Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP)
wikileaks.org
Press Release
November 13, 2013
Image by Public Citizen via Flickr
Today, 13 November 2013, WikiLeaks released the secret negotiated draft text for the entire TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) Intellectual Property Rights Chapter. The TPP is the largest-ever economic treaty, encompassing nations representing more than 40 per cent of the world’s GDP. The WikiLeaks release of the text comes ahead of the decisive TPP Chief Negotiators summit in Salt Lake City, Utah, on 19-24 November 2013. The chapter published by WikiLeaks is perhaps the most controversial chapter of the TPP due to its wide-ranging effects on medicines, publishers, internet services, civil liberties and biological patents. Significantly, the released text includes the negotiation positions and disagreements between all 12 prospective member states.
The TPP is the forerunner to the equally secret US-EU pact TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership), for which President Obama initiated US-EU negotiations in January 2013. Together, the TPP and TTIP will cover more than 60 per cent of global GDP. Both pacts exclude China.
Since the beginning of the TPP negotiations, the process of drafting and negotiating the treaty’s chapters has been shrouded in an unprecedented level of secrecy. Access to drafts of the TPP chapters is shielded from the general public. Members of the US Congress are only able to view selected portions of treaty-related documents in highly restrictive conditions and under strict supervision. It has been previously revealed that only three individuals in each TPP nation have access to the full text of the agreement, while 600 ’trade advisers’ – lobbyists guarding the interests of large US corporations such as Chevron, Halliburton, Monsanto and Walmart – are granted privileged access to crucial sections of the treaty text.
The TPP negotiations are currently at a critical stage. The Obama administration is preparing to fast-track the TPP treaty in a manner that will prevent the US Congress from discussing or amending any parts of the treaty. Numerous TPP heads of state and senior government figures, including President Obama, have declared their intention to sign and ratify the TPP before the end of 2013.
WikiLeaks’ Editor-in-Chief Julian Assange stated: “The US administration is aggressively pushing the TPP through the US legislative process on the sly.” The advanced draft of the Intellectual Property Rights Chapter, published by WikiLeaks on 13 November 2013, provides the public with the fullest opportunity so far to familiarise themselves with the details and implications of the TPP.
The 95-page, 30,000-word IP Chapter lays out provisions for instituting a far-reaching, transnational legal and enforcement regime, modifying or replacing existing laws in TPP member states. The Chapter’s subsections include agreements relating to patents (who may produce goods or drugs), copyright (who may transmit information), trademarks (who may describe information or goods as authentic) and industrial design.
The longest section of the Chapter – ’Enforcement’ – is devoted to detailing new policing measures, with far-reaching implications for individual rights, civil liberties, publishers, internet service providers and internet privacy, as well as for the creative, intellectual, biological and environmental commons. Particular measures proposed include supranational litigation tribunals to which sovereign national courts are expected to defer, but which have no human rights safeguards. The TPP IP Chapter states that these courts can conduct hearings with secret evidence. The IP Chapter also replicates many of the surveillance and enforcement provisions from the shelved SOPA and ACTA treaties.
The consolidated text obtained by WikiLeaks after the 26-30 August 2013 TPP meeting in Brunei – unlike any other TPP-related documents previously released to the public – contains annotations detailing each country’s positions on the issues under negotiation. Julian Assange emphasises that a “cringingly obsequious” Australia is the nation most likely to support the hardline position of US negotiators against other countries, while states including Vietnam, Chile and Malaysia are more likely to be in opposition. Numerous key Pacific Rim and nearby nations – including Argentina, Ecuador, Colombia, South Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines and, most significantly, Russia and China – have not been involved in the drafting of the treaty.
In the words of WikiLeaks’ Editor-in-Chief Julian Assange, “If instituted, the TPP’s IP regime would trample over individual rights and free expression, as well as ride roughshod over the intellectual and creative commons. If you read, write, publish, think, listen, dance, sing or invent; if you farm or consume food; if you’re ill now or might one day be ill, the TPP has you in its crosshairs.”
Current TPP negotiation member states are the United States, Japan, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Malaysia, Chile, Singapore, Peru, Vietnam, New Zealand and Brunei.
Read the full secret TPP treaty IP chapter here
***
WikiLeaks Leaks Controversial Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Documents
Dennis Trainor, Jr on Nov 13, 2013
The TPP is a Trojan horse that seeks to usher in a backroom secret sweetheart deal for the global elite, and President Barack Obama want the deal fast-tracked through Congress. That effort was dealt a serious blow on Wednesday, when WikiLeaks released the secret negotiated draft text for the entire Trans-Pacific Partnership Intellectual Property rights chapter. According to the WikiLeaks press release:
“The WikiLeaks release of the text comes ahead of the decisive TPP Chief Negotiators summit in Salt Lake City, Utah, on 19-24 November 2013. The chapter published by WikiLeaks is perhaps the most controversial chapter of the TPP due to its wide-ranging effects on medicines, publishers, internet services, civil liberties and biological patents.”
Remember NAFTA? Remember the concept of Corporate Personhood from the Citizens United case? The TPP combines all of the worst elements of NAFTA and Citizens United, shoots them up with steroids, sprinkles in a speedball and codifies these principles into a trade agreement that is in fact much more than a trade agreement.
To sum up what we do know already, based on previous leaks of the working text about how the TPP would eclipse the concept of corporate personhood, I’ll quote David Swanson of Roots Action, who writes that the TPP would make popular the phrase Corporate Nationhood:
“Many of us have heard of corporate personhood. Corporations have been given the Constitutional rights of persons by U.S. courts over the past 40 years, including the right to spend money on elections. By corporate nationhood I mean the bestowing of the rights of nations on corporations (…) Treaties, according to Article VI of the U.S. Constitution, are — together with the Constitution itself — the supreme law of the land. So U.S. laws would have to be made to comply with the TPP’s rules.”
How would U.S. laws be made to comply? Because, As Kevin Zeese and Margret Flowers write:
“In addition to requiring that laws conform to provisions within the TPP, corporations would be allowed to sue governments in the trade tribunal if laws interfere with their profits. Governments could not represent their interests before the tribunal or appeal adverse decisions. This would be a tremendous loss of sovereignty.”
And who is on this tribunal? Three judges, appointed by the corporations.
***
Max Keiser: US/EU deal makes genocide legitimate business model
RT on Nov 11, 2013
A single market for Europe and America means not just regulatory differences between the two sides will be removed – but it’s claimed big business will also be able to overrule the will of governments. However, the EU is promised big benefits – of 119 billion euros annually. RT discussed this Max Keiser, and he was very critical about the deal.
***
WikiLeaks reveals secretive TPP agreement
RT on Nov 13, 2013
The Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal is in trouble, as 170 members of the House of Representatives have balked at backing the agreement. The TPP would open up markets between Pacific Rim countries, but critics focus on the high level of secrecy surrounding the negotiations, where members of Congress are being shut out by powerful transnational corporations. The Obama administration wanted to fast track the approval of the TPP in Congress, meaning that senators couldn’t filibuster the bill, nor could lawmakers amend the bill. But the 170 representatives who signed onto a letter refusing to fast track the bill could effectively kill the deal. And now the secretive negotiations aren’t so secretive anymore, as whistleblowing organization WikiLeaks published the actual text of one of the chapters of the agreement. RT’s Sam Sacks talks to James Love, director of Knowledge Ecology International, and Peter Maybarduk, program director of Public Citizen Global Access to Medicine, about the latest developments in the TPP negotiations.
New Wikileak: Trans-pacific trade deal revealed, dubbed anti-consumer for mega-corp bias
***
Updated: Nov. 14, 2013
TPP Exposed: WikiLeaks Publishes Secret Trade Text to Rewrite Copyright Laws, Limit Internet Freedom
democracynow on Nov 14, 2013
http://www.democracynow.org – WikiLeaks has published the secret text to part of the biggest U.S. trade deal in history, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). For the past several years, the United States and 12 Pacific Rim nations have been negotiating behind closed doors on the sweeping agreement. A 95-page draft of a TPP chapter released by WikiLeaks on Wednesday details agreements relating to patents, copyright, trademarks and industrial design — showing their wide-reaching implications for internet services, civil liberties, publishing rights, and medicine accessibility. Critics say the deal could rewrite U.S. laws on intellectual property rights, product safety and environmental regulations, while backers say it will help create jobs and boost the economy. President Obama and U.S. trade representative Michael Froman reportedly wish to finalize the TPP by the end of the year and are pushing Congress to expedite legislation that grants the president something called “fast-track authority.” However, this week some 151 House Democrats and 23 Republicans wrote letters to the administration saying they are unwilling to give the president free reign to “diplomatically legislate.” We host a debate on the TPP between Bill Watson, a trade policy analyst at the Cato Institute, and Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch.
***
Updated: Nov. 15, 2013
Mounting Opposition Puts TPP in Jeopardy
TheRealNews on Nov 15, 2013
Kevin Zeese: Obama administration plans for Fast Track authority thwarted by bipartisan outrage.
Wikileaks Exposes the TPP as a Capitulation to Corporate Interests
***
Action Alert!
Don’t Let Them Trade Away Our Internet Freedoms: Speak Out Against the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement!
eff.org
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a trade agreement currently being negotiated in secret by the United States and ten other countries.
Leaked language from the agreement’s intellectual property chapter has been worrisome enough—and the public has no idea what is in the latest official draft, or even what the U.S. Trade Representative is pushing for in this agreement. There has been zero transparency in a process that is being pushed to the finish.
What’s worse is that the people who do have access to TPP’s official language are the same content industry executives that tried pushing through harmful laws like SOPA, PIPA, and ACTA. The rest of us will continue to be kept in the dark unless we speak up now.
Join us in demanding an end to these backroom negotiations.
[…]
via http://action.eff.org/o/9042/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=8229
***
Action Alert!
We still have time to kill the Trans-Pacific Partnership!
Watchdog.net
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is set to create a virtually permanent corporate rule over the people.
This is the trade scam NAFTA globalized, a devil’s deal that has nothing to do with trade and everything to do with corporate protectionism — of the 29 chapters in the TPP, only FIVE actually cover trade issues!
Lax food safety regulation, unregulated fracking, overseas job shifts, rocketing drug prices, Internet monopolies, slashes to public services to profit Wall Street robbers… these are just some of the effects the TPP’s passing will have on our world. Don’t let voting nations pass this corporate coup d’etat. Call on the US, Canada, Japan and other nations considering the trade deal to back out of the TPP now!
PETITION TO TRADING NATIONS: Don’t sacrifice our rights, liberties and economic independence to profit corporations and monopolize trade. Vote against joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership now.
see also:
Call To Action: December 3, International Day of Action Against Toxic Trade Agreements
TPP Uncovered: WikiLeaks releases draft of highly-secretive multi-national trade deal (Russia Today)
The Trans-Pacific Partnership: We Won’t Be Fooled by Rigged Corporate Trade Agreements by Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese
see
Yves Smith and Dean Baker: The Top Secret Trade Deal You Need to Know About (#TPP)
#TPP: Back-room Deal for the 1%
Obama Pushes Secretive TPP Trade Pact–Lori Wallach: The #TPP is A Corporate Trojan Horse
Dandelion Salad 
Pingback: Goodbye to Democracy if Transatlantic Partnership is Passed by Pete Dolack (#TTIP) | Dandelion Salad
Pingback: WikiLeaks: The US Strategy to Create a New Global Legal and Economic System: TPP, TTIP, TISA | Dandelion Salad
Pingback: Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (#TPP) – Investment Chapter | Dandelion Salad
Pingback: WikiLeaks Releases the Secret Draft Text for the Entire #TPP Environment Chapter | Dandelion Salad
Pingback: #TPP: Fast Tracking a Corporate Agenda by Karen Hansen-Kuhn | Dandelion Salad
Pingback: Julian Assange’s Christmas Address from the Ecuador Embassy in London | Dandelion Salad
Pingback: Kevin Zeese: US Pushing for the Most Extreme Pro-Transnational Corporate Power Positions (#TPP) | Dandelion Salad
Pingback: WikiLeaks’ Second Release of Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Documents (#TPP) | Dandelion Salad
Pingback: Ellen Brown on Bail-ins (the Big Disaster Coming), GMO Foods, Trans Pacific Partnership (#TPP) | Dandelion Salad
Pingback: Monsanto, the TPP, and Global Food Dominance by Ellen Brown | Dandelion Salad
Pingback: Jill Stein and Margaret Flowers: The Path of Positive Resistance | Dandelion Salad
Unaccountable mercantile dominance is a reductionist tyranny. We must have a radical revolution, a spiritual revolution; a real change of heart that prioritizes values, relationship, meaning and worth.
If we do not change voluntarily, nature will see to it that we are brought to our senses by other means.
So true, David.
Out tyranny dates back well before our astrophysicists, such as Gallileo, Newton, Einstein, Hubble, and so on, why has man been with nationalism? this breeds a false sense of identity? rather than we identifying we live on a planet of limited resources? and outside this fragile infrastructure of what appears to be infinite space, and as far as we know, no others live in our Universe, or at least if so, doubtful as to the relevance to our existence, and in terms of distance/time, we, here are alone as for as we know in the Universe, what is fundamentally wrong with us?
I mention just a few scientists amongst the many great contributors to our understanding, illuminating us somewhat to our comprehension of existence, these people do not seem to have changed our appetite for our addiction to killing each other, often in what is considered by many as a barbaric method.
As you have received a substantial better education than myself David, are you able to comment and give us some insight on this peculiar and morbid propensity, with regard to this situation.
Hi Don, not sure about that “eponymous” education you refer to ~ I have worked my way through “higher education” as a mature student but pretty much self-taught really, although I have been privileged and fortunate to meet some pretty extraordinary & wise beings in my travels over time, from whom I have gained great insight & counsel.
You may have hit on something significant when you speak of our isolation in a “lonely planet” and the possible psychological effects that has on our sense of identity and need to belong to something. I dare say, it could help to explain our desperate appetite for strange beliefs and affiliations, if we are truly the orphans of infinite (doomed) space that some boffins suggest.
I don’t actually buy it. In the first place, I don’t think our cosmologies are coherent, and secondly what we seem to be discovering lately, indicates that the universe (whatever that means) is absolutely teeming with intelligent energies in every imaginable dimension of consciousness (whatever that is…)
After all if the only destiny we can envisage is a dreaded void, there isn’t much point doing anything to improve things, because it is all futile and a sort of existential horror story. I’m not at all persuaded this is so.
Updated this post again. Scroll down to see the new video reports, plus there are 2 Action Alerts.
I really like Lori Wallach’s attitude. She’s spot on.
The whole point is “free trade” is definitely NOT Fair Trade. I think the US elite want to completely break up Europe and shift the power base to the not terribly mysterious East.
Hmm, Hollywood and Big Pharma. Now those folks couldn’t be linked to “mind-control,” could they? Absurdity! ridiculous! of course not….what kind of crazy fantasy is that!? What would the American Psychiatric Association have to say? they’ve probably already got that nutty disorder nailed in their revised Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
What an outrageous contention, had me worried for a minute ~ the very idea that the corporate gods would try to goose-step us into worshiping at some make believe altars, while we’re all drugged to the nines; the next thing you’ll want me to swallow is they plan to convince us to sacrifice every last iota of common sense we have ever possessed, all in the name of “absolute freedom” ~ for “all..?” Ha ha, what a joke!
Utter deluded nonsense. By the way I’m a committed big bluer and scientology is just alright with me. In fact, gimme a brand to brandish, and I feel just like a real human being….
Hey suckers, we’re all in the gulag now…wakey wakey, bang the big bad drum ~ let’s get this galley moving!! Whaddya think this is, some kinda mafia kindergarten??
thanks so much lo….been a tad concerned…..;)
And we have much to be concerned about this. This could effect our food, medicines, the Internet, labor, environment, personal freedoms, and so much more.
It truly is a legalization of the “New World Order” that many have feared for years/decades. It is Fascism according to the definition that states a merger of corporations and governments.
Would be interesting to find out how WikiLeaks managed to get hold of these ‘secret’ documents. With Snowden’s help? What is urgently needed now are massive demonstrations all over.
WikiLeaks does NOT divulge its source(s), so not likely to find out who the leaker(s) is/are.
Ed Snowden is residing in Russia, so not likely him; plus he leaked info on the US govt’s spying; he was not a spy himself. The TPP and the NSA are very different entities.
Those who are pushing for approval of TPP need to be called out for secretiveness while not sharing the text and provisions with the people of America and the other nations potentially joining TPP. The people simply should be informed because the agreement is highly consequential for them. The way proponents have secretly acted is dishonest, unethical, and immoral. This is not right – the public should be made aware of the underhanded manner in which this trade agreement has been written/created, secretive dimensions of passage, and attempts by proponents to pass without input from citizens.
It is not a secret who is behind the pushing of this bill: Pres. Barack Obama and the corporations. I’ve posted a few press releases directly from the White House, see:
If you dance the TPP can arrest you? its all to much to deal with, what is wrong with you all?
The Assange saga of having a policeman on a door way, to arrest Assange, for alleged misuse of of a condom omission is all to much?
We need to revise who are in authority and what meaning or legitimacy they have?
The concerns of our present rulers who find concern over people like Assange, as opposed to what I consider misuse of taxpayers money on war in places such as Afghanistan, and I have seen on Australian TV, recently, the murder of a nuero surgeon, shot through the head by British military is , if true a indictment on the British Establishment and unless such people as the British Queen having not voiced disapproval of what must be to some extent acting as Her Majesty’s Forces, is culpable.
A lot of the push for this bill is around copyright and intellectual property. It’s a corporate take over worldwide; think New World Order being legalized for and by the corporations who are essentially in control now.
There ya go, WikiLeaks (wondered where you had been) Glad to see you go after the privateers as well
Well, as they say in America, shit just got real. Pardon my English,
Haha.