Silent Coup

A post in January revealed that one of my favourite books is “The Capitalism Papers - fatal flaws in an obsolete system” published in 2012 by the famous US activist and journalist Jerry Mander. It has everything –

· The ecological concerns;
· questioning of the legal basis of the corporation and the inequities and iniquities they cause;
· recognition that military spending and advertising supports the whole rotten system
· that democracy is being privatised
· as is our very consciousness
Mander drew it all together in a masterful conclusion in some 35 pages starting 

at page 258 (of the hyperlink given in the title above) which has 4 sub-headings -
· Nature Comes First
· The Primacy of Scale: Not Globalization, Localization
· Experiments in Corporate Values and Structure.
· Hybrid Economics . . 

And the post suggested that more recent books such as  Silent Coup – how 

Corporations overthrew Democracy by Claire Provost and Matt Kennard (2023) 

"simply repeated what we already knew". That is indeed a serious problem 

for many new texts these days where editors really do need to insist that 

authors prove they have something new to say to us – for example by doing a 

proper literature review of previous work on the subject to prove to us that 

thay have something distinctive to contribute.
But I was wrong in this particular case! Kennard has been producing some 

videos to follow up the theme of the book which have caused me to go back to 

the book and treat it more seriously. Silent Coup deals with an issue which 

most of us have ignored – namely the way Corporations are using a private 

court system (ICSID) within the World Bank in Washington DC. ICSID  stands 

for the International Centre for the Settlement of  Investment Disputes. 

This allows private Corporations to sue governments for what they argue is 

lost revenue when a country’s laws prevent an investment.

The international investment treaties that enshrine the global justice system that protects corporations’ profits; the global welfare system that nourishes them and helps them expand; private carve-outs like special economic zones (SEZs) that have sliced and diced our world; and corporations’ control over force and security – today all of these dynamics affect countries globally.

On one side of this story are rich and powerful people and their elite advisors, lawyers and lobbyists. On the other side is the vast majority of the world’s population. Those hit hardest are often those already struggling.

Overall what we uncovered was dark, and suggested that many of the scandals that occupy our media may actually be quite small in comparison to the silent coup that has been enacted against our democracies.

The book basically recounts the journeys around the world the authors made 

to identify the scale of this racket. So far Kennard has put up 3 videos in a 

series understandably called THE RACKET which are here -
episode 1 of THE RACKET interviews Jeremy Corbyn 
episode 2 interviews an Arab journalist 
Episode 3 has Matt Kennard with Jill Stein, the US Presidential candidate who has taken up the cudgel from Ralph Nader  
 
Other videos about the book are here -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xRrk-cYU-E Chris Hedges report
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDsp2apG5zQ&t=627s Novara with Aaron Bastani
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW5dEtjMb-k Politics Jo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsrP162n1S4&t=14s Planet Critical
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxOQJA0UXrM Freedom of the press
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr2KeKxv3wo short video