By Systemic Disorder Imagine a world in which which labor safeguards, safety rules and environmental regulations will be struck down because a multi-national corporation’s profits might be affected. A world in which measures to reign in financial speculation are illegal. A world in which the task of governments, codified in law, is to maximize corporate profits.
Imagine a world in which corporations can bypass national laws and courts when they are in a dispute with a government, and instead can have their dispute adjudicated by a closed tribunal controlled by their lawyers.
Unfortunately, the above is not dystopian science fiction; it is the reality of the top-secret Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Related: More analysis of the TPPA -- Occupy the TPPA -- Melbourne protest at TPPA negotiations
Haven’t heard of the Trans-Pacific Partnership? There is good reason. It is a proposed trade agreement being secretly negotiated that would not only codify the one-sided rules heavily favoring corporate interests exemplified in the North American Free Trade Agreement, it would go beyond them. And many of the harshest rules proposed to be included in the TPP are being pushed by the U.S. government.
Nine countries — among them Australia — have negotiated in secret for four years. Among the measures being negotiated are new monopoly rights for pharmaceutical companies and the ability for them to overturn the policies of countries such as Australia and New Zealand that result in relatively low prices for medicines, policies that U.S.-based pharmaceutical companies wish to overturn.
For an analysis of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, please go to http://wp.me/p2cpPS-2x
