Tobacco: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Those pre-TPP cases are nothing compared to the future combined scope of TPP (Pacific), TTIP (Europe) and RCEP (China, Korea, India, and other Asian countries). Never say there is nothing you can do. Tell other people about ISDS. Share the videos [1][2][3][4]. Jon Oliver's video [4] about the Philip Morris tobacco ISDS lawsuit against Australia (for brown paper packaging) caused such an outcry that TPP negotiators were forced to exclude the entire tobacco industry from ISDS. This is the first time such an industry-specific carve-out has appeared in a trade agreement. [1] [link] [2] [link] [3] [link] [4] [this video]

The comic[1] that I posted in the previous thread has a nice overview about the situation. The specific issue the EFF article is pointing out is how the ISDS is designed to trumps national sovereignty, so business can strong-arm countries into removing any law they don't like. It works more or less like this: 1) pass TPP as a treaty , which by definition has the same power as a constitutional amendment. (this is probably a serious bug in the constitution). This means TPP trums congress. 2) TPP sets up an international tribunal (ISDS) that hears complaints from businesses. (i.e. "Australia is hurting our tobacco sales with their plain packaging laws"[2]) 3) The tribunal, as mentioned in this article, would be staffed by, "three private-sector attorneys who take turns being the judge and the corporate advocate." This conflict of interest would be a serious violation of ethics requirements in most legal systems. 4) The tribunal rules that your local law violates some foreign requirement, as determined by the ISDS and their business-assigned judges, and the local legislature is forced to repeal the law. ("Australia's plain packaging laws is seizing the trademarks of Philip Moriss, in violation of a 1993 trade agreement if we carefully abuse the agreement's language") That's the short version, and I'm leaving out some details, of course. It should work as a decent overview of ISDS is a threat to national sovereignty. [1] [link] [2] this example is covered well by John Oliver: [VID

Narratives of doom can lead to paralysis. Better to remember that the past is reversible by action, as described in this review of Public Citizen's yeoman effort to raise TPP awareness and decipher the implications of draft texts, [link] "Enlisting a core band of labor, environmental, and community allies, the dozen trade-watching stalwarts at Public Citizen divided into five teams and went after the Brobdingnagians of global corporate power ... it's important to spread the story of the progressive coalition's successful confrontation with the Global Goliath. Its methods and achievements give us a new template for organizing (and winning) future populist challenges to the corporate order. And the breadth, depth, and intensity of this effort show what it will take to forge a real populist movement--multifaceted and with the long-term capacity to pursue our country's deep democratic principles. We can get there if we build on what we learn--and keep pushing." Do you remember Jon Oliver's video on tobacco lobbyists suing Australia for plain-paper packaging, [this video] ? That ISDS video got so much attention that the TPP excludes the entire tobacco industry from suing government with lawsuits like [link] . To slow/stop the TPP, public interest stakeholders need to lobby corporations to take a stand and declare their position on freedom of speech, freedom to tinker, freedom to compete against all business models. Wikipedia can go dark for one day a week, to raise awareness of the TPP

Absolutely! When UK Parliament wanted Zuk to answer some tough question about his company facilitating electoral fraud, he simply refused to show up. Even first world nations struggle in dealing with American corporation, which often act as if they are above the law. God forbid you are a developing nation. British American Tabacco has taken poor developing nations to court for trying to ban children from smoking (!!) and got compenation and the law repealed [this video] I am not even mentioning illegal stuff: bribes, threats, drone strikes, strong-arming, etc. Even the EU was strong armed when it comes to GPS: [link] Those that think that American economic advantage was won in a 'fair game' are super naive