Wednesday, September 12, 2012

4 days to stop a corporate Death Star


Dear friends,


We have four days to stop a top-secret global corporate power grab that attacks everything from a free Internet to environmental protections. This agreement is being negotiated right now by bureaucrats backed by corporate lobbyists. Click below to crash their secret meeting with our global call to kill the TPP deal:

Sign the petition
Details are leaking of a top-secret, global corporate power grab of breathtaking scope -- attacking everything from a free Internet to health and environmental regulations, and we have just 4 days to stop it.

Big business has a new plan to fatten their pockets: a giant global pact, with an international tribunal to enforce it, that is kept top secret for years (even from our lawmakers!) and then brought down like a Death Star on our democracies. Big Tobacco, Big Oil, Big Pharma, Walmart and almost 600 other corporate lobbyists are all in on the draft -- including limits on smoking laws, affordable medicines and free speech on the Net.

The latest round of negotiations ends in just 4 days -- but outcries in each of our countries could shake the confidence of negotiators and scuttle the talks forever. Let's get to a million against the global corporate takeover. Sign below and forward widely. Avaaz will project our petition counter on the walls of the conference so negotiators can see the opposition to their plan exploding in real time:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/stop_the_corporate_death_star/?bBbiodb&v=17850

The deal, called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), is written to protect investors from government regulation, even if that regulation is passed in the public interest. Leaked versions suggest the TPP would undermine protections for air and water safety and reintroduce measures from the US Internet freedom attack as well as steamrolling efforts to produce generic affordable medicines. Worse still, lawmakers who fail to conform to the TPP’s rules face sanctions in an international tribunal -- a place where corporations can sue us for deals previous governments signed in secret!

Negotiators say this is just a trade agreement, written to facilitate investment and profit for all. But the leaked draft imposes so many limits on citizen protections, it's clear this "trade" agreement is skewed to put corporate profit above people's needs -- that's not surprising since it's been drafted in secret with almost 600 corporate lobbyists.

But there is hope: Australia is bucking against the international tribunal system, and New Zealand is objecting to the takeover of its medicine-pricing protections that keep drugs affordable. Massive public opposition, casting doubt over each country's ability to sell TPP at home, could derail the talks for good. Sign the petition now, and forward widely -- the delegates and lobbyists are watching the wave of opposition grow in real time:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/stop_the_corporate_death_star/?bBbiodb&v=17850

US Senator, Elizabeth Warren in a recent speech said: “Corporations are not people. People have hearts, they have kids, they get jobs, they get sick, they cry, they dance. They live, they love, and they die. And that matters, because we don't run this country for corporations, we run it for people." Let’s reach one million to stop the corporate takeover of our governments.

With hope,

Iain, Pedro, Laura, Ari, Emma, Lisa, Luca, Ricken and the whole Avaaz team

PS - Avaaz has launched Community Petitions, an exciting new platform where it's quick and easy to create a campaign on any issue you care strongly about. Start your own by clicking here: http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/start_a_petition/?do.ps.tpp

MORE INFORMATION

The Nation: "NAFTA on Steroids"
http://www.thenation.com/article/168627/nafta-steroids

The Guardian: "The Pacific free trade deal that's anything but free"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/27/pacific-free-trade-deal

Huffington Post: "Leak Cracks Open Trans-Pacific Partnership Scandal"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-fletcher/leak-cracks-open-transpac_b_1594675.html

Reuters: "Lawmakers press for open Trans-Pacific trade talks"
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/27/us-usa-congress-trade-idUSBRE85Q1MK20120627

TechDirt: "Hollywood Gets To Party With TPP Negotiators; Public Interest Groups Get Thrown Out Of Hotel"
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120131/23161417605/hollywood-gets-to-party-with-tpp-negotiators-public-interest-groups-get-thrown-out-hotel.shtml

Electronic Frontier Foundation: "Background and analysis of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement"
https://www.eff.org/issues/tpp

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is very important to stop this "secret" treaty from being implemented! This is NOT for the people, but is for the Corporations to Control us and everything else, Stop our internet freedoms, and for them to try and rob us by jacking the prices on things way up with their monopolies on products, etc. PLEASE sign this petition to STOP this treaty from going through. They want a million people to sign it, and so far it looks like only about 39,000 people have signed. This is important to our future to STOP this NOW!!! There is only 4 days to get this done. Thank you all, and God Bless!

Anonymous said...

Too little, too late. The corporations already own our government. You just don't know it. The media does not talk about it, so you don't know it. What stops Big Pharma from pushing their filthy drugs on us and advertising them openly on TV, while this practice is banned elsewhere? What prevents the oil industry from jacking up oil prices whenever they feel like it for no reason, other than to fill their pockets, while there's ample supply of oil? The oil producers will tell you that. I can go on all night. So you see, this is just an attempt to make this takeover open and accepted globally.