The Case that Blew the Lid Off the World Bank’s Secret Courts

[eridani]

TPP would give us more secret courts. Yay!

http://www.nationofchange.org/2015/04/25/the-case-that-blew-the-lid-off-the-world-banks-secret-courts/

One focuses the United States toward Europe — that’s the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) — and the other toward Asia, in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Both would establish broad new rights for foreign corporations to sue governments for vast sums whenever nations change their public policies in ways that could potentially impact corporate profits.

These cases would not be handled by domestic courts, with their relative transparency, but in special, secretive international tribunals.

It’s a stupendously powerful tool and a double win for the corporations: It’s a money machine that loots public treasuries and a potent tool to stifle unwelcome regulations, all wrapped in one. As Senator Elizabeth Warren recently wrote in the Washington Post, “Giving foreign corporations special rights to challenge our laws outside of our legal system would be a bad deal.” But it’s a deal U.S. lawmakers are rapidly preparing to make as they debate extending “fast-track” trade promotion authority to President Barack Obama.

The system of closed-door trade tribunals has been around for decades now, nestled like a ticking time bomb into hundreds of smaller bilateral trade agreements between nations. But not so long ago, the trade tribunal system wasn’t the stuff of high-profile op-eds by U.S. senators. It was virtually unknown except among a small cadre of international lawyers and trade specialists.

The case that brought the system into broad public view was born 15 years ago this month on the streets of a city high in the Andes. How that case was won holds powerful lessons today for the battles over the TTIP, the TPP, and the effort to hand global corporations enormous new legal powers.

<snip>

In 1997, World Bank officials made the privatization of Cochabamba’s public water system a condition of loans the bank was issuing to expand water service in the country. So Bolivia’s government was compelled to offer a 40-year lease to Bechtel, complete with a guaranteed annual profit of 16 percent — a gouging deal backed by the willingness of the government to shoot its own people if required.

The World Bank’s ICSID and other international tribunal systems are a corporate dream. The tribunals that decide these cases are made up of lawyers who move from being highly paid corporate defenders in one case to supposedly impartial judges in the next, a blatant conflict of interest. It’s a system where testimony is commonly sealed and where cases are heard thousands of miles away from the communities involved.

Unsurprisingly, corporations win either a full or partial victory more than half the time

[Downwinder]

1. From Corporate persons to Corporate rulers.

[Enthusiast]

6. Precisely.

[Mustellus]

2. Make promises to People and Bankers....

.. 'cause the Bankers always win.

Not.

[midnight]

3. kick

[RiverLover]

4. TPP Investment Chapter makes it ILLEGAL to favor local businesses

& local govts/taxpayers must pay corporations to stop polluting~

1. Favoring local ownership is prohibited

Let’s start with the Investment Chapter’s section on how the TPP’s member countries should treat foreign investors:

"Each Party [country] shall accord to investors of another Party treatment no less favorable than that it accords, in like circumstances, to its own investors with respect to the establishment, acquisition, expansion, management, conduct, operation, and sale or other disposition of investments in its territory."

Put in plain English, the above paragraph means that signatory countries renounce their right to favor the domestic ownership and control of the lands, waters and other productive assets and services essential to the lives and well-being of their people.

The 12 countries further renounce their right to favor locally owned businesses, corporations, cooperatives, or public enterprises devoted to serving their people with good local jobs, products and services. They must instead give equal or better treatment to global corporations that come only to extract profits.

2. Corporations must be paid to stop polluting

Another provision limits what member countries can do in regard to corporate investments:

"No Party may expropriate or nationalize a covered investment either directly or indirectly through measures equivalent to expropriation or nationalization (“expropriation”), except: (a) for a public purpose; (b) in a nondiscriminatory manner; (c) on payment of prompt, adequate, and effective compensation [emphasis added] … ; and (d) in accordance with due process of law."

This provision may sound reasonable, until you look at the chapter’s definition of “investment,” which includes “the expectation of gain or profit.” This odd definition means that a corporation can sue a signatory nation if the country deprives the corporation of expected profits by enacting laws that prohibit the company from selling harmful products, damaging the environment, or exploiting workers. Other language in the chapter makes it clear that this applies to actions at all levels of government.

In other words, a country in the TPP has every right to stop a foreign corporation from harming its people and the environment — but only if the country compensates the corporation for the expense of not harming them....

http://billmoyers.com/2015/04/20/trade-rule-makes-illegal-favor-local-business-newest-leak-shows-tpp/

[Octafish]

5. 'a gouging deal backed by the willingness of the government to shoot its own people if required'.

That "gouging" part with capital punishment for thirsty peons sounds like the deal favors the Ownership Class, plus it explains why DHS bought all those billions of bullets.

[Enthusiast]

7. Kicked

and recommended a whole bunch!

[MisterP]

8. they use cartel money, I guess they picked up a few other things too!