The TPP is being sold as a trade agreement between nations, when in fact it is really an agreement between trans-national corporations and their biggest markets.
Nations that agree to it will be relinquishing sovereignty in their own countries.
Why?
The TPP comes prepackaged with its own legal system, one that bestows rights on corporations, while diminishing rights of civil societies. It is a direct attack on the sovereignty of nation-states, and the democratic governments within them.
This private court (ISDS), whose laws are written to compel nation-states to submit to corporate will, does not meet any of the requirements for transparency, consistency or due process, that many of the member states agreeing to it require in their own courts!
Corporations will be able to sue nation-states for loss in profit due to local law restrictions on wages, environmental protection, etc.
And while the TPP gives lip service to citizens and consumer rights, they are actually weakened by the agreement:
“all of the provisions that recognize the rights of the public are non-binding, whereas almost everything that benefits rightsholders is binding.”
dailydot.com/politics/what-is-tpp-internet-intellectua...-property/?tw=dd
We are giving up local control to an international cabal of corporate interests who would be happy to have a world where we all compete in a race to the bottom.
This agreement will prevent or postpone the availability of generic drugs.
This agreement will make many of our everyday activities on the internet illegal.
This agreement attempts to 'ever-green' patents - increasing corporate profits and raising prices for consumers.
This agreement criminalizes DRM circumvention.
(criminalizing anyone who “circumvents without authority any effective technological measure that controls access to a protected work, performance, or phonogram.”) Like unlocking your phone, or working on your car.
This agreement erodes digital privacy and makes spying on people easier.
As a middle aged person who lived through NAFTA and saw the incredible loss of American manufacturing jobs, as well as the tragic loss of public lands by Mexico's indigenous people, I am in no mood to live through another corporate looting of our country.
We the People need to protect what few rights we have left. Do not be persuaded by the corporate advertising that claims this agreement will benefit the average American. It will not. It is a plan for corporate world domination and the subjugation of democratic states.
trust.org/item/20151112121937-c04sa/?source=leadCarousel
time.com/4065267/trans-pacific-partnership-american-workers/
theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/13/trans-pacifi...lectual-property