Good morning 99percenters!
Morning news dump and music by Rory Black.

TPP Trade Pact Would Give Wall Street a Trump Card to Block Regulations

Banks and other financial institutions would be able to use provisions in the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership to block new regulations that cut into their profits, according to the text of the trade pact released this week.

In what may be the biggest gift to banks in a deal full of giveaways to Hollywood, the drug industry and technology firms, financial institutions would be able to appeal any national rules they didn’t like to independent, international tribunals staffed by friendly corporate lawyers.

That could nullify a proposal by Hillary Clinton to impose a “risk fee” on financial firms — or the Elizabeth Warren/Bernie Sanders plan to reinstate the firewall between investment and commercial banks.

The Most Brazen Corporate Power Grab in American History

The release Thursday of the 5,544-page text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership—a trade and investment agreement involving 12 countries comprising nearly 40 percent of global output—confirms what even its most apocalyptic critics feared.

“The TPP, along with the WTO [World Trade Organization] and NAFTA [North American Free Trade Agreement], is the most brazen corporate power grab in American history,” Ralph Nader told me when I reached him by phone in Washington, D.C. “It allows corporations to bypass our three branches of government to impose enforceable sanctions by secret tribunals. These tribunals can declare our labor, consumer and environmental protections [to be] unlawful, non-tariff barriers subject to fines for noncompliance. The TPP establishes a transnational, autocratic system of enforceable governance in defiance of our domestic laws.”

The TPP is part of a triad of trade agreements that includes the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA). TiSA, by calling for the privatization of all public services, is a mortal threat to the viability of the U.S. Postal Service, public education and other government-run enterprises and utilities; together these operations make up 80 percent of the U.S. economy. The TTIP and TiSA are still in the negotiation phase. They will follow on the heels of the TPP and are likely to go before Congress in 2017.

With the "Robin Hood Tax," a Grassroots Movement Seeks to Bring Wall Street to Heel

Across the country, movements are rising up to challenge politicians who balance public budgets on the backs of working people instead of taxing corporations. "Municipal frugality" and "shared sacrifice" are examples of the political doublespeak and hypocrisy that governments employ while the 1% hoards its record levels of wealth.

In May, National Nurses United and student groups gathered in the nation's capital to join Democratic presidential contender Sen. Bernie Sanders to announce his introduction of the Robin Hood Tax bill, which proposes a small levy on Wall Street financial transactions. A burgeoning, national movement has sprung up in support Sander's legislation. The bill has not made it out of the Senate Finance Committee. Economists backing this proposal, such as Nobel Prize winners Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, estimate the 0.5 percent tax would generate $350 billion annually in the US alone.

Last month, the Senate passed a budget deal that, among other things, cut Social Security disability benefits and increased military spending by $50 billion. The cuts were justified by the urgent need to "avert government default." These fiscally "necessary" cutbacks on social services, coupled with an expansion of corporate welfare, are examples of "more of the same" politics that communities are tired of, and frankly will not withstand.

The Horrors of Lesbos: On the Front Lines of Fortress Europe

Nothing could have prepared us for the night when approximately 300 people were shipwrecked off the coast of Lesbos.

Boatloads of people were brought in by the coastguard. Everyone was drenched to the bone, hypothermic, screaming the names of family members who had perished. Medics and volunteers desperately attempted to revive the unconscious.

One moment I was consoling a young man, shuddering and shaking in my arms, as he cried out, "my brother, my brother, I have lost my brother, our boat was broken, two hours at sea," the next I was wrapping my arms around a woman screaming and banging her head against the wall, her eyes wide in shock, desperation and grief.

TPP Ignores Global Warming & Allows Murder of Labor Union Organizers

U.S. President Barack Obama’s capstone to his Presidency, his proposed megalithic international ‘trade’ treaties, are finally coming into their home-stretch, with the Pacific deal finally being made public on Thursday November 5th.

The final Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) proposed treaty would leave each signatory nation liable to be sued by any international corporation that objects to any new regulation, or increase in regulation, regarding climate change, otherwise known as global warming. In no terminology is that phenomenon even so much as just mentioned in the “Environment” chapter. Regarding labor issues, including slavery, the “Labour” chapter of the TPP contains merely platitudes. (Obama allowed Malaysia into the compact despite its notoriously poor record of non-enforcement of its ban on slavery, because he wants the U.S. to control the Strait of Malacca in order to impede China’s economic and military expansion; it’s part of Obama’s anti-China policy. Almost everything that he does has different motives than the ones his rhetoric claims.) Throughout, the treaty would place international corporations in ever-increasing control over all regulations regarding workers’ rights, the environment, product safety, and consumer protection. But the environmental and labor sections are particularly blatant insults to the public — a craven homage to the top stockholders in international corporations. The world’s richest 80 people own the same amount of wealth as the world’s bottom 50%; and Obama represents those and other super-rich and their friends and servants in the lobbying and other associated industries. But he also represents the even richer people who aren’t even on that list, such as King Salman of Saudi Arabia, the world’s richest person. It’s people such as that who will be the real beneficiaries of Obama’s ‘trade’ treaties. The public will be harmed, enormously, wherever these treaties become law.

The full meaning of the terms that are set forth in the TPP agreement won’t be publicly known for at least four years, but the explicit terms that were made public on November 5th, and that will be presented to the 12 participating nations for signing, are entirely consistent with what had been expected on the basis of wikileaks and other earlier published information.

Obama’s Risky ‘Mission Creep’ in Syria

When Russian President Vladimir Putin opted in late September to intervene in Syria’s horrendous civil war, President Barack Obama seemed so taken aback that a few hopeful souls wondered if the shock might cause him to rethink his failed strategy of toppling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad while waging war on Al Qaeda’s Al Nusra and the Islamic State (also known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh).

After all, attacking an enemy and its prime opponent never made much sense to begin with. So why not seize the opportunity to shore up Syria’s besieged government – even pressing President Assad and his political opponents to work together – while concentrating on defeating the terrorists? With more security, democratic elections might be possible, letting the Syrians take control of their own future.

But last week’s decision to insert 50 Special Forces troops in northern Syria suggests President Obama is veering off in another direction altogether. Militarily, the operation makes no more sense than anything else the administration has done in Syria.

Obama’s Criminal Drone War

A new whistleblower has joined the ranks of Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, John Kiriakou and other courageous individuals. The unnamed person, who chose to remain anonymous because of the Obama administration’s vigorous prosecution of whistleblowers, is a member of the intelligence community.

In the belief that the American public has the right to know about the “fundamentally” and “morally” flawed U.S. drone program, this source provided The Intercept with a treasure trove of secret military documents and slides that shine a critical light on the country’s killer drone program. These files confirm that the Obama administration’s policy and practice of assassination using armed drones and other methods violate the law.

The documents reveal the “kill chain” that decides who will be targeted. As the source said, “This outrageous explosion of watchlisting — of monitoring people and racking and stacking them on lists, assigning them numbers, assigning them ‘baseball cards,’ assigning them death sentences, without notice, on a worldwide battlefield — it was, from the very first instance, wrong.”

“A turning point for Obama”: How the president learned to love the national security state
NYT reporter Charlie Savage tells Salon the real reason why Obama has broken less from Bush than many hoped

One of the great mysteries — and ongoing controversies — of the Barack Obama presidency has to do with his record on civil liberties and counter-terrorism. In fact, for many former supporters of the president, it’s the alleged continuities between the anti-terror policies of Obama and Bush that first caused them to rescind their support for the former. Charges that Obama is worse than Bush, because he legitimized and gave bipartisan cover to that which was once seen as radical and divisive, are not uncommon.

So now that Obama is about to entire his final year in the White House, and now that attention is increasingly turning away from him and toward his would-be successors, it seems like an opportune moment to reassess the past seven years and figure out why, exactly, Obama’s record on counter-terrorism issues has been so controversial — and mixed. Which is where “Power Wars: Inside Obama’s Post-9/11 Presidency,” the new book from the New York Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Charlie Savage, comes in.

Recently, Salon spoke over the phone with Savage about his book, which is both a deeply reported history of the Obama administration and a look at how bureaucracy, chance, politics and technology have so profoundly shaped its legacy. Alongside discussing what Obama really promised on the campaign trail in 2008, we also talk about the outsized influence of late-2009’s failed “underwear bomber,” and why the president has less control over the prosecution of leaks from his administration than you may suspect.

Our conversation is below and has been edited for clarity and length.

Read the conversation here.

New Poll Shows 60% of Americans Think Hillary Clinton is Untrustworthy and Dishonest

The real interesting part of the latest Quinnipiac University National Poll, is not the fact that 60% of Americans think Hillary Clinton is dishonest, but that 40% of Americans don’t.

You’d truly have to be a certified zombie, or living your life entirely under a rock, to not recognize how completely shady and corrupt this woman is. Fear not, I’ll provide a plethora of links at the end of this post, but here’s a recent example that went completely under the radar.

In a desperate attempt to appear populist, Clinton tweeted the following last week:

"We need to end private prisons. Protecting public safety…should never be outsourced or left to unaccountable corporations." —Hillary

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) October 30, 2015

State Law Makes It a Felony to Touch a Police Officer Even Off-Duty and Out of Uniform
In effect, the Oklahoma measure extends the cloak of 'qualified immunity' to cover every aspect of a law enforcement officer’s life.

Two short-tempered men run into each other in a bar in Enid, Oklahoma. The combustible mixture of alcohol and ego produces the predictable reaction – a brief, stupid, and inconclusive fight in which neither side is seriously injured. When police officers arrive on the scene, onlookers expect that both parties to the altercation will be hauled away in handcuffs.

However, after one of them produces a police credential, he is allowed to handcuff the other and place him under arrest for a felonious assault on an off-duty law enforcement officer. It doesn’t matter that the individual making the arrest might have been the same one who started the fight.

This scenario is made entirely plausible by a newly enacted Oklahoma statute that makes any “assault” on an off-duty law enforcement officer a felony — and it is standard practice to treat nearly any physical contact with an officer as an “assault.”The law, which passed the legislature unanimously (always a bad sign), went into effect on November 1. In effect, this measure extends the cloak of “qualified immunity” to cover every aspect of a law enforcement officer’s life.

How Law Enforcement Can Use Google Timeline To Track Your Every Move

THE RECENT EXPANSION of Google’s Timeline feature can provide investigators unprecedented access to users’ location history data, allowing them in many cases to track a person’s every move over the course of years, according to a report recently circulated to law enforcement.

“The personal privacy implications are pretty clear but so are the law enforcement applications,” according to the document, titled “Google Timelines: Location Investigations Involving Android Devices,” which outlines the kind of information investigators can now subpoena.

The Timeline allows users to look back at their daily movements on a map; that same information is also potentially of interest to law enforcement. “It is now possible to submit a legal demand to Google for location history greater than six months old,” the report says. “This could revitalize cold cases and potentially help solve active investigations.”

'Bright Spots' Worldwide Show 100% Renewable Can and Must be Done
It 'is the only way to ensure the world does not descend into catastrophic climate change.'

As a new UN report finds that emissions pledges made by governments for the upcoming climate talks in Paris represent just half of what they need to be to keep warming under the 2C threshold, places around the world are proving themselves to be "bright spots" in the transition to a clean energy.

In one recent example, Austria's biggest state and home to over 1.6 million people, Lower Austria, said Thursday that all of its electricity is now being generated by renewables.

"We have invested heavily to boost energy efficiency and to expand renewables," Agence France-Presse quotes Erwin Proell, premier of Lower Austria, as telling reporters. "Since 2002 we have invested 2.8 billion euros ($3.0 billion) in eco-electricity, from solar parks to renewing (hydroelectric) stations on the Danube," Proell said.

Obama's Rejection of Keystone XL Is Victory, But That's Not the Whole Story
The black snake, Keystone XL, has been defeated and best believe we will dance to our victory!'

President Obama's official rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline on Friday was met with grand applause from those who opposed the project and organizers who worked tirelessly, despite long odds, to force the adminstration's hand.

However, even as celebrations were enjoyed and an evening rally was scheduled outside the White House, there's more to this story than the simple rejection of a single pipeline and the ultimate climate legacy of a president who has announced a 'historic' decision.

Mass Movements Work

Through years of unprecedented campaigning, ordinary people in the United States and Canada turned what could have been an unremarkable rubber stamping of yet another fossil fuel pipeline into an internationally-watched fight to stop climate change. Since 2011, communities across the United States have staged over 750 direct actions and protests across the country—from mass sit-ins at the White House to a tens-of-thousands-strong march on the National Mall. Farmers, workers, students, Indigenous peoples, and communities on the frontlines of oil refineries and extreme weather put their bodies and relationships on the line—risking arrest, talking to their neighbors, and taking to the streets.

China Underreporting Coal Consumption, Data Says

China, the world’s largest carbon emitter, has been dramatically underreporting the amount of coal it consumes each year, it has been claimed ahead of key climate talks in Paris.

Official Chinese data, reported by the New York Times on Wednesday after being quietly released earlier this year, suggests China has been burning up to 17 percent more coal each year than previously disclosed by the government.

The revelation – which may mean China has emitted close to a billion additional tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year – could complicate the fight against global warming ahead of the United Nations climate change conference in Paris, which begins on Nov. 30.

Flurry of Hawaiian Hurricanes Shows Climate Fingerprints

Despite being in the tropics, Hawaii isn’t exactly a hurricane magnet. Yet since 2014, the state has been buzzed by a dozen tropical storms and hurricanes.

New findings indicate climate change is behind at least the 2014 uptick in activity and that the island chain should prepare for more storms to come its way.

The research, published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society’s annual attribution report, specifically links the three 2014 storms that came within striking distance of the island chain — including Iselle, which grazed the Big Island as a tropical storm — to climate change. This year’s nine hurricanes in the central Pacific are also reinforcing the idea that climate change could mean more active hurricane seasons around Hawaii in the future.

A Greener Way to Die
Are We Doing Our Worst Environmental Damage From the Grave?

Back in the early ‘60’s Jessica Mitford wrote a shocking book — The American Way of Death — that exposed how the funeral industry took advantage of the aggrieved with expensive and unnecessary burial practices.

Now we are learning that this $15 billion-a-year business is also unsustainable — and highly destructive to the environment.

Consider this: the millions of gallons of toxic embalming fluid used to pretty up and “preserve” corpses eventually find their way into the ground, contaminating soil and water resources. And the iron, lead, copper, zinc, and cobalt used in caskets and vaults also contaminate the soil. Even cremation isn’t nearly as clean as you might think. Crematories release by-products from embalming fluid, dental fillings, surgical devices, etc.