You take this incident in North Dakota, and expand it to even more similar incidents happening globally with no repercussions or regard for various laws put into place in country after country that aims to protect countless watersheds, countless ecological systems, countless cultures dependent on the very lands which pipelines are built across. That is what you can expect to see happen under something such as TTIP or TTP. You could very well see international corporations sue sovereign nations to strip away hard earned protections meant to keep historical sites and national parks free of any sort of mining interests, logging interests, oil interests or whatever the case may be...that's what TPP could open the door to. And there would be no regress, no real ability to fight something like that from happening, given that corporate movements allowed by something such as the TPP or the TTIP wouldn't stand a chance in an "independent" court or panel governed mainly by corporate attorneys, corporate leaders and their lackeys within every level of government. The threat posed by TPP extends to every single area of our lives one could name, and thekuribo nailed another example on the head with his post regarding how gamers should be concerned where DRM free content is concerned with.

The point is, this fallacy of an agreement is being hammered down our throats by a President who, in supporting an agreement like TPP and an earlier, equally horrific "free trade" agreement in the vein of what is called KORUS, has turned out over the past 8 years to be a corporate puppet, another centrist liar who identifies as neoliberal, to our collective detriment as a people, no matter what political stripe we show on the surface. I'll give another example of what kind of risk the TPP poses to us all, and more specifically gamers. Let's say, for example, you were to open your own game publishing business, okay? You produce your first ever game tailor made by you...we're talking maybe hundreds of hours of work, if not more, into an act of love and creativity that you had always wanted to do. You put this game up for sale. It becomes a best seller. Normally, that would be a good thing, right? Now, let's say this happens after TPP is put into place as law, and a company like EA gets wind of your game, and decides that somehow it violates a copyright of a completely different game they happen to own the rights to, and maybe this decision is made on the most ridiculous thing - an object you placed in your game that they filed a patent for without your knowledge or anyone else. Under this scenario, they could file a suit against you with this international court of arbiters (again, most of whom are composed of corporate bigwigs and lawyers), and you would have no way, no ability to fight back. Your rights under US law in this scenario would be superseded by the demands the TPP imposes on our nation...and under this scenario, you end up having to cease sales of this game, your publishing business goes under, and EA gets the rights to your game and no credit to you whatsoever, while you're left in the dust with a completely empty bank account because this international court, in addition to siding with EA, ordered you to pay EA an exorbitant amount for "copyright infringement".

The Dakota Access Pipeline issue that still is going on right underneath our noses, along with the aforementioned scenario I just gave you, are just two prime examples of what we are all facing if TPP is allowed to pass into law. And President Obama, from every noticeable standpoint, seems to have taken the stance that he is willing to fast track this deal through Congress (much of which answers to the same corporate overlords as he does) and get it signed into law, damn the risk and the nightmarish laws that would be imposed on the United States regardless of what our own Constitution, what our own laws even, may say in terms of civil litigation and the ability of corporate outfits to do what they please with the backing of an international court of corporate leaders who are granted the right to dictate how each country will answer to their whims, and not to each country's own sovereign laws and regulations. And with respect to media coverage? I find that outside of a few mentions here and there, most of our own so-called media is refusing to cover most of what the TPP is, and what exact kind of threat it poses to not only our economy, but our workforce, our civil laws, the content we read and watch, the games we play, the brands of clothing we have, the medicines we take, the kind of medical treatment we seek...almost every aspect of our lives will be dominated by how an unelected old rich white CEO thinks we should live our lives, buy what we buy with our money, work how he thinks we should work (which, let's face it, is barely a step above slavery and is virtually in lockstep with what once was called serfdom through medieval Europe). And yet our media focuses on an orange Whopper eating asshole day in, day out, going on and on about the drama he creates that brings in hundreds of millions of free advertising dollars. Our media, instead, prefers to focus on that and the antics of sports figures who truly don't appear to do much for society's long term survival, brainless celebrity twits who parade before the cameras to gain more attention...I rarely see any coverage of that.

As for DAPL itself, and Standing Rock? Outside of Democracy Now, a few glossed over reports by some corporate news outlets (NBC anyone?), and relatively unknown - at least to the majority of Americans - internet based progressive journalist outfits, nothing has been said of DAPL or of Energy Transfer Partners Corporation's virtual criminal behavior. No mention of the fact that this pipeline would be at risk of causing the worse environmental disaster in human history if there was a spill - all that oil spilling into the entire Mississippi River, destroying the drinking water forever for millions of Americans of every color, every national origin, every religion, both genders, every age who live and depend on the Mississippi for their very livelihoods. The economic factors at work with the Mississippi River? Destroyed if a spill ever happened. Clean drinking water? A mere distant happy memory...if a spill were to happen. In terms of the pipeline's location, they've already deliberately bulldozed right over identified burial sites and religious sites the Sioux tribe identified in court as vital to their heritage as a people - and it was done not even 12 hours after the very maps containing this information were unveiled within a court room. I can almost hear the CEO of Energy Transfer Partners saying this: "Well, there's nothing there now, so why don't they just give up and let us build?" They're even doing this on the Sioux's lands...lands that were guaranteed to these people by treaty...and as previously noted by the tribe itself, this is the third time the US government has broken a treaty with their tribe, and this time it was in favor of an unelected board of old rich white men who buy our elected leaders' loyalty with their money so they can get rich quick without giving a damn as to the consequences of their actions. And again, to strike the same theme, this is the exact thing we're facing with TPP, only played out on a global scale. And no one in our so-called media is interested in covering any of this, if only because they find anything that Trump says to be funny as hell and they find that it keeps them rich. You asked for an answer, you got it.

1) no generics is one thing, but are they getting rid of cost controls? Truth of the matter is that, in most developed countries, governments can and do control costs in plenty of other ways. The exclusivity part has pros and cons, but do keep in mind that most new drugs are developed by private companies, and those companies do need to recoup their investment (though, some of the price gouging that goes on is beyond excuse). But countries like Canada and England have legal procedures in place that prevent a company from, for example, raising the price of a drug from $1 to $750 for no justifiable reason. note that this drug hasn't had patent protection in decades

2) The ability of a company to sue a state over loss of profits is actually immensely logical. Just to use an exaggerated hypothetical. What if Country A's company builds a billion dollar factory in Country B. Then, country B changes the zoning law just for that one parcel of land, such that the company cannot operate the factory. The company is forced to sell the land for next to nothing to a buyer in country B. Now Country B again changes the zoning law so that the new buyer can operate the factory.
Yes, that's an extreme example, but it has actually happened in the past. The idea behind a country being able to sue a state for loss of profit is to (a) prevent that kind of corruption, and (b) to give businesses confidence to actually operate in foreign countries, knowing that their investment is protected.
Yes, there are some issues with it, such as ever evolving environmental laws, but, at the same time there's a great advantage to it too. as an aside, I have a friend who sells political risk insurance, which provides the same kind of protection. Depending on the country, you really shouldn't do business abroad without it

because otherwise politics gets in the way.
Let's say that there is one provision (#1) that matters most to country A. The negotiator from country A may try to push for two provisions (#1 and #2). The negotiator will be willing to lose on position #2 and use it as a bargaining chip to win provision #1. (look, I'll give up #2, if you'll give me #1).

Now let's say this is all public. Some interest group gets upset about #1, and publicly starts to oppose the deal. Opportunistic politicians latch on to #1, and instruct the negotiator to drop #1. Now the negotiator has no more leverage.

(or, from a more practical scale, if the provision can be scored from 1 to 10, instead of trying to get an 8 or a 9, the negotiator might be in the position of defending to hold onto a 6 or a 7)
It's impossible to be a tough negotiator, when the party on whose behalf you're negotiating is making their opinions known.

for a great example, just watch this

Why the points on the trade are secret?
There is a lot of horrible stuff over there . The ISDS provision is the worst one (so far)