7 ms·

Read the TPP

249 points by SimplyUseless 11y ago

jsprogrammer 11y ago
It is ridiculous that after months of Obama telling people to "just read it", he dumped the agreement as ~268 separate PDFs. No body has time for that. It's nice that they have pared this down to 31 different sections, but my guess is that they are not showing the full agreement here. It would be much nicer if someone just dumped it all into a single PDF and HTML file. Edit: Care to leave a comment rationalizing your downmods?
- envy2 11y ago
  "He" didn't dump the agreement as separate PDFs; that's how these things are almost always handled because most people involved are focused on specific areas (be they negotiators, interest groups, or concerned citizens). Other governments published the text in exactly the same way [1]. The USTR also published the full text on Medium [2] for anyone who doesn't want to download a PDF. There are plenty of issues worth discussing when it comes to the text itself and the way the original negotiations were conducted, but arguing that the final agreement hasn't been made accessible is really not a legitimate complaint. [1] https://www.mfat.govt.nz/en/about-us/who-we-are/treaty-making-process/trans-pacific-partnership-tpp/text-of-the-trans-pacific-partnership https://www.mfat.govt.nz/en/about-us/who-we-are/treaty-makin... [2] https://medium.com/the-trans-pacific-partnership https://medium.com/the-trans-pacific-partnership
  - jsprogrammer 11y ago
    [0] https://medium.com/the-trans-pacific-partnership https://medium.com/the-trans-pacific-partnership Authorship is claimed as "Barack Obama", @PresidentObama. [1] https://medium.com/@PresidentObama https://medium.com/@PresidentObama (Even includes an avatar of Obama's face.) [2] https://ustr.gov/tpp/ https://ustr.gov/tpp/ The top header claims "Executive Office of The President". [3] https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/trans-pacific-partnership/tpp-full-text https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/tran... Also claims "Executive Office of the President". The US Constitution only grants treaty making powers to the President. Any treaty that claims to come from someone other than the current US President is not and cannot be a valid treaty. Edit: "That’s why I am posting the text of this agreement here for you to read and explore." (Authorship Claim: Barack Obama) [4] [4] https://medium.com/the-trans-pacific-partnership/here-s-the-deal-the-text-of-the-trans-pacific-partnership-103adc324500#.6tyhpo5qc https://medium.com/the-trans-pacific-partnership/here-s-the-... Edit2: Will soon be lobbying HN to publish all downmods.
    - tomcam 11y ago
      SNAP! * * There goes what little karma I had
      - jsprogrammer 11y ago
        ?
- puppetmaster3 11y ago
  You said something that may be non complimentary about the left, and hacker news mods are left coast based, see who they have in senate and house.
- rubbingalcohol 11y ago
  Check out the source on Github. We actually went through the entire TPP and turned the chapters into Markdown text files. It's a bit easier to parse that way than the dozens of PDFs or Medium posts. https://github.com/fightforthefuture/readthetpp/tree/master/site https://github.com/fightforthefuture/readthetpp/tree/master/...
johnmaguire2013 11y ago
This seems like a perfect proof of concept for genius.com if they're serious about becoming a way to annotate anything (not just songs). [1] http://genius.com/web-annotator http://genius.com/web-annotator
- 37 11y ago
  I believe this has already been started. http://genius.com/artists/Transpacific-partnership-tpp-negotiating-parties http://genius.com/artists/Transpacific-partnership-tpp-negot...
- teddyh 11y ago
  I think that co-ment would probably be a better fit: https://lite.co-ment.com/ https://lite.co-ment.com/
shmerl 11y ago
There really should be a stronger push to scrap this undemocratic monstrosity.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  Have you called your congressional representatives to voice your opinion? If not, do so!
  - shmerl 11y ago
    I did write to them, multiple times (and even got a response from one of them that they oppose it, which interestingly changed form the past). I'll give a call as well.
jariz 11y ago
This is great and all and is something that should absolutely be shared, however, if the intent behind this project is to share it with 'the average' person it's completely useless. No one's going to read through that entire thing, I'd expect them to at least put up a summarized version.
- CaptSpify 11y ago
  We should hire someone to do the summaries for us. And since they'll already understand it, we should have them vote for or against it based on our best interest.... wait...
  - outside1234 11y ago
    except that we don't have that. we have representatives that have piles of money from corporations and special interests. these piles of money on the two sides of the scale are what drive any decision around voting.
tptacek 11y ago
I opened this page up, skipped forward to the first highlighted section (18. Intellectual Property), and skimmed to the first annotation. The original text: 1. A Party may, in formulating or amending its laws and regulations, adopt measures necessary to protect public health and nutrition, and to promote the public interest in sectors of vital importance to their socio-economic and technological development, provided that such measures are consistent with the provisions of this Chapter. The annotation: In other words, the TPP overrides any domestic laws protecting public health and nutrition, or socio-economic development. That's not at all how the TPP works. The treaty doesn't allow foreign governments to "override" local laws, but rather allows for damage claims against the governments themselves if they enact and enforce laws contrary to the agreements in the TPP itself. I'd really like the TPP annotated by legal experts. Instead, it's annotated by the CTO of Fight For The Future. I'm not sure that's a win.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  > That's not at all how the TPP works. The treaty doesn't allow foreign governments to "override" local laws, but rather allows for damage claims against the governments themselves if they enact and enforce laws contrary to the agreements in the TPP itself. Isn't this just semantics though? If you can use economic force (damage claims against the governments themselves), its just as effective as using executive/legislative force to "override" local law [1]. > I'd really like the TPP annotated by legal experts. Luckily, they can! It's on Github. Its just a matter of finding legal experts willing to mark it up. [1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/big-tobacco-puts-countries-on-trial-as-concerns-over-ttip-deals-mount-9807478.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-feat...
  - tptacek 11y ago
    No, it's not just semantics. The plain wording of the annotation, by one of the site's sponsors, is that the TPP "overrides local laws". It does not. The equivalence between allowing a trade treaty to literally rewrite our laws and allowing a trade treaty to settle economic claims is not at all clear to me. This does not seem like a minor detail.
pluckytree 11y ago
I think the positive benefit of this effort will likely be undermined (and it’s already underway) by reactionary comments from uninformed people. They'll play well to people that already know the TPP sucks, but not from those on the fence or really wanting to learn about it.
dpweb 11y ago
Read the TPP.. Skipped right to the HN comments about the TPP.
- pekk 11y ago
  It doesn't matter what the TPP actually says, or how that relates to the status quo. All that matters is that you are outraged about it, and you're angry and you're not going to take it for one more second. Whatever it is.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - r00fus 11y ago
    I am legitimately pissed that the entire treaty was negotiated behind closed doors and we the people won't get any say about something that will have a big impact on the joined economies.
    - tinalumfoil 11y ago
      There's no other sane way to negotiate large international treaties. The moment you open it to the public tens of thousands of political advocacy groups, lobbying groups, interest groups, protesters, etc from each country start yelling about all the things they want changed. You can't negotiate if your needs keep changing or are conflicting. Whether we like it or not the TPP really is the "gold standard" of international treaties. Unfortunately it turns out no treaty at all is probably better anyway.
krick 11y ago
A brief question: should I know what this is if I'm not an USA citizen?
- walterbell 11y ago
  If you're one of 800 million people in the 13 countries which have signed the TPP, then your local laws will be revised to implement the TPP.
  - krick 11y ago
    So, there isn't anything worth spending time understanding it for the outside viewer? Only for those who live inside this "TPP club" and care about local laws?
    - walterbell 11y ago
      In Europe, there is TTIP. In Asia, there is RCEP. The three agreements regulate similar goods. There is also TiSA, which covers services in 50 countries.
- BeefySwain 11y ago
  I'm by no means an expert, but this is an international treaty, so I suppose I would find out if your host country is currently in talks to implement it. Regardless, for better or worse, things that negatively effect the US of A tend to negatively effect the rest of the West.
walterbell 11y ago
Citizen's Trade organized 1,500 groups to sign a letter to the US Congress, against the TPP, http://www.citizenstrade.org/ctc/blog/2016/01/07/1500-groups-urge-congress-to-oppose-the-tpp/ http://www.citizenstrade.org/ctc/blog/2016/01/07/1500-groups... "... the TPP elevates investor rights over human rights and democracy, threatening an even broader array of public policy decisions than described above. This, unfortunately, is the all-too-predictable result of a secretive negotiating process in which hundreds of corporate advisors had privileged access to negotiating texts, while the public was barred from even reviewing what was being proposed in its name. The TPP does not deserve your support. Had Fast Track not become law, Congress could work to remove the misguided and detrimental provisions of the TPP, strengthen weak ones and add new provisions designed to ensure that our most vulnerable families and communities do not bear the brunt of the TPP’s many risks. Now that Fast Track authority is in place for it, Congress is left with no means of adequately amending the agreement without rejecting it entirely. We respectfully ask that you do just that."
lindx 11y ago
This is what happens when you try to visit this site with Tor: https://anonm.gr/up/b386.png https://anonm.gr/up/b386.png Cloudflare's captchas are nearly impossible to solve, which means that Tor users are effectively blocked from seeing the site. Would you consider using something other than Cloudflare to host the site?
- teddyh 11y ago
  When that happens I always just click “New Tor Circuit for this Site” repeatedly, until I get one of the other two forms of CAPTCHA, both of which are solveable.
  - lindx 11y ago
    I tried that, but I never got an easier captcha even after many attempts.
    - teddyh 11y ago
      Yeah, it can take quite a while sometimes, but eventually I always get one. For this site I got an easy one on the second try. I used to try to solve the hard ones, but I found I could not do it; it’s most often impossible to guess what all the letters are in the garbled mess with inverted blobs on top. From your example, I think it’s supposed to be “Thtllyt nthrwhyy”, but I’m usually wrong.

249 points by SimplyUseless 11y ago

It is ridiculous that after months of Obama telling people to "just read it", he dumped the agreement as ~268 separate PDFs. No body has time for that. It's nice that they have pared this down to 31 different sections, but my guess is that they are not showing the full agreement here. It would be much nicer if someone just dumped it all into a single PDF and HTML file. Edit: Care to leave a comment rationalizing your downmods?

envy2 11y ago
"He" didn't dump the agreement as separate PDFs; that's how these things are almost always handled because most people involved are focused on specific areas (be they negotiators, interest groups, or concerned citizens). Other governments published the text in exactly the same way [1]. The USTR also published the full text on Medium [2] for anyone who doesn't want to download a PDF. There are plenty of issues worth discussing when it comes to the text itself and the way the original negotiations were conducted, but arguing that the final agreement hasn't been made accessible is really not a legitimate complaint. [1] https://www.mfat.govt.nz/en/about-us/who-we-are/treaty-making-process/trans-pacific-partnership-tpp/text-of-the-trans-pacific-partnership https://www.mfat.govt.nz/en/about-us/who-we-are/treaty-makin... [2] https://medium.com/the-trans-pacific-partnership https://medium.com/the-trans-pacific-partnership
- jsprogrammer 11y ago
  [0] https://medium.com/the-trans-pacific-partnership https://medium.com/the-trans-pacific-partnership Authorship is claimed as "Barack Obama", @PresidentObama. [1] https://medium.com/@PresidentObama https://medium.com/@PresidentObama (Even includes an avatar of Obama's face.) [2] https://ustr.gov/tpp/ https://ustr.gov/tpp/ The top header claims "Executive Office of The President". [3] https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/trans-pacific-partnership/tpp-full-text https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/tran... Also claims "Executive Office of the President". The US Constitution only grants treaty making powers to the President. Any treaty that claims to come from someone other than the current US President is not and cannot be a valid treaty. Edit: "That’s why I am posting the text of this agreement here for you to read and explore." (Authorship Claim: Barack Obama) [4] [4] https://medium.com/the-trans-pacific-partnership/here-s-the-deal-the-text-of-the-trans-pacific-partnership-103adc324500#.6tyhpo5qc https://medium.com/the-trans-pacific-partnership/here-s-the-... Edit2: Will soon be lobbying HN to publish all downmods.
  - tomcam 11y ago
    SNAP! * * There goes what little karma I had
    - jsprogrammer 11y ago
      ?
puppetmaster3 11y ago
You said something that may be non complimentary about the left, and hacker news mods are left coast based, see who they have in senate and house.
rubbingalcohol 11y ago
Check out the source on Github. We actually went through the entire TPP and turned the chapters into Markdown text files. It's a bit easier to parse that way than the dozens of PDFs or Medium posts. https://github.com/fightforthefuture/readthetpp/tree/master/site https://github.com/fightforthefuture/readthetpp/tree/master/...

johnmaguire2013 11y ago

This seems like a perfect proof of concept for genius.com if they're serious about becoming a way to annotate anything (not just songs). [1] http://genius.com/web-annotator http://genius.com/web-annotator

37 11y ago
I believe this has already been started. http://genius.com/artists/Transpacific-partnership-tpp-negotiating-parties http://genius.com/artists/Transpacific-partnership-tpp-negot...
teddyh 11y ago
I think that co-ment would probably be a better fit: https://lite.co-ment.com/ https://lite.co-ment.com/

shmerl 11y ago

There really should be a stronger push to scrap this undemocratic monstrosity.

toomuchtodo 11y ago
Have you called your congressional representatives to voice your opinion? If not, do so!
- shmerl 11y ago
  I did write to them, multiple times (and even got a response from one of them that they oppose it, which interestingly changed form the past). I'll give a call as well.

jariz 11y ago

This is great and all and is something that should absolutely be shared, however, if the intent behind this project is to share it with 'the average' person it's completely useless. No one's going to read through that entire thing, I'd expect them to at least put up a summarized version.

CaptSpify 11y ago
We should hire someone to do the summaries for us. And since they'll already understand it, we should have them vote for or against it based on our best interest.... wait...
- outside1234 11y ago
  except that we don't have that. we have representatives that have piles of money from corporations and special interests. these piles of money on the two sides of the scale are what drive any decision around voting.

tptacek 11y ago

I opened this page up, skipped forward to the first highlighted section (18. Intellectual Property), and skimmed to the first annotation. The original text: 1. A Party may, in formulating or amending its laws and regulations, adopt measures necessary to protect public health and nutrition, and to promote the public interest in sectors of vital importance to their socio-economic and technological development, provided that such measures are consistent with the provisions of this Chapter. The annotation: In other words, the TPP overrides any domestic laws protecting public health and nutrition, or socio-economic development. That's not at all how the TPP works. The treaty doesn't allow foreign governments to "override" local laws, but rather allows for damage claims against the governments themselves if they enact and enforce laws contrary to the agreements in the TPP itself. I'd really like the TPP annotated by legal experts. Instead, it's annotated by the CTO of Fight For The Future. I'm not sure that's a win.

toomuchtodo 11y ago
> That's not at all how the TPP works. The treaty doesn't allow foreign governments to "override" local laws, but rather allows for damage claims against the governments themselves if they enact and enforce laws contrary to the agreements in the TPP itself. Isn't this just semantics though? If you can use economic force (damage claims against the governments themselves), its just as effective as using executive/legislative force to "override" local law [1]. > I'd really like the TPP annotated by legal experts. Luckily, they can! It's on Github. Its just a matter of finding legal experts willing to mark it up. [1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/big-tobacco-puts-countries-on-trial-as-concerns-over-ttip-deals-mount-9807478.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-feat...
- tptacek 11y ago
  No, it's not just semantics. The plain wording of the annotation, by one of the site's sponsors, is that the TPP "overrides local laws". It does not. The equivalence between allowing a trade treaty to literally rewrite our laws and allowing a trade treaty to settle economic claims is not at all clear to me. This does not seem like a minor detail.

pluckytree 11y ago

I think the positive benefit of this effort will likely be undermined (and it’s already underway) by reactionary comments from uninformed people. They'll play well to people that already know the TPP sucks, but not from those on the fence or really wanting to learn about it.

dpweb 11y ago

Read the TPP.. Skipped right to the HN comments about the TPP.

pekk 11y ago
It doesn't matter what the TPP actually says, or how that relates to the status quo. All that matters is that you are outraged about it, and you're angry and you're not going to take it for one more second. Whatever it is.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- r00fus 11y ago
  I am legitimately pissed that the entire treaty was negotiated behind closed doors and we the people won't get any say about something that will have a big impact on the joined economies.
  - tinalumfoil 11y ago
    There's no other sane way to negotiate large international treaties. The moment you open it to the public tens of thousands of political advocacy groups, lobbying groups, interest groups, protesters, etc from each country start yelling about all the things they want changed. You can't negotiate if your needs keep changing or are conflicting. Whether we like it or not the TPP really is the "gold standard" of international treaties. Unfortunately it turns out no treaty at all is probably better anyway.

krick 11y ago

A brief question: should I know what this is if I'm not an USA citizen?

walterbell 11y ago
If you're one of 800 million people in the 13 countries which have signed the TPP, then your local laws will be revised to implement the TPP.
- krick 11y ago
  So, there isn't anything worth spending time understanding it for the outside viewer? Only for those who live inside this "TPP club" and care about local laws?
  - walterbell 11y ago
    In Europe, there is TTIP. In Asia, there is RCEP. The three agreements regulate similar goods. There is also TiSA, which covers services in 50 countries.
BeefySwain 11y ago
I'm by no means an expert, but this is an international treaty, so I suppose I would find out if your host country is currently in talks to implement it. Regardless, for better or worse, things that negatively effect the US of A tend to negatively effect the rest of the West.

walterbell 11y ago

Citizen's Trade organized 1,500 groups to sign a letter to the US Congress, against the TPP, http://www.citizenstrade.org/ctc/blog/2016/01/07/1500-groups-urge-congress-to-oppose-the-tpp/ http://www.citizenstrade.org/ctc/blog/2016/01/07/1500-groups... "... the TPP elevates investor rights over human rights and democracy, threatening an even broader array of public policy decisions than described above. This, unfortunately, is the all-too-predictable result of a secretive negotiating process in which hundreds of corporate advisors had privileged access to negotiating texts, while the public was barred from even reviewing what was being proposed in its name. The TPP does not deserve your support. Had Fast Track not become law, Congress could work to remove the misguided and detrimental provisions of the TPP, strengthen weak ones and add new provisions designed to ensure that our most vulnerable families and communities do not bear the brunt of the TPP’s many risks. Now that Fast Track authority is in place for it, Congress is left with no means of adequately amending the agreement without rejecting it entirely. We respectfully ask that you do just that."

lindx 11y ago

This is what happens when you try to visit this site with Tor: https://anonm.gr/up/b386.png https://anonm.gr/up/b386.png Cloudflare's captchas are nearly impossible to solve, which means that Tor users are effectively blocked from seeing the site. Would you consider using something other than Cloudflare to host the site?

teddyh 11y ago
When that happens I always just click “New Tor Circuit for this Site” repeatedly, until I get one of the other two forms of CAPTCHA, both of which are solveable.
- lindx 11y ago
  I tried that, but I never got an easier captcha even after many attempts.
  - teddyh 11y ago
    Yeah, it can take quite a while sometimes, but eventually I always get one. For this site I got an easy one on the second try. I used to try to solve the hard ones, but I found I could not do it; it’s most often impossible to guess what all the letters are in the garbled mess with inverted blobs on top. From your example, I think it’s supposed to be “Thtllyt nthrwhyy”, but I’m usually wrong.