WikiLeaks Presents The Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP)
” Today, 13 November 2013, WikiLeaks released the secret negotiated draft text for the entire TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) Intellectual Property Rights Chapter. The TPP is the largest-ever economic treaty, encompassing nations representing more than 40 per cent of the world’s GDP. The WikiLeaks release of the text comes ahead of the decisive TPP Chief Negotiators summit in Salt Lake City, Utah, on 19-24 November 2013. The chapter published by WikiLeaks is perhaps the most controversial chapter of the TPP due to its wide-ranging effects on medicines, publishers, internet services, civil liberties and biological patents. Significantly, the released text includes the negotiation positions and disagreements between all 12 prospective member states.
The TPP is the forerunner to the equally secret US-EU pact TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership), for which President Obama initiated US-EU negotiations in January 2013. Together, the TPP and TTIP will cover more than 60 per cent of global GDP. Both pacts exclude China.
Since the beginning of the TPP negotiations, the process of drafting and negotiating the treaty’s chapters has been shrouded in an unprecedented level of secrecy. Access to drafts of the TPP chapters is shielded from the general public. Members of the US Congress are only able to view selected portions of treaty-related documents in highly restrictive conditions and under strict supervision. It has been previously revealed that only three individuals in each TPP nation have access to the full text of the agreement, while 600 ’trade advisers’ – lobbyists guarding the interests of large US corporations such as Chevron, Halliburton, Monsanto and Walmart – are granted privileged access to crucial sections of the treaty text.
The TPP negotiations are currently at a critical stage. The Obama administration is preparing to fast-track the TPP treaty in a manner that will prevent the US Congress from discussing or amending any parts of the treaty. Numerous TPP heads of state and senior government figures, including President Obama, have declared their intention to sign and ratify the TPP before the end of 2013.”
This has NWO/Statism written all over it . The fact that Obama is trying to skirt the necessary Congressional approval of trade agreements says all we need to know about his administration’s efforts “on our behalf” . It would appear after a very brief , cursory reading that many of the provisions in the latest piece of sovereign renunciation are blatantly unconstitutional , which helps to explain the imperative of secrecy and subterfuge from our “most open , honest and transparent” administration .
This whole treaty , conceived in the smoke-filled back rooms of some old boys network private club , far from the prying eyes of the peons people and their representatives by the Masters of Industry and State is nothing more than a two-fisted power grab enriching the global corporate entity and the transnationalist political figures they bankroll .
” The 95-page, 30,000-word IP Chapter lays out provisions for instituting a far-reaching, transnational legal and enforcement regime, modifying or replacing existing laws in TPP member states. The Chapter’s subsections include agreements relating to patents (who may produce goods or drugs), copyright (who may transmit information), trademarks (who may describe information or goods as authentic) and industrial design.
The longest section of the Chapter – ’Enforcement’ – is devoted to detailing new policing measures, with far-reaching implications for individual rights, civil liberties, publishers, internet service providers and internet privacy, as well as for the creative, intellectual, biological and environmental commons. Particular measures proposed include supranational litigation tribunals to which sovereign national courts are expected to defer, but which have no human rights safeguards. The TPP IP Chapter states that these courts can conduct hearings with secret evidence. The IP Chapter also replicates many of the surveillance and enforcement provisions from the shelved SOPA and ACTA treaties.”
In order for Obama to skirt the Constitutional requirement of senatorial “advise & consent” the proposed TPP and TTIP have to be Executive Agreements and not , strictly speaking , treaties . This ploy allows him to avoid the necessary 2/3 vote of approval from the full Senate . Executive agreements have a long and controversial history in the hands of US presidents .
Having been unfamiliar with the distinction between the agreement and treaty we thought we would educate ourselves a bit and pass along our research for the benefit of readers such as ourselves . Here is how the Oxford Companion To The Supreme Court describes the differences between the two types of agreements :
” Under the Constitution, treaties with other countries require consent of two‐thirds of the Senate. The framers clearly intended joint action of the national executive and the representatives of states in Congress to make binding international obligations.
Executive agreements, unmentioned in the text, are practical alternatives made under presidential authority. They are so ubiquitous in American foreign relations—and sometimes so controversial—that one should distinguish various forms. The vast bulk have some form of legislative approval by statute, treaty, or joint resolution of Congress. For example, the North American and general trade agreements of 1993–1994 were approved by joint resolution. If the subject is within Congress’s broad powers, the Supreme Court accepts the delegation of legislative power and the Senate bypass. “
Franklin Roosevelt , Obama’s presidential idol , was the undisputed master of usurpation through the use of executive agreements , which coming from the man who’s very reign inspired the need for presidential term limits , who attempted to change the very nature of the Supreme Court and who issued orders for nationwide gold confiscation should come as no surprise .
” President Franklin D. “Roosevelt converted executive agreements into primary instruments of foreign relations. He approved the Litvinov Agreement recognizing the Soviet Union in 1933, and the destroyer bases deal of 1940. During World War II, Roosevelt and Truman made secret agreements with allies at Cairo, Yalta, and Potsdam affecting most of the world.”
Some history on executive agreements …
” … presidents have had the power to enter into executive agreements with other nations since George Washington’s administration. Treaties are binding on future presidents unless modified with Senate consent; executive agreements are not.
The State Department explains:
As explained in greater detail in 11 FAM 721.2, there are two procedures under domestic law through which the United States becomes a party to an international agreement. First, international agreements (regardless of their title, designation, or form) whose entry into force with respect to the United States takes place only after two thirds of the U.S. Senate has given its advice and consent under Article II, section 2, Clause 2 of the Constitution are “treaties.” Second, international agreements brought into force with respect to the United States on a constitutional basis other than with the advice and consent of the Senate are “international agreements other than treaties” and are often referred to as “executive agreements.”
Let’s look, then, at 11 FAM 721.2 to see on what “constitutional basis” a president might enter into such an agreement.
(3) Agreements Pursuant to the Constitutional Authority of the President
The President may conclude an international agreement on any subject within his constitutional authority so long as the agreement is not inconsistent with legislation enacted by the Congress in the exercise of its constitutional authority. The constitutional sources of authority for the President to conclude international agreements include:
(a) The President’s authority as Chief Executive to represent the nation in foreign affairs;
(b) The President’s authority to receive ambassadors and other public ministers;
(c) The President’s authority as “Commander-in-Chief”; and
(d) The President’s authority to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” “
Findlaw offers even more on the executive agreement , it’s limitations and it’s consequences :
INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS WITHOUT SENATE APPROVAL
” The capacity of the United States to enter into agreements with other nations is not exhausted in the treaty-making power. The Constitution recognizes a distinction between ”treaties” and ”agreements” or ”compacts” but does not indicate what the difference is. 388 The differences, which once may have been clearer, have been seriously blurred in practice within recent decades. Once a stepchild in the family in which treaties were the preferred offspring, the executive agreement has surpassed in number and perhaps in international influence the treaty formally signed, submitted for ratification to the Senate, and proclaimed upon ratification.
During the first half-century of its independence, the United States was party to sixty treaties but to only twenty-seven published executive agreements. By the beginning of World War II, there had been concluded approximately 800 treaties and 1,200 executive agreements. In the period 1940-1989, the Nation entered into 759 treaties and into 13,016 published executive agreements. Cumulatively, in 1989, the United states was a party to 890 treaties and 5,117 executive agreements. To phrase it comparatively, in the first 50 years of its history, the United States concluded twice as many treaties as executive agreements. In the 50-year period from 1839 to 1889, a few more executive agreements than treaties were entered into. From 1889 to 1939, almost twice as many executive agreements as treaties were concluded. In the period since 1939, executive agreements have comprised more than 90% of the international agreements concluded. 389“
In the interests of “equal time” , sort of , you can view TPP “news” , what little there is at the Office of The US Trade Representative’s website . Good luck with that .
In closing , and admittedly not knowing as much as we should about this looming shadow of globalism , we are of the opinion that any agreement or treaty related to business and commerce promulgated by the most economically illiterate leader this country has ever had can only be intended to accomplish one , the other or both of two things … most likely both : 1) further pad the already bloated bank accounts of his corporate cronies through regulation and protectionism and 2) advance the Statist/NWO agenda that drives his trans-nationalist puppet masters through gaining control of the creative process … meaning control of the lines of communication ( internet freedom) and control of property rights (patents , trade marks , etc).
There is surely nothing in this secretive effort that can be described as advancing the cause of the individual and human rights and that is not acceptable from any US president .
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YouViewed/Editorial 