I disagree that I’m putting words in warfangle’s mouth. He said, ‘The fact that they are so secretive about the negotiations as to eject and ridicule third-party observes proves that they are not acting in the best interest of said third party observers.’ I don’t think that it in any possible way proves such a thing at all, and I was making a guess as to the premise warfangle was assuming to arrive at such a statement.<p>You’ll note that I haven’t made any statement one way or the other regarding the treaty itself. You shouldn’t infer that I am for or against it based on what I’ve said. Yes, I do know the details have been leaked. You’re missing my point entirely, because the content of the treaty is completely irrelevant to what I’ve said. My point is simply that the fact that the treaty is being negotiated in secret has no bearing on the relative merits of the treaty itself. The secrecy is just an irrelevant procedural technicality of the negotiation process that’s being framed as some nefarious underhanded move that should invalidate the treaty. It’s being used as a scare tactic in place of debating the treaty itself. Argue for or against the treaty on its content, not how it was arrived at.<p>I’m perplexed at how it isn’t clear to people that the treaty is being negotiated in secret <i>precisely</i> to prevent just such a mob backlash as is occurring. And it’s not to prevent a backlash because there is some corporate/government conspiracy to control the masses at work. It’s because there are concrete procedural difficulties in negotiating something like this when the parties involved aren’t able to speak freely without having 6 billion rabid critics jump down their throats at every proposal.