Wikileaks offers $100k for text of Trans-Pacific Partnership deal

Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London

Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London

Wikileaks, the activist journalism/espionage organization run by creepy weirdo Julian Assange, has offered a $100,000 bounty for text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. I checked my computer, and I don’t have the .pdf. It turns out the terms of the Trans-Pacific Partnership are secret. Details of the 12-nation agreement—reputed to restrict the sale of generic pharmaceuticals, constrain fair use of copyrighted materials, and created an international trade court where corporations can sue national governments—are secret. None of that stuff I just listed is necessarily true. Right now, the text of the TPP is available to members of Congress, who can read the treaty in a special room but are not allowed to discuss its contents publicly. Representatives of about 600 private companies can also access the document via a secret internet portal. The general public cannot.

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So, what’s in the Pakistani news?

Yesterday’s All Parties Conference in Islamabad (not pictured: various parties)

Because I am a curious fellow in dire need of supervision, I spent several hours yesterday reading the Express Tribune of Pakistan. Granted, now seems like an especially interesting time in Pakistani news, but man—that place is a den of insanity. The photo above comes from this story about a meeting of the All Parties Conference, which threatened to block NATO supply routes to Afghanistan if the United Nations does not pass an anti-blasphemy law. They also threatened to leave the UN and form a separate, Muslim United Nations, which would pretty much be the best thing ever to happen to American talk radio. It gets better after the jump.

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