So much for The Hague

[Nuclear Unicorn]

Any who were pinning their hopes on The Hague as the court of last resort may wish to re-think.

Chevron Corp. (CVX), the second-largest U.S. energy company, said it won a $96 million judgment against Ecuador in an international arbitration case stemming from a 1990s oil-export dispute with the Latin American nation.

The ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague resolved seven commercial claims over crude sales by the Ecuadorian government from 1991 to 1993 from wells operated by Texaco Inc., Kent Robertson, a spokesman for the San Ramon, California-based company, said today in a telephone interview.

Ecuador overstated domestic crude demand to boost its share of production from the Texaco-operated wells, and then sold the oil on the international market, depriving Texaco of profits, Robertson said. Texaco was acquired by Chevron in 2001.

“Ecuador rejects the final sentence given by the arbitration court and considers that it has no legal validity and represents a grave injustice,” Diego Garcia, Ecuador’s attorney general, said today to reporters in Quito.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-31/chevron-awarded-96-million-for-1990s-ecuador-oil-export-dispute.html

Who watches the watchers?

[Overseas]

1. Sad K&R.

[malaise]

2. Every institution has been infected and captured by corporate

interests. We need our own new institutions of the people, for the people and by the people.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

3. It's not the institutions, it's the people

There's nothing wrong with The Hague -- as laid-out on paper. The law didn't malfunction. The building stood whole. Even the toilet flushed every time it was supposed to. Yet, despite everything working as it was supposed to, in an environment built and groomed for the express purpose of seeing justice meted out impartially, we still are left with only travesty.

I dunno. Maybe the Calvinists are on to something. Maybe humanity, as a whole, is too irredeemably corrupt to save itself.