Trans-Pacific Partnership is machtsgreep bedrijven

Trans-Pacific Partnership: Under Cover of Darkness, a Corporate Coup Is Underway
Door Lori Wallach, Alternet, 29 juni 2012

The highly secretive pact, dubbed "NAFTA on steroids," is so invasive it would even limit how governments can spend tax dollars.

With the direct participation of 600 corporations and shocking levels of secrecy, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) is rushing to complete the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) [between the U.S. and Australia, Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam; with countries like Japan and China potentially joining later, ook wel afgekort als TTPA]. 600 corporate advisors have access to the text, while the public, Members of Congress, journalists, and civil society are excluded. Branded as a trade agreement (yawn) by its corporate proponents, TPP largely has evaded public and congressional scrutiny since negotiations were launched in 2008 by the George W. Bush administration.

But trade is the least of it. Only two of TPP’s 26 chapters actually have to do with trade. The rest is about new enforceable corporate rights and privileges and constraints on government regulation. This includes new extensions of price-raising drug patent monopolies, corporate rights to attack government drug formulary pricing plans, safeguards to facilitate job offshoring and new corporate controls over natural resources.

Lori Wallach is the director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch.

Zie ook het vraaggesprek (internet-radio) met Lori Wallach aan het eind van het artikel.

En:

TPP’s Investment Rules Harm the Environment
Public Citizen Fact Sheet (PDF)

[...] A major goal of U.S. multinational corporations for the TPP is to impose on more countries a set of extreme foreign investor privileges and rights and their private enforcement through the notorious “investor-state” system. This system allows foreign corporations to challenge before international tribunals national environmental, land use, health and other laws and regulations that apply to domestic and foreign firms alike. Outrageously, this regime elevates individual corporations and investors to equal standing with each TPP signatory country’s government – and above all of us citizens. This regime would empower corporations to skirt national courts and sue our governments before tribunals of private sector lawyers operating under UN and World Bank rules to demand taxpayer compensation for domestic regulatory policies that investors believe diminish their “expected future profits.”
If a corporation “wins”, the taxpayers of the “losing” country must foot the bill.

Toegevoegd 7-2012:

How the Supreme Court's 'Knox v. SEIU' Decision Could Dismantle Union Security Around the Country
Door Mariya Strauss, Alternet, 24 juni 2012

In Knox v. Service Employees International Union, the Supreme Court suggests that the First Amendment is for corporations, not working people and unions. 

Toegevoegd 8-2012: 

What You Need to Know About a Worldwide Corporate Power Grab of Enormous Proportions
Door Laurel Sutherlin, Rainforest Action Network / Alternet, 11 september 2012

[...] this high-stakes global corporate pact, now in its 14th round of discussions, is heavily guarded by paramilitary teams with machine guns and helicopters as it is developed behind closed doors under a dangerous and unprecedented veil of secrecy.

What the hell is the TPP, you may ask? While it is among the largest and potentially most important ‘free trade’ agreements the world has ever seen, one can hardly be blamed for not being familiar with it yet. The corporate cabal behind it, including names like Cargill, Pfizer, Nike and WalMart, has done an exceptional job of maintaining an almost total lack of transparency as they literally design the future we will all inhabit.

Zie ook m'n blognotities:
Handelsverdrag TTIP VS-EU fnuikt democratische wetten
Boek: multinationals nemen de macht over
Bedrijven in de VS krijgen financieel ongelimiteerde greep op de democratie
VS: 26 grote bedrijven betaalden geen belasting
Bedrijven ontduiken miljarden belasting door corrupt toezicht