South San Francisco, CA May 17, 2015
While Everything South City explores mostly well…. Everything South City, we do venture onto larger issues that still impact us locally, which is what the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) does. South City has historically been home to strong working blue collar industries yet many of them have now gone overseas with the NAFTA and CAFTA agreements. We now are home to world class life science industries that may very well be effected by this ‘Investor State Dispute Settlement’ (ISDS).
To that end, when we received an email from a South San Francisco resident on the issue of TPP and TTIP, including a request we share an online petition, we checked the validity of the concerns and believe it is worthy to share with our community. It definitely is food for thought in our ever changing global economy.
Below is the text we have received and we are sharing a link to an informative article found in The World Post (A partnership of Huffington Post and Berggruen Institute) titled ‘The Obscure Trade Provision Everyone Is Talking About” CLICK HERE TO READ which gives a greater overview of what to expect.
From our neighbor:
and from Canada to the EU are secretly negotiating trade deals that will
give global corporations the right to sue our governments and overturn our
laws.
Details have leaked out on what is called the Trans Pacific Partnership
(TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership (TTIP) that will
massively expand the power of corporations to sue our governments.
Thousands of corporate lobbyists are helping to write these secret pacts —
but we’re not allowed to see them. Governments know that we won’t like
these corporate power grabs, so they’re hoping to keep them under the radar
until it’s too late to stop them. But if we can raise our voices now, we
can expose these corporate charters and kill the deals forever.
Can you please sign this petition calling on global governments to scrap
these deals?
Thank you.
*Cynthia*
The Petition States:
“Promise to protect our democracies from corporate lawsuits, and stop the secret TPP and TTIP trade pacts.”
Tobacco giant Philip Morris is suing Australia for billions of dollars in lost profits because the government took action to reduce teenage smoking. Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly is suing Canada for $500 million, just because Canada has laws to keep essential drugs affordable.
Worst of all, these cases are happening in secret international courts to which only corporations have access.
Now, details are leaking of two global trade pacts (called the TPP and TTIP) that would massively expand the power of corporations to sue our governments. Countries from the US to Australia and from the EU to Canada are negotiating right now — and some could be just days from signing up.
Thousands of corporate lobbyists are helping to write these secret pacts — but the public isn’t allowed to see them. Global governments know that the public won’t like these corporate power grabs, so they’re hoping to keep them under the radar until it’s too late to stop them. But if we can raise our voices now, we can expose these corporate charters and kill the deals forever.
Our governments are meeting right now to lock a deal. Sign the petition now to demand they reject any secret treaties that massively increase the power of corporations in our democracies.
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Further writer Terra Lawson-Remer states in the World Post article dated May 16th the following:
There are a huge number of issues on the table, but the make-or-break may come down to an obscure provision of international law, obliquely called ‘Investor State Dispute Settlement’ (ISDS) mechanisms. ISDS gives foreign corporations the right to bring private lawsuits through secretive supra-national tribunals when governments pass laws that protect the public interest, but might harm profits.