Monsanto leading super-secret 'above Congress' Obama trade scheme to outlaw GMO labeling worldwide

Monday, September 09, 2013 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: TPP, GMO labeling, Monsanto

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(NaturalNews) It's called the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), and it's a super secret trade pact being negotiated completely outside of law, with no congressional authority but with the aim of forcing nations around the world to ban GMO labeling, embrace Monsanto's GMO crops and keep pharmaceutical prices artificially high to enrich the world's medication monopolists.

A purely executive creation of the Office of the United States Trade Representative -- i.e. created outside of law with zero public accountability -- the TPP involves White House loyalists running around the world, strong-arming over a dozen nations into signing on to a corporate domination agreement knowingly misnamed "free trade."

Details of the TPP are so secret that even members of Congress are not allowed to review them or disclose them. What we know about the TPP has only come from leaks, as the full text of the entire agreement is being kept not only from Congress but also the American people. Yet over 600 corporate CEOs -- including CEOs of companies that have been repeatedly found guilty of felony crimes in America -- have been allowed to influence the details of the TPP agreements. Monsanto, Wal-Mart and Big Pharma corporations are reportedly given top influence positions in this super-secret Obama organization that hands the future of the world over to the most evil corporations of all time.

GMO labeling to be illegal, generic drugs to be all but shut down

The countries currently involved in the TPP include the United States, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. More are being bullied into signing the agreement with each passing month. Although the exact language of the TPP is a tightly-protected secret, it is reported that the TPP will require:

• Dropping of all bans on GMOs. All countries signing the TPP must allow GMOs to be grown in their country and secretly used throughout the food supply -- all GMO labeling will be outlawed.

• Shutting down all generic drug manufacturers who make "copycat" drugs that compete with the monopoly patents of top U.S. drug makers.

• Redefining resistance against GMOs as "anti-free trade practices" that can result in economic sanctions against nations that attempt to ban GMOs.

• The outlawing of "Fair Use" of copyrighted material. Anyone using an image, a short video clip, an audio clip, etc., would be criminalize and possibly arrested and imprisoned under the TPP.

• Flooding the U.S. market with polluted, unsafe food products from nations that have virtually no enforcement of regulations on pesticides and herbicides. As Nationofchange.org reports, "[Corporations] are carefully crafting the TPP to ensure that citizens of the involved countries have no control over food safety, what they will be eating, where it is grown, the conditions under which food is grown and the use of herbicides and pesticides."

• Banning people from using the internet if they engage in Fair Use of copyrighted material. This would shut down virtually the entire alternative media, many blogs, and silence most critics of the global corporate cabal.

• Forcing member nations to criminalize small-scale copyright infringement such as someone sharing a music file with a friend. Domineering copyright enforcement provisions are being influenced by the MPAA which has also been given extraordinary influence over the language of the TPP.

• Vastly reducing banking regulations, allowing criminal banksters to steal even more money globally while facing no repercussions for their actions. "The agreement would also be a boon for Wall Street and its campaign to water down regulations put in place after the 2008 financial crisis," writes Wallach in the NY Times. "Among other things, it would practically forbid bans on risky financial products, including the toxic derivatives that helped cause the crisis in the first place."

Essentially, take every criminal corporation you can imagine, make a list of all their most evil priorities to dominate and enslave humankind, and write them all down. That's the TPP. It is the executive enforcement of a totalitarian wish list of corporate evil to dominate and enslave humankind. (No wonder Obama doesn't want you to be able to read it...)

Maybe this is why the TPP is being referred to as the "Death Star" of our modern economy.

Learn more about the TPP in this video:



Or see more videos about the TPP here:
http://www.exposethetpp.org/TPPMedia2.html

Monsanto, GMOs and how the TPP would forbid GMO labeling globally

The best information on the GMO side of all this comes from a site called Nation Of Change. This page describes the implications of the TPP on GMOs and how the TPP would globally ban GMO labeling:

• The labeling of foods containing GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) will not be allowed. Japan currently has labeling laws for GMOs in food. Under the TPP Japan would no longer be able to label GMOs. This situation is the same for New Zealand and Australia. In the US we are just beginning to see some progress towards labeling GMOs. Under the TPP GMO labels for US food would not be allowed.

• In April 2013, Peru placed a 10-year moratorium on GMO foods and plants. This prohibits the import, production and use of GMOs in foods and GMO plants and is aimed at safeguarding Peru's agricultural diversity. The hope is to prevent cross-pollination with non-GMO crops and to ban GMO crops like Bt corn. What will become of Peru's moratorium if the TPP is passed?

Read more at:
http://www.nationofchange.org/trans-pacific-...

Big handout to Big Pharma

Under the terms of the TPP, drug companies could force member nations to keep drug costs artificially high, thereby enriching the profits of Big Pharma. The TPP Timeline reveals that PhRMA, the lobby group representing the top drug companies and vaccine manufacturers, has special influence over the TPP.

As written in the NY Times, "Pharmaceutical companies, which are among those enjoying access to negotiators as 'advisers,' have long lobbied against government efforts to keep the cost of medicines down. Under the [TPP] agreement, these companies could challenge such measures by claiming that they undermined their new rights granted by the deal."

The intellectual property provisions of the TPP are also a big handout to Big Pharma. They allow drug companies to shut down generic drug manufacturers that are currently keeping medication costs low in many member nations. Under the TPP, drug companies like Merck would be able to enforce global monopoly pricing, even across poor nations where the costs of a month's medications would vastly exceed a typically monthly income.

But that's how Big Pharma operates: the goal of the entire industry is to extract as much human wealth from the planet as possible, regardless of the true cost in human suffering or global chemical pollution from pharmaceutical manufacturing.

All this could be forced upon the world without even a debate in Congress. "Mr. Obama wants the agreement to be given fast-track treatment on Capitol Hill," write Wallach and Beachy in the NY Times. "Under this extraordinary and rarely used procedure, he could sign the agreement before Congress voted on it. And Congress's post-facto vote would be under rules limiting debate, banning all amendments and forcing a quick vote."

"The secrecy of the Trans-Pacific Partnership process represents a huge assault on the principles and practice of democratic governance. That is untenable in the age of transparency, especially coming from an administration that is otherwise so quick to trumpet its commitment to open government."

In another op-ed published in the Bangkok Post, Wallach writes "Another leaked portion of the TPP text would take aim at policies to control medicine costs. Pharmaceutical companies are among the firms enjoying privileged access to TPP negotiators as official 'advisers'. They have long lobbied against government efforts to keep the cost of medicines down. Their goal is to keep their already unaffordably high profit margins up. One leaked TPP text reveals terms that would allow pharmaceutical firms to challenge the measures that the US government uses domestically to negotiate lower medicine costs for Medicare, Medicaid and veterans' health programmes."

Learn more at: www.citizen.org/TPP

So secret that even Congress is not allowed to see it

The federal government of the USA has, of course, become a super-secret corporate mafia that answers to no one. So when it came time to create the TPP and force U.S. corporate imperialism upon the nations of the world, Congress was left completely out of the loop. The TPP was dreamed up entirely by the executive branch without a single vote ushering it into existence. It answers to no law and has zero transparency. No representative of the People votes on its provisions. There is no oversight. There is no recourse for the public to challenge its language. The TPP exists utterly outside the boundaries of government and of U.S. law, including the Constitution.

"This is astounding, given that the US Constitution provides Congress exclusive authority over trade policy," writes Wallach in the Bangkok Post.

This idea of total secrecy with zero oversight from Congress or the public is to offensive to the fundamental ideas of democracy that 132 members of Congress signed on to this letter demanding transparency over the language of the TPP. The letter was utterly ignored by the Obama administration, once again proving it is willing to sell out the American people for corporate interests.

"While the agreement could rewrite broad sections of nontrade policies affecting Americans' daily lives, the administration also has rejected demands by outside groups that the nearly complete text be publicly released," write Lori Wallach and Ben Beachy in a NY Times op-ed.

"This covert approach is a major problem because the agreement is more than just a trade deal. Existing and future American laws must be altered to conform with these terms, or trade sanctions can be imposed against American exports," they add.

In another op-ed published in the Bangkok Post, Wallach writes, "A big-business-dominated group of more than 600 official US trade 'advisors' enjoy privileged access to TPP texts and negotiators.

Congressman declares TPP as "assault on democratic government"

After years of attempts by members of Congress to even see the TPP, finally one congressman was able to review only a few select sections of the agreement. That congressman's name is Alan Grayson.

He immediately characterized it as an "assault on democratic government." Watch his video here.

The Obama administration threatened Grayson if he tried to release any of the information he saw by calling the TPP "classified" information. (Yeah, national security and all that.) This is, of course, a runaway abuse of power by the federal government as well as yet another use of the police state secrecy tactics that have already made our government utterly unaccountable to the People. When the government doesn't want the public to see something it's doing, it simply slaps the "classified" label on the project and proceeds to engage in wild, runaway criminality with absolutely no repercussions.

"What I saw was nothing that could possibly justify the secrecy that surrounds it," Grayson said. "It is ironic in a way that the government thinks it's alright to have a record of every single call that an American makes, but not alright for an American citizen to know what sovereign powers the government is negotiating away."

"Having seen what I've seen, I would characterize this as a gross abrogation of American sovereignty," Grayson told HuffPost. "And I would further characterize it as a punch in the face to the middle class of America. I think that's fair to say from what I've seen so far. But I'm not allowed to tell you why!"

Read some of the leaked text from the TPP here:
http://tppinfo.org/resources/leaked-texts-co...

Or learn more about the TPP at:
http://www.exposethetpp.org

Take action

If you wish, you may sign this online petition organized by Public Knowledge
http://www.publicknowledge.org/Tell-White-Ho...

Public Citizen also hosts their own petition on the subject. Check it out here:
http://action.citizen.org/p/dia/action3/comm...

Keep reading Natural News for more updates on the TPP.

Sources for this story include:
http://www.exposethetpp.org/
http://www.citizen.org/TPP
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/opinion/ob...
http://tppinfo.org/resources/leaked-texts-co...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/18/ala...
http://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/3...
http://citizen.typepad.com/eyesontrade/2013/...