Tag: TPP

WERU News Report 12/11/13

Producer/Host: Amy Browne

Segment 1: An update today on the re-write of Maine’s mining regulations. As we reported last week, the Board of Environmental Protection met to discuss further changes to the proposed rules they will be presenting to the legislature when they reconvene. The changes are considered substantive and therefore must be put out for further public comment. Lindsay Newland Bowker, Environmental Risk Manager with Bowker Associates joins us again today, with her thoughts about the meeting, and the proposed changes. Includes excerpts from a video of the meeting, shot by Eric Tuttle. Watch the meeting here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkInaDIkP7M&feature=youtu.be

Segment 2: Local residents will have an opportunity to learn more about the TPP, and voice their opinions, at a public hearing with the Maine Citizens Trade Policy Commission, in Belfast tomorrow. The committee’s co-chairs,
Senator Troy Jackson and Representative Sharon Treat say that the meeting will “broadly focus on the topics of food and seafood safety, specific impacts on Maine agriculture and such food policy issues such as buying local and GMO and other food labeling policies as they pertain to the TransPacific Partnership Agreement (TPP).” Here to tell us more, is Ridgely Fuller, who describes herself as “Simply a Very Concerned Belfast Resident” FMI: http://www.maine.gov/legis/opla/citpol.htm

WERU News Report 11/13/13

Producer/Host: Amy Browne

Wikileaks today made public one section of a highly secretive trade agreement currently under negotiation. The Trans-Pacific Partnership –or TPP has been called “NAFTA on steroids”. It is being negotiated by 12 countries, with a combined gross domestic product totally 40% of the world’s economy. Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison (D) has called it “largest corporate power grab you never heard of.”

Only 3 people from each participating country have been allowed to see the full agreement, but wikileaks managed to obtain a copy of intellectual properties rights section.

WikiLeaks’ Editor-in-Chief Julian Assange stated: “The US administration is aggressively pushing the TPP through the US legislative process on the sly.” The advanced draft of the Intellectual Property Rights Chapter, published by WikiLeaks on 13 November 2013, provides the public with the fullest opportunity so far to familiarise themselves with the details and implications of the TPP.”

The non-partisan citizen advocacy group Public Citizen has analyzed the document, and determined that the “Leaked Documents Reveal Obama Administration (is) Push(ing) for Internet Freedom Limits, (and) Terms That Raise Drug Prices” We spoke with Public Citizen’s Peter Maybarduk earlier today, to learn more about that, and what else the leaked documents reveal: