Can a “Dracula Strategy” Bring Trans-Pacific Partnership into the Sunlight?

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http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/11/28-4


President Barack Obama attends the Trans-Pacific Partnership meeting in Yokohama, Japan, on November 14, 2010. (Photo by Pete Souza)

While the election season seized everyone’s attention, government officials and 600 official corporate “advisors” were working behind closed doors to complete the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Negotiations have been cloaked in unprecedented secrecy and its proponents have mislabeled the TPP as a “free trade” agreement. In reality, the TPP is about much more than trade. It threatens a stealthy, slow-motion corporate coup d'etat, formalizing and locking in corporate rule over most aspects of our lives.

Thirteen years ago, at the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Seattle Ministerial, a similar threat in the form of a massive expansion of the powers and scope of the WTO was stopped.

At the Battle in Seattle, the immovable object called grassroots democracy was victorious over the allegedly unstoppable force of corporate-led globalization. The “Doha Round,” which followed two years later and continued the attempt to expand the WTO’s reign, was also derailed thanks to tenacious campaigning by organizations and activists worldwide.

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1. K&R