Stephen Lendman

During his UK visit, Obama’s London Telegraph op-ed was duplicitous like all his remarks. The headline alone gave it away this time, saying “(a)s your friend, let me say that the EU makes Britain even greater.”

Neoliberal Europe reveals otherwise, benefitting monied interests exclusively, harming most others, devastating least advantaged households throughout the EU.

Obama’s op-ed meddled unjustifiably in the affairs of another country. It made painful reading, ignoring issues mattering most to ordinary Brits, ones affecting their economic, financial and social welfare, suffering under force-fed neoliberal austerity.

Instead of explaining a failed Western experiment, Obama urged greater commitment to NATO, the need to counter nonexistent “Russian aggression, (and) meet(ing) our overseas commitments” in US-instigated war theaters.

“(W)e must continue to promote global growth, so that our young people can achieve greater opportunity and prosperity,” Obama ranted.

Policies instituted by Western societies afford most “young people” no futures today, privileged interests benefitting at their expense.

European political and economic unity v. Brexit matters only in parliaments and corporate board rooms, a non-issue for ordinary Brits, their welfare harmed either way.

Obama lied touting “single market” benefits, “providing enormous opportunities for the British people.” He promoted the anti-consumer, pro-business Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) - outrageously claiming it’ll advance “high-standard, pro-worker rules for trade and commerce in the 21st century economy.”

Like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), it’s not about growth-promoting trade benefitting everyone equitably. It’s a deplorable one-way sweetheart deal for business.

It’s about corporate control over the lives of ordinary people, empowering predatory monied interests, letting them operate unaccountably, unhindered by sovereign legal restraints.

It’s grand theft, anti-democratic, a corporate coup d’etat fascist takeover, a jobs killer/environment destroyer, a thirdworldizing scheme, an assault on personal freedoms, nightmarish for ordinary people everywhere.

It’s a zero-sum game - everything for business, exploitation for millions in all nations joining the deal.

Obama endorses what amounts to a neoserfdom scheme. So does Hillary Clinton, backing TPP and TTIP, uncaring about the harm to ordinary people. Ignore her more recent campaign rhetoric suggesting opposition.

TTP and TTIP were and continue to be secretly negotiated because what corporate predators want is so draconian, so harmful to public welfare and fundamental rights, widespread public knowledge could undermine their coming into force.

Countries involved in both agreements account for about 90% of global GDP. Freeing their business interests from legal restraints other than what both agreements stipulate lets them rule the world unhindered.

Civil societies will be unprotected from their predations. Ordinary people will have no way to challenge their abuses.

Sovereign states will be transformed into facilitators for corporate predation - the public interest, fundamental rights and environmental sanity be damned.

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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks World War III".

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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