Click here to access article from Al Jazeera.
Although the article begins with an inane question--"We ask if the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement negotiations have rendered democratic decision-making irrelevant."--it actually is fairly well balanced for a source owned mostly by the medieval monarch of Qatar and reliable US ally.
This ongoing, largely secret effort by global elites to extend free agreements will continue the downward trend in living standards of working people throughout the world and will increase the widening gap between the "haves" and the "have-nots". Such so-called "free trade" agreements force working people across the globe to compete over wages and working conditions which means a race to the bottom. They also further alienate ordinary people by weakening what little influence they have over the corporate controlled, representative governments currently in place across the globe.
This trend, of course, is the logical endgame of capitalism where the existing feeble versions of "democratic" government will be replaced by corporate imposed global treaties enforced by capitalist appointed judicial bodies, police, and armies. This trend will only accentuate the disintegration of societies, increase poverty, wars, and the destruction of our planet.
