Trade

Berlin: Hundreds Of Thousands Protest TTIP

October 11, 2015 Chris Johnston, www.theguardian.com Resist! European Union (EU), Neoliberalism, Obama, Trade, TTIP

By Chris Johnston for The Guardian. Berlin, Germany - Hundreds of thousands of people marched in Berlin on Saturday to oppose a planned free trade deal between the European Union and the United States that is claimed to be anti-democratic and to threaten food safety and environmental standards. The environmental groups, charities and opposition parties that organised the protest claimed 250,000 people took part, while a police spokesman said 100,000 attended. Smaller protests were also held in other cities, including Amsterdam, with a rally due to be held in London on Saturday night at which shadow chancellor John McDonnell is scheduled to speak.

Stop The TPP: ‘Not A Done Deal’

October 7, 2015 Staff, www.flushthetpp.org Resist! Corporatism, Finance and the Economy, TPP, Trade

By Staff for Flush the TPP. After five years of secret talks, the twelve countries involved in the TransPacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations announced they have reached an agreement. The deal was written by corrupt trade ministers and hundreds of corporate lobbyists without public (or even US Congressional) input. It is much more than a trade deal– only 5 of the 29 chapters even deal with trade. The rest of the deal is about privatizing government programs and services for corporate profits, removing government regulations, and setting protections for multinational corporations and investors rather than the health of the planet or necessities of people. The TPP has supposedly been agreed upon (the trade ministers' announcement was vagur), but it has not been signed yet and there are still many steps before it becomes law. It is now up to us to stop.

Communities Create TPP/TTIP-Free Zones

October 4, 2015 Margaret Flowers, www.popularresistance.org Resist! Democracy, TPP, Trade, TTIP

By Margaret Flowers for Popular Resistance. As negotiations of the TransPacific Partnership (TPP) inch toward completion, resistance to it and the other rigged corporate international treaties, the TransAtlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and Trade-in-Services Agreement (TiSA), is escalating. In the European Union, activists are working to pass 10,000 such resolutions. During the fight to stop Congress from passing Fast Track legislation that will be used to rush these agreements through Congress, cities from Seattle, WA to Madison, WI to New York, NY passed resolutions against Fast Track. Labor played a big part in making these successful. Now, new resolutions are underway in more cities with the goal of 100.

Judge Shields TPP From Freedom Of Information Act

October 1, 2015 Adam Klasfeld, www.courthousenews.com Educate! Secrecy, TPP, Trade, Transparency

By Adam Klasfeld in Courthouse News. MANHATTAN (CN) – Drafts of the “vast, sweeping” trade agreement that the United States is secretly negotiating with 11 other world powers are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, a federal judge ruled. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a proposed trade agreement between 12 countries bordering the Pacific Rim setting international standards over labor, the environment, agriculture, medicine, labor, the Internet, human rights, intellectual property rights and many other issues. By Adam Klasfeld for Courthouse News Service. Though first announced to Congress in 2009, a confidentiality agreement that the participating countries reached protects their proposals from public disclosure until there is a final agreement. Most information about the deal has come to light through leaks to the press.

Stop The TPP: Tell USTR ‘No To This Bad Deal!’

September 29, 2015 Staff, www.popularresistance.org Petitions and Online Actions TISA, TPP, Trade, TTIP

By Staff of Popular Resistance. Trade ministers from around the world are meeting in Atlanta, GA today through Thursday in a desperate attempt to finalize the text of the TransPacific Partnership (TPP). Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is feeling pressured by the October 19 elections as the opposition parties step up their criticism of the TPP. People are rising up in protest to this deal that is bad for people and the planet! In Ottawa, Canada, farmers brought their tractors to the capital to demonstrate against the harmful impacts the TPP will have on local dairy farms. In Atlanta, Georgia, a coalition of groups are holding a series of actions this week.

The US & WTO Demolish India’s Solar Energy Ambitions

September 6, 2015 Charles Pierson, www.counterpunch.org Educate! India, Solar Energy, TPP, Trade, WTO

By Charles Pierson for Counterpunch - 400 million Indians - one quarter of India's population - have no electricity. But as far as the United States and the World Trade Organization (WTO) are concerned, they can keep sitting in the dark. Last month, the news was leaked that a WTO dispute panel had found that India's subsidies for solar power contravene WTO trade rules. India must now remove the subsidies or face trade sanctions. The United States filed the WTO complaint in 2013. The US alleged that India's subsidies for the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (NSM) discriminate against foreign suppliers of solar components. The WTO decision confirms yet again that neoliberalism always favors trade over environmental protection. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) contains all the same features which enabled the WTO's decision against India's solar subsidies.

National Call To Action: Stop The TPP

August 27, 2015 Flush the TPP, www.popularresistance.org Resist! Corporatism, Democracy, TPP, Trade

By Flush the TPP. Now that Congress has given the President authority to Fast Track the TransPacific Partnership, US negotiators are working furiously to complete the deal. The word is that the group negotiations fell apart in Maui so negotiators are meeting in secret one-on-one to work out the final details. There is contention over sections regarding agriculture, pharmaceuticals, automobiles and intellectual property rights. Some countries are hesitant because the TPP is a bad deal for everyone except the transnational corporations and financiers who are set to line their pockets with more cash. Recently, tens of thousands of people took the streets in New Zealand with the message: "TPPA No Way, NZ Walk Away!" This is a crucial time to show greater resistance to his bad deal in the US.

TTIP Can Only Be Read In Brussels ‘Reading Room’

August 17, 2015 Zachary Davies Boren, www.independent.co.uk Educate! Europe, Finance and the Economy, Trade, usa

By Zachary Davies Boren in The Independent - The European Commission is making the secret Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) trade deal even more secret, introducing a new rule that means politicians can only view the text in a secure 'reading room' in Brussels. An investigation by German news site Correct!v has revealed that the Commission is cracking down on TTIP security following a series of leaks, purportedly by EU member states who had accessed information on the deal electronically. EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström has said that no more reports on TTIP negotiations will be sent to Member States because of "important vulnerabilities in the last rounds of negotiations". Officials were told of this change in policy on July 24th at a meeting in Brussels in which the Commission explained that the documents had "been submitted to databases of [member states'] national parliaments" meaning that "hundreds of people have actually uncontrolled access".

WikiLeaks Goes After Hyper-Secret Euro-American Trade Pact

August 12, 2015 Wikileaks, www.wikileaks.org Resist! Europe, Finance and the Economy, Trade, usa

By Wikileaks - Today, Tuesday 11th August, 9:15 BST, WikiLeaks has launched a campaign to crowd-source a €100,000 reward for Europe’s most wanted secret: the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Starting pledges have already been made by a number of high profile activists and luminaries from Europe and the United States, including former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, esteemed UK fashion designer and environmental campaigner Dame Vivenne Westwood, US journalist Glenn Greenwald, veteran Australian film-maker and investigative journalist John Pilger, Belarusian philosopher and theorist Evgeny Morozov, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange. [Update as of Tuesday 11th August 2.30pm BST: Now joined by filmmaker Terry Gilliam and Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek.]

Corporate Rigged Trade Is A Racial Justice Issue

August 10, 2015 Isaiah J. Poole, www.otherwords.org Educate! Jobs, NAFTA, Racism, TPP, Trade

By Isaiah J. Poole for Other Words - What’s the connection to racial unrest? Simply put, it’s the lack of economic opportunity that results when bad trade deals lead to the disappearance of good-paying jobs. Hundreds of thousands of blue-collar jobs vanished after the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, was signed in 1994. And towns like Ferguson were hit especially hard. The St. Louis metropolitan area, home to 206,000 manufacturing jobs in 1990, only had about 113,000 left by the end of 2014, according to the Labor Department. During that same period, the region saw no net growth in trade, transportation, or utility-sector jobs. “We used to have a ton of light manufacturing, light industrial jobs,” said John L. Davidson, a St. Louis banking lawyer who writes a blog about economic issues. But now, “there are no jobs out there.” The trade deal left the St. Louis region with a mortally wounded tax base intertwined with deep-seated racial bias.

KEI Leaks TPP Text On Intellectual Property

August 4, 2015 James Love, www.keionline.org Resist! Big Pharma, health, Health Care, TPP, Trade

By James Love of Knowledge Ecology International. Washington, DC - Today, August 4, 2015, Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) released text from three sections of the 95-page secret negotiating text on the Intellectual Property Chapter being used in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP, sometimes referred to as TPPA) trade negotiations. The negotiating text is dated May 11, 2015, and reflects the state of the text right before the Maui rounds of the negotiation, which ended Friday, July 31, 2015. Analysis and more text to be forthcoming.

Newsletter: Their Greed Is Our Ally

August 2, 2015 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.PopularResistance.org Newsletter #BlackLivesMatter, Black Lives Matter (BLM), Cleveland, Kayactivists, Police abuse, Police violence, Shell Oil, sHellNo!, TPP, Trade

By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flower for Popular Resistance. The radical transformation that is needed is not on the agenda of anyone running for president in either the Democratic or Republican primary. The reality is that nothing offered by mainstream politics will achieve the transformational change that is needed. A normally mainstream Democrat, Robert Kuttner writes: “This is one of those moments when there is broad popular frustration, a moment when liberal goals require measures that seem radical by today’s standards. . . . Muddle-through and token gestures won’t fool anybody.” Consciousness is rising and with that so will the demands and actions of an organized populace. Sometimes it will take the shape of protests, other times a rebellion, sometimes cities will be shut down and there will be riots. The system is not responding to the reasonable demands for social, economic, racial and environmental justice.

Hawaii TPP Protest Breaks Record For Conch Shell Blow

July 30, 2015 Andrea Brower & Marti Townsend, www.PopularResistance.org Resist! Globalization, Neoliberalism, TPP, Trade

By Andrea Brower & Marti Townsend - In a galvanizing call-to-action, hundreds gathered today outside of secret TPP negotiations to put out a global kahea (call) to stop the corporate assault on people and planet. At least four hundred people took part in a unified sounding of the pū (Hawaiian conch shell), setting a new world record that will be officially submitted to Guinness Records. Event organizer Trinette Furtado said that in blowing the pū, “we are putting out a mighty kahea(call), past the shorelines of Maui, to connect with others standing up for their 'āina (land) and people.” Following the record-setting sounding of the conch, powerful ancient chants echoed down the beach, beginning with “I Ku Mau Mau”—“Stand Up Together.” Long-time Native Hawaiian activist Walter Ritte spoke, "We don’t need another layer of colonialism and bureaucracy. We had the sugar and pineapple barons, now we have the chemical-GMO barons and the tourist industry. We don’t need anymore. It’s pilau, pilau, pilau (rotten).”

Political Payback For TPP Fast Track Legislators Begins

July 26, 2015 Staff, www.nwlaborpress.org Resist! fast track, TPP, Trade

By Staff for Northwest Labor Press - The damage to their relationship to organized labor is beginning to be felt. The Northwest Oregon Labor Council resolved not to invite them to its annual Labor Day picnic this year. The announcement of that decision was greeted with general applause at the July 7 meeting of the state AFL-CIO Executive Board. Likewise, the Oregon AFL-CIO won’t be inviting any Fast Track Democrats to its biennial convention in Seaside this October. That’s never happened before. And there’s more to come. “Our message is: ‘You damaged the relationship. It’s up to you to fix it,’” Oregon AFL-CIO president Tom Chamberlain explained at the Executive Board meeting. Senator Wyden is up for re-election in 2016, and so are all the Fast Track Democrats in the House, since they must run every two years. United Food and Commercial Workers, both nationally and in Oregon, has resolved not to support to the re-election campaigns of members of Congress who voted for Fast Track, in any way. And at least one other national union is ready to back a primary challenger to Wyden, if one should emerge.

Bird-dogging To Stop TPP, TTIP And TiSA

July 17, 2015 Margaret Flowers and Mackenzie McDonald Wilkins, www.flushthetpp.org Resist! Congress, fast track, TPP, Trade

By Margaret Flowers and Mackenzie McDonald Wilkins for FlushtheTPP.org. Germantown, MD - It has been one month since Fast Track passed through US Congress. Now we are starting a mass mobilization effort to stop the TransPacific Partnership (TPP). One part of the effort to Stop the TPP is to hold members of Congress accountable, by birddogging them wherever they go and challenging them in upcoming elections. Already, this has been happening across the country. On July 16 a small group from Communication Workers of America (CWA), FlushtheTPP, and Popular Resistance protested Congressman John Delaney's vote to Fast Track the TPP at a community forum. See the video here: filmed and edited by Mackenzie McDonald Wilkins.

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