bush admin sold out public safety in order to ban online gambling… unbelievable

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative under the Bush administration struck a secret deal with the European Union that could open up a door for foreign ownership of liquefied natural gas terminals and other dangerous chemical and energy facilities. The agreement could also create conditions in which federal, state and local regulations affecting those facilities could be challenged as barriers to international trade.

Details of the negotiations came to light after a Freedom of Information Act request by Michigan Messenger was denied by the Bush administration on grounds that the deal was “classified in the interest of national security pursuant to Executive Order 12958.”

Michigan Messenger’s inquiry has lasted more than a year and involved a federal lawsuit seeking disclosure of the agreement. As a federal judge was considering the merits of the case, USTR declassified the document the week before last November’s elections. Trade law experts from Global Trade Watch, a division of the government watchdog group Public Citizen, assisted Michigan Messenger in the analysis of the agreement and in the federal lawsuit.

“It was important to get this document because it shows that the Bush administration was using the [World Trade Organization] process to sell out U.S. public safety and give foreign firms new rights and privileges here even as state authorities were trying to regulate these dangerous LNG facilities,” said Lori Wallach, a trade attorney and director of Global Trade Watch. “Now the public and state officials have the information to stop this proposal from becoming a new binding U.S. WTO commitment.”

read further: Secret trade pact between U.S., Europe could void local laws on chemical, gas storage

un-fucking-believable.

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