Obama Secrecy Hides 'Assault on Democratic Government'

Democratic representative for Florida's 9th congressional district  Alan Grayson ramps up the pressure on the Obama administration to release the text of Trans-Pacific Partnership, the secretive free trade agreement amid intensifying controversy over the administration's transparency record and its treatment of classified information.

From the Huffington Post

Cartoons Exhibition Opening

TPPA Cartoons

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Exhibition Opening

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Friday June 14th

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5.30 p.m.

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WEA hall

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 59 Gloucester Street

Christchurch

The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA), currently under negotiation between New Zealand, the US and ten other Asia/Pacific countries, poses a grave danger to our economy, our environment, our health and our ability to shape our own future.

Here are some of the reasons why

• Most restrictions on foreign investment will be frozen and rolled back even further. 

• Big overseas companies will be able to sue the New Zealand government for millions in damages in secretive offshore tribunals, claiming that new laws and regulations (for example, a ban on fracking, smoking control laws, or a cap on electricity prices) have seriously undermined the value of their investments. 

• Medicines will become more expensive as big pharmaceutical companies gain more influence over PHARMAC, and restrictions are placed on generic medicines 

• Copyright laws will be toughened and more harshly enforced, restricting internet freedom and access to information, costing libraries, schools, and businesses, and stifling innovation. 

• Parallel importing will be banned, meaning that New Zealanders, especially the poor, will have to pay far more for all sorts of ordinary products. 

• Foreign banks, insurance companies and money traders will gain more powers to challenge laws designed to prevent another financial crisis; and overseas property dealers could contest moves to burst the property bubble, such as a capital gains tax.

Help with the publicity 

download and distribute the flyer 

This exhibition is of the cartoons entered into a national contest organised by It’s Our Future www.itsourfuture.org.nz.

The exhibition is touring the country. The winning cartoon, by Mike Moreu, is above

Call to reject G8’s proposed transparency initiative for land transactions

The G8 is currently discussing an “initiative to increase transparency of land transactions and tenure”, which is to be launched at the G8 summit in June 2013. 
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We strongly reject and condemn the G8’s proposed transparency initiative for the following reasons:

• Transparency – and the G8 initiative – will not stop land and resource grabbing

• The G8 has no democratic legitimacy to make decisions about land, food and nutrition

• The G8 initiative on transparency bypasses and undermines the CFS (Guidelines on the Tenure of Land Fisheries and Forests)

We therefore call upon the members of the G8 to:

• Abandon all plans to establish the proposed initiative

• Comply with their commitments arising from endorsing the CFS Tenure Guidelines, inter alia by supporting the financial Facility proposed by FAO

• Promote true accountability by regulating investors and companies based in G8 countries to disclose their involvement in land and resource grabs, and hold them legally accountable for abuses of tenure and human rights.

• Stop the implementation of the cooperation frameworks of the G8 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition in Africa, as well as the negotiation of new frameworks that undermine sustainable small-scale food production and local food systems.

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