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posted by takyon on Sunday November 08 2015, @08:45PM   Printer-friendly
from the just-say-no dept.

Dissident Voice reports:

A mass mobilization in Washington, DC from November 14 to 18 has been announced to begin the next stage of the campaign to stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

[...] "At its root, the TPP is about modern colonialism. It is the way that Western governments and their transnational corporations, including Wall Street banks, can dominate the economies of developing nations", said Margaret Flowers, co-director of Popular Resistance. She continued "The reality is that without trade justice there cannot be climate justice, food justice; there cannot be health justice or wage justice. That is why people are mobilizing to stop the TPP."

[...] The groups will begin their protests [on Monday morning, November 16] at the US Trade Representative building on 17th Street with the message that the TPP betrays the people, planet, and democracy.

This will be followed that evening by a protest that begins at the US Chamber of Commerce and White House then marches along K Street and ends at the Reagan International Trade Center.

The next day, the groups will have an international focus protesting at multiple sites along Embassy Row to stand in solidarity with people around the world who are fighting to stop the TPP.

On the final day, the groups will focus on Congress.

Previously: Trans-Pacific Partnership Text Released
Trans-Pacific Partnership: "Intellectual Property" Fears Become Reality


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Sunday November 08 2015, @09:42PM

    by fido_dogstoyevsky (131) <axehandleNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Sunday November 08 2015, @09:42PM (#260521)

    Or is it all just, this could lead to multinational corporations exercising more power over poor little governments that don't know any better, etc.

    Multinational corporations have a long and unsavoury history of exercising whatever power they can get, so the "could lead to..." should really be replaced by "would lead to...".

    Given that some corporations' budgets are comparable to many nations', and the apparent ease with which they can simply purchase whatever US legislation is convenient to them, it's not so much "poor little governments that don't know any better" as little nations being bullied by large organisations wielding the ability to give them more democracy if they don't do as they're told.

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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by c0lo on Sunday November 08 2015, @11:23PM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 08 2015, @11:23PM (#260558) Journal

    Multinational corporations have a long and unsavoury history of exercising whatever power they can get, so the "could lead to..." should really be replaced by "would lead to...".

    Multinational corporations have a long and unsavoury history of exercising whatever power they can get, so the "could lead to..." should really be replaced by "will lead to...".

    FTFY

    It won't take long until corporates or conglomerates will take over the "management of a country".
    Some (almost) meaningless numbers:
    * NZ GDP - $190B [tradingeconomics.com].
    * Chile's GDP - $258B [worldbank.org]
    * Apple market capitalisation - $700B [economist.com], cash reserves: somewhere around $170B [appleinsider.com] to $200B+ [cnbc.com]
    * total cash reserves of Apple, Microsoft, Google, Cisco Systems, Oracle - $400B+ [cnn.com]

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 09 2015, @02:53PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 09 2015, @02:53PM (#260775)

      Maybe I'm inferring something you didn't mean imply, but I'm noticing a value judgement in your quoting how Apple is worth over 3x as much as New Zealand.

      If this value judgement was in fact intentionally implied, then which do you think would have a bigger impact on the world. Not which "should" have a bigger impact on the world, but which would have a bigger impact.

      1) New Zealand functionally disappears. All imports, exports, resources, people, etc are lost to the rest of the world.
      2) Microsoft functionally disappears. All their software and hardware stops working, and all their employees and the people trained in Windows forget everything about it. (I'm intentionally choosing Microsoft as I think their affects on business and personal usage are more obvious.)

      Assume for this thought experiment that there is no (well justified) hysteria, major tidal waves from geological reconfiguration, changes to the energy consumption from vanished XBoxes, etc. Everything is "just gone" with no secondary effects.

      • (Score: 2) by AnonymousCowardNoMore on Monday November 09 2015, @03:27PM

        by AnonymousCowardNoMore (5416) on Monday November 09 2015, @03:27PM (#260788)

        Maybe I'm inferring something you didn't mean imply, but I'm noticing a value judgement in your quoting how Apple is worth over 3x as much as New Zealand.

        You misunderstand. GDP is not the nett worth of a country like that of a company. It is the amount of money that exchanged hands in various transactions inside the country, per year. Very roughly speaking, you may think of it as analogous to revenue—although that has more in common with exports than GDP.

      • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday November 10 2015, @02:55AM

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 10 2015, @02:55AM (#261039) Journal

        Maybe I'm inferring something you didn't mean imply

        You did

        but I'm noticing a value judgement in your quoting how Apple is worth over 3x as much as New Zealand.

        Nope. The numbers are an attempt to show somehow the buying power of a corporation vs the "economic might" of a country.
        Using GDP is a bit tricky (this is one reason I used "almost meaningless" in the preamble) because:
        * it's per annum (while a corp cash reserves are absolute)
        * doesn't represent the "sale value of the country"

        --
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford