Chances are that you’ve never heard of the Trans-Pacific-Pact/Free Trade Agreement, aka the TPP-FTA, and that is exactly the way the Obama administration (and its corporate bosses)– would like to keep things. The mainstream (read: corporate), media has utterly left the American public in the dark on this skunk of a deal which surrenders our national, state and local sovereignity to corporate interests. The TPP as it is known in secretive corporate circles represents the most anti-democracy assault devised by trade representatives from some 600 corporations including Halliburton, Chevron, PhaRMA, Comcast and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).
The secrecy factor…hiding TPP’s anti-democracy powers behind ‘national security’…
The TPP-FTA (Trans-Pacific-Pact Free Trade Agreement) is the latest brainchild of the 1%. Negotiations for each round have been so secretely guarded that paramilitary teams surrounded each locale with weaponized helicopters looming overhead.
A ‘weapon of mass deception’ specifically engineered to surrender our representative democracy to corporate rule; the TPP has been negotiated in secret since 2008 and is now nearing completion in its 17th round.
President Obama has allowed both of his US Trade Representative(s) (first Ron Kirk and now Mike Froman); to use the illegitimate veil of ‘national security’, and the accompanying overclassification of information, to shut out the public and Congress from ‘negotiations.’
No amount of public relations salesmanship from Obama can sell this stinker of a trade deal–once the facts hit the light of day. Ironically, the facts only surfaced–because of a leak–another whistleblower.
Leaked official documents clearly show that parties involved agreed to keep all draft and contributing documents secret, until four years after the final ratification of the agreement (or when negotiations collapse);– EXCEPT for the final text.
During the entire length of ongoing negotiations–now in it’s 17th round, Congress was locked out of any meaningful discussion or investigation, while over 600 corporate chieftains and advisors have all but scripted the entire document down to the last punctuation mark.
Congress locked out….
Congress was not only ‘locked out’–it was never invited to the party. (While it’s true that the USTR ‘permitted’ limited viewing of the texts by members of Congress–none were allowed to have expert staffers in various negotiated areas of concern, present. Furthermore, recording devices were expressely forbidden.
The deal which would surrender national, state and local sovereignity to a secret tribunal of three corporate attorneys,–excluding all but corporate interests, was blessed with impunity on the profane altar of ‘national security.’ Leakers would be punished as ‘enemies of the state’–with a real possibility of jail time–and that threat included members of congress.
Congressional leaders questioning this ‘corporate coup’ though few–were refreshingly forthright. Senator Ron Wyden (D) Oregon led the charge, followed by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D) Mass. and Congressman Alan Grayson (D) Fla.
MORE: http://www.ukprogressive.co.uk/tpp-the-most-dangerous-trade-contract-youve-never-heard-of/article22844.html
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