Milan here is an interesting situation. Further expansion of corporate America. bev ----- Original Message ----- From: Dallas Peace Center Sent: Friday, February 01, 2002 9:16 PM To: Dallas Peace Center Subject: "Trading Democracy" Tues. 10 pm The Bill Moyers special, "Trading Democracy," will air on KERA (Dallas
area), Channel 13, Tuesday, February 5, 9:00-10:00 p.m. and repeat Sunday,
February 10, 4:00-5:00 a.m.
Our World and Democracy Aren't for Sale!
"Trading Democracy" is a one-hour documentary by Bill Moyers 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.
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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/Doggett_Chapter11_letter.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!
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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).
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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?"
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For more information on "Trading Democracy":
Kristin Fellows
TRADING DEMOCRACY Outreach and Promotion
Kelly & Salerno Communications
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
703-780-4006
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