Secretive Corporate Deal in the Works Could Establish Special Closed Door Courts for Big Business

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/world/trans-pacific-partnership-extends-tentacles-corporate-power



Last week the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement leapt from behind the closed doors of negotiations to the front pages of major newspapers, thanks to information from Wikileaks revealing previously unpublished details of the proposed intellectual property chapter of the deal.

If you hadn't yet heard about the TPP, there is a reason for that. Not even members of the US Congress have been allowed to see the negotiating text. Thanks to a set of leaks however, we´re beginning to get glimpses of exactly how dangerous the agreement is. The Wikileaks revelations have shone an urgent public light on the agreement’s onerous implications regarding intellectual property.

In 2012, however, another leak uncovered what may be an even more dangerous aspect of the TPP. The proposed investment chapter of the deal revealed plans to expand the system of international investment tribunals that deal with what is called ‘investor-state dispute settlement’. These are closed-door courts that take direct aim at the ability of governments across the world to enact environmental, public health and other protections for their citizens.

We don’t need much help to imagine what a world under these provisions of the TPP would look like. We need look no further than some of the current investor-state dispute cases in which powerful international corporations are demanding millions – sometimes billions – of dollars in claims, against countries both poor and wealthy, for the sin of protecting their citizens.

[woo me with science]

1. Corporate fascism.

More important than the President's nice sweater are his plans for this nation.

[xchrom]

2. +1

[Th1onein]

5. Absolutely. I am so tired of the cult of personality.

I could care less that "Obama rocks a sweater." Unbelievable that we would see this here.

[marmar]

3. k/r

[woo me with science]

4. Kick. This is important.

[JCMach1]

6. We need to get right and left (the non-corporatistas) on-board to block this monstrousity...

very very very bad thing

[woo me with science]

7. +1 This is a 99 percent issue, not a Red versus Blue issue,

...as *most* economic assaults we face are these days.

[Volaris]

8. To do that,

you might have to get in bed with the UN-Black-helicpoter, destruction-of-american-soverignity, new-world-order-cabal-hating members of the Republican Party, 'cause for damn sure the "establsihment (see corporate) Republicans aren't going to do anything except vote "yes" on this thing.

Not saying that getting into bed with them would be all bad, it WILL serve your purpose quite nicely if they can actually be convinced to hop in with you. I'm just saying, bring "protection", as I would bet some of them have never been checked for various forms of right-wing lunacy, and if you're not careful, that stuff can be transmitted lol...

[pampango]

11. Nicely said, Volaris. n/t

[WinkyDink]

15. And exactly what about TPP REFUTES the "NWO" accusation? NOTHING.

[JCMach1]

19. Even a broken clock is useful twice a day...

[AuntFester]

9. How prescient was George Orwell?

We are rushing headlong into a world where we are nothing more than livestock.

[WinkyDink]

16. Hello? That time is NOW.

[Egalitarian Thug]

21. We the sheeple...

[woo me with science]

10. kick

[Omaha Steve]

12. K&R!

[MisterP]

13. of course, if we turn into Shadowrun we get *dragon presidents*

[WinkyDink]

14. IOW: The wealthy class is equal, or superior, to sovereign nations. TPP would end, for all time,

a nation's ability to raise taxes on the rich.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

17. I K&R'ed the living F out of this thread. n/t

[KoKo]

18. Oh Yeah...Wait and see ...We get the "TPP Agreement" just before Christmas

or right aftr the New Year in a "hidden vote" obscured by some other distracting crisis.

THE TPP just like the PIPELINE AGREEMENTS are RED LIGHTED...but, not so that the PEOPLE will have time to react given the Holiday Hiatus and Spin and Hype.

I hope I'm wrong...believe me. But, if this goes through in the way I suggested...then I think we all need to be very worried about what POB is really about. I've tried to give him a break over not invading and bombing Syria and the Iranian Deal...but what lies "underneath" what we hear and the truth of what will go down remains to be seen.

I want to "BELIEVE" this good news...but, past history tells me that it all isn't what we "want to believe" but FEEDING US what "we want to believe."

As I said....I hope to heck that I'm wrong.

[woo me with science]

20. kick