The Trade In Services Agreement (TISA)
The Trade In Services Agreement is designed to "fix" some problems with previous trade agreements from the Point of view of the corporations involved. The Service Coalition Board says about it [https://servicescoalition.org/negotiations/trade-in-services-agreement] in their "What is TISA section;
"The Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) is the most promising opportunity in two decades to improve and expand trade in services. Initiated by the United States and Australia, the TISA is currently being negotiated in Geneva, Switzerland with 51 participants that represent 70 percent of the world's trade in services."
Privateering on an International Level
But that says very little. The reality is that, as always, the devil is in the details. And the details are of more neo-liberal ideology seeking to give impunity and immunity to international corporations by shifting governing powers from local government to these for the private, separate gain public corporations.
"As WikiLeaks puts it, the regulations together create "international legal regime which aims to deregulate and privatize the supply of services—which account for the majority of the economy across TISA countries."
This is privateering on an international level. Treaties like this are pirate treaties promising to turn the World Trade Organization into the Confederate Corporations of the World. That might be an improvement over the current chaotic oligarchy but it is the institution of hierarchical oligarchy and the institutionalization of wealth and power into rulership. It won't end war or solve hunger, but it will give more power to the already powerful for their separate enjoyment as they fly over the rest of us.
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Common Dreams, an Anti TISA Website reports:
"As with Wednesday's documents, Thursday's batch of texts reveals 'a concerted attempt to place restrictions on the ability of participating governments to regulate services sectors, even where regulations are necessary to protect the privacy of domestic populations, the natural environment or the integrity of public services,' WikiLeaks declares." [http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/07/02/tisa-leaks-part-deux-more-evidence-concerted-attack-democracy?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=socialnetwork]
The website goes on to list initial negotiating companies, but the says:
"TiSA is based on the WTO's General Agreement on Trade in Services ( GATS ), which involves all WTO members. This means that if enough WTO members join, TiSA could be turned into a broader WTO agreement and its benefits extended beyond the current participants." [http://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/in-focus/tisa/]
Common Dreams alleges that:
"the corporate aim [is] to use TISA to further limit the public interest regulatory capacity of democratically elected governments."
They then quote Ben Beachy:
"TISA would expand deregulatory 'trade' rules written under the advisement of large banks before the financial crisis, requiring domestic laws to conform to the now-rejected model of extreme deregulation that led to global recession."
—Ben Beachy, Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch
What is TISA?
The services in question "relate to regulation of financial services, e-commerce, telecommunication, and maritime transport." These are powerful public services, many of which are within the public realm and are vital services that are also natural monopolies. They have to be regulated or they tend to be run as feudal kingdoms.
De-regulating them would put some of them back in the state they were in the 19th century and would allow 19th century style impunity and immunity for newer services like e-commerce and telecommunications, both of which are extensions and modernizations of the concept behind the Post Office and have traditionally been associated with the Post Office and been so important and powerful that they demand their own organ of government out of reach of both legislature and post office under normal circumstances. Deregulating them creates a power that is part of rule and gives it to private individuals, establishing kings.
The Euro folks said:
"Like any other trade negotiations, the TiSA talks are not carried out in public and the documents are available to participants only." [http://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/in-focus/tisa/]
Like with TPP I've been hoping that the Wikileaks were premature and the allegations were going to be proved false but it seems that the secrecy that is still around TISA should be a warning that the allegations are liable to be true. Nobody goes to such extremes to hide a treaty unless there is something sketchy about it. This sort of thing goes all the way back to the Jay Treaty, which the Washington Administration tried to keep secret because they knew it would infuriate many Americans.
...more on this in my next post "Going Greek on the Whole World" [http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2015/07/going-greek-on-whole-world.html].
- Common Dreams is reacting to a News Release from Public Citizen:
- http://www.citizen.org/documents/press-release-tisa-leak-july-2015.pdf
- Read the Article at Common Dreams:
- http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/07/02/tisa-leaks-part-deux-more-evidence-concerted-attack-democracy?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=socialnetwork
- http://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/policy-making/analysis/sustainability-impact-assessments/assessments/
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