see, this is the game that the ndp get to play, so long as you don't release the text - they can feign agnosticism to the text, thereby stringing along opponents long enough that they fail to organize, until they get a chance to see it.

by explicitly citing intellectual property rights protections, which appear to have been relaxed with the withdrawal of the united states, they appear to be setting up a situation where they can accept the changes.

that said, they are getting to the heart of the problem of the deal. as i've mentioned, the tpp was always meant to reconstruct the wartime japanese empire, including ambitions in australia and india, but this time as an economic block, under american hegemony, with the explicit purpose of containing china. what the american withdrawal really does is it lets loose this neo japanese empire to act outside of direct american hegemony, and that may mean co-operation, rather than competition, with the chinese, and the russians. it was a total fuck up, from an american-centric geostrategic perspective.

but, what that means is that the islands in the southeast of asia are going to be largely reconverted into japanese colonial holdings, that they will supply resources and labour to the multinationals that are headquartered in japan to service the japanese market and markets that japan exports to, including china and north america.

japan does still make a lot of electronics, but it doesn't make them in north america. the thing it makes in north america is cars. so, these new rules to reduce the cost of production in asia will tempt the japanese to move production of parts to asia, and then import them to canada, rather than make them here. in a worst case scenario, the north american operations could be reduced to something like an ikea process to building automobiles.

the trade-off is a larger export market for agricultural goods. that doesn't help people where i live much. but, if you're looking at aggregate national numbers, it might add up to a net positive for the country. and, that's the problem that workers here have really faced for decades - small concessions to industry taken one at a time always balance out to other factors, and then add up over a long time.

so, how do you fix this?

well, the ideal solution is to support workers movements in asia. the agreement is supposed to insist on labour regulations, but they already sold us that bridge at nafta - don't believe that. it's not enforceable. workers always need to win their own rights. the establishment of a sustainable wage standard across the trading block would localize production for local markets, as the transportation costs would become superfluous. that's what everybody, save the vultures, really want in the end; it's the endpoint of all of the ideologies. and, it's attainable. to get to this point, it's imperative that workers see each other as united in co-operation, rather than divided in competition. for, if they compete, they produce a race to the bottom. the focus should be on lifting them up.

but, for this particular deal, i'm not convinced it's the way forward for anybody. the agriculture industry would be far better off in a bilateral deal with japan that keeps canada outside of this neo japanese colonial sphere. and, i might agitate for that approach, instead.

but, i expect the ndp to support the deal, based on this posturing.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/ndp-trade-critic-calls-on-trudeau-to-release-all-details-of-new-tpp-deal-1.3780081

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

so, how important were the iranians - the alans - in building what we call france, anyways?

well, we know there were substantial migrations of iranians into france, as there were substantial migrations of celts back into the plateaus. there was a two-way flow there, for a long time.

we also know that there was enough of a settled iranian presence in the areas around belgium and northern france, the origin area of the franks, that shrines were built to iranian deities, although there is a curious tendency in the literature to attribute this to trade contacts and a mass fetish for 'orientalism', despite the known migration histories. i put these two facts together and deduce that there were established iranian settlements in this region, just before the franks appear kind of out of nowhere.

the franks weren't really an ethnic confederacy. it was a german word, but it meant the free tribes of varying sorts in that particular region at the corner of the empire: celts, germans and enough iranians to take note of. but, the iranians tend to be ignored due to the fact that they did, indeed, assimilate to the new germanicized roman order, whereas the celts kind of held out.

there's a specific area of the map in france where everything is all about alan. everything ends up named alain in some abstraction, from mountains to cities to rivers to people. alain is probably recognizable to most as a french name, but it is actually iranian in origin, and a memory of the iranian tribe of alans that settled that area, before they vanished to history.

the idea i want to put forward is that they were probably important enough in the development of the frankish federation that they contributed to the cimmerian origin myth, which said that the franks came from the area around scythia, after a fancy detour through both trojan and roman lore. but, these were invented histories, invented purposefully to control the population with. the alans at least came from scythia, though. they appear to have been important enough to be necessary to include in the composite. and, due to the composite, we can indeed remember their importance in the federation.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

our mining companies are out of control.

so, this is much called for, as a preliminary step. i've argued in the past that we should be using the rome convention to prosecute human rights abuses...and there are stories of villages being burned down, mass rape, just horrific behaviour....

as this is tied into the country's image, and the prime minister is greatly concerned about this, it's difficult to tell if this is serious or not. you'd assume it isn't, a priori, but it's actually in a priority zone for the pmo. at least the government is recognizing that there is a serious problem with how canadian mining businesses, especially, are conducting themselves overseas.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/corporate-ombudsman-abroad-1.4491388

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

i'm sorry, i just think that the proper political entity to fight brexit is the liberal party, and not the labour party. and, i actually want to see them do it; this would be the correct unfolding of a process in history.

really, the british liberals are missing in action, right now. and, it's an affront to history. it's not too late.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

that commercial for the liberals in the uk should be created as a dramatic personal reflection. just somebody talking to themselves...

"i'm a liberal.

(rising orchestral music slowly fades in).

wait. i just got it. i'm....i'm a liberal.

a liberal.

(rising music coming to climax)

I'M A LIBERAL.

(crashes of whatever type, maybe backwards guitars and distorted cellos, with a deep gong and some electronic noise filling out the spectrum.)

so, i should vote Liberal.

(music fades...)

'cause i'm a liberal.

(music stops)

get it?"

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.