----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, January 28, 2002 11:59 PM
Subject: Hidden NAFTA provision: Corporations can sue governments
over environmental and health laws that affect profits: Moyer's Trading
Democracy
BlankOn Tuesday February 5th at 10:00 PM a Bill Moyers PBS
documentary,
"Trading Democracy," will expose hidden powers granted to
transnational
corporations in the NAFTA treaty. Learn how, to the
globalists, we are
all Taliban
now.
===============================
"Trading Democracy" is a one-hour
documentary that covers, in understandable
terms, the legal and technical
aspects of NAFTA's investor rules. These
rules allow corporations to sue
countries directly to overturn legitimate
public interest laws and
regulations when they believe their actual or
potential corporate profits
have been undermined. Incredibly, these suits
are decided in secret by
unelected bureaucrats who have been given the power
to determine whether
laws ranging from zoning ordinances to environmental
protections
constitute an interference with corporate profits.
Already Chapter 11 has
led to corporate assaults against health, safety and
environmental
laws, with one company demanding compensation close to $1
billion. Beyond
that, even "Buy America" laws intended to protect our
country's steel
industry are now under attack by multi-national
corporate
profiteers.
Amazingly, the Bush Administration is now in
negotiations to expand this
dangerous NAFTA investor provision to 31 more
countries in the hemisphere,
through the so-called Free Trade Area of the
Americas (FTAA). The first
step in paving the way to this expansion of
the reach of Chapter 11 will be
a soon-to-be held senate vote on the
Baucus/Grassley Fast Track
bill.
____________________________________________________________________________
_________
WHAT
CAN YOU DO? Below are three simple and straight forward, and important
things
you can do to ensure your voice is heard:
1) FEBRUARY 6th: ALL-CALL DAY
TO YOUR SENATORS! Urge your Senators to oppose
these outrageous
"investor-to-state" provisions in trade and investment
agreements, and DEMAND
that they vote against the Baucus/Grassley Fast Track
bill. Its weak language
(contained in the foreign investment section of the
bill) would lead to
further corporate assaults on the environment, and on
health and safety
regulations. Tell your senator that Chapter 11 investor
rules undermine
our democratic rights to choose our own laws to protect the
environment, as
well as our health and safety, and that a meaningful and
substantial revision
of this terrible NAFTA provision is necessary. (For a
list of some
necessary revisions to Chapter 11, check out the letter from
Congressman
Doggett (D-TX) on our web-page:
http://www.citizen.org/documents/Fast_Track_-Doggett,Eshoo_Chp._11,_Pres._Bu
sh_1.pdf).
YOUR
SENATOR MAY BE REACHED BY CALLING THE U.S. CAPITOL SWITCHBOARD
AT
202-224-3121, OR 202-225-3121.
2) Tell everyone you know about the
program and urge them to watch this
incredible expose. (You can send
electronic postcards by visiting
www.thirteen.org/moyers/trading_democracy/index.php).
Tape the show and
arrange for a screening of it to friends/family/colleagues
later on.
3) Send a letter to the editor about Chapter 11. You can find
some sample
letters on our web-site:
http://www.citizen.org/trade/nafta/CH__11/articles.cfm?ID=6692.
We will also
post a sample op-ed and letters to your elected officials on
this site after
the program has aired so keep checking the
site!
____________________________________________________________________________
_________
Want
more information about Chapter 11? Visit these links: Public Citizen
released
a comprehensive report on Chapter 11 called: "NAFTA Chapter
11
Investor-to-State Cases: Bankrupting Democracy":
http://www.citizen.org/publications/release.cfm?ID=7076
There
is also a shorter article from Multinational Monitor "NAFTA's
Investor
"Rights" A Corporate Dream, A Citizen Nightmare" that is well worth
reading:
http://www.essential.org/monitor/mm2001/01april/corp1.html
Several
organizations have also released information on Chapter 11,
including Center
for International Environmental Law (www.ciel.org), Friends
of the Earth (www.foe.org) and the Sierra Club (www.sierraclub.org).
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
BILL
MOYERS REPORTS: TRADING DEMOCRACY REVEALS
HOW AN OBSCURE PROVISION HIDDEN IN
NAFTA CAN
COST TAXPAYERS MILLIONS OF DOLLARS WHEN
MULTINATIONAL
CORPORATIONS SUE` THE
GOVERNMENT OVER ENVIRONMENTAL AND HEALTH
LAWS THAT
THREATEN THEIR PROFITS
Documentary Exposing How NAFTA's Chapter
11
Has Become Private Justice For Foreign Companies
Premieres February
5, at 10:00 p.m. (ET) on PBS (check local listings)
Newest Collaboration
Between Bill Moyers And Sherry Jones
Investigating Our Democracy At
Risk
Three years after a Mississippi jury found a Canadian-based
conglomerate
guilty of fraud in attempting to put a family-owned Biloxi
funeral home out
of business, the Canadian company filed a claim against the
United States,
demanding $725 million in compensation.
When California
banned a gasoline additive that had contaminated drinking
water throughout
the state, another Canadian firm sued the U.S. government
to force citizens
to pay nearly 1 billion dollars for its potential lost
profits.
In
what one attorney called "an end-run around the Constitution,"
corporations
are using a little-known provision of the North American Free
Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) to challenge public laws, regulations and jury
verdicts not only in
the United States, but in Canada and Mexico as well.
And, they are arguing
those cases not in courts of law, but before secret
trade
tribunals.
How can this be happening? And why do so few people know
about it?
In the latest in their series of expos�s on the secret recesses
of American
democracy, Bill Moyers and Sherry Jones uncover how
multinational
corporations have acquired the power to demand compensation if
laws aimed at
protecting the environment or public health harm them
financially. The
one-hour documentary, BILL MOYERS REPORTS: TRADING
DEMOCRACY, premieres
February 5 at 10:00 p.m. (ET) on PBS (check local
listings).
"When the North American Free Trade Agreement became the law
of the land
almost a decade ago, the debate we heard was about jobs," notes
Bill Moyers.
"One provision was too obscure to stir up controversy. It
was called
Chapter 11, and it was supposedly written to protect investors
from having
their property seized by foreign governments. But since
NAFTA was ratified,
corporations have used Chapter 11 to challenge the powers
of government to
protect its citizens, to undermine environmental and health
laws, even
attack our system of justice."
Speaking with legislators,
public policy experts, community leaders and
citizens about the lawsuits
filed under NAFTA's Chapter 11, BILL MOYERS
REPORTS: TRADING DEMOCRACY
unravels the hidden repercussions of a treaty
that was supposed to promote
democracy through free trade, but now appears
to have given deep-pocketed
corporations the means to undermine democracy
across international
borders.
The program explores the case of Methanex, a Canadian company
that is the
world's largest producer of the key ingredient in the gasoline
additive
MTBE, which was found to be a carcinogen. In 1995 MTBE began
turning up in
wells throughout California, and by 1999 had contaminated
thirty public
water systems. The state ordered that the additive be phased
out. Methanex
filed suit under NAFTA's Chapter 11, seeking $970 million
in compensation
for loss of market share and, consequently, future
profits.
With regard to the Methanex case, environmental attorney Martin
Wagner tells
Moyers, "they're saying that California either can't implement
this
protection or that they get a billion dollars. People should be
outraged by
that."
As Moyers reports, many people who have been
affected by MTBE contamination
are indeed outraged. But they are
helpless to do anything. The NAFTA
tribunal that will decide the
Methanex case - like all the tribunals hearing
Chapter Eleven-based cases -
is closed to the public. Yet, it is the
taxpayers "who will foot the
bill if the tribunal decides in favor of the
Canadian company," says
Moyers.
But the ramifications for the public go well beyond the loss of
taxpayer
dollars, a journalist William Greider explains. "If Methanex
wins its
billion dollar claim over California environmental law, there ain't
gonna be
many states enacting that law, are there?" he says, adding that the
NAFTA
provision "hobbles the authority of government to act in the broader
public
interest. And, in fact, that was the idea in the first
place."
Addressing a Chapter 11 case in which the Ethyl Corporation, an
American
manufacturer of another gasoline additive called MMT, successfully
sued
Canada over a ban on the product, Greider tells Moyers:
"Governments are
already being intimidated by the mere threat of a claim
being filed against
some regulatory action. If you're a civil servant,
or even a political
leader, you've got to think twice when a corporate lawyer
comes to you and
says, quite forcefully, we're going to hit you for a half a
billion dollars
if you do this."
Moyers also takes his investigation
south of the border to the Mexican state
of San Luis Potos�, where an
American company called Metalclad tried to
bulldoze over the protests of both
state and local governments to reopen a
toxic waste dump that many citizens
feared was making them sick. When
Metalclad was stopped by the local town
council the company invoked Chapter
11 and was awarded $16 million in
compensation. The crux of Metalclad's
victory was the Chapter 11 phrase
"tantamount to expropriation." As Martin
Wagner explains: "Not
only do governments have to compensate when they
expropriate or take away
property, but they have to do so whenever they do
something that is
'tantamount to
expropriation'."
Challenges being mounted under Chapter 11 are not only directed
toward
regulatory activity, they are also successfully overruling jury
decisions in
civil courts of law. The documentary explores a case in
Mississippi
where a Biloxi funeral home owner was awarded punitive damages
by a jury in a
civil suit against a large Canadian corporation called the
Loewen Group. The
local funeral home owner alleged that the Loewen Group had
engaged in
"fraudulent" and "predatory" trade practices, and the jury found
against the
Canadian company. Three years later, the Loewen Group filed a
Chapter
11 claim against American taxpayers saying the jury was biased
against
Canadians, and in a preliminary ruling, the NAFTA tribunal has
declared the
Mississippi trial a legitimate target. The Loewen suit, notes
Moyers,
"could conceivably open the U.S. civil justice system to challenge
-
including decisions of the United States Supreme
Court."
This startling realization, and the knowledge that corporate
giants are
pushing to expand NAFTA to 31 more countries in the Western
Hemisphere,
prompts Moyers to ask, "Are we promoting democracy - as we claim
- or trading
it
away?"
TRADING DEMOCRACY is the latest collaboration between Bill
Moyers and
producer Sherry Jones, who produced TRADE SECRETS: A MOYERS
REPORT in
March 2001. Their previous productions include WASHINGTON'S OTHER
SCANDAL,
the Peabody-winning investigation of campaign finance scandals in
the 1996
Presidential elections, and the Emmy-winning HIGH CRIMES AND
MISDEMEANORS for
PBS's Frontline
series.
Major funding for BILL MOYERS REPORTS: TRADING DEMOCRACY was
provided by The
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; The Kohlberg
Foundation, Inc.;
The Herb Alpert Foundation; and The Bernard and Audre
Rapoport Foundation.
Corporate funding was provided by Mutual of America
Life Insurance
Company.
BILL MOYERS REPORTS: TRADING DEMOCRACY is produced by Public
Affairs
Television, Inc., in association with Washington Media Associates,
and is
presented on PBS by Thirteen/WNET New York. Producer: Sherry
Jones
editor Jennifer Beman-White; Associate Producers: Christopher
Buchanan and
Matilda Bode; Executive Editors: Bill Moyers and Judith
Davidson Moyers;
Executives in Charge: Judy Doctoroff O'Neill, Judith
Davidson Moyers;
Executive Producer: Felice Firestone; Executive
Director of Special
Projects: Deborah
Rubenstein.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
For more information on
"Trading Democracy":
Kristin Fellows
TRADING DEMOCRACY Outreach and
Promotion
Kelly & Salerno Communications
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
703-780-4006
/s/Mike
Dolan
GTW Deputy Director
Public Citizen
West
510-663-0888
fax 663-8569
http://www.citizen.org/california/
Tickled
& Proud to be helping out Jim Hightower
on the Rolling Thunder Downhome
Democracy Tour
www.jimhightower.com
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