Concerned Hawaii residents discuss Trans Pacific Partnership

- A community forum was held in Hilo Wednesday night on the subject of the Trans-Pacific Partnership - a proposed regional regulatory and investment treaty involving twelve countries throughout the Asia-Pacific region currently in negotiations. This week, those negotiations are reportedly being conducted, behind closed doors, at the posh Waikoloa resorts. It was a great opportunity for those opposed to the TPP to speak out.

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Juliet Begley, Americans for Democratic Action, Hawaii Island

Jim Albertini of the Malu 'Aina Center For Non-violent Education & Action helped organize the forum.

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Comment: WikiLeaks: Updated Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) The Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement that would strip governments of the power to regulate transnational corporate activities, is another dirty corporate tactic to dominate the world:

Under Cover of Darkness, an International Corporate Coup Is Underway

With the direct participation of 600 corporations and shocking levels of secrecy, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) is rushing to complete the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Branded as a trade agreement (yawn) by its corporate proponents, TPP largely has evaded public and congressional scrutiny since negotiations were launched in 2008 by the George W. Bush administration.

But trade is the least of it. Only two of TPP's 26 chapters actually have to do with trade. The rest is about new enforceable corporate rights and privileges and constraints on government regulation. This includes new extensions of price-raising drug patent monopolies , corporate rights to attack government drug formulary pricing plans, safeguards to facilitate job offshoring and new corporate controls over natural resources .

Also included are severe limits on government regulation of financial services, zoning and land use, product and food safety , energy and other essential services, tobacco, and more. The copyright chapter poses many of the threats to Internet freedom of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which was stalled in Congress under intense public pressure.

The proposed pact is so invasive of domestic policy space that it would even limit how governments can spend tax dollars. Buy America and other Buy Local procurement preferences used to reinvest our tax dollars in the American economy would be banned and sweat-free, human rights or environmental conditions on government contracts would be subject to challenge in closed-door foreign tribunals.