While there is at least a modicum of public discussion and public outrage over the trade-deal, negotiated in secret after a model of corporate supremacy, between the United States and Europe, there is barely a bald mention of the pseudopodia of lobbyists who have no allegiance to any greater good are reaching out in the other direction—eastward.
Journalist Thom Hartman, writing for AlterNet, prefers to call the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TTP) by the fitting abbreviation “
SHAFTA” (Southern Hemisphere Asian Free Trade Agreement) as it, from what little can be gathered, is poised to raise the stakes of the race to the bottom and gouge already tenuous environmental and labour safeguards. Not many more details could be limned, what with the media cone-of-silence, which is surely enforced by the business stakeholders.
