Category: Aggregated

Japan and the U.S. announced new Defense Cooperation Guidelines, the first revision since 1997, at a 2+2 meeting Monday of the countries’ defense and foreign affairs ministers/secretaries—Secretary of State John Kerry of State, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, Defense Minister Gen Nakatani, and Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida.

Foreign Minister Kishida implied that the “reinterpretation” of the Constitution announced by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Cabinet last year, which would allow Japan to join in a U.S. war against China (or others) was a completed fact. But Abe deferred taking the issue to the Diet until next year, uncertain that it would pass (even many in his own party do not want to overthrow Japan’s post-war pacifist Constitution). The reinterpretation requires legislative changes which are far from certain to pass.

Kerry was explicit that this new concept was written into the Guidelines: “Today we mark the establishment of Japan’s capacity to defend not just its own territory, but also the United States and other partners as needed.” It would appear that U.S. approval supersedes Japan’s own constitutional procedures.

Equally egregious is the statement in the Defense Department release: “Other business in the meetings included the U.S. affirmation that the Senkaku Islands are territories of Japan and fall under the U.S.-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security.” This totally contradicts the official U.S. position that it will not take sides in territorial disputes—China and Japan contest sovereignty over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. President Obama last year belligerently asserted that he considered the contested islands to fall under the U.S. nuclear umbrella, but claimed it was only because the contested islands were being governed by Japan, not that he was taking sides on the sovereignty issue. Kerry, in his statement Monday to the press, maintained that cover story — but the Defense release dropped the pretense and asserted Japanese sovereignty—a blatant provocation of China.

The 2+2 leaders also announced the expansion of the U.S. missile defense posture in Japan, reporting that two more U.S. ballistic missile defense destroyers will be based in Japan, and that a second X-band radar construction site announced earlier will proceed. These also constitute direct military threats to China in the context of Obama’s first strike policy against China (Prompt Global Strike and Air-Sea Battle).

The resistance to the supranational straitjacket masquerading as the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal (TPP) continues to galvanize Democrats, especially in the wake of Obama’s callous, imperial dismissal that Sen. Elizabeth Warren and others were being “dishonest” in their criticisms. In fact, Arizona Democrat Raul Grijalva took the fight directly to Obama (and implicitly Hillary Clinton) telling Roll Call magazine this morning, that, “if the vast majority of Democrats in the House are willing to confront their President, it only makes sense that any candidate for that position is on the line.”

A lot of latitude has been handed to Clinton, about her equivocating statement that she is “closely watching” the TPP. Yesterday, Politico put the lie to those statements, running comments by White House Deputy Press Secretary Eric Shultz at a press conference April 22, telling reporters that, as far as they know, Hillary Clinton is foursquare behind them and fully supportive of the TPP. “I haven’t seen anything to suggest any distance,” is the way Schultz put it, and, when asked if the White House considers Clinton an ally on trade, Schultz said “yes.”

For their part, Senators Warren and Sherrod Brown are not backing down. On April 25, they wrote a powerful letter to Obama, urging him to make the text of the TPP available to the public. “Your Administration has deemed the draft text of the agreement classified and kept it hidden from public view,” they say, “thereby making it a secret deal. It is currently illegal for the press, experts, advocates, or the general public to review the text of this agreement. And while you noted that Members of Congress may walk over … and read the text of the agreement — as we have done — you neglected to mention that we are prohibited by law from discussing the specifics of that text in public.”

They make the case that, in 2001, even George Bush made “portions” of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) deal public “several months” before the Congressional vote on fast track. At the time, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick noted that the release would “make international and its economic and social benefits more understandable to the public and would increase public awareness of and support” for the deal. “We respectfully suggest,” they say, “that characterizing the assessments of labor unions, journalists, Members of Congress, and others who disagree with your approach to transparency on trade issues as ‘dishonest’ is both untrue and unlikely to serve the best interests of the American people.”

Glass-Steagall promoter Ellen Brown wrote a piece over the April 25-26 weekend, in which she took aim at the supranational Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) courts. After quoting revelations made by Yves Smith and others, Brown concludes that, “something else besides attracting investment money and encouraging foreign trade seems to be going on. The TPP would destroy our republican form of government under the rule of law, by elevating the rights of investors — also called the rights of ‘capital’ — above the rights of the citizens. That means that TPP is blatantly unconstitutional.”

In Monday’s Australian blog MacroBusiness, Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman expose that, after examination of the intellectual property and investment chapters that have been leaked via WikiLeaks, the TPP would establish a U.S.-style regulatory structure that would hand considerable monopoly-style power to U.S. pharmaceutical and digital firms. “Included in the draft intellectual property chapter was the proposal to extend patent protection and strengthen monopolies on clinical data. It also flagged the extension of patents for new forms of known substances, as well as on new uses on old medicines—an outcome that would lead to evergreening, whereby patents can be renewed continuously.”

The question remains as to whether this resistance can be galvanized into the larger question, of removal of Obama for his accumulating crimes, and for his future one, the imminent threat of global thermonuclear war.