End of the line for corporate sovereignty

Sat, 27 Apr 2024 12:56:52 +1000

Andrew Pam <xanni [at] glasswings.com.au>

Andrew Pam
<https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/27/korporate-kangaroo-kourts/#corporate-sovereignty>

"Back in the 1950s, a new, democratically elected Iranian government
nationalized foreign oil interests. The UK and the US then backed a coup,
deposing the progressive government with one more hospitable to foreign
corporations:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalization_of_the_Iranian_oil_industry>

This nasty piece of geopolitical skullduggery led to the
mother-of-all-blowbacks: the Anglo-American puppet regime was toppled by the
Ayatollah and his cronies, who have led Iran ever since.

For the US and the UK, the lesson was clear: they needed a less kinetic way to
ensure that sovereign countries around the world steered clear of policies that
undermined the profits of their oil companies and other commercial giants.
Thus, the "investor-state dispute settlement" (ISDS) was born.

The modern ISDS was perfected in the 1990s with the Energy Charter Treaty
(ECT). The ECT was meant to foam the runway for western corporations seeking to
take over ex-Soviet energy facilities, by making those new post-Glasnost
governments promise to never pass laws that would undermine foreign companies'
profits."

Cheers,
       *** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net               Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/                 Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/            Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/               Manager, Serious Cybernetics

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