5 thoughts on “Our Allies”

1. Tying the dawdling speed of agreements like the TPP to the Obama administrations relationship with Israel is a bit of a stretch, NZ and others in this region have been after FTA’s with the US for decades.

   1. A huge stretch. Most of our allies look at the intensity of our support of Israel with bewilderment. Countries like Australia and New Zealand, for example, vote against Israel at the U.N. far more than we do. The idea that they’d find Obama insufficiently pro-Israel is nonsense. Rightists don’t like Obama’s stance towards Israel, so at this point they’re ready to blame it for anything and everything.

      This president treats enemies like allies, and allies like enemies.

      Or, as the National Review put it, it’s an administration that “favors our enemies and slights our allies.” Oh wait, that was about the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, negotiated by LBJ. The same charge was leveled by the right against Nixon and Reagan and Bush 41; it’s evergreen and content-free.

      1. The article is from the economist and was as much about Japan and Singapore no longer trusting the U.S. But I understand your desire to deflect from the abysmal foreign policy of Obama. You probably think Yemen is still a success.

2. I have been told that the TPP agreement also includes regulation of the Internet. Sounds like another excuse for tyranny.

3. I think they’re more worried about the political fallout from Wikileaks making the negotiations public. I think we should be glad that TPP is taking a really long time. I gather the impetus for much of these secret negotiations was due to Bush, but it’s an obvious anti-democratic and unconstitutional tool which when combined with the US President’s ability to enter into “executive agreements” is a pretty dangerous thing.

   The statement coincides with the release of two more documents from Wikileaks which reveal just how far apart the US is from the other nations involved in the treaty, with 19 points of disagreement in the area of intellectual property alone. One of the documents speaks of “great pressure” being applied by the US.

   Australia in particular is standing firm, objecting to the US’ proposals for copyright protection, parallel importation proposals and criminalization of copyright infringement. It’s also opposed to a measure supported by all the other nations involved to limit the liability of ISPs for copyright infringement by their users. Japan, too – which only joined the talks in March – has vowed to protect its agricultural markets, which the US wishes to see opened up.

   But the TPP is causing increasing disquiet in the US, as well as around the world. Over the weekend, campaign group Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) revealed that Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz of the Columbia University School of Business has written to the negotiators, calling on them to resist a tranche of measures that he says would weaken the 2001 Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health.

   These include extending patent terms and lowering the threshold for patentability of medicines, making surgical procedures patentable and mandating monopolies of 12 years on test data for biologic drugs. He also objects to the granting of compulsory licenses on patents, increasing damages for patent and copyright infringement, placing lower limits on injunctions, narrowing copyright exceptions and extending copyright protection to life plus 70 years.

   “The TPP proposes to freeze into a binding trade agreement many of the worst features of the worst laws in the TPP countries, making needed reforms extremely difficult if not impossible,” he writes.

   Sure, I think think US allies have fair reason to be worried about betrayal by the US after Obama’s actions, but there’s more going on here than just that.

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