RE: "Stopping the Biggest Corporate Power Grab in Years" (TPP)

[99th_Monkey]

This guy, Arthur Stamoulis, knows his shit when it comes to international trade deals such as the TPP: he's Director of Citizens Trade Campaign (CTC) ~ http://www.citizenstrade.org/ctc/ ~ CTC is a national coalition of labor, environmental, family farm, consumer, and human rights organizations working together to improve U.S. trade policy. Follow CTC on Twitter at @citizenstrade. In this article he lays out a compelling case for an immediate mobilization to "Stop the biggest Cororate Power Grab in Years".

Mr. Stamoulis is sounding a serious alarm here, calling for immediate mobilization to derail "fast-tracking" by exposing TPP's nefarious contents to the public. US Senator Bernie Sanders is pressing Obama and Congress to do just that: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026043682

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Stopping the Biggest Corporate Power Grab in Years
How fighting back against one arcane, Nixon-era trade negotiating procedure could put a stop to a global corporate coup.
By Arthur Stamoulis * January 6, 2015 * CommonDreams.com/Foreign Policy in Focus

When global justice groups wanted to halt expansion of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1999, they organized massive demonstrations in Seattle, where the official ministerial conference was being held. Tens of thousands of people filled the streets. Groups held rallies, marches, and teach-ins, conducted civil disobedience, and in many cases faced attacks by police. With delegates unable to even reach the convention hall, the opening ceremony was cancelled, and the talks eventually fell apart. The “Battle of Seattle” not only succeeded in derailing the Millennial Round of negotiations, it also turned opposition to corporate globalization into international headline news.

~snip~

The TPP is a corporate power grab clearly worthy of Seattle-caliber mobilization. But the fight against this reprehensible deal requires different types of tactics. And the place to start is by derailing “Fast Track,” the mechanism that would allow TPP approval to rush through the U.S. Congress with little debate and no amendments.

~snip~

Organizing Against the TPP Using The Anti-Fast Track Strategy

~snip~

TPP boosters have said time-and-again that passing Fast Track is critical not only to getting a completed pact through Congress, but also to convincing foreign TPP negotiators to actually finish the pact. Just imagine other governments’ reasoning: Why bother giving in to Washington’s most draconian and politically risky demands when the White House can’t even get the pact through the U.S. Congress without more demands being tacked on?

TPP supporters and opponents alike both know that, with the U.S. presidential elections gearing up in the latter half of 2015, the window of opportunity for concluding the TPP is fast closing. Neither political party in the United States wants an unpopular trade debate on its hands while it’s trying to take the White House. And so, anti-TPP activists are both extremely close to victory and about to face another major pro-Fast Track onslaught.

~snip~

The first months of the new year are the period when we’ll win or lose. If activists are able to escalate local expressions of opposition to Fast Track for the TPP over the coming months, and to continue communicating to their U.S. representatives that a Fast Track vote is something that they’ll remember forever, they will succeed in preventing the most harmful corporate sneak-attack since the 1990s.

PLEASE SEE ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE: http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/01/06/stopping-biggest-corporate-power-grab-years

[misterhighwasted]

1. Thank You. Excellent post . Anxious to link & read

Bookmarked

[Octafish]

2. No wonder it's secret. The only ones who've gotten to work on it are lobbyists and lawyers.

From the OP:

In many ways, the TPP is an end-run around that peoples’ movement victory by corporations and their allies. Rather than continue facing the WTO’s ostensibly consensus-based decision-making process, transnational corporations are today using their proxy — the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative — to cherry-pick those countries most willing to play ball with their agenda. They’re pushing those governments to approve an omnibus package of corporate dream policies on energy, finance, intellectual property, agriculture, and more, which they’ve disguised as a trade deal. And since the TPP is a “docking agreement” — meaning that other countries can join over time — they can then pressure other nations, from China on down, to sign on once the rules have already been set.

[99th_Monkey]

3. and of course all those unelected lobbyists and lawyers are working

to benefit We the People.

[djean111]

4. Regarding pro- or meh-TTP/TTIP posts I have read elsewhere -

it is completely disingenuous to compare the TTP/TTIP to NAFTA in the sense that these are NOT mostly about trade. The TTP/TTIP are about corporate power. Only a few sections are about trade.

[99th_Monkey]

7. Totally! I completely agree.

If you read the whole article, I think it's clear the author is NOT in favor of either
NAFTA or TPP. As has been said elsewhere, "TPP is NAFTA on steroids".

I think the only reason the author mentioned NAFTA was to recall how the 1999
WTO "Battle of Seattle" came down, and to provide a little historical context ...

I didn't see anywhere an assertion that TPP and NAFTA were equivalent ..
Indeed the title's use of "corporate power grab" makes pretty clear the author
is aware of TPP's nefarious pro-corporate devils in the details.

In any case, thank you for pointing this out as some on DU may have assumed
some kind of "false equivalency" from the author's referencing NAFTA.

[djean111]

9. I have seen other OPs extolling the wonders of NAFTA, here at DU.

Other comments have said oh, this is really about China. No, this is about corporate power.

[StopTheTPP]

5. Thanks for your post

Call your senators and tell them NO on the TPP.

[Faryn Balyncd]

6. We are going to stop it.

[99th_Monkey]

8. Woot! That's the spirit -nt-

[cascadiance]

14. I want to get a grass roots efforts for county level PCP resolutions against the TPP...

... and do it across the country quickly. I'm hoping to get it before committee early next week so that we can go through our two month cycle and get it passed and announced before the end of February, hopefully before it goes to Obama's desk for a signature if it can get out of congress by then.

I think if we can build a good generic template of a resolution for all people to take to their local county organizations, that perhaps we can send the message that not only are grass roots progressive movement against what many of both Republicans and Democrats are doing with this, but that the grass roots of the Democratic Party itself is against this and won't accept corrupt pols in Washington pushing it and its fascist side effects on to the rest of us.

Even though this resolution is a bit long and parts of it need tweaking to be more readable and applicable in a generic fashion to many other areas, I think that the resolution earlier passed by the city of Los Angeles would be a good starting point for this effort.

http://www.orangejuiceblog.com/2014/06/los-angeles-resolution-opposing-obamas-trans-pacific-partnership-negotiations-lets-try-this-in-oc-cities/

[RiverLover]

10. Great post! Thank You!!!

[99th_Monkey]

11. And thank you for the awesome graphic

can I steal it?

[RiverLover]

13. Definitely~

http://www.themudflats.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/tpp1.

png

[WillyT]

12. Huge K & R !!! - Thank You !!!

Did you see this ???

Link: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026052271