This was forwarded to me, thought you'd all like to read it:
>Originally written by Frank Hughes:
>
> This year the industrialized nations of the world are quietly
>trying to finalize a treaty to create a corporate utopia by restricting any
>local government controls over transnational corporate investments throughout
>the world. The treaty, which is called the Multilateral Agreement on
>Investments, would first be aproved by the industrialized countries within the
>Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD] and subsequently
>forced on the rest of the world. A parallel exercise is going on in the World
>Trade Organization [WTO].
> The treaty would give transnational corporations new rights and
>powers and burden nations with new obligations owed to corporations. It
>would require nations to give foreign investors access to all economic
>sectors. It would abolish the powers of citizens and governments to control the
>entry, conditions, behavior, and operations of transnational companies in their
>country. This right is especially vital for developing countries as it would
>effectively close the possibility of domestic capacvity building.
> The adverse social, economic, environmental, and cultural
>consquences of various transnational corporate investments and companies,
>which occur now even when they are subject to government regulation, would
>be greatly magnified. In practice, this means that people anywhere on the
>globe could wake up and find that a local business, forest, or farm, or
>even an entire communications system or an entire employment sector, was
>bought and is now controlled by a transnational company with no interest in the
>well-being of that community. [end of quote]
>
> Consider, please, those to whom these powers are to be given. There
>are the tobacco companies who, fully aware of the poisonous nature of their
>product, have fought for many years to avoid rational public health regulation.
>There is the Shell Oil Company whose actions toward the peoples of Nigeria have
>been reprehensible. The Nestle Corporation, who dressed salesgirls as nurses to
>persuade uninformed mothers to stop breastfeeding and use Nestle formula,
>regardless of the lack of suitable water. These actions are all reprehensible,
>and to consider giving such entities overriding powers is in the interests
of no
>nation.
> The fundamental fallacy making this Multilateral Investment
>Agreement unacceptable lies in the laws on corporations. As is generally
>known, a corporation is an artificial person, given such powers as the act
>creating it allows. The powers now generally allowed are far too wide for,
>as Baron Thurlow put it, did you ever expect a corporationto have a
>conscience, when it has no soul to be damned, and no body to be kicked?
>Thes amoral,conscienceless entities must be prevented from exercising their
>powers to the detriment of any person: a fortiori, of no nation.
> It is most curious that I, and others I know, have seen nothing
>published in the press, until recently, or heard or seen broadcast even on
>our national CBC, discussing this vital matter: this could be construed as
>an example of the
>long reach of the corporate arm.
Jay
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