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Peru FTA anti-sovereignty provisions |
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Written by Stumo
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Friday, 21 September 2007 |
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Here's another tidbit about the Peru Free Trade Agreement
(PFTA). Chapter 10 of the PFTA allows multinationals to sue local
government to overturn laws the companies don't like. This is the
NAFTA model.
A letter by environmental groups spells it out (PDF link):
Harmful Anti-Environmental Lawsuits: The FTA’s Investment Chapter
(Chapter 10) contains provisions like those in CAFTA and NAFTA that
would allow foreign investors to challenge health and environmental
regulations for compensation before international tribunals, bypassing
domestic courts. The United States currently faces 12 active NAFTA
investor-state cases.
Worse, the agreement provides foreign investors even greater rights to
challenge environmental laws than CAFTA does. CAFTA gave investors the
right to file suit against alleged breaches of natural resources
contracts. The U.S. - Peru FTA expands these rights by broadly defining
natural resources contracts to include every aspect of the extractive,
productive and marketing processes. These new rights would enable
multinational corporations to attack legitimate attempts by communities
to protect their health and environment even if their activities are
only tangentially related to natural resource extraction. For example,
communities suffering from water pollution and chemical exposure due to
Peru’s large mining industry are pushing to strengthen laws that
regulate mining and oil exploration. The U.S. - Peru FTA’s investor
rights provisions threaten these efforts, and could chill future
attempts to improve environmental conditions. In addition, the
agreement gives corporations the right to challenge U.S. government
decisions over oil and gas royalties and
other domestic regulations.
Trade attorneys in international tribunals decide whether to strike
local laws. Multinationals turn loose their lawyers on the
counsel for the local community that just voted against property tax
increases and has a budget crunch.
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In the news
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Colorado CPA member Milt Heft has these thoughts on money, wealth and the economy. Heft is the owner of Petrogen, Inc in Colorado Springs.
A few thoughts about manufacturing:
There is a great misunderstanding of the relationship- between money and wealth. The beginning principles with which we can all agree are a few and simple noble truths:
1. Money is meaningless without wealth.
2. Wealth is difficult to distribute without money.
3. Wealth is the reality of the physical things we need to survive and thrive: food, clothing, shelter, ice cream & computers. It is the product of mining, industrial production, and agriculture.
4. Money is anything that make the wheels of production and distribution go ‘round.
5. Money is easy to manufacture and control.
6. Wealth takes a lot of blood, sweat, toil and tears.
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