Tag: ek Politics

Europe and austerity failed Greece

by Joseph Stiglitz, AlterNet

Friday, Feb 6, 2015 04:30 AM EST

Every (advanced) country has realized that making capitalism work requires giving individuals a fresh start. The debtors’ prisons of the nineteenth century were a failure – inhumane and not exactly helping to ensure repayment. What did help was to provide better incentives for good lending, by making creditors more responsible for the consequences of their decisions.

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The idea of bringing back debtors’ prisons may seem far-fetched, but it resonates with current talk of moral hazard and accountability. There is a fear that if Greece is allowed to restructure its debt, it will simply get itself into trouble again, as will others.

This is sheer nonsense. Does anyone in their right mind think that any country would willingly put itself through what Greece has gone through, just to get a free ride from its creditors? If there is a moral hazard, it is on the part of the lenders – especially in the private sector – who have been bailed out repeatedly. If Europe has allowed these debts to move from the private sector to the public sector – a well-established pattern over the past half-century – it is Europe, not Greece, that should bear the consequences. Indeed, Greece’s current plight, including the massive run-up in the debt ratio, is largely the fault of the misguided troika programs foisted on it.

So it is not debt restructuring, but its absence, that is “immoral.” There is nothing particularly special about the dilemmas that Greece faces today; many countries have been in the same position. What makes Greece’s problems more difficult to address is the structure of the eurozone: monetary union implies that member states cannot devalue their way out of trouble, yet the modicum of European solidarity that must accompany this loss of policy flexibility simply is not there.

Seventy years ago, at the end of World II, the Allies recognized that Germany must be given a fresh start. They understood that Hitler’s rise had much to do with the unemployment (not the inflation) that resulted from imposing more debt on Germany at the end of World War I. The Allies did not take into account the foolishness with which the debts had been accumulated or talk about the costs that Germany had imposed on others. Instead, they not only forgave the debts; they actually provided aid, and the Allied troops stationed in Germany provided a further fiscal stimulus.

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Seldom do democratic elections give as clear a message as that in Greece. If Europe says no to Greek voters’ demand for a change of course, it is saying that democracy is of no importance, at least when it comes to economics. Why not just shut down democracy, as Newfoundland effectively did when it entered into receivership before World War II?

One hopes that those who understand the economics of debt and austerity, and who believe in democracy and humane values, will prevail.

Heiner Flassbeck

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Not from here of course, all we ask is that people get preapproved if they want to write about I/P and that you refrain from stalking, harrassment (bullying), hate speech, and outing, otherwise you can insult my intelligence and your fellow readers to your heart’s content because blogging is not crochet and best bring your sharpest needles and thickest skin if you want to play.

I recall a different time (2009) and a different place that is now a shadow of what it once was.  Barack Obama and his Administration had just decided to withold thousands of photographs of prisoner abuse and torture from Abu Ghraib and other sites under U.S. control.

That was then.  This is now.

Judge Gives US Government a Week to Appeal or Comply With Order Involving Thousands of Prisoner Abuse Photos

By: Kevin Gosztola, Firedog Lake

Friday February 6, 2015 11:54 am

The United States government has been given a week to appeal or comply with a federal judge’s order to provide a justification for why approximately 2,100 photographs of torture and abuse of prisoners must remain secret.

The American Civil Liberties Union has pursued the release of records related to detainee treatment and “the death of prisoners in United States custody and abroad after September 11, 2001, since October 2003.

In October 2009, the Protected National Security Documents Act (PNSDA) amended the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to “provide that photographs could be made exempt from disclosure for a three-year certification by the Secretary of Defense to the effect that publication would endanger American lives.” Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki asked President Barack Obama not to release photographs of detainees abuse, for “fear of the consequences.” Secretary of Defense Robert Gates filed a certification to prevent the release of photographs and the court upheld that certification.

Three years later, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta renewed the certification, even though US troops had withdrawn and the war in Iraq had been declared over.

Judge Alvin Hellerstein found that Panetta’s certification failed to show why the release of the photos would continue to “endanger the citizens of the United States, members of the United States Armed Forces or employees of the United States Government deployed outside the United States.” He ordered the government in August 2014 to go through each of the photos and explain why they should not be released.

On February 4, Hellerstein informed the government he was skeptical of Panetta’s reclassification. He had already seen a small sample of the photos and did not think a national security exemption covered many of the photos he reviewed, according to The Guardian. He requested the government put forward a plan for assessing each individual photo to justify withholding them from the public.

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According to The Intercept, government lawyers invoked the Islamic State’s use of past abuses to justify executions of hostages. A government lawyer stood in court and argued the government had already fulfilled its obligation to “review” the photos when associate deputy general counsel in the Department of the Army, Megan Weis, was designated in 2012 to look at the photos on Panetta’s behalf.

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Hellerstein was not satisfied with this process.

The judge said he would be willing to go through the photos one by one in a closed session with the government. The government could explain why each one had to remain secret. But, at one point, Hellerstein added, “I did not enjoy seeing the pictures the first time. I would not want to see them again.”

He did not believe any threat posed by the Islamic State was justification for secrecy. Newsweek reported Hellerstein contended soldiers and citizens were as “exposed” as they were when the court favored release in 2005.

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When Obama refused to release the photos in 2009 and responded to criticism, one of his remarks in defense of the decision was that they were not “particularly sensational.”

Journalist Jason Leopold reported last year that documents from the Defense Department show the photos come from “203 closed criminal investigations into detainee abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

The Defense Department had actually planned to “mitigate the threat to security and political stability” by offering apologies to “regional partners” and “audiences who find [the] images humiliating.”

The photos the government are afraid of releasing depict scenes such as soldiers zip-tying Iraqi detainees to bars in stress positions, a soldier pointing a pistol at a prisoner tied up with his head covered while lying on the ground, a dead Afghan national shot and killed and a female soldier holding a broom near a detainee as if she was going to stick it into his rectum.

Leopold’s report suggested the soldiers had wanted to hold on to these photos as “mementos.”

Like all court orders where judges refuse to show the utmost deference to the government’s secrecy arguments, the government does not think the court is correctly interpreting the law passed to effectively help the Pentagon conceal embarrassing photos. However, PNSDA clearly says the Secretary of Defense must issue a certification for a photograph. It does not refer to photographs collectively. So, a process that attempts to justify blanket certification for secrecy is not in line with the law.

The judge may decide that all or most of the photos should remain secret, but the judge has decided he will not defer to the government when it is not doing what the law says the Defense Department is supposed to do.

Hmm…

When Obama refused to release the photos in 2009 and responded to criticism, one of his remarks in defense of the decision was that they were not “particularly sensational.”

The photos the government are afraid of releasing depict scenes such as soldiers zip-tying Iraqi detainees to bars in stress positions, a soldier pointing a pistol at a prisoner tied up with his head covered while lying on the ground, a dead Afghan national shot and killed and a female soldier holding a broom near a detainee as if she was going to stick it into his rectum.

The proximate cause of my banishment was that I said that people who wanted to suppress these images were no better than the “Good Germans” who ignored the evidence of the Nazi Death Camps and when a particular member objected to that characterization I said that he too was behaving like a “Good German”.

I put it to you, gentle reader, how much acumen is required to ignore the trains arriving full of humans every day and leaving empty?  How insensate do you have to be to consume your dinner downwind of the stench of decay and the stink of burning flesh that you can claim not to know what crimes your leaders are committing in your name?

Or are you also worried that the irrefutable evidence of this will inflame the victims’ sentiments?

Why should they not be inflamed at this injustice?  What kind of excuse is that?

After slightly less than 2 years I was reinstated.  I never apologized, I have nothing to apologize for.  I was later banished again for defending a rape survivor against a drunken bully, but that’s another story.

So this was the gloomy news yesterday-

The World’s Email Encryption Software Relies On One Guy, Who Is Going Broke

by Julia Angwin, ProPublica

Thu, Feb 5th 2015 12:34pm

The man who built the free email encryption software used by whistleblower Edward Snowden, as well as hundreds of thousands of journalists, dissidents and security-minded people around the world, is running out of money to keep his project alive.

Werner Koch wrote the software, known as Gnu Privacy Guard, in 1997, and since then has been almost single-handedly keeping it alive with patches and updates from his home in Erkrath, Germany. Now 53, he is running out of money and patience with being underfunded.

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Koch’s code powers most of the popular email encryption programs GPGTools, Enigmail, and GPG4Win. “If there is one nightmare that we fear, then it’s the fact that Werner Koch is no longer available,” said Enigmail developer Nicolai Josuttis. “It’s a shame that he is alone and that he has such a bad financial situation.”

The programs are also underfunded. Enigmail is maintained by two developers in their spare time. Both have other full-time jobs. Enigmail’s lead developer, Patrick Brunschwig, told me that Enigmail receives about $1,000 a year in donations – just enough to keep the website online.

GPGTools, which allows users to encrypt email from Apple Mail, announced in October that it would start charging users a small fee. The other popular program, GPG4Win, is run by Koch himself.

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For almost two years, Koch continued to pay his programmer in the hope that he could find more funding. “But nothing came,” Koch recalled. So, in August 2012, he had to let the programmer go. By summer 2013, Koch was himself ready to quit.

But after the Snowden news broke, Koch decided to launch a fundraising campaign. He set up an appeal at a crowdsourcing website, made t-shirts and stickers to give to donors, and advertised it on his website. In the end, he earned just $21,000.

The campaign gave Koch, who has an 8-year-old daughter and a wife who isn’t working, some breathing room. But when I asked him what he will do when the current batch of money runs out, he shrugged and said he prefers not to think about it. “I’m very glad that there is money for the next three months,” Koch said. “Really I am better at programming than this business stuff.”

And here is the good news today!

Internet Comes Through For Developer Of Key Email Encryption Tool

by Mike Masnick, Tech Dirt

Fri, Feb 6th 2015 6:13am

Yesterday, we reposted Julia Angwin’s article from ProPublica about how the guy behind GPG, a key tool for email encryption, Werner Koch, was basically broke, and that attempts to crowdfund money to keep going hadn’t been all that successful. The story seemed to resonate with lots of people, and the donations started flowing. After getting a grand total of just about €34,000 in 2014, he’s already well over €100,000 this year, with most of that coming yesterday after Angwin’s story went up. On top of that, Stripe and Facebook each agreed to fund him to the tune of $50,000 per year (from each of them, so $100k total), and the Linux Foundation had agreed to give him $60k (though, Koch admits that the deal there was actually signed last week).

Either way, this is great to see, though it’s unfortunate that it had to wait until an article detailing his plight came out.

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It really is quite incredible when you realize how much of the internet that you rely on is built by people out of a true labor of love. Often, people have no idea that there even is an opportunity to support those projects, and it’s great that Angwin was able to highlight this one and get it the necessary funding to keep moving forward.

FISA Court Rubberstamped NSA’s Questionable Legal Theories To Grant It Expanded Surveillance Powers

by Tim Cushing, Tech Dirt

Tue, Feb 3rd 2015

More documents have been yanked out of the NSA’s hands, thanks to a New York Times FOIA lawsuit. The documents are from 2007, and they further detail the agency’s warrantless surveillance program which swept up not only phone numbers but also email addresses and content. The program wasn’t actually legal at the time it rolled out. It took the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 to codify this. In the meantime, the agency used interim legislation (2007’s Protect America Act) and some hubris to enhance its haystacking business.

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Rather than use the standard definition of a “facility” — that being a base of operations — the NSA chose to read it as an impossible combination of noun and verb. An email address is a “facility” because it “facilitates communications.” Vinson wasn’t too impressed with this, or the fact that the application didn’t contain much in the way of probable cause. As he noted, the NSA’s intention was to collect both sets of data in bulk, far from the targeted surveillance it attempted to portray in its application.

The May 2007 order (also by Roger Vinson) shows that the NSA found a way to get its aims accomplished, despite Vinson’s reluctance. A “new legal theory” was offered by the agency in an amended application and buttressed by Keith Alexander’s declaration that it was all totally legal.

Unfortunately, the order doesn’t detail the NSA’s legal theory, or at least not in any visible way. Vinson’s musings on the NSA’s Plan B turns out to be a bunch of wasted typing. His declaration that on the “basis of facts submitted by the applicant, there is probable cause to believe that…:” is followed by four completely redacted pages.

Following that, Vinson authorizes the NSA’s “roving, multipoint” surveillance, based on the opinion that Congress would have authorized that (and apparently pretty much anything else it may or may not have conceived of) considering the “Government’s national security interests are so great.” This rationale again. And again, presented by an agency whose livelihood depends on the depiction of security threats as perennially “great” and everlasting. Vinson also agreed to contact-chaining using these numbers and email addresses as selectors.

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And so, the domestic surveillance that wasn’t (this order — and past ones — draws a very clear line between foreign targets and known US persons) becomes a handy tool for domestic surveillance. As the court notes earlier in the order, because of where the communications and data are collected, there’s no real way to separate US/non-US data without digging through the collection. When it’s discovered, minimization procedures are to apply — except, apparently, if it can hand the data/communications off to the FBI. (The CIA, on the other hand, gets everything, domestic or foreign, apparently only subject to the NSA’s discretion.)

Again, this entire line of surveillance still hadn’t been determined to be completely legal. It took the FISA Amendments Act to codify this particular program. Despite that, it was approved anyway, thanks to the NSA’s willingness to explore as many legal theories as necessary in order to secure the FISA judge’s approval.

That’s the problem with these two orders. We don’t get to see the NSA’s legal wranglings. Those are redacted. And what is actually revealed doesn’t explain much. The May 2007 order notes that the NSA’s arguments are still on shaky ground and the earlier (and much longer) April order handles the entirety of the agency’s legal discussions on its contact-chaining of unrelated “facilities” in a single paragraph.

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Simply mentioning a targeted email in the body of an email message is enough “probable cause” for the FISA court, which goes on to note that it’s perfectly OK (in the search for supporting probable cause) for the agency to read nearly any communication that crosses its desk, provided it’s within a step or two of its selectors.

The NSA didn’t get to where it is today overnight. It took a decade of legal wrangling and the steadfast assertion that the terrorist threat to the US is just as strong as it was September 10, 2001. With the assistance of obliging courts and sympathetic legislators, the NSA has become a data and communications behemoth, sucking in vast quantities of both from all over the world.

Don’t Trade Away Our Health

By JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ, The New York Times

JAN. 30, 2015

Among the topics negotiators have considered are some of the most contentious T.P.P. provisions – those relating to intellectual property rights. And we’re not talking just about music downloads and pirated DVDs. These rules could help big pharmaceutical companies maintain or increase their monopoly profits on brand-name drugs.

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Trade agreements are negotiated by the office of the United States Trade Representative, supposedly on behalf of the American people. Historically, though, the trade representative’s office has aligned itself with corporate interests. If big pharmaceutical companies hold sway – as the leaked documents indicate they do – the T.P.P. could block cheaper generic drugs from the market. Big Pharma’s profits would rise, at the expense of the health of patients and the budgets of consumers and governments.

There are two ways the office of the trade representative can use the T.P.P. to maintain or raise drug prices and profits.

The first is to restrict competition from generics. It’s axiomatic that more competition means lower prices. When companies have to fight for customers, they end up cutting their prices. When a patent expires, any company can enter the market with a generic version of a drug. The differences in prices between brand-name and generic drugs are mind- and budget-blowing. Just the availability of generics drives prices down: In generics-friendly India, for example, Gilead Sciences, which makes an effective hepatitis-C drug, recently announced that it would sell the drug for a little more than 1 percent of the $84,000 it charges here.

That’s why, since the United States opened up its domestic market to generics in 1984, they have grown from 19 percent of prescriptions to 86 percent, by some accounts saving the United States government, consumers and employers more than $100 billion a year. Drug companies stand to gain handsomely if the T.P.P. limits the sale of generics.

The second strategy is to undermine government regulation of drug prices. More competition is not the only way to keep down the prices of essential goods and services. Governments can also directly restrain prices through law, or effectively restrain them by denying reimbursement to patients for “overpriced” drugs – thus encouraging companies to bring down their prices to approved levels. These regulatory approaches are especially important in markets where competition is limited, as it is in the drug market. If the United States Trade Representative gets its way, the T.P.P. will limit the ability of partner countries to restrict prices. And the pharmaceutical companies surely hope the “standard” they help set in this agreement will become global – for example, by becoming the starting point for United States negotiations with the European Union over the same issues.

Americans might shrug at the prospect of soaring drug prices around the world. After all, the United States already allows drug companies to charge what they want. But that doesn’t mean we might not want to change things someday. Here again, the T.P.P. has us cornered: Trade agreements, and in particular individual provisions within them, are typically far more difficult to alter or repeal than domestic laws.

We can’t be sure which of these features have made it through this week’s negotiations. What’s clear is that the overall thrust of the intellectual property section of the T.P.P. is for less competition and higher drug prices. The effects will go beyond the 12 T.P.P. countries. Barriers to generics in the Pacific will put pressure on producers of such drugs in other countries, like India, as well.

Of course, pharmaceutical companies claim they need to charge high prices to fund their research and development. This just isn’t so. For one thing, drug companies spend more on marketing and advertising than on new ideas. Overly restrictive intellectual property rights actually slow new discoveries, by making it more difficult for scientists to build on the research of others and by choking off the exchange of ideas that is critical to innovation. As it is, most of the important innovations come out of our universities and research centers, like the National Institutes of Health, funded by government and foundations.

Or we can hope so.

Syriza Official Vows to Kill EU-US Trade Deal as ‘Gift to All European People’

by Andrea Germanos, Common Dreams

Monday, February 02, 2015

The TTIP, which would be the biggest trade deal ever, has been criticized as a corporate-friendly deal that threatens food and environmental safety under the guise of “harmonization” of regulations.

Georgios Katrougkalos, now deputy minister for administrative reform, confirmed what he had told EurActiv Greece ahead of his Syriza party’s victory last week: that his parliament would not ratify the trade deal.

“I can ensure you that a Parliament where Syriza holds the majority will never ratify the deal. And this will be a big gift not only to the Greek people but to all the European people,” EurActiv reported Monday.

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Friends of the Earth Europe, which plans to hold a demonstration Wednesday to highlight how the TTIP is a “Trojan treaty.”

Also joining the demonstration is Guy Taylor, trade campaigner for Global Justice Now and an organizer for actions Wednesday, who said in a statement: “It’s unheard of to see so many people traveling to Brussels to lobby their MEPs like this, and that’s testament to just how hugely controversial and unpopular TTIP has become. David Cameron waxes lyrical about national sovereignty, but in pushing for this deal he is willfully handing sovereignty to big business. The deal is not really about trade, it’s about entrenching the position of the one percent. It should be abandoned.”

Underscoring similar concerns is 31-year-old Ross Mackay, who will be joining the actions in Brussels. He told the Scotland Herald, “TTIP is not really about opening up trade and harmonizing tariffs and regulations; it’s about a race to the bottom, locked-in privatization, and a seismic shift in power away from people and their elected governments towards corporations.”

Another reminder of why these “Trade” deals are bad-

Two Leaks Reveal How TAFTA/TTIP’s Regulatory Co-operation Body Will Undermine Sovereignty And Democracy

by Glyn Moody, Tech Dirt

Mon, Feb 2nd 2015

(I)n a single week, we have had two important leaks in this area, both confirming those initial ideas sketched out in 2013 are still very much how TAFTA/TTIP aims to bring about the desired regulatory harmonization.

Corporate Europe Observatory obtained a very recent draft copy of the EU’s proposals for the chapter covering regulatory co-operation (pdf), which describes a new transatlantic organization, now called the Regulatory Cooperation Body.

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Along with this new opportunity for lobbyists to try to shape, slow down or even block new regulations, the EU proposes to hand them a powerful weapon — the impact assessment.

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As Corporate Europe Observatory points out, the only criteria taken into account are impacts on trade or investment. So, for example, new environmental rules might well do wonders for reducing air pollution, but if they have an adverse effect on US or EU companies’ sales or investments, they would be marked as undesirable. This is likely to have a severe chilling effect on bringing in new standards that protect the public but might impose new costs on business.

The other leak, obtained by the Greens MEP Michel Reimon, concerns regulatory co-operation in the field of finance (pdf). This is a contentious area: the US is reluctant to harmonize financial regulations through TAFTA/TTIP because Europe’s are weaker; for the same reason, the European finance industry is keen to use TAFTA/TTIP as a way of undermining America’s more stringent rules.

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That is, the European Commission wants the US to sign up to TTIP without any specification of exactly how the new Financial Regulatory Forum will work, or what powers it will have. This seems a clear effort to sneak in elements later that the US is currently resisting.

What these important leaks confirm is that the regulatory co-operation that lies at the heart of TAFTA/TTIP would undermine sovereignty on both sides of the Atlantic. The Regulatory Cooperation Body would provide an important new forum for corporate lobbyists to intervene even earlier in the life of proposed rules and regulations than they do now — and long before lawmakers have a chance to express their views. The end-result is likely to be an impoverishment not just of public policy-making, but of democracy itself.

Finally, we have some new video about SYRIZA and the direction they are taking-

Bill Black

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Democracy Now

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Debt Swaps

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Lasting from July to November of 1917 this battle (also known as the Battle of Passchendaele) cost nearly a Million lives on both sides of the conflict.

Among Allied critics the argument is made that the objectives were too limited (capture of some ridges controlling a supply line), premature in the face of United States Expeditionary Force deployment, the tactics limited and antiquated, and the price too costly in resources that could have been diverted to other fronts (the Battle of Caporetto for instance).

Among German critics it exposed Ludendorff as a commander of limited skill and little imagination and it was objectively a tactical loss.

Allied apologists claim it blunted German offensive capabilities in the critical year of 1917 and diverted German resources from the Eastern Front which eventually collapsed anyway due to the Russian Revolution.

German ones point out the Germans held long enough to ensure that collapse and the transfer of resources West to enable the Ludendorff Offensive of 1918 (which failed).

It is possible that The Great War could have come to an ultimate decision ending in Allied victory without United States intervention.  The British blockade was just as stifling as it had been against Napoleon a century earlier and the German Army after the failure of a reinforced Ludendorff no more resolute than the French (among which there was spreading mutiny).  What would likely not have happened is a settlement as punitive as the Treaty of Versailles which led, ultimately, to the ascendancy of Hitler and the Second World War.

So, lives wisely spent or not?  Or are you with Chairman Mao who said when asked if the invention of fire had been good for the Chinese people- ‘Too soon to tell’?

A Year After Reform Push, NSA Still Collects Bulk Domestic Data, Still Lacks Way to Assess Value

By Dan Froomkin, The Intercept

1/29/15

The presidential advisory board on privacy that recommended a slew of domestic surveillance reforms in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations reported today that many of its suggestions have been agreed to “in principle” by the Obama administration, but in practice, very little has changed.

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“The Administration accepted our recommendation in principle. However, it has not ended the bulk telephone records program on its own, opting instead to seek legislation to create an alternative to the existing program,” the report notes.

And while Congress has variously debated, proposed, neutered, and failed to agree on any action, the report’s authors point the finger of blame squarely at President Obama. “It should be noted that the Administration can end the bulk telephone records program at any time, without congressional involvement,” the report says.

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The board noted that Obama has accepted some, but not all, of the privacy safeguards it recommended – somewhat reducing the ease and depth with which National Security Agency agents can dig through the domestic data, but not, for instance, agreeing to delete the data after three years, instead of five.

A year ago, the board also recommended that Congress enact legislation enabling the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which currently approves both specific and blanket warrant applications without allowing anyone to argue otherwise, to hear independent views. It recommended more appellate reviews of that court’s rulings.

There’s been no progress on either front.

A year ago, the board recommended that “the scope of surveillance authorities affecting Americans should be public,” and that the intelligence community should “develop principles and criteria for the public articulation of the legal authorities under which it conducts surveillance affecting Americans.”

Something is apparently brewing in that area, but it’s not entirely clear what. “Intelligence Community representatives have advised us that they are committed to implementing this recommendation,” with principles “that they will soon be releasing,” the report says.

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But one recommendation in particular – that the intelligence community develop some sort of methodology to assess whether any of this stuff is actually doing any good – has been notably “not implemented.”

“Determining the efficacy and value of particular counterterrorism programs is critical,” the board says. “Without such determinations, policymakers and courts cannot effectively weigh the interests of the government in conducting a program against the intrusions on privacy and civil liberties that it may cause.”

Yup.  It’s transparent alright.

Trans-Pacific Partnership Contains Provison To Help Wall Street Avoid Regulations

By: DSWright, Firedog Lake

Wednesday January 28, 2015 1:00 pm

Try to hide your surprise. One of the reasons the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is being kept secret is because it has unpopular and reckless policies in it such as deregulating Wall Street. Framed as an effort to harmonize rules for efficiency’s sake the TPP contains rules to prevent “localization” or domestic rules that would restrain financial firms.

Much like Dodd-Frank in the US, many countries have local regulations on how the financial industry can operate in their country. TPP seeks to eliminate such local requirements and instead promote a low and loose universal standard to allow global financial firms and financiers to come and go as they please in each country party to the TPP agreement.

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What could go wrong? Surely Wall Street can be trusted to follow difficult to enforce rules that if broken could jeopardize financial markets and the global economy. When has that ever not worked out?

Tutankhamun’s botched beard: conservation chief demoted to royal vehicles role

Patrick Kingsley, The Guardian

Tuesday 27 January 2015 09.26 EST

It’s a pharaoh cop, Egyptian archaeology officials have admitted. After initially downplaying reports that Tutankhamun’s beard had been fixed with the wrong glue, the Egyptian Museum has owned up to the error – and moved its chief conservator to less glamorous pastures.

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Last week, her duties included the conservation of one of the world’s most important collection of artefacts, including Tutankhamun’s fabled death mask and jewellery, as well as hundreds of ancient mummies, tombs and statues. From now on her role will be limited to overseeing the contents of Egypt’s royal stables.

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Her move follows the museum’s admission that Tutankhamun’s beard was damaged last year, and that conservators subsequently fixed it with too conspicuous a glue.

The discovery initially came to light after anonymous curators leaked the information to the press last week. “One night they wanted to fix the lighting in the showcase, and when they did that they held the mask in the wrong way and broke the beard,” one curator told the Guardian at the time. “They tried to fix it overnight with the wrong material, but it wasn’t fixed in the right way.”

For several days, officials downplayed the claims. Abdelrahman argued that while the wrong glue was indeed applied, the beard was never itself broken. “If it was broken, it would have been a big problem, and we would have written a report about it,” she said.