British artists against TTIP trade deal

This video from Britain says about itself:

Why artists are saying no to TTIP. | Guardian Features

9 June 2015

A group of artists including actors Ruth Wilson, Andrew Scott and Juliet Stevenson and designer Vivienne Westwood are fronting a campaign (artistsagainstttip.org) to raise public awareness of the trade deal TTIP (pronounced tee-tip) which is being secretly negotiated between the EU and the US.

They are questioning its democratic validity, as no UK MP has had access to the negotiating documents. This week a European petition against TTIP has reached a record 2 million signatures, a few days ahead of a crucial vote on the deal by MEPs in the European parliament.

By Peter Lazenby in Britain:

Artistic types join fight to halt TTIP

Friday 3rd July 2015

LEADING actors, musicians, writers and producers united yesterday for a new campaign against the hated free-trade deal TTIP.

Dozens of people are backing the Artists Against TTIP campaign, launched at London’s Young Vic Theatre, to oppose the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) which is being negotiated in secret by the EU and the US.

The deal would enforce privatisation of public services.

It would also hand multinational corporations powers to sue governments in a special court if they enact legislation deemed to affect the corporations’ profits — issues such as health and safety or working hours.

It was set up in collaboration with campaign groups War on Want and Global Justice Now.

Artists Against TTIP founder and director Carrie Cracknell said: “As soon as I heard about TTIP and the scale of its potential impact I was horrified.

“I kept asking people I knew if they had heard about it and nobody had. It dawned on me that a deal was being negotiated, in secret, which could radically alter the balance of power between democratic governments and big multinational corporations and there was virtually no public dialogue about it.

“That was the impetus for founding Artists Against TTIP, to try to use the public profile of the artistic community to alert people to this issue, and the rapidly escalating public opposition to it.”

Artists backing the campaign include Dominic Cooke, Lily Cole, Jeremy Hardy, Mike Leigh, Helen McCrory, Tobias Menzies, Mark Rylance, Yusuf Islam aka Cat Stevens, Juliet Stevenson, Sam West, Vivienne Westwood and Ruth Wilson.

Actor Mark Rylance added: “TTIP is an attempt to bypass our English laws, and control our ability to change our minds in the future. We must resist this.”

CORE texts of the secretive Trade in Services Agreement (Tisa) have finally been exposed by WikiLeaks: here.

NEWLY released Trade in Services Agreement (Tisa) documents show the treaty is “a continuing threat to sea­farers’ wages and conditions,” the International Transport ­Workers Federation (ITF) said yesterday: here.

DEVELOPING countries will be thrown deeper into poverty by the extreme capitalist TTIP trade deal between the US and EU, the Fairtrade Foundation said yesterday: here.

SEAFARERS must ignore “sly, spurious and sinister half truths” from the EU claiming that trade deals will level the playing field in global shipping, maritime union Nautilus heard yesterday. The union has overwhelmingly passed policy as its conference opposing the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the EU and the US and the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement: here.

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