The Destruction Of National Sovreignty In Favor Of Corporations

Remember the Battle For Seattle?

Flush with the success of NAFTA and CAFTA, which turned the riches of North and Central America over to rapacious corporations bent on digging out every last bit of wealth without worrying about sovereign nations stopping them with pesky laws and regulations, the US went for broke. The entire world was to be subject to the WTO.

In Seattle, the Teamsters and the Turtles combined to fight the meeting of the world's elite bent on destroying labor and the environment in their quest for more loot. And they won! Temporarily.

Undaunted, the rich and powerful met again in Cancun, where a South Korean farmer immolated himself in protest, and thwarted their evil plans once again.

But when Obama came in the 1% of the world had a worthy and determined campaigner. What Obama did was put speech controls on the negotiators, forbidding them from speaking and threatening them with severe consequences for telling the public just what was in the TPP they were negotiating.

And Obama, the Drone King, could make his threats scarily real.

We organized anyway, and we held it off long enough for Trump to be elected. On his first day in office, he tore up the TPP.

Yay!

But apparently the world's elite decided to switch their plans for power to the WHO instead of the WTO. At least, as near as I can tell.

But now the US has left the WHO also! Yay!.

That's a long way to talk about what is happening now.

The worst part of the WTO and TPP were the Investor-State Dispute Settlement agreements, where sovereign governments who responded to the concerns of their populations by putting limits on corporate ravages, could be sued by the corporations. And no national or international courts could be involved, just an arbitration panel appointed to make a judgement.

Laws? We don't need no stinking laws!

There are many outrageous cases where corporations sued for loss of potential profits due to laws protecting citizens or the environment, and won in the secret arbitration courts, forcing countries to pay millions to said corporations.

But now Russia is going to use the system to sue Euroclear for stealing their sovereign funds.

I am delighted. Hoist those greedy assholes on their own petard, I say.

As Yves Smith puts it:

"In any event, pass the popcorn. Things are about to get ugly. The long-standing erosion of national rights in favor of stateless investors is being turned against its neoliberal creators."

Explain It Like I Still Believe In NATO

Four years ago this month, Russia presented proposed treaties with the US and NATO that would provide mutual security to all countries in Europe. Russia pointed out that the NATO encroachments into eastern European countries was causing a security concern for them, and they proposed win/win agreements that would guarantee security for everyone.

The US and NATO responded by laughing at the proposals, promising nuclear weapons to Ukraine at the Feb. Munich meeting, and upping the attacks by the embedded Kiev regime troops on the people of the Donbass.

Russia responded with the SMO.

The Mighty Wurlitzer of propaganda responded by calling the SMO "unprovoked", and the US and NATO countries openly supported the Kiev regime's war against the people of the Donbass and Russia. They promised endless supplies of weapons, ammo, ISR, and money as long as Zelensky promised endless supplies of Ukrainian men.

"Security" was rebranded to mean "security for the Ukraine" and NATO countries went wild signing "mutual security" treaties with Zelensky.

Alex Chistophorou pointed out today that Finland is the latest of NATO countries to renege on their "security guarantees" with the Ukraine.

Oops! Who knew this would happen once Kiev got down close to the Last Ukrainian?

Not Zelensky. He kept his part of the bargain, funneling endless men kidnapped off the streets of Ukraine, especially men from the ethnically Russian areas.

Plus, after about a year, he had to add endless mantras of "gratitude" to western countries for the money, although not one western countries has ever bothered to say "Thank you for the cannon fodder".

But, alas, it turns out that NATO is made up of lying, soulless, murderous, looting criminals, who will break treaties with their "allies" as easily as they break treaties with their adversaries.

And then call them ''corrupt'', to boot, because they took some of the booty that, face it, was mostly looted by the west.

Who knew? Well, I did. And let me give a heads-up to Russia.

See how the west treats their proxies? See the broken promises and the broken treaties and the looting and the back-stabbing?

Yeah, they ain't gonna treat you any better.