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The Case Against Ratifying the Trans Pacific Partnership (michaelgeist.ca)

Posted by timothy on from the transparency-transchmarency dept.

An anonymous reader writes: For the past two and a half months, Canadian law professor Michael Geist has been writing a daily series on the trouble with the Trans Pacific Partnership. The 50 part series wrapped up today with the case against ratifying the TPP. While the focus is on Canadian issues, the series hits on problems that all 12 countries face: unbalanced intellectual property rules, privacy risks, dangers to the Internet and technology, cultural and health regulation, and investor-state settlement rules that could cost countries billions of dollars.

5 of 177 comments (clear)

  1. History as teacher by some+old+guy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    After WTO, NAFTA, et al, I'd say its safe to assume that TPP is designed and built to expedite the globalist race to the bottom, to the detriment of everyone but the oligarchs and their bootlickers.

    --
    Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
    1. Re:History as teacher by Kohath · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Wage trends in China indicate the "race to the bottom" is actually a race to the middle.

  2. One reason needed by s.petry · · Score: 4, Informative

    TPP is a secret agreement, developed by parties who are financially biased to make such an agreement, without any discourse or dialogue outside of interested parties.

    The lies of NAFTA, having been exposed as lies, have much to do with why this is being done in secret. NAFTA was not developed by party, it was developed in much the same way. Except that people were able to question the alleged benefits before ratification. The so called "naysayers" who warned about not just NAFTA, but many other treaties and Acts have been proven right far too often.

    I certainly appreciate the attorney's 50 days/reasons and the detail he goes into. I just don't think it's necessary for at least the US, who needs Congressional approval for a treaty. (I don't know Canada's laws, perhaps they have similar.) Any member of Congress that approves this "treaty" should be impeached, jailed, banished, or some other nice form of punishment for treason.

    --

    -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

  3. Small wonder that his was secret until now by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This article is a Canadian perspective, but it's instructive to see how others see us. The whole point of TPP seems to be to ratify US corporate monopolies that have up to now only been enforced within the US. If TPP is ratified, all of the signatory countries get US-style intellectual property oppression, US-style high pharma prices, and a surveillance state to replaces Internet freedom.

  4. Here are all the corporate backers: by waspleg · · Score: 4, Informative

    You'll see a lot of familiar names.

    Here is how much each senator was paid by each backer for fast tracking.

    Here's a Hillary specific one about donations to her campaign, since it came up early in the search.

    The first 2 charts I found linked in this excellent Guardian story.

    Some key excerpts:

    Using data from the Federal Election Commission, this chart shows all donations that corporate members of the US Business Coalition for TPP made to US Senate campaigns between January and March 2015, when fast-tracking the TPP was being debated in the Senate:

    - Out of the total $1,148,971 given, an average of $17,676.48 was donated to each of the 65 "yea" votes.
    - The average Republican member received $19,673.28 from corporate TPP supporters.
    - The average Democrat received $9,689.23 from those same donors.

    The amounts given rise dramatically when looking at how much each senator running for re-election received.