June 24, 2012 at 04:04:17
George Orwell cried last night. Had
not he warned them. Hadn't they read his books, once taught in high schools
across America. He was so clear. Yet, so few listened. Now, the plot was almost
over. They, the Pigs, were about to win. Unless......
"We have to stop them before it gets
to Congress", warned Brooke Harper, referring to the Trans Pacific Partnership
(TTP), the proposed pan-pacific treaty likely the most insidious piece of
corporate global legislation ever to be secretly slipped through the halls of
Congress. It was a secret until two weeks ago. Now, opposition must rise
quickly. The consequences for American, and world, society are, indeed, terminal.
Ms. Harper, who represents Global Trade
Watch, an organization based in Wash. DC, has just arrived in San Diego to
rally the Southern California area activists in preparation for the upcoming TPP,
eight day, negotiations to be held at the Hilton/ San Diego Bayfront in San
Diego, July 2-10, 2012. This is round thirteen.
A crowd of about forty, representing activist
groups from the San Diego area, listened as Harper explained the depth of the
threat posed by TPP. They had gathered at Canvass for a Cause, a community hall
in the City Heights area. What they heard was chilling and went far beyond the
fringes of what our current broken American democracy has become.
Pres. Barack Obama is traitor. This
underhanded legislation/ treaty secretly sells- out the American people's legal
rights in favor of his corporate puppet masters. The concept, inception, and
mechanism of the TPP treaty comes, solely, from the Obama administration. In
doing so, our one time constitutional scholar president attempts to create a
new, world- wide, corporate dynasty. TPP gives up legal sovereignty and
jurisdiction of the United States, and its laws, to a foreign power. This is
the very definition of treason.
If Americans don't stop TPP
corporations will, literally, be able to circumvent the existing laws of the
EPA, FDA, unions, collective bargaining agreements, patent protections and
access, banking regulations and many other American regulations and rights. All
will be negated solely by the arbitrary diktats of corporations being currently,
and secretly, included in the language of the TPP treaty. Should state, local,
or federal governmental agencies attempt to enforce American laws in favor of
their citizens a separate corporate court will have supreme jurisdiction over that
American governmental agency. This "Tribunal" has the power to override
existing American regulation. Federal agencies,
State Gov'ts, City authority, citizen's property, and competing American
corporate interests will be considered as the Defendant before the court. These defendants will have been charged, by
the plaintiff corporation, with the new crime of a "Technical Barrier to
Trade."
Should the defendant chose not to comply
with the Tribunal's diktat, or refuse to pay Tribunal ordered financial
compensation, the judgment will be enforced by our federal gov't against
American interests.
Making matters even worse American
based corporations will not have access to the authoritarian controls and
manipulations of the TPP treaty. These luxuries are only available to the big
multi-national corporations. Smaller American corporations will be subservient
to the whims of TPP.
So, your state decides to place a
health tax on cigarettes of one dollar a pack, as compensation for increased
healthcare costs of smokers to the state. (California's Prop 29 attempted to do
this in the last primary election.) The voters approve it. Seems pretty fair so
far. Au contraire.
R.J. Reynolds doesn't like this
portion of democracy, considering it bad for business and profits. Healthcare
and designed addiction be damned, big corporations, at least the ones with real
power, don't worry about the trifles of mere democracy. They just turn to the "Investor/State
Dispute Resolution Tribunal." Not to a state court, not the federal court, nor
the Supreme Court of the United States. A Corporation run court. For this TPP
has adopted the more ominous description of, "Tribunal."
This corporate sponsored,
congressional, science fiction continues with the makeup of the Tribunal and
its members. Composed of just three corporate lawyers (remember what
Shakespeare said?) the three will be divided into; one with experience with the
defendant's issues, one for the plaintiff corporation, and a third who is,
somehow, neutral. The Tribunal will meet in closed session away from cameras
and reporters when adjudicating disputes between sovereign American federal,
state, and local laws and the wishes of the corporations whose countries'
governments have, maliciously, ratified the TPP treaty.
With the likelihood of your state
prevailing being nil, the tribunal rules against the cigarette tax. The tax is
ordered to be repealed and, as punishment to the state for the crime of
state-sponsored health interests, is next assessed a corporate monetary penalty
due to the tax being a, "technical barrier to trade". This term is
the mantra of TPP and translates directly into, "your (healthcare) law is
restricting our profits."
The tribunal then issues an order for
compensation of, hypothetically, one hundred million dollars due to the loss of
profits to R.J. Reynolds tobacco sales. Your state's attorney general says, "over
my dead body", and heads for the Appeals court, perhaps the Supreme Court.
Au contraire.
Here lies the treason of the TPP. It grants,
once congress ratifies it, the complete nullification of the jurisdiction of
all US courts regarding matters before the tribunal. So your state loses.
Automatically.
Well, now your state treasurer says,
"we'll never pay." That won't work either. Thanks to TPP, and a
majority of treasonous Congressman, the federal government, which has authority
over the states, must enforce the monetary judgment. Your states treasurer
wakes up one morning to a call from the bank. It's something about a $100
million withdrawal. Uncle Sam just stole your states $100 million and gave it
to R.J. Reynolds. And there wasn't a damn thing your state could do to stop it.
This is not fantasy. Nor hyperbole. Already
Australia is under a similar legal attack by Phillip Morris, Ltd, one of the
world's largest cigarette manufacturers. Because of a similar existing, Hong Kong/
Australia, trade treaty Morris is currently seeking tens of millions of dollars
in monetary damages from the Australian Gov't. Recently, the Aussies decided to
mandate plain paper packaging of all cigarettes and, that this packaging
contain a health warning and some very ghastly images of diseased lungs, stomas,
etc., designed to discourage smoking. Thanks to the treaty; au contraire.
The Obama administration's treason in propagating
the TPP is shown in many other likely future edicts via TPP. Using the broad
brush of, "Technical Barrier to Trade", pro-American interests will soon be
banned, literally. "Buy American" provisions, designed to create jobs, on Gov't
Purchases will not be banned.
Green Energy, an Obama campaign
promise regarding creating new jobs, will not be a reality as these would
compete with the stronger oil industry. Heath care for employees? Also gone due to the cost to employers. Patent
terms would be lengthened to as much as fifty years so as to restrict the production
of cheaper generic drugs of same quality, thereby maintaining higher prices and
restricting access to medication in impoverished counties. How many millions of
people world- wide will die will never be known. Banking regulation, already
minimal, will be gone. The few remaining small farmers will be forced from
their land by multi- national agri-business. Fracking? Whether you like it, or not. These are just
the obvious examples.
Substitute into this scenario any
governmental agency, fit in any restriction to corporate profit, and add the
name of any multinational corporation, and the story plays out the same. These
requirements are actually currently written into the first two, leaked to the
public, chapters of the TPP treaty. There are drafts for twenty --six additional chapters, most of which have
nothing to do with trade, but rather impose limits on domestic food safety,
health, environmental, and other policies. The
first two are bad enough and the reason that these draft copies were released to
Global Trade Watch two weeks ago. The governments involved, including the US, won't release
the texts to the public. But 600 U.S. corporate "trade advisors" have full
access.
What was initially met with a
collective gasp by most media was quickly dampened to a mumble after a one-day
news cycle. It is now missing from the pages of our nations' corporate controlled
media, much as the recent NDAA ( National Defense Authorization Act) subterfuge.
Media scoundrels are doing their job efficiently. During a the recent Dallas
negotiations, despite the presence of over 400 area protesters, there was only
one media crew, from Japan, present to cover the event.
These forty dedicated Occupiers and
activist leaders are determined to make the week of July 2 -10 a call to action,
and the attention, of their American and world brethren of the pending horror
of TPP.
After a 90 minute presentation by
Brooke Harper, on the nuances of TPP, the gathering spent another hour and a
half discussing plans for each day of the week during the TPP negotiations, since
negotiations are held during the day. A coordinated effort from across Southern
California is expected to make a strong presence daily. Twenty members of the
group have been given passes to enter the assembly daily as, "Stakeholders", (implying
that they actually have a say in negotiations) and can meet and discuss issues
with the official trade representatives of the countries present. Harper warns
these stakeholders to be prepared for the self-serving arguments of the
negotiators, since the invitation is designed to be the foil for the negotiators
to challenge these protesters in public and legitimize the TPP process.
The countries who are party to this
attempt at corporate world domination, i.e. globalization, are Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia,
New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam . All these countries are champions of the new
corporate Democratic model.
These democracies elect their
representatives, and these officials, then, maliciously ignore the interests of
these voters until the advent of the next election cycle. In the interim these
sham democracies serve, with all expediency, the corporate interest. This is
becoming the global democratic model and the goal of globalization, and its
castrating scissors; the TPP. Of course this has, since NAFTA, been the goal of
American corporations all along. The TPP is American made. Obama's
administration is the author.
The TPP negotiators refer to the
treaty as a "Docking Agreement" meaning it is an opportunity for other countries
to join. Already Mexico, a country representing, only, its upper 1%, and Canada,
a country that just authored its own authoritarian response to the student
protests in Montreal, will soon be added
Just two-and a- half years ago Americas'
one-time constitutional scholar president, continued to bolster his assault of
Americans' best interests, by commencing
the drafting of the TPP treaty, and to invite countries to participate in the negotiations.
These have been continuing routinely, in secret, with the recent twelfth stopover
in Dallas, Texas this past May. All the twenty US trade negotiators and the US
trade representative, Ron Kirk, will be present at the TPP conference. All were
selected by Obama.
Obama's treason deliberately conceals
its intentions as the release of secret two chapters reveals. By design the
treaty will remain secret. US Congressmen and Senators will not be able to see
them until a final draft is submitted to them for consideration, and
presumably, automatic passage. This
pre-authored treaty, like so many pieces of legislation already authored by A.L.E.C.,
will have no need to be read by these congressmen, who are already in the bag, and
pleased to do the bidding of their corporate sponsors. The likely punch-line to
this treasonous joke will be Obama using his "fast-track authority",
via current US trade authority, to get this through Congress without
possibility of formal congressional review, or the public suddenly paying
attention in time. Like the secret provisions of this past New Year's sinister NDAA
passage, this treasonous president, and his congressional co-conspirators, will
put a final death nail in American democracy. Unless".
The time line for passage of the
treaty through the congress and Parliaments of these member nations is intended
to be by late summer this year.
Two congresswomen are taking an
interest in protection American sovereignty and its citizen from TPP. Reps. Rosa
L. DeLauro (D-CT) and Rep. Donna Edwards(D- MD) are the current leaders in
exposing and challenging TPP. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), chairman of the
Trade Committee in the Senate which has jurisdiction overtrade agreements, has been denied any
access to information despite persistent requests. Already a US senator lacks standing, or
jurisdiction, within TPP regarding American interests. No elected official,
other than Pres. Obama, is involved in the negotiations.
.
Times were dire before
the sudden, shocking, news of the TPP. Corporations seek supreme authority over
sovereign nations. Desperate, and ever greedy, the minions of authoritarian
democracy wish to give their corporate masters the keys to the base of the
financial pyramid. From Citizens United to the BP oil disaster cover-up; Obama's
sham Heath Care bill to the NDAA's new gutting of civil rights, we now have TPP,
designed to finish the job. It must be stopped. Efforts in San Diego and across
the nation must commence. Congressmen must be contacted. Phones must ring. The call
to national action must go out. Or the last vestiges of freedom will.
George Orwell cried last
night.
Take action -- click here to contact your local newspaper or congress people:
STOP TPP
The author spent his formative years growing up in Australia, Ghana, the
Bahamas and Alaska.He also traveled extensively through out the
developing world in the era before globalization.His experiences have
shaped him into a World Citizen who sees (
more...)
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
