SumOfUs
Costa Rica’s rainforests are some of the most amazing places on earth. So when a Canadian mining company wanted to put an open pit, cyanide-leach gold mine in the middle of its most pristine forest, Costa Rica didn’t just say no. They said hell, no.
So what did the mining company do? They sued Costa Rica for $100 million lost profits.
It’s the latest strategy in corporate bullying: If a country won’t let you do whatever you want, then sue them for violating “free trade.”
But Costa Rica is the tip of the iceberg. Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly sued Canada to increase drug prices. Philip Morris has sued Australia over cigarette warning labels. The list goes on and on — and under proposed trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, we’ll see an explosion of these kinds of lawsuits.
But fighting corporate bullies is exactly what SumOfUs was set up to do. Using the Internet to organize, our worldwide membership has the collective power to stand up to big corporations, so countries like Costa Rica don’t have to face these corporate bullies alone.
Shortly after Infinito Gold proposed its mine, Costa Rica banned the kind of destructive open pit mining they wanted to do. And you’d think that would be the end of it — but because of a so-called free trade agreement between Canada and Costa Rica, many experts think Infinito Gold will win its lawsuit. If it do, Costa Rica will have to pay a huge sum of money just because they decided to protect their forests.
Costa Rica is just one example of a growing trend of corporations bullying sovereign governments — and it could get a lot worse because of similar trade deals like the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) or the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) that could affect virtually all of Europe, Australia, Asia, and North and South America.
So we’re fighting back. First, we’re blowing the whistle every time a corporation tries to bully a nation like Costa Rica. Second, we’re organizing to block new trade deals like the TPP and TTIP.
Papua New Guinea Mine Watch 
i’m a canadian and i am disgusted at this corporate trampling on citizen’s soveireingnity—how dare they try to plunder this nation’s resources without a proper agreement!—-unfortunately,the exact same thing is occurring in our own country where foreign corporations are doing the exact same thing—-suing us for loss of profits because we dare to propose that we will not allow fracking due to the potential damage to our ecosystems—this has to stop –we will not take this assault on our birthright lying down!
humans…didn’t Infinito Gold have a signed concession agreement with the Costa Rica government…and didn’t Infinito Gold invest 92million and then the Costa Rica “new” govement sue???…wake up-
As a Canadian I support blocking the TPP, but that doesn’t mean I think Infinito Gold doesn’t have a case to argue. Costa Ricans, like Canadians, should have the right to decide if they want open pit mining. Then if their democratically elected government changes policy mid-stream on a project by some investor breach of contract is one of the costs they should factor-in. G20 governments are trying to tell their citizens that we need such trade agreements to protect corporate foreign investment, but they are no longer elected democratically elected (if they ever were) since the same corporations that write the trade agreements effectively choose the governments. This is most obvious in Washington, and I see no hope for democracy anywhere until/unless Washington is cleaned up through changes to the campaign finance laws. Represent.US seems to have the most viable plan for introducing campaign finance reform legislation but only Americans are eligible to support it, and they remain massively ignorant about the root democracy problem thanks their corporately controlled media.
If we’re all more interested in the problems of Justin Beiber than the problems of our democracies then I guess we deserve the mass extinction that we’re headed for. I urge Americans of all political stripes to visit the site Represent.US; the world needs you now more than ever because we’re all getting f’d by the corporate model which has become terminally malignant under your watch.