No
surprise, right? What’s surprising is the astonishing breadth and depth of the
affair. For it seems that twelve countries—United
States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Mexico, Malaysia, Chile,
Singapore, Peru, Vietnam, and Brunei—are getting together to pass the Trans-Pacific
Partnership (TTP), a little venture which, according
to Julian Assange
“would trample over individual rights and free expression.”
Well,
he should know, because he released the 30,000-word draft of the document on
November 13 of this year, and that was pretty much the first time anybody had
any idea what it was all about. Here’s
The Guardian—surprise, surprise!—on the issue:
In
case you were wondering why we had to get this information from WikiLeaks, it's
because the draft negotiating texts are kept secret from the public. Even
members of the US Congress and their staff have extremely limited access. Thus
the much-maligned WikiLeaks has once again proven how valuable
and justified are their efforts to bring transparency to important
policy-making that is done in the darkness – whether it is "collateral murder", or other forms of life-threatening
unaccountability.
Is it just
me, or does anybody else have a knee-jerk reaction to anything done at this
level of secrecy? And what, exactly, does the TTP intend to do? The Guardian quotes Public Citizen’s Global TradeWatch:
…set
US policy on non-tariff, and indeed not-trade, issues in the context of 'trade'
negotiations.
Ummmh?
At
least that was my reaction, so I read and then reread and then figured it
out—there are some concepts simple guys like me can’t get. So would the answer
come later in the article? Quite possibly, and it did. Check this out:
Laws
to protect the environment, food safety, consumers (from monopoly pricing), and
other public interest concerns can now be traded away in "trade"
negotiations. And US law must be made to conform to the treaty.
Well,
the email that I got from Alice Jay at Avaaz.org
put it a bit more graphically:
Monsanto’s
about to celebrate their biggest coup ever, but we’ve got until the weekend to
stop them.
The
Trans-Pacific Partnership is a huge, ultra-secret deal among twelve major
countries that would give corporations unprecedented power -- allowing them to
use new global tribunals to sue our governments for passing laws that protect
us, but reduce their profits!
This could apply to everything from labeling GMO foods to protecting internet
freedom. Wikileaks has broken the story and opposition is building fast, but
the countries are rushing to seal the deal in 48 hours.
OK—let me
imagine it. The US decides, at long last, to ban genetically altered wheat,
since our foreign market doesn’t want the stuff. But Monsanto decides to raise
the middle finger, and argues that the ban infringes on their right to make a
profit. So they take us to a new global court, and sue us on the basis of this
treaty.
All of
this, asserts Assange, is an attempt to impose the United States’ strict
interpretation of intellectual property rights, under which a seed becomes an
idea, as long as you’ve altered its DNA.
Wonderful,
isn’t it, what corporations are doing, and what they’ve become. They’re no
longer things, or legal concepts—but people. So under Citizens
United, corporations, like people, can donate money to political campaigns.
Oh, and they can have religions, too, which is why Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Supplies will argue
this year before the US. Supreme Court that they have the right to
not offer certain types of contraception through their employee health
plans. Nor, by the way, are these particularly small companies: Hobby Lobby employs
over 13, 000 people, Conestoga over 1000.
The
following information, by the way, comes from the liberal website Slate.com.
But it seems that the sword cuts both ways, because I’ve just read that animal
rights activists, citing Citizen’s United, are now looking for jurisdictions
that would take the adventurous step of declaring chimpanzees legal persons.
(The article
was entitled “Seeking Citizen’s United Victory for Chimpanzees”—of course I had
to read it….)
Back
paddling hard back to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, there’s one thing to bear
in mind: the process in the US may be fast-tracked. And that is, you ask? The
Guardian comes through
again:
…fast
track, which first began under Nixon in 1974, was not only a usurpation of the US Congress' constitutional authority "to regulate commerce
with foreign nations".
It
also gave the executive branch – which is generally much less accountable to
public pressure than the Congress – a means of negating and pre-empting
important legislation by our elected representatives.
So
what’s our time frame? According to the email which alerted me to the issue,
it’s 48 hours.
Here’s
the link, dear Reader. You know what you have to do….
