The Trans-Pacific Partnership - Corporations Attacking Government

It's a corporate lobbyist's wildest dream - a huge global trade deal that would let corporations like Monsanto sue our governments if they passed laws to protect the environment or keep life-saving medicine affordable.  In short it's the legalisation of the law suit that Bayer is trying to bring against the European Union.

 

The Trans-Pacific Partnership has to be stopped.

 

This month, tens of thousands of American SumOfUs members and friends have called Congress to demand it rejects a bill to give President Obama "fast track" authority to sign the TPP -- and support is starting to fall away.  In the US, corporate lobbyists are pushing hard for Congress to approve of this bill so they can get on with screwing up our world with no possible reprimand. Elsewhere, governments are facing no scrutiny as they get ready to sign away our democratic rights to make laws that protect the public interest. Unless we do more, we may lose this fight.

 

That's why the SumofUs community is stepping up. This week, they are getting ready to launch a major effort to stop the TPP in its tracks -- and with support, they are not going to stop fighting until they have won.

 

If 5,000 of us give just $10 each, we can launch the first steps of our campaign and start working together to stop the TPP and save our democracy.

 

The plans can't be revealed just yet, but they are already looking to:

• Target key countries that can stop the TPP -- like Australia and Canada -- and make sure that citizens hear about the TPP before it's too late
• Call out consumer companies who have access to the negotiations and are helping write the deal -- rights our elected representatives don't even have -- and demand they come clean on what they know
• Organise constituents to contact their representatives -- to make sure the TPP is something that governments have to answer for
• Work with lawyers to submit Freedom of Information requests for governments to come clean on the deal
• Offer rewards for officials who are willing to do the right thing and let the public know what's in the TPP
• Take out advertisements in key national media highlighting the threats the TPP poses to our democracies

The corporations behind the TPP know the public won't like what's in the deal, which is why the full contents are still secret - only high-level government negotiators and the 600 corporate lobbyists have access.  But enough is known to know that the TPP has to be stopped -- and enough to know how it can be stop if enough people step up to the base plate and call for this destruction of democracy to be stopped.

 

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is called a trade deal, but it is really a corporate wish-list aimed at attacking everything from environmental protections to affordable medicines to Internet freedoms. Worst, it gives corporations impunity from governments or citizens that want to reign in their power. So if it is passed then even our most powerful governments will not be able to get it revoked.  I'd say 'Wake up America, they are about to sign away that freedom for which you have fought for so long!'

 

In fact, it is probably the most important international treaty you’ve never heard of. The TPP is being negotiated between the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan and other Pacific countries -- making it nearly global in scope.

 

There's lots wrong with the TPP, but the unaccountable systems it would set up to allow corporations to sue governments are one of the most frightening. If it is signed, future laws designed to protect consumers, our health, and our environment could be overturned in secret courts by corporations that claim the laws harm their profits -- and there is nothing we or our elected governments could do to stop them.

 

We need to do a lot more to make sure we stop this treaty 'cause if we don't then there won't be a leg that campaigners will be able to stand on and all the charities, such as the WWF, Green Peace and Band Aid will no longer be able to call for change to defend those that cannot defend themselves if it 'harms corporate profit'.

 

I wonder if it will be said in the future - 'where were you when they took over the world?  We weren't.  We didn't fight, we just stood by and let them do it.'