The Trans-Pacific Partnership: A Global Attack by the One Percent

[limpyhobbler]

by MARK VORPAHL
During the week of July 1st – 7th an international cabal of corporate lobbyists has been meeting behind closed doors in San Diego. Their aim is moving the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) towards completion. For over two years TPP negotiations have been in process, yet the proposals and agreements made so far have been carefully kept from public view, until recently.

A leaked TPP document, published at Public Citizen, has revealed what the 600 corporate advisers involved in the negotiations, including representatives from Verizon, FedEx, and Walmart, have been up to. Considering the contents of this document, it is no wonder why the public and even elected representatives have been kept in the dark.

Publicly the TPP is being described as a Free Trade Act (FTA). This understates its scope. While the FTAs already in existence have raked in giant profits for the corporate elite, for workers internationally they have resulted in lay offs and a race to the bottom in terms of living conditions and rights. The big business tops have been working hard to enhance the power of their moneymaking weapons of mass destruction. If NAFTA was a hand grenade, the TPP is a bunker buster.

What is perhaps most astonishing about the TPP is its architects’ disregard for the consequences of its destructive potential. Their greed has blinded them to the political instability and popular revolt the consequences of the TPP will create. The corporate elite imagines their rule to be absolute and eternal. Sheltered by these illusions and goaded on by the need to increase their riches regardless of social costs, they are creating a bomb that could blow them up as well.
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more: http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/07/06/a-global-attack-by-the-one-percent/

[AnotherMcIntosh]

1. If there is any better way to destroy what is left of the American middle class, what is it?

[limpyhobbler]

4. I don't know

Outlaw unions maybe? It's hard to think of many things that could actually be worse.

I'm hoping President Obama just needs a little encouragement to come around on this issue.

Glad to see 130 or more members of Congress signed that DeLauro-Miller letter demanding transparency. A good start.

[rbnyc]

2. k & r (nt)

[90-percent]

3. This is so anti-democracy

This is so anti-democracy that calling it an act of treason isn't even hyperbole.

These fuckers do indeed want it all, don't they?

OUR INSTITUTIONS ARE INFESTED WITH CORRUPT SOCIOPATHS.

-90% Jimmy, with spiffy new SIG LINE

[fasttense]

5. The T-peepee will cement inverse fascism into America.

It will make governments nothing more than tools of corporations thoroughly and completely.

And Obama will be forever linked to it just as Clinton is forever linked to NAFTA and the repeal of Glass-Steagall.