Julian Assange’s Wikileaks organisation has issued a whopping €100,000 bounty for the release of the secretive Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) documents, with a further €100,000 aimed at securing the release of the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal.
The deals – billed as “free trade” agreements by the political establishments of Europe and the United States, but derided as “corporatist stitch-ups” by both the populist left and right across the two continents – have attracted attention because of the clandestine way in which they are being hurried through legislatures and bureaucracies.
As yet, the full details of the deals are yet to be revealed, with European Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom blaming the U.S. government for the secrecy.
U.S. Congressman Ted Yoho, as well as UKIP leader Nigel Farage, have spoken exclusively to Breitbart London on the nature of the deals, with the former noting that the Obama administration has a track record of negotiating poor deals. He said: “I don’t want Obama negotiating another thing.”
Mr Farage helped to stage a coup against TTIP in June of this year, when EU leaders attempted to bypass a vote on the deal. Mr Farage wrote for Breitbart London: “Whilst TTIP may masquerade as being about free trade, actually it’s not. It’s about harmonisation, standardisation and a market place in which the giant corporates can dominate.”
Now Wikileaks has joined the growing number of voices concerned about the nature of the deal, which also includes left-wing campaigning group 38 degrees.
A statement on the group’s website reads:
€100,000 reward for Europe’s most wanted secret. The TTIP is a multi-trillion dollar international treaty that is being negotiated in secret between the United States and the European Union. It remains secret almost in its entirety, closely guarded by the negotiators, and only big corporations are given special access to its terms. The TTIP covers half of global GDP and is one of the largest agreements of its kind in history. The TTIP aims to create a global economic bloc outside of the WTO framework, as part of a geopolitical economic strategy against the BRICS countries of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
The Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has dubbed the TTIP an “economic NATO,” comparing it to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization military alliance. Over the last two years WikiLeaks has published chapters from two other secret global trade deals, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) and the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA), despite unprecedented efforts by negotiating governments to keep them under wraps.
Together with the TTIP, these treaties represent the “Three Big T’s”, affecting 53 countries, 1.6 billion people and covering two thirds of the global economy. They aim to create a new international legal regime allowing transnational corporations to bypass domestic courts, evade environmental protections, police the internet on behalf of the content industry, limit the availability of affordable generic medicines, and drastically curtail each country’s legislative sovereignty. Of the “Three Big T’s”, the TTIP remains the least exposed to public scrutiny, and the most significant to the interests of the European public.
The group is crowdsourcing the money as a rewards, or bounties, for anyone who leaks them the full text of the documents, respectively.
On TPP, Wikileaks notes:
America’s most wanted secret. The TPP is a multi-trillion dollar international treaty that is being negotiated in secret by the US, Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico and others. This massive agreement has 29 chapters, of which 26 are still secret. It covers 40% of global GDP and is the largest agreement of its kind in history. The treaty aims to create a new international legal regime that will allow transnational corporations to bypass domestic courts, evade environmental protections, police the internet on behalf of the content industry, limit the availability of affordable generic medicines, and drastically curtail each country’s legislative sovereignty. US Senator Elizabeth Warren has said “[They] can’t make this deal public because if the American people saw what was in it, they would be opposed to it.” Over the last two years WikiLeaks has published three chapters of this super-secret global deal, despite unprecedented efforts by negotiating governments to keep it under wraps. The remaining 26 chapters of the deal are closely held by negotiators and the big corporations that have been given privileged access. The TPP is also noteworthy as the icebreaker agreement for the proposed ‘T-treaty triad’ of TPP-TISA-TTIP which would see TPP style rules placed on 53 nations, 1.6 billion people and 2/3rds of the global economy.
Already the group has received nearly $13,000 for the bounty on TTIP, and a huge $80,000 for the TPP leak inducement.
Last month the EU’s External Relations Commissioner Cecilia Malmström declared that the deal had to be finalised before the end of the Obama administration in the United States, as she was concerned the Republicans would slow down the process with “hearings” if they take the White House next year.
She said: “The criticism, however, is very loud – and I have the impression that there is more skepticism is growing in some countries.”
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