We are destroying our own country.

From Crooks and Liars
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Corporations Colonize Us With Trade Deals, Wall Street Wants In

After 237 years, we're becoming a colony again. Our nation's losing the right to self-determination it fought so hard to win, and it's happening on a scale unseen since the days of George III.

As is so often the case these days, this wholesale loss of our rights is being underwritten by corporate interests.

And, as usual, it's being called "bipartisan" - by corporations who "buy" both Republican and Democratic "partisans."

Terms of Surrender

Republicans cheered George W. Bush for saying, "I will never place U.S. troops under U.N. command." Democrats cheered Barack Obama for saying, "I want us to control our own energy destiny."

But both leaders pushed trade agreements that surrender our sovereign rights to faceless bureaucrats in international bodies - bodies that are dominated by multinational corporations.

Where are those cheering crowds now? Republicans backed a president who supported a agreements which put Americans' rights - and their environment - "under the command" of foreign bodies. And unless something changes Democratic voters will soon see their president give up even more control of our economic destiny.

WTO Stands For "We're Taking Over"

Public Citizen, which has been doing excellent work on this issue, reports on three U.S. laws that were nullified by the World Trade Organization (WTO): country-of-origin labels on meat, dolphin-safe labels on tuna, and the ban on sweet-flavored cigarettes designed to get kids addicted to the tobacco companies' carcinogenic products. (What's next: cherry-flavored crack?)

The WTO and the WTO "Appellate Body" - two bodies most Americans don't even know exist - overruled these laws in a preemptory manner that would have outraged the Continental Congress.

We didn't elect them. We can't communicate with them. But they've issued three decrees which we must obey:

1) We are not to know where the meat we're eating comes from.
2) We must accept the fact that we may unknowingly wind up eating the flesh of dolphins, arguably the most intelligent nonhuman species on the planet. And,
3) We must continue to allow the distribution of products designed to addict our children to a deadly and habit-forming substance.

How's that for "controlling our own destiny"

Our faux moral outrage is costing us.

Source...Boing-Boing

WTO gives Antigua the right to sell pirated American copyrighted goods
from Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow

The WTO agreement is supposed to guarantee level playing fields for its member states, allowing each to sell into the others' markets. But US law bans online gambling, which is the major export from Antigua. Antigua has been going back and forth with the USA in trade court since 2003, and now the WTO has agreed that the US has violated its treaty obligations. By way of reparations, the WTO has given Antigua permission to set up a kind of legal pirate market, where American copyrighted works can be sold without permission or royalties. The initial ruling came in 2007, and was affirmed on Monday. Antigua has announced plans for a site for downloading US software, music and movies.

    Antigua's Finance Minister Harold Lovell said in a comment that the U.S. left his Government no other option than to respond in this manner. Antigua's gambling industry was devastated by the unfair practices of the U.S. and years of negotiations have offered no compromise.

    "These aggressive efforts to shut down the remote gaming industry in Antigua has resulted in the loss of thousands of good paying jobs and seizure by the Americans of billions of dollars belonging to gaming operators and their customers in financial institutions across the world," Lowell says.

    "If the same type of actions, by another nation, caused the people and the economy of the United States to be so significantly impacted, Antigua would without hesitation support their pursuit of justice," the Finance minister adds.