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Trade Deals vs. ‘Core Community Values’
Trade Deals vs. ‘Core Community Values’
How a federal ‘no’ to Nova Scotia mine got whacked by NAFTA’s tribunal.
Canada lost a big chunk of its sovereignty as well as its right to protect local communities from bad developments earlier this year in a little reported NAFTA tribunal decision.
Furthermore the appalling ruling has major implications for any community or First Nation opposed to liquefied natural gas terminals, mining projects or bitumen pipelines.
The bizarre Bilcon case also represents a perfect example of why Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions, now commonplace in international trade agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, face increasing resistance from citizens around the world.
The investor trade law expert Gus Van Harten has defined the ISDS or new pseudo-courts deftly. Their purpose “is to protect foreign investors, meaning usually the world’s wealthiest companies and people, from the rest of us. Instead of public courts, you now have private lawyers sitting as ‘arbitrators’ with the power to decide how much Canadians must pay to compensate foreign investors for our country’s decisions.”
Last March, a three-man NAFTA tribunal ruled that a federal and provincial environmental review process grossly erred by rejecting a controversial quarry proposed by a Delaware construction company on Digby Point in Nova Scotia.
Tellingly, the ruling can’t be contested under Canadian law.
The dismal facts are these. The Delaware-based firm Bilcon wanted to blast, crush, wash and stockpile millions of tons of rock a year and to build a 170 metre-long marine terminal that would load cargo ships with approximately 40,000 tons of aggregate, every week over a 50-year period.
Lots of Nova Scotians objected to the mining export project on the grounds that it would degrade a precious resource: the beautiful Bay of Fundy.
A joint federal review environmental panel noted that Bilcon didn’t do a very good job talking to First Nations or fishermen either.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
How Obama’s “Trade” Deals Are Designed To End Democracy
How Obama’s “Trade” Deals Are Designed To End Democracy
U.S. President Barack Obama has for years been negotiating with European and Asian nations — but excluding Russia and China, since he is aiming to defeat them in his war to extend the American empire (i.e, to extend the global control by America’s aristocracy) — three international ‘trade’ deals (TTP, TTIP, & TISA), each one of which contains a section (called ISDS) that would end important aspects of the sovereignty of each signatory nation, by setting up an international panel composed solely of corporate lawyers to serve as ‘arbitrators’ deciding cases brought before this panel to hear lawsuits by international corporations accusing a given signatory nation of violating that corporation’s ‘rights’ by its trying to legislate regulations that are prohibited under the ’trade’ agreement, such as by increasing the given nation’s penalties for fraud, or by lowering the amount of a given toxic substance that the nation allows in its foods, or by increasing the percentage of the nation’s energy that comes from renewable sources, or by penalizing corporations for hiring people to kill labor union organizers — i.e., by any regulatory change that benefits the public at the expense of the given corporations’ profits. (No similar and countervailing power for nations to sue international corporations is included in this: the ‘rights’ of ‘investors’ — but really of only the top stockholders in international corporations — are placed higher than the rights of any signatory nation.)
This provision, whose full name is “Investor State Dispute Resolution” grants a one-sided benefit to the controlling stockholders in international corporations, by enabling them to bring these lawsuits to this panel of lawyers, whose careers will consist of their serving international corporations, sometimes as ‘arbitrators’ in these panels, and sometimes as lawyers who more-overtly represent one or more of those corporations, but also serving these corporations in other capacities, such as via being appointed by them to head a tax-exempt foundation to which international corporations ‘donate’ and so to turn what would otherwise be PR expenses into corporate tax-deductions. In other words: to be an ‘arbitrator’ on these panels can produce an extremely lucrative career.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Two Contending Visions of World Government
The Two Contending Visions of World Government
The Origin & Broader Context of Obama’s ‘Trade’ Deals
U.S. President Barack Obama’s proposed ‘Trade’ deals are actually about whether the world is heading toward a dictatorial world government — a dictatorship by the hundred or so global super-rich who hold the controlling blocks of stock in the world’s largest international corporations — or else toward a democratic world government, which will be a global federation of free and independent states, much like the United States was at its founding, but global in extent. These are two opposite visions of world government; and Obama is clearly on the side of fascism, an international mega-corporate dictatorship, as will be documented here in the links, and explained in the discussion.
Also as a preliminary to the discussion here is the understanding that if Obama wins Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority, then all of his ‘trade’ deals will be approved by Congress, and that if he fails to receive this Authority, then none of them will.
“Fast Track,” as will be explained in depth here, is, indeed, the “open Sesame” for Obama, on the entire matter. Without it, his deals don’t stand even a chance of passage.
I previously wrote about why it’s the case that “‘Fast Track’ Violates the U.S. Constitution.” The details of the case are presented there; but, to summarize it here: “Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority,” which was introduced by the imperial President Richard M. Nixon in the Trade Act of 1974, violates the U.S. Constitution’s Treaty Clause — the clause that says “The President … shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur.” (In other words: otherwise, the President doesn’t have that power, the President cannot “make treaties.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Free Trade Deals Put Profits Over Public Interest
Free Trade Deals Put Profits Over Public Interest
‘Poison pill’ strategy ties hands of future governments.
Opponents of so-called free trade deals have always struggled with the question of why these international treaties don’t generate more alarm and vocal opposition from Canadians. These treaties, after all, trump all other Canadian authority to make laws — provincial legislatures, Parliament, the courts and even the Constitution. If, instead of being bored by news of another ho-hum “trade deal,” Canadians were told that a panel of three international trade lawyers would be reviewing all new laws and determining, in secret, which ones passed muster by meeting with the approval of their giant corporate clients, would they react differently?
That is effectively what all of these corporate rights treaties establish: extra-judicial rulings whose objective is to protect the profits against laws passed in the public interest. The clauses that allow such suits are referred to as investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). This is not hyperbole — that is the actual, stated objective of ISDS: if a new law affects the expected future profits of a foreign owned company, it can sue the federal government for damages. And the decision is made by a panel of trade lawyers whose bias is, naturally, in favour of facilitating corporate interests — because that is who they normally work for. They aren’t environmental lawyers or labour lawyers or human rights lawyers. They’re trade lawyers. Foxes judging the right of other foxes to kill chickens.
Twenty years after NAFTA — the first free trade agreement to include ISDS — came into effect there are many examples of laws duly passed by legislatures in the public interest that have been ruled in violation of NAFTA. Some are more egregious than others — but they all challenge and assign financial penalties against laws that one government or another thought were important enough to implement.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Trade Deals and the Logic of the Middle Finger
Trade Deals and the Logic of the Middle Finger
After news broke that Senate Democrats had voted against giving President Obama fast-track authority for his TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) ‘trade’ agreement there was a moment when true knowledge of the world was held ever-so-briefly in suspension. Eternal optimists of the liberal and progressive persuasions instantly declared that Democrats had acted on, if not quite their moral compasses, at least credible threats from the electorate that their futures as professional collectors of campaign contributions might be at risk. However, upon reading the ‘reasons’ for the vote it became clear that said Democrats were only moving slowly to assure they would be paid their proper tribute for endorsing the deal.
While optimism is certainly within the range of normal human emotions, those expressing it in socially beneficial forms can be found facing down militarized cops in Ferguson, Missouri, fighting mountaintop removal in West Virginia and occasionally burning cop cars in Baltimore. As Senate Democrats were quick to demonstrate, where optimism is never rewarded is in expectations that they will act in the public interest. It took only twenty-four short hours for the graftariat to ready itself to once again conduct the (rich) people’s business. If the fact of the reversal fails to impress, the speed with which it took place certainly should. With the capitalist coup (TPP, TTIP) now so near completion, the call of opposition has been rephrased as it always should have been, to ‘take the politics out of money.’
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
How America’s ‘News’ Media Killed America’s Democracy: TPP & TTIP
How America’s ‘News’ Media Killed America’s Democracy: TPP & TTIP
As I reported on Wednesday, a deal was worked out in the U.S. Senate on the early afternoon of May 13th to “Fast-Track” through to approval U.S. President Barack Obama’s proposed trade deals, TPP with Asia, and TTIP with Europe. (It should have been reported on the nightly TV news programs, but most of them ignored it then, and reported the news only the next day when the Senators made it official.)
TPP and TTIP have been represented in America’s press as ‘trade’ deals, but instead they’re actually about sovereignty. They’re about America and the other participating countries handing their democratic sovereignty — on regulation of the environment, consumer protection, worker protection, and finance — over to panels, all of whose members will be selected by the large international corporations that for years have been working with U.S. President Obama’s Trade Representative to draft these “trade” treaties.
If some corporation “C” under these ‘trade deals’ then brings a case to one of those panels and says that country “X” has any regulations regarding the environment, consumer protection, worker protection, or finance, that are stricter than the ones that are set forth in TPP and TTIP, then country X will be assessed to pay a fine to corporation C, for “unfair trade practices” against that corporation.
In other words: these corporate panels will constitute a new international government, with the power to fine countries for exceeding the regulations that are set forth in these international ‘trade’ treaties.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
