“The irony of the text containing repeated references to transparency, and an entire annex on transparency requiring governments to provide information useful to business, being negotiated in secret from the population exposes in whose interests these agreements are being made,” she said.Another dedicated public spokes-being had this to say:
Nick Dearden, director of the charity Global Justice Now, formerly the World Development Movement, said: “These leaks reinforce the concerns of campaigners about the threat that TISA poses to vital public services. There is no mandate for such a far-reaching programme of liberalisation in services. It’s a dark day for democracy when we are dependent on leaks like this for the general public to be informed of the radical restructuring of regulatory frameworks that our governments are proposing.”
It is, of course, just members of groups like those referenced above who are out leaking their heads off whenever they get the chance. In some ways they're like the old communists hiding in the State Department and DoD who could not resist sending reams of classified info to the communists in the USSR, Cuba and Venezuela. They just can't help themselves.
The TPP has been particularly controversial because of the level of secrecy around it – trade agreements by their nature are negotiated behind closed doors, but restrictions on the TPP are such that elected representatives aren’t allowed to express any specific reservations about its content to their constituents. Moreover, advisers specifically included in the conversation to represent the public say they aren’t being allowed to read the entire document. “Today’s consultations are, in many ways, much more restrictive than those under past administrations,” veteran trade advisor Michael Wessel wrote in Politico last month.Which just made the CNN poll showing more Americans favored GW Bush than favor Obama; priceless.
It is kind of sad and pathetic that the Rethuglicans are now the party urging a vote on a trade bill nobody is allowed to read before voting for or against it. When the hell did they become democrats? How is it that democracy is now defined by both national parties as a process of keeping the electorate completely and utterly ignorant of pending legislation and passing it in the dead of night by ramming it through on strict party lines? How can anybody lobby their representative or senators on the bill if NOBODY is allowed to know what it says before the vote in Congress?
No comments:
Post a Comment