UCA News: TransPacific Partnership Will Undermine Democracy, Empower Transnat Corps

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TransPacific Partnership Will Undermine Democracy, Empower Transnational Corporations

On critical issues, the massive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) being negotiated in secret by the Obama administration will undermine democracy (http://itsoureconomy.us/2012/07/secret-trans-pacific-partnership-trade-negotiations-are-a-fire-sale-to-foreign-corporations/) in the United States and around the world and further empower transnational corporations.

It will circumvent protections for health care, wages, labor rights, consumers' rights and the environment, and decrease regulation of big finance and risky investment practices.

The only way this treaty, which will be very unpopular with the American people once they are aware of it, can be approved is if the Obama administration avoids the democratic process by using an authority known as "Fast Track," which limits the constitutional checks and balances of Congress.

If the TPP is approved, the sovereignty of the United States and other member nations will be dissipated by trade tribunals that favor corporate power and force national laws to be subservient to corporate interests.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/15353-transpacific-partnership-will-undermine-democracy-empower-transnational-corporations

A long article, lots of nasty stuff from a leaked documents of the SECRET CORPORATE negotiations that Congress is excluded from.

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http://www.tppcoalition.org/

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Secret “Free Trade” Negotiations Will Gut Regulations, Further Enrich Multinationals and Big Financial Firms (http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/05/secret-free-trade-negotiations-will-gut-regulations-further-enrich-multinationals-and-big-financial-firms.html)It’s a sign of the times that a reputable economist, Dean Baker, can use the word “corruption” in the headline of an article describing two major trade deals under negotiation and no one bats an eye.


By way of background, the Administration is taking the unusual step of trying to negotiate two major trade deals in the same timeframe. Apparently Obama wants to make sure his corporate masters get as many goodies as possible before he leaves office. The Trans-Pacific Partnership and the US-European Union “Free Trade” Agreement are both inaccurately depicted as being helpful to ordinary Americans by virtue of liberalizing trade. Instead, the have perilous little to do with trade. They are both intended to make the world more lucrative for major corporations by weakening regulations and by strengthening intellectual property laws. The TPP has an additional wrinkle of being an “everybody but China” deal, intended to strengthen ties among nations who will then be presumed allies of America in its efforts to contain China. As we indicated via a link to an Asia Times article over the weekend, that’s proving to be a bit fraught as Japan is flexing its muscles militarily and thus less inclined to follow US directives tamely.


One of the most disturbing aspects of both negotiations is that they are being held in secret….secret, that is, if you are anybody other that a big US multinational who has a stake in the outcome.


Baker describes in scathing terms why these types of deals are bad policy:


…these deals are about securing regulatory gains for major corporate interests. In some cases, such as increased patent and copyright protection, these deals are 180 degrees at odds with free trade. They are about increasing protectionist barriers.


All the arguments that trade economists make against tariffs and quotas apply to patent and copyright protection. The main difference is the order of magnitude. Tariffs and quotas might raise the price of various items by 20 or 30 percent. By contrast, patent and copyright protection is likely to raise the price of protected items 2,000 percent or even 20,000 percent above the free market price. Drugs that would sell for a few dollars per prescription in a free market would sell for hundreds or even thousands of dollars when the government gives a drug company a patent monopoly…


The idea is that once a deal is completed there will be enormous political pressure for Congress to approve it no matter what it contains….news outlets like the Washington Post will use both their news and opinion sections to bash members of Congress who oppose a deal. They will be endlessly portrayed as ignorant Neanderthals who do not understand economics.


The reality of course is that it is the “free traders” who either do not understand economics or deliberately choose to ignore it. Many of the provisions that we are likely to see in these deals, like stronger patent protections, will slow growth and cost jobs.


These deals will also lead to more upward redistribution of income. The more money that people in the developing world pay to Pfizer for drugs and Microsoft for software, the less money they will pay for the products that we export, as opposed to “intellectual property rights”….


This is yet another case where the government is working for a tiny elite against the interests of the bulk of the population.


If that isn’t bad enough, there’s another side of these planned pacts that is often simply ignored. These “trade” deals are Trojan horses to erode or eliminate national regulations. Baker anticipates that these deals will include sections that would limit government regulation (including at the state and local level) on fracking and could revive much of the internet surveillance that reared its ugly head in the failed SOPA.


And this sort of erosion of the right to regulate will most assuredly extend to financial services. Dodd Frank? The Brown-Vitter bill that some see as a great new hope for tougher financial regulation? They are already unworkable under existing trade agreements. As Public Citizen noted:


One of the most controversial WTO agreements is the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS)..One of the most controversial service sectors covered by the GATS is finance….


Taken as a whole, the WTO’s limits on financial service sector regulation are expansive. These rules not only guarantee foreign financial firms and their products access to U.S. markets, but also include numerous additional rules that limit how our domestic governments may regulate foreign firms operating here:


No new regulation: The United States agreed to a “standstill provision” which requires that we not create new regulations (or reverse liberalization) for the list of financial services bound to comply with WTO rules. Translated out of GATSese, this means that the United States has bound itself not to do what Congress, regulators and scholars deem necessary – create new financial service regulations.


Certain forms of regulation banned outright: The United States agreed that it would not set limits on the size of financial firms, the types of financial service one entity may provide or the types of legal entities through which a financial service may be provided in the broad array of financial services signed up to the WTO. These WTO rules conflict with countries’ efforts to put size limitations on banks (so that they do not become “too big too fail”) and to “firewall” different financial services (a policy tool used to limit the spread of risk across sectors).


Treating foreign and domestic firms alike is not sufficient: The GATS Market Access limits on U.S. domestic regulation apply in absolute terms. In other words, even if a policy applies to domestic and foreign firms alike, if it goes beyond what WTO rules permit, it is forbidden. And, forms of regulation not outright banned by these rules must not inadvertently “modify the conditions of competition in favor of services or service suppliers” of the United States, even if they apply identically to foreign and domestic firms. Might aspects of the Wall Street bailout eventually “change the conditions of competition” in favor of U.S. firms? Other WTO members have begun reviewing just this question.


No bans on new financial service “products”: The United States is also required to allow all foreign financial firms operating here “to offer in its territory any new financial service,” a conflict with proposals to limit various risky investment instruments, such as types of derivatives.


Other non-discriminatory domestic regulations also subject to review: GATS subjects policies of general application that may affect service sector firms to review, with WTO tribunals empowered to determine if they are “reasonable”, whether they “could not reasonably have been expected” and whether licensing and qualification requirements and technical standards limit foreign firms’ access.


And the TPP would tilt the table even further in favor of financial firms. Public Citizen again:


The draft text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a NAFTA-style FTA under negotiation between the United States and 10 Pacific Rim countries, contains the same limits on financial regulation as the WTO, and more. In addition, these rules would be privately enforceable by foreign financial firms that could “sue” the U.S. government in foreign tribunals, which would be empowered to order payment of unlimted sums of U.S. taxpayer money if they saw our laws as undermining such firms’ “expected profits.” Also, even as the International Monetary Fund has officially shifted from opposition to qualified endorsement of capital controls, which are used to avoid destabilizing floods of speculative money into and out of countries, the TPP would ban the use of these important regulatory tools. Despite years of pressure from former House Financial Services Committee Chair Rep. Barney Frank to permit capital controls, the Obama administration is the strongest promoter of this ban in the TPP.


When we have to look to Barney Frank as a lonely defender of the public’s interest, you know you’ve gone past an event horizon. The very fact that trade negotiations, which are normally so sophorific that they remain out of the public’s mind, are being held in secret says that what is afoot is most decidedly not in the average person’s best interest. At a minimum, voters and the press need to demand that these talks be conducted in the open to prevent Congress from being presented with a fait accompli.


The one good bit of news is Obama is looking more and more like a lame duck every day and his overplaying his hand on these bills could well backfire. But the stakes are sufficiently high that relying on nature to take its course is risky, particularly since corporate lobbying dollars will buy a lot of Congressional complacency. So make noise early and often about this outrage, particularly with local media outlets.


http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/05/secret-free-trade-negotiations-will-gut-regulations-further-enrich-multinationals-and-big-financial-firms.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capi talism%29


Sounds like a treaty that the all Congressional Repugs will love to vote for. But they are so bloody minded obstructionist, they will probably vote against it to deny Barry anything and everything. Or they may add amendments that make it much much worse for the 99%.

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If People Knew What Was Going On, They Would Stop It


We won't make the information public because if people knew what was going on, they would stop it.

That's been the government's argument for not releasing the basic trade negotiation documents. Let me explain:

Trade agreements are important. They affect everything -- our imports and exports, wages, jobs, the environment, financial services, and even the Internet.

But if people can't follow the basic outline of the negotiations, then they can't have any real input into the process.

Right now the U.S. Trade Representative is negotiating a Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal with eleven countries, including Japan, Mexico, Canada, Singapore and Vietnam. For months, the Trade Representative has refused any public access to the Trans-Pacific Partnership's
composite bracketed text – the language proposals being negotiated on by the United States and other countries.

I believe in transparency and democracy, and I think the U.S. Trade Representative should too. So I asked President Obama's nominee for U.S. Trade Representative, Michael Froman, three questions:

1. Would he commit to releasing the composite bracketed text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership?

2. If not, would he commit to releasing just a scrubbed version of the bracketed text that made anonymous which country proposed which provision? Even the Bush Administration put out the scrubbed version during negotiations around the Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement.

3. Would he provide more transparency behind what information is made to the trade office's outside advisors? Currently, there are about 600 outside advisors that have access to sensitive information -- industry, labor, environmental groups and other NGO representatives. But there is no transparency around who gets what information and whether they all see the same things, and I think that's a real problem.

Mr. Froman's response was clear: No, no, no. He will not commit to make this information available so the public can track what is going on. For that reason, I voted against Michael Froman's nomination as U.S. Trade Representative on Wednesday.

I have heard the argument that transparency would undermine the Trade Representative's policy to complete the trade agreement because public opposition would be significant.

In other words, if people knew what was going on, they would stop it. This argument is exactly backwards. If transparency would lead to widespread public opposition to a trade agreement, then that trade agreement should not be the policy of the United States.

We need a new direction from the Trade Representative -- a direction that prioritizes transparency and public debate. The American people have the right to know more about the negotiations that will have dramatic impact on the future of the American economy.

Michael Froman was confirmed to his new position Wednesday night, but I'm not going to stop asking him the tough questions. We should have a serious conversation about our trade policies, because these issues matter. And it all starts with transparency from the U.S. Trade Representative.


http://elizabethwarren.com/blog/if-people-knew-what-was-going-on-they-would-stop-it

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So-called free trade talks should be in the public, not corporate interest


The Doha round was torpedoed by the US refusal to eliminate agricultural subsidies – a sine qua non for any true development round, given that 70% of those in the developing world depend on agriculture directly or indirectly. The US position was truly breathtaking, given that the WTO (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/wto) had already judged that America's cotton subsidies – paid to fewer than 25,000 rich farmers – were illegal. Washington's response was to bribe Brazil, which had brought the complaint, not to pursue the matter further, leaving in the lurch millions of poor cotton farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and India, who suffer from depressed prices because of America's largesse to its wealthy farmers.

Given this recent history, it now seems clear that the negotiations to create a free trade area between the US and Europe, and another between the US and much of the Pacific (except for China), are not about establishing a true free trade system. Instead, the goal is a managed trade regime – managed, that is, to serve the special interests that have long dominated trade policy in the west.

There are a few basic principles that those entering the discussions will, one hopes, take to heart. First, any trade agreement has to be symmetrical. If, as part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the US demands that Japan eliminate its rice subsidies, Washington should, in turn, offer to eliminate its production (and water) subsidies, not just on rice (which is relatively unimportant in the US) but on other agricultural commodities as well.

Second, no trade agreement should put commercial interests ahead of broader national interests, especially when non-trade-related issues like financial regulation and intellectual property are at stake. America's trade agreement with Chile, for example, impedes Chile's use of capital controls, even though the International Monetary Fund now recognises that they can be an important instrument of macro-prudential policy.

Other trade agreements have insisted on financial liberalisation and deregulation as well, even though the 2008 crisis should have taught us that the absence of good regulation can jeopardise economic prosperity. America's pharmaceutical industry, which wields considerable clout with the office of the US Trade Representative (USTR), has succeeded in foisting on other countries an unbalanced intellectual property regime, which, designed to fight generic drugs, puts profit ahead of saving lives. Even the US supreme court has now said that the US Patent Office went too far in granting patents on genes.

etc

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/economics-blog/2013/jul/05/free-trade-talks-public-corporate-interest

TPP and TAP will be disasters for the 99%, as is ALWAYS the case with ANYTHING pushed hard for the United Corporations of America, the corporatocracy, eg, "globalization" in the 1980s.

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If a country signs the TPP, it loses the right to restrict sales, to protect its citizens, of shit like cigarettes

Tobacco state protest may snuff out Obama administration trade move (http://www.salon.com/2013/08/13/tobacco_state_protest_may_snuff_out_obama_administ ration_trade_move_partner/)

Facing vehement protest from tobacco state lawmakers and business groups, the Obama administration appears to have retreated from efforts to keep cigarette makers from using trade treaties to attack countries that adopt strong anti-smoking rules.

At issue is whether a pending free trade deal should include language protecting the authority of nations to adopt tough regulations to reduce smoking. In recent years, tobacco companies have invoked trade agreements to challenge the most stringent rules, such as requiring large graphic warnings on packs of cigarettes.

The announcement last year that administration officials would seek such protective language in the Trans Pacific Partnership (http://www.ustr.gov/about-us/press-office/fact-sheets/2011/november/outlines-trans-pacific-partnership-agreement)—a sweeping trade deal being negotiated between the U.S. and 11 other Pacific Rim nations—drew a storm of protest from powerful business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers and American Farm Bureau Federation. They warned that seeking special treatment for tobacco could lead to similar exceptions for products vital to U.S. trade. Joining the chorus of opposition was a group of former U.S. Trade Representatives, including three employed by top law firms with tobacco industry clients.

http://www.salon.com/2013/08/13/tobacco_state_protest_may_snuff_out_obama_administ ration_trade_move_partner/

[TDMVPDPOY]

why dont you guys just use ur 401k plan or buy into them companies?

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The Trans-Pacific Partnership: A Corporate Coup In Disguise

http://nationalmemo.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/TPP.jpg


Twenty years later, the gang that gave us NAFTA is back with the TPP, a “trade deal” that mostly does not deal with trade. Of the 29 chapters in this document, only five cover traditional trade matters! The other chapters amount to a devilish “partnership” for corporate protectionism:

—Food safety. Any of our government’s food safety regulations (on pesticide levels, bacterial contamination, fecal exposure, toxic additives, etc.) and food labeling laws (organic, country of origin, animal-welfare approved, GMO-free, etc.) that are stricter than “international standards” could be ruled as “illegal trade barriers.” Our government would then have to revise our consumer protections to comply with weaker standards.

—Fracking. Our Department of Energy would lose its authority to regulate exports of natural gas to any TPP nation. This would create an explosion of the destructive fracking process across our land, for both foreign and U.S. corporations could export fracked gas from America to member nations without any DOE review of the environmental and economic impacts on local communities — or on our national interests.

—Jobs. U.S. corporations would get special foreign-investor protections to limit the cost and risk of relocating their factories to low-wage nations that sign on to this agreement. So an American corporation thinking about moving a factory would know it is guaranteed a sweetheart deal if it moves operations to a TPP nation like Vietnam. This would be an incentive for corporate chieftains to export more of our middle-class jobs.

—Drug prices. Big Pharma would be given more years of monopoly pricing on each of their patents and be empowered to block distribution of cheaper generic drugs. Besides artificially keeping everyone’s prices high, this would be a death sentence to many people suffering from cancer, HIV, AIDS, tuberculosis and other treatable diseases in impoverished lands.

—Banksters. Wall Street and the financial giants in other TPP countries would make out like bandits. The deal explicitly prohibits transaction taxes (such as the proposed Robin Hood Tax here) that would shut down speculators who have repeatedly triggered financial crises and economic crashes around the world. It restricts “firewall” reforms that separate consumer banking from risky investment banking. It could roll back reforms that governments adopted to fix the extreme bank-deregulation regimen that caused Wall Street’s 2007 crash. And it provides an escape from national rules that would limit the size of “too-big-to-fail” behemoths.

—Internet freedom. Corporations hoping to lock up and monopolize the Internet failed in Congress last year to pass their repressive “Stop Online Piracy Act.” However, they’ve slipped SOPA’s most pernicious provisions into TPP. The deal would also transform Internet service providers into a private, Big Brother police force, empowered to monitor our “user activity,” arbitrarily take down our content and cut off our access to the Internet. To top that off, consumers could be assessed mandatory fines for something as benign as sending your mom a recipe you got off of a paid site.

—Public services. TPP rules would limit how governments regulate such public services as utilities, transportation and education — including restricting policies meant to ensure broad or universal access to those essential needs. One insidious rule says that member countries must open their service sectors to private competitors, which would allow the corporate provider to cherry-pick the profitable customers and sink the public service.

http://www.nationalmemo.com/the-trans-pacific-partnership-a-corporate-coup-in-disguise/

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TTP will allow corporations to extract weatlh from Internet users

There's an International Plan to Censor the Internet in the Works

the TPP is more than a trade agreement - it’s an underhanded attempt by old industry interests to censor the Internet.
The lack of general awareness about the TPP is exactly what unelected trade officials and lobbyists hope for; the more covert the negotiations, the easier it is to usher in extreme new Internet censorship rules.

The changes proposed by the TPP could seriously undermine citizens’ rights to participate in a free and open Internet. We know from leaked drafts (http://keionline.org/sites/default/files/tpp-10feb2011-us-text-ipr-chapter.pdf) that these draconian measures could criminalize your everyday use of the Internet, force service providers to collect and hand over your private data, and give old industry conglomerates more power to fine you for Internet use. As opposed to fostering a global forum in which citizens can engage with one another, the TPP would stifle any kind of innovation within the Internet community.

TheElectronic Frontier Foundation (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/09/international-criticism-escalates-against-tpp-negotiations-go-further-underground) underlines the dangers of the TPP:

“The copyright provisions in the TPP will carve a highly restrictive copyright regime into stone and prevent countries from enacting laws that best address and promote users’ interests. In this final stage, it’s time for us to demand that our lawmakers join those who are already denouncing this agreement. We must drag this out into the light and reject international laws that uphold corporate interests at the expense of users’ rights.”

Obama fast tracks the TPP, bypasses democracy

If it isn’t bad enough that these talks have occurred behind closed doors, President Obama is now taking this secrecy even further by attempting to “fast track” the deal through Congress.

This means that elected U.S. Congress members would be forced to vote on the agreement without the possibility of sharing, discussing, or amending its contents. Under such intense pressure from the President, it seems as though the most comprehensive and covert post-WTO trade agreement could be finalized by as early as the end of October.

http://www.alternet.org/theres-international-plan-censor-internet-works-lets-stop-it-its-tracks?akid=11040.187590.J2Pcdc&rd=1&src=newsletter909943&t=6&paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

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Remember all the paranoia about UN take over of USA, Blue Helmets at the Alamo, the Mighty USA losing its sovereignty, One World Government?

Well, the imminent threat is not from the USA, but from the United Corporations of America

A Full-Frontal Assault on Democracy in Europe and the United States

Remember that referendum about whether we should create a single market with the United States? You know, the one that asked whether corporations should have the power to strike down our laws? No, I don't either. Mind you, I spent 10 minutes looking for my watch the other day before I realised I was wearing it. Forgetting about the referendum is another sign of ageing. Because there must have been one, mustn't there? After all that agonising over whether or not we should stay in the European Union, the government wouldn't cede our sovereignty to some shadowy, undemocratic body without consulting us. Would it?

The purpose of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (http://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/in-focus/ttip/) [3] is to remove the regulatory differences between the US and European nations. I mentioned it a couple of weeks ago (http://www.monbiot.com/2013/10/14/elite-insurgency/) [4].

But I left out the most important issue: the remarkable ability it would grant big business to sue the living daylights out of governments which try to defend their citizens. It would allow a secretive panel of corporate lawyers to overrule the will of parliament and destroy our legal protections. Yet the defenders of our sovereignty say nothing.

The mechanism through which this is achieved is known as investor-state dispute settlement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investor-state_dispute_settlement) [5]. It's already being used in many parts of the world to kill regulations protecting people and the living planet.

The Australian government, after massive debates in and out of parliament, decided that cigarettes should be sold in plain packets (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20559585) [6], marked only with shocking health warnings. The decision was validated by the Australian supreme court. But, using a trade agreement Australia struck with Hong Kong (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jun/27/philip-morris-australia-cigarette-packets) [7], the tobacco company Philip Morris has asked an offshore tribunal to award it a vast sum in compensation for the loss of what it calls its intellectual property.

During its financial crisis, and in response to public anger over rocketing charges, Argentina imposed a freeze on people's energy and water bills (does this sound familiar?). It was sued by the international utility companies whose vast bills had prompted the government to act. For this and other such crimes, it has been forced to pay out over a billion dollars in compensation.

In El Salvador, local communities managed at great cost (three campaigners were murdered (http://www.canadians.org/fr/node/5297) [8]) to persuade the government to refuse permission for a vast gold mine which threatened to contaminate their water supplies. A victory for democracy? Not for long, perhaps. The Canadian company which sought to dig the mine is now suing El Salvador for $315m – for the loss of its anticipated future profits.

In Canada, the courts revoked two patents owned by the American drugs firm Eli Lilly, on the grounds that the company had not produced enough evidence that they had the beneficial effects it claimed. Eli Lilly is now suing the Canadian government for $500m (http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/eli-lilly-files-500m-nafta-suit-against-canada-over-drug-patents-1.1829854) [9], and demanding that Canada's patent laws are changed.

These companies (along with hundreds of others) are using the investor-state dispute rules embedded in trade treaties signed by the countries they are suing. The rules are enforced by panels which have none of the safeguards we expect in our own courts. The hearings are held in secret. The judges are corporate lawyers, many of whom work for companies of the kind whose cases they hear. Citizens and communities affected by their decisions have no legal standing. There is no right of appeal on the merits of the case. Yet they can overthrow the sovereignty of parliaments and the rulings of supreme courts.

You don't believe it? Here's what one of the judges on these tribunals says about his work. "When I wake up at night and think about arbitration, it never ceases to amaze me that sovereign states have agreed to investment arbitration at all ... Three private individuals are entrusted with the power to review, without any restriction or appeal procedure, all actions of the government, all decisions of the courts, and all laws and regulations emanating from parliament."

There are no corresponding rights for citizens. We can't use these tribunals to demand better protections from corporate greed. As the Democracy Centre (http://democracyctr.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Under_The_Radar_English_Final.pdf) [10] says, this is "a privatised justice system for global corporations".

Even if these suits don't succeed, they can exert a powerful chilling effect on legislation. One Canadian government official, speaking about the rules introduced by the North American Free Trade Agreement, remarked: "I've seen the letters from the New York and DC law firms coming up to the Canadian government on virtually every new environmental regulation and proposition in the last five years. They involved dry-cleaning chemicals, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, patent law. Virtually all of the new initiatives were targeted and most of them never saw the light of day." Democracy, as a meaningful proposition, is impossible under these circumstances.

This is the system to which we will be subject if the transatlantic treaty goes ahead. The US and the European commission, both of which have been captured by the corporations they are supposed to regulate, are pressing for investor-state dispute resolution to be included in the agreement.

The commission justifies this policy by claiming that domestic courts don't offer corporations sufficient protection because they "might be biased or lack independence". Which courts is it talking about? Those of the US? Its own member states? It doesn't say. In fact it fails to produce a single concrete example demonstrating the need for a new, extrajudicial system. It is precisely because our courts are generally not biased or lacking independence that the corporations want to bypass them. The EC seeks to replace open, accountable, sovereign courts with a closed, corrupt system riddled with
conflicts of interest and arbitrary powers.

Investor-state rules could be used to smash any attempt to save the NHS from corporate control, to re-regulate the banks, to curb the greed of the energy companies, to renationalise the railways, to leave fossil fuels in the ground. These rules shut down democratic alternatives. They outlaw leftwing politics.

This is why there has been no attempt by the UK government to inform us about this monstrous assault on democracy, let alone consult us. This is why the Conservatives who huff and puff about sovereignty are silent. Wake up, people we're being shafted.

http://admin.alternet.org/civil-liberties/full-frontal-assault-democracy-europe-and-united-states?akid=11114.187590.fJxktg&rd=1&src=newsletter919989&t=19&paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

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From a newsletter from <[email protected]>

"Tobacco giant Philip Morris is suing Australia for billions of dollars in lost profits -- just because the government took action to reduce teenage smoking.

Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly is suing Canada for $500 million -- just because Canada has laws to keep essential drugs affordable.

Worst of all, these cases are happening in secret, in international tribunals to which only corporations have access.
Now, more of these corporate lawsuits against governments could be coming to the US, thanks to the Obama Administration.
For months, world leaders have been negotiating a trade deal -- called the TPP -- that would massively expand these secret tribunals. It’s NAFTA on steroids, and international. The text of the deal is still completely secret and the public can't look -- but over 600 corporate lobbyists who are helping write the treaty can."

[Winehole23]

it's really all there in your inbox, isn't it?

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it's really all there in your inbox, isn't it?

GFY

[TeyshaBlue]

:lmao:lmao

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Tobacco Firms’ Strategy Limits Poorer Nations’ Smoking Laws

Tobacco companies are pushing back against a worldwide rise in antismoking laws, using a little-noticed legal strategy to delay or block regulation. The industry is warning countries that their tobacco laws violate an expanding web of trade and investment treaties, raising the prospect of costly, prolonged legal battles, health advocates and officials said.

The strategy has gained momentum in recent years as smoking rates in rich countries have fallen and tobacco companies have sought to maintain access to fast-growing markets in developing countries. Industry officials say that there are only a few cases of active litigation, and that giving a legal opinion to governments is routine for major players whose interests will be affected.

But tobacco opponents say the strategy is intimidating low- and middle-income countries from tackling one of the gravest health threats facing them: smoking. They also say the legal tactics are undermining the world’s largest global public health treaty, the W.H.O. Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which aims to reduce smoking by encouraging limits on advertising, packaging and sale of tobacco products. More than 170 countries have signed it since it took effect in 2005.

More than five million people die annually of smoking-related causes, more than from AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined, according to the World Health Organization.

Alarmed about rising smoking rates among young women, Namibia, in southern Africa, passed a tobacco control law in 2010 but quickly found itself bombarded with stern warnings from the tobacco industry that the new statute violated the country’s obligations under trade treaties.

“We have bundles and bundles of letters from them,” said Namibia’s health minister, Dr. Richard Kamwi.

Three years later, the government, fearful of a punishingly expensive legal battle, has yet to carry out a single major provision of the law, like limiting advertising or placing large health warnings on cigarette packaging.

Administration officials say they want the new treaty to raise standards for public health. They single out tobacco as a health concern, wording that upset the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, which said that the inclusion would leave the door open for other products, like soda or sugar, to be heavily regulated in other countries.

the current wording would not stop countries from being sued when they adopt strong tobacco control measures, though some trade experts said it might make the companies less likely to win. This fall, more than 50 members of the House and about a dozen members of the Senate sent letters to the administration expressing concern.

Tobacco consumption more than doubled in the developing world from 1970 to 2000, according to the United Nations. Much of the increase was in China, but there has also been substantial growth in Africa, where smoking rates have traditionally been low. More than three-quarters of the world’s smokers now live in the developing world.

legal actions against Uruguay, Norway and Australia were “deliberately designed to instill fear” in countries trying to reduce smoking.

“The wolf is no longer in sheep’s clothing, and its teeth are bared,”

In the early 1990s, the American government used to pressure countries to open their markets to American tobacco companies. As smoking rates in some of these countries rose, outrage grew, and President Bill Clinton issued an executive order in 2001 that banned the United States government from lobbying on the industry’s behalf.

Such treaties are intended to promote prosperity by reducing trade barriers and protecting investors from expropriation by foreign governments. They allow companies to sue directly, instead of having to persuade a state to take up their case. They have proliferated since the 1990s, and number around 3,000, up from a few hundred in the late 1980s,

“They’re trying to intimidate everybody,”

many developing countries are at a disadvantage in investment cases because they do not have the specialized legal expertise or resources to fight.

Uruguay has acknowledged that it would have had to drop its tobacco control law and settle with Philip Morris International

Companies are even paying for countries to make the industry’s case against other nations in the World Trade Organization. Ukraine filed a complaint with the organization against Australia’s packaging rule, even though the two countries barely trade.

“The fear is that they have the money and they have the resources, so they can pay for anything,”

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/12/13/health/tobacco-industry-tactics-limit-poorer-nations-smoking-laws.html?from=health

It will be hilarious when, eg a French or Russian tobacco company, with USA tobacco companies filing/supporting the foreigners' cases, sues the USA for restricting cigarette ads, and wins, forcing US taxpayers to cough up $100Ms in fines.

[Winehole23]

not gonna happen this year. talks broke down.

[Wild Cobra]

How much of the BS boutox brings up comes to life?

[Winehole23]

the preoccupation with prediction is much more at home in sports-related forums than here, but may reflect in any case the high gloss self-certainty puts on self-love and random guesses.

[Winehole23]

and of course the one, big, gruesome, overarching, all-encompassing conspiracy he continually bangs on about in his bus stop preacher-ish way

[boutons_deux]

not gonna happen this year. talks broke down.

You Lie. TPP resumes next year.

[boutons_deux]

and of course the one, big, gruesome, overarching, all-encompassing conspiracy he continually bangs on about in his bus stop preacher-ish way

corporations are already intimidating countries into not enforcing theirown laws, and suing and pocketing $100Ms+ from countries/taxpayers under current TPP-like "free trade" rules.