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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • Okay strap in this gets wild:

    I am currently reading “Silent Coup” - very interesting book.

    It talks about the international mechanisms by which we legally took the sovereignity of nation states.

    As byproduct of free trade agreements most countries are liable to be sued by foreign companies. There are absurd cases where forein investors undermine democratic decisions in order to ensure their pofit interests.

    South Africa - for example - after ending Apartheid wanted to change the deal with diamond mining rights. They wanted to add a tax to ensure that black people get a fair share of the wealth extracted from their soil. But one italian multinational didn’t like this - so they sued and won. SA wanted to keep this as silent as possible so that no other company would sue. But they had to grant them a huge cut: from 26% of profits to 5%.

    Many other examples, this one just stood out to me.

    On first glance it seems absurd that some company can sue a sovereign country over democratic decisions, but this is the world we live in. Fuck free trade agreements, fuck coorporations, fuck the whole World Bank & Breton Woods machinery.

    https://www.counterfire.org/article/silent-coup-how-corporations-overthrew-democracy-book-review/

    https://icsid.worldbank.org/cases/case-database/case-detail?CaseNo=ARB(AF)/07/1