Australian MPs allowed to see top-secret trade deal text but can't reveal contents for four years
Australian politicians have been told they can view the current confidential negotiating text for the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, but only if they agree not to divulge anything they see for four years, despite expectations the deal could be finalised within months.
As 10 years of highly secret negotiations over the 12-nation trade and investment pact draw to a close and the US Congress debates whether to grant president Barack Obama fast-track authority, MPs and senators were briefed on the deal Monday night by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade assistant secretary Elizabeth Ward and other officials.
The MPs were told that, despite the negotiations being “in the final stages” and “at the end game”, key provisions had not been agreed – including intellectual property clauses of deep concern to the Australian government and controversial legal avenues for corporations to take action against governments – so-called investor state dispute settlements (ISDS). They were also told the ISDS process itself was still being negotiated, including provisions on transparency.
They were told they could view the current TPP negotiating text on Tuesday “subject to certain confidentiality requirements” and were shown a document they would be required to sign before any viewing.
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jun/02/australian-mps-allowed-to-see-top-secret-trade-deal-text-on-condition-of-confidentiality
Nothing going on here folks ... move along..... everything is under control.............everything is fine........ relax......
= new reply since forum marked as read
Today, WikiLeaks has launched a campaign to crowd-source a $100,000 reward for America's Most Wanted Secret: the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP).
Over the last two years, WikiLeaks has published three chapters of this super-secret global deal, despite unprecedented efforts by negotiating governments to keep it under wraps. US Senator Elizabeth Warren has said, "
They) can’t make this deal public because if the American people saw what was in it, they would be opposed to it." The remaining 26 chapters of the deal are closely held by negotiators and the big corporations that have been given privilleged access. Today, WikiLeaks is taking steps to bring about the public's rightful access to the missing chapters of this monster trade pact. . . .
The TPP bounty also heralds the launch of WikiLeaks' new competition system, which allows the public to pledge prizes towards each of the world's most wanted leaks. Members of the public can now go to wikileaks.org/tpp-reward to pledge on the missing chapters of the TPP.
WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange said, "The transparency clock has run out on the TPP. No more secrecy. No more excuses. Let's open the TPP once and for all."
This "job creator" cannot wait to start selling life saving oils to the poor of the world!
The top 1% has seen its real income rise by more than 60% over those two decades. The largest increases however were registered around the median: 80% real increase at the median itself and some 70% around it. It is there, between the 50th and 60th percentile of the global income distribution that we find some 200 million Chinese, 90 million Indians, and about 30 million people each from Indonesia, Brazil and Egypt. These two groups—the global top 1% and the workers of the emerging market economies— are indeed the main winners of globalization...
But the biggest loser (other than the very poorest 5%), or at least the “non-winner,” of globalization were those between the 75th and 90th percentile of the global income distribution whose real income gains were essentially nil. These people, who may be called a global upper-middle class, include many from former Communist countries and Latin America, as well as those citizens of rich countries whose incomes stagnated.
More than fifty percent of one’s income depends on the average income of the country where a person lives or was born (the two things being, for 97% of world population, the same). This gives the importance of the location element today. There are of course other factors that matter for one’s income, from gender and parental education which are, from an individual point of view externally given circumstances, to factors like own education, effort and luck that are not. They all influence our income level. But the remarkable thing is that a very large chunk of our income will be determined by only one variable, citizenship, that we, generally, acquire at birth. It is almost the same as saying, that if I know nothing about any given individual in the world, I can, with a reasonably good confidence, predict her income just from the knowledge of her citizenship... Around 1870, class explained more than 2/3 of global inequality. And now? The proportions have exactly flipped: more than 2/3 of total inequality is due to location.
Canada is second only to the U.S. in its growing inequality. In the U.S., about 47 per cent of total growth went to the wealthiest one per cent between 1975 and 2007, compared to 37 per cent in Canada, while in Australia and the U.K., about 20 per cent of growth went to the wealthiest.
In Nordic countries and in France, Italy, Portugal and Spain, about 90 per cent of growth went to the 99 per cent of middle and low-income earners in the same period.
Larry Summers, who was secretary of the treasury under Bill Clinton and is now a Harvard professor, has pointed out how the constant push for tax cuts and the erosion of union bargaining rights has led to greater income inequality.
The study calls for higher marginal tax rates and fewer tax deductions and credits aimed at high income earners. It also advocates wealth or inheritance taxes.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/top-1-taking-lion-s-share-of-global-growth-oecd-says-1.2627154
The two groups that have been big global winners in terms of income over the past 25 years have been workers of the emerging market economies and the global 1%. Nordic countries along France, Italy, Portugal and Spain with have shown that the gains of the 1% can be redirected to the 99%. If we did that here, the dip in the global income graph that represents us could be dealt with and not harm the bottom 75% who are already making progress.
