Monday, April 27, 2015

Stopping the Pacific Partnership Treaty

Bad Guys Pushing THIS WEEK to Promote Global Tyranny Run By Corporations Posted on April 23, 2015 Written by washingtonsblog.com

Here’s How to STOP Them: The powers-that-be are push­ing this week to fast track a hor­ri­ble treaty which would destroy America. The treaty is called the Trans Pacific Part­ner­ship (TPP).

The U.S. Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive – the fed­eral agency respon­si­ble for nego­ti­at­ing trade treaties – has said that the details of the TPP are clas­si­fied due to “national secu­rity”. Why’s the deal being kept secret? Because it would be impos­si­ble to pass if the pub­lic knew what was really in it:

Ron Kirk, until recently Mr. Obama’s top trade offi­cial, was remark­ably can­did about why he opposed mak­ing the text pub­lic: doing so, he sug­gested to Reuters, would raise such oppo­si­tion that it could make the deal impos­si­ble to sign.

Sen­a­tor Eliz­a­beth War­ren notes: 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.”

But it’s not only being hid­den from the Amer­i­can peo­ple … it’s being hid­den even from most U.S. Con­gress mem­bers.

A Con­gress­man who has seen the text of the treaty says: There is no national secu­rity pur­pose in keep­ing this text secret … this agree­ment hands the sov­er­eignty of our coun­try over to cor­po­rate interests.

It would also allow for­eign cor­po­ra­tions to chal­lenge U.S. laws.  It will lit­er­ally over­ride Amer­i­can law.  As the New York Times head­lines  in Trans-Pacific Part­ner­ship Seen as Door for For­eign Suits Against U.S.:

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.

Ron Paul says that the TPP would erode national sovereignty: While it’s falsely called a “trade agree­ment”, only 5 out of 29 of TPP’s chap­ters have any­thing to do with trade.  And con­ser­v­a­tives point out that even the 5 chap­ters on trade do not pro­mote free trade. Bloomberg calls TPP a “cor­po­ratist power grab”, “as demo­c­ra­tic and trans­par­ent as a one-party state,” and shrouded in “Big Brother-like secrecy”.


A very cred­i­ble inside source – with a proven track record of access, accu­racy, intel­li­gence and ded­i­ca­tion to work­ing for our coun­try – tells Washington’s Blog that TPP con­tains pro­vi­sions which would severely harm America’s national secu­rity. Specif­i­cally, like some pre­vi­ous, ill-conceived treaties, TPP would allow for­eign com­pa­nies to buy sen­si­tive Amer­i­can assets which could sub­ject us to ter­ror attacks or eco­nomic blackmail.

Huff­in­g­ton Post quotes the New York Times and Wik­ileaks to explain how the dis­pute pro­vi­sions would gut the Amer­i­can legal system: 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: “Companies 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 “gives 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.

This ISDS mech­a­nism “Investor-State Dis­pute Set­tle­ment” tri­bunals cre­ated by TPP 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.”

To give an idea of what would hap­pen to Amer­i­can law if TPP passes, just look at Equador …   Its courts awarded bil­lions against Chevron for trash­ing huge swaths of rain­for­est.  But then a pri­vate arbi­tra­tion panel sim­ply ignored the country’s court sys­tem. If TPP passes, we’ll be treated like a third world coun­try, and our Amer­i­can laws and courts will be ignored as well.

(Those opposed to a “one world gov­ern­ment” or a “new world order” should oppose TPP as the big fight.  Con­ser­v­a­tives might want to read this.  Remem­ber that one of the best def­i­n­i­tions of fas­cism – the one used by Mus­solini – is the “merger of state and cor­po­rate power”.  TPP (is?) a giant step in that direction.)

The back­ers of TPP – includ­ing Obama and many in Con­gress – are try­ing to approve a “fast track” pro­ce­dure this week that would pre­vent Con­gress from hav­ing any real input into the agree­ment, or to even have the oppor­tu­nity to debate what should be in the agreement.

But the treaty is so bad, that if we just defeat the attempt to fast-track it, it will die a nat­ural death as soon as it’s made pub­lic … and Con­gress has to engage in seri­ous debate on the hor­ri­ble agree­ment, and answer to its angry constituents.

The Amer­i­can peo­ple are already strongly opposed to TPP, and are dis­gusted by the pro­posed fast-tracking of the TPP vote. But we have to let our Con­gress mem­bers’ know how we feel on this.


Related Posts

No comments: