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Palestinians Do Not Need to Learn Land Cultivation Elsewhere
What a great idea, that of taking Palestinians out of Palestine to teach them how to cultivate other lands! How had it not occurred to them before?
Jun 15, 2025
“Uruguay aims to ‘bring some young Palestinians from the West Bank’ to train them in agriculture through a FAO program, said Lubetkin” (Channel 12, Uruguay, June 6, 2025)
On Monday, May 12, 1919, the British Minister of War, future Prime Minister and hero of World War II Winston Churchill, referring to his own practice of gassing Arab protesters and rebels, wrote:
I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. We have definitely adopted the position at the Peace Conference of arguing in favour of the retention of gas as a permanent method of warfare… I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum. It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gasses: Gasses can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror…
Of the Hindus, he said they were animals who worshipped elephants. Consistent with this, he was directly and knowingly responsible for the famine that killed millions in Bengal in 1943, shortly before he signed an alliance agreement with Stalin in Iran to fight against Nazism.
These words from the British hero and defender of freedom and human rights, these supremacist ideas and actions were not new at the time and did not provoke any scandal. Supremacist and messianic racism, like the “Manifest Destiny” of John O’Sullivan and “The White Man’s Burden” of Rudyard Kipling, which in the 19th century justified and promoted the slaughter of “uncivilized peoples” and “inferior races,” were the precursors to Hitler and Nazism. Hitler plagiarized entire paragraphs from Madison Grant for Mein Kampf and thanked him for the inspiration. The popularity of Nazism in countries like England and the United States was deep and widespread, especially among wealthy businessmen and powerful politicians, until they began to lose World War II, and suddenly the Nazi criminals were just a handful of lunatics, not a complicit and cowardly mass of beautiful and superior civilized people with sudden amnesia.
A hundred years later, the history of suppressing the uncivilized, inferior races and peoples cursed by God is a thousand times worse, and, as then, it seems like it’s not such a big deal. But the real-time information available is also a thousand times greater, so the responsibility and shame (or shamelessness) are multiplied a thousandfold.
Beyond the murky conscience of Uruguay’s Foreign Ministry, many do not understand or imagine that in Palestine there are thousands of bilingual professionals and academics whose schools and universities were bombed to rubble.
Currently, Uruguay is one of those examples that do not quite reach the level of tragedy solely due to its military and propagandistic inability to do much harm. Not because we are a superior people, as our government so kindly insists on making clear with its own example. Which does not exempt us from the shame of the cowardice of denial or moral wavering in the face of the most tragic events of contemporary history. Cowardice and denial from which are exempted those Uruguayans who do not bow tremblingly before the fascists of the moment—those fascists who terrorize with total impunity from right to left—in that order.
After Uruguayan President Yamandú Orsi refused his party’s (the left-wing coalition Frente Amplio) request to define the massacres in Gaza as genocide, he defended himself by saying that his focus is on actions, not words, and that he prefers not to talk about “the war” and instead offer “concrete solutions,” such as sending powdered milk and rice to Gaza… The Israeli Embassy in Uruguay labeled the Frente Amplio’s criticism of the genocide in Gaza as “expressions of disguised hatred” and warned of “dangerous consequences.” B’nai B’rith called the FA’s brief statement a “grave moral failure.”
Due to prior criticism from artists and left-wing activists regarding the wavering of their own government, the president once again tried to put out the fire with more fuel. In a new statement to the newspapers, he said he condemned the “military escalation” and that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s offensive “fuels antisemitism” and generates “weariness” in “important sectors” of the Israeli people.
It is quite obvious that the Zionist genocide can fuel, among other things, antisemitism, as it has always been the Zionists themselves who, for political, geopolitical, and ideological reasons, have strategically confused and identified Zionism with Judaism (like identifying the KKK with Christianity), which is why even the hundreds of thousands of Jews who actively oppose the massacres of Palestinians and apartheid in Israel can end up being blamed for something they condemn.
But what about the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians massacred, mutilated, traumatized, and starved? Are they not the direct victims of the hatred and violence that insists that “in Gaza there are no innocents, not even children,” which justifies exterminating them before they become “terrorists”? Could it be that the European settlers who claim to be descendants of a man named Abraham who lived 4,000 years ago in what is now Iraq are the real antisemites? A man who first had a child with his slave at the request of his infertile wife. But the son of Abraham and the slave produced the lineage of the Arabs. When something went wrong, Sarah had her son at the age of 90 by a miracle of the Lord, the one who produced the lineage of the Israelites (according to the same tradition that identifies those Israelites from 3,000 years ago with the current ones) as an improved version of his brother’s race. But let’s leave this surreal line of reasoning, which is only obvious to fanatics in perpetual trance.
The mere idea of sending milk and rice to Gaza under the slogan of “actions, not words” hides a profound ignorance of what happens with humanitarian aid in Palestine or, more likely, denialism and a well-known fear of criticizing the powerful who are committing genocide—let’s say massacre, so as not to offend the sensitivity of the killers and their apologists.
Of course, if you mention it, the automatic argument is “I haven’t seen you condemn the October 7th attack.” Which is false and paradoxical, since it is always said by those who have never condemned and will never condemn the repeated massacres and systematic violation of human rights against Palestinians and other neighbors since World War II, when the same Zionists proudly identified themselves as terrorists.
Uruguayan Foreign Minister Mario Lubetkin (former director of institutional communication for Food and Agriculture Organization in Latin America) has come out to put out the fire (now a blaze) of criticism from his political base by announcing plans to allow “some young Palestinians from the West Bank” to come to the country to train in sustainable agriculture. In another radio program, he stated that the Palestinian youth could “think about the day after” by becoming entrepreneurs and starting their own start-ups.
The day after what? Why do we, the Western masters, have to tell them what they must do to civilize themselves, how to indoctrinate themselves and adapt to progress and submission to Anglo-Saxon capitalism? Of course, to exile them again, far from their land and their own sovereign decisions as individuals and as a people.
Beyond the murky conscience of Uruguay’s Foreign Ministry, many do not understand or imagine that in Palestine there are thousands of bilingual professionals and academics whose schools and universities were bombed to rubble. In Israel, they are considered beasts of burden, and in the West, they believe they can teach them how to plant olive trees.
At the beginning of 2024, I met with the International Affairs officers at my university in the United States to propose the creation of “humanitarian scholarships” for students affected by armed conflicts. While the idea was very well received, it sank into the apathy of donors. But what a great idea, that of taking Palestinians out of Palestine to teach them how to cultivate other lands! How had it not occurred to them before? It’s not about giving scholarships to the youth who lost everything under the bombs so they can prepare and wage an international struggle for the sovereignty of their people, but so they can learn to cultivate the land, other lands that have nothing to do with their own, which they know like the back of their hand and have cultivated for thousands of years in a more than sustainable way.
Where is the mantra we Western professors hear with toxic frequency about the need to “train global leaders”? Every time I criticize this colonialist slogan in a meeting, many struggle to understand me.
Displacing Palestinian youth to learn “sustainable agriculture” in Uruguay is such a good idea that it resembles the “Final Solution,” which members of Netanyahu’s cabinet—and the majority of Israelis—talk about so much; according to a survey by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, 82% of the population supports the forced expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza.
At this point, I don’t know what’s worse, having a Trump in Argentina or a Biden in Uruguay.
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What We Can Learn From Uruguay on Earth Overshoot Day
Uruguay highlights the importance of political will and bold action in achieving sustainability and shows that it can go hand in hand with both economic security for the many and social justice.
Aug 02, 2023
August 2 is Earth Overshoot Day, when the planet groans, burdened by the greed of richer, overconsuming countries and people. According to the Global Footprint Network’s analysis, today marks the point when humanity starts consuming resources beyond the level the planet can replenish in a year.
Overshoot Day has arrived earlier and earlier over the past 50 years. Those of us in wealthier countries must take this as a reminder of our collective responsibility to live lives of greater sufficiency, and to choose governments who will reign in the corporations trampling Earth’s fragile ecosystems and pushing the planet beyond its limits.
Overshooting Is Not Inevitable
According to Global Footprint Network’s rankings, more than a quarter of countries in the world do not overshoot. However, the problem of reducing our ecological footprint is not that we do not have models of sustainable living—it is that most of these countries are characterized by poverty. The richer countries which have been burning fossil fuels to excess have not yet taken the challenging, yet completely doable steps, to live without them. Imagining new ways of living requires some sort of blueprint to guide us.
Uruguay—a Story of Political Will and Bold Action
One country that offers some ideas for moving forward is Uruguay: a small nation of rolling hills whose experience shows that reducing consumption of the Earth’s resources does not mean a lower standard of living. While there is no “one size fits all” template for sustainability, Uruguay shows that a country’s leaders can be intentional in reducing its ecological footprint.
Looking at its recent past, Uruguay highlights the importance of political will and bold action in achieving sustainability and shows that it can go hand in hand with both economic security for the many and social justice. Uruguay has one of the lowest levels of income inequality in Latin America and an almost complete absence of extreme poverty. The government has invested heavily in education, healthcare, a minimum wage indexed to inflation, and a progressive tax system that redistributes wealth from the rich to the poor—all of which have helped to reduce poverty and inequality.
For Uruguay’s leaders, businesspeople, and workers, the green transition did not just represent a shift to renewables, it also signaled a shift in their own mindset.
This focus on social welfare has helped to create a more stable and resilient society, with its people less vulnerable to economic shocks and more likely to weather downturns. It’s no surprise that Uruguay is one of the happiest countries in Latin America, with a strong social safety net and a high standard of living.
Achieving Energy Independence
Uruguay reduced its dependence on fossil fuels by creating a renewable energy sector that makes it a world leader on this front. In 2008, Uruguay embarked on a countrywide transition to renewable power that today has created one of the world’s greenest electricity grids, powered by 98% renewable energy, mostly hydropower and wind. This commitment to clean energy has created new jobs and economic opportunities, as Uruguay has become a leader in renewable energy technology and exports.
Dangers of Backtracking
While Uruguay’s leaders have made some good choices over recent decades, not all of its government’s decisions are beyond reproach. Facing the worst water crisis in its history, drought compounded by mismanagement and uncontrolled growth of urban areas has reportedly resulted in the depletion of the main reserve that supplies the capital, Montevideo. Activists have also criticized the authorities for prioritizing water for transnationals and agribusiness at the expense of its own citizens, including plans for a Google data center that is projected to use millions of liters of water.
Also of deep concern are Uruguay’s plans to expand deepwater oil and gas exploration after recently discovering sizable new reserves off its shores. Uruguay now has its sights on expanding production and consumption via trade and is pushing for the destructive EU-Mercosur deal.
Prioritizing Well-being
We are at a crossroads in human history. Those of us living in countries that had an overshoot day long before today can indeed live well without such extreme overconsumption. We can push our governments to follow the example of countries like Uruguay and implement policies that prioritize collective well-being.
For Uruguay’s leaders, businesspeople, and workers, the green transition did not just represent a shift to renewables, it also signaled a shift in their own mindset. Rather than contemplate the paralyzing crises of the future, they could approach them as everyday problems with people-centered solutions. Let’s use these positive examples to get rid of Overshoot Day completely.
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Political Democracies, Economic Dictatorships
Countries are held hostage by big capital that migrates from one country to another in a matter of hours, terrorizing populations with the threat of another economic crisis and forcing their rulers, democratic or not, to kneel before these feudal lords.
Mar 26, 2023
From France to Uruguay, not by chance, neoliberal governments have proposed a pension reform that adds years to the retirement age (two in France; up to five in Uruguay). The narrative that justifies raising the retirement age is twofold: (1) People live longer and, therefore, have to work more; (2) If these "necessary and painful reforms" are not carried out, the system will be defunded and the country will lose competitiveness in the world since other countries have applied these same measures, necessary for the financial class and painful for the productive classes. The same discourse, plus a third threat, has been repeated for decades in the United States: (3) Social Security (invented by "the communist president" Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression) is not sustainable, so we must raise the retirement age and, as far as possible, privatize it. It does not matter that it is and always has been self-sustaining. Social security is just that: insurance, not risky investments.
Privatization was first put into practice in peripheral countries. The destruction of Salvador Allende's socialist democracy 50 years ago and the imposition of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship had the declared intention of preserving the freedom of capital and using this country as a laboratory for the neoliberal theories of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. The "Chilean Miracle" was noted for its social and economic crises, despite the tsunami of dollars from Washington and large corporations. The semi-private pension model was brought to Uruguay in 1996 and it only took 20 years for it to fail. The damn state should have come to the rescue of those harmed by investment geniuses.
All this could be solved with a more direct democracy system, something that many of us have been writing about for decades, especially with the new digital tools.
The difficulty that a single country, be it France or Uruguay, can resist this acceleration of the robbery of the working classes is due to the fact that these neoliberal policies have a global reach. Countries are held hostage by big capital that migrates from one country to another in a matter of hours, terrorizing populations with the threat of another economic crisis and forcing their rulers, democratic or not, to kneel before these feudal lords. On the other hand, the largest financial institutions in the world, such as the IMF and the World Bank, are allies of this mafia. The World Bank defines itself as a development bank, but its practice indicates the opposite: It is at the service of the benefits of capital, informing to the minute which countries are planning to vote on a law to protect their workers or to control banks with regulations. Thus, its partners and clients can protect their investments by transferring their millions from a sovereign country to a more friendly one, better placed in the ranking of "business freedom," another of those old functional fictions.
Since the 1980s, the productivity of workers in the United States and around the world has been steadily growing, while their wages have remained stagnant or have lost purchasing power. You don't have to be a genius to understand where this difference between productivity and salary went. But they want more.
Another tender explanation for legislating against the will of the people consists of the classic idea that it is not the unions that govern but the elected governments. But in France alone, 70% of the population is against the pension reform, and its "government elected by the people" refuses to listen. This deafness is classic and, in turn, is justified by another ideology: "The government must act responsibly, not demagoguery." Again: responsibility before the capital of harassment; demagogy for exercising democracy, giving the people their right to decide.
All this could be solved with a more direct democracy system, something that many of us have been writing about for decades, especially with the new digital tools. If the French could decide in regular referendums, the massive demonstrations and urban destruction that have been going on for weeks would not have occurred in France. But common citizens have no other effective tool than rebellion, in violent cases. Obviously, this idea of direct democracy is dangerous because it is an idea in favor of a real democracy.
As history shows, capitalism is by nature undemocratic. It has developed from the brutality and carnage in its colonies; it has been strengthened by slavery; it has been consolidated with the multiple military dictatorships in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Even lately, he has been more than comfortable with Chinese communism. When capitalism coexisted with liberal democracies, it was not because it was a democratic system but because it is a great manipulator, to the point of convincing half the world that democracy and capitalism are the same thing, since both are based on freedom. What he forgets to clarify is that democracy refers to the freedom of the people and capitalism understands it as the freedom of capital, that is, of the dictatorial elite that today not only owns most of the world's wealth but the control of the global financial system and the near monopoly of the dominant media.
The French have a long tradition of social protest, but they can also afford to riot in the streets since few will accuse them of being underdeveloped. Uruguayans, despite their long tradition of democratic institutions such as education, health, and individual rights, are much timider in their claims. Its oligarchy, like all of them, also has a long tradition of stigmatizing the advances of real democracy, accusing any popular demand of being communist (a recipe inoculated by the CIA in the 1950s and which survives 30 years after the Cold War) at the same time. They do it in the name of democracy and freedom.
The (re)solution for France is not easy in an international context kidnapped by the masters of capital who demand and even convince their slaves to work more years for the same ration and, moreover, to do so of their own free will. For Uruguay, due to its context and its size, it is more than difficult. But in both cases, if resistance to economic dictate succeeds, they could set themselves up as dangerous examples.
For these reasons, the only long-term solution is the union of a new current of Non-Aligned Countries or those associated by common interests (cultural and economic) such as Latin America, for example.
But of course, we all know that the centennial solution of imperial capitalism has been the disunity, demobilization, and demoralization of the colonies and their own workers. So long as this ideological inoculation that today, in the former colonies, nationalist movements are on the rise. With one detail: they are not the anti-colonialist nationalism of the 1960s in Africa, for example, but a sepoy and parasitic reflection of imperial nationalism in their own colonies.
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Brazil's New Lula Government Is an Opportunity for a New Trade Model
This is a historical moment that calls for renewed policies based on scaling up democracy in a profoundly participatory way.
Feb 17, 2023
Change is afoot in Latin America. The region—battered by COVID, inequality and environmental crisis—is seeing a second wave of progressive governments elected, most significantly with the recent victory of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil. This is a unique opportunity for us to build a new trade model that puts people and the planet first. Stopping the harmful EU-Mercosur trade deal is a good place to start.
Now Brazil is back, the priority is people over profit
In his election victory speech Lula outlined some of the government’s priorities. The focus was on fighting hunger and poverty, while also repositioning Brazil as a major player in regional and international affairs. Lula committed to re-negotiating the EU-Mercosur trade deal. He stated, “Brazil is back. We are back to help build a peaceful world order based on dialogue and multilateralism.” This will give a much needed boost to global human rights, climate action and diplomacy that have been under threat from the rising far right.
Initiatives from Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Colombia indicate that the region as a whole is keen to discuss regional integration as well as the strategic economic and political foundations on which to base our relationship with the world.
Timing is everything. The world’s vulnerabilities have been laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic and further heightened by the impact of the war in Europe. A war which is now taking place in key countries for the supply of energy and raw materials for the agro-industry. This alone should inspire an interrogation of international economic relations and the dominance of transnational corporations in determining trade and investment flows and national production patterns.
This is a unique opportunity for us to build a new trade model that puts people and the planet first. Stopping the harmful EU-Mercosur trade deal is a good place to start.
While some politicians are trying to use Lula’s election as a reason to accelerate the ratification of the deal, Friends of the Earth International and our allies around the world know that now is the time to prioritise social needs, such as access to medicines, healthy food and the environment. It is time to confront the obsolete, neo-colonial and neo-liberal trade model, driven by the supply and market demands of European companies.
The winners and losers in the harmful EU-Mercosur trade deal
The EU-Mercosur deal is a powerful symbol of the failed old trade model. In negotiation for over 20 years between Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay—known collectively as Mercosur—and the European Union, the trade agreement is beset by disagreements from both regions. It contradicts many progressive governments’ policies and election mandates. It would restrict reindustrialisation policies, undermine public procurement and open up the free trade in harmful products, thereby accelerating deforestation, climate change and human rights violations.
The treaty liberalises trade tariffs, which will affect over 90% of the Mercosur goods portfolio. The London Schools of Economics sustainability impact assessment sees the beef, soya, derivatives, paper and beverages sectors as Mercosur’s economic winners and the vehicle, chemical, pharmaceutical and industrial sectors as the losers. Mercosur exports of ethanol from sugarcane production will also increase considerably. In Brazil the ethanol sector relies on huge concentrations of land, intensive agrochemicals and poor working conditions. This colonial legacy severely impacts the biomes and Indigenous Peoples of Mata Atlantica, Cerrado and Pantanal biomes. The trade deal also looks set to impact negatively on Uruguay’s dairy and beverage sectors.
Far from resolving environmental concerns, this agreement will herald further expansion of the agricultural and extractive sectors, such as the energy mining sector, with inevitable impacts on deforestation, land grabbing, biodiversity, water, and food quality.
It would also scupper the chance for Mercosur countries to develop public policies to value-added manufacturing and increase economic diversity, a particular problem for the newly elected Brazilian government. The EU has ruled out protection clauses for developing industrial sectors and the transfer of technology in investments. The agreement would open up state procurement, depriving countries of an important social and industrial promotion policy, thereby providing highly competitive EU companies with an extremely attractive market.
Far from resolving environmental concerns, this agreement will herald further expansion of the agricultural and extractive sectors, such as the energy mining sector, with inevitable impacts on deforestation, land grabbing, biodiversity, water, and food quality. This in turn results in increased violence against and displacement of the collective rights of communities. According to the report prepared by the Left in the European Parliament (GUE), trade with the European Union is directly linked to 120,000 hectares of deforestation in Mercosur countries. That is one soccer field of deforestation every three minutes.
The EU-Mercosur deal expands the private protection of intellectual property—increasing the protection provided for by WTO obligations. This will likely push up the cost of medicines while undermining technology transfer. The corporate-friendly text on the patenting of seeds and plant varieties reduces farmers’ rights to seeds and undermines food sovereignty.
A new trade model based on democracy and justice
Lula has repeatedly committed to reopening EU-Mercosur negotiations and is urging cohesion within the Mercosur block, in the face of threats by Uruguay to go their own way on trade policy. On the EU's side some are racing to conclude the agreement as quickly as possible, while other governments want the deal stalled. Yet the new Brazilian government's victory must set the scene for an in-depth evaluation of the treaty’s impacts, not just a whitewashing of some of its more delicate elements. The new balance of power within Mercosur underscores the need for profound changes, even in elements that form the backbone of the agreement, such as the space for industrial policy in the region. Lula is calling for renegotiation because the treaty does not respect Brazil's development needs.
The EU’s proposal to improve the deal through a new protocol or environmental annex and other false solutions does not address the core unsustainability of the agreement. An example of a real solution would be to end the export of European pesticide agro-toxins (produced mainly by BASF and Bayer-Monsanto). Ironically these pesticides - a key part of the agribusiness global chain - are banned from use in Europe, but are exported for use in Mercosur countries' agricultural sectors, the produce of which is then exported to the EU.
New progressive governments provide an opportunity for the Mercosur region to broadly discuss some of the treaty's components that may have more harmful impacts on our development from a social and environmental justice perspective. It also provides us with the opportunity to discuss the trade models needed today for the region’s peoples and countries.
The challenges we face are enormous. This is a historical moment that calls for renewed policies based on scaling up democracy in a profoundly participatory way. This applies to the ways in which the countries of Latin America—which remain the most unequal in the world—integrate and build a common political space. Failed free trade agreements and corporate power have no place in the transformation of society. Justice and democracy must sit at the heart of politics.Keep ReadingShow Less
'Turn Off the Tap on Plastic,' UN Chief Declares Amid Debate Over New Global Treaty
"Plastics are fossil fuels in another form," said U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, "and pose a serious threat to human rights, the climate, and biodiversity."
Dec 03, 2022
Hours before the first round of negotiations to advance a global plastics treaty concluded Friday in Punta Del Este, Uruguay, the leader of the United Nations implored countries "to look beyond waste and turn off the tap on plastic."
"The push for an ambitious global plastics treaty has only just begun."
"Plastics are fossil fuels in another form," U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres tweeted, "and pose a serious threat to human rights, the climate, and biodiversity."
Guterres' comments elevated the demands of civil society organizations, scientists, and other advocates fighting for robust, legally binding rules to confront the full lifecycle impacts of the plastic pollution crisis. A coalition of more than 100 groups has called for limiting the ever-growing production and consumption of plastic and holding corporations accountable for the ecological and public health harms caused by manufacturing an endless stream of toxic single-use items.
Petrochemical industry representatives who attended the first intergovernmental negotiating committee meeting (INC-1) for a global plastics treaty, by contrast, attempted to bolster fossil fuel-friendly governments' efforts to slow the pace of talks--convened by the U.N. Environment Program and set to continue off-and-on through 2024--and weaken proposals for action.
In the wake of this week's opening round of debate, the Break Free From Plastic (BFFP) alliance launched a petition outlining what it calls the "essential elements" of a multilateral environmental agreement capable of "reversing the tide of plastic pollution and contributing to the end of the triple planetary crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution."
According to experts associated with BFFP, an effective global plastics treaty must include the following:
- Significant, progressive, and mandatory targets to cap and dramatically reduce virgin plastic production;
- Legally binding, time-bound, and ambitious targets to implement and scale up reuse, refill, and alternative product delivery systems;
- A just transition to safer and more sustainable livelihoods for workers and communities across the plastics supply chain; and
- Provisions that hold polluting corporations and plastic-producing countries accountable.
BFFP member Graham Forbes, head of the Global Plastic Project at Greenpeace USA, said in a statement that "we cannot let oil-producing countries, at the behest of Big Oil and petrochemical companies, dominate and slow down the treaty discussions and weaken its ambition."
"If the plastics industry has its way, plastic production could double within the next 10-15 years, and triple by 2050--with catastrophic impacts on our planet and its people," said Forbes. "The High Ambition Coalition must show leadership by pushing the negotiations forward and calling for more ambitious measures which protect our health, our climate, and our communities from the plastics crisis."
A global plastics treaty, Forbes added, represents "a major opportunity to finally end the age of plastic, and governments should not let this go to waste. We demand that world leaders deliver a strong and ambitious treaty that will dramatically reduce plastic production and use, open inclusive and justice-centered discussions, and ensure that the next INCs are free from industry interference."
Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) senior attorney Giulia Carlini pointed out that profit-maximizing corporations "have deliberately manufactured doubt about the health impacts" of their products in previous treaties that address health issues, such as the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
"There is strong scientific consensus that plastics-associated chemicals cause diseases," Carlini continued. "If the treaty is to succeed in meeting its health objectives, it will be essential to set strict conflict-of-interest policies going forward."
After more than 145 governments expressed support this week for developing a pact with specific and shared international standards--which could include a ban on single-use items and requirements to ensure reuse and circularity--Eirik Lindebjerg, global plastics policy lead at the World Wildlife Fund, said that "the momentum demonstrated at these negotiations is a promising sign that we will get a truly ambitious treaty with effective global measures to stop plastic pollution" by 2024.
"It has been a very important week in the history of protecting the environment and people," said Lindebjerg. "This week we saw an encouraging level of agreement, both in formal and informal spaces, on the urgency of seeking a joint solution to this major threat to nature and communities, and to do so in a comprehensive, effective, inclusive, and science-based manner."
However, he warned, "this is just the first step towards a legally binding global treaty that can help us stop plastic pollution."
"We cannot afford another treaty that centers on the whims of its leaders."
"The next stage of negotiations will be more challenging, as countries must agree on the technical measures and rules," said Lindebjerg. "Although in the minority, there are also some powerful opponents of global rules and standards, which risk potentially weakening obligations on countries to take action. The push for an ambitious global plastics treaty has only just begun."
"Millions of people around the world, whose livelihoods and environments are affected by plastic, have their eyes on these negotiations," he added. "Now negotiators must harness this momentum to push for specific rules to be negotiated as part of the treaty."
Lindebjerg's assessment was shared by other summit delegates.
"Negotiations at INC-1 this week demonstrated that the majority of countries are ready to take urgent action to confront the plastics crisis, including by addressing the plastic production that drives that crisis," said CIEL president Carroll Muffett. "Sadly, it also proved that plastic producers and their allies are equally committed to slowing progress and weakening ambition--from the U.S. insistence that the plastic treaty replicate the weaknesses of the Paris agreement, to last-minute maneuvers by other fossil fuel and petrochemical states to block countries' ability to vote on difficult issues."
"Despite these maneuvers, the world made real progress in Punta Del Este," said Muffett. Robust "global commitments and binding targets remain both necessary and achievable," she added, but securing them will require "the U.S. and other countries join the rest of the world in pairing claims of high ambition with the policies that high ambition demands."
While this week marked the first time that governments have met to hash out global-scale regulations to restrict plastic production, the United States and the United Kingdom--the world's biggest per-capita plastic polluters--have so far refused to join an international treaty to curb the amount of plastic waste destined for landfills and habitats, though both countries are reportedly now open to the idea.
"Over this week, we have seen multiple interventions raising whether the future treaty will be based on national action plans, or global, mandatory targets," said CIEL senior attorney Andres Del Castillo. "We know that this will be top of the agenda at INC-2. The failure of countries to fulfill their emissions reduction plans under the Paris agreement shows that we cannot afford another treaty that centers on the whims of its leaders."
The next session of the conference aimed at creating a global plastics treaty is set to take place in Paris in May 2023.
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IG Report Finds Trump Aid to Venezuela Was Aimed at Toppling Maduro
"This was incredibly obvious at the time, but it's shocking to see the details," said one U.S. journalist and author.
Apr 30, 2021
Progressive observers of United States foreign policy in Latin America were unsurprised yet still expressed alarm Thursday over details in a new report from the U.S. Agency for International Development that shows the Trump administration's humanitarian aid to Venezuela was at least partially motivated by a desire for regime change in Caracas.
"You didn't need to be a genius to see the U.S. was trying to force a dramatic confrontation, rather than trying to efficiently help needy Venezuelans."
--Vincent Bevins, journalist
The report (pdf) published earlier this month by the USAID inspector general's office states that "the U.S. government's key foreign policy goals" in Venezuela following President Nicolas Maduro's 2018 reelection were to "increase pressure on Maduro to step down" and "support Guaido's legitimacy as the interim president," a reference to the unelected opposition leader Juan Guaido, who has also received a show of support from President Joe Biden.
"Accordingly, USAID prioritized aid to the Venezuelan people in coordination with the interim president, including issuing in-kind grants to distribute humanitarian commodities inside Venezuela," the report says. This included supporting an unnamed Venezuelan NGO perceived as aligned with U.S. foreign policy objectives despite not knowing "whether the organization had the capacity to comply with USAID's legal and financial requirements."
The IG investigation found that out of 368 metric tons of humanitarian aid designated for delivery to Venezuela by the agency, only eight metric tons arrived in the country, with the rest going to Colombia and Somalia. Aid that was sent to Venezuela arrived in military transport planes, a move the report says "was not justified by operational needs as commercial transportation was available and less expensive."
The report also acknowledges that the failed February 2019 aid convoy organized by U.S. special representative Elliott Abrams--whose history in the region includes using humanitarian aid flights to arm Contra terrorists in Nicaragua and covering up massacres committed by U.S.-backed death squads in Guatemala and El Salvador--"contributed to a tense environment for humanitarian assistance funded by or associated with the U.S. government, as the Maduro regime publicly rejected pre-positioned commodities and initiated security crackdowns in Venezuela."
Additionally, it states that USAID's own officials determined that food aid purportedly sent to alleviate child hunger "was unnecessary because the nutritional status of Venezuelan children did not warrant its use at the time."
USAID, "concerned that the United Nations supported the Maduro regime," also minimized funding for U.N. agencies even though some of them "had infrastructure in Venezuela to deliver humanitarian commodities."
This, at a time when a combination of increasing U.S. economic sanctions, corruption and mismanagement, low oil prices, and natural disasters reversed some of the tremendous progress made by the Bolivarian Revolution--which began with former President Hugo Chavez and continued under Maduro--in improving the lives of poor Venezuelans.
The new report surprised few seasoned observers of the more than 100-year history of U.S. meddling in Venezuelan affairs, a timeline that includes hundreds of millions of dollars in USAID funding--including nine-figure spending on groups opposing the Bolivarian Revolution. Still, the USAID IG report raised eyebrows.
"This was incredibly obvious at the time, but it's shocking to see the details," said U.S. journalist and author Vincent Bevins of the report's contents.
USAID itself has a long history of foreign interference and subversion around the world. The agency funded death squads in El Salvador and Guatemala's genocidal army during the 1980s, the forced sterilization of Indigenous Peruvian women in the 1990s, Laotian heroin traffickers during the Vietnam War--to name but a handful of examples. USAID operatives also taught torture and democracy suppression to security forces in Latin American dictatorships including Brazil, the Dominican Republic, and Uruguay in the 1960s and 1970s.
More recently, USAID in 2010 launched a social media campaign with the goal of sparking civil unrest against the Fidel Castro-led government in Cuba. Around the same time, the agency infiltrated Cuba's burgeoning hip-hop scene in a bid to foment a youth uprising.
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Citing Racist Massacres and 'Inexcusable' Prevalence of Guns, Foreign Countries Issue Travel Safety Warnings for United States
"The world is watching."
Aug 06, 2019
While President Donald Trump and the Republican Party have spent the past several years claiming foreign migrants and refugees pose a threat to Americans, a pair of massacres in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio over the weekend has compelled two Latin American countries to warn their own citizens of the travel dangers lurking in the United States.
The foreign ministries of Venezuela and Uruguay issued urgent warnings to people in their countries who may travel to the U.S. following the deaths of 31 people in the two mass shootings. Both countries informed their citizens of the "indiscriminate possession" of guns by the U.S. population and the refusal of the federal government to address the problem.
"These increasing acts of violence have found an echo and support in the conversations and actions impregnated by racial discrimination and hatred against migrant populations, pronounced and executed by the supremacist elite who holds political power in Washington."
--Foreign Ministry of VenezuelaTravelers from Uruguay were specifically urged to "take precaution amid the growing indiscriminatory violence, specifically hate crimes including racism and discrimination," following the shooting deaths of 22 people in El Paso on Saturday by an accused gunman who reportedly posted an anti-immigrant, white supremacist manifesto online minutes before the attack.
The foreign ministry listed several crowded public venues which could pose a threat to travelers: "theme parks, shopping centers, festivals, religious events, gastronomic fairs and any kind of cultural or sporting events."
Nearly all of the places listed have been the sites of mass shootings in the U.S., although the list was hardly exhaustive. As of Tuesday, the 218th day of 2019, there have been 255 mass shootings in the country.
Venezuela also pointed to the "recent proliferation of violent acts and hate crimes" as reason to exercise caution regarding travel to the U.S., and slammed the country for the "inexcusable, indiscriminate possession of firearms by the population, encouraged by the federal government."
"These increasing acts of violence have found an echo and support in the conversations and actions impregnated by racial discrimination and hatred against migrant populations, pronounced and executed by the supremacist elite who holds political power in Washington," the foreign ministry told Venezuelans in its travel warning.
In Detroit on Sunday, the Japanese Consul also alerted Japanese nationals with plans to travel to the U.S. that they "should be aware of the potential for gunfire incidents everywhere in the United States," according to the Los Angeles Times.
A minority of U.S. households own guns, yet a 2017 study found that there were 120.5 civilian-owned firearms for every 100 people in the United States. Other countries like Australia and New Zealand have instituted strict gun control measures and even weapons bans after a single mass shooting while the U.S. has allowed hundreds to take place each year.
Travel warnings were mirrored by stunned international coverage of the two shootings, which took place within 13 hours of one another and in which both gunmen used high-capacity magazines and military-style semi-automatic weapons, which are legal in the states where the gunmen bought them.
An editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald on Sunday condemned the United States' "white nationalist terrorism crisis." The Argentinian newspaper Clarin reported "another massacre in the U.S." on Saturday, while the Dutch publication Algemeen Dagblad published a graphic explaining to readers that while the Netherlands is known for having more bicycles than people, the U.S. has more guns than people.
The reaction of officials in Venezuela and Uruguay as well as the international perception of the U.S. as a dangerous country was unsurprising but dismaying to observers on social media.
"The world is watching," wrote organizer Dan Knudsen.
Killing fields USA: Foreign countries are warning their citizens about U.S. travel after mass shootings https://t.co/YMoMANJuzW
-- Sir Henry Cuthbert-Purkiss #TheResistance (@VoteBlueFFS) August 6, 2019
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Five Men Sentenced to Life for Operation Condor Killings Trained at School of the Americas
Revelation comes after Italian court sentences 24 men to life behind bars for roles in U.S.-backed state terror campaign
Jul 17, 2019
Five of the 24 men sentenced last week by an Italian court to life in prison for their roles in a brutal and bloody U.S.-backed Cold War campaign against South American dissidents graduated from a notorious US Army school once known for teaching torture, assassination, and democracy suppression.
On July 8 judges in Rome's Court of Appeals sentenced the former Bolivian, Chilean, Peruvian and Uruguayan government and military officials after they were found guilty of kidnapping and murdering 23 Italian nationals in the 1970s and 1980s during Operation Condor, a coordinated effort by right-wing military dictatorships in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Paraguay, Brazil--and, later, Peru and Ecuador--against perceived leftist threats. The campaign, which was characterized by kidnappings, torture, disappearances and murder, claimed an estimated 60,000 lives, according to human rights groups. Victims included leftists and other dissidents, clergy, intellectuals, academics, students, peasant and trade union leaders, and indigenous peoples.
The United States government--including military and intelligence agencies--supported Operation Condor with military aid, planning, and technical support as well as surveillance and torture training during the Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan administrations. Much of this support, which the U.S. attempted to justify within the context of the global Cold War struggle against communism, was based at U.S. military installations in Panama. It was there that the US Army opened the School of the Americas in 1946, which would graduate 11 Latin American heads of state over the following decades. None of them became their country's leader by democratic means, leading critics to dub the SOA "School of Assassins" and "School of Coups" because it produced so many of both.
SOA's most notorious graduates include narco-trafficking Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, the genocidal Guatemalan military dictator Efrain Rios Montt, Bolivian despot Hugo Banzer (known for sheltering Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie), Haitian death squad commander and military dictator Raoul Cedras and Argentine strongman Leopoldo Galtieri, who presided during a period of his country's "Dirty War" in which tens of thousands of innocent men and women were disappeared. Countless other war criminals have studied at the SOA, sometimes using U.S. manuals that taught kidnapping, torture, assassination, and democracy suppression techniques.
Some of the worst massacres and other atrocities perpetrated by U.S.-backed forces during the civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala during the 1980s, including the slaughter of 900 villagers--mostly women and children--at El Mozote, the assassination of Salvadoran archbishop Oscar Romero and the rape and murder of four U.S. churchwomen who worked with him, were planned, committed or covered up by SOA graduates. So were a series of chainsaw massacres in Colombia, the murder of four Dutch journalists in El Salvador, the assassination of a former Chilean official and his U.S. aide in a 1976 car bombing in Washington, D.C. and many other atrocities.
It can now be revealed that several men sentenced to life in prison in Rome last week are also SOA graduates. According to a database of over 60,000 SOA alumni compiled from U.S. military records by School of the Americas Watch (SOAW), a Georgia-based activist group founded by Father Roy Bourgeois in 1990, five SOA trainees are among the 24 men found guilty by the Italian court. Two of them are named among SOAW's "most notorious SOA graduates": former Bolivian interior minister Luis Arce Gomez, who is currently serving a 30-year prison term for genocide, assassination and drug trafficking, and Luis Alfredo Maurente, a Uruguayan captain implicated in the torture and disappearance of nearly 100 people in Uruguay and Argentina. Arce Gomez completed communications, tactical officer and radio repair courses at SOA in 1958; Maurente attended SOA in 1969 and 1976, studying military intelligence. The three other SOA graduates uncovered among the 24 defendants are: Hernan Ramirez Ramirez (Chile; command course, 1970), Ernesto Avelino Ramas Pereira (Uruguay; motor officer course, 1962) and Pedro Antonio Mato Narbondo (Uruguay; unspecified, 1970).
SOA operated in Panama from 1946 until 1984, when it was relocated to Fort Benning, Georgia. In a bid to rebrand itself amid growing public outcry over graduate atrocities, SOA changed its named to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) in 2000, with a greater emphasis on human rights. However, the school's alumni continue to make dubious headlines to this day, with four of the six generals behind the 2009 Honduran coup and former Mexican commandos now employed as mercenaries for international drug cartels among its more notorious recent alumni.
It is unclear whether many of the defendants in the Rome case will face justice, as all but one of the 24 were tried in absentia under the legal concept of universal jurisdiction. Uruguay, which does not allow for life sentences, has previously jailed people convicted of similar crimes. A January 2017 ruling by an Italian court had sentenced eight of the defendants, including the late former Bolivian dictator Luis Garcia Meza, former Peruvian president Francisco Morales Bermudez, and former Uruguayan foreign minister Juan Carlos Blanco-- who is now under house arrest in Montevideo--to life behind bars, while acquitting 19 others due to statutes of limitations. Those acquittals were reversed by Monday's appellate decision.
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The Organization of American States Shouldn't Be Run by Regime Change Enthusiasts
Amid crises in Venezuela, migration, and the climate, the Western Hemisphere’s chief regional organization has been hobbled by pro-Trump leadership.
Jan 23, 2019
With a Venezuelan opposition leader declaring himself the country's president and the Trump administration appearing to back a coup, Venezuela is lurching toward a new phase of crisis. And that crisis could be worsened by hardline leadership at the Organization of American States (OAS), the world's oldest and most influential regional organization.
Luis Almagro, the OAS Secretary General, recently announced his bid for another 5-year term at the helm of the organization. That would be a major setback for good governance in the region.
Throughout his tenure, Almagro has acted against many of the basic principles and mandates of the organization and consistently represented U.S. interests above those of its neighbors, generally supporting allies and punishing adversaries of the U.S. government. In particular, he's actively sought regime change in Venezuela.
Almagro's often unsubstantiated claims against Venezuela and Cuba echo the rhetoric of dangerous terrorists like Luis Posada Carriles. His open interventions in countries' internal politics have completely reversed diplomatic advances in resolving controversies, divided the continent, and led his own Uruguayan political party to expel him and advocate for removing him from the leadership of the OAS.
Abetting Corruption and Dictatorship
Moreover, as Almagro has set himself up as arbiter in the internal affairs of leftist-governed nations (while turning a blind eye to blatant disregard for law in right-wing regimes), his own leadership faces serious corruption charges related to management of funds for the beleaguered anti-corruption mission in Honduras.
In an unusual move, Almagro appointed himself the head in absentia of the Mission to Support the Fight against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (MACCIH), maintaining control of the mission and finances in Washington. The MACCIH was founded in 2015 as a result of citizen pressure and placed under the auspices of the OAS.
The lead representative of the MACCIH, former Peruvian prime minister Juan Jimenez Mayor, resigned in frustration in February 2018, citing lack of support from Almagro, withdrawal of security measures for his team, and a "pact of impunity" between Almagro and JOH.
Jimenez also publicly accused Almagro of hiring persons close to him at hefty salaries despite the fact that the commission in Honduras doesn't know what it is they do. With signs of corruption within the OAS anti-corruption mission, MACCIH lawyers requested an audit by the OEA Inspector General. Although member countries seconded the request, no audit was carried out.
Tensions between Almagro and the anti-corruption commission had been building for months. The MACCIH had recently taken on some major investigations in the midst of a political crisis in the country. Since the 2009 coup d'etat, Honduras has lurched from one crisis to the next. The nation has suffered a series of corruption scandals under the post-coup regimes, rule of law has deteriorated, and state and criminal violence have soared, often hand in hand.
In November 2017, Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez was re-elected in a vote viewed as illegitimate by the majority of the population and many experts. Although the OAS declared the elections essentially too dirty to call, the Honduran opposition criticized the OAS for tacitly supporting the U.S. embassy in propping up Hernandez (JOH), as massive protests called for him to step down and government forces killed at least 16 protestors.
In early 2018, with continuing post-electoral conflict, the MACCIH uncovered a corruption scheme involving members of the Honduran congress. The case alleges that legislators syphoned off hundreds of thousands of dollars in public money (in a country where 25 percent of the population lives on $5.50 a day or less). The MACCIH has filed several similar cases against government corruption since then, the latest on December 11. As the mission attacked corruption, it began to receive threats and encounter what one member, the Peruvian prosecutor Julio Arbizu, called "serious obstacles" to its work directly from Almagro.
A June 2018 evaluation of the MACCIH by experts at American University concurs that much of the blame for the obstacles and failures of the MACCIH can be directly attributed to Almagro. The study concludes: "The political course of the MACCIH has revealed an OAS weakened and divided, directed by an impulsive and inconsistent Secretary General." The report quotes a member of the anti-corruption commission saying that Almagro "spent more time spying on our colleagues to report to Washington what Jimenez Mayor was up to than working on what we were supposed to be doing."
Almagro's decisions to abandon the Honduran political crisis and back off on prosecuting corruption and state crimes, undermining his own mission, has contributed to the exodus of thousands of Hondurans seeking refuge in the United States. Since the audit of his office requested by MACCIH members and donor countries was blocked, allegations against Almagro of misuse of funds have not been cleared up.
Dividing the Hemisphere
Almagro's support for the Honduran leader deemed a dictator by his own people contrasts sharply with his extremely aggressive campaign against Venezuela.
In a shocking break with his diplomatic mandate, last September Almagro threatened military intervention to overthrow the Maduro government. This position violates the OAS Charter and the reason for being of the organization, articulated in Article 21: "The territory of a State is inviolable; it may not be the object, even temporarily, of military occupation or of other measures of force taken by another State, directly or indirectly, on any grounds whatever." Article 3 mandates "respect for the personality, sovereignty, and independence of States." More broadly, Almagro's hawkishness flies in the face of numerous organizational commitments to resolve conflicts through diplomacy and peaceful means.
Almagro's statement, although not unexpected, provoked an avalanche of criticism from diplomats. His own party, the Broad Front of Uruguay, voted unanimously to expel him, and the Uruguayan government announced it will oppose his re-election. Subsequently, his instant recognition of National Assembly leader Juan Guaido as "president-in-charge" of Venezuela, a coup also backed by Donald Trump, throws gas on a crisis that could easily erupt in violence just as diplomatic channels were being opened.
The promotion of intervention in alliance with the Trump administration has carefully driven a wedge between nations and forces in the hemisphere. Almagro's attempts at regime change in Venezuela were consistently seconded by the Mexican and Colombian governments, but the new Mexican government of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador wisely decided against continuing to play the role of Almagro-Trump lackey in the OAS and abstained from a declaration by the majority of the Lima Group not to recognize Maduro's re-election. Although Almagro has found a new ally in the neofascist Brazilian government of Jair Bolsonaro, that alliance will only make the politicized nature of his strategy more painfully obvious.
The OAS chief's obsession with Venezuela has eroded his leadership and distracted the organization from confronting shared threats to the region. His cozy relationship to the Trump administration has meant downplaying the need to promote joint measures to slow climate change. Nor has the organization under Almagro's rule taken a strong stance in defense of migrant rights despite thousands of deaths and human rights violations.
With the U.S. withdrawing from international accords on climate change, migration, and other shared interests -- and Brazil following suit -- there's a growing governance gap on the most pressing issues facing the hemisphere. The OAS must step up to fill that gap, with creative solutions for working together before inequality and indifference send the planet into a tailspin.
Almagro has been far more interested in anti-democratic regime change than in facing these critical challenges. The region has an opportunity to restore regional cooperation on shared priorities. But that will require a change in leadership.
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Celebrating Common Sense?
Last week, there was a bit of good news on the trade front: on July 8, tobacco giant Philip Morris lost its ridiculous case against Uruguay's cigarette labeling laws. In 2010, the multinational company's Swiss subsidiary--which owns its operations in Uruguay--sued the country over rules designed to discourage cigarette consumption, especially by young people.
Jul 16, 2016
Last week, there was a bit of good news on the trade front: on July 8, tobacco giant Philip Morris lost its ridiculous case against Uruguay's cigarette labeling laws. In 2010, the multinational company's Swiss subsidiary--which owns its operations in Uruguay--sued the country over rules designed to discourage cigarette consumption, especially by young people. As in a similar case against Australia, the company alleged that requiring labels that emphasize the dangers of smoking lowered the value of its intellectual property rights (i.e., its trademarked labels) and therefore, its investments. The case was brought under the Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism in a bilateral investment treaty between Switzerland and Uruguay. ISDS empowers companies to sue governments in private tribunals over measures that undermine their expected profits. It has become a lightning rod for controversy in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
Like most fair trade advocates, I find myself explaining ISDS to people who are new to the trade debate. In my interactions with local food and farm groups, people are often a bit skeptical that such an outlandish mechanism could be real. But we have decades of evidence, such as Metalclad, the U.S. waste disposal company that successfully sued the Mexican government over a community's refusal to reopen a toxic waste dump. Other cases could be decided soon, such as Chevron's suit against Ecuador over environmental cleanup costs resulting from its oil drilling operations; or Pac Rim's case against El Salvador over its ban on gold mining. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Investment, some 700 known cases have been filed, with a record 70 of them filed in 2015.
Philip Morris has had a run of bad luck recently with these cases. The ISDS panel ruled against its suit over Australia's cigarette label rules last year. In that case, since Switzerland and Australia haven't agreed to such a mechanism, the company ran the lawsuit through its Hong Kong subsidiary, which does have ISDS through a bilateral treaty. The ISDS panel ruled that this kind of treaty shopping was out of bounds. It did not rule on the underlying public health or intellectual property issues. It is entirely sensible that a company shouldn't have the right to this kind of sleight of hand. There has been no decision yet on who will pay for the legal costs involved in the case. Reports in the Australian press indicate that the government spent AUD$50 million (US$38 million) to defend the case.
In the new Uruguay decision, in addition to ruling against the company's claims, the panel ruled that Philip Morris should pay for the legal costs involved in the case, including $7 million of Uruguay's expenses defending the case. While that decision is welcome news, it underscores the point that these cases can create heavy burdens for a small country like Uruguay, and no doubt lead to strong incentives for the government to simply settle the case to avoid further expenses (as well as a glaring warning to other countries contemplating such measures). In this case, the country was able to continue in part due to substantial financial support from the Bloomberg Foundation. So again, the ISDS panel's decision that Philip Morris should compensate the government for its costs is common sense.
Here's where the common sense aspect falls apart. Future ISDS panels are not required to abide by the logic established in these two cases. Even more fundamentally, there is no common sense reason for ISDS to exist at all. Historically, the notion was that it was needed to encourage companies to invest in countries with inadequate legal systems. The rules proposed in TPP, TTIP and the dozens of bilateral investment treaties involve many countries like the EU, Japan and the U.S. that have well developed legal systems. When TransCanada sued the U.S. government under NAFTA rules over its refusal to proceed with the Keystone Pipeline, it also sued in Texas using the normal U.S. legal system for commercial disputes.
This not only gives companies a chance for a "second bite at the apple," it also undoubtedly sends strong political signals to other local or national governments considering new programs. Laurent Huber, executive director of Action on Smoking and Health, commented in a Reuters article that Philip Morris "will no doubt shed some public crocodile tears, but their main goal in launching the suit has been realized, six years and millions of dollars have been spent defending a nondiscriminatory law that was intended purely to protect public health...This has already resulted in regulatory chill in other countries, preventing tobacco legislation that would have saved lives."
These cases have attracted a lot of public attention. As a result, the final TPP text contains provisions allowing countries to keep tobacco control measures out of future ISDS cases. That's a good step, but of course, still leaves many public health and environment laws subject to future suits. Food and farm advocates should also be concerned about the dozens of cases over restrictions on mining and oil exploration (with drastic impacts on water pollution), land rights and zoning.
So, while we should certainly celebrate the good news from the Philip Morris-Uruguay decision, that doesn't mean that common sense over these kinds of disputes has prevailed. A better approach would be to set aside ISDS, as countries like Bolivia and South Africa have done, and focus on global governance rules that put us on the road to better public health and sustainable development.
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