Twitter action called for in blocking a dodgy internation trade deal

Guest blog post from Phil Fletcher of Barnet Green Party

URGENT!

 

Hi Folks,

 

Received this rather worrying email. The European parliament have voted not to have a debate on CETA [Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement — Canada and the EU] and are voting on Wednesday.If you’ve got the time, please take part in this twitter action. If you haven't the time, could you please forward this on to someone who has?

 

Cheers

 

Phil Fletcher

(Barnet Green Party)

 

Please help stop CETA [Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement] by tweeting your MEPs and asking them to vote  FOR the Greens' proposal that the question of the legality of ICS in CETA to be referred to the European Court of Justice. 

Thank you

Laura

MEPs voted on Monday 21.11.2016 afternoon on whether there should be a debate on the issue of the European Parliament asking for a European Court of Justice decision on the legality of ICS (ISDS [Investor-State Dispute Settlement] in CETA)

before the European Parliament actually votes on this,  in Strasbourg , on Wed.

The proposal for a debate was rejected by 184 votes to  170 votes.

Consequently, there will NO debate before the vote on Wednesday.

(How bad can the institution of the EU get...?)

So it would be useful to contact your MEPs quickly and ask them to vote  FOR the Greens' proposal that the question of the legality of ICS in CETA to be referred to the European Court of Justice. 

Let's see what we can achieve.

Below is some stuff to help,  including tweets 

and  a list of key MEPs to contact

Linda 

Tweet particularly these UK MEPs. See below for suggested tweets

@sajjadkarimMEP 

@syedkamall

@jfostermep 

@C_Stihler_MEP

@davidmartinMEP 

@derekvaughan

@gleniswillmott 

@LindaMcAvanMEP

@maryhoneyball

@richardhowitt

@JimNicholsonMEP

@juliegirling

@DavidHannanMEP

@EmmaMcClarkin

Mega bucks business not good for NHS

From Megan Bentall of petitioning website 38 Degrees

Here’s a scary prospect:

The NHS being carved up by more and more private companies. Coke or other mega corporations taking our government to the cleaners because they don’t like how strict our laws are.

Sound far-fetched? A huge new trade deal is being negotiated right now between the US and the EU, that could make that scary prospect a reality. [1] The deal’s called the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) - its a fancy name for a sinister trade deal.

Under the deal, US healthcare companies trying to provide NHS services could sue our government for passing a law to put a stop to privatisation. Or big businesses could sue the government for raising the minimum wage - if it hurts their profits. [2]

Business Minister Vince Cable’s department is in charge of TTIP in the UK. He’ll decide what we sign up to - he could make or break the deal. If he hears how important TTIP is to the public, he might do the right thing and fix or scrap TTIP.

A huge petition is the first step in showing Vince that we’re watching him closely. Can you take two minutes to add your name to a petition telling him to fix or scrap TTIP now? Click here:
https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/petition-ttip

It’d be easy to fix this deal. Vince could take a stand against businesses being able to sue the government, like Germany has done recently. [3] Or he could call for the NHS and public services to be completely removed from the deal, like the French government did when they got some areas excluded. [4]

So let’s push TTIP into the spotlight and force Vince’s hand. Already thousands of us have chipped in and raised £100,000 for an ad campaign launching in the Autumn. [5] But we need to keep the pressure mounting. We need to tell Vince Cable to fix or scrap this deal.

Click here to add your name to the petition:
https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/petition-ttip


Thanks for being involved,

Megan, Susannah, Blanche & the 38 Degrees team


NOTES:
[1] The Independent: British sovereignty ‘at risk’ from EU-US trade deal: UK in danger of surrendering judicial independence to multinational corporations, warn activists:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/british-sovereignty-at-risk-from-euus-trade-deal-uk-in-danger-of-surrendering-judicial-independence-to-multinational-corporations-warn-activists-9057318.html
Open Democracy: On TTIP and the NHS, they are trying to bamboozle us:
https://opendemocracy.net/ournhs/john-hilary/on-ttip-and-nhs-they-are-trying-to-bamboozle-us
[2] Touchstone: Special courts for foreign investors have no place in trade deals:
http://touchstoneblog.org.uk/2013/11/special-courts-for-foreign-investors-have-no-place-in-trade-deals/
[3] ipolitics: Germany throws down gauntlet in CETA investor state negotiations:
http://www.ipolitics.ca/2014/07/27/germany-throws-down-gauntlet-in-ceta-investor-state-negotiations/
[4] Screen Daily: EU-US free trade talks under fire from filmmakers:
http://www.screendaily.com/news/eu-us-free-trade-talks-under-fire/5072471.article
[5] 38 Degrees blog: TTIP fundraiser:
http://blog.38degrees.org.uk/2014/06/17/ttip-fundraiser/

A submission to an EU consultation about 'TTIP'

A submission to an EU consultation about 'TTIP'

TTIP stands for 'Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership' and has already been referred to on this blog site. Now the campaigning organisation 38 Degrees has intervened toward facilitating EU citizen input into this consultation where the EU commissioners have previously hindered Swheatie's involvement.

The text of Swheatie's input appears below, with a link to the John Hilary briefing added.

Swheatie's submission in response to the 'public consultation' on TTIP

A pamphlet by John Hilary of War On Want about the dangers of TTIP listed the TTIP portal of the European Commissioners website and so I went there, aiming to input what I had to say about the matter. Thus I was instantly confronted with an invitation to give feedback on why I was visiting that site that day, and told that the survey should only take me a few minutes.
  
I know that I am a person with a learning difficulty that makes my mental processing among the lowest few percentile but I was appalled at how 'norm-based' that rubbishy survey was. Further, when I had given up on that survey as a complete distraction from my original purpose and attempted to locate any details regarding the deadline for submissions to the 'consultation', I found that the TTIP portal seemed to be designed more to obfuscate than to help with any real consultation.

What I did glean from my perusal of that website was that 'investors' were being presented as angels who must not be abused, and that that is the basis upon which 'Investor-to-State Dispute Settlement' exists, and that there was something about the law operating within a country [rather than any reference to the UN Declaration of Human Rights]. I believe that ISDS could lead to situations like how, historically, Haiti was punished by France for what it had done to free slaves: Haiti was forced to compensate the heirs of slave traders for their 'loss of human cargo'.

As I have stated, I am a person with a learning difficulty. For all the laudable anti-discrimination legislation that the EU has helped bring to the UK, I have not as far as I am aware been helped while the global company ATOS has in effect murdered vulnerable people in its 'disability denial factories' that have apparently been based upon those of American-based insurance company Unum, formerly Unum-Provident. It was only through legal aid that has now been withdrawn that I won my case against ATOS and the Department for Work & Pensions so I got Employment & Support Allowance after having accrued only 17 months total waged employment from November 1977 to early 2009 when I first applied for ESA. [Swheatie forgot to add that apart from 1994 to 1997 at uni as a mature undergraduate, he had been on jobseeker benefits before claiming any disability benefit.]

And in 1978 an Employment Rehabilitation Centre 'Social Worker' told my parents that because I was slow, it would be a waste of public money for me to receive any further government-funded education and training, despite "an academic brain."

In conclusion, while TTIP talks about 'removing barriers to trade', the authors show remarkable ignorance surrounding how physical, economic and environmental barriers turn personal impairments into disabilities. I want more enforcement of existing human rights legislation rather than a charter for human rights abusers to increase the world's injustices in the name of 'free trade'.