I wonder how these people manage to sleep at night. Just how much of a backhander does it take for someone to support such obvious corporate greed?
TPP treaty nearly ready to roll over us, says Oz minister
An Australian government minister has said he expects the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement to be finalised soon. Talks on the treaty – which has been criticised for following a corporate America agenda on issues like patents, copyright law, and investor-state dispute settlement – stalled late last year. At …
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Monday 13th January 2014 00:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
There's corporate greed on both sides. It's just different corporations.
Australia is (for reasons best known only to themselves) trying to sell sugar. A commodity with little value add. In exchange for selling the US sugar, it will impose US defined rules on IP. As the majority of IP is owned by US corporations, the balance of benefit is to the US.
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Sunday 12th January 2014 23:23 GMT Breen Whitman
Well, for Australia ad New Zealand its only a matter of time before US attack drones are criusing the pacific skies looking for copyrght infringers and taking out the infringing dwelling the IP address belongs too.
Ozzies and NZ'ers aren't US citizens so they can be taken out with impunity.
At the very least Ozzies and Kiwis will end up in Guantanamo Bay. Mark my words.
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Monday 13th January 2014 04:08 GMT Brad Ackerman
Absent our continued propping-up of certain Floridian families (who were allegedly more important to President Clinton than spending time with his mistress), the US would be buying much of its sugar from Brazil, not Australia. Also, a good amount of sugar currently being bought in Canada would be bought in the US instead—those sugar quotas and tariffs have been causing the US to hemorrhage food-production jobs.
What I'd want to see from a hypothetical trade treaty that wasn't just a giveaway to the MAFIAA: ditch the Jones Act, Buy America Act, and Fly America Act; eliminate the aforementioned sugar supports; give states the choice between allowing gambling and banning it (not, say, allowing a state-run lottery but no private-sector gaming); freedom of movement; and maybe even burying FACTA. Sadly, to get these things, we'd apparently need to actually exercise the option of ejecting the entire House and one-third of the Senate in an even-year election, which never seems to happen no matter how crappy our representation in DC is.
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Monday 13th January 2014 05:54 GMT Lapun Mankimasta
Free Trade and the United States? The two concepts just don't mix, like oil and water. How long has the US been locking trading partners out of their markets with vast subsidies to their own products and simultaneously demanding unfettered access to others' markets? They make the European Community look like rabid free-marketers.
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Monday 13th January 2014 06:43 GMT Anonymous Coward
Two whitewashes
The first was the ashes where Oz won but the second is US 1,000,000 OZ Nil.
Well Aussies, you don't knowe it yet but you are about to become the 51st state, NZ will hold out a little longer.
Soon Oz schools won't be playing Rugby, Aussie rules or Cricket but American Footie and Little League Baseball.
The assimilation into the Borg, aka US society is almost upon them.
I really thought you lot down under would have the balls to standup to US IMperialism. Ned Kelly will be turning in his grave.