Leaked Memo Indicates Obama to Give Transnational Corporations Governmental Powers Superseding US Sovereignty

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

At one time when anyone talked about how the attendees at Bilberberg conferences were creating a new world financial order, I thought that they were wearing a tin hat and getting transmissions from Mars.  And I still think Lyndon LaRouche is some sort of political zombie, whose followers have entered a twilight zone.

However, given that The Huffington Post (HP) has just revealed a leaked memo that President Obama is negotiating granting governmental powers that supersede sovereignty to international corporations, it might just be time to stock up on tin foil.  It's not new that the super-trade agreements such as NAFTA prohibit states and local entities from suing foreign companies in certain circumstances.
What is news is that the Obama administration is backing an international court that would have the right to override national laws in favor of corporations.  The implications are staggering for the environment, financial oversight and unions, according to the Huffington Post.Even life-saving medicine could be monopolized and raised to a level that would make some vital medications unaffordable to all but those with wealth or top insurance policies. According to The HP, the Obama administration has been pursuing:

…efforts in other international negotiations to establish controversial medical patents that grant companies long-term monopolies on life-saving medications. Those monopolies increase drug prices, which impede access to medications, particularly in developing nations. The World Health Organization and dozens of nonprofit public health groups have objected to the standards sought by the Obama administration. Two United Nations groups recently urged global governments not to agree to trade terms currently being advocated by the Obama administration, on the grounds that such rules would hurt public health.

As I noted in a BuzzFlash at Truthout commentary on June 11, I have come to see the nations of the world more and more at the mercy of an international global corporate and financial elite – and this leaked memo provides more fodder for that theory.  Americans, if the agreement is reached, won't even have the right to hold foreign corporations accountable in US courts for many egregious violations:

The irony is that the right-wing of America has long despised the United Nations, but the current reality of economic management of the earth is falling into the hands of a few elite institutions, developed regions (call them nations if you will), and international financial firms and corporations.  Call it the United Global Elite instead of the United Nations.

Members of the global elite, as BuzzFlash at Truthout has mentioned before, are more at home with each other than with the other 99% of their own countries. The G-8, the G-20, call them what you will, but the economic fate of nations is decided to a great degree at international meetings of the haves.

This is not a conspiracy theory. It is the result of a world of global trade, finances, and marketing that is not confined to national boundaries. Yes, nations have distinct legal systems, but their financial fates and corporate legal disputes with local, state and federal governments are more and more determined by decisions made at a global level by individuals at a great distance from working people - or the person trying to survive on subsistence living.

The HP states bluntly:

A critical document from President Barack Obama's free trade negotiations with eight Pacific nations was leaked online early Wednesday morning, revealing that the administration intends to bestow radical new political powers upon multinational corporations, contradicting prior promises….

Trans-Pacific negotiations have been taking place throughout the Obama presidency. The deal is strongly supported by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the top lobbying group for American corporations. Obama's Republican opponent in the 2012 presidential elections, Mitt Romney, has urged the U.S. to finalize the deal as soon as possible.

So the same group of people who have viciously derided the notion of the United Nations encroaching on US unilateral power are now eager to give up chunks of our local, state and national legal recourse to an international tribunal, so as to benefit corporations?

No, this isn't some tin foil hat conspiracy.  Under President Obama and the Republicans, apparently we are about to surrender portions of our legal system that protect our health, environment, financial system and working conditions to a corporate driven international tribunal.

"Bush was better than Obama on this," said Judit Rius, U.S. manager of Doctors Without Borders Access to Medicines Campaign, referring to the medication rules as described in The HP. "It's pathetic, but it is what it is. The world's upside-down."

Yes, the world's upside down indeed and the myth of the US as a nation determining its own destiny is being surrendered to global corporate and financial behemoths who want us out of their way.
Also See News Release From Public Citizen. Click here.