Werewolf Edition #36 – Trans Pacific Partnership Special
Werewolf Edition #36 – Trans Pacific Partnership Special
From Werewolf Editor Gordon Campbell
Enter the "Wolf"
Hi and welcome to the 36th edition of Werewolf, this month dominated by the Trans Pacific Partnership negotiation round in Auckland, early December. The TPP is a secretive trade deal via which US business lobbies aim to unify the Asia Pacific region in service to their commercial interests – but to date, all the TPP has managed to unify (and magnify) is opposition to its aims and processes from an unlikely mix of left wing fair traders and multilateral free traders, nationalists and pan-nationalists, environmentalists, academics, trade unionists, business analysts, many members of the US Congress and farmers from as far afield as Japan, Canada and the United States.
As we explain > this month's cover story everyone from Pharmac to The Warehouse to our bio-security safety net are in the TPP firing line, and New Zealand would lose immediately far, far more than it stands to gain, eventually from a TPP deal. In her story, Alison McCulloch reports on the TPP’s special implications for agriculture, and water quality. In another TPP story, we demonstrate how benign sounding TPP terms like “ transparency” would impact on Pharmac, and on this country’s medicines bill. In our exclusive interview with Jagdish Bhagwati, the world’s foremost trade economist explains his concerns about the damage the TPP may do to New Zealand, and to multilateral free trade.
But hey, its not all TPP, folks. In this extensively researched story, Dunedin writer Greg Adamson examines the hypocrisy of state’s role in persecuting of Kim Dotcom while state agencies and major corporates pour in money to advertise on his and other allegedly ‘pirate” sites. From the edge of the horrifically polluted Aral Sea, globe-trotting regular contributor Brannavan Gnanalingam reports on the blighted landscape and on the region’s peculiar fate as the resting ground for a century of Russian lost art, from socialist realism to underground experimentalism. Entombed art beside a dying sea.
Are hipsters the pea or the princess? Or do they inhabit a Venn diagram where they’re both the advance scouts of change and the boundary riders of the status quo at the same time? Anne Russell reports on how hipsters and their infernal identity shopping and penchant for cultural appropriation suit capitalism right down to the ground. In his film column this month Philip Matthews picks 2012’s best, worst and over-rated films. While in our music column The Complicatist there’s a downbeat thread running from hipster depressive art rapper Serengeti, early 60s rocker Del Shannon (so downbeat he’s dead) and singing fashion plate Lana Del Rey. Finally, in his satirical column Lyndon Hood asks whether you too, are finding it impossible these days to suspend disbelief at NZ’s patently scripted politics. Better acting, better writing, more believable plotlines, please.
Thanks to Lyndon for helping me post this online. And thanks to everyone who’s helped out, written for, donated to and/or just plain old read something on Werewolf this year. Thanks a whole lot. You all make it seem like fun, at close of day. We’re taking a break, but the ‘Wolf will back in February. If you want to be involved and care to talk over story ideas, contact me at gordon@scoop.co.nz
Gordon
Campbell
Editor, Werewolf.
The contents of this edition are:
FEATURES:
***********
Into The Cave of Dreams –
Trans Pacific Partnership
Is the Trans
Pacific Partnership a free trade mirage?
by Gordon
Campbell
Selling the Farm – Trans Pacific
Partnership
Just how much could a TPP deal
to get our dairy into the United States really cost
us?
by Alison McCulloch
The Neutering Of Pharmac – Trans
Pacific Partnership
How the TPP trade deal
means trouble for our drugs buying agency.
by Gordon
Campbell
Head First Into The Spaghetti Bowl
– Trans Pacific Partnership
An exclusive
interview with the world’s leading trade scholar, Jagdish
Bhagwati.
by Gordon Campbell
MegaContradictions
Copyright
infringement is allegedly theft – so how come state
agencies and corporates advertise on pirate sites?
by
Greg Adamson
Hipster Irony and
Capitalism
Reporting from the
polyhipsternomics war zone
by Anne Russell
Go To China
The best
(and worst) films of 2012
by Philip Matthews
Art On Desolation
Row
A great art museum endures, amidst
social and environmental disaster by the Aral Sea
by
Brannavan
Gnanalingam
COLUMNS:
***********
From The Hood : This Movie
Sucks
Shouldn’t reality have a better
script?
by Lyndon Hood
The Complicatist : Serengeti, Del
Shannon, Lana Del Rey
Learning survival
tactics from Brian Dennehy
by Gordon Campbell
* * * * *
WEREWOLF ISSUE 35, October 11, 2012 * * * *
*
The Octoberr 2012
Edition of Werewolf
by
Werewolf
THE IMPORTANT BIT
- WHY WEREWOLF?
from Scoop General Manager Alastair
Thompson
Werewolf is all about finding a new way to enable quality journalism to thrive in an online environment and a key part of that effort is soliciting support from our readers.
Our estimate is that for every 300 monthly subscribers we gain we will be able to afford to employ one professional journalist. We have a way to go - but it is not such a high mountain to climb.
Already several Scoop readers have decided to subscribe on a recurring monthly basis. We thank them greatly. But more are needed.
The links to use to make donations via credit card are.
$10
Per Month Sustaining Subscription
http://scoop.co.nz/go/subscribe10.html
$15
Per Month Sustaining Subscription
http://scoop.co.nz/go/subscribe15.html
$25
Per Month Sustaining Subscription
http://scoop.co.nz/go/subscribe25.html
Or
if you prefer you can set up an automatic payment to our
bank account"
Automatic payment to our bank
account:
Westpac - Scoop Media Ltd.
03-0502-0254668-000
We would also encourage you to
consider approaching your friends to also become Scoop
Sustaining Subscribers.
Become a Scoop Sustaining Subscriber - join the alternative to the mainstream media mind-set!
In the meantime we would be very keen to hear any feedback you have on the publication or this subscription project - please reply to this email or email werewolf@scoop.co.nz with suggestions, bouquets or brickbats. This is very much a work in progress and we are very keen to understand the subscriber perspective on this.
Best Regards
Alastair Thompson
Scoop.co.nz
General
Manager