Among the many terrible features of the Trans Pacific Partnership, twelve countries are crafting something that would give corporations unprecedented power: a secret court for capitalist enterprises to sue any country that infringes on profits.

As it stands, with investment treaties skewed in their favor, multinational corporations enjoy the freedom to pillage developing countries–when people suffer disease, death and environmental devastation as a result, they simply claim there is no jurisdiction where they can be made to answer to a court.

Despite many international human rights treaties that countries must follow, there are none that apply to corporations–despite the fact that 37 of the top 100 economies in the world are corporations. 

But while the corporate elite flex their power across the planet, one small country has been leading a fight to hold them accountable for their crimes against humanity. Ecuador has been spearheading a project in the United Nations to create a binding legal instrument that, for the first time, would hold corporations accountable for human rights violations in the countries they extract profits from.

Leading this bold initiative Maria Fernanda Espinosa, Ecuador’s permanent representative to the UN; also having served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs and of National Defense under President Correa. She joined Abby Martin at the TeleSUR studios in Quito to discuss this historic venture, and how Ecuador ended up on the forefront of this fight.

Inside the UN Fight Against Corporate Impunity with Maria Espinosa

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FOLLOW // @EmpireFiles & @AbbyMartin

WATCH // YouTube.com/EmpireFiles

Most people know Ralph Nader as the insurgent third-party Presidential candidate in the 2000 elections, where the popularity of his stand against corporate hegemony struck fear into establishment politics. 

But hundreds of millions experience Nader’s legacy everyday. Most notably, how virtually every automobile safety measure, from seatbelts to airbags, are the product of his relentless campaign against auto industry giants. His contributions as a consumer advocate span disability rights to exposing corporate pollution.

A long-time political figure with unique experience fighting from the center of Washington, Nader joins Abby Martin on The Empire Files to discuss today’s political climate, the corporate government and rigged elections. 

Ralph Nader and Abby Martin on US Corporate Rigged Elections

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Nader describes the invasion of Washington by Wall Street as the way in which the government has been indentured by corporatism; the Democrats are dialed into the same corporate interests as Republicans and both work to crush third party representatives from getting on the ballot.

Nader argues that Bernie Sanders gave up his bargaining power when he pledged to endorse Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee. “He probably knows that the democratic party machinery is controlled by the Clintons.” Nader says Sanders needs to use his grassroots support to make demands of the Democratic Party, and his followers need to start organizing beyond the campaign. 

Hillary Clinton is a “corporate criminal”, who has never met a war or weapons system she doesn’t like. Her hawkish foreign policy casts light on her tendency to chase after war, and her support of Wall Street. “She’s a militarist and a corporatist,” says Nader. Her blind ambition of seeking power will likely push the United States into more wars.

The Clinton Foundation, which is funded by Gulf monarchies and mining magnets, saw an increase in donorship once Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State, showing just how close the Clinton’s ties are to the most oppressive regimes and corporations. While Hillary’s campaign has been supported most passionately by those calling for more women-led leadership, this brand of ‘Clinton feminism’ has latched onto something that is nothing more than an upwards career move, not a substantive movement towards equal representation.

FOLLOW // @EmpireFiles and @AbbyMartin

WATCH // YouTube.com/EmpireFiles

VISIT // https://Nader.org/ for his weekly column and radio show

MEDIA ROOTS — Modern Money and Public Purpose is the 2012-2013 Series on Contemporary Issues in Law and Political Economics at Columbia Law School. The video below displays some hard-hitting, yet, little-known truths about our economy. We can broadcast the truth about money and the people’s democratic sovereignty to control it, especially given the false economic crises facing Americans–where unnecessary economic pain and austerity is being inflicted onto the people.

The speakers in the fifth installment in the series, Dr. Woody Holton (Univ. of S. Carolina), Dr. Farley Grubb (Univ. of Delaware, Economics Department), and Dr. Christine Desan (Harvard Law School) is moderated by Dr. Gillian Metzger (Columbia Law School). A notable aspect of this panel is the description of the origin of money, which traces its value in our society to today’s modern money systems. These inquiries lay bare the reality of money sovereignty for public purpose, denied by those who truly wield power in the USA, namely those who control the power to create money. As Dr. Holton noted in quoting the private banker Gouverneur Morris during the 1787 Constitutional Convention: “The monied interest will oppose the plan of Government, if paper emissions be not prohibited.”

Messina

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NEW ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES—The latest installment of Modern Money and Public Purpose is now online.  This seminar explores the relationship between money and the legal formation of the modern liberal capitalist state, with a particular emphasis on the pre-Revolutionary and early United States.  In contrast to conventional economic narratives that cast money as lubrication for existing forms of exchange, this event highlights the legal and political origins of our modern monetary system, and traces the influence of those forces on the shape of the modern economy.

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“The number one reason the people who wrote our Constitution were there—in Philadelphia, in that summer of 1787—was to stop the states from printing paper money. That’s the number one reason they were there,” said Dr. Holton.

Wow. The monied interests would straight shut down Government and Democracy, altogether, if the people awaken to the power of controlling the money supply for the public purpose. Although the speakers presented important work and were descriptive of historical truths, they seemed less, or un-, willing to explicitly connect those important truths to today’s real conditions of unnecessary and avoidable widening inequality and economic misery for a growing majority, as others do, such as Dr. Michael Hudson:

“But if governments are not allowed to create their money, then all of the credit the economy needs is created by the commercial banks. And when the commercial bank credit creation leads to debt deflation and the government cannot finance the deficit to pay the interest then the commercial banks say: Alright, sell off and privatise your infrastructure. This is what we’re seeing in Greece today, in Ireland. You’ve seen it in Iceland. What you are seeing is a financial grab of infrastructure that is taking place by the ability of commercial bankers to prevent the central bank from creating credit.”

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