The Trans-Pacific Free Trade Agreement (TPP)–Destroying the Free Exchange of Ideas and News

Negotiations are taking place behind closed doors to create the TPP’s Internet trap criminalizing our day-to-day use of the Internet through expensive fines. You and over 80,000 others around the world pushed back by signing the StopTheTrap.net petition. Yet the list of TPP lobbyists is also growing; over 600 from telecom, media, and other conglomerates are privy to these secret negotiations. We need the entire pro-Internet community to push back against the TPP’s Internet trap.

The object of the TPP is to separate us, grind us down and limit our sources of information to the major corporate news (largely bull shit) organizations. That makes it easier to redistribute income and wealth from the 99 to the 1 percent, which is the real reason these negotiations are occurring.

You can take the next crucial step by sharing the petition on Facebook, Twitter, and forwarding the URL http://stopthetrap.net to everyone you know today. Fight back. Don’t be passive. Your rights, information, ideas and freedoms are at stake.

After citizens stood against big telecom and media conglomerates’ attempts to push through national laws that would crush free expression and innovation online, their lobbyists decided to go behind closed doors through the TPP. It’s an undemocratic, extreme attempt to take decisions about the Internet out of your hands. But the pro-Internet community is taking the fight global as well. We’ve assembled a powerful coalition of people and organizations—including experts at Public Knowledge, Public Citizen, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation—who are currently on the ground at meetings in San Diego. They have committed to hand-deliver the StopTheTrap.net petition signatures to leaders, but we need to give them the numbers to have influence.

Please help OpenMedia.ca hit the crucial 100,000 signatures mark by reaching out on Facebook, on Twitter, and by forwarding the URL http:/stopthetrap.net to everyone you know today.

The pro-Internet community is already having an impact across borders. In the U.S., 130 members of Congress just signed a letter calling for secret TPP documents to be made public; in Canada the largest federal opposition party has come out against the TPP; rifts are also developing between other signatory countries.

If we work together we could all be part of a foundational achievement of the global pro-Internet community: dismantling this Internet trap before it gets set. Thanks for sharing through the links above.
For the open Internet,

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One Percent Trying to Redistribute More Income From the 99 percent via the Trans Pacific Free Trade Agreement–Update on Protests and Negotiations

Here’s how free trade works; your income is freely given to the rich. It’s that simple. When your government signs a free trade treaty, it is opening up doors for US companies to ship jobs overseas from the USA, or giving them a conduit through which to create jobs over seas rather than here, which would never have occurred without the treaty. The difference between the old wages here and the new lower wages there go into the pockets of the one percent via higher corporate profits, rising dividends and enhanced share prices. The losers of those jobs might get unemployment insurance, if they’re lucky. The American tax base is being systematically destroyed via each treaty as more and more jobs are shipped or created overseas by American companies. Schools are starving for money, so are public libraries and other governmental agencies because the tax money has been stuffed into the already fat wallets of the one percent via trade treaties.

In other words, the Obama administration is knowingly negotiating to redistribute income from your pockets and the pockets of your children to the rich as it negotiates the Trans Pacific Free Trade Agreement. How’s that for a man of the people?

Here’s the latest update from Dallas, Texas.

As trade negotiators from throughout the Pacific Rim gathered outside Dallas for a trade summit aimed at speeding the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Free Trade Agreement towards conclusion, Texans were out in force to demand a public voice in the negotiating process. With the help of Citizens Trade Campaign and the Texas Fair Trade Coalition, local labor, environmental and community advocates:

Delivered over 42,000 petition signatures urging the U.S. Trade Representative to release the texts. Over 24,000 were presented during a media event with speakers from the Texas AFL-CIO, Lone Star Sierra Club, Communications Workers of America Local 6215, and then delivered to Assistant USTR Carol Guthrie. Later in the week, CTC hand-delivered an additional 18,000+ to lead U.S. negotiator Barbara Weisel during a stakeholder briefing, at which point she publicly stated USTR’s new position that “constantly evolving TPP chapter texts cannot be released to the public” — a rollback in transparency from both the current World Trade Organization negotiating process and the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) of more than a decade ago.

Followed up on the petition with a high-energy “TPP: Out of the Shadows!” rally and march. The demonstration started with a rally trade justice advocates from across Texas and the Pacific Rim. More than 300 people then marched over into the parking lot of the hotel where negotiators were meeting, before they were stopped by police. Texas AFL-CIO President Becky Moeller led the march by asking “What are they trying to hide?,” and CTC Executive Director Arthur Stamoulis led the crowd in a spirited “mic check” directed at negotiators.

Conducted a wide range of educational activities, including a teach-in moderated by the Dallas Peace Center, with fantastic presentations by Lori Wallach (Global Trade Watch), Celeste Drake (AFL-CIO), Ilana Solomon (Sierra Club) and Sanya Reid Smith (Third World Network). CTC staff also participated in a CWA-hosted telephone town hall, as well as meetings and events throughout the week with the Steelworkers, Teamsters, Building Trades, Sierra Club and Occupy Dallas. Occupy even live-streamed the May 12th rally.

Separate from CTC’s efforts, a number of independent activists also carried out a variety of stunts throughout the week, including a Yes Men award presentation; replacing hotel toilet paper with special TPP TP; projecting transparency messages onto the side of the hotel; putting flyers under negotiators’ hotel room doors; and more.

The next round of TPP negotiations will be in the United States from July 2 – 10, 2012, widely rumored to take place in Los Angeles.

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A Demand for Transparency in the Federal Reserve Rescue of Wall Street

The folks of the Federal Reserve are not known for being funny, but sometimes they are. Dylan Ratigan, the democracy demander from MSNBC joined with the Huffington Post to attack the traditional secrecy of the central bank. Months ago, they filed a freedom of information request “asking the Fed to make available the meeting minutes of Fed decision makers from 2007 to 2010. Those were the critical years of financial collapse and massive bailouts when the Fed dispensed trillions of dollars to comfort the panicky financial system and prop up insolvent banks.”

See the full story and video below.

Dylan Ratigan Wants the Federal Reserve to Provide the Minutes of Meetings Leading to the Rescue of Wall Street

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