TPP and the New Global Corporate Government
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Let me put this in context. Corporate agriculture has always been the enemy of organic farming (and even gardening). From its inception in America in the early 1940s by J.I. Rodale, organic farming and gardening has called out Big Ag for the unnatural, harmful, and sinister system of food production that it is. Big Ag in return has waged a campaign to discredit and destroy first of all J.I. Rodale’s credibility, and then the organic movement as a whole.
I know. I was there for a lot of it. I took my first job at Organic Gardening & Farming magazine, as it was then called, in 1963, and have been associated with organics ever since.
It’s easy to see why Big Ag tried to destroy the organic movement. Big Ag is all about selling agricultural chemicals (and now, GMO seeds). Organics is all about farming without chemicals or GMO seeds. The two systems are diametrically opposed.
Both the organic movement and Big Ag have grown over the years. They remain opposed. Only now, Big Ag is really big, with enormous resources. The FDA is stuffed with Monsanto executives. The global corporate Godzilla runs unchecked through the world, as the FDA’s approval of GMO salmon proves. Its latest scheme is the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Who will challenge this terrible agreement, if not the organic community? Educate yourself, because this really is the Big One. Here is the situation:
“The TPP agreement just recently released is a document of 5,554 pages,” according to Jack Rasmus, writing in teleSUR. “There are 30 separate chapters, not counting special ‘annexes’ and schedules. Then there’s a ‘secret guidance’ document, not yet released, which apparently even members of the US Senate still haven’t seen, according to US Senator, Jeff Sessions.”
Of course, there are official executive summaries of the 5,554 pages, notably by the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office, and statements by President Obama. But readers won’t find out what the TPP is really about in these documents, which are designed to market TPP to the public. In fact, these for public consumption puff pieces are replete with misrepresentations, spin, and outright lies.
However, one statement by Obama is correct. He calls TPP “a new type of trade agreement”. It’s a new type all right.
The TPP is not simply an economic document, about trade in goods, services, and investor money capital flows. TPP is first and foremost a political document. TPP is the latest salvo fired by global corporations against national and popular sovereignty, against Democracy itself. The key to understanding how TPP is about global corporations setting up their own global government is contained in its Chapters 27 and 28.
In chapter 27, TPP provides for a new executive-legislative body whose decisions will usurp national and state-local legislative functions and representative democracy—already under serious attack everywhere by corporate money and other initiatives. And in chapter 28, TPP provides for a new kind of global corporate court system, run by corporate-friendly lawyers and hirelings who will make decisions which cannot be reviewed, appealed, or challenged in existing court systems of any TPP member country. TPP courts will take precedence over US and other national court systems, already under heavy attack by corporate forces vigorously promoting arbitration as a means by which to bypass the formal judicial system in the US.
Chapter 27 establishes a TPP Commission, composed of ministers or officials who oversee the operation of TPP and its future evolution. For the TPP is being called a living agreement, meaning it will change as new members join. What is not explained, however, is whether once it is ratified by Congress, will representatives get to ratify each time it is changed? Or just once at the outset, thereafter allowing corporate lawyers, CEOs, and corporate-owned bureaucrats to change it any way they please later?
According to TPP, the Commission members function as a kind of corporate global Politburo, a legislative committee of the Multinational Corporations of the TPP members, with yet to be defined accompanying executive powers. No separation of powers here.
More important, TPP is totally silent on questions like how will the Commission be determined? What are the terms of office of its members? Who chooses them and how? Can they be relieved and, if so, by whom and according to what process? To whom are they accountable? Can they meet in secret? What are the rules for decision making under which they’ll operate? The TPP is silent on all these questions. How convenient. Perhaps something addressing these questions exists in the mysterious guidance document no one has seen yet. But don’t bet on it.
Most important, it appears the decisions by the Commission are not subject to review, let alone reversal, by Congress or any other existing government legislature. According to the US Congressional Record of November, 10, 2015, at least one US Senator has raised the warning that “we are empowering the TPP countries to create a new Congress of sorts” and a supra-national Commission that “will not be answerable to voters anywhere.”
But TPP proposes not only to negate existing government legislative and executive functions. It even more directly attacks existing judicial institutions and functions. Chapter 28 sets up an independent court system, or tribunals, which will make decisions that existing national judicial systems cannot review or overturn. These tribunals are officially called ISDS panels, for ‘Investor-State Dispute System,’ each of which is composed of three trade and expert representatives. But once again, as in the case of the Commission, Investor-Corporate representatives selected by whom? How? For what terms? Representing whose interests?
Let’s call them what they are: Korporate Kangaroo Kourts that will do most of their work in secret. TPP language allows them to conduct public hearings in public, but it also allows them the option to conduct hearings in total secrecy as well. Guess which they’ll prefer? TPP indicates KKKs may consider requests from the public to provide written views—but “may” does not mean must. It also says final reports will be available to the public—but that’s after their final decisions have been made. Furthermore, “the initial report will be confidential,” while the final report to the public is “subject to the protection of any confidential information in the report.” What’s finally released to the public will no doubt look like extensive black outs in a typical US Freedom of Information Act request.
Here’s another problem: The ISDS-KKK courts allow corporations and investors to sue national governments—i.e. legislatures or executive regulatory agencies—that may try to pass laws or establish rules to protect workers, the environment, or whatever investors and corporations consider to be interfering with their ability to make profits under the TPP. The TPP suits will claim the US government violated the TPP treaty, even though the corporation’s dispute may in fact be between the Investor-Corporation and a state or local government.
This means technically that a corporation-investor that owns farmland in California, for example, can sue the state for imposing water rationing in the drought. That rationing would of course interfere with their profit making under TPP. Or how about a foreign owned restaurant chain in Los Angeles, which just passed a city ordinance calling for a $15 minimum wage? Under TPP, moreover, neither the state of California nor Los Angeles will be able to appear as a direct party to the TPP suit to defend itself, since disputes under TPP are restricted to the Corporation-Investor vs. the national government. So much for local democracy as well under TPP.
All governments exercise legislative, judicial, and executive functions. The TPP establishes on behalf of global corporations all the above. But TPP establishes those functions at the direct expense of existing government institutions, popular sovereignty, and the very idea of democratic representation. TPP’s Commission establishes a corporate pan-global legislature by corporate committee with unknown executive powers as well. Its KKKs clearly violate Article III of the US Constitution establishing an independent judiciary.
The signing of the TPP agreement in Atlanta, Georgia, on Oct. 4, 2015, represents in a sense the founding “Constitutional Convention” of global corporate government. For the economic Corporate Form has clearly outrun the political Government Forms with which it has coexisted for the past two centuries.
All forms of revolution, they say, occur based on the emergence of dual power and new sets of institutions attempting to replace the old. Chapters 27 and 28 of the TPP represent the seed of that emerging corporate dual power. So maybe it’s time for some new popular forms of dual power to stop them as well.
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FDA APPROVES GMO SALMON
The Food and Drug Administration has approved AquAdvantage salmon, a genetically engineered fish developed by AquaBounty Technologies to grow much faster than natural wild salmon. The FDA announced that it met the criteria for approval for safety and effectiveness. It will still be years before it hits markets, as the company needs to build farms to produce and raise the salmon.
Scientists, environmental and consumer groups, and fishermen have responded by lambasting the FDA. This is the first-ever genetically engineered animal, and it was approved for human consumption despite widespread public outcry, risks to wild salmon, and a faulty assessment based on incomplete company data.
Despite this approval, a large segment of the market has already rejected genetically engineered salmon. More than 60 grocery store chains representing more than 9,000 stores across the U.S. have made commitments to not sell the GMO salmon, including Safeway, Kroger, Target, Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, Aldi, and many others.
“Despite FDA’s flawed and irresponsible approval of the first genetically engineered animal for human consumption, it’s clear that there is no place in the U.S. market for genetically engineered salmon,” said Lisa Archer, Food and Technology program director at Friends of the Earth. “People don’t want to eat it and grocery stores are refusing to sell it.”
Seventy-five percent of respondents to a recent New York Times poll said they would not eat genetically engineered salmon, and 1.8 million people sent letters to the FDA opposing approval of the so-called “frankenfish.”
The FDA has said it will probably not require labeling of the fish; however, Alaska, a top wild salmon producer, requires labeling of genetically engineered salmon and momentum is growing for GMO labeling in a number of states across the U.S. and at the federal level.
AquaBounty Technologies’ AquAdvantage® salmon is genetically engineered with the DNA of an eel-like ocean pout to grow faster. At least 35 other species of genetically engineered fish, along with chickens, pigs, and cows, are currently under development, and the FDA’s decision on this genetically engineered salmon application sets a precedent for other genetically engineered fish and animals.
A growing body of science suggests that GMO salmon may pose serious environmental and public health risks, including potentially irreversible damage to wild salmon populations.
“There were over 250 million wild salmon harvested in Alaska and Puget Sound this year. Why should we put this sustainable resource at risk for the benefit of a few multinational corporations that will, sooner or later, introduce GE salmon into their floating feed lots? Americans will be eating synthetic salmon, thinking they are receiving the nutritional benefits of wild salmon,” said Dr. Pete Knutson, owner of Loki Fish Company and Commissioner on the Puget Sound Salmon Commission.
“There’s no place on our dinner plates for genetically engineered fish. We will continue to work to ensure the market, from grocery retailers to restaurants, continues to listen to majority of consumers that don’t want to eat this poorly studied, unlabeled, genetically engineered fish,” said Archer.
More information on health and environmental risks of genetically engineered salmon and a full list of stores that have made commitments to not sell genetically engineered seafood and salmon, letters sent to companies by Friends of the Earth and allies, and a list of coalition partners are available at www.gefreeseafood.org.
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MONSANTO WILL LABEL GMO FOOD—IN AN UNINTELLIGIBLE BLOTCH
Monsanto and its special interest friends have unveiled a new, sneaky approach to hide information about GMOs. They’re offering a “compromise” on the DARK Act, which would require GMO labels on food products, but only if they’re hidden in difficult to read QR codes on the back of a product.
This would be a disaster for our right to know what’s in our food. Instead of clear labels, we would get a complicated black and white dot pattern that needs to be scanned with a smartphone in order to be read. These QR codes are not at all accessible to Americans shopping for food for their families.
That’s why we need everyone to make a phone call to the Senate.
Pick up your phone and dial 1-877-796-1949 to be connected with your Senators so you can let them know you oppose these new efforts by Monsanto to hide information about GMOs in complicated QR codes.
If this “compromise” is accepted, Monsanto can claim that we’ve won and gotten the labeling we’ve demanded. We can’t let that happen. With Big Food using every resource at their disposal to put pressure on the Senate, this deal could go through at any minute.
Our grassroots efforts are our best defense against Monsanto’s big money and corporate lobbying effort.
Please, join the thousands of activists making calls across the country. Dial 1-877-796-1949 and talk to your Senators today.
Thank you for taking action. Paige Richardson, Director, Oregon GMO Right to Know
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NEW FDA CHIEF IS A BIG PHARMA MEGA-LOBBYIST
President Obama’s recent nominee to chair the Food and Drug Administration has drawn harsh criticism for his ties to the pharmaceutical industry, writes Carey Wedler in AntiMedia.
The disapproval grew more justified last week as it was revealed that until this year, nominee Dr. Robert Califf was a board member and consultant for a company whose sole purpose is to help pharmaceutical companies evade and manipulate FDA regulations. He currently serves as the FDA’s deputy commissioner for medical products and tobacco.
Faculty Connection, LLC, where Califf served from 2006 to 2015, claims the company “brings together physicians and researchers from leading academic institutions with pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device clients.”
Faculty Connection, LLC “boasts that its team of ‘practicing university-based physicians and researchers’ provides ‘regulatory consulting,’ including expertise in FDA briefing reviews and other regulatory submissions to the agency.”
Further, an official corporate video notes the company has “served over 175 different pharma, biotech, and medical device firms,” claiming to help faculty — researchers, doctors, and academics — work side-by-side with the pharmaceutical industry.
Califf previously came under fire for helping to establish the Duke Clinical Research Institute, which is funded primarily by pharmaceutical companies. According to a 2014 “Conflict of Interest Disclosure,” Cahill admitted his close connection to the industry. His income is “contractually underwritten in part by several large pharmaceutical companies, including Merck, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, and Novartis. He also receives as much as $100,000 a year in consulting fees from some of those companies, and from others.” The FDA insists Cahill donates his private income to nonprofits.
Even so, Califf’s appointment is hardly surprising. Michael Taylor, the current Deputy Commissioner for Foods at the FDA—also appointed by Barack Obama—used to be Monsanto’s vice president for public policy.
Collusion between corporations and the FDA is widely documented. This influence has presumably contributed to many questionable decisions, such as the FDA’s approval of oxycontin for children or the ongoing approval of countless dangerous drugs that are later recalled.
Bernie Sanders, the Senator from Vermont who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, said last month that he would oppose Dr. Califf’s candidacy because he did not think Dr. Califf would be tough on the issue of rising drug prices.
Thomas Marciniak, a former cardiovascular drug reviewer for the F.D.A., said that he had reviewed several trials conducted by the Duke Clinical Research Institute, the group that Dr. Califf ran, and that he believed the control arm had been compromised to make the drug look better.
Marciniak said he believed drug companies had too much discretion over what data they submit, a power that gives them what he believes is inappropriate sway over the drug approval process.
“The clinical trial system run by drug companies in this world is really broken,” said Marciniak, who left the agency last year. “I think Rob Califf is one of the architects of that. I think he should be held accountable, not appointed to run the F.D.A.”
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FORD FUNDS CLIMATE DENIER GROUP ALEC
The Ford Motor Company, despite its much-hyped commitment to the environment, has been quietly funding the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a group widely criticized for its promotion of climate change denial and for its opposition to the development of renewable alternatives to fossil fuels, according to EcoWatch.
A Ford spokesperson, Christin Baker, confirmed the ALEC grant to the Center for Media and Democracy/PRWatch, but said that the funding was not intended to be used by ALEC to block action on climate change.
“Ford participates in a broad range of organizations that support our business needs, but no organization speaks for Ford on every issue. We do not engage with ALEC on climate change,” said Baker.
Center for Media and Democracy is breaking the story of Ford funding of ALEC as other major international corporations have continued to withdraw financial support from the organization. Since Center for Media and Democracy first launched the ALEC Exposed investigation in 2011, revealing the extensive agenda of the corporate lobbying group, more than 100 corporations have left ALEC, including BP, Occidental, Yahoo, Visa, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Walmart and McDonalds.
In September 2014, Google announced that it would end its ALEC funding. “I think the consensus within the company was that that was some sort of mistake, and so we’re trying to not do that in the future,” Chairman Eric Schmidt told National Public Radio.
Schmidt then slammed ALEC for the deceptive claims it has showcased on climate change, even though “the facts of climate change are not in question anymore. Everyone understands climate change is occurring, and the people who oppose it are really hurting our children and our grandchildren and making the world a much worse place. And so we should not be aligned with such people—they’re just, they’re just literally lying.”
Most recently, Shell Oil announced it would withdraw support for ALEC, telling the Washington Post: “ALEC advocates for specific economic growth initiatives, but its stance on climate change is clearly inconsistent with our own.”
Ford has attempted to present itself as a leader in addressing climate change, in part through its participation in the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC). The compact requires corporate members to address 10 principles concerning human rights, labor standards, anti-corruption, and the environment.
As part of its UNGC commitment, Ford boasts that it “is committed to doing our share to prevent or reduce the potential for environmental, economic and social harm due to climate change.”
Ford’s funding of ALEC is inconsistent with that aim.
At a session held during the 2014 ALEC Annual Meeting in Dallas, Texas, ALEC legislators were repeatedly told: “There is no scientific consensus on the human role in climate change.” At another session during the same conference, legislators heard that: “The idea that there is a ‘scientific consensus’ [on climate change] does not hold up.” ALEC counts more than 2,000 legislators as members and it has touted its reach in Congress with former House Speaker John Boehner plus several GOP members of the Senate and House who have publicly denied climate change.
Despite ALEC’s efforts to promote climate change denial among U.S. politicians, there is in fact wide consensus that the earth is warming because of human activity. Respected scientific bodies including the National Academy of Sciences, the American Medical Association, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, along with 97 percent of climate scientists, agree on this point.
Earlier this year, CMD/PRwatch co-launched a new website that documents the teaching of climate change denial to legislators at ALEC conferences: ALECClimateChangeDenial.org.
ALEC’s next meeting is in Scottsdale, Arizona, at the same time as the UNFCC’s COP21 meeting on climate change will be taking place in Paris, France.
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MEXICAN COURTS HAND MONSANTO A DEFEAT ON GMOS
Lorraine Chow at EcoWatch reports that opponents of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have claimed victory after Mexico’s Supreme Court blocked a move that would allow the cultivation of GMO soy in the Mexican states of Campeche and Yucatan.
In a separate appeals court decision, a federal judge upheld a 2013 ruling that barred companies such as Monsanto and DuPont/Pioneer from planting or selling their GMO corn within the country’s borders.
The court decisions were heralded as a “double whammy” against agribusiness giant Monsanto, according to a celebratory Facebook post from sustainable food advocacy organization GMO Free USA.
According to a report from Mexico News Daily, the ruling favored an injunction filed by Maya beekeepers on the Yucatán peninsula, where honey production and collection is its main industry.
“The decision suspends a permit granted to the agrichemical firm Monsanto to farm genetically modified soybeans on over 250,000 hectares in the region and instructs a federal agency it must first consult with indigenous communities before granting any future permits for transgenic soy farming,” the report said.
Environmental organizations such as Greenpeace, Indignación and Litiga OLE reportedly said that farming GMO soybeans in the region would put honey production and approximately 15,000 Maya farm families at risk due to the use of the herbicide glyphosate (which has been linked to cancer). It was also claimed that soy production would lead to deforestation in Campeche.
Monsanto has since given a response to the decision, denying that its GMO soy has impacted bees, causes deforestation, or damages the honey industry in the two states, Reuters reported.
“We do not accept accusations that put us as responsible for deforestation and illegal logging in the municipality of Hopelchén, Campeche, or any place of the Republic, because our work is rigidly attached to the guidelines provided by law,” the company said in a statement.
As for GMO corn, Sustainable Pulse reported that federal judge Benjamin Soto Sánchez, head of the second Unitarian Court in Civil and Administrative Matters of the First Circuit, “upheld a provisional suspension prohibiting pertinent federal agencies from processing and granting the privilege of sowing or releasing into the environment of transgenic maize in the country.”
This decision came despite 100 challenges by transnational agribusiness interests and the federal government, according to Sustainable Pulse.
According to Al Jazeera, “Fewer than 30 percent of Mexican farmers even use conventional hybrid maize—high-yielding, single-use seeds, which need to be purchased every year,” and prefer “to stick with seeds they can save year to year, often varieties of the native ‘landraces’ of maize the injunction is intended to protect.” Still, Monsanto “has the Mexican market for yellow maize seeds; 90 percent of U.S. maize is in GM seeds, and that is the source for Mexico’s imports of yellow maize.”
Mexico’s initial ban of GMO corn in September, 2013, was overturned in August, 2015, which opened the door for more business opportunities for Monsanto pending favorable later court decisions, as Telesurtv noted. Monsanto has announced that it was seeking to double its sales in the country over the next five years.
However, this latest ruling from the appellate court could drive Monsanto’s ambitions to the ground.
A staunch anti-GMO movement has swelled in the country in order to preserve the country’s unique biodiversity of its staple crop. Lawyer Bernardo Bátiz, advisor to the lead plaintiffs’ organization, Demanda Colectiva, spoke about the significance of the two separate cases.
He said that Mexico is “a country of great biological, cultural, agricultural diversity and [therefore the courts should consider the impact of] planting GMO corn, soybeans or other crops.”
He added, “in a country like ours, among other negative effects that would result, is that Mexican honey would be difficult to keep organic.”
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AGRIBIZ ATTEMPTS TO HIJACK CLIMATE TALKS
Vandana Shiva, writing for EcoWatch, reports that “in 2008, before the climate summit in Copenhagen, I wrote the book Soil Not Oil. It was a time when the intimate connections between climate and agriculture, air and soil were not being recognized in any forum, neither in the negotiations on climate change nor in the climate movement. As we head into the Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris, agri-corporations are attempting to hijack climate talks once again.
“Today we are faced with two crises on a planetary scale—climate change and species extinction. Our current modes of production and consumption are contributing to what climate change scientists term anthropogenic emissions—originating from human activity. If no action is taken to reduce greenhouse gases, we could experience a catastrophic 4 C increase in temperature by the end of the century.
“In addition to global warming, climate change is leading to the intensification of droughts, floods, cyclones and other extreme weather events that are costing lives. What can we do to mitigate this? Like the problem, the solution must be anthropogenic.
“Three years after Rio (1992), the United Nations Leipzig Conference on Plant Genetic Resources assessed that 75 percent of the world’s biodiversity had disappeared in agriculture because of the Green Revolution and industrial farming. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations estimates that 70-90 percent of global deforestation is due to industrial agriculture pushing its monocultures further and further into forests to grow commodities for export—not for food.
“As I wrote in Soil Not Oil, chemical agriculture and a globalized food system are responsible for 40 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. A grain.org report concluded that ‘the current global food system, propelled by an increasingly powerful transnational food industry, is responsible for about half of all human produced greenhouse gas emissions: anywhere between a low of 44 percent to a high of 57 percent.’
This is also where the Gates Foundation, along with the other biotech evangelists of our times, has it completely wrong. Climate-smart agriculture and “One Agriculture,” packaged in a PR bubble, will starve the world and worsen the refugee crisis. The Gates Foundation, pretending to feed the world, is propagating the very source of half the climate problem.
Heartland Institute, the right-wing think tank, is sending a big delegation to the talks to refute global warming science.
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