Trans Pacific Partnership put on Fast Track and supported by Obama

The Trans Pacific Partnership is an anti-democracy trade deal that has been negotiated completely in secret and Congress has now put in on the "fast track" meaning that it could become law very soon.

The deal gives foreign corporations the ability to avoid our domestic laws and regulations with respect to labor, the environment, taxation, patents, industrial policy, etc.

This is diktat by the global corporatocracy that subverts our democracy, our sovereign status.

Why the fuck do we vote? For this??

(Why the fuck do we vote, anyway?)

Call your Congressional representative and tell them you stand against this terrible deal that will lead to more outsourcing, more wage destruction, more pollution, more exploitation.

Central planning at its finest. This is why we have surging income inequality under Obama. For all his phony concern for workers and the Middle Class, he is nothing more than a puppet of the corporate elite.

Congress about to pass a massive SECRET anti-democracy trade deal!

Congress is about to sign off on a massive, pro-corporate, anti Democracy trade deal that was negotiated completely in secret. This deal will give corporations the ability to nullify our domestic environmental, labor, trade policies, rules, regulations, etc.

You should be extremely frightened now with regard to how fast these destructive and highly one-sided policies are being rolled out. This is nothing less than an all-out assault on our freedoms and sovereignty by large transnational corporate interests AND THEY ARE CLEARLY WINNING!

A LOT is at stake here. You think income inequality is bad now? Just wait. You think joblessness is bad now? Just wait. You think our freedoms are being curtailed now? Just wait. You think the environment is being plundered now? Just wait.

Call your Congressional Representative today and voice your opposition. I did! Here is a list of phone numbers. Find your Rep and CALL!

This is a war and we cannot afford to lose!

Mark Karlin — The Trans-Pacific Partnership Legalizes Corporate Rights Prevailing Over Human Rights

The basic premise of free trade is to allow global companies to move freely between borders to exploit low wage labor, be free from any but the most minimal environmental standards, not be subject to lawsuits in many areas, and move corporate bank accounts around the world to achieve the lowest taxation possible.

It's ironic that at the same time the TPP is being negotiated in the utmost secrecy, the US is discussing how to further increase an already militarized border with Mexico to stop the free movement of people. So, free trade agreements guarantee the rights of corporations to hop around the world to exploit workers and the environment (among other provisions), but people within those nations are restricted in their movements.

In these sense, when it comes to global trade treaties, corporations have more rights than people.

Corporate rights prevail over human rights. That's the essence of so-called "free trade agreements" -- and the TPP is allegedly a free trade agreement on steroids.

BuzzFlash

The Trans-Pacific Partnership Legalizes Corporate Rights Prevailing Over Human Rights

Mark Karlin, Editor Of Buzzflash At Truthout
(h/t Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism

Neoliberalism (economic liberalism as a political philosophy) holds that free markets, free trade, and free capital flows are the hallmark of democratic states and the non qua non of global prosperity. Without free movement of people (labor), this is a joke. It is recipe for corporate fascism, political repression, economic equality, and social privilege.

David Becker — Trans Pacific Partnership: A new Constitution

Neoliberalism on steroids. This is what your president has planned for you and your children, those that survive the drones anyway. Creepy stuff being thought up and implemented by creeps.

I have excerpted the most salient points.

What struck me in Public Citizens review was that the system being setup as the arbiter of the trade agreement is following the US' fascination with "extra judicial" proceedings as a viable means of following the ideals of our Constitution. It's those same thought processes that gave us rendition, enhanced interrogation, military tribunals, unitary executive. You can't help but see our past 35 years of leadership in the realm of pioneering new concepts in equality, fairness, justice, and processes to achieve such.

Concepts of "free market", "invisible hand", and process of deregulation, economies of scale, etc. How else do you explain the use of rotating corporate tied lawyers as judges? Where is the separation of the judge and the plaintiff? This is right out of the current US play book on how to better your nation with the social institution known as "revolving door"?

You can see in this document the culmination of work performed over the last 40 years (yes Carter started the deregulation) by the conservative (internationally known as neoliberal) ideology merged with Milton Friedman's economics and Ayn Rand's objectivism. Dare I say, the TPP is to capitalism what our Constitution was to democracy?....

This document is the constitution of a new world order. It is an order that has been the dream of many for ages upon ages that until this time in humanity was not possible do to the limits of the technology of the time. This is the document of what I coined a few years ago as The United Corporations of Global. It is this aspect of the document that the people of the world should be most fearful of. It is not a trade agreement as I believe the common man (as in the court concept of the "common man") would think of the phrase "trade agreement". This is a constitution that is coming prepackaged with the rules and regulations already written. Only, there is no need for ratification to be a part of the creative process. This document comes pre-ratified in that all a nation has to do is say "I'm in"....

The documents greatest power is what I alluded to when I mentioned rendition, unitary executive, enhanced interrogation, military tribunals. Rationalization. This document codifies the use of rationalization as a viable thought process for achieving the advancement of humanity. It reinstates the fallibility of human thinking, turning on it's head the enlightenment age because this document believes it is of enlightened thought. It rationalizes as enlightenment the freeing of people to trade to the greatest level of monetary efficiency. Such a thought is putting a human creation ahead of humanity....

This is a document written by people who envision the world structured far differently than how we are taught to view our social organization based on the US Constitution and it's meaning to the world.... 

This document is not just about how nations will relate to each other, it also gives the same rights and privileges to individual investor entities as representative of a nation. Thus, keep in mind that anything you read here also means a rich person or a business entity is treated as if they are the nation. However, citizens are not at anytime mentioned as being a "party" of any type other than when it comes to citizens potentially creating a loss for a "party" or it's investor representative. In other words, "citizens" are at all times considered to have lesser status such that citizens have no claim to inalienable rights and the resultant rule of law. It is less than slavery for in this document, the only recognized covered entities are "party" which means a nation of signature and it's participants in the sector of said parties social interaction referred to as "investment".... 

...what we have here is an agreement that the investing entity is protected via insurance in the form of the host nation's taxing ability that becomes a mechanism for "encouraging" shall we say, a host nation to take measures to assure it's citizens remain compliant. This is the new social order.

This is the corporate model of relationships...

The further we go with implementing these types of agreements the further removed we are from the enlightenment concepts that resulted in a group of people writing prose such as our Constitution. You can forget about the ideal bound in our Declaration of Independence. And, the further we are moved toward the model of business organization as the dominate model for structuring a society. It is too accepted that the purpose of business is to make money. There is no longer any talk of "social responsibility" within today's business model. Business no longer is a means for creating wealth that society then puts to work in reducing life's risks. Business is simply about making money...stop. The declaration for the TTP would simply read: We hold this truth to be self-evident, the purpose of business is to make money.

Angry Bear
Trans Pacific Partnership: A new Constitution
Daniel Becker