Privatized Planet: Free Trade as a Weapon Against Democracy, Healthcare and the Environment

by T.J. Coles

Overview

President Trump has torn up the TTIP and TPP. Britain is distancing itself from the European Union. Does this means that corporate globalization is in retreat? Privatized Planet exposes the truth about 'free trade' in this new era of globalization. Quoting leaked documents, corporate lobby memos and a host of other primary sources, it seeks to prove that corporate globalization is simply changing shape, not coming to an end.

Author T.J. Coles takes us on a tour of US-led corporate free trade deals from WWII to the present. He argues that activists helped beat back the big multilateral trade deals, TTIP and TPP, and that they must now pay attention to the 'noodle bowl' of bilateral deals being signed in secret, like the ongoing US-UK free trade deal.

Whether it's privatizing Britain’s National Health Service, lobbying to get genetically-modified foods and hormone-treated beef into Europe, pushing fracking on Eastern European countries, or murdering environmental activists in the third world, the US-led corporate empire will stop at nothing until the planet is in private hands.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781780265018
Publisher:	New Internationalist
Publication date:	04/17/2019
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

T.J. Coles was awarded a PhD from Plymouth University(UK) for his work on the aesthetic experiences of blind and visually impaired people. His thesis The Knotweed Factor draws on the philosophy of neuroscience and cognitive psychology. A columnist with Axis of Logic, Coles regularly writes about politics and human rights. His work has appeared in Newsweek, the New Statesman, Peace Review, teleSUR, Truthout and Z Magazine. Books include Britain's Secret Wars, The Great Brexit Swindle, President Trump, Inc., Fire and Fury and the anthology Voices for Peace (2017), which he edited.

Table of Contents

Preface: 'Retain that fatter profit share'

Part I Evolving world order
Introduction: Reshaping globalization
Chapter 1 Free trade: From WWII to the WTO
Chapter 2 Free trade: Bush & Obama
Chapter 3 Free trade: The Trump years
Chapter 4 Rivalries: 'Globalization is a brutal process'

Part II Our environment
Introduction Energy & transport: ‘Eliminating the limits’
Chapter 5 Clinton’s State Department: ‘Get a life’
Chapter 6 Fossil fuels: ‘Exploitation should be guaranteed’
Chapter 7 Vehicles: ISDS as ‘gunboat diplomacy’
Chapter 8 Food and agriculture: ‘Mere law’

Part III Health and finance
Chapter 9 Financialization: ‘A highway without speed limits’
Chapter 10 Health: ‘The NHS will be shown no mercy’
Conclusion: ‘Make it impossible to reverse privatisation’

What People are Saying About This

John Pilger

'In this meticulously sourced book, T.J. Coles breaks down the facade of "free trade" and its army of acronyms, spelling out the threat from an extremism that wants your healthcare, wages, pensions and much more. You have been warned.'
John Pilger, author of The New Rulers of the World

Richard Heinberg

'Coles clearly shows there is an enormous hidden cost to global trade agreements, and we all end up paying the tab … Coles's work is well researched, carefully argued, eminently readable, and, in the end, irrefutable.'
Richard Heinberg, Research Fellow, Post Carbon Institute, author of The End of Growth

John Perkins

'Privatized Planet demonstrates that what the corporatocracy calls "free trade" is a tool of enslavement; it frees the billionaires to entrap and exploit the rest of us.'
John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hitman