TPP--the "T" is for Trans--Trans-Pacific Partnership

[Dantès]

Another Reason to Love Obama

A Corporate Trojan Horse Posing as a Trade Agreement

As the federal government shutdown continues, Secretary of State John Kerry heads to Asia for secret talks on a sweeping new trade deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The TPP is often referred to by critics as "NAFTA on steroids," and would establish a free trade zone that would stretch from Vietnam to Chile, encompassing 800 million people — about a third of world trade and nearly 40 percent of the global economy. While the text of the treaty has been largely negotiated behind closed doors and, until June, kept secret from Congress, more than 600 corporate advisers reportedly have access to the measure, including employees of Halliburton and Monsanto. "This is not mainly about trade," says Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. "It is a corporate Trojan horse. The agreement has 29 chapters, and only five of them have to do with trade. The other 24 chapters either handcuff our domestic governments, limiting food safety, environmental standards, financial regulation, energy and climate policy, or establishing new powers for corporations."

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/10/4/a_corporate_trojan_horse_obama_pushes

 

[anatta]

Have to read more about it; the summit(?) was skipped by Obama during the shutdown. There was some talk that by not being there -China would take a more active role....but i'm sketchy on all this, as I just glanced at a story.

Not against "free trade" per se' ( though NAFTA was a giveaway) - but this does look like a corporate whore more then anything else...

I'll go thru it a bit

 

[anatta]

And it was only after a big, great fuss was kicked up by a lot of members—150 of them wrote last year—that finally members of Congress, upon request for the particular chapter, can have a government administration official bring them a chapter.

Their staff is thrown out of the room. They can’t take detailed notes. They’re not supposed to talk about what they saw. And they can, without staff to help them figure out what the technical language is, look at a chapter. This is in contrast to, say, even what the Bush administration did. The last time we had one of these mega-NAFTA expansion attempts was the Free Trade Area of the Americas

..........not good

Alan Grayson said, "I can tell you it’s very bad for the future of America. I just can’t tell you why.

 

[anatta]

So, the Stop Online Piracy Act was a vehicle basically to take away some of our rights on the Internet. It would have criminalized what they call inadvertent, small-scale, non-commercial copying. And the example would be, for instance, Juan, I had you over to dinner.
You liked the recipe I had. I happened to have taken it for $2 I paid for it off of a paid website. And you said, "Lori, can you send me that recipe?" And, of course, I said, "Yeah," and I sent it to you.
That is officially a copyright violation. I should say, "You have to go pay $2 and get it yourself, Juan." But, in fact, it’s small-scale. I didn’t sell it. It’s not commercial. I didn’t send it to a lot of people.

That kind of activity, under SOPA, as well as any number of things we do all the time—making a copy, or like a buffer copy that our computer would make to look at a video, or breaking a digital lock—for instance, if we bought software, but we wanted to run it on Linux—all of those things would be considered criminal activities. We’d face huge fines, and our carriers—Google, etc.—would have to take us off of service, to black us out. So, a huge limit on Internet freedom.

That whole mess was defeated in Congress in a wonderful citizen uprising. A chunk of that is now stuck in the copyright chapter of SOPA—of TPP. So, they call TPP "son of SOPA." In a lot of countries around the TPP region, citizens have fought to have good laws that actually provide them access and don’t allow that kind of control. So, that is a chunk. To give you an idea of how varied the problems are, that’s a chunk of what is in there.

Now, the thing about that Fast Track you mentioned, Fast Track is not in effect. Fast Track is an extraordinary delegation of Congress’s authority. So if we don’t want unsafe food, offshore jobs, SOPA, SOPA, SOPA, limits on Internet freedom, the banksters gettings rolled back into deregulation, we have to make sure that Congress actually maintains its constitutional authority to make sure that before this agreement can be signed, it actually works for us. Fast Track is a delegation of authority. President Obama has asked for it, but it only happens if Congress gives it to him.

 

[anatta]

TPP includes the very controversial investor-state system, which empowers individual corporations to directly sue governments—not in our courts, but in extrajudicial tribunals where three corporate attorneys act as "judges," and these guys rotate between being the judge and being the guys suing the government for the corporation.
They’re empowered to give unlimited cash damages from us, the taxpayers, to these corporations for any government action—a regulatory issue, environment, health, safety—that undermines the investor’s expected future profits. Under that system, big tobacco companies have been attacking health regulations.

 

[anatta]

http://www.exposethetpp.org/


The Trans-Pacific Partnership n. 1. A "free trade" agreement that would set rules on non-trade matters such as food safety, internet freedom, medicine costs, financial regulation, and the environment.

2. A binding international governance system that would require the United States, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, and any other country that signs on to conform their domestic policies to its rules.
3. A secret trade negotiation that has included over 600 official corporate "trade advisors" while hiding the text from Members of Congress, governors, state legislators, the press, civil society, and the public.

 

[Dantès]

http://www.exposethetpp.org/


The Trans-Pacific Partnership n. 1. A "free trade" agreement that would set rules on non-trade matters such as food safety, internet freedom, medicine costs, financial regulation, and the environment.

2. A binding international governance system that would require the United States, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, and any other country that signs on to conform their domestic policies to its rules.
3. A secret trade negotiation that has included over 600 official corporate "trade advisors" while hiding the text from Members of Congress, governors, state legislators, the press, civil society, and the public.

It's pretty damn smelly isn't it! It's probably the worst thing any president has ever proposed!

 

[Dantès]

Have to read more about it; the summit(?) was skipped by Obama during the shutdown. There was some talk that by not being there -China would take a more active role....but i'm sketchy on all this, as I just glanced at a story.

Not against "free trade" per se' ( though NAFTA was a giveaway) - but this does look like a corporate whore more then anything else...

I'll go thru it a bit

It's damn bad! You won't like what you find I bet!