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downloading. It's worth it.
No daily sensationalism here, just the stuff to keep you informed, alert, thinking,
active.
This is a not for profit site created and funded by unpaid volunteers.
April 2001
Edition 20
A compendium of
corporat's insidious march toward
taking over the world.
It's time we got into their private
files and fight fire with fire.
"Civil disobedience" -- the time has come to employ it to the fullest extent!
Deliberate breaking of laws considered unjust, a form of nonviolent direct action; the term was coined by the US writer Henry Thoreau in an essay of that name 1849. It was advocated by "Mahatma Gandhi" to prompt peaceful withdrawal of British power from India. Civil disobedience has since been employed by, for instance, the US civil-rights movement in the 1960s and the peace movement in the 1980s.
Before proceeding, we must advance just a note, on corporatism:
Our "democracy" may be warped by corporatism, but it was our democracies that created corporatism. Under a *liberal* state (whether democratic or not) the market is the arena of individuals, individuals who may manipulate government, but who never attain the degree of power that is wielded by modern corporations. The corporate form (perpetual life, limited liability, impersonal control, in the end, immunity from political borders and control)
after intense legal lobbying, was granted by our corrupted government. Our country did not begin by giving way to the underhanded practices of corporations. We had just gotten rid of one ... the "King of England."
If the corporate form has gone awry, one alternative to socialist world-government is liberal, capitalist, particularist government. No government is bound to empower the corporate form; we've just grown so used to it that when we think of business, we think of corporations.
Though these articles come from our Canadian neighbor they accurately apply to the U.S.A..
HOT FLASH
Tariff Elimination Could Cripple U.S.
In a significant step toward global government, a prestigious group is calling for an end to all tariffs in the world-to the cheers of the Bush administration.
By James P. Tucker Jr.
The National Foreign Trade Council called for an end to tariffs throughout The world at a press conference attended by officials of the Bush administration on March 21.
"The tariff elimination proposal ad dresses the WTO's most obvious piece of unfinished business-the remaining high level of tariffs on industrial goods worldwide," said Frank Kittrede, council president.
Attending the Washington session were Brenda Fisher of the Commerce Department, Christopher Griffen of State and Normal Vantoai and Eugene Rosengarden, both of the International Trade Com mission.
The meeting was hosted by Global Bus iness Dialogue, an advocate for a global economic system. It is based in Washington.
"We firmly believe that global industrial tariff elimination would provide significant economic benefits to American manufacturers, workers and consumers, as well as to the rest of the world," Kittredge said. "If enacted, global tariff elimination could be a powerful economic stimulus."
With "the momentum toward regional zero-tariff agreements, such as NAFTA, FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas), the European Union . . . the next logical step would be political commitment to multilateral zero-tariff trade as well," Kittredge said.
Vince Ryan, chairman of Liberty Lobby, the Institution that led opposition to NAFTA and other so-called "free trade" agreements, ridiculed the proposal for an end to all tariffs.
"They are using the same propaganda that misled Congress into embracing NAFTA," Ryan said. "They promise us more jobs, economic expansion, lower costs of consumer goods and what happens?
"Millions of American jobs have been lost as international corporations shut down their U.S. plants and set up shop in poor countries where they pay slave wages and escape the costly burdens of vacations, health insurance and other fringe benefits imposed in this country by government," Ryan said.
Ryan cited the numerous cases of foreign countries "dumping"-selling below cost until the domestic producer is forced out of business-in calling tariffs a "necessary tool" to protect U.S. industry.
"The worst thing about this propaganda is that world free trade would be tantamount to world government, and this is an undeniable fact," said Ryan
Corporatism & Globalization
Increasingly, "corporations are ruling the world." Governments are, in effect, relinquishing control over their countries' economic and social agendas to globalization and the corporate agenda. Use this page to educate yourself about this movement and to give form to formulating methods to combat this destructive force.
Asbestos Dispute Illustrates Health and
"Trade Implications of WTO"
By Barry Castleman The World Trade Organization (WTO) is currently involved in a challenge by Canada to a complete ban on all uses of all types of asbestos by France. Canada argues that banning asbestos is a disproportionate and an unnecessarily extreme measure, because regulation (i.e. "controlled use") of asbestos can render the remaining hazards to workers and society "undetectable" and, hence, acceptable. The case is fundamental for the WTO. It is expected to have at least two important consequences: first, on the WTO legal system and its capacity to promote trade interests at the expense of human health; and, second, on the power of developing countries to intervene effectively to control hazardous working conditions and environmental health hazards in their territories.Significantly, the United States has sided with the European Union against Canada in asking the WTO panel to dismiss this complaint, saying that it is the right of each nation to determine the acceptable degree of risk that is tolerable in its territory and to determine the appropriate level of protection for its citizens. This position is explained by the fact that there is probably not a single large corporation left in the U.S. that cares what happens to the asbestos industry in the 21st century, because liability and regulation have all but ended the use of asbestos in the United States.
We are dealing here with the leading known cause of occupational cancer in human populations all over the world, one of the most thoroughly studied toxic dusts ever breathed. If the WTO panel finds that there isn't enough evidence to ban the use of asbestos (mainly used in building panels and pipes and vehicle brakes, hazardous uses where safer substitutes are available), what can be banned? This case is thus about much more than banning asbestos. It is about whether a country has the sovereign right to ban the use of a dangerous product, even if strictly applied "controlled use" could reduce the risk to workers and the public to a level that the exporting country (i.e. Canada) would consider acceptable (for others, if not in its territory, which exports 97 percent of all asbestos mined).
Simply put, this case is about the limits which the WTO Agreements impose on countries wishing to keep out of their territory products which are known to be dangerous, even when their controlled use, if strictly applied, could reduce substantially but not eliminate the risk to workers.
But what credibility does anyone have, talking about controlled use of asbestos? Governments across Europe have already rejected the argument that "controlled use" of asbestos-cement products in building construction, maintenance and demolition can really work satisfactorily in practice. And what government can assure that tens of thousands of brake mechanics will all stop grinding brakes and using compressed-air hoses in doing brake repairs? Will the free-trade fundamentalists at WTO have the wisdom to take account of the limitations of even the best-written regulations in protecting workers and the general public from widespread, mortal, silent health hazards like asbestos dust?
Despite the fact that this case concerns, strictly legally speaking, only the ban applied by France, the decision of the WTO panel will undoubtedly have serious implications for any WTO country wishing to ban asbestos in its territory. A decision in Canada’s favor would threaten national bans across Europe and beyond.
The real target of the case is the Third World, mainly Asian countries that are the major importers of Canadian asbestos today. Canada has in reality no expectation of resuming significant exports of asbestos to France or to most of the other developed countries even if successful in the case. So the case is of primary importance for the developing countries, and most of all it affects the workers in those countries. It is also clear that Canada doesn't want Third World countries asking why they should use a product so deadly that it is now scheduled to be banned by all countries in the European Union by 2005. But it is important to note that the WTO panel will not be taking testimony about the technical feasibility of applying "controlled use" of asbestos in Asia, Africa and Latin America, where uncontrolled use is the norm. So there’s a dangerous difference between what this case is formally about and what it is really about, a difference that calls into question the honor of the Canadian government as well as the role and operating principles of the WTO in making decisions with such far-reaching implications and consequences.
A decision in the case is expected in March, 2000.
The Asbestos case, like all other cases decided by the WTO panels in Geneva so far, raises the fundamental issue of transparency. In fact, the entire dispute settlement system of the WTO in Geneva is conducted under complete secrecy. This is contrary to any democratic concept and system of law of which we are aware. In any national or international system of dispute resolution, the hearing of the case by the court is fully open to the public. But this is not so in the WTO, where the hearings of the panels and the Appellate Body are held behind firmly closed doors.
Also as a rule, the statements of the parties to the panels and the Appellate Body are confidential unless the parties themselves release them to the public. Yet, cases like the Asbestos case can profoundly affect the lives and welfare of millions of people without them having the slightest clue of what is going on in Geneva.
NGOs have no right to participate in the proceedings and make their views known. They may send amicus curiae submissions, but there is no legal guarantee that their submissions will be taken into account by the panels unless a country in the dispute explicitly requests the panel to do so. This is clearly unacceptable and insufficient. The breadth and effect of the WTO agreements are enormous, and of course NGOs cannot trust national governments to properly represent their views or their constituencies in human rights, worker protection, consumer protection, and environmental protection in the proceedings. This should change immediately.
When a case raises scientific issues, WTO panels are given the power to request the advice of scientific experts. But the names of the scientists selected to advise the panel, the scientists' disclosures of possible conflicts of interest, the questions proposed to the scientists, the answers the scientists give, the comments by the parties on the quality and bias of the answers and experts, and then the exchanges that go on at a panel hearing on scientific issues are all strictly confidential.
The panels have made an extensive use of this "expert" option in five cases so far. But we know how subjective scientific advice can be, depending on the knowledge, experience, professional standards and ethical concerns of the selected scientists. In addition, there are formidable difficulties in achieving a process of selection of scientists that is fair and where all conflicts of interest are disclosed if not eliminated. All these tricky questions are handled by the panelists or, to tell the truth, by the invisible WTO staff (secretariat) assisting the panelists with no transparency at all, as explained above. We also know from our national legal systems that well-trained and experienced professional judges face enormous difficulties in deciding cases raising complex scientific questions. How then is a non-trained and inexperienced trade diplomat going to judge a complex case, like this on asbestos or possibly one on genetically modified organisms, within a space of six months? It is obvious that the WTO dispute settlement system needs immediate fixing before it completely breaks down or continues producing scientifically flawed and socially disastrous results.
Complex scientific questions that normally take between four to seven years to be decided in national legal systems are decided by the WTO in Geneva within a few months. WTO procedures force resolution of the most intractable problems in one year, and appeals are decided in 6 more months.
Panel members are selected from lists of names recommended by WTO member countries. They are a mixture of retired trade officials or still-busy trade diplomats, lawyers, economists, etc. It may be a once-in-a-lifetime job to be a panel member and doesn't pay much at all. These people mostly have no legal background and some are way too busy to read all the hundreds or thousands of pages of specialized documents submitted in these cases. Though it might appear that the panelists selected to decide the case are judges, the reality is that none of them is actually a judge or has specific training on how to go about deciding a case, let alone a complex scientific case. The 3 members of a panel are typically two busy trade diplomats and a lawyer.
Inevitably, the real work is in fact done by faceless bureaucrats within the WTO secretariat. Most of these WTO employees are political scientists, economists and lawyers. There are no real scientists employed by WTO. One would think that the WTO employees, most of whom are sent there by their national governments and have no permanent status, would be susceptible to influence by their national governments and business interests, lacking as they are in expertise in technical areas under discussion. Are there rules to safeguard against national trade interests, business lobbyists, consultants, and collaborating academics having contact with WTO staff? The companies are not, strictly speaking, parties in these cases, which are litigated by governments.
To sum up, the WTO system with its dispute settlement process has acquired too much power and authority which now affect practically all aspects of life of the ordinary people. Most importantly, WTO’s decisions directly affect human and animal health and the environment. Yet, its entire operation is carried on in complete secrecy and totally lacks democratic control. This system simply cannot go on like this. The stakes are too high for all of us who care about our health, our environment, the poor and the excluded to let it go on uncontrolled.
Barry Castleman is an Environmental Consultant living in Baltimore, Maryland. He is the leading researcher who originally exposed the hazards of asbestos. This article was presented at the Environment and Health Day, which accompanied the WTO meetings in Seattle at the end of November, 1999. Contact him at bcastle@bcpl.net.
Media Madness
How corporations use the public relations industry and the media to manage perceptions and modify behavior, in order to create positive business results.
“Perceptions are real. They color what we see...what we believe...how we behave. They can be managed...to motivate behavior...to create positive business results.”
Wendy Priesnitz Traditionally, most media outlets have intentionally separated their editorial and advertising departments. The news was reported, regardless of its impact on advertisers. Increasingly, this separation is being eroded.
You might recall viewing a televised news item about the difficulties experienced by the owners of the Sky Dome stadium in Toronto when they tried to wash the outside of the dome. Well, that wasn't really a news item at all; it was an advertisement dressed in news' clothing, supplied to the television station by the makers of Sunlight detergent, which was, you probably couldn’t help noticing, the brand used in that large-scale cleaning operation.
This piece of hype, which appeared on prime time newscasts, went to the television stations in the form of a video news release (VNR). VNRs are complete news stories, written, filmed, and produced by public relations firms. They are designed to appear to be genuine news items. And producers often air them without revealing their origin. According to a Nielsen Media Research study, about 80 percent of television stations in the United States use VNRs. More than 70 percent use up to ten a day!
One company supplying VNRs to Canadian stations is News Canada, which also creates already-typeset newspaper columns and canned radio shows. Their clients have included organizations like the Canadian Petroleum Association and the Conservative Party of Canada, as well as corporations like General Motors, the Bank of Montreal and Shoppers Drug Mart. News Canada claims in its promotional literature that “editors publish more than 95 percent of News Canada’s typeset columns with the message unchanged”.
A more overt blurring of the news-advertiser boundaries occurred during the recent Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. According to the Multinational Monitor, Nike’s sponsorship of CBS Sports’ coverage of the Olympics included reporters wearing parkas adorned with the Nike logo. CBC News reporter Roberta Baskin, whose story about Nike’s less-than-perfect labour practices in Vietnam was aired on the investigative program 48 Hours in 1996, wasn’t pleased with the sports reporters acting as billboards for the athletic shoemaker. According to Multinational Monitor’s reporters Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, Baskin believes that Nike’s sponsorship has caused CBS to avoid further negative coverage of the company. CBS News President Andrew Heyward has apparently called Baskin’s anger “intemperate” and denied any connection between Nike’s sponsorship and the network’s news coverage.
Magazines, whose financial situation is often more precarious than that of newspapers, are especially vulnerable to the manipulation of editorial by advertisers, or the lure of free editorial.
Some large advertisers, especially in the U.S. have, for some years now, been asking mainstream magazine editors to submit articles to them before publication. Corporations like Chrysler and Procter & Gamble would rather pull their advertising than risk having their corporate image tarnished or being attacked by special interest groups as a result of their ad accompanying a controversial article.
The journalism profession frowns on this practice. Magazine industry associations in both the U.S. and Canada have recently condemned the practice of submitting articles to prior review by advertisers. And some organizations have established rules of conduct for their members. However, the practice continues.
In fact, some magazines intentionally blur the lines between editorial content and advertising in order to bring in revenue. Many specialty magazines willingly publish advertorials – articles submitted by and promoting companies who advertise alongside the articles. In some cases, it is clear to the reader that the article was written by the advertiser; in others, the editorial is presented as fact in spite of its bias.
Why is this happening? Well, it's becoming increasingly difficult to separate the news makers from the news gatherers. Most of North America’s newspapers, magazines, and radio and TV stations are owned by the same transnational corporations about which they report. The American television network ABC is a subsidiary of Disney, which, in addition to its entertainment holdings also owns an oil and gas company and an insurance company. The NBC and CBS networks are owned by General Electric and Westinghouse, respectively. In Canada, one man – Conrad Black – owns or controls close to two-thirds of the daily newspapers.
Additionally, the corporatization of the media often leads to budget cutbacks, staff reductions and less time for careful research in the news departments. As the corporate mindset becomes entrenched, news becomes just another product.
There are other, more subtle, ways in which corporations use the media to further their own economic agendas.
Public relations firms are very good at their work of managing public perceptions to create positive business results. For instance, in the lead-up to the Climate Summit in Kyoto last December, millions of dollars were spent on anti-global warming propaganda by corporations that will suffer from restrictions on the burning of fossil fuels.
According to the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute, a right-wing think tank which is often used as a source by the media, global warming does not exist as an environmental problem. In a brochure advertising a conference to debunk global warming, the Institute states that: “The public has been barraged with apocalyptic predictions of global warming. This campaign has been so successful that global warming is now reported as fact...the evidence, however, does not support the predictions.”
Another common way for companies to influence the public agenda, especially in the health and environment fields, is to create phony grassroots organizations whose mission is to spread disinformation about an issue and sometimes to pressure politicians regarding pending legislation. They have catchy, innocuous sounding names like Forests Forever and the Global Climate Coalition and their corporate roots are cleverly hidden – even in the news items that report on their activities.
To help defeat anti-global warming initiatives, a coalition of American energy industry organizations formed a group called the Information Council for the Environment (ICE) in 1991 to, as its literature put it, “reposition global warming as theory (not fact).” The half-a-million dollar campaign was coordinated by a Washington-based public relations company called Bracy Williams & Co.
People working against clearcutting of old growth forests have long been aware that NPR – the Canadian arm of the world’s largest public relations firm Burson-Marsteller - is behind a campaign to ally First Nation peoples with logging companies against environmentalists. Burson-Marsteller has a history of working on behalf of BC’s logging companies, having formed the British Columbia Forest Alliance (BFCA), which is funded by companies like Louisiana-Pacific, Mitsubishi and Weyerhaueser.
Burson-Marsteller also created the National Smokers Alliance, which lobbies for smokers’ rights on behalf of the Philip Morris tobacco company.
Governments are also contributing to skewing of the news by encouraging libel chill. Thirteen American states have passed what are called food disparagement laws. They give the perishable food industry the power to sue people who criticize their products, using standards of evidence which dramatically shift the burden of proof in favour of the industry.
These laws were the basis for a couple of libel lawsuits that have recently been in the news. Texas cattlemen claimed their industry was defamed on the Oprah Winfrey show and that cattle prices dropped severely as a result of a discussion about whether or not mad cow disease was a threat in the United States. Even though, at the end of February, Winfrey was acquitted of the charge of spreading false information because she said she wouldn’t eat hamburger, the mere threat of such lawsuits is bound to further erode the quality of information provided by the mainstream media.
Media Education Foundation
Web: http://www.igc.org/mef
MAI. Never heard of it? Join the club. But this quietly negotiated model for increased corporate control of our lives will profoundly affect our political, social and economic climate.
Wendy Priesnitz
The MAI or Multilateral Agreement on Investment is currently being negotiated by the 29 member nations of the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) – the industrialized countries that host transnational corporations. It will serve as a sort of investment infrastructure template for the World Trade Organization (WTO), restricting what national governments can do to control international investment and corporate activities. It can be seen as the ultimate free trade agreement, shifting power from democratically elected governments to unaccountable corporations.
The premise behind MAI is that transnational corporations want legal protection for their investments in foreign countries from any obligations imposed by the host country. These obligations could be environmental, or they could involve hiring quotas, social development policies, special taxation rules or preferential treatment like foreign ownership restrictions to protect domestic industries. The MAI would prevent such restrictions and result in the free movement of capital and unrestricted profit-taking. It would mean that countries would no longer be in control of their own development.
National governments would not only lose their authority to impose performance standards on investors, but lower levels of government would also have to comply – in effect, wiping out a municipality's authority to prevent a McDonalds or Wal-mart from locating within their boundaries.
The Director General of the WTO, Renato Ruggiero, has put it quite clearly: “We are writing the constitution of a single global economy.” Critics, however, put it somewhat differently. Lori Wallach of Citizen Action, a group founded by consumer activist Ralph Nader, has described the MAI as GAFTA – NAFTA and GATT on steroids.
Yves Bajard, Secretary of the National Centre for Sustainability located in British Columbia, recently participated in a meeting with Andrew Griffith, a Canadian representative to the World Trade Organization. Bajard says that Griffith was very open, but clearly came from a different perspective. “For him, economic growth and globalization of the market, with their supranational processes, multilateral agreements and treaties, are natural and desirable. The goal in these processes is to remove obstacles to trade, regardless of possible social and environmental effects. There is neither recognition of likely natural constraints to economic growth, nor questioning of the premises of the economic system in place and of its compatibility with reality.”
Negotiations for MAI began in mid 1995 as an initiative of the American Council for International Business and other corporate lobby groups.
Until recently, negotiations have been conducted pretty much in secret, without the knowledge of or input from citizens or non-governmental organizations. Critics of the process are encouraging individuals to become informed about the issues and to lobby their elected representatives against such all-encompassing corporate control.
Twenty-two non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from over 70 countries returned from the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) “consultation” with the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris last fall, intent on mobilizing grassroots campaigns in their respective countries to fight the multinational trade agreement.
The coalition of groups cooperatively presented a statement to the OECD, which was categorically rejected. Nevertheless, the coalition feels that the MAI is in trouble. The OECD failed to meet its first deadline of May this year, suffers from obvious internal conflicts which surfaced at the NGO meeting, and is overwhelmed by an enormous list of country specific reservations which must negotiated. The last thing the negotiators need is a series of massive campaigns against the MAI in various countries. The Paris “consultation” was clearly a last minute public relations attempt to silence the riled NGOs who have been exposing the MAI in its true ugly colors.
The international coalition includes the Canadian Environmental Law Association, the Council of Canadians, Friends of the Earth, Sierra Club, and organizations from Eastern and Western Europe, South and Central America, and Pacific Rim countries.
As part of this mobilization effort, the Council of Canadians sought a legal opinion about the MAI. Toronto trade lawyer Barry Appleton told the organization that, in his opinion, the federal government is jeopardizing Canada's social programs by failing to protect them adequately in the global investment treaty.
A list of exceptions Canada has proposed to the MAI indicates Ottawa has left fundamental pillars of Canadian society exposed to challenges from foreign investors, said Appleton.
The Council of Canadians hired Appleton to give his legal assessment of whether the exceptions, or reservations, Canada has tabled during negotiations of the treaty will actually preserve culture, the environment and social programs.
“In our opinion the protection for the provision of health, public education and other social services under the MAI is inadequate,'” Appleton said in his brief.
“Canada's proposed reservation to protect social services...contains provisions which may unduly limit the financial ability of governments to provide services such as health, public education and child care.”
The MAI is a treaty designed to protect the investments of companies and individuals around the world. The federal government has argued it merely builds on investment protections already contained in the North American Free Trade Agreement.
The new deal would require the 130 members of the OECD to treat foreign corporations or investors in the same way as domestic ones. But critics point out that could restrict Canada’s ability, for example, to try to create jobs by providing subsidies or incentives to Canadian corporations in exchange for the firms’ agreement to hire certain numbers of employees or to conduct specified amounts of research and development.
On another front, in February, 600 representatives of peoples’ movements will meet in Geneva to establish a platform for worldwide action against trade liberalization: the Peoples’ Global Action against “Free” Trade and the World Trade Organization (PGA).
The PGA will work as a tool for coordination, exchange of information and mutual support for the struggles of all those hit by globalization. It calls for non-violent civil disobedience and the construction of local alternatives by local people, as answers to the action of multilateral institutions, governments and corporations.
The first big-scale action in the calendar of the PGA will be a wave of decentralized mobilizations and protests all over the world parallel to the Second Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), which will take place in May 1998.
The meeting in February will be the founding conference of the PGA. It is being convened by a committee formed by some of the most representative peoples’ movements of all continents, including peasant movements (like the Brazilian Movimento Sem Terra, the Indian KRRS and the Peasant Movement of the Philippines), indigenous peoples (like the Mexican Zapatistas, the Nigerian Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, the Indigenous Women’s Network of North America and the Pacific and FIA, a Maori organisation from Aotearoa), unions (like the Central Sandinista de Trabajadores from Nicaragua) and women’s organisations (like Mama 86, an organisation of Ukranian women affected by the Chernobyl disaster, and the above mentioned Indigenous Women’s Network).
Other events will take place around the first PGA conference, including roundtables on topics such as gender, food production, culture, economics, etc.; a one-day intensive seminar on the WTO, the MAI and trade liberalisation; coordination and planning sessions; and a European meeting to launch a Europe-wide movement of civil disobedience against “free” trade.
Liberals Bow to Ethyl Corp. Law Suit
The Canadian government has bowed to pressure from a large multinational corporation in a trend setting exhibition of the power corporations wield over governments under free trade agreements.
Wendy Priesnitz
The Canadian government has bowed to pressure from a large multinational corporation in a trend setting exhibition of the power corporations wield over governments under free trade agreements.
In April of 1997, the Canadian Parliament voted to ban MMT, a controversial gasoline additive, which many scientists believe to be a dangerous neurotoxin.
Canada was one of the few countries in which MMT was sold, either due to health and environmental concerns, or because it appears to damage car engines.
Its American manufacturer, Ethyl Corporation, sued the Canadian government for the “expropriation” of its “property” (namely its anticipated profits) and the “damage” to its reputation caused by the debate. The suit was filed under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), where a top secret tribunal began to assess the case. NAFTA entitles companies to sue governments they believe are raising unfair barriers to trade.
In July, the Canadian government, fearing it would never win under NAFTA, settled with Ethyl. It agreed to allow the corporation to resume sales of MMT in Canada. It also agreed to pay Ethyl $13 million in compensation. But perhaps worst of all, it agreed to reverse its position on the additive, declaring that “MMT poses no health risk.”
NDP trade critic Bill Blaikie says, “By announcing that they are going to lift the restrictions on the inter-provincial trade and import of this gasoline additive, the Liberals are admitting they are afraid to allow their judgement on MMT to go before the NAFTA process. They are admitting that the NAFTA process can’t protect us, which is the same process they want to entrench in the MAI.”
The NDP has long argued that under NAFTA and the proposed MAI the threat of lawsuits would intimidate governments wanting to adopt legitimate environmental policies. “Instead of adopting a ‘polluter pays’ principle, the trade agreements that the Liberals are getting us into promise many more ‘pay the polluter’ situations,” Blaikie says.
The United Nations and the Corporate Agenda
This rare look behind the closed doors of the power holders reveals a seamless alliance between the public and private sectors aligned behind the consolidation of corporate rule over the global economy.
David C. Korten
It was a true power lunch of lobster and an exotic mushroom salad held in a private dining room at the United Nations on June 24, 1997. Thirty seven invited participants were co-hosted by Ambassador Razali Ismail, President of the UN General Assembly, and Mr. Bjorn Stigson, Executive Director of the World Business Council on Sustainable Development (WBCSD). The agenda was to examine steps toward establishing terms of reference for business sector participation in the policy setting process of the UN and partnering in the uses of UN development assistance funds.
The players in the meeting were 15 high level representatives of government, including three heads of state, the Secretary General of the UN, the Administrator of UNDP, and the UN Under Secretary General responsible for presiding over the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, the Secretary General of the International Chamber of Commerce and ten CEOs of transnational corporations. The CEOs were mostly members of the WBCSD, a council of transnational corporations (TNCs) originally organized by Stephan Schmidheiny and Maurice Strong to represent the interests of global corporations at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio in 1992.
In a limited gesture toward transparency and multi-stakeholder participation, two “academics” and two NGOs were invited to observe. The academics were Jonathan Lash of World Resources Institute and myself. Chee Yoke Ling of the Third World Network and Victoria “Vicki” Tauli-Corpuz of the Indigenous Peoples' Network, Philippines were the NGO participants.
The meeting's outcome was preordained. It closed with Ambassador Razali, President of the General Assembly, announcing that a framework for the involvement of the corporate sector in UN decision making would be worked out under the auspices of the Commission on Sustainable Development.
Listening to the presentations by the governmental and corporate representatives left me rather deeply shaken, as it revealed the extent to which most of the messages the world's NGOs have been attempting to communicate to the UN and its governmental members at UNCED and the other UN conferences have fallen on deaf ears. On the positive side, Thorbejoern Jagland, the Prime Minister of Norway, called for a tax shift to place the burden of taxation on environmentally damaging consumption. Both Clare Short, Secretary of State for International Development of the United Kingdom and Margaret De Boer, Minister of Environment for the Netherlands, called for giving high priority to ending poverty.
Chee Yoke Ling of the Third World Network, the only non-corporate stakeholder voice given the floor, spoke eloquently of the growing concentration of wealth being created by the corporate sector and of the corporate commitment to the unattainable agenda of creating a universal consumer society. She observed that there are not enough resources in the world for everyone to live even at the current level of consumption of the average Malaysian, let alone the level of the United States or Europe. She further noted that people are becoming increasingly cynical about the professed corporate commitment to sustainability given that in corporate dominated forums such as World Trade Organization (WTO) they talk only of the rights of corporations and nothing of their obligations.
Such moments of enlightenment were the exception. On the less enlightened side, we were treated to the views of Samuel Hinds, the President of Guyana. He was the only speaker to take any note of Chee Yoke Ling's comments and he dismissed them out of hand. Indeed, he accused NGOs of causing popular unrest by trying to postpone in the name of environmental protection the development that people so desperately want. Besides, he pointed out, if he does not cut down his country's forests someone might grow marijuana in them.
The United States sent Larry Summers, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury as its representative to the luncheon. The Clinton administration could hardly have sent a clearer message as to how it views the trade-off between its commitment to sustainability and its commitment to its corporate clients. Summers is the former Chief Economist of the World Bank who gained public fame for advocating the shipping of more toxic wastes to low income countries because people there die early anyway and they have less income earning potential so their lives are less valuable.
Summers treated the luncheon guests to a litany of neoliberal platitudes. He praised privatization, noting that people take better care of their homes when they own them, implying that environmental resources will be better cared for when they are all privately owned by the corporate sector. He assured us that economic growth leads the way to creating both the will and the means to deal with the environment. In other words, he believes that the more a person consumes the more careful that person will be of the environment. And he noted that by attracting private foreign capital to build bridges and roads on a fee for use basis, the receiving countries will eliminate their need to use scarce public funds for physical infrastructure. He might well have noted as a further advantage that the private toll roads and bridges will be less congested than open public facilities as fees will exclude their use by the poor.
He, of course, made no mention that corporate participation in Rio helped assure that few standards were actually set and that even fewer have been met. He called on the private sector to come up with alternative energy sources for the poor so they “don't have to cut down every tree in sight”, while making no mention of the corporations that are strip mining the world's forests. He praised UNDP for its role in preparing the way for private investment to come into Third World countries and called on governments to provide incentives to move business in this direction – in short he is firmly committed to using UN and other public funds to subsidize the corporate buy-out of Third World economies.
Gus Speth, the Administration of UNDP, said that the best hope for the three billion people in the world who live on less than $2 a day is to bring them into the market by redirecting more private investment flows to low income countries. UNDP is apparently facilitating this process by giving priority to using its limited funds to “leverage” (read “subsidize”) private foreign investment.
Underlying the words of everyone who was allowed to speak, with the sole exception of NGO spokesperson Chee Yoke Ling, was an embrace of the neoliberal logic of market deregulation and economic globalization. According to the prevailing official wisdom, economic globalization and the economic dominance of corporations are irreversible realities to which we must simply adapt. Since global corporations have the money and the power, any viable approach to dealing with poverty and the environment must center on providing market incentives (read public subsidies) that will make it profitable for them to invest in job creation and environmentally friendly technologies. Thus it follows, by the twisted official logic, that corporations need to be brought in as partners in public decision process to assure that the resulting policies will be responsive to their needs. If any speaker other than Chee Yoke Ling saw any problem in giving over ever more power to global corporations, they revealed no hint of it at this power luncheon.
The underlying commitment to the use of public resources to advance unrestrained global corporate expansion brought to mind the central message of a book that first appeared in 1980 written by Bertram Gross entitled Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America. Gross looked beyond the familiar racism, hatred and brutal authoritarian rule associated with the practice of fascism to describe the institutional structure of fascist regimes. Herein he revealed a nasty little secret. The defining structure of fascist regimes is a corporate dominated alliance between big business and big government to support the expansion of corporate empires. Those of us who have been studying these issues have long known of the strong alignment of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank, and the IMF to the corporate agenda. By contrast the United Nations has seemed a more open, democratic and people friendly institution. What I found so shattering was the strong evidence that the differences I have been attributing to the United Nations are largely cosmetic.
It seems that all our official forums function within the culture of ideological dogmatism that international financier George Soros denounced in his Atlantic Monthly article on “The Capitalist Threat”. With dissenting voices quickly silenced, there is no challenge within the halls of power to flawed logic and assumptions. So long as official forums remain captive to this closed and deeply flawed ideological culture, our governmental and corporate institutions will almost surely lead our world ever deeper into crisis. The burden of providing alternative leadership that falls on those elements of civil society that are not captive to the official culture is thus enormous. We must speak fearlessly with force and clarity in an effort to penetrate the veil of silence that shields our official and corporate institutions from confronting the devastating consequences of their ideologically driven leadership.
David Korten is the author of When Corporations Rule the World and president of The People-Centered Development Forum (PCDF). This article was first posted to the PCDF website
Fighting Corporate Rule
A statement of international solidarity from the first International Symposium on Corporate Rule, which included 85 delegates from Asia Africa, Europe, Latin America and North America.
The first International Symposium on Corporate Rule took place in early November at Port Elgin, Ontario, Canada. The delegates included 85 people from Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America and North America. Following is a statement prepared by the chair of the Symposium Tony Clarke, which was unanimously endorsed (with a few modifications) by the delegates.
“For the past four days, we have been meeting here at Port Elgin on the shores of Lake Huron in Canada – campaign organizers, front-line activists and policy analysts – from all over the world, from different societies and cultures, from different economic and social sectors, but sharing a common concern about the ever growing power of corporations over governments and peoples, and with a common resolve to fight for democratic control over our economic, social and environmental future.
“We came together to deepen our understanding of the global system of corporate rule: how corporations have subverted true democracy in some countries and reinforced brutal autocratic regimes in others, how they have exploited workers, pillaged resource, ravaged the environment, weakened labour laws, and widened the gap between rich and poor with particularly devastating effects on women and children, how they have enshrined the goal of maximizing profits over all human, cultural, social and ecological needs, and how they have seized control over the reins of public policy making in all our countries.
“We came together to consolidate our efforts to expose and confront corporate rule in all its forms. Many of us have been involved for years in battling the depredations of individual companies in our respective regions – sometimes losing sometimes winning – and these grassroots struggles must be continued and supported.
“At the same time, we see the need to develop a new Citizens’ Politics to challenge corporate rule in all our organizations and sectoral activities. This new Citizens’ Politics must be grounded in a reassertion of the fundamental human and democratic rights, and indeed the inalienable rights of the Earth itself.
“The ultimate goal must be to give the world’s peoples the sovereign right to govern themselves as they wish and deserve to be governed. To that end, we pledge to take the following steps to forge and equip a global movement to challenge corporate rule:
“1) by redesigning our existing campaigns and developing new anti-corporate campaigns – in forestry, mining and energy, in food, textiles and electronics, in health care, public education, and the media/communications industry – to unmask and confront the system of corporate rule that dominates our lives,
“2) by mounting a series of new campaigns in the coming year focused on four major targets that are mechanisms of corporate rule the proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), the Financial Casino, the World Trade Organization (WTO), plus the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF),
“3) by building a global network of information providers to share research findings on corporations and corporate rule in accessible ways and forms that will enable grass-roots groups to develop more effective community-based campaigns for challenging corporate power and authority,
“4) by launching an International Day of Resistance Against Corporate Rule each year, aimed at targeting and exposing the operations of specific transnational corporations at local, national and international levels, utilizing a variety of direct action tactics, including civil disobedience,
“5) by developing an ongoing vehicle to help facilitate follow-up action on all these fronts, and to build new solidarity networks between groups actively engaged in sectoral campaigns and social movements, in order to advance the struggle for democratic rights against the global system of corporate rule.”
Corporate Rule Substitutes for Democracy
How government has given its power to the corporate sector.
Wendy Priesnitz
I awoke this morning to a newscast that trumpeted the return to economic prosperity. There's a building boom in the City of Toronto, Canada, according to the radio reporter. People are lining up to get building permits, we were told - a sure sign of a recovered economy.
For a moment of semi-consciousness, I bought into the rejoicing. Then I surfaced sufficiently to wonder exactly who was lining up at City Hall. Sure enough, the reporter continued on to interview some of the queuing masses. There was a developer planning to convert an older apartment building into trendy studio lofts. And an interior designer's assistant looking for approval to remodel high rise office space to accommodate upscaling corporate executives. Not a builder of affordable housing in sight.
The universe is apparently unfolding just the way the corporate elite has told its government puppets it should. The economy is very good for a select group of businesses...and lousy and getting worse for everyone else, especially those scraping at the bottom of the economic barrel. And that's because the corporate bottom line now rules the world, having, over the past few decades, substituted greed for democracy.
In Ontario, as in so many other places around the world, financial institutions and a handful of other major corporations have hijacked the political process, substituting their agenda for the common good.
Of course, it's nothing new for business leaders to become politicians and former politicians to get influential positions on boards of major corporations. What's different now is the sophisticated, systematic and organized way in which corporations have gained power over international politics.
In Canada, the Business Council on National Issues (BCNI) represents 150 of the country's largest corporations and banks, with assets totaling over $1.5 trillion. It was founded over a decade ago with the intention of writing and directing public policy in areas affecting the economy (and by extension most other areas of our lives). And it's succeeded quite well.
As a result of BCNI lobbying, corporate tax rates fell from 15 percent in the mid-'80s to around 7.5 percent by 1993. Their other ideas have also been incorporated into public policy. A prime example is the use of high interest rates to lower inflation (and to increase bank profits). As a result of this controversial fiscal policy, the federal government's deficit became artificially inflated, which drained money from government coffers and justified an unprecedented cost-cutting policy, which has seen the goring of Canada's social safety net.
Another piece of largesse doled out by the Canadian government to its corporate friends was corporate tax reform which resulted, by 1994, in corporations owing the federal government over $40 billion in deferred taxes and allowed over 80,000 profitable corporations to avoid paying income tax every year. In addition, Ottawa pays approximately $11 billion a year to businesses in the form of subsidies.
These same transnationals lobbied for US-Canada and North American Free Trade deals, scoffing at opponents' claims that jobs would be lost in Canada as a result. The US-Canada agreement resulted in the loss of more than 200,000 jobs in Canada between 1998 and 1994.
Unfortunately, Canada is not alone in this astonishing takeover by corporate rule. In the United States, the Business Round Table includes the heads of 42 of the 50 largest corporations in the world. In Europe, a similar organization, called the European Round Table of Industrialists is composed of 40 men, all CEOs of transnationals based in Europe. Like the BCNI in Canada, the American and European organizations have played a strategic role over the past two decades in shaping economic policy of their respective regions.
The world's largest conglomerate, Mitsubishi, has more total revenue than Indonesia. Wal-Mart is larger than the economies of 161 countries. Philip Morris' annual sales are greater than New Zealand's GDP. These and other major transnationals have been meeting with political leaders from around the world for over 20 years in a little-known forum called the Trilateral Commission which targeted what it called "excess democracy". These are the people who have been the architects of the new global economy, and who continue to push governments toward the total dismantling of trade and investment barriers.
This hijacking of democracy has resulted in a massive transfer of wealth from public to private, creating greater distances between rich and poor and polarizing class distinctions. In 1992, the top one percent of the Canadian population owned 25 percent of the country's assets.
Too bad the mainstream media – itself largely corporate owned – doesn't think to question just who is standing in line to reap the rewards of the so-called economic recovery.
Making Banks
Accountable
A proposed bank merger sparked a lively debate. Should banks serve individuals, small businesses and local communities? Instead do they act with little regard for their customers?
Duff Conacher
Do we want banks that serve individuals, small businesses and local communities? Or do we want banks that act with little regard for their customers?
A poll in February found a majority of Canadians (55 percent) opposed the proposed merger between the Royal Bank and the Bank of Montreal, with only six percent strongly in favour. And no wonder.
With $452 billion in combined assets and 17 million customers, the new megabank would control almost half the total assets of Canada’s big five banks. As a result, consumers and small businesses would have even less choice. A study of thousands of U.S. bank mergers found that they led to higher fees, closed branches and less customer service.
On a brighter note, the U.S. experience suggests that it is possible to require banks to be accountable to the communities in which they are located and to serve all customers.
The 20-year-old U. S. Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) goes a long way to making U. S. banks and other financial institutions serve everyone fairly and well. It requires deposit-taking financial institutions to help meet local credit and deposit service needs in a manner “consistent with the safe and sound operation of the institutions.”
Financial institutions’ performance in meeting needs is revealed by requiring them to disclose detailed data about their loans, investments and services. After reviewing the data, the U.S. government grades each institution’s performance. Those who fail can be required to take corrective action, and any expansion, merger or takeover of the institution can be denied.
The Bank of Montreal and Toronto-Dominion own U.S. banks that must comply with U.S. laws. Before the Bank of Montreal could expand its subsidiary Harris Bank of Chicago in 1994, Harris Bank had to correct its poor lending and service record, revealed by disclosure of data under the CRA. To do so, it pledged $327 million in credit and assistance for affordable housing, small business loans and other community needs.
Thanks to the CRA, poor performance by financial institutions in servicing some U.S. communities has been revealed, and the institutions have invested $353 billion in these communities in response – a terrific boost to local communities.
Canada could enact other laws based on positive U.S. models. At least 400,000 Canadian adults have no bank account, in large part because banks require identification for opening accounts and cashing cheques that people with low incomes often lack.
The federal government and major banks agreed in 1997 that banks would lower barriers to access by reducing ID requirements and eliminating requirements that the customer be employed and maintain a minimum balance.
Yet this agreement didn’t work. It’s voluntary and does nothing to ensure that banks do not place excessive holds on deposited funds or charge excessive fees. An informal survey by the Canadian Community Reinvestment Coalition (CCRC) last fall revealed that five of the big six banks still require photo ID, maintenance of a minimum balance, or employment to open an account. In contrast, U. S. states such as New York require banks to offer basic banking services to everyone.
The Canadian banks are currently spending $20 million on a flashy PR campaign because they know that people are unhappy with them. Surveys in the past two years by the National Quality Institute of over 8,000 Canadians regarding customer satisfaction with various industries found banks near the bottom of the heap.
Many people feel bewildered by the hundreds of products and services offered by banks. They’re upset about high service fees and credit card charges, but feel powerless.
A Financial Consumer Organization (FCO) could offer advice to consumers about financial products and could advocate for their interests. The FCO could be created if banks and other financial institutions enclosed a flyer in their mailings to customers inviting them to join the FCO, for a small annual fee.
Again, the U. S. provides a model. In four U.S. states, utilities have been required to enclose a flyer in their customer mailings, resulting in effective citizen watchdog groups. Three to five percent of utility customers usually join these groups, meaning that a Canadian FCO would potentially have at least 600,000 members. Canada’s Industry Minister John Manley endorsed the FCO proposal in 1996 and pledged to push the banks to enclose the flyer if they refused to do so voluntarily.
Still, Canada is 20 years behind the U.S. in terms of bank accountability. Americans have potent tools to help them ensure banks are serving consumer and community interests. We don’t. Meanwhile, Canada’s big banks are heading for another year of record profits. It’s about time, especially given the proposed Royal Bank-Bank of Montreal merger, that the federal government took steps, like those outlined above, to catch up.
Duff Conacher is the Chairperson of the Canadian Community Reinvestment Coalition, a 73-group national coalition representing three million Canadians that advocates for bank accountability. For more information contact the CCRC: Fax (613) 241-4758, Email; cancrc@web.net Web: http://www.cancrc.org or write P.O. Box 1040, Station B, Ottawa ON KIP 5R1.
The Boxing Day Belch by Wendy Priesnitz - The overconsumption of the season is just the most obvious symptom of a larger sickness; corporations, through their seemingly unlimited economic power, political clout and mass advertising, have come to control not only what we buy, but also what we eat, how we’re entertained and what we think.
From the Editor’s Desk
Yet another day has come and gone. Store owners and shoppers have once again ended their pre-Christmas orgy of consumerism with a huge, post-holiday belch.
Too bad that a holiday that’s supposed to be about love and peace and family has become so empty and chaotic. In reality, the over consumption of the season is just the most obvious symptom of a larger sickness; corporations, through their seemingly unlimited economic power, political clout and mass advertising, have come to control not only what we buy, but also what we eat, how we’re entertained and what we think.
Only a few generations ago, we were a relatively frugal people, living within our means. Today we’re bloated with excess, controlling a large portion of the world's wealth and creating a large portion of its pollution. Along with the other developed countries, Canada is living off the death of nature and charging the costs to future generations.
The very same consumer mentality that crowded our city streets on the day after Christmas led to disappointing results a month earlier as world governments met at the climate change summit in Kyoto, Japan to argue about levels of greenhouse gas emissions.
After eleven days of negotiations, governments agreed to a compromise deal with enough loopholes to possibly lead to emission increases, rather than decreases, in the early part of the next century. Canada agreed to cut emissions by six percent from 1990 levels by 2008 to 2012. Overall, industrialized nations agreed to reduce emissions by 5.2 percent. The U.S. agreed to a seven percent cut.
This is far below the 15 per cent reduction at 1990 levels by 2010, which was proposed by the European Union as a realistic and achievable target. And even that reduction is low compared to the action demanded by some scientists. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the main scientific advisory body on climate change, has said at least a 50 percent cut in emissions is required to prevent the continued build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Even with this wimpy copout, we were treated to the disgusting spectacle of Canada's energy industry criticizing the agreement because it might damage corporate profits or inconvenience consumers. The Alberta government went so far as to say the protocol was “not acceptable”. In fact, the highly compromised deal was largely attributable to the position of the United States, which was heavily influenced by the frantic pre-conference lobbying of fossil fuel corporations and the automobile industry.
However, there may be an optomistic spin to put on this seeming disaster. The fact that a legally binding agreement was reached at all, over the objections of the oil companies, shows that industry's grip on governments may finally be loosening. Could this be the result of a worldwide movement that is underway to wrest back control of our lives from corporations? Environmental groups, indigenous peoples' organizations, trade unions, and peoples' movements from all continents are co-operating to push corporations and their cohorts at the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization to shift things into a sustainable gear.
Yes, the pig is still belching. But positive change is afoot. In this issue, there's news of such initiatives, as well as examples of people who have already created sustainable lives for themselves and their communities.
From the Editor’s Desk
SLAPP suits designed to deter environmental protest: Ethyl Corporation sues the Canadian government under NAFTA and Daishowa takes Friends of the Lubicon to court.
Wendy Priesnitz
As I write this editorial, two court cases are in motion that should worry anyone who values the rights of individuals, organizations and governments to protect the environment against the wishes of corporations. One involves a corporation suing the government for regulating one of its toxic products. The other involves a corporation suing supporters of a First Nations group for protesting the devastation of its land by logging.
The Ethyl Corporation is suing the Canadian government for US$251 million for imposing a ban on the toxic gasoline additive MMT. Under both NAFTA and the proposed MAI, corporations have the right to sue national governments. The case will be a test of whether investor rights in agreements like NAFTA and MAI can be used to overturn environmental regulations or other safeguards.
Last April, the Canadian government banned the import and interprovincial transport of MMT. Ethyl responded with the lawsuit. Ethyl claims that the ban on MMT violates various provisions of NAFTA and seeks restitution to cover losses resulting from the “expropriation” of both its MMT production plant and its “good reputation.” The American corporation is MMT's only manufacturer; its use is illegal in the United States.
An international panel, rather than a domestic court, will hear the case. Under the terms of NAFTA, proceedings will be conducted in secret, the records will not be publicly accessible, and the decision will be legally binding. If successful, this lawsuit could set a precedent where a government would have to compensate investors when it wishes to regulate them or their products for public health or environmental reasons. Such a precedent would have the effect of giving a corporation's right to make profits the same weight as the public's right to be protected from industrial contaminants.
The second lawsuit, which may be the final chapter in a story that's become legendary in the annals of aboriginal resistance struggles, could have the same effect of equating the public good with corporate profits.
A small, Toronto-based organization called Friends of the Lubicon is being sued by the multinational paper giant Daishowa Products for its successful boycott campaign in support of the 500-member Lubicon Lake Cree Nation of Alberta. Since the boycott began in 1991, Daishowa has been forced to hold off clear-cut logging operations on disputed Native lands. More than 43 companies representing over 4,000 retail outlets – including major fast food chains – joined the boycott. But last year, an Ontario court ruled that the boycott is “causing economic harm” to the corporation, and issued a temporary injunction on the boycott. Daishowa is in court to have the injunction made permanent, and to seek damages of more than $10 million.
Ralph Nader's Multinational Monitor named Daishowa one of the Ten Worst Corporations of 1996, calling it “rotten to the core” for its attempts to silence people who are critical of its activities.
If Daishowa wins this court case, we’ll see a whole rash of so-called SLAPP suits (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) – legal proceedings brought by corporations to deter or punish lawful public participation in the democratic
Monsanto Goes Shopping
Genetic engineering giant Monsanto went on a shopping spree, buying up seed companies and acquiring the Terminator technology.
Monsanto purchased a relatively small American company named Delta and Pine Land Co. for US$1.76 billion. The attraction was that Delta and Pine had, just two months earlier, patented genetic engineering technology dubbed the Terminator.
Then on June 1, Monsanto announced a mega-merger with American Home Products (AHP) for US$33.5 billion, creating the world’s largest crop chemicals company. Later that month, Monsanto bought Cargill’s international seed business for US $1.4 billion.
These three strategic moves give the company massive market share to deploy the Terminator technology, which has been called anti-farmer and anti-poor by farmers’ groups and NGOs around the world.
The Terminator sterilizes and renders useless farm-saved seed by halting a plant’s reproductive process. The Terminator’s sole goal is to force farmers to return to the commercial seed market every year and thereby fatten industry profits.
Since 1996, Monsanto has spent $8.1 billion buying seed companies. It is now approaching monopoly market share in several major food crops. It estimates that its potential to deploy genetically engineered seeds outside the USA is twice that of its domestic market. Especially lucrative are crops like wheat and rice in countries such as India, China and Pakistan. The major barrier in reaching this market has been lack of a viable seed distribution and multiplication system in the Third World. The Cargill deal solves this problem. It gives Monsanto plant breeding and seed testing establishments in 24 countries and seed multiplication and distribution operations in 51 countries.
Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI) was prompted to declare, “By the time the seed industry holds its 75th anniversary convention in Cambridge, UK next year, the entire gathering might be able to meet over a wienie roast in someone’s backyard.”
Monsanto is apparently trying sign up political leaders in the Third World in a campaign to gain acceptance for genetically modified food products in the First World. The company has reportedly commissioned a Washington lobbying firm to write to leading African politicians seeking their endorsement of a Monsanto advertising campaign in support of the use of biotechnology in food.
Health Problems Persist 12 Years After India's Enviro Disaster
Twelve years after the Union Carbide gas leak disaster in Bhopal, India, serious medical, economic and social problems among survivors and their children persist.
Twelve years after the Union Carbide gas leak disaster in Bhopal, India, serious medical, economic and social problems among survivors and their children persist, according to the final report of the International Medical Commission on Bhopal (IMCB). In December 1984, a mixture of toxic gases leaked from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, killing thousands and injuring hundreds of thousands.
The IMCB, an international volunteer organization comprised of physicians and public health experts, has investigated a range of issues related to the disaster.
The Commission demands that Union Carbide acknowledge its negligence in causing the gas leak. The IMCB points out that Union Carbide's admission of responsibility and its appearance before the Magistrate Court of Bhopal to answer charges of homicide would be a first step in helping survivors feel that justice has been done.
According to the final report issued in December, as many as 50,000 people including children of survivors continue to suffer as a result of the gas leak. The Commission identified several key issues for survivors that should be addressed by the Indian government and/or Union Carbide, including chronic physical and psychological illness, inadequate or misdirected medical treatment, lack of community-based primary health care systems, inadequate compensation for death and injury, and a range of challenges related to job loss, poverty and prejudice against victims of the disaster.
The Commission stated that many survivors suffer chronic neurological problems such as loss of memory, speech or fine motor skills. Many survivors also suffer from post traumatic stress disorder, a condition that the Indian government does not recognize as an effect of the gas exposure requiring compensation. In addition, many suffer from severe depression and a sense of hopelessness related to their disrupted lives and their loss of loved ones.
The report also outlined a range of social and economic challenges, including poverty due to job loss or death of family providers, poor sanitation in the slum areas most affected by the gases and social stigmatization of survivors — especially for girls. The IMCB calls for improved housing, clean water and opportunities for work to meet the needs of survivors. It also recommends assigning responsibility for survivors' needs to the Ministry of Health and Welfare rather than the Ministry of Chemicals and Petrochemicals, the agency currently charged with this responsibility.
Public Control of Water on the Chopping Block
The Canadian Environmental Law Association has issued an Action Alert about the privatization of water resources in Ontario.
Amidst the furor over the Ontario government's intention to turn the City of Toronto and its surrounding municipalities into a mega city, a piece of legislation with possibly profound environmental impact has been largely overlooked. The Water and Sewage Services Improvement Act (Bill 107) will transfer to municipal ownership, all water and sewer plants currently under provincial control (about one quarter of the total in the province). It also outlines new provincial requirements for the sale of any water or sewer plant.
According to the Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA), throughout 1996 and with the massive restructuring announcements (which included Bill 107) announced earlier this year during what has come to be called “megaweek”, the Ontario government has been paving the way for privatization of Ontario's water and sewer utilities.
First, Bill 26 removed the Public Utilities Act requirement that municipalities hold a public referendum on the sale of public utilities. Second, multi-million dollar cuts to the Ministry of Environment and Energy's (MOEE) budget substantially eliminated the municipal infrastructure assistance program. Third, MOEE has cut water monitoring and enforcement staff. Fourth, Bill 107, taken together with the massive restructuring of services announced by the province's Conservative government, shifted the political problem of water privatization to municipalities.
Even before Bill 107 was announced, municipal transfer payments were being cut by up to 40 percent. Critics are predicting that the new costs will outstrip municipal budgets – if not immediately, certainly over the longer term.
Increasingly cash-strapped municipalities are already being courted by large water companies. However, Bill 107 does not provide provide for independent regulation of water and sewage utilities.
According to an Insight Canada poll conducted in April of 1996, more than 76 percent of Ontarians say that water should remain in public control.
According to CELA, public opinion may be right on this subject. The organization cites the experience in England and Wales since their water and sewerage industries were privatized in 1989, as an example of the problems citizens could face in Ontario. These include: substantial increases in water prices; the termination of water services to thousands of low income families; severe water shortages and significant restrictions on non-essential water uses; outbreaks of dysentery, Hepatitis A and other gastro-intestinal problems caused by poor sanitation and unavailability of water; the sell-off of water reservoir lands for development purposes; the failure to re-invest profits into aging or leaking infrastructure; cutting corporate costs by laying off thousands of workers and lowering wages; excessive executive salaries and shareholder dividends; numerous violations of regulatory requirements; creation of integrated monopolies providing water, sewage, electricity, transportation and waste management services.
In the United Kingdom, profit maximization for executives and shareholders has continued while consumers have borne the cost of massive leakage of water from poorly maintained systems. In 1995, it was estimated that 29 percent of the 16 billion litres of water distributed in England and Wales every day leaks out of the system. According to the Ontario Ministry of the Environment, 25 percent of Ontario's water and sewage infrastructure is almost 50 years old and nearing the end of its lifespan.
A coalition of health, environment and labour organizations, called Save Ontario Water, has been formed to oppose the loss of public control over Ontario's water resources. The coalition is calling for public hearings on Bill 107.
Contact:
Save Ontario Water Coalition
Canadian Environmental Law Association
401 - 517 College St.
Toronto ON M6G 4A2
Phone: (416) 960-2284
Fax: (416) 960-9392
Email: cela@web.net
Website: http://www.web.net/cela
Final Stage of McLibel Trial Underway
Details of the so-called McLibel Trial, between the $30 billion a year McDonald's Corporation and two supporters of London Greenpeace (Helen Steel and Dave Morris).
The McLibel Trial, between the $30 billion a year McDonald's Corporation and two supporters of London Greenpeace (Helen Steel and Dave Morris), began on 28th June 1994 and is now set to run to the end of this year. It is already by far the longest civil case in British history.
McDonald's is suing Steel and Morris for alleged libel over a six-sided factsheet produced by London Greenpeace, entitled What's Wrong With McDonald's?, which McDonald's alleges they distributed in 1989/90.
A total of approximately 180 witnesses from the UK and around the world have given evidence in court about the effects of the company's operations on the environment, on human health, on millions of farmed animals, on the Third World, and on McDonald's' own staff. They include environmental and nutritional experts, trade unionists, animal welfare experts, McDonald's employees, top executives, and five infiltrators employed by McDonald's.
Steel and Morris were denied their right to a jury trial and, with no right to Legal Aid, have been forced to conduct their own defence against McDonald's team of top libel lawyers. The denial of a jury caused Marcel Berlins, a leading legal commentator, to remark, “I cannot think of a case in which the legal cards have been so spectacularly stacked against one party.”
After McDonald's issued leaflets nationwide calling their critics liars, the Defendants took out a counterclaim for libel against McDonald's which is running concurrently with McDonald's libel action, leading to two separate verdicts.
At the time of the first anniversary of the trial (June 1995), it was widely reported that McDonald's had initiated secret settlement negotiations with Steel and Morris. The company twice flew members of its US Board of Directors to London to meet with the Defendants to seek ways of ending the case. McDonald's was, and still is, clearly very worried about the way the case is going for them and the bad publicity they are receiving.
The case is receiving publicity worldwide. The columnist Auberon Waugh described the trial as “the best free entertainment in London”. A confidential internal memo from McDonald's in Australia (leaked to and broadcast widely by the media last year) revealed the corporation's dilemma around the world with media coverage of the trial: “Contain it as a UK issue”. “We could worsen the controversy by adding our opinion”. “We want to keep it at arms length – not become guilty by association”. “This will not be a positive story for McDonald's Australia”. The aim is to “minimize any further negative publicity”.
The issues in the case, on which 180 witnesses have given evidence, and which will be summarized in the Closing Speeches, are as follows:
The connection between multinational companies like McDonald's, cash crops and starvation in the third world
It's clear that McDonald's aim of suppressing the leaflet has backfired. Over two million leaflets have been handed out to the public in the UK alone since the action was started and thousands of people have pledged to continue circulating the leaflets whatever the verdict. Protests and campaigns against McDonald's continue in over 24 countries. And now there is an Internet site called McSpotlight – an on-line library and campaigning tool – which makes available across the globe 2,000 separate files containing everything that McDonald's don't want the public to know: http://www.mcspotlight.org/. McSpotlight was accessed over a million times in its first month.
Shell Given Controversial Award Nomination
The World Wildlife Fund Canada (WWF) nominated Shell Canada Limited for the B.C. Ministry of the Environment Environmental Awards, in spite of Shell's activities in Nigeria.
Each year, the British Columbia Ministry of the Environment sponsors the Minister's Environmental Awards. For this year's award, the World Wildlife Fund Canada (WWF) nominated Shell Canada Limited, Chevron Canada Resources, Petro-Canada and Mobil Oil Canada in recognition of recent donation of 320,000 acres of mineral exploration rights off the northwestern coast of British Columbia to the Nature Conservancy of Canada.
WWF views the contribution of the four oil companies as being very significant, as it is a critical step towards the establishment of the Gwaii Haanas National Marine Conservation Area Reserve which will constitute the marine component of Gwaii Haanas National Park. WWF is now pressing the federal government to take the necessary steps to have the marine reserve formally designated. The contribution of mineral permits is the largest in Canadian history to advance marine conservation. According to a WWF media release, the organization sees the oil company's action as an international example of how energy companies, governments, conservation groups and aboriginal people can work together for the environment.
After news of the nomination surfaced, there was criticism in environmental circles about the wisdom of honouring Shell, given its record of torturing Ogoni environmental activists in Nigeria, the death of activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, and the fact that an international boycott of Shell is underway. Saro-Wiwa, winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize for Africa and nominee for a Nobel Peace Prize, was executed along with eight other Ogoni activists by the military dictatorship in Nigeria in November of 1995. They died for leading a peaceful protest against Shell Nigeria's destruction of Ogoni land.
The protesters were reacting to Shell's drilling and exploring for oil in Ogoni territory.
A recent report entitled Ogoni, The Struggle Continues by the World Council of Churches in Geneva, Switzerland, documented the massive environmental destruction in the Niger River Delta, which preceded the deadly protests. Shell spilled 56 million gallons of oil onto farmlands and into community water supplies.
According to the report, key witnesses for the prosecution at Saro-Wiwa have signed sworn affidavits saying they were bribed by Shell to testify against the activist and writer. Since late 1995, the Nigerian dictatorship has been holding 19 more Ogoni environmental activists, charged with the same crime for the other nine were executed.
Shell Canada has refused to condemn or accept responsibility for these acts despite the fact that a majority of its stock is owned by Shell UK and Royal Dutch Shell – the international parent company which made the decision to continue oil exploration in Nigeria despite human rights abuses of the Nigeria military dictatorship. The Dutch parent is the tenth largest corporation in the world, and number one in profitability. Shell operates in 100 countries, but 40 percent of all its oil spills have occurred in Nigeria, where it controls at least 60 percent of all the oil reserves.
Some activists are concerned that Shell will use the WWF nomination to rebuild its shattered reputation while the Ogoni are being tortured and displaced from their land for oil exploration.
WWF defended the nomination by stating that it is not an overall endorsement of Shell's environmental practices or other activities elsewhere in Canada or around the world. At the time of the death of Ken Saro-Wiwa and his colleagues in Nigeria, WWF International did publicly express its concern over the situation in the Niger Delta.
In a media release issued in response to pressure from environmentalists, it stated, “WWF believes strongly in encouraging bona fide conservation initiatives, regardless of the sector from which they originate...we don't summarily rule out working with whole sectors by subscribing to 'anti' ideologies (e.g. anti-logging, anti-hunting, anti-corporate or anti-labour). We support or work with anyone who shares our conservation mission.
“WWF holds strongly to its right to act independently in the best interests of conservation. In return, we do not try to tell other groups whom they should support or criticize. In some cases, our approach may mean commending corporations for specific conservation contributions in one part of the world and, where warranted, criticizing those same companies for activities in another part of the world. We do not see this as a contradiction in terms or as being hypocritical; we see it as a practical effort to reform corporate behaviour in the best interests of the environment and people.”
Election Kills Laws
A number of pieces of environmental legislation died when the writ for the recent Canadian federal election was dropped. Environmental experts claim that this may be more positive than negative, since at least two pieces of proposed legislation were less than desirable, probably due to pressure from corporations and industry groups.
Among the dead bills was one that would have changed the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA). In 1994, the all-party Parliamentary Committee on Sustainable Development published It’s About Our Health!, a report identifying a number of toxic discharges that were harmful to human health. It recommended the virtual elimination of dioxin from the environment. But pressure from industry resulted in a substantial watering down of the legislation that was sent to Parliament but not passed before the election call. The proposed changes would have allowed toxic industries to chart their own compliance plans. In fact, the federal government has been negotiating memorandums of understanding with some toxic industries, notably the PVC industry, which will allow them to virtually avoid regulation.
It is to be hoped that the newly formed government will revisit the It’s About Our Health! report and implement its full recommendations, thereby putting some teeth into any new legislation that it tables to amend CEPA.
Another piece of legislation that didn’t survive the election call was an Endangered Species Act. Canada was the first signatory of an International Biodiversity Convention in 1992. Under that, Canada promised to enact endangered species legislation. In the final months before the election call, the government proposed an Act that would only protect species at risk on federal lands and would provide no habitat protection. The proposed legislation was opposed by many environmental groups, who referred to it as a “permitting system for extinction”.
Corporatism Threatens Forests
How the Ontario, Canada's Lands for Life scheme promises a wholesale transfer of the province's forests to private industry.
Helen ForseyHow does corporatism threaten the natural environment and human communities? The current Ontario government provides some hideous examples. One of its latest schemes, “Lands for Life”, promises a wholesale transfer of the province's forests to private industry, with what are sure to be disastrous environmental consequences.
They're calling it “land use planning”, but the real purpose is to entrench the timber industry's tenure of all public land in central and northern Ontario. This Crown Land is currently managed by the Ministry of Natural Resources, and most of it is under claim by First Nations.
Under the Lands for Life program over the next two years, three provincially-appointed regional Round Tables will choose a few areas for protection or tourism, then hand all the remaining forests over to the industry. This will put the corporations in charge of every single aspect of forest use in Ontario, from logging to camping to moose hunting.
The scheme is based on a confidential government report, nicknamed the “6-Pack Report”, which recommends giving forest companies guaranteed volumes of timber as well as land areas. This system would hamper environmentally-based restrictions on logging practices, and prevent future “withdrawals” for protected areas or land claim settlements. Since every hectare of forest in the province is already allocated to some timber company, any Native or environmentalist gain is seen as a loss to industry. These uphill battles would become well-nigh impossible under the proposed changes.
Recent global trends and provincial policies have set the stage for the Lands for Life proposals. Corporate concentration is the name of the game; by the year 2000, a mere five companies will control the forests of the entire province. In Ontario, as elsewhere, super-mechanization continues to devastate the forests and throw people out of work. Meanwhile, deregulation and government cutbacks make it impossible to properly monitor the results of changes in policy or practice, or to enforce whatever standards are left.
Most frighteningly, the Lands for Life recommendations, once in place, will be practically irreversible. If the changes in tenure are solidified, future provincial governments would be legally obliged to compensate the companies for any land “withdrawn” for protection or allocated to First Nations. This kind of entrenchment is now becoming a standard strategy of corporate globalism. The Pearson Airport fiasco and the shut-down of the Kemano dam project in B.C. – over which Alcan is now suing the provincial government – show how difficult it is politically and legally to reverse pro-corporate measures.
Concerned citizens in Ontario and elsewhere are seeking ways to oppose these destructive policies. Environmental groups are forming alliances with the labour movement to expose the flaws in the “jobs versus environment” arguments of government and industry. Many environmentalists support the report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, which recommends long-overdue limitations on mining and forestry operations on Native lands. In British Columbia, the Sierra Legal Defence Fund is using NAFTA's Commission on Environmental Cooperation to challenge Canada's low stumpage fees, which effectively subsidize destructive forest practices.
Public support can help prevent the worst of the outcomes threatened by Ontario's Lands for Life and other such plans.
Contact:
Wildlands League
308-401 Richmond St. W.
Toronto ON M5V 3A8
Phone (416) 971-9453
Email: wildland@web.netHelen Forsey is a writer and activist in the feminist, environmental and Native solidarity movements. An agriculture graduate who formerly worked in international “development”, she now lives communally in the Ottawa Valley.
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