Democrats have no business helping management.

[Octafish]

28. 'Slow Motion Coup d'Etat' -- Information from Third World Traveler NAFTA-FTTA-CAFTA Page

Regulating Governments, De-regulating Business; expanding personhood with a Bill of Corporate Rights...

Slow Motion Coup d'Etat

Global Trade Agreements and the Displacement of Democracy

by Lori Wallach

Multinational Monitor, January/February 2005

EXCERPT...

REGULATING GOV'T, DEREGULATING BUSINESS

International commercial agreements, like WTO and NAFTA, include a broad deregulatory agenda, slashing food safety, environmental and other public interest protections by labeling them "illegal trade barriers" that must be eliminated. These pacts also promote commodification of common resources by, for instance, requiring signatory countries to issue patents on plant varieties or traditional medicinal plant uses so that the planet's natural biodiversity and the 4? X common heritage of the planet's people can be transformed into tradable units of property for The WTO and NAFTA rules covering the service sector operate to transform services like healthcare, education, electricity and other basic utility essentials into commodities by encouraging broad privatization and deregulation. The WTO and NAFTA establish a right for foreign corporations to own, operate or establish an unlimited array of providers of such critical services, which now are often either provided by governments or via highly regulated monopolies.

The agreements also create new protections for corporations, for instance by requiring all signatory nations to establish new monopoly-style, intellectual property rights (patents, copyrights) for a vast array of knowledge and items from seeds and plant varieties to medicines - many of which are otherwise available for unrestricted use. In exporting the U.S. monopoly patenting system which has contributed to high drug prices, the WTO and NAFTA's intellectual property rules undercut poor countries' capacity to make essential medicines available to their populations.

These trade agreements established new rights for foreign investors to operate, while limiting governments' authority to set the terms of such foreign investment to ensure that it benefits residents of the host country not just the foreign investor. For instance, the special privileges granted foreign investors under NAFTA forbid countries from using capital controls to avoid currency crashes during economic crises, even though such policy instruments have proven time and again to be vital for avoiding economic meltdowns. Both NAFTA and the WTO contain foreign investment protections that forbid governments from using the policies such as requiring that manufactured goods include a percentage of domestic content, or that a percentage of products be exported - that were essential components of the industrial policies employed by the fast-growing Asian economies. Indeed, no country has moved from poverty except by employing the very policies forbidden by WTO and NAFTA. Thus it is not surprising, if horrifying, that grinding poverty has worsened in many developing countries that followed the WTO/International Monetary Fund model most faithfully, while countries like China, Vietnam and Malaysia that have either remained outside the WTO or selectively implemented its terms, have grown dramatically, bringing many to a better standard of living.

In yet another torturous twist, NAFTA and the WTO protect subsidies given to agribusiness for exporting commodities, while certain domestic subsidies to support small farms or ensure food sovereignty are characterized as "illegal trade distortions."

All of these new corporate rights are enforced by a new, powerful and binding dispute resolution system unlike anything from any past trade agreement or included in environmental, human rights or other treaties. A key WTO provision requires nations to "ensure conformity of their laws, regulations and administrative procedures" to the WTO's terms.

Any national or local policy of a WTO or NAFTA signatory nation that falls outside WTO or NAFTA's terms even if it has nothing to do with trade per se is challengeable as an "illegal trade barrier" before a WTO or NAFTA tribunal. These panels are comprised of three trade officials meeting behind closed doors. Nations whose policies are judged not to conform to WTO or NAFTA rules are ordered to eliminate them or face permanent trade sanctions.

A CORPORATE BILL OF RIGHTS

While both WTO and NAFTA represent an audacious power grab, many of the rules of NAFTA are considerably more extreme than the rules of the WTO.

Because WTO negotiations included scores of countries - including some progressive European nations and many large developing countries such as India and Brazil - it was possible to generate a critical mass of push-back against some of the most extreme proposals emanating from the Reagan administration.

In contrast, the power imbalance inherent in the U.S. relationship with Mexico and Canada meant that NAFTA was more of a dictation than a negotiation, and the first Bush Administration was able to insert into NAFTA the most complete and extreme version of the corporate-friendly agenda it favored. NAFTA is considered the gold standard for mechanisms furthering corporate globalization because it includes service sector privatization and deregulation, government procurement deregulation and foreign investor protections that go well beyond the WTO's rules on these issues.

For instance, NAFTA requires signatory countries to provide foreign investors a much more expansive list of new privileges than is required under WTO rules, including privileges that extend beyond the property rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. NAFTA gives foreign investors the right to be compensated for the costs domestic environmental or health regulations applicable to all businesses might pose to their expected future profits, for example.

Under NAFTA, foreign corporations and investors are empowered to privately enforce these new privileges and rights where the WTO renders all disputes between governments. NAFTA contains a mechanism allowing foreign investors to sue signatory governments in private NAFTA tribunals demanding cash compensation for government policies that do not satisfy the NAFTA-guaranteed minimum standard of treatment for foreign companies.

Neither Congress nor the public must be given notice of these NAFTA investor cases, so it is unclear how many have been filed. However, more than 40 cases are known to date and several have been decided.

In one case, the government of Mexico paid Metalclad, a U.S. toxic waste company, $16 million in damages after a NAFTA tribunal ruled that a Mexican municipality's refusal to grant a construction permit for a toxic waste treatment facility in an environmentally sensitive area violated Metalclad's NAFTA investor rights.

In another case, Canada paid the U.S. corporation Ethyl $12 million in compensation and reversed a ban on a toxic gasoline additive called MMT after Ethyl filed a NAFTA challenge.

Not even international environmental and human rights treaties are free from these attacks: in another case, a U.S. corporation called S.D. Meyers received millions in compensation after a NAFTA tribunal ruled that Canada's implementation of the Basel Convention, an international treaty on the handling of toxic waste, had limited S.D. Meyer's business opportunities in PCB toxic waste disposal trade.

In pending actions, a Canadian tobacco company has challenged the tobacco settlements made by assorted U.S. states as a disadvantage to their expected market share in the United States. And a Canadian mining company has just filed a claim for $300 million against the U.S. government because California denied it a permit to dig an open-pit mine on land deemed sacred by a California Indian tribe.

Meanwhile, an array of U.S. health and environmental policies have been weakened to meet WTO or NAFTA rules: imported meat is now permitted even if the foreign plants in which it is processed do not meet U.S. safety standards; U.S. Clean Air Act regulations, dolphin-safe tuna labeling and Endangered Species Act have all been successfully attacked in trade tribunals - meaning dirtier gasoline was allowed for sale in the most polluted cities and that dolphin-safe labels on tuna cans no longer means no dolphins were killed in the tuna harvest.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/NAFTA_FTAA/Coupd%27Etat_NAFTA_CAFTA.html

Lots of information and history that Corporate McPravda ignores and the Have-Mores prefer we never know or remember:

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/NAFTA_FTAA/NAFTA_FTAA.html

All the articles at the above are way before anyone even heard that "TPP is NAFTA on steroids."