Welcome to the Empire Files podcast. This is Abby Martin. This is the audio version of each episode of the Empire Files hosted on Telesaur English. You can watch every episode at the Empire Files. TV.

Among the many terrible features of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, 12 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's no jurisdiction where they

can be made to answer to a court. From obliterating ecosystems to taking human lives to maximize

profits, the shareholders' cash is protected by this legal obstacle course. Thousands of corporate crimes go unchecked every year,

but some incidents have been so horrifying that public outcry has exposed this legal impunity.

Like in Bhopal India, where Dow Chemical Subsidiary Union Carbide released 40 tons of several lethal gases,

exposing more than 600,000 people to a poisonous

cloud that has killed an estimated 25,000 cents and left many more maimed. The area remains

heavily contaminated, and Dow has refused to accept any real responsibility to the victims

or to clean up the toxic site. Or the Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh.

In 2013, a multi-level clothing factory collapsed

due to extremely unsafe, cost-cutting building conditions.

It left more than 1,100 people dead.

Brands that use Bangladeshi labor, like H&M, Walmart, Gap, then pledged to enforce building

and worker safety.

But three years later, nothing's been done, and these businesses are free to continue to operate

under criminally unsafe standards.

Then there's Chevron Texaco's oil dumping disaster in Ecuador's Amazon rainforest, where the company

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