The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a sweeping, secret global treaty that sets out many corporatist policies by which countries surrender their national interest and sovereignty in favor of corporations, who get to violate local regulations and rules and sue countries that try to enforce them. A lot of the opposition to TPP has centered on its insane copyright provisions (leaked TPP drafts have included things like mandatory border-searches of laptops and phones for pirated music and movies; as well as “three-strikes” rules like the failed French HADOPI system, whereby whole families would be disconnected from the Internet if their router was linked to unsubstantiated claims of piracy). But increasingly, the participating countries are growing nervous with the whole premise of TPP.
For example, the former Prime Minister of Malaysia published a post where he called TPP “a partnership of the unequal, of the strong to take advantage of the weak.” And Chile’s former chief TPP negotiator wrote a newspaper editorial where he said, “It is a threat to our countries. It will restrict our options for development in health and education, in biological and cultural diversity, design of public policies and the transformation of our economies.”
Discontent With Secrecy And One-Sided Nature Of TPP Spreads Among Participating Nations [Glyn Moody/Techdirt]
(Image: Jefe de Estado participó hoy en la Reunión de Negociaciones del Acuerdo de Asociación Transpacífico (TPP), a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from 65990097@N03’s photostream)