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Anyone's free to answer fam. Why wouldn't you be able to?
Wikileaks Releases Secret Trans-Pacfic Partnership Agreement... Vol. 1984
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Its called a NEW WORLD ORDER.... WORLD ORDER NOT USA ORDER OR EURO ORDER OR ASIA ORDER WORLD ORDER...
no matter where u go its gonna follow you via RfID chip in your passport gps in your cell phone , etc
no matter where u go its gonna follow you via RfID chip in your passport gps in your cell phone , etc
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Agreed. Can someone give a Sparknotes as to what's bad about this?
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I posted (quoted) this just a page back, and it's in the OP as well:
Cliffnotes:
- The USA, UK, Australia, and a number of Asian countries (12 Nations total) have been secretly drafting a legislative proposal that would change international laws regarding patents, copyrights, trademarks, industrial design, AND [COLOR=#red]law enforcement.[/COLOR]
- The "Enforcement" section of this draft would pretty much trample over individual rights, civil liberties, internet privacy, and essentially destroy all creative commons licensing (creative, intellectual, biological, and environmental.) It allows for the use of "Secret evidence," and is essentially SOPA and ACTA combined.
- China AND Russia have both been purposefully kept out of the loop, and have not had any input on this proposal.
- The Obama Administrationis getting readyhas been given approval to fast track this WITHOUT ANY DISCUSSION/AMENDMENTS, and Obama has already said he intends on signing it.
- Lobbyists (Chevron, Halliburton, Monsanto and Walmart) have just as much access to this bill as many US Congress members, if not more.
Full Press Release (and the leaked draft) here: https://wikileaks.org/tpp/pressrelease.html
George Orwell was right.
****, man. The good ol' tactic of letting the people have a couple wins so they don't realize that they're taking/are about to take an even bigger loss.
But this expands on the issue well I think too, in a more accessible way:
[Video]
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go damnit, I'm angry as hell.
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What specifically does TPP do in terms of internet privacy?
BERNIE & WARREN 2016
Sorry, I didn't catch this one before. The video I just posted on this page goes a bit into what could mean in regards to that. We just finally won the war for net neutrality and this sounds like it could not only circumvent that, but make that net neutrality matter become something a company could sue a country for if I'm not mistaken
Bump, since this seems to have happened recently. No surprise, but things are starting to be set in stone
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/24/barack-obama-fast-track-trade-deal-tpp-senate
Are we ******yeah ?
View media item 1608807
I thought so
This won't be pretty |I
Might need to see how doable a life in China is.
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bump, shared the video on fbook. is there any petitions out there?, usefull for contacting congressman/women
jchambers
Banned
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I posted a comic strip breaking it down. It is a secretive trade deal being brokered (most likely with bribery involved) between huge corporations and politicians. It isn't going to be good for the average working class. There will surely be some clauses hidden in there that further erode our liberties as well.
Why the Trans-Pacific Partnership Is Bad for Workers, and for Democracy
Over the past few months, protests have erupted in the halls of the U.S. Capital, and in the streets outside, to thwart the passing of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)--a boon to corporate interests, the protesters argue, and an anathema to U.S workers.
The TPP is a pending trade agreement that brings together 12 countries along the Pacific Rim, in what would be the world's largest free trade area, accounting for 40 percent of the global economy. After five years of negotiations, intense lobbying, and heated debate, the agreement is nearing the finish line, with finalization possible by the end of 2015.
President Obama has positioned the TPP as a signature achievement of his administration. During the 2015 State of the Union, he stressed the importance being economically out front in the Asia Pacific, and promised that the TPP would create more and better jobs, and benefit small business. He also asked for increased executive authority: "I'm asking both parties to give me trade promotion authority to protect American workers," he said, "with strong new trade deals from Asia to Europe that aren't just free, but fair." This means that the President would negotiate and sign the TPP without formal congressional input until after the fact, and even then, members could not offer amendments.
The TPP aims to increase commerce and investment through reducing trade barriers among participating countries. Such barriers typically include import tariffs, but also environmental and labor regulations, known as "nontariff barriers to trade," or NBTs. Economists vary widely in their assessments of the TPP, but there's general agreement across ideological stripes that tariffs are already low. In fact, some reports claim that only five of the 29 draft chapters in the agreement actually relate to lowering tariffs. The protest-worthy part of the deal regards the NBTs--the reduction of regulatory measures, and "freeing" of market activity, in the name of standardizing rules and lowering costs.
Free market trade liberalization efforts like the TPP are not new. In the 1970s and 80s, catchphrases like "trickle-down economics" and the "Washington Consensus" named the series of policy prescriptions pushed by supranationals like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) that combined trade liberalization with privatization and deregulation schemes, and fiscal austerity, under the rubric of structural adjustment. As economic crisis left much of the developing world in dire straights, IMF and World Bank debt programs helped pry open their markets for foreign investment, undermining indigenous industries and placing them in a sisyphean struggle against default. In some cases, like Chile, it was not the IMF that brought free markets, but the iron fist of dictators like Augusto Pinochet, in collusion with U.S. corporate and political leadership, and laissez faire economists like Milton Friedman.
Critics of the TPP reference the failures of NAFTA, which was first conceived during this period by the original champion of trickle-down, Ronald Reagan. Leading up to the 1994 elections, NAFTA garnered bipartisan support, but lone wolf, Independent candidate Ross Perot warned of the "giant sucking sound" that America would hear if NAFTA passed and American jobs were drawn south. Global Trade Watch's assessment of NAFTA's "20 year legacy" demonstrates just how right Perot was. An estimated one million jobs have been lost to NAFTA. It's put downward pressure on wages, and exacerbated America's income gap. And while pre-NAFTA, the U.S carried a trade surplus with Mexico, and was just $26 billion in the hole with Canada--as of 2014, we had a combined trade deficit with both countries of $177 billon.
The TPP repeats many of NAFTA's mistakes, as well as those of other bilateral trade treaties, like the Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China, which cost some 2.7 million U.S. jobs, and the Korea Free Trade Agreement, which failed to deliver the 70,000 jobs its brokers promised. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that under the TPP we stand to lose more than 130,000 jobs to Vietnam and Japan alone, with American workers having to compete with their counterparts in Vietnam, where the minimum wage is just 56 cents an hour.
It's not just jobs and trade deficits, however. The TPP also threatens Internet freedoms and civil liberties, collective bargaining rights, public and environmental health, food safety, financial stability--and American democracy. The closed-door nature of the negotiation process has positioned Congress and the American people as passive recipients of public policy, rather than agents of it - and left us out of decision-making processes that will have broad and deep implications in our everyday lives. Meanwhile, 500-plus corporations have been seated at the TPP negotiation table from the start.
The good news is that some lawmakers, union leaders, and grassroots activists are voicing their opposition. Because of WikiLeaks, public advocates and journalists have been able to assess contradictions between what Executive leadership has disclosed about the TPP and what's actually in the agreement. Progressive Senators like Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) have written letters to the U.S. Trade Representative in protest against the secret negotiation process, and the TPP's adverse effects on financial regulation. Sanders has also said that he would introduce legislation to require disclosure of all future trade agreement negotiations.
Street protests are also gearing up, echoing the large-scale demonstrations in Seattle against the World Trade Organization in the late 90s. These spurred a global movement against corporate-driven globalization, and for "fair" as opposed to "free" trade, spanning many of the environmental, health, and labor concerns that the TPP is now raising. In Latin America, particularly hard hit by structural adjustment, a regional trade alliance emerged among leftwing countries in opposition to Bill Clinton's Free Trade Area of the Americas. The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, or "ALBA," now accounts for over 10 percent of Latin America and the Caribbean's GDP and has produced a broad range of social and economic programs, from literacy and hunger relief to health and medical interventions and oil-trading, as well as telecom initiatives like TeleSur. In a radical departure from U.S.-brokered trade agreements, ALBA emphasizes public, rather than private ownership, domestic development over exports, and cooperation over competition.
Progressive regional partnerships like ALBA may not provide an immediate answer to our TPP troubles, especially given Venezuela's current instability. But they do suggest more people-centered values for shaping the global economy over the long haul. In the meantime, the vote to fast-track the TPP is coming soon. Let's learn our lessons from NAFTA, and avoid the "giant sucking sound" of fleeting jobs, and basic human freedoms, that's looming over the Pacific.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/heather-gautney/why-the-transpacific-part_1_b_6598604.html
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jchambers
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D
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So... Uruguay or... Nah?
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Just wrote to my Representative.
D
Deleted member 38307
Guest
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how do I do this?
jchambers
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Find your rep here. There is a link to their website and email once you find them.
http://www.house.gov/htbin/findrep?ZIP
Didn't the Bush family purchase 100,000 acres of land in Paraguay or Uruguay?
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[emoji]128514[/emoji][emoji]128514[/emoji][emoji]128514[/emoji][emoji]128514[/emoji]
You failed
jchambers
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Now We Know Why Huge TPP Trade Deal Is Kept Secret From the Public
Dave Johnson
A key section of the secret Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement has been leaked to the public. The New York Times has a major story on the contents of the leaked chapter, and it's as bad as many of us feared.
Now we know why the corporations and the Obama administration want the TPP, a huge "trade" agreement being negotiated between the United States and 11 other countries, kept secret from the public until it's too late to stop it.
The section of the TPP that has leaked is the "Investment" chapter that includes investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) clauses. WikiLeaks has the text and analysis, and the Times has the story, in "Trans-Pacific Partnership Seen as Door for Foreign Suits Against U.S.":
An ambitious 12-nation trade accord pushed by President Obama would allow foreign corporations to sue the United States government for actions that undermine their investment "expectations" and hurt their business, according to a classified document.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership -- a cornerstone of Mr. Obama's remaining economic agenda -- would grant broad powers to multinational companies operating in North America, South America and Asia. Under the accord, still under negotiation but nearing completion, companies and investors would be empowered to challenge regulations, rules, government actions and court rulings -- federal, state or local -- before tribunals organized under the World Bank or the United Nations.
The WikiLeaks analysis explains that this lets firms "sue" governments to obtain taxpayer compensation for loss of "expected future profits."
Let that sink in for a moment: "[C]ompanies and investors would be empowered to challenge regulations, rules, government actions and court rulings -- federal, state or local -- before tribunals...." And they can collect not just for lost property or seized assets; they can collect if laws or regulations interfere with these giant companies' ability to collect what they claim are "expected future profits."
The Times' report explains that this clause also "giv[es] greater priority to protecting corporate interests than promoting free trade and competition that benefits consumers."
The tribunals that adjudicate these cases will be made up of private-sector (i.e., corporate) attorneys. These attorneys will rotate between serving on the tribunals and representing corporations that bring cases to be heard by the tribunals. This is a conflict of interest because the attorneys serving on the tribunals will have tremendous incentive to rule for the corporations if they want to continue to get lucrative corporate business.
The Corporate Influence Over the TPP
Largely ignored by the media -- until now -- the TPP has been in a negotiation process for more than five years. The TPP has 29 "chapters" covering various issues, but only five of these chapters cover what would normally be considered "trade." It is a "docking" agreement, which means that any country in the region (e.g., China) can add themselves to the agreement just by signing on.
These negotiations have been conducted in secret, but more than 500 corporate "trade advisors" have access to the text of the agreement. Many of the negotiators themselves are past (and/or likely expect to be future) corporate attorneys or executives. U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman, for example, "received over $4 million as part of multiple exit payments when he left Citigroup to join the Obama administration," according to a report, "Obama Admin's TPP Trade Officials Received Hefty Bonuses From Big Banks," by investigative journalist Lee Fang.
This one-sided process has been causing concern among representatives of many of the key "stakeholder" groups that have been excluded from the negotiating process. Labor unions, environmental groups, consumer groups, health groups, and food-safety groups, as well as LGBT, democracy, faith, and other "stakeholders" who have been denied a seat at the TPP negotiating table, have feared that the process would produce an agreement that tilts the democracy/plutocracy power balance even further in the direction of corporations and billionaires than it is now.
ISDS Tilts Playing Field to Corporations
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, speaking March 18 at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, compared the extraordinary ability of corporations to sue governments to the lack of redress when labor organizers are murdered to explain how ISDS tilts the playing field to corporations over other stakeholders:
ISDS is just a fancy way to give corporations a special legal system that circumvents democratically accountable laws and courts.
ISDS allows corporations to directly challenge almost any law or regulation based on ill-defined concepts such as "fair and equitable treatment." In contrast, all provisions for enforcing labor rights in the TPP require action by member governments -- neither workers nor unions can enforce the labor rights provisions on their own even by suing in national courts.
I'm not just talking theory here. In the first three years of the Labor Action Plan in Colombia, 73 trade unionists were murdered for trying to organize workers. These are men and women just like you and me who were killed for trying to exercise their rights under the law and speak in a collective voice. That's terrible, and yet these trade deals have been completely ineffective in addressing this injustice. And the U.S. government has taken no official "trade" action in response. Anyone with a lick of common sense can tell you that not only are these killings a human rights catastrophe, they are driving down wages and workplace standards in Colombia -- and in every country that trades with Colombia.
But here's the thing: unlike the clunky labor provisions, which require workers to wait for government action, these ISDS provisions can be used immediately by multinational firms to challenge efforts by TPP member countries to develop a modern regulatory state in key areas. ISDS tilts the playing field away from democracy, from workers and consumers, and toward big business and multinational investors.
In sum, if corporations feel they have been denied "expected" profits by a government regulation, ISDS lets them circumvent a country's courts and go to an international corporate tribunal with their grievance. But if labor organizers are murdered, workers and their families have nowhere to go.
This shows the extent to which the playing field gets tilted. The same imbalance exists between corporate interests and the interests represented by environmental groups, consumer groups and all other non-corporate stakeholders: a special channel for corporations, and a brick wall for the interests of the rest of us.
Advantage: Foreign Firms
While ISDS would give American multinational corporations tremendous powers over other governments, it places non-U.S. corporations (and, of course, non-U.S. subsidiaries of American multinational corporations) at a tremendous advantage over U.S. firms by giving only them -- not U.S.-based firms -- this right to challenge U.S. laws and regulations.
Global Trade Watch explains this advantage:
The TPP would grant foreign investors and firms operating here expansive new substantive and procedural rights and privileges not available to U.S. firms under U.S. law, allowing foreign firms to demand compensation for the costs of complying with U.S. policies, court orders and government actions that apply equally to domestic and foreign firms. ... The text allows foreign investors to demand compensation for claims of "indirect expropriation" that apply to much wider categories of property than those to which similar rights apply in U.S. law.
The TPP is the largest trade agreement in history, involving more than 40 percent of the world's GDP. One way President Obama and the Chamber of Commerce sell the TPP is by saying it will change everything and will rewrite the rules for doing business for the 21st century. This leak shows us that they are right about the TPP changing everything and rewriting the rules. But the leak shows that the people and organizations opposing the TPP were right too, because the changes give corporations vast new powers to overrule democratic governments.
Origins of ISDS
This ISDS mechanism originates from a time when investors in wealthy, developed countries wanted to invest in projects in unstable "third-world," "banana-republic"-style countries but worried that dictators or revolutionary governments could decide to seize their property -- a refinery, railroad or factory -- leaving them with no recourse. So before investing, the target country agrees that in the case of disputes, a tribunal is set up outside and beyond the reach of the country's justice system (courts where the judge is a brother or other crony of the dictator, for example), providing recourse in the event of unjust seizure of property. This would make investment less risky.
However, under agreements like the TPP, these provisions apply to and override the laws of modern, stable, developed countries with democratic governance and fair court systems. The corporate representatives negotiating modern trade agreements see such democratically run governments as "burdensome" and chaotic, introducing "uncertainties" and "interfering" or "meddling" with the corporate order. As one supporter of these ISDS provisions put it, they protect corporations from "the waves of madness that occasionally flit through the population."
Secret and Rushed
It is understandable that the giant, multinational corporations want the TPP kept secret and want Congress to pass "fast-track" trade-promotion authority that requires Congress to pass the TPP within 90 "session" days after the agreement is made public. Fast track sets up a rushed process that does not give the public time to read, understand, analyze and consider the ramifications of it -- never mind time to effectively organize opposition. This is because, as U.S Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) pointed out, "supporters of the deal say to me, 'They have to be secret, because if the American people knew what was actually in them, they would be opposed.'" Warren continued:
Think about that. Real people, people whose jobs are at stake, small-business owners who don't want to compete with overseas companies that dump their waste in rivers and hire workers for a dollar a day -- those people, people without an army of lobbyists -- they would be opposed. I believe if people across this country would be opposed to a particular trade agreement, then maybe that trade agreement should not happen.
Fast track also prevents members of Congress from amending (i.e., fixing) flaws that might be found in the agreement even in the limited time available to comprehend and analyze the agreement. With the expected massive corporate public-relations campaign that will occur as the agreement comes up for a vote, this sets up a rushed process where the Congress becomes more concerned with not "killing the whole agreement" than with getting it right.
Reaction
Larry Cohen, the president of the Communications Workers of America (CWA), says the leak shows that the TPP is "worse than imagined":
The 56 pages of the Investor chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership are worse than imagined and must be a wake up call for our nation. Amazingly, this chapter is sealed for four years after either adoption or rejection of the TPP. Everything we read and learn makes "Fast Track" authority unimaginable. It's secrecy on top of secrecy.
The TPP is shaping up to be an exercise in words about citizen rights that are not enforceable versus expanded corporate rights to sue governments for supposed diminishment of corporate profits. Section B of the leaked chapter documents new provisions of Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), the secret tribunal process that is above national law or courts.
U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) released the following statement:
It appears that the investor state provision being considered as part of TPP will still amount to a corporate handout at the expense of consumers despite the assurances of our negotiators. We need strong language to prevent multinational corporations -- like Big Tobacco -- from using trade agreements to challenge health and safety laws.
It's telling when Members of Congress and their staff have an easier time accessing national security documents than proposed trade deals, but if I were negotiating this deal I suppose I wouldn't want people to see it either. Trade agreements should lift American workers and their counterparts abroad, rather than creating a race to the bottom.
From the Wikileaks statement:
Julian Assange, WikiLeaks editor said: "The TPP has developed in secret an unaccountable supranational court for multinationals to sue states. This system is a challenge to parliamentary and judicial sovereignty. Similar tribunals have already been shown to chill the adoption of sane environmental protection, public health and public transport policies."
Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch has this analysis of the leaked text:
The leaked text provides stark warnings about the dangers of "trade" negotiations occurring without press, public or policymaker oversight. It reveals that TPP negotiators already have agreed to many radical terms that would give foreign investors expansive new substantive and procedural rights and privileges not available to domestic firms under domestic law.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-johnson/now-we-know-why-huge-tpp_b_6956540.html
Dave Johnson
A key section of the secret Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement has been leaked to the public. The New York Times has a major story on the contents of the leaked chapter, and it's as bad as many of us feared.
Now we know why the corporations and the Obama administration want the TPP, a huge "trade" agreement being negotiated between the United States and 11 other countries, kept secret from the public until it's too late to stop it.
The section of the TPP that has leaked is the "Investment" chapter that includes investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) clauses. WikiLeaks has the text and analysis, and the Times has the story, in "Trans-Pacific Partnership Seen as Door for Foreign Suits Against U.S.":
An ambitious 12-nation trade accord pushed by President Obama would allow foreign corporations to sue the United States government for actions that undermine their investment "expectations" and hurt their business, according to a classified document.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership -- a cornerstone of Mr. Obama's remaining economic agenda -- would grant broad powers to multinational companies operating in North America, South America and Asia. Under the accord, still under negotiation but nearing completion, companies and investors would be empowered to challenge regulations, rules, government actions and court rulings -- federal, state or local -- before tribunals organized under the World Bank or the United Nations.
The WikiLeaks analysis explains that this lets firms "sue" governments to obtain taxpayer compensation for loss of "expected future profits."
Let that sink in for a moment: "[C]ompanies and investors would be empowered to challenge regulations, rules, government actions and court rulings -- federal, state or local -- before tribunals...." And they can collect not just for lost property or seized assets; they can collect if laws or regulations interfere with these giant companies' ability to collect what they claim are "expected future profits."
The Times' report explains that this clause also "giv[es] greater priority to protecting corporate interests than promoting free trade and competition that benefits consumers."
The tribunals that adjudicate these cases will be made up of private-sector (i.e., corporate) attorneys. These attorneys will rotate between serving on the tribunals and representing corporations that bring cases to be heard by the tribunals. This is a conflict of interest because the attorneys serving on the tribunals will have tremendous incentive to rule for the corporations if they want to continue to get lucrative corporate business.
The Corporate Influence Over the TPP
Largely ignored by the media -- until now -- the TPP has been in a negotiation process for more than five years. The TPP has 29 "chapters" covering various issues, but only five of these chapters cover what would normally be considered "trade." It is a "docking" agreement, which means that any country in the region (e.g., China) can add themselves to the agreement just by signing on.
These negotiations have been conducted in secret, but more than 500 corporate "trade advisors" have access to the text of the agreement. Many of the negotiators themselves are past (and/or likely expect to be future) corporate attorneys or executives. U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman, for example, "received over $4 million as part of multiple exit payments when he left Citigroup to join the Obama administration," according to a report, "Obama Admin's TPP Trade Officials Received Hefty Bonuses From Big Banks," by investigative journalist Lee Fang.
This one-sided process has been causing concern among representatives of many of the key "stakeholder" groups that have been excluded from the negotiating process. Labor unions, environmental groups, consumer groups, health groups, and food-safety groups, as well as LGBT, democracy, faith, and other "stakeholders" who have been denied a seat at the TPP negotiating table, have feared that the process would produce an agreement that tilts the democracy/plutocracy power balance even further in the direction of corporations and billionaires than it is now.
ISDS Tilts Playing Field to Corporations
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, speaking March 18 at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, compared the extraordinary ability of corporations to sue governments to the lack of redress when labor organizers are murdered to explain how ISDS tilts the playing field to corporations over other stakeholders:
ISDS is just a fancy way to give corporations a special legal system that circumvents democratically accountable laws and courts.
ISDS allows corporations to directly challenge almost any law or regulation based on ill-defined concepts such as "fair and equitable treatment." In contrast, all provisions for enforcing labor rights in the TPP require action by member governments -- neither workers nor unions can enforce the labor rights provisions on their own even by suing in national courts.
I'm not just talking theory here. In the first three years of the Labor Action Plan in Colombia, 73 trade unionists were murdered for trying to organize workers. These are men and women just like you and me who were killed for trying to exercise their rights under the law and speak in a collective voice. That's terrible, and yet these trade deals have been completely ineffective in addressing this injustice. And the U.S. government has taken no official "trade" action in response. Anyone with a lick of common sense can tell you that not only are these killings a human rights catastrophe, they are driving down wages and workplace standards in Colombia -- and in every country that trades with Colombia.
But here's the thing: unlike the clunky labor provisions, which require workers to wait for government action, these ISDS provisions can be used immediately by multinational firms to challenge efforts by TPP member countries to develop a modern regulatory state in key areas. ISDS tilts the playing field away from democracy, from workers and consumers, and toward big business and multinational investors.
In sum, if corporations feel they have been denied "expected" profits by a government regulation, ISDS lets them circumvent a country's courts and go to an international corporate tribunal with their grievance. But if labor organizers are murdered, workers and their families have nowhere to go.
This shows the extent to which the playing field gets tilted. The same imbalance exists between corporate interests and the interests represented by environmental groups, consumer groups and all other non-corporate stakeholders: a special channel for corporations, and a brick wall for the interests of the rest of us.
Advantage: Foreign Firms
While ISDS would give American multinational corporations tremendous powers over other governments, it places non-U.S. corporations (and, of course, non-U.S. subsidiaries of American multinational corporations) at a tremendous advantage over U.S. firms by giving only them -- not U.S.-based firms -- this right to challenge U.S. laws and regulations.
Global Trade Watch explains this advantage:
The TPP would grant foreign investors and firms operating here expansive new substantive and procedural rights and privileges not available to U.S. firms under U.S. law, allowing foreign firms to demand compensation for the costs of complying with U.S. policies, court orders and government actions that apply equally to domestic and foreign firms. ... The text allows foreign investors to demand compensation for claims of "indirect expropriation" that apply to much wider categories of property than those to which similar rights apply in U.S. law.
The TPP is the largest trade agreement in history, involving more than 40 percent of the world's GDP. One way President Obama and the Chamber of Commerce sell the TPP is by saying it will change everything and will rewrite the rules for doing business for the 21st century. This leak shows us that they are right about the TPP changing everything and rewriting the rules. But the leak shows that the people and organizations opposing the TPP were right too, because the changes give corporations vast new powers to overrule democratic governments.
Origins of ISDS
This ISDS mechanism originates from a time when investors in wealthy, developed countries wanted to invest in projects in unstable "third-world," "banana-republic"-style countries but worried that dictators or revolutionary governments could decide to seize their property -- a refinery, railroad or factory -- leaving them with no recourse. So before investing, the target country agrees that in the case of disputes, a tribunal is set up outside and beyond the reach of the country's justice system (courts where the judge is a brother or other crony of the dictator, for example), providing recourse in the event of unjust seizure of property. This would make investment less risky.
However, under agreements like the TPP, these provisions apply to and override the laws of modern, stable, developed countries with democratic governance and fair court systems. The corporate representatives negotiating modern trade agreements see such democratically run governments as "burdensome" and chaotic, introducing "uncertainties" and "interfering" or "meddling" with the corporate order. As one supporter of these ISDS provisions put it, they protect corporations from "the waves of madness that occasionally flit through the population."
Secret and Rushed
It is understandable that the giant, multinational corporations want the TPP kept secret and want Congress to pass "fast-track" trade-promotion authority that requires Congress to pass the TPP within 90 "session" days after the agreement is made public. Fast track sets up a rushed process that does not give the public time to read, understand, analyze and consider the ramifications of it -- never mind time to effectively organize opposition. This is because, as U.S Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) pointed out, "supporters of the deal say to me, 'They have to be secret, because if the American people knew what was actually in them, they would be opposed.'" Warren continued:
Think about that. Real people, people whose jobs are at stake, small-business owners who don't want to compete with overseas companies that dump their waste in rivers and hire workers for a dollar a day -- those people, people without an army of lobbyists -- they would be opposed. I believe if people across this country would be opposed to a particular trade agreement, then maybe that trade agreement should not happen.
Fast track also prevents members of Congress from amending (i.e., fixing) flaws that might be found in the agreement even in the limited time available to comprehend and analyze the agreement. With the expected massive corporate public-relations campaign that will occur as the agreement comes up for a vote, this sets up a rushed process where the Congress becomes more concerned with not "killing the whole agreement" than with getting it right.
Reaction
Larry Cohen, the president of the Communications Workers of America (CWA), says the leak shows that the TPP is "worse than imagined":
The 56 pages of the Investor chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership are worse than imagined and must be a wake up call for our nation. Amazingly, this chapter is sealed for four years after either adoption or rejection of the TPP. Everything we read and learn makes "Fast Track" authority unimaginable. It's secrecy on top of secrecy.
The TPP is shaping up to be an exercise in words about citizen rights that are not enforceable versus expanded corporate rights to sue governments for supposed diminishment of corporate profits. Section B of the leaked chapter documents new provisions of Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), the secret tribunal process that is above national law or courts.
U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) released the following statement:
It appears that the investor state provision being considered as part of TPP will still amount to a corporate handout at the expense of consumers despite the assurances of our negotiators. We need strong language to prevent multinational corporations -- like Big Tobacco -- from using trade agreements to challenge health and safety laws.
It's telling when Members of Congress and their staff have an easier time accessing national security documents than proposed trade deals, but if I were negotiating this deal I suppose I wouldn't want people to see it either. Trade agreements should lift American workers and their counterparts abroad, rather than creating a race to the bottom.
From the Wikileaks statement:
Julian Assange, WikiLeaks editor said: "The TPP has developed in secret an unaccountable supranational court for multinationals to sue states. This system is a challenge to parliamentary and judicial sovereignty. Similar tribunals have already been shown to chill the adoption of sane environmental protection, public health and public transport policies."
Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch has this analysis of the leaked text:
The leaked text provides stark warnings about the dangers of "trade" negotiations occurring without press, public or policymaker oversight. It reveals that TPP negotiators already have agreed to many radical terms that would give foreign investors expansive new substantive and procedural rights and privileges not available to domestic firms under domestic law.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-johnson/now-we-know-why-huge-tpp_b_6956540.html
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What is the significance of the Bush family doing this?
edit: nvm, just did some research. They're gonna privatize the water.
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Thank god there's the Internet, let's cotinue to spread the word ya'll. This is why I support mandatory tax to fund the candidate you vote for so they can avoid this "sell out/lobbyist/IOU" tradition. It wouldn't solve everything, but at least it'll be in the right direction and you wouldn't have to be particularly wealthy to get into politics, which is a big issue.
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Done. If you oppose the TPP, you should contact your Rep and express your opposition.
I can't even believe how shady this deal is.
mr marcus
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Posting to get my rep info
NT coming through
NT coming through
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It's just something to say like "I'm moving to *insert place here*" clowns when Obama got elected or anything else happens.
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Just tried to explain it to my friends in broad strokes. But man, the more I read, the more I'm convinced that **** is actually about to go down. I remember those zeitgeist videos from years ago wherein they foresaw the world bank and corporations infiltrating the government... Didn't want to believe the world would come to that.
