Friday, February 19, 2016

The zombie ISDS

Click here to access article from Corporate Europe Observatory.

The European based agency, which is exposing the latest neoliberal strategy to do an end-run around the sovereignty of nations, reports that neoliberals have now changed the name of the key agency that the new multi-nation trade agreements would establish to promote the interests of transnational corporations.
“The zombie ISDS – rebranded as ICS, rights for corporations to sue states refuse to die” shows how the push for foreign investor privileges in EU trade talks such as the proposed EU-US TTIP deal continues as the Commission attempts to rebrand the politically untenable investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) as an “Investment Court System” (ICS). An unprecedented Europe-wide controversy over the democratic threat posed by ISDS led to last autumn’s rebranding of ISDS as ICS in an attempt to get around the enormous public opposition to legal privileges for multinational corporations.
This reminds me of other renaming attempts to hide the history of sinister organizations such as School of the Americas and Blackwater.