11 ms·

Hard to believe that these talks are conducted in secret behind closed door. It is quite clear the some of the proposals are strictly designed to serve powerfu

by dil8 13y ago

Hard to believe that these talks are conducted in secret behind closed door. It is quite clear the some of the proposals are strictly designed to serve powerful interest groups. Great work by Wikileaks to put this in the public arena.

rayiner 13y ago
The basic idea of diplomatic negotiations being secret is that it's not appropriate to publicize your strategy for defending Belgium in case the Germans roll through on the way to France. Unfortunately, in this situation, diplomatic negotiations are being used to end-run around the domestic legislative process. This is the intrinsic downside of allowing diplomatic cooperation to extend beyond its traditional domain of war and peace.[1] In liberal democracies, the organs of foreign policy are designed to be opaque and non-responsive to the public. In the United States, this is by design--stemming from the framers' worry that a democracy wouldn't be able to speak with the required single voice when it came to issues of foreign policy. But the flexibility of the process militates towards keeping it restricted to a narrow domain. [1] There is something fundamentally undemocratic about using the diplomatic process to normalize law between countries. Yes it makes business easier, but it undermines democratic control over law. The law of a country should be an expression of the will of its voters, and only its voters. Some egghead in the UK has no business weighing in on what America's laws should be, and vice versa.
- Malstrond 13y ago
  >it's not appropriate to publicize your strategy for defending Belgium in case the Germans roll through on the way to France. The strategy for defending Belgium in both world wars and the strategy for defending the average citizen against corporate interests seem to be the same in this case: Do nothing, leave them to the wolves.
- blah32497 13y ago
  Don't these kind of deals need congressional approval eventually? The idea of dealing behind the scene is that it allows you to talk more openly about what is and isn't on the table without having anything on the record. Ex: Say they were negotiating with Israel. Publicly Israel has very uncompromising policies. But maybe in private, in return for some things they are willing to give up some of their demands. Maybe some of their concessions end up not in the deal, or the whole deal falls through. They don't want to have to then be "accountable" for the things they put on the table.
  - beambot 13y ago
    > Don't these kind of deals need congressional approval eventually? Yes, but I believe the argument goes something like this: "We cannot possibly renegotiate the deal because (1) we've already spent considerable time and funds to reach an agreement and (2) it represents the best deal we can get." So Congress gives a ceremonial rubber stamp on a deal that would otherwise never have been reached (and conveniently stuffed with as much lobbyist pork as possible -- originating from who-knows-where since all "negotiating" occurred behind closed doors).
    - waps 13y ago
      Please note the difference here between the US and the EU. In the EU, foreign treaties DO NOT require parliament approval (this is required by the EU treaty), and as such mean that effectively 1) No member of the EU has separation of powers, a very important part of the legislative power is vested in the (equivalent of) the ministry of foreign affairs. 2) Since the EU commission can unilaterally impose treaties even without approval of that ministry that have legislative authority, no EU member country can be said to be a sovereign nation. There is only the EU (which is further illustrated, for example, in that the EU has it's own embassies and hosts it's own embassies in for example China).
      - Joeri 13y ago
        Sources please. I'm pretty sure none of what you said is accurate. There is no such thing as EU law because there is no EU consitution, the EU itself is just a set of a treaties and thereby always subservient to national laws. Any member state can quit the EU at any time, but they would also lose the considerable benefits, which is why even vehement anti-EU governments like the UK choose to be part of the EU. All laws in europe are national laws and must be approved by the respective parliaments. EU directives must be transcribed into national law before they go into effect, and all EU directives must be voted by the EU parliament before they go to the national parliaments (although the vote isn't always binding, that part is a bit complicated). The EU commission has no lawmaking powers to my knowledge, they are allowed to draft proposals, but they cannot bring them into law.
- dllthomas 13y ago
  "Some egghead in the UK has no business weighing in on what America's laws should be, and vice versa." Well, except by honestly convincing American voters.
  - waqf 13y ago
    Even for that you have to worry about campaign finance laws.
- Silhouette 13y ago
  There is something fundamentally undemocratic about using the diplomatic process to normalize law between countries. Yes it makes business easier, but it undermines democratic control over law. Easier than what, though? In the absence of international agreements, how do you improve the business climate at all, even in ways that are universally beneficial? Your point about democracy is a fair one, but it's predicated on the idea that the only pools of people who matter are divided up into individual countries that vote for their own governments in isolation. If we're going to deal with global issues, whether it's trade or transportation or the Internet or chasing bad people across national borders, maybe it's time to consider whether there is a better way forward than trying to do everything legislative at a national level? I'm not talking about some sort of global senate and worldwide voting here, but the idea that nations could send representatives to negotiate things according to their desires and everyone's voters then have to accept the results before their nation signs up to the finished agreement isn't absurd. It seems like a reasonable way of ensuring that only transparently reasonable, least-common-denominator style agreements get made within any given set of nations, and that might be a better policy than what happens today, where international agreements are frequently used as excuses to implement policy that wouldn't pass electoral muster back home.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    > In the absence of international agreements, how do you improve the business climate at all, even in ways that are universally beneficial? If businesses want legislation that improves the business climate, they should lobby the relevant governments for such legislation. If such changes really are "universally beneficial" this should not be a hurdle. As a practical matter, the business world worked just fine prior to say 1995, when the WTO was established. > it's predicated on the idea that the only pools of people who matter are divided up into individual countries that vote for their own governments in isolation. It's predicated on that idea because that is the essence of the world we live in. Americans vote for their government, and that government's sole legitimate purpose is to ensure American prosperity. The same is true for the Swedes in Sweden and the Germans in Germany, etc. International cooperation results in governments trading off the prosperity of their people for the prosperity of people who are not party to the same social contract, and in doing so subvert and compromise their democracy. > nations could send representatives to negotiate things according to their desires and everyone's voters then have to accept the results before their nation signs up to the finished agreement isn't absurd The problem with this approach is that it results in "take it or leave it" sorts of agreements. As the framers of the U.S. Constitution realized, it's not just voting that's important, but the whole process by which legislation is proposed, tweaked, and then voted upon. That process must happen subject to democratic pressures. An acceptable approach would be for nations to send representatives to negotiate shared principles, and then introduce implementation of those principles as ordinary legislation, subject to the same changes and tweaking as ordinary legislation.
rhizome 13y ago
You can't have the voters knowing anything that would reliably give them a reason to ignore the marketing campaigns that constitute political campaigns. That is, it would help citizens exercise independent thought, which campaign managers, donors, and candidates themselves hate.
hoggle 13y ago
I can't express how grateful I am for each and every whistleblower. They often take tremendous risks and with their actions show us that we should act responsibly and humanely whenever we can ourselves.
- ChrisAntaki 13y ago
  They make democracy possible, by informing the voters.
  - Joeri 13y ago
    I wonder about that. Obama during his candidacy was the most opposed to this cloak and dagger stuff, and then he got elected and became one of the most secretive presidents ever. If he had the policies he campaigned on, it would be a radically different government. How can voters influence outcomes when regardless of the principles and/or promises of who gets elected they end up getting the same policies? I always get this impression that the first day in office of a new president some guy in a black suit comes into the oval office, sits down across from the president, and then says "You know those campaign promises you made? There's a few things i need to explain to you before you go ahead with those..."
    - elsurudo 13y ago
      Reminds me of this Bill Hicks bit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EaCr1aRits http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EaCr1aRits
      - patrickk 13y ago
        The "12 industrial capitalist scum-fucks who got you in there" line gets me every time.
    - timbro 13y ago
      > I always get this impression that the first day in office of a new president some guy in a black suit comes into the oval office... If you remember that one of the pre-Snowden whistleblowers stated in an interview that Obama was among the people under targeted surveillance, then you know that all future Presidents (and some past ones probably too) are nothing more than puppets being manipulated by the real powers (which we don't see). So it's really no surprise that "promises will always be broken" - unless we understand that very profound changes in our systems are the only real solution, long-term.
rtpg 13y ago
As much as I appreciate Wikileak's efforts to put this out in the open, I feel like this deal fell through over much more 'fundamental' issues than copyright, like food security and such.
codex 13y ago
Are treaties normally negotiated in public? I don't recall Obama live tweeting any closed door talks with Putin--it's just not a good idea. You can't be frank when you have to worry about covering your ass to prevent attacks from every nutjob special interest group at home.
- tehwalrus 13y ago
  Big trade deals that affect how companies work - yes. Foreign policy and diplomacy - no.
- snowwrestler 13y ago
  No. Every recent trade deal done by the US was initially negotiated in private. It is totally normal. Initial negotiations are always private, even for domestic legislation. Just look at the $85 billion funding package that was just announced. Only two people--Patty Murray and Paul Ryan--worked on that, in private, before it was introduced to the rest of Congress. People who are concerned about the substance of the TPP are campaigning against the very basics of the process itself. This is a bad tactic. Over time it will be very corrosive to the government's ability to do anything.
twobits 13y ago
"Hard to believe that these talks are conducted in secret behind closed door" "Hard to believe"? Maybe you should start believing "conspiracy theories" a bit more.

by dil8 13y ago

rayiner 13y ago

The basic idea of diplomatic negotiations being secret is that it's not appropriate to publicize your strategy for defending Belgium in case the Germans roll through on the way to France. Unfortunately, in this situation, diplomatic negotiations are being used to end-run around the domestic legislative process. This is the intrinsic downside of allowing diplomatic cooperation to extend beyond its traditional domain of war and peace.[1] In liberal democracies, the organs of foreign policy are designed to be opaque and non-responsive to the public. In the United States, this is by design--stemming from the framers' worry that a democracy wouldn't be able to speak with the required single voice when it came to issues of foreign policy. But the flexibility of the process militates towards keeping it restricted to a narrow domain. [1] There is something fundamentally undemocratic about using the diplomatic process to normalize law between countries. Yes it makes business easier, but it undermines democratic control over law. The law of a country should be an expression of the will of its voters, and only its voters. Some egghead in the UK has no business weighing in on what America's laws should be, and vice versa.

Malstrond 13y ago
>it's not appropriate to publicize your strategy for defending Belgium in case the Germans roll through on the way to France. The strategy for defending Belgium in both world wars and the strategy for defending the average citizen against corporate interests seem to be the same in this case: Do nothing, leave them to the wolves.
blah32497 13y ago
Don't these kind of deals need congressional approval eventually? The idea of dealing behind the scene is that it allows you to talk more openly about what is and isn't on the table without having anything on the record. Ex: Say they were negotiating with Israel. Publicly Israel has very uncompromising policies. But maybe in private, in return for some things they are willing to give up some of their demands. Maybe some of their concessions end up not in the deal, or the whole deal falls through. They don't want to have to then be "accountable" for the things they put on the table.
- beambot 13y ago
  > Don't these kind of deals need congressional approval eventually? Yes, but I believe the argument goes something like this: "We cannot possibly renegotiate the deal because (1) we've already spent considerable time and funds to reach an agreement and (2) it represents the best deal we can get." So Congress gives a ceremonial rubber stamp on a deal that would otherwise never have been reached (and conveniently stuffed with as much lobbyist pork as possible -- originating from who-knows-where since all "negotiating" occurred behind closed doors).
  - waps 13y ago
    Please note the difference here between the US and the EU. In the EU, foreign treaties DO NOT require parliament approval (this is required by the EU treaty), and as such mean that effectively 1) No member of the EU has separation of powers, a very important part of the legislative power is vested in the (equivalent of) the ministry of foreign affairs. 2) Since the EU commission can unilaterally impose treaties even without approval of that ministry that have legislative authority, no EU member country can be said to be a sovereign nation. There is only the EU (which is further illustrated, for example, in that the EU has it's own embassies and hosts it's own embassies in for example China).
    - Joeri 13y ago
      Sources please. I'm pretty sure none of what you said is accurate. There is no such thing as EU law because there is no EU consitution, the EU itself is just a set of a treaties and thereby always subservient to national laws. Any member state can quit the EU at any time, but they would also lose the considerable benefits, which is why even vehement anti-EU governments like the UK choose to be part of the EU. All laws in europe are national laws and must be approved by the respective parliaments. EU directives must be transcribed into national law before they go into effect, and all EU directives must be voted by the EU parliament before they go to the national parliaments (although the vote isn't always binding, that part is a bit complicated). The EU commission has no lawmaking powers to my knowledge, they are allowed to draft proposals, but they cannot bring them into law.
dllthomas 13y ago
"Some egghead in the UK has no business weighing in on what America's laws should be, and vice versa." Well, except by honestly convincing American voters.
- waqf 13y ago
  Even for that you have to worry about campaign finance laws.
Silhouette 13y ago
There is something fundamentally undemocratic about using the diplomatic process to normalize law between countries. Yes it makes business easier, but it undermines democratic control over law. Easier than what, though? In the absence of international agreements, how do you improve the business climate at all, even in ways that are universally beneficial? Your point about democracy is a fair one, but it's predicated on the idea that the only pools of people who matter are divided up into individual countries that vote for their own governments in isolation. If we're going to deal with global issues, whether it's trade or transportation or the Internet or chasing bad people across national borders, maybe it's time to consider whether there is a better way forward than trying to do everything legislative at a national level? I'm not talking about some sort of global senate and worldwide voting here, but the idea that nations could send representatives to negotiate things according to their desires and everyone's voters then have to accept the results before their nation signs up to the finished agreement isn't absurd. It seems like a reasonable way of ensuring that only transparently reasonable, least-common-denominator style agreements get made within any given set of nations, and that might be a better policy than what happens today, where international agreements are frequently used as excuses to implement policy that wouldn't pass electoral muster back home.
- rayiner 13y ago
  > In the absence of international agreements, how do you improve the business climate at all, even in ways that are universally beneficial? If businesses want legislation that improves the business climate, they should lobby the relevant governments for such legislation. If such changes really are "universally beneficial" this should not be a hurdle. As a practical matter, the business world worked just fine prior to say 1995, when the WTO was established. > it's predicated on the idea that the only pools of people who matter are divided up into individual countries that vote for their own governments in isolation. It's predicated on that idea because that is the essence of the world we live in. Americans vote for their government, and that government's sole legitimate purpose is to ensure American prosperity. The same is true for the Swedes in Sweden and the Germans in Germany, etc. International cooperation results in governments trading off the prosperity of their people for the prosperity of people who are not party to the same social contract, and in doing so subvert and compromise their democracy. > nations could send representatives to negotiate things according to their desires and everyone's voters then have to accept the results before their nation signs up to the finished agreement isn't absurd The problem with this approach is that it results in "take it or leave it" sorts of agreements. As the framers of the U.S. Constitution realized, it's not just voting that's important, but the whole process by which legislation is proposed, tweaked, and then voted upon. That process must happen subject to democratic pressures. An acceptable approach would be for nations to send representatives to negotiate shared principles, and then introduce implementation of those principles as ordinary legislation, subject to the same changes and tweaking as ordinary legislation.

rhizome 13y ago

You can't have the voters knowing anything that would reliably give them a reason to ignore the marketing campaigns that constitute political campaigns. That is, it would help citizens exercise independent thought, which campaign managers, donors, and candidates themselves hate.

hoggle 13y ago

I can't express how grateful I am for each and every whistleblower. They often take tremendous risks and with their actions show us that we should act responsibly and humanely whenever we can ourselves.

ChrisAntaki 13y ago
They make democracy possible, by informing the voters.
- Joeri 13y ago
  I wonder about that. Obama during his candidacy was the most opposed to this cloak and dagger stuff, and then he got elected and became one of the most secretive presidents ever. If he had the policies he campaigned on, it would be a radically different government. How can voters influence outcomes when regardless of the principles and/or promises of who gets elected they end up getting the same policies? I always get this impression that the first day in office of a new president some guy in a black suit comes into the oval office, sits down across from the president, and then says "You know those campaign promises you made? There's a few things i need to explain to you before you go ahead with those..."
  - elsurudo 13y ago
    Reminds me of this Bill Hicks bit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EaCr1aRits http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EaCr1aRits
    - patrickk 13y ago
      The "12 industrial capitalist scum-fucks who got you in there" line gets me every time.
  - timbro 13y ago
    > I always get this impression that the first day in office of a new president some guy in a black suit comes into the oval office... If you remember that one of the pre-Snowden whistleblowers stated in an interview that Obama was among the people under targeted surveillance, then you know that all future Presidents (and some past ones probably too) are nothing more than puppets being manipulated by the real powers (which we don't see). So it's really no surprise that "promises will always be broken" - unless we understand that very profound changes in our systems are the only real solution, long-term.

rtpg 13y ago

As much as I appreciate Wikileak's efforts to put this out in the open, I feel like this deal fell through over much more 'fundamental' issues than copyright, like food security and such.

codex 13y ago

Are treaties normally negotiated in public? I don't recall Obama live tweeting any closed door talks with Putin--it's just not a good idea. You can't be frank when you have to worry about covering your ass to prevent attacks from every nutjob special interest group at home.

tehwalrus 13y ago
Big trade deals that affect how companies work - yes. Foreign policy and diplomacy - no.
snowwrestler 13y ago
No. Every recent trade deal done by the US was initially negotiated in private. It is totally normal. Initial negotiations are always private, even for domestic legislation. Just look at the $85 billion funding package that was just announced. Only two people--Patty Murray and Paul Ryan--worked on that, in private, before it was introduced to the rest of Congress. People who are concerned about the substance of the TPP are campaigning against the very basics of the process itself. This is a bad tactic. Over time it will be very corrosive to the government's ability to do anything.

twobits 13y ago

"Hard to believe that these talks are conducted in secret behind closed door" "Hard to believe"? Maybe you should start believing "conspiracy theories" a bit more.