Bully Obama

If there's one thing that this whole saga with the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement has shown, it is that Obama is a bully. A bully in the hands of corporate US.

He came to power promising a new era, with high and mighty speeches and rhetoric that we all wanted to hear. In reality he's just the same as the rest of them; a US bully, somehow thinking that the rest of the world envys his country.

No we don't. From afar, clear across the Pacific in fact, we are appalled at the corporate creation that is now the US. We don't want our lives going in any way anywhere near the social disaster unfolding over there. We don't want the corporations controlling our lives, however special the US thinks it's broken system is. 

It's ironic that a country that considers itself the bastion of freedom to the world is trying to push corporate enslavement onto the world. We utterly reject the idea that corporate capitalism is in any way a legitimate and fair way for a country to function. In that sense, we reject the US notion that it's system is the best and that we should all adopt it, and the loony notion of US exceptionalism. The only thing good about the corporate rape of the US in the last 30 years is that it's become a shinning example of how not to be. Yet bully Obama is trying to shove the fuckin thing down our throats; a failed system where the pieces are so scattered it will take decades to pick them all up.

Yet Obama appears to think the US system is the only way to go, like an ideologue preaching to us mere non-Americans. Um, we also reject the notion that we should follow the US down the toilet.

There does appear to be a glimmer of hope however. There's so much opposition to so much of the TPP from us countries outside the US, that it's looking like it ain't gonna happen anytime soon:

“It is clear from the text obtained by WikiLeaks that the U.S. government is isolated and has lost this debate,” Maybarduk said. “Our partners don’t want to trade away their people’s health. Americans don’t want these measures either. Nevertheless, the Obama administration – on behalf of Big Pharma and big movie studios – now is trying to accomplish through pressure what it could not through persuasion.” 

“The WikiLeaks text also features Hollywood and recording industry-inspired proposals – think about the SOPA debacle – to limit Internet freedom and access to educational materials, to force Internet providers to act as copyright enforcers and to cut off people’s Internet access,” said Burcu Kilic, an intellectual property lawyer with Public Citizen. “These proposals are deeply unpopular worldwide and have led to a negotiation stalemate.” 

“Given how much text remains disputed, the negotiation will be very difficult to conclude,” said Maybarduk. “Much more forward-looking proposals have been advanced by the other parties, but unless the U.S drops its out-there-alone demands, there may be no deal at all.” more

I certainly hope not.