.
The idea is that the fear of being watched and the knowledge that your actions are recorded and can be used against you (or even fabricated if you do nothing explicitly wrong, because, let's be honest, who's going to audit that stuff to make sure none of it's tampered with? Who will watch those watchmen?) will be used to make sure you are a good little goy.
MIGRANT CRISIS
Hey, let's separate the religious crazies from the religious moderates. Crazies - those would would put a strain on the effort to control the population - will die fighting in the desert, the more cowed - those suitable as civilized wage slaves - will end up in Europe, the really pitiful - those would would present a strain on support - will stay and die without even fighting or die on the journey. Sounds like a good way to cull a herd if you ask me.
Europe will get stressed out from the sudden change and demand some kind of action. EU and UN will gladly step up and say "We'll save you, all we need is more control! These restraints are for your own good, it's so you don't hurt each other." They'll receive a hero's welcome. At least that's what the EU and UN will believe about themselves. Classic Hegelian dialectic: cause a problem, present a solution, reach a new state of balance.
Where do they ultimately want to go with all of this? Probably a smaller more manageable total world population. All of these things point to a single system planet, the new world order as they call it. It's inevitable pretty much - just a matter of who's going to be running it when the last brick is laid.
Ask me what I think about any of the other crazy shit going on.