Skip to content

TPP

Newsletter: See You At The Barricades

June 6, 2015 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese at Popular Resistance, www.PopularResistance.org , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese at Popular Resistance. We are at a crossroads to either a future of global corporate governance or a chance for democracy. As Chris Hedges writes in his new book, "Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt," a revolution is coming but we can't guarantee which way it will go. Will you be there to fight for justice? You have an opportunity to do that now. This is the critical week to stop Fast Track legislation from passing in Congress. Fast Track could last for the next six years and would enable passage of not just the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), but also the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA). There are different ways to define security. Some would say that security means a police or military force to protect people from those who might cause harm. Others would say that security means the government has a responsibility to make sure that the basic needs of its people are met which in itself would reduce crimes and the need for a violent security force. This is your food for thought for this week. How do you define security?

Confidential Emails Show Close Industry Involvement In TPP

June 6, 2015 William New, www.ip-watch.org , , ,
By William New in IP Watch - Through a US Freedom of Information Act request, Intellectual Property Watch has obtained some 400 pages of email traffic between USTR officials and industry advisors. Most of the content of the emails is redacted (blacked out), but they still give insight into the process. The released emails, ranging from 2010 to 2013, are made public for the first time. What is striking in the emails is not that government negotiators seek expertise and advice from leading industry figures. But the emails reveal a close-knit relationship between negotiators and the industry advisors that is likely unmatched by any other stakeholders. A number of other big companies are included in discussions on trade secrets, such as DuPont, Corning, Microsoft and Qualcomm.

Take Action Now: Demand Congress Release Trade Texts

June 5, 2015 Staff, www.PopularResistance.org , ,
By Staff at Popular Resistance, Popular Resistance has joined with a coalition of groups to demand that Congress use its power to publish the text of the Trans-Pacific Partrnership. This month is the key moment to stop Fast Track for the TPP and other rigged trade agreements. Secrecy is at the heart of the strategy to turn these abusive agreements into law. We can highlight this by demanding the text is made public. Please take action now: Sign the petition. Share this link and urge everyone you know to sign the petition. One of the most controversial aspects of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement is that it’s secret from the public. If the proponents of the agreement have their way, the text will still be secret from the public when the House votes on Fast Track trade negotiating authority, essentially a vote to pre-approve the agreement.

The Rigged Trade Rebellion To Stop Fast Track Begins!

June 4, 2015 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.popularresistance.org , , ,
By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese. Washington, DC - The movement to stop Fast Track, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and other rigged trade agreements is huge and very diverse. It has delayed previous attempts over the past few years by Congress to pass Fast Track legislation that would allow the President to sign international agreements like the TPP, Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) into law before they go to Congress for restricted review, no amendments and only an up-or-down vote. This year, the President and Republican leadership are doing all that they can to get Fast Track. They want to complete the TPP but final negotiations have stalled until Congress passes Fast Track.

DC Protesters Demand To See TPP Text, Rebuffed By Obama & Police

June 4, 2015 Cole Strangler, www.ibtimes.com , , , ,
By Cole Strangler in IB Times - In the latest escalation of its campaign against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the nation's largest labor federation is calling on the Obama administration to declassify the full text of the proposed trade agreement. And on a rainy Tuesday morning in Washington, the AFL-CIO and its allies engaged in some old-fashioned political theater to make their point. As it stands, access to the deal is limited to negotiators and, upon special request, members of Congress, all of whom are legally barred from disclosing the details. Those strict rules remain in place even as the White House lobbies the House of Representatives on so-called fast-track legislation

ObamaTrade Rewards US Corporations That Profit From Slavery

June 3, 2015 Zach Carter, www.huffingtonpost.com , , , ,
By Zach Carter in Huffington Post - President Barack Obama's effort to include Malaysia in a major pending trade pact has baffled human rights advocates, who see it as a reward for a regime with one of the world's worst human trafficking records. But the myriad interests involved in the trade fight include some very large American corporations, which are currently padding their profits with labor costs kept low by modern-day slavery in Malaysia. Major U.S. electronics brands, including Intel, AMD, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Texas Instruments and Dell, have relied on Malaysian manufacturing for years -- either in their own factories, or through facilities operated by their suppliers. Computer processors, hard drives, smartphone parts and other consumer electronic devices are all part of the slavery system -- more than one-fourth of all workers in the Malaysian electronics industry are victims of forced labor, according to a damning 2014 report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Labor.

Wikileaks Issues $100,000 Reward For Release Of TPP

June 3, 2015 Wikileaks, www.wikileaks.org , ,
By Wikileaks - Today WikiLeaks has launched a campaign to crowd-source a $100,000 reward for America’s Most Wanted Secret: the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP). Over the last two years WikiLeaks has published three chapters of this super-secret global deal, despite unprecedented efforts by negotiating governments to keep it under wraps. US Senator Elizabeth Warren has said "[They] can’t make this deal public because if the American people saw what was in it, they would be opposed to it." The remaining 26 chapters of the deal are closely held by negotiators and the big corporations that have been given privileged access. Today, WikiLeaks is taking steps to bring about the public’s rightful access to the missing chapters of this monster trade pact.

TPP Reduces Human Trafficking & Child Labor To Misdemeanors

June 3, 2015 Stan Sorscher, www.huffingtonpost.com , , , ,
By Stan Sorscher in Huffington Post - The most recent US Department of Labor report shows that Malaysia uses forced labor in its electronics and garment industry, and child labor to produce palm oil. Mass graves were recently discovered with 139 bodies of men women and children showing signs of torture. Many of the victims in Malaysia are Rohingya Muslims who are exploited by human traffickers, held for ransom, and traded among other smugglers. In Malaysia, investigations, prosecutions and convictions are down. This deterioration in enforcement occurred while Malaysia was helping negotiate the labor provisions in TPP. On May 19, in an abrupt about-face, Senator Menendez tried to soften the language that he had originally proposed to the Finance Committee, excluding Tier 3 countries from the TPP.

UN Experts Warn Of Serious Threats From Secret Trade Deals

June 3, 2015 UN Commission on Human Rights, www.ohchr.org , , ,
By UN Commission on Human Rights - While trade and investment agreements can create new economic opportunities, we draw attention to the potential detrimental impact these treaties and agreements may have on the enjoyment of human rights as enshrined in legally binding instruments, whether civil, cultural, economic, political or social. Our concerns relate to the rights to life, food, water and sanitation, health, housing, education, science and culture, improved labour standards, an independent judiciary, a clean environment and the right not to be subjected to forced resettlement. We believe the problem has been aggravated by the “chilling effect” that intrusive ISDS awards have had, when States have been penalized for adopting regulations, for example to protect the environment, food security, access to generic and essential medicines, and reduction of smoking, as required under the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, or raising the minimum wage.

Stop Fast Track NOW!

June 1, 2015 Staff, www.popularresistance.org ,
Our pressure is working! Obama wanted Fast Track for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) by the end of March but the largest coalition to ever work to oppose Fast Track has made that impossible. Through phone calls, emails, visits to members, rallies, bird-dogging and more, Congress is feeling the heat and struggling to get votes. We expect that Fast Track legislation won't be introduced in the Senate until April. But the opposition is working hard too. President Obama is personally calling members of Congress and his staff are twisting arms and making promises to get votes for Fast Track. The Chamber of Commerce is getting ready to launch a $160 million ad campaign in favor of Fast Track. We've got to increase and maintain the pressure over the next few months or else members of Congress will cave in.

Newsletter: Movements And Elections

May 31, 2015 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.popularresistance.org , , , , , , ,
By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese. Popular Resistance was created to help build a broad-based movement that is informed and acts strategically to challenge the status quo. There are so many crises today and we have been focused on trying to stop those crises from worsening (“stop the machine”) while using the fights and partial victories to build capacity for the movement. We have avoided putting emphasis on elections in part because it is important not to get caught up in the electoral cycle which has been nothing more than a periodic horse race between corporate candidates chosen through a rigged system. Instead, we hoped that more people would step out of the electoral cycle and take a longer-term view of the work that must be done to build a movement with real power.

Fast Track Should Be Called The “Treason Act”

May 29, 2015 Victor Tiffany, www.examiner.com , , ,
The Trans-Pacific Partnership should be called the Treason Act because it would impose regulations upon the national legislatures and local governments of twelve countries as if they had been defeated in a war. The TPP is an act of waragainst middle class Americans’ standard of living, against the planet's climateand against the poor people of 12 nations who will not be able to pay higher costs for life-saving prescriptions. People will unnecessarily die if the transnational corporations win this "war." The transpartisan collaboration to impose corporate rule upon the United States means that Obama will not be impeached for this act of treason, but he should be. He should also be arrested and indicted for treason, but he won’t be because the United States has become a corporate-state, a government of, by and for the corporations. Senate Majority Leader McConnell and House Speaker Boehner are corporate collaborators helping to foist this coup upon the American people, and they will protect the corporate puppet in the White House from warranted impeachment and prosecution.

How Much Did Corporations Pay To Senate For Fast Track?

May 29, 2015 C Robert Gibson and Taylor Channing, www.theguardian.com , , ,
A decade in the making, the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is reaching its climax and as Congress hotly debates the biggest trade deal in a generation, its backers have turned on the cash spigot in the hopes of getting it passed. “We’re very much in the endgame,” US trade representative Michael Froman told reporters over the weekend at a meeting of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum on the resort island of Boracay. His comments came days after TPP passed another crucial vote in the Senate. That vote, to give Barack Obama the authority to speed the bill through Congress, comes as the president’s own supporters, senior economists and a host of activists have lobbied against a pact they argue will favor big business but harm US jobs, fail to secure better conditions for workers overseas and undermine free speech online.

Opponents Say TPP Deal Will Impose Defacto Corporate Governance

May 28, 2015 Interview with Kevin Zeese Scott Harris, www.btlonline.org , , , ,
The battle in Congress over Trade Promotion Authority, also known as “fast track,” and the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the European Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) free trade agreements, is in high gear. President Obama is pressuring lawmakers to pass fast track, which is a mechanism that forces Congress to vote on a trade agreement within 60 to 90 days of receiving it, with only limited debate and no amendments allowed. While fast track had been stalled in the U.S. Senate, it’s expected to eventually pass there, with the real fight moving to the House of Representatives. There, an unlikely coalition of mostly Democrats and some Republicans are opposed to a free trade deal citing a variety of reasons.

June 3rd Call-In Day To Derail Fast Track

May 27, 2015 Staff, www.PopularResistance.org , , ,
Ways & Means Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI) is pushing to bring his awful Fast Track legislation for a vote in the House very soon. June 3rd will be a national call in day to derail fast track. Please share this email with organizations you are involved with so they can be part of the day of action. Organizations can sign up to participate in the fast track call-in day here. On June 3rd we will send messages to people urging them to call their representatives, i.e. Please call your representative now at 888-804-8311 and urge them to vote NO on Fast Track. People can also call through our coalition website www.StopFastTrack.org. Representative Ryan’s Fast Track bill has already passed in the Senate, and if approved by the House, would allow secretive trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to be rushed through Congress, circumventing ordinary review, amendment and debate procedures. We can win. We can stop fast track for rigged corporate deals but to do so we must mobilize everyone we know and work with. We need to create a wall of phone calls into Congress to show them the breadth and depth of opposition to fast track for crony capitalist trade. We need to let them know voters will ensure elected officials who go against the people on this issue will pay a political price with the end of their careers.
«12345678910»

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Donate Here

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 

Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Donate Here
Sign Up To Our Daily Digest

Independent media outlets are being suppressed and dropped by corporations like Google, Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for our daily email digest before it’s too late so you don’t miss the latest movement news.