MUST READ: Two-Part BUZZFEED Piece on Internat'l Private Justice
This is one reason we must stop TPP from creating more disparity and devastation:
Part One
The Court That Rules the World
A parallel legal universe, open only to corporations and largely invisible to everyone else, helps executives convicted of crimes escape punishment. Part one of a BuzzFeed News investigation.
Imagine a private, global super court that empowers corporations to bend countries to their will.
Say a nation tries to prosecute a corrupt CEO or ban dangerous pollution. Imagine that a company could turn to this super court and sue the whole country for daring to interfere with its profits, demanding hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars as retribution.Imagine that this court is so powerful that nations often must heed its rulings as if they came from their own supreme courts, with no meaningful way to appeal. That it operates unconstrained by precedent or any significant public oversight, often keeping its proceedings and sometimes even its decisions secret. That the people who decide its cases are largely elite Western corporate attorneys who have a vested interest in expanding the court’s authority because they profit from it directly, arguing cases one day and then sitting in judgment another. That some of them half-jokingly refer to themselves as “The Club” or “The Mafia.”
And imagine that the penalties this court has imposed have been so crushing — and its decisions so unpredictable — that some nations dare not risk a trial, responding to the mere threat of a lawsuit by offering vast concessions, such as rolling back their own laws or even wiping away the punishments of convicted criminals.
This system is already in place, operating behind closed doors in office buildings and conference rooms in cities around the world. Known as investor-state dispute settlement, or ISDS, it is written into a vast network of treaties that govern international trade and investment, including NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Congress must soon decide whether to ratify.
Part Two
The Billion Dollar Ultimatum
International corporations that want to intimidate countries have access to a private legal system designed just for them. And to unlock its power, sometimes all it takes is a threat. Part two of a BuzzFeed News investigation.
Known as investor-state dispute settlement, or ISDS, this legal system is written into a vast network of treaties that set the rules for international trade and investment. It is as striking for its power as for its secrecy, with its proceedings — and in many cases its decisions — kept from public view. Of all the ways in which ISDS is used, the most deeply hidden are the threats, uttered in private meetings or ominous letters, that invoke those courts. The threats are so powerful they often eliminate the need to actually bring a lawsuit. Just the knowledge that it could happen is enough.
An 18-month BuzzFeed News investigation into ISDS for the first time casts a bright light on the use of these threats. Based on reporting from Asia, Africa, Central America, and the US; interviews with more than 200 people; and inspection of tens of thousands of pages of documents, many of which have never before been made public, the series has already exposed how executives accused or convicted of crimes have turned to ISDS to help them get off the hook. Stories later this week will show how some financial firms have used ISDS to protect their most controversial and speculative practices and how the US, a major booster of the system, is surprisingly vulnerable to ISDS suits. Today’s story reveals how corporations have turned the threat of ISDS legal action into a fearsome weapon, one that all but forces some of the countries where these corporations operate to give in to their demands.

Comments
Want to get a taste? Bitter pill warning.
http://news.nationalpost.com/features/port-in-a-storm-people-in-churchil...
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
ISDS is a tool of vulture capitalism. Welcome to the world of
globalized fascism. There is no national sovereignty any longer. Corporate coup de tat complete.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." - JFK | "The more I see of the moneyed peoples, the more I understand the guillotine." - G. B. Shaw Bernie/Tulsi 2020
Indeed it is vulture capitalism in the worst way as usual
This is the best article that describes how horrible the ISDS is and how it will be worse if the TPP passes.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/isds-lawsuit-financing-tpp_us_57c48e...
The message echoes from Gaza back to the US. “Starving people is fine.”
A nation's laws mean nothing to global capital and if the laws
get in the way of corporate profits, then bought-off politicians will help them circumvent the laws. Obama thinks nothing of murdering people, even American citizens, with drones; we should not be surprised that he's leading the fight to allow capital to make the profits they THINK they should be making and these business-lawyer tribunals are a handy way of dodging We The People.
Obama has already signed into law a bill outlawing Country Of Origin Labeling(COOL) for meat even though polls show 90% of Americans favoring COOL.
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
Obama is not an American.
Now, I don't mean that in the same way that the idiot "birthers" do, but in the sense that Obama considers himself a globalist or global citizen rather than an American. He believes that everything he does is for the good of the world. Whether or not those things are good for the U.S. is a secondary and lesser matter. It's a true case of "the ends justify the means", and little or no thought is given to those harmed along the way.