Trans Pacific Partnership Threatens Democracy 40% ofWorld Economy at Risk of Corporate Control How much do you know about the Trans Pacific Partnership? Up until recently, very few people knew that the TPP even existed. Now, after the much publicized posting of major segments of the highly secretive document on Wikileaks, we are
beginning to understand why twelve nations and many multi-national corporations kept the public in the dark for six long years. Based on the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as well as the 2007 Korean Free Trade Agreement (KFTA) the Trans Pacific Partnership is a mammoth twentynine chapter trade agreement with sections ranging from the energy industry to patent law and even Net Neutrality. Despite this, the most troubling aspect of the document that's now poised to control forty percent of the world's economy is its elevation of corporations to the level of nationstates, endowed with special rights and privileges that make it easier,
safer, and cheaper to undercut the American economy by exporting jobs to low-wage companies across the Pacific region.
“A Corporate Trojan Horse” According to Public Citizen the Trans Pacific Partnership “would open to 9,000 more corporations the right to drag the U.S. government into investor-state corporate tribunals” explained Lori Wallach. “Those are the extra-judicial tribunals where panels of three corporate attorneys would be empowered to rule on a claim brought directly against the U.S. government by a foreign corporation claiming they should get compensation from our tax dollars for any domestic law they
think violates their rights under the agreement, and they should get paid for their lost future profits for having to meet our laws.” You read that right. If the United States (or any other country within the agreement for that matter) passes a domestic law, lawyers from multinational corporations would now have the right to sue governments for “lost future profits.” By giving corporations the right to enforce the terms of public treaty, the TPP deliberately hands over the keys to democracy and accountability for upwards of 800 million people. Yet, as scary as this is, it's only the beginning. Of the twenty-nine
chapters within the TPP only five of them have anything to do with trade. The remaining chapters undermine nearly every aspect of corporate and government accountability. With the teeth of the tribunals described above, the TPP undermines Net Neutrality and Internet freedoms and civic access to information with language imported from the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). An additional chapter lays out exploitation of patent law and allows companies to increase the prices of medications through enormous monopolies. Yet another chapter deregulates much of the financial services industry, paving the way for an infinite number of gutchurning boom-bust cycles that people around the globe can ill afford.
A “Procurement” chapter cuts the legs out of American-made products and services, setting American workers up to compete for wages with those making as little as sixty cents an hour. And yet another chapter eviscerates energy industry regulations, potentially setting climate justice fights back decades at the worst possible moment. After an initial vote by Congress (at President Obama's urging) to “Fast Track” the agreement, we are a hair's breadth away from losing what precious measures of accountability and Democracy we have left in the developed world. Fast Track authority allows Congress to force through the TPP to the President's desk while
allowing absolutely zero amendments or changes to the text of the agreement. In a head-spinning work of obfuscation, the TPP is being held up by pundits (including NPR reporters) as the best hope of uniting an ever polarized country. For once, they breathlessly exclaim, liberals and conservatives can at long last come together on an issue that according to Obama “protects American workers and the environment.� This could not be further from the truth. In a published letter to a U.S. Trade Representative, Senator (and now candidate) Bernie Sanders vehemently outlined is staunch opposition to the TPP:
A Rising Chorus of Opposition “It is incomprehensible to me that the leaders of major corporate interests who stand to gain enormous financial benefits from this agreement are actively involved in the writing of the TPP while, at the same time, the elected officials of this country, representing the American people, have little or no knowledge as to what is in it.� Candidate Sanders is hardly alone in his condemnation for the TPP. In March of 2013 a group of 4,000 Japanese farmers held protests across Tokyo to decry the effect the agreement would have upon the local
agricultural industry. Joining them were protesters dressed as zombies and the Malaysian AIDS Council in Kuala Lumpur in February of 2014 who railed against the likely rise in the cost of medications to treat severe conditions (including HIV/AIDS). Economist Robert Reich entered the fray as well in January, stating “Trojan horse in a global race to the bottom, giving big corporations and Wall Street banks a way to eliminate any and all laws and regulations that get in the way of their profits.� Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! chastised Obama for turning his back on the wide constituency that elected him in 2008 and again in 2012:
"President Barack Obama and the Republicans in Congress are united. Yes. that's right. No, not on Obamacare, or on the budget, or on negotiations with Iran, or on equal pay for women. But on so-called free-trade agreements, which increase corporate power and reduce the power ofpeople to govern themselves democratically, Obama and the Republicans stand shoulder to shoulder."
Speaking from Washington, Congressman Alan Grayson lays bare the road before us. The Trans Pacific Partnership is a “Fast Track to Hell where America is nothing but cheap labor and debt slavery.�
The Heretic A Poem from the Boston Anarchists Social thinking, the idea that we are members of a society, and that our decisions ought to be made with others in mind has become heresy. The dominant message insists that we are all individuals. Be whoever you want, even yourself. But to be myself, I remember I have to connect to others I care about and who care about me. Heresy, then becomes a necessity in order to survive, to exist.