WikiLeaks on Wednesday released 17 different documents related to the Trade in Services Agreement (Tisa), a controversial pact currently being hashed out between the US and 23 other countries – most of them in Europe and South America.
The document dump comes at a tense moment in the negotiations over a series of trade deals. President Barack Obama has clashed with his own party over the deals as critics have worried about the impact on jobs and civil liberties.
- The International Transport Workers’ Federation sound the alarm over safety in air transport services. TiSA rules, being written by trade negotiators are set to take precedence over rules upheld by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), a United Nations agency which has incomparable expertise and a proven track record in this quarter.
- The New Zealand Public Services Association have issued a call for their government to stop this move to abandon public control of services including public health, childcare, water, broadcasting and the postal service.
- The Our World Is Not For Sale network have given the texts a quick reading and point out that the domestic regulation texts aim to “remove domestic policies, laws and regulations that make it harder for trans national corporations to sell their services in other countries”.
On Tuesday, WikiLeaks put a $100,000 bounty on documents relating to the alphabet soup of trade treaties currently being negotiated between the US and the rest of the world, particularly the controversial Trans-Pacific trade agreement (TPP). The offer, announced yesterday, has already raised more than $33,000.
Wednesday’s leak is the third time that WikLeaks has published sections from secret trade agreements. In January it leaked a chapter from the TPP related to the environment. In November 2013 it made public a draft of the agreement’s intellectual property chapter, containing proposals that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said would “trample over individual rights and free expression”. Original Source
