One Tiny Change to Just One Word in the Massive |International Agreement Could Send Send You to Jail. It’s Time to Say NO to TPP Here: http://TinyURL.com/No2TPP
By Kurtis Bright
More Sneaky Maneuvering Around the Trans Pacific Partnership Trade Disaster
One tiny change to one word in the massive, heretofore secret, international agreement could have tremendous consequences
By now, you probably have heard of the odious Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement and the underhanded means by which the powers that be are trying to steamroll it into existence. As bad as the TPP is for workers, the economy, human rights and natural health, by changing just one word, from “paragraph” to “subparagraph,” the substance of the criminal penalties section has been drastically altered for the worse.
We do not give active links off the page because we do not want to encourage people to leave – REL The TPP in brief is a massive, 12-nation agreement that would wrest control from elected officials in areas from intellectual property law to pollution standards to food production to the treatment of whistleblowers and give it that control to tribunals of unelected lawyers selected by the very corporations they are purportedly policing.
The creation of the TPP, in the works for over six years now, has been highly secretive with all the major corporate players given a seat at the table in writing the agreement, but with insanely onerous restrictions on who else might have a look. In fact, prior to Congress’ vote to allow the bill “fast-track” status last May, the only way even our elected representatives were allowed to view the text of the agreement was to enter a locked room with no cell phones or recording devices, no aides, and read it on the spot with no opportunity to even make copies.
All of this makes it unsurprising that the this stealth legislation is just getting worse. The document, which has already been signed off by the 12 nations involved but which will subsequently have to be ratified by each nation’s parliament, is currently undergoing what is called “legal scrubbing,” in which all the language is gone over with a fine-tooth comb to make sure it is legal and correct, with supposedly only minor, cosmetic changes happening.
But as the Electronic Freedom Foundation reports, one tiny change, from “paragraph” to “subparagraph” could have frightening consequences. Previously, the language of the document allowed nations to forgo criminal penalties in copyright infringement cases in which no damage to the copyright holder could be proven. Now, nations would be required to impose those criminal penalties–even in cases where no damages have occurred.
The potential ramifications are not hard to imagine. What if a corporation in a signatory country is unhappy with the light in which you blog about, say, a press release of theirs, you could face not only a take-down notice, but actual criminal penalties.
That means fines. That means jail time.
Could there be any more chilling betrayal of that most basic of tenets on which modern governments around the world are based: freedom of speech?
The more you know about the TPP the more obscene the document appears.
But the TPP, while it is steaming on, has not been signed into law yet. Pressure your congressperson or senator by taking action here: http://TinyURL.com/No2TPP Public opinion is enormously important to politicians everywhere. . If enough of us let enough of them know that the price for signing off on this corporate giveaway of our entire nation and everything we stand for is going to cost them their cushy jobs, they will listen.
http://www.anh-usa.org/bad-trade-deal-gets-worse/