I drew this after the May Day rally in Kuala Lumpur, where I met Edward Low from MTAAG+. Now is a good time to post it because it was announced on 5 Oct 2015 that agreement has been reached on the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement or TPPA.
The TPPA is controversial because it’s being negotiated in top secret by the governments of 12 member countries on behalf of their citizens. The countries involved are: Malaysia, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Canada, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam and the United States, which is seen to be leading negotiations. If signed, the TPPA will be the largest trade agreement in the world.
I just spent 20 minutes reading about this thing I’ve been seeing in the news, but don’t actually know much about. Here are good, concise links from a variety of sources that give the basic picture:
What the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement means for Malaysia at Poskod.my, 6 Oct 2015
11 things Malaysians should know about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations at Business Circle (Malaysian marketplace web portal associated with the government-backed Economic Transformation Programme), 27 May 2014
Brief on the TPP by the Malaysian Ministry of International Trade and Industriy (MITI)
Leaked TPP Documents on Wikileaks
~
By the way, I deactivated my Facebook account. So if you’re in that Venn diagram overlap of people who 1) read this blog, 2) follow me on Facebook and 3) wonder where the fuck I am, well, now you know. I don’t know if I’ll go back. Probably I will after I deal with the current bunch of deadlines. It’s been… difficult. But now I’m not on Facebook, and it’s already getting better!
Oh, ‘I trust my hand’ is scribbled in the margins because at the time I did this drawing, I hated my drawing.
~
Antid Oto – italian for antidote – was one of Leon Trotsky‘s earliest pen names. I also love the Malay word for it: penawar. A few months ago, I started taking regular walks and making drawings afterwards as a way to deal with worry, procrastination, hopelessness, writer’s block, internet rage, and digital distraction. I’ll post a series of them here, one every other day, for as long as I keep making them.