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| Multinationals will profit; TTIP CETA TISA; people will lose |
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| TTIP or Democracy, don't hand over Europe to multinational companies. Full of German obedience, they took the banner off Freiburg's town hall just when I arrived. The police had told them that it was not allowed to decorate official buildings with protest banners. |
This morning Freiburg's Sunday paper Der Sonntag printed another picture taken in front of Freiburg's townhall with EU's Jean-Claude Juncker claiming that European jobs will not be affected, Germany's Angela Merkel raising her new leitmotif that TTIP is alternativlos (without alternative), and the young man in the foreground proudly proclaims that TTIP will assure him profits.
This time German angst is somehow justified, for few people understand what TTIP is all about. We do not know what the American and European delegations deliberate so secretly. Angst always develops when things and situations are not well understood. A good example is the reappearance of a few timid wolves in Germany; however, the dire wolves making angst are so "well known" from our reading of Brother Grimm's Kinder- und Hausmärchen (fairy tales).
Apparently, the two TTIP parties' clever (?) idea was to keep the negotiations secret to not excite the people concerned about any tiny detail the US and Europe may and certainly will quarrel about. This way of non-communicating backfired with the result of a general excitement among the people developing lots of conspiracy theories. Here the famous American Chlorhühnchen (a chicken bathed in a chlorine solution to kill the germs) traded against the European chicken full of antibiotics and hormones only presents the tip of the TTIP iceberg.
People develop conspiracy scenarios with the streetcars coming under American control, even in Freiburg. Although one of the future tram stops is already named Madisonallee, more may come. Will the Kaiser-Josef-Straße, in the Middle Ages, called Große Gass (Big Alley), become Broadway, and the Hauptbahnhof be renamed Main Station?
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| ©Der Sonntag/Rothermel |
Apparently, the two TTIP parties' clever (?) idea was to keep the negotiations secret to not excite the people concerned about any tiny detail the US and Europe may and certainly will quarrel about. This way of non-communicating backfired with the result of a general excitement among the people developing lots of conspiracy theories. Here the famous American Chlorhühnchen (a chicken bathed in a chlorine solution to kill the germs) traded against the European chicken full of antibiotics and hormones only presents the tip of the TTIP iceberg.
People develop conspiracy scenarios with the streetcars coming under American control, even in Freiburg. Although one of the future tram stops is already named Madisonallee, more may come. Will the Kaiser-Josef-Straße, in the Middle Ages, called Große Gass (Big Alley), become Broadway, and the Hauptbahnhof be renamed Main Station?
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