TPP Negotiators Completely Ignored Public Interest Groups At Last Negotiations

from the they-don't-care dept

Mon, Dec 16th 2013 4:04pm — Mike Masnick

We've noted in the past how little the USTR and other country negotiators wanted to hear from various "civil society" or public interest groups during the various negotiating rounds. However, at least they made some attempt to set up "stakeholder engagement" periods, in which concerned organizations could present their arguments. However, it appears that all that went completely out the window at the last negotiations in Singapore. According to a report from Deborah Gleeson, who was there, this time around, those groups were basically shunned entirely:

While civil society stakeholders have always had a rather marginal role in the negotiations, at most previous rounds there have been opportunities for academics and NGO representatives to participate formally in the process.

But the meeting in Singapore had a very different feel. This time stakeholders had no role as participants and no avenues for interacting with negotiators except through personal contacts.

It was clear that ministers were getting down to business. And it was even more difficult than usual to get any information about what was happening.

Basically, the negotiators confirmed what many people knew was going on all along. Negotiators have never shown any actual interest in taking the concerns of these groups seriously. The meetings have always been for show, and now that it's time to "get down to business" apparently those groups can be ignored entirely.

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Filed Under: civil society, negotiations, public interest, tpp, ustr

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out_of_the_blue, 16 Dec 2013 @ 4:56pm

You keep telling us about reaction and public relations, NOT what's in this monster.
And it's the worst pro-corporate, anti-sovereignty "agreement" between our supposedly Public Servant politicians and the legal fictions of amoral soulless money-machines called corporations. Your brief and glossy focus on specific little groups who've been ignored only subtracts from what's already out about the danger to the 99%. Try this:

The Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty is the complete opposite of 'free trade'
The TPP would strip our constitutional rights, while offering no gains for the majority of Americans. It's a win for corporations

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/19/trans-pacific-partnership-corporate -usurp-congress

Anyone can be a "Venture Capitalist": all it takes is more money than honest laborers could ever set aside out of what they EARN. A lack of conscience is helpful too, but a pile of inherited money is the key.

12:56:06[n-137-6]
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Dec 2013 @ 5:18pm

So who exactly was *in* Singapore and was "ignored"? Name the names.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Dec 2013 @ 5:29pm

Re:
It's a secret.
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silverscarcat (profile), 16 Dec 2013 @ 5:42pm

Re: Re:
Dammit, Xellos!
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Dec 2013 @ 5:47pm

Re: You keep telling us about reaction and public relations, NOT what's in this monster.
As crazy as your writing style is, this comment is actually pretty on-topic and contains a surprising lack of contrarianism for its own sake.

It's still probably going to get reported, but for what it's worth, I think this is one of your better comments.
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That One Guy (profile), 16 Dec 2013 @ 5:55pm

Re: You keep telling us about reaction and public relations, NOT what's in this monster.
Well, except TD has done multiple articles discussing the very, very few details that have managed to slip out, and all of them note how utterly bad the 'partnership' would be for pretty much everyone not a multinational corporation.

http://www.techdirt.com/blog/?tag=tpp
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CK20XX (profile), 16 Dec 2013 @ 6:25pm

Aye, there's the rub.
Even when he has a valid point to make, he acts like he's the first person to have thought of it. As long as he thinks he's the only smart person on the planet, he's going to deserve all the report votes he gets. He condemns himself to irrelevance because he's wrong even when he's right.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Dec 2013 @ 6:25pm

Isn't this the way that virtually all legislation is passed, with the public locked out and the moneyed interests the only ones to have any influence?
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Dec 2013 @ 6:33pm

Re: You keep telling us about reaction and public relations, NOT what's in this monster.
Well, if they would release the documents first then maybe we can actually discuss them.

but what we have now is not democracy. We have documents with laws that we, the public, are expected to be subject to being negotiated by legislators and corporate interests without public awareness over the contents of those documents. That's makes this whole thing even more infuriating.

and if we aren't able to understand the laws then why would they write the laws ambiguously so that the public, being subject to the consequences of these laws, can't understand them? Why not write the laws clearly so that they could be properly and easily interpreted by the public instead of us having to guess how a court may interpret some intentionally obscure poorly defined paragraph that no one knows how a court may interpret?

Also, last minute changes to the laws should be prohibited. Every change should delay the passage of the laws by at least two weeks (depending on how big the change is) to allow the public the opportunity to digest the change and organize a protest. That's what should happen if laws are intended to be written in the public interest. But laws are not intended for the interest of the public. They are intended for the interests of the government-industrial complex. That's why copy'right' lasts way too long and kept getting retroactively extended.

and this nonsense that we can't understand how the laws serve the public interest as well as members of the government-industrial complex is nonsense. We are a better authority over our interests than the government-industrial complex. So why are industry and government discussing laws in secret without inviting us the public?
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Dec 2013 @ 7:20pm

Re: Re:
Sounds like it's a secret who made up this silly rumor.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Dec 2013 @ 11:57pm

Re: Re: Re:
From the link:

Deborah Gleeson is a lecturer in Public Health at La Trobe University.
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The Conscious Catholic, 18 Dec 2013 @ 6:26am

And you acting like this is new Mike?
Of course negotiators outside of Japan care less, its congress we should be pushing, none of it was "just for show", it was more like "pointing out the obvious"
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