The so-called Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), like its Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) counterpart, isn’t about growth-promoting trade benefitting everyone equitably.
Just the opposite!! Both assault personal freedoms. They’re anti-consumer, anti-public welfare, anti-ecosanity, business sweetheart deals, giving corporate predators control over the lives of populations in all countries agreeing to these deals.
It lets them operate unaccountably, overriding sovereign legal restraints at the expense of societies fit to live in.
Greenpeace leaked 248 pages of classified documents being negotiated, saying TTIP “threaten[s] to have far-reaching implications for the environment and the lives of more than 800 million citizens in the EU and US.”
At stake is “a huge transfer of power from people to big business.” Personal freedoms, consumer protections and environmental safeguards are threatened.
TTIP rules empower profit-making above human health, welfare, labor rights, digital freedom and virtually all other consumer safeguards.
They prevent nations from “protect[ing] human, animal and plant life or health.” They fail to “conserv[e] exhaustible natural resources.”
Corporate empowerment under TTIP and TTP assures dismantling vital safety standards protecting human health and welfare.
Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch lists the top TTIP threats as follows:
- “Wall Street: Roll Back Financial Reforms
- “Agribusiness: Weaken Food Safety Standards
- “Oil and Gas Corporations: Halt Green Energy Policies
- “Monsanto, et al: Remove GMO Labels and Limits
- “Chemical Corporations: Allow Exposure to Untested Chemicals
- “Transnational Corporations: Empower Investor Attacks on Safeguards
- “Chronic Job Offshorers: Ban Buy American, Buy Local and Buy Green Policies
- “Corporate think tanks: Debunking Bogus Claims of TTIP Economic Gains”
TPP and TTIP will third worldize participating nations, benefitting business and investor interests at the expense of most others.
War on Want’s executive director, John Hillary, believes leaking TTIP’s hellish anti-consumer, anti-public safety and welfare details means “the beginning of the end for this much hated deal.”
He’s right if sustained mass actions against it refuse to tolerate its enactment. He’s wrong if people complain and do little or nothing.
It’s up to us to kill this monster and its TPP counterpart!! At stake is freedom or slavery!!
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book as editor and contributor is “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.” Visit his blog at sjlendman.blogspot.com . Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.
Dronebama is not only one of the worst presidents in history. He is the MOST dangerous president we’ve ever had because of the fascist agenda he has facilitated during his reign of terror. TPP, NDAA, TTIP, bankster bailouts, 24/7 drones, destruction of Libya with Syria and Ukraine in tatters, police state run amok – few if any of these things would have been a fait accompli under a Republican administration. The usual Left suspects would have raised holy hell and Congressional Dems would have fought against much of what they are now abetting. I said it in 2008 and I’ve been proven right – Barry’s biracial black face and Democrat party membership would act as Kryptonite against dissent. The usual suspects have remained silent or made excuses for the evildoings of this administration. TPP and TTIP will be the death of us all thanks to Barry and Killary. Fear of a Trump planet? Hell, no. Other than Sanders (who’s already said he’ll support Killary in Nov and who is mounting a wimpy fight against devil Clinton), Trump is the only candidate speaking out AGAINST TPP and the other unfair trade deals. Who knows what he’ll do if elected on these issues but we damn sure know what Killary will do – keep screwing us over.