NOVANEWS
By Cassius Methyl
Today, on November 13th, WikiLeaks released the text containing secret agreements and disagreements between countries, on what they call the ‘largest-ever economic treaty’, the ‘Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement.
Wikileaks Logo (photo: Wikicommons)
(INTELLIHUB) — Today, WikiLeaks published something that may shed much-needed light on the secret agreements of powerful officials and the people behind them.
In a press release concerning the released texts, consisting of negotiations between countries concerning the economic agreement, WikiLeaks said- ‘”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 press release from WikiLeaks and the secret text can be viewed at this link[1]
To sum it up, these agreements concern not the politicians or elected officials of countries such as the US, but corporate powers.
Lobbyists representing corporate powers are allowed to view what has now been leaked but was once secret, and the elected officials specifically cannot know what is going on.
Quoting the WikiLeaks press release “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. “
This agreement may have very serious implications for our civil liberties, our subjection to mass surveillance, and more.
To again quote the WikiLeaks press release ” 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. “
You can read the text yourself at the following link.[1] Please share this with as many people as possible, because our concern and involvement with this may be the only thing that can prevent our rights being taken away, by the powers that conceived these secret agreements.
Sources:
[1] Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) – Wikileaks.org