The TPP is the most brazen corporate power grab in history. "If there is no sustained popular uprising to prevent the passage of the TPP this spring we will be shackled by corporate power. Wages will decline. Working conditions will deteriorate. Unemployment will rise. Our few remaining rights will be revoked. The assault on the ecosystem will be accelerated. Banks and global speculation will be beyond oversight or control. Food safety standards and regulations will be jettisoned. Public services ranging from Medicare and Medicaid to the post office and public education will be abolished or dramatically slashed and taken over by for-profit corporations. Prices for basic commodities, including pharmaceuticals, will skyrocket. Social assistance programs will be drastically scaled back or terminated. And countries that have public health care systems, such as Canada and Australia, that are in the agreement will probably see their public health systems collapse under corporate assault. Corporations will be empowered to hold a wide variety of patents, including over plants and animals, turning basic necessities and the natural world into marketable products. And, just to make sure corporations extract every pound of flesh, any public law interpreted by corporations as impeding projected profit, even a law designed to protect the environment or consumers, will be subject to challenge in an entity called the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) section. The ISDS, bolstered and expanded under the TPP, will see corporations paid massive sums in compensation from offending governments for impeding their “right” to further swell their bank accounts. Corporate profit effectively will replace the common good."
http://www.truthdig.com/
This list of things to hate about the Trans Pacific Partnership was written in the US, but what it talks about holds true for every nation unfortunate enough to sign the thing. TPP would expand the rights and power of the same Wall Street firms that nearly destroyed the world economy just five years ago and would create the conditions for more financial instability in the future. It encourages job offshoring and threatens wages, collective bargaining, food safety, buy local laws, and environmental protections. And that's without even mentioning giving corporations the ability to overturn laws they find inconvenient.
http://
Independent economists tell us the TPP will kill 450,000 US jobs, 75,000 Japanese jobs, and 58,000 Canadian jobs.
http://boingboing.net/
The TPP’s IP provisions will result in preventable deaths in the name of profit, so you can add outright killing people to make a buck to your list of concerns.
http://canadians.org/blog/
The TPP also nails shut the coffin of our climate future if we let it pass. If you think it might be a good idea not to consign all future generations to a brutal inhospitable hell scape, now is the time for you to stand with others to oppose the TPP.
https://www.facebook.com/
The entire 6000 pages doesn't even mention the words "climate change" once. "Instead of a 21st century standard of protection, the leaked text shows that the environmental obligations are weak and compliance with them is unenforceable. Contrast that to other chapters that subordinate the environment, natural resources and indigenous rights to commercial objectives and business interests. The corporate agenda wins both ways.
Those chapters include one on investment protection, with an investor-to-state dispute settlement process pulled from NAFTA that gives companies extraordinary rights to challenge environmental measures that undermine their profits. Governments will have no comparable powers in the TPP to make sure multinational corporations are abiding by environmental commitments (e.g. to remediate industrial sites). In fact, the TPP environment chapter encourages voluntary mechanisms to enhance environmental performance (section 9) and voluntary corporate social responsibility programs (section 8).
All of this just exposes the obvious: the TPP is not an environmental protection agreement but another, much more elaborate compact for policing corporate globalization. Governments are prohibited from interfering with trade and investment flows. When they or their corporations disrupt ecosystems or continue to dump carbon into the atmosphere their only punishment is a lengthy consultation."
http://canadians.org/blog/
It's about a lot of things, but for the most part really not about trade. Instead, it focusses on things like costing Canadians $100 million a year through extended copyright provisions and preventing regulators from auditing source code of the type Volkswagen used to subvert emissions tests to protect unethical businesses from scrutiny.
http://
The rules governing global trade and investment are effectively being written by US corporations for US corporations. This should be unacceptable to anyone committed to democratic principles.
http://
Nasty Internet censorship provisions include longer copyright terms and rules encouraging ISPs to block content.
https://openmedia.ca/news/
Top down control of the internet, ISPs forced to report on users, special rights for corporate trade secrets to crush the little guy, it's all here.
https://www.eff.org/
The TPP will not only create barriers for free speech and free expression, but even cropping a photo (chapter 18.69), unlocking your phone (18.68) or installing Linux on your PC (18.68) will all become criminal offences.
http://thinkpol.ca/2015/
The information citizens acquire from newspapers, television, radio, and other media is almost all controlled by a handful of corporations. The same people that exercise control over what you may see in those places want to control what you are allowed to see on the internet as well.
http://
Under the TPP corporations can attack governmental regulations over cancer-causing chemicals or environmental concerns before tribunals comprised of corporate lawyers that rotate by day and night between acting as "judges" and representing corporations attacking governments. These decisions then cannot be challenged in federal courts, and taxpayers get stuck with the bill.
http://
That's where this is the most scary. The truly horrific part of this monstrous agreement lies in the Investor State Dispute Settlement provisions. The TPP removes legislative authority from nations on a range of issues. Judicial power is surrendered to three-person trade tribunals in which only corporations are permitted to sue. Workers, environmental and advocacy groups and labor unions are blocked from seeking redress in the proposed tribunals. The rights of corporations become sacrosanct. The rights of citizens are abolished.
I'll let this video explain more about how that works.
https://youtu.be/
With the power of NAFTA, Canada was already transformed from a nation concerned with the well being of its people to a shill for a toxic product in surprisingly short order.
http://www.cela.ca/
If the government can't even ban a proven neurotoxin out of public health concerns, we're already in pretty rough shape, but of course it doesn't end there. Canada has been sued more often under NAFTA than any other member nation, and primarily over efforts at environmental protections.
http://
To the extent that the potential cost to the nation for merely enacting laws now approaches billions.
http://www.thestar.com/
"Investor rights" agreements have clearly gotten out of hand when we've reached the point that the profit margins of a cosmetics company can trump the value of a nation's entire health care budget.
https://www.facebook.com/
Does anyone remember having a referendum on whether corporations should be given the power to strike down our laws? Me either.
http://
I recommend this fabulous documentary on corporations and the unfortunate way they have been structured by law to value profits above any other concerns, period.
https://www.youtube.com/
Is that who you want to have control over our nation's ability to write its own laws? The TPP is not about trade, it's about dominance. It's The Plutocracy Plan. If you wish not to be dominated, stand up now and demand that your government NOT join the TPP.
And for those who argue that a signature is not the same as ratifying it so we shouldn't make a big deal about signing the thing, may I remind you that pulling out a pistol and pointing it at someone's face is also not the same thing as pulling the trigger, but it's still ample cause for concern.
#TPP #StopTheTPP
http://www.truthdig.com/
This list of things to hate about the Trans Pacific Partnership was written in the US, but what it talks about holds true for every nation unfortunate enough to sign the thing. TPP would expand the rights and power of the same Wall Street firms that nearly destroyed the world economy just five years ago and would create the conditions for more financial instability in the future. It encourages job offshoring and threatens wages, collective bargaining, food safety, buy local laws, and environmental protections. And that's without even mentioning giving corporations the ability to overturn laws they find inconvenient.
http://
Independent economists tell us the TPP will kill 450,000 US jobs, 75,000 Japanese jobs, and 58,000 Canadian jobs.
http://boingboing.net/
The TPP’s IP provisions will result in preventable deaths in the name of profit, so you can add outright killing people to make a buck to your list of concerns.
http://canadians.org/blog/
The TPP also nails shut the coffin of our climate future if we let it pass. If you think it might be a good idea not to consign all future generations to a brutal inhospitable hell scape, now is the time for you to stand with others to oppose the TPP.
https://www.facebook.com/
The entire 6000 pages doesn't even mention the words "climate change" once. "Instead of a 21st century standard of protection, the leaked text shows that the environmental obligations are weak and compliance with them is unenforceable. Contrast that to other chapters that subordinate the environment, natural resources and indigenous rights to commercial objectives and business interests. The corporate agenda wins both ways.
Those chapters include one on investment protection, with an investor-to-state dispute settlement process pulled from NAFTA that gives companies extraordinary rights to challenge environmental measures that undermine their profits. Governments will have no comparable powers in the TPP to make sure multinational corporations are abiding by environmental commitments (e.g. to remediate industrial sites). In fact, the TPP environment chapter encourages voluntary mechanisms to enhance environmental performance (section 9) and voluntary corporate social responsibility programs (section 8).
All of this just exposes the obvious: the TPP is not an environmental protection agreement but another, much more elaborate compact for policing corporate globalization. Governments are prohibited from interfering with trade and investment flows. When they or their corporations disrupt ecosystems or continue to dump carbon into the atmosphere their only punishment is a lengthy consultation."
http://canadians.org/blog/
It's about a lot of things, but for the most part really not about trade. Instead, it focusses on things like costing Canadians $100 million a year through extended copyright provisions and preventing regulators from auditing source code of the type Volkswagen used to subvert emissions tests to protect unethical businesses from scrutiny.
http://
The rules governing global trade and investment are effectively being written by US corporations for US corporations. This should be unacceptable to anyone committed to democratic principles.
http://
Nasty Internet censorship provisions include longer copyright terms and rules encouraging ISPs to block content.
https://openmedia.ca/news/
Top down control of the internet, ISPs forced to report on users, special rights for corporate trade secrets to crush the little guy, it's all here.
https://www.eff.org/
The TPP will not only create barriers for free speech and free expression, but even cropping a photo (chapter 18.69), unlocking your phone (18.68) or installing Linux on your PC (18.68) will all become criminal offences.
http://thinkpol.ca/2015/
The information citizens acquire from newspapers, television, radio, and other media is almost all controlled by a handful of corporations. The same people that exercise control over what you may see in those places want to control what you are allowed to see on the internet as well.
http://
Under the TPP corporations can attack governmental regulations over cancer-causing chemicals or environmental concerns before tribunals comprised of corporate lawyers that rotate by day and night between acting as "judges" and representing corporations attacking governments. These decisions then cannot be challenged in federal courts, and taxpayers get stuck with the bill.
http://
That's where this is the most scary. The truly horrific part of this monstrous agreement lies in the Investor State Dispute Settlement provisions. The TPP removes legislative authority from nations on a range of issues. Judicial power is surrendered to three-person trade tribunals in which only corporations are permitted to sue. Workers, environmental and advocacy groups and labor unions are blocked from seeking redress in the proposed tribunals. The rights of corporations become sacrosanct. The rights of citizens are abolished.
I'll let this video explain more about how that works.
https://youtu.be/
With the power of NAFTA, Canada was already transformed from a nation concerned with the well being of its people to a shill for a toxic product in surprisingly short order.
http://www.cela.ca/
If the government can't even ban a proven neurotoxin out of public health concerns, we're already in pretty rough shape, but of course it doesn't end there. Canada has been sued more often under NAFTA than any other member nation, and primarily over efforts at environmental protections.
http://
To the extent that the potential cost to the nation for merely enacting laws now approaches billions.
http://www.thestar.com/
"Investor rights" agreements have clearly gotten out of hand when we've reached the point that the profit margins of a cosmetics company can trump the value of a nation's entire health care budget.
https://www.facebook.com/
Does anyone remember having a referendum on whether corporations should be given the power to strike down our laws? Me either.
http://
I recommend this fabulous documentary on corporations and the unfortunate way they have been structured by law to value profits above any other concerns, period.
https://www.youtube.com/
Is that who you want to have control over our nation's ability to write its own laws? The TPP is not about trade, it's about dominance. It's The Plutocracy Plan. If you wish not to be dominated, stand up now and demand that your government NOT join the TPP.
And for those who argue that a signature is not the same as ratifying it so we shouldn't make a big deal about signing the thing, may I remind you that pulling out a pistol and pointing it at someone's face is also not the same thing as pulling the trigger, but it's still ample cause for concern.
#TPP #StopTheTPP
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