WHY THIS secondrate poet DOESN´T LOVE BIG BUSINESS part 31:

As this is posting number 31 in the on-going I found it necessary to line up the foundation, the wider perspective of my heartfelt hate. I know its late, but is should never be too late. When you hit 30 and more is my piss point, you got to make sense:

The apparent goal of international trade negotiations is to safeguard multinational corporate investments by eliminating regulatory control by nation/states and local governments. They call it: MAI: The Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) and are plans to set in place a vast series of protections for foreign investment. It would threaten national sovereignty by giving corporations – BIG BUSINESS – nearly equal rights to those of nations. MAI delegates from an estimated 30 of the world’s richest nations have been meeting in France for the last decade. A draft of their work surfaced I 1997. More wide reaching than NAFTA or GATT, MAI would thrust the world economy much closer to a transnational laissez-faire system where international corporate capital would hold free reign over the democratic wishes and sociecnomic needs of people, not The People, but people!
Pushed by, in particular the International Chamber of Commerce and US Council on International Business, the major goal of MAI is to safeguard direct foreign investments, defines broadly as encompassing any assets: factories, products, services, currency, stocks, etc., -which may be located in one country but owned by another. US direct foreign investments have more than doubled within the last decade.
Foreign investments often involve enormous risks, mostly in developing countries where the social, political and economic climate is not always as conductive to foreign investments as the corporations would like. Governments have commonly a tax system at hand, tariffs and subsidies favouring the home economy. These provision shrink foreign profit and reduce the dollar amount can haul out of the host country.
The MAI agreement requires a national treatment for all foreign investors. National governments will no longer be able to treat domestic firms more favourably than foreign firms. It will be illegal to implement restrictions on what foreign firms can own. Subsidy programs focused on assisting and developing domestic industries will be eliminated. Host nations will also be liable and can be sued by corporations for lost competitiveness and profits.
Moreover the MAI could also have devastating impact on different nations legal, environmental and cultural sovereignty. It could force nations to relax(!) and nullify human, environmental and labour protection in order to attract investments. Necessary measures such as food subsidies, control of land speculation, agricultural reforms, the implementation of health and environmental standards can be challenged as “illegal” under the MAI. This same illegality is extended to community control of forests, local bans of pesticides and hormineinduced foods, clean air standards, limits on mineral, gas and oil extraction, and bans on toxic dumping.
In general: The MAI will undermine the capacity of local communities and governments to govern sustainly and according to the democratic tradition.

In his book “The five mysteries of Capital” (2000) Hernando de Soto writes as a comment to the MAI negotiations and the parallel riots in Seattle and Washington DC, 1999:
“…many has begun recalling the economic historian Karl Polanyi`s warnings that the free market ultimately can collide with society and lead to fascism (…..) These whispers of alarm, disturbing though they are, have thus far only prompted American and European leaders to repeat to the rest of the world the same wearisome lectures: Stabilize your economy, hang tough, ignore the food riots, and wait patiently for the foreign investors to return.”
In other words: Work harder, run faster, buy more stuff!! The mercy of Big Business or just the Mercy Seat?

This and other postings in the on-going… is inspired by the following:

The Republican Noisemachine: David Brock (2004)
The Five Mysteries of Capital: Hernado de Soto (200)
Lead Us into Temptation: James B. Twitchell (1999)
I Want That: Thomas Hine (2002)
Steeling Innocence: Henry A. Giroux (2000)
RAMPAGE, The social roots of school shootings in America: Katherine S. Newman (2002)
Globalisation: Zygmunt Bauman (2001)
San Francisco Chronicle: www.sfgate.com
And various website hits. Google this (!): Multilateral Agreement on Investment (670.000 hits)

more to come...