I am just going to excerpt from Pepe after the background info If you have not read these posts you may want to: 1-Trigger a cold war to make it easier (for the US) to annex Europe 2- Ukraine: Regime Change & the IMF's Bitter Pill3-The New Great Game: Why the Ukraine matters to so many other nations4- Ukraine: Cargill acquires stake in UkrLand Farming/food control = people control Apparently China is not looking for the US to capitalize anymore then it has on it's domestic populace. Rather China is opting to build it's society up, on it's own. And is looking to Russia for assistance.Which is a much better option for two stronger nations. Pepe-
Not impressed is an understatement. One week off the grid, and the same sarabande of paranoia, frenetic pivoting and monochromatic exceptionalism. Yet, there it was, like a pearl at the bottom of the turquoise Mediterranean, buried in the info-avalanche: the definitive news of the week, perhaps the year, perhaps the decade.Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller had met with China National Petroleum Corporation chairman Zhou Jiping in Beijing on Wednesday. They were on their way to sign the 30-year, mega-contract deal to supply China with Siberian natural gas "as soon as possible". Probably on May 20, when Putin goes to Beijing.Now this is the genuine article. Pipelineistan meets the strategic partnership Russia-China, as solidified in the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, with the tantalizing prospect of pricing/payment bypassing the petrodollar, otherwise known as the "thermonuclear option". Ukraine, compared to this, is a mere sideshow.
Welcome to the Brussels rat-o-drome
It was on the road from the Mediterranean back to Arles via Aix-en-Provence that it hit me like an Obama drone. This whole trip was after all about the sublime chevre wrapped up in chestnut leaves in Banon, those "rose petal" bottles of wine; in Bandol, artisan producers and season mountain folks spelling out their fears in village markets and unpretentious chateaux. This was all about economic NATO.
I am very jealous of the wine and cheese- Yummy
The Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement is a top priority of the Obama administration. Tariffs are already almost negligible across most products between the US and the European Union. So a deal is essentially about a power grab over continental markets by Big American Agro-Business (as in an invasion of genetically modified products), as well as American media giants. Call it a nice add-on to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) - which in a nutshell means an American takeover of the heavily protected Japanese economy.
This goes right back to that post on annexing the EU. The Cargill post- Using Ukraine as a means to get American GMO foods shoved down the throats of the rest of the world. And the TPP an agreement that is being made so secretly. Here in Canada we hear next to nothing about it. But, Canadians will lose in this one. Because Canadians have lost in every free trade agreement since Reagan and Mulroney sang Irish eyes are smiling- Sickening!
Southern NATOstan does offer glimpses of a European post-historical paradise - a Kantian rose garden protected from a nasty Hobbesian world by the "benign" Empire (the new denomination of choice, coined by - who else - neo-cons of the Robert Kagan variety). Yet the main emotion enveloping southern NATOstan, as I witnessed since the start of 2014 successively in Italy, Spain and France, is fear. Fear of The Other - as in the poor interloper, black or brown; fear of perennial unemployment; fear for the end of middle-class privileges until recently taken for granted; and fear of economic NATO - as virtually no average European trusts those hordes of Brussels bureaucrats.For nine months now, the European Commission has been negotiating a so-called Trade and Investment Partnership. The "transparency" surrounding what will be the largest free-trade agreement ever, encompassing more than 800 million consumers, would put North Korea's King Jong-eun to shame.The whole secret blah blah blah revolves around the euphemistic "non-tariff obstacles" - as in a web of ethical, environmental, juridical and sanitary norms that protect consumers, not giant multinationals. What the behemoths aim for, on the other hand, is a very profitable free-for-all - implying, just as an example, the indiscriminate use of ractopamine, an energy-booster for pork that is even outlawed in Russia and China.
Ractopamine! Disgusting. Ever heard of that garbage? I have. In fact there is a previous post here which mentioned Ractopamine; along with the Boston bombing and NATO- Interesting how all these topics intersect yet again.
Digression.... Boston Bombing: NATO- Taking the fight to Russia via Georgia/Chechnya ??The Russian ban centers around the toxic swill, Ractopamine, allowed by the US & Canada. Both freedom loving nations..... free to poison the dumbed down populace with toxic foodstuffs and gmo, that is! Would You Like Extra Ractopamine With Your Pork, Sir?
Ractopamine is a growth promoter drug. It is widely used on intensive livestock farms in the U.S. because it increases the rate of weight gain and carcass leanness in pigs, cattle and turkey. It's estimated that up to 80 percent of the U.S. pig herd is fed the drug every year. Of course, the drug doesn't come without its costs.
Ractopamine digression over- Yummy
"So why is the Obama administration suddenly so enamored of a free-trade agreement with Europe? Because US Big Business has finally found out that the Holy Grail of an economic pivoting to China won't be so holy after all; the whole thing will be conducted under Chinese terms, as in major Chinese brands progressively upgrading to control most of the Chinese market.Thus Plan B as a transatlantic market submitting 40% of international trade to the same big business-friendly norms. Obama has been heavily spinning the agreement will create "millions of well-paid American jobs". ( Obama is full of 'it') That's highly debatable, to say the least. But make no mistake about the American drive; Obama himself is personally implicated.As for the Europeans, it's more like rats scurrying in a secret casino. As much as the National Security Agency monitors every phone call in Brussels, average Europeans remain clueless about what they will be slapped with. Public debate over the agreement is for all practical purposes verboten for European civil society.
Same in Canada and the US
European Commission negotiators meet only with lobbyists and multinational CEOs. In case of "price volatility" down the road, European farmers will be the big losers, not Americans, now protected by a new Farm Bill. No wonder the direct and indirect message I received from virtually everyone in the Provencal countryside is that "Brussels is selling us out"; in the end, what will disappear, in a death by a thousand cuts manner, is top-quality agriculture, scores of artisan producers with a savoir-faire accumulated over centuries.
The crushing of small independent accountable business for big toxic US agribusiness and GMO'sA nightmare for humanity
So long live hormones, antibiotics, chlorine and GMOs. And off with their heads in the terroir! NATO issuing threats to Russia is such a lame, convenient diversionary tactic. As La Piccolina left Provence carrying its share of sublime artisan goods, I could not but understand why the locals see an economic NATO future with such Van Goghian apprehension.
American multinationals as global plundering marauders, backed up by the military might afforded by the petro dollar
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