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Bernie Sanders, climate, drug prices, drug safety, environment, Global Justice, health, international tribunal, Japan, Malaysia, NAFTA, Pacific Rim, pharma monopoly, pharmaceutical industry, pollution, public health, seafood safety, Sierra Club, slavery, toy safety, TPP, Trans-Pacific Partnership, US, Vietnam, wildlife
“Based on its initial assessment of the text, Sierra Club said—just as predicted—the TPP would threaten the health of communities, the environment, and global climate.
‘We now have concrete evidence,’ said Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune, “that the Trans-Pacific Partnership threatens our families, our communities, and our environment. It’s no surprise that the deal is rife with polluter giveaways that would undermine decades of environmental progress, threaten our climate, and fail to adequately protect wildlife because big polluters helped write the deal.” As cited at CommonDreams.org: http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/11/05/full-text-tpp-released-public-and-its-horrible
From CommonDreams.org:
“TPP ‘Worse Than I Thought’
‘It is clear to me that the proposed agreement is not, nor has it ever been, the gold standard of trade agreements.’
by Bernie Sanders, Thursday, November 05, 2015
Now that the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership has finally been released, it is even worse than I thought. It is clear to me that the proposed agreement is not, nor has it ever been, the gold standard of trade agreements.
This trade deal would make it easier for corporations to shut down more factories in the U.S. and ship more jobs to Vietnam and Malaysia where workers are paid pennies an hour. The TPP is a continuation of our disastrous trade policies that have devastated manufacturing cities and towns all over this country from Newton, Iowa, to Cleveland, Ohio. We need to rebuild the disappearing middle class, not tear it down.
The TPP would allow foreign corporations to sue federal, state and local governments in an international tribunal for passing an increase in the minimum wage or any other law that could hurt expected future profits.
The agreement would threaten American laws that protect the safety of the drugs we take, the seafood we feed our families and the toys our kids play with every day.
At a time when prescription drug prices are skyrocketing, the TPP would make a bad situation even worse by granting new monopoly rights to big pharmaceutical companies to deny access to lower cost generic drugs to millions of people.
Outrageously, the proposed agreement includes violators of international human rights, like Brunei, where gays and single mothers can be stoned to death and Malaysia where tens of thousands of immigrant workers in the electronics industry are working as modern day slaves.
I will do everything I can to defeat the TPP. We need trade policies in this country that work for the working families of our nation and not just the CEOs of large, multi-national corporations.
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Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), currently a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2006 after serving 16 years in the House of Representatives. He is the longest serving independent member of Congress in American history. Elected Mayor of Burlington, Vt., by 10 votes in 1981, he served four terms. Before his 1990 election as Vermont’s at-large member in Congress, Sanders lectured at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and at Hamilton College in upstate New York. Read more at his website. http://www.sanders.senate.gov Follow him on Twitter: @SenSanders or @BernieSanders” http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/11/05/tpp-worse-i-thought
“The TPP is a disaster for jobs, and environment and our democracy. It is the latest stage in the corporate capture of our society,” said Nick Dearden, executive director of Global Justice Now, in response to the full text.
The enormous so-called “free trade” deal between 12 Pacific Rim nations, he continued, “has less to do with selling more goods, than with rewriting the rules of the global economy is favor of big business. Like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 20 years ago, it will be very good for the very richest, and a disaster for everything and everyone else. NAFTA entrenched inequality and caused massive job losses in the USA, and TPP is turbo-charged NAFTA.” As cited at CommonDreams.org: http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/11/05/full-text-tpp-released-public-and-its-horrible
-i-thought
Good luck to anyone trying to figure out what this says, if the chapter on Japan agriculture is reflective of the rest of the English: http://www.mfat.govt.nz/Treaties-and-International-Law/01-Treaties-for-which-NZ-is-Depositary/0-Trans-Pacific-Partnership-Text.php
Click to access 2-D.%20Japan%20Appendix%20B-1%20Agricultural%20Safeguard%20Measures.pdf
Maybe some Japanese can understand this part about Japan “Agricultural Safeguards”, but most English speakers won’t be able (and it’s being generous to say most). Is the rest of the text this incomprehensible? And, what do racehorses have to do with agricultural safeguards? How about radioactive food?
See more here: http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/11/05/worse-we-thought-tpp-total-corporate-power-grab-nightmare
Mining Awareness + 