interest as attested to by all of the bribed and
coerced trade representatives.
These “trade pacts” originate in the US, because
American global corporations and the American
mega-banks are the largest players in the world
economy, and the agreements that the corporations walk through the process give the American
companies economic hegemony over the countries
that sign the agreements. The Trans-Atlantic and
Trans-Pacific “partnerships” are tools of US financial imperialism.
Today (May 3, 2016) I debated on Press TV Sean
O’Grady, the financial editor of the UK newspaper
the Independent. It is extraordinary that O’Grady
took a line totally opposite to that of his newspaper.
I suggested to him that perhaps he should read his
own newspaper.
Today an article in the Independent reported that
the leaked “documents show that US corporations
will be granted unprecedented powers over any new
public health or safety regulations to be introduced
in future. If any European government does dare
to bring in laws to raise social or environmental
standards, TTIP will grant US investors the right to
sue for loss of profits in their own corporate court
system that is unavailable to domestic firms, governments or anyone else. For all those who said that
we were scaremongering and that the EU would
never allow this to happen, we were right and you
were wrong.”
As I understand it, the situation is worse than the
article describes. TTIP applies to laws already on
the books, such as France’s laws against GMO seeds
and food products.
The Independent article continues:
“Today’s shock leak of the text of the Transatlantic
Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) marks
the beginning of the end for the hated EU-US trade
deal, and a key moment in the Brexit debate. The
unelected negotiators have kept the talks going
until now by means of a fanatical level of secrecy,
with threats of criminal prosecution for anyone
divulging the treaty’s contents.
“Now, for the first time, the people of Europe can
see for themselves what the European Commission
has been doing under cover of darkness – and it is
not pretty. The leaked TTIP documents, published
by Greenpeace this morning, run to 248 pages and
cover 13 of the 17 chapters where the final agreement has begun to take shape. The texts include
highly controversial subjects such as EU food safety
standards, already known to be at risk from TTIP,
as well as details of specific threats such as the US
plan to end Europe’s ban on genetically modified
foods.
“The leaked texts also reveal how the European
Commission is preparing to open up the European
economy to unfair competition from giant US
corporations, despite acknowledging the disastrous
consequences this will bring to European producers, who have to meet far higher standards than
pertain in the USA.
“According to official statistics, at least one million
jobs will be lost as a direct result of TTIP – and
twice that many if the full deal is allowed to go
through. Yet we can now see that EU negotiators
are preparing to trade away whole sectors of our
economies in TTIP, with no care for the human
consequences.
“The European Commission slapped a 30-year
ban on public access to the TTIP negotiating texts
at the beginning of the talks in 2013, in the full
knowledge that they would not be able to survive
the outcry if people were given sight of the deal. In
response, campaigners called for a ‘Dracula strategy’ against the agreement: expose the vampire to
sunlight and it will die. Today the door has been
flung open and the first rays of sunlight shone on
TTIP. The EU negotiators will never be able to
crawl back into the shadows again.
TheSovereignVoice.Org