"A lopsided treaty from which a mere 1% will benefit"

The other night, I had the opportunity to attend a TPP event in Tokyo. The event featured speeches by more than a dozen prominent Japanese, as well as live music, skits, and an organic food market. Unfortunately, I was not able to see any of the skits (which included one called “Monsantopolis”), and I was only able to catch about half of the speeches. But it was still an interesting and enlightening event.

When I arrived, the live band was performing.



The first thing I did was go to the organic food booths. There were a lot of people from Hokkaido at the booths. Hokkaido is Japan’s northernmost main island, and it is also one of the major agricultural regions of the country. Hokkaido farmers produce an amazing amount of rice, potatoes, soybeans, wheat, sugar beets, and meat and dairy products, among other foods. The Hokkaido farmers I met are lovely people, and they are proud of the efforts they make to produce some of the world’s most wholesome foods. But, as I have noted here before, and as they reminded me the other night, that fantastic productivity, and the livelihoods of not only them but tens of thousands of their fellow farmers and food workers, could be jeopardized by the TPP.



Here are some of the foods I got at the event— organic soybeans, organic cheese, and a “No TPP!” cookie.

Anyway, when the live band finished playing, speakers took the stage to give brief speeches about TPP. Among the speakers were the head of a national medical association, the head of an agricultural association, a representative of an NPO, and a couple of politicians-- one is the Japanese version of Al Franken, while the other is a former cabinet minister and is now a lawyer.

What was amazing to me was that the speakers touched upon nearly all of the TPP issues that have been discussed here on DU, and essentially described it as a giveaway to multinational corporations and the ultra wealthy. One of them even wrote a book whose cover describes the TPP as a “lopsided treaty from which a mere 1% will benefit”.

I will talk more about that in later posts.