Bad Guys Pushing THIS WEEK to Promote Global Tyranny Run By Corporations

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Here’s How to STOP Them

The pow­ers-that-be are push­ing this week to fast track a hor­ri­ble treaty which would destroy America.

The treaty is called the Trans Pacif­ic Part­ner­ship (TPP).

The U.S. Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive – the fed­er­al agency respon­si­ble for nego­ti­at­ing trade treaties – has said that the details of the TPP are clas­si­fied due to “nation­al secu­ri­ty”.

Why’s the deal being kept secret? Because it would be impos­si­ble to pass if the pub­lic knew what was real­ly in it:

Ron Kirk, until recent­ly Mr. Obama’s top trade offi­cial, was remark­ably can­did about why he opposed mak­ing the text pub­lic: doing so, he sug­gest­ed to Reuters, would raise such oppo­si­tion that it could make the deal impos­si­ble to sign.

Sen­a­tor Eliz­a­beth War­ren notes:

Sup­port­ers of the deal say to me, “They have to be secret, because if the Amer­i­can peo­ple knew what was actu­al­ly in them, they would be opposed.”

But it’s not only being hid­den from the Amer­i­can peo­ple … it’s being hid­den even from most U.S. Con­gress mem­bers.

A Con­gress­man who has seen the text of the treaty says:

There is no nation­al secu­ri­ty pur­pose in keep­ing this text secret … this agree­ment hands the sov­er­eign­ty of our coun­try over to cor­po­rate interests.

It would also allow for­eign cor­po­ra­tions to chal­lenge U.S. laws.  It will lit­er­al­ly over­ride Amer­i­can law.  As the New York Times head­lines  in Trans-Pacif­ic Part­ner­ship Seen as Door for For­eign Suits Against U.S.:

Com­pa­nies and investors would be empow­ered to chal­lenge reg­u­la­tions, rules, gov­ern­ment actions and court rul­ings — fed­er­al, state or local — before tri­bunals orga­nized under the World Bank or the Unit­ed Nations.

Ron Paul says that the TPP would erode nation­al sovereignty:

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While it’s false­ly called a “trade agree­ment”, only 5 out of 29 of TPP’s chap­ters have any­thing to do with trade.  And con­ser­v­a­tives point out that even the 5 chap­ters on trade do not pro­mote free trade. Bloomberg calls TPP a “cor­po­ratist pow­er grab”, “as demo­c­ra­t­ic and trans­par­ent as a one-par­ty state,” and shroud­ed in “Big Broth­er-like secrecy”.

TPP would increase the cost of con­sumer loansmake pre­scrip­tion drugs more expen­sive, destroy pri­va­cy, harm food safe­tylet Wall Street run amok, make it ille­gal to favor local busi­ness­es, and – yes – lit­er­al­ly act to destroy the sov­er­eign­ty of the U.S. and the oth­er nations which sign the bill.

A very cred­i­ble inside source – with a proven track record of access, accu­ra­cy, intel­li­gence and ded­i­ca­tion to work­ing for our coun­try – tells Washington’s Blog that TPP con­tains pro­vi­sions which would severe­ly harm America’s nation­al secu­ri­ty. Specif­i­cal­ly, like some pre­vi­ous, ill-con­ceived treaties, TPP would allow for­eign com­pa­nies to buy sen­si­tive Amer­i­can assets which could sub­ject us to ter­ror attacks or eco­nom­ic blackmail.

Huff­in­g­ton Post quotes the New York Times and Wik­ileaks to explain how the dis­pute pro­vi­sions would gut the Amer­i­can legal system:

The Wik­iLeaks analy­sis explains that this lets firms “sue” gov­ern­ments to obtain tax­pay­er com­pen­sa­tion for loss of “expect­ed future profits.”

Let that sink in for a moment: “[C]ompanies and investors would be empow­ered to chal­lenge reg­u­la­tions, rules, gov­ern­ment actions and court rul­ings — fed­er­al, state or local — before tri­bunals….” And they can col­lect not just for lost prop­er­ty or seized assets; they can col­lect if laws or reg­u­la­tions inter­fere with these giant com­pa­nies’ abil­i­ty to col­lect what they claim are “expect­ed future profits.”

The Times‘ report explains that this clause also “giv[es] greater pri­or­i­ty to pro­tect­ing cor­po­rate inter­ests than pro­mot­ing free trade and com­pe­ti­tion that ben­e­fits consumers.”

The tri­bunals that adju­di­cate these cas­es will be made up of pri­vate-sec­tor (i.e., cor­po­rate) attor­neys. These attor­neys will rotate between serv­ing on the tri­bunals and rep­re­sent­ing cor­po­ra­tions that bring cas­es to be heard by the tri­bunals. This is a con­flict of inter­est because the attor­neys serv­ing on the tri­bunals will have tremen­dous incen­tive to rule for the cor­po­ra­tions if they want to con­tin­ue to get lucra­tive cor­po­rate business.

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This ISDS mech­a­nism [“Investor-State Dis­pute Set­tle­ment” tri­bunals cre­at­ed by TPP] orig­i­nates from a time when investors in wealthy, devel­oped coun­tries want­ed to invest in projects in unsta­ble “third-world,” “banana-republic”-style coun­tries but wor­ried that dic­ta­tors or rev­o­lu­tion­ary gov­ern­ments could decide to seize their prop­er­ty — a refin­ery, rail­road or fac­to­ry — leav­ing them with no recourse. So before invest­ing, the tar­get coun­try agrees that in the case of dis­putes, a tri­bunal is set up out­side and beyond the reach of the country’s jus­tice sys­tem (courts where the judge is a broth­er or oth­er crony of the dic­ta­tor, for exam­ple), pro­vid­ing recourse in the event of unjust seizure of prop­er­ty. This would make invest­ment less risky.

How­ev­er, under agree­ments like the TPP, these pro­vi­sions apply to and over­ride the laws of mod­ern, sta­ble, devel­oped coun­tries with demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nance and fair court sys­tems. The cor­po­rate rep­re­sen­ta­tives nego­ti­at­ing mod­ern trade agree­ments see such demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly run gov­ern­ments as “bur­den­some” and chaot­ic, intro­duc­ing “uncer­tain­ties” and “inter­fer­ing” or “med­dling” with the cor­po­rate order. As one sup­port­er of these ISDS pro­vi­sions put it, they pro­tect cor­po­ra­tions from “the waves of mad­ness that occa­sion­al­ly flit through the population.”

To give an idea of what would hap­pen to Amer­i­can law if TPP pass­es, just look at Equador …   Its courts award­ed bil­lions against Chevron for trash­ing huge swaths of rain­for­est.  But then a pri­vate arbi­tra­tion pan­el sim­ply ignored the country’s court sys­tem. If TPP pass­es, we’ll be treat­ed like a third world coun­try, and our Amer­i­can laws and courts will be ignored as well.

(Those opposed to a “one world gov­ern­ment” or a “new world order” should oppose TPP as the big fight.  Con­ser­v­a­tives might want to read this.  Remem­ber that one of the best def­i­n­i­tions of fas­cism – the one used by Mus­soli­ni – is the “merg­er of state and cor­po­rate pow­er”.  TPP (is?) a giant step in that direction.)

The back­ers of TPP – includ­ing Oba­ma and many in Con­gress – are try­ing to approve a “fast track” pro­ce­dure this week that would pre­vent Con­gress from hav­ing any real input into the agree­ment, or to even have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to debate what should be in the agreement.

But the treaty is so bad, that if we just defeat the attempt to fast-track it, it will die a nat­ur­al death as soon as it’s made pub­lic … and Con­gress has to engage in seri­ous debate on the hor­ri­ble agree­ment, and answer to its angry constituents.

The Amer­i­can peo­ple are already strong­ly opposed to TPP, and are dis­gust­ed by the pro­posed fast-track­ing of the TPP vote. But we have to let our Con­gress mem­bers’ know how we feel on this.

We’ve stopped oth­er bad trade bills … and we can stop this one.

Make your voice heard and tell Con­gress NO to TPP!

Post­script: Find you House mem­ber here, and your Sen­a­tor here.