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Taking on the Trade Laws of the 1 Percent
from YES! Magazine:
Taking on the Trade Laws of the 1 Percent
A protest at the World Bank supported El Salvador's attempts to put human rights above corporate rights.
by John Cavanagh, Robin Broad
posted Dec 21, 2011
By early 2012, a little-known tribunal representing the interests of the 1 percent will likely make a ruling with significant implications for the 99 percent.
The tribunal is called the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). And, it is located in the giant concrete complex of the World Bank headquarters, which occupies an entire city block in downtown Washington, DC.
Five of us ventured down to the World Bank early in the morning of December 15 with 1,000 copies of a leaflet protesting the tribunal. Bank security guards warned us that we were not allowed to leaflet inside barriers set up in the wake of the huge anti-corporate globalization protests of a decade ago. We asserted our first amendment rights and told the security chief that he would have to call the police if he really wanted us to leave. We were allowed to stay.
As we passed out the leaflets, we invited World Bank staff to join us at noon in a rally outside the Bank. Most took the leaflet and a handful stopped to chat with us to find out why we were there; a few said they would return to listen. ...............(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/john-cavanagh-and-robin-broad/taking-on-the-trade-laws-of-the-1-percent
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Taking on the Trade Laws of the 1 Percent (Original Post)
marmar
Dec 2011
OP
pipoman
(16,038 posts)1. All of the trade agreements
Dem Presidents, Congress, and Senate members love so much, ONLY benefit the 1%...thus the irony of considering the Democratic party the 'labor party'...The labor party is dead..
meow2u3
(24,745 posts)2. All these free trade agreements are unconstitutional treaties by another name
FTA's are designed to make an end run around the 2/3 Senate vote requirement on treaties. Multinationals sneak clauses in the legislation that directly curtail the rights of sovereign nations to pass laws that protect their citizens from corproate crimes against them, giving them a license to colonize any country they want.
Someone needs to challenge the constitutionality of FTA's in court.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleii#section2
Most of these Free Trade laws are in some sense unconstitutional. But of course it doesn't matter since ultimately it's the corporations that run the world now.
[url]http://www.survivingeconomiccollapse.net/[/url]
Exactly.