We can share the women.
We can share the wine.
We'll just share what we got of yours,
'Cause you won't get none of mine.
~~ with apologies to The Grateful Dead
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On 7/6/2020, magiamma posted, in part:
New NAFTA Trade Deal Deepens Oil and Gas Dependency During Climate Crisis
https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/06/30/nafta-usmca-trade-deal-oil-gas-cli...
Reading between the lines of the 2,000-plus page deal, environmentalists say it is bad news for North America’s climate future. Far from addressing the crisis, the deal provides loopholes for oil, gas, and mining companies to operate across borders, and paves the way for U.S.companies to export even more fracked natural gas across the border into Mexico.
The United States Trade Representative boasts that the USMCA assures the “free flow of energy” without tariffs, “streamlines” liquid natural gas (LNG) export to Canada and Mexico, and “facilitates” cross-border gas and oil pipelines.
That triggered this response from me:
Haven't looked at the desmogblog article, but no surprise with the analysis you present. If, as it seems, the petroleum based energy world is about to be priced out of the game, then it is obvious that TPTB will bust a gut to get costs down and barriers removed. "All of the above" Obama was pretty open at one point (when talking about Syria) that we won't abide anything that impedes or interferes with the free flow of resources. (explains Libya quite well too). Look at "resources" broadly and that explains our entire global economic and foreign policy, maximum exploitation through maximum exploitability, the US corporate-government symbiote as uber-parasite.
(I've now read the article, but not the treaty, but I'll bet that it anticipates the latest DAPL court decision and now makes it impossible for any state, county city or mere human to in any way block or impede gas and oil pipelines. From the article, it appears that even if it is somehow still legal for such a thing to happen, the Investor Dispute Settlement process is now aimed specifically at the energy sector and facilitatint prohibitively punitive suits to prevent not only pesky regulations, but even things like inspections.) No surprise, these so-called "free Trade" agreements and provisions, all the way back to the WTO have exited solely to exalt businesses, especially corporations, over governments and people.
Here's the deal
Obama, speaking of Syria, said something about the US being committed to ensuring the free flow of resources. He meant, in that instance, specifically petroleum products, Specifically, Syria had the immense gall to tell a foreign nation that it couldn't build a pipeline through Syria to deliver its products to either Turkey or the Med. Really! It's as if they thought that merely being a sovereign nation permitted them to assert dominion over their lands and thereby decrease somebody else's profits per million barrels by forcing them to use less cost effective delivery methds. Just after we had just overthrown Libya for having the gall to decide to sell its oil to whomever it wanted to as opposed to whomever NATO wanted them to, and then had the gall to suggest that maybe it would use a currency of its choosing instead of ours. Previously, under some Republican IIRC, though it could have been either party in office, we threatened India with reprisals, sanctions and "punishment" of some sort if it insisted on reserving some of its water for its people's use for such things as agriculture, drinking, hygiene, and maybe even industry and such instead of allowing one of our predatory corporations to extract, bottle, export and sell it all for its own benefit. Chile? Afghanistan? Iraq? Bolivia? Ecuador? Venezuela? When you look at it, all of our global history, politics and policies and the like has to do with resources. Not so much guaranteeing free flow as guaranteeing maximum access and exploitation by the global corporate parasites, especially those headquartered here. Resources like petroleum, water, guano, land, bauxite, timber, pharmaceutically useful plants, minerals, human labor, you name it. Hence the chain gang topic picture. They still exist, even in this country, though they are more likely to wear orange and to work at anything and everything, including fighting California wildfires long after they were supposed to be released, but it is abroad where they are most important to the US corporategovernment symbiote..
Digression?:
We got a bit hoist by our own petard as we ran out of pseudo-legitimate justifications for wars, invasions and governmental overthrows. We started using phony "human rights" concerns to justify coups, interventions, color revolutions and the like all while all those running the country were exploiting borderline slavery abroad, leading to push-back against our own corporations for things like "sweatshops", exploitation of child labor, and on and on. Boycott threats and declining "Brand Cachet" forced some of them to clean up their act in this regard a tiny bit, which violated the fundamental US corporate ethical maximum of "whatever will maximize profits". Bwahahaha. It's always nice when our Machiavellian shenanigans and propaganda bite us back. Lest any of us get too cocky, please remember that we are all mere labor assets and personnel resources, with no real value or meaning, and subject to exactly the same cost-benefit analysis as the young children sorting through toxic metal scrap heaps in Asia for us.
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It's an open thread, so have at it. The floor is yours
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Cross posted from caucus99percent.com