Organic Farming
US -- The international underground market in harvested human organs is drawing the attention of watchdog groups. Women in Brazil have had kidneys removed unknowingly during gynecological surgery. The bodies of Turkish earthquake victims were delivered to morgues with organs missing. In China, organs have been removed from the bodies of executed prisoners. Japanese loan sharks have forced defaulters to sell their kidneys. Organs Watch, founded by University of California at Berkeley Anthropology Professor Nancy Scheper-Hughes, vows to keep an eye on the growing global trade in human body parts -- thanks to a $230,000 grant from the Soros Foundation.
Globalization Is Mob-ilization
Vienna -- Organized crime has "jumped on the bandwagon of globalization to create transnational criminal networks," warns UN Deputy Secretary-General Louise Frechette. Addressing the Tenth UN Congress on the Prevention of Crime, Frechette observed that throwing borders open to trade has made it easier "to traffic in women and children for forced labor and prostitution, to smuggle drugs and arms and to escape justice." Thanks to free trade, she added, there are now "new shares of illegal markets to be won." In addition, the growth of the Internet has provided "new opportunities for child pornography and money laundering." Frechette issued an ominous call for the "globalization" of law enforcement.
They Shouldn't Give a Dam
India -- When President Bill Clinton visited India, Ogden Corporation CEO Scott Mackin was invited to tag along. Mackin got right to work and inked a deal to help build the 400MW Maheshwar Dam. Neither Ogden, Inc., nor its Indian partner (a textile firm) has any experience building dams, but the Madhya Pradesh Electricity Board (MPEB) is running out of options. Previous backers in the US and Germany have abandoned the project, and more than 125 organizations in 27 countries are asking Ogden to do the same.
The dam would displace more than 35,000 farmers, fishers and craftspeople, while flooding 61 villages and 1,100 hectares [2,718.2 acres] of rich farmland. If the dam is built, its electricity will cost 4-5 times more than competing power. The MPEB has promised Ogden a 16 percent return on equity for 35 years -- even if the hydroelectric dam performs poorly. Because the MPEB is on the verge of bankruptcy, the International Rivers Network reports, it would have to "cut subsidized connections for the poor and substantially increase tariffs" to pay Ogden's expenses.
Global Water Privateering
The Hague -- As representatives from 115 governments gathered for the Second World Water Forum, Italian newspapers broke the news that politicians in Milan had been offered a bribe of 200 billion lire to approve a water supply project. The Asia Pacific Forum of Environmental Journalists says the scandal illustrates "the fact that the majority of the top ten water multinationals are implicated in underhanded schemes to rig bids and pad profits." As David Boys of the Blue Planet Project noted, "Water privatization and corruption go hand-in-glove." Subsidiaries of a dozen multinationals were caught offering bribes to win contracts for the Lesotho Highlands Water Project. "That money should be spent on developing water infrastructure in the poor townships, not lining the pockets of the water multinationals," declared Lance Veotte of the South African Municipal Workers Union.
Fingerprinting for McSchoolkids
Austria -- With its right-wing government likely to gut spending on social services, Austria's schools are desperately striking deals with the private sector to stay afloat. More than half of Austria's schools have signed advertising and sponsorship contracts with commercial businesses. Ten percent of the budget for Vienna's Polgarstrasse school now comes from corporations. "At break-time," BBC News reports, students "stream past advertisements promoting sports gear and mobile phones on their way to buy fizzy drinks and snacks at sponsored vending machines." School officials also rent out students as "guinea pigs for new ideas." In one example cited by the BBC, students were required to test "a machine [that] matches their fingerprints to their dinner order. After these trials, the manufacturer hopes to sell the device to factories and security firms."
Yank the Bank
US -- A global boycott of World Bank bonds has been launched by activists in 11 countries. The World Bank raises 80 percent of its funds through bonds sold to investors in private capital markets. "When investors realize that their money is being used to damage the environment, destroy indigenous communities and trample human rights, they will move their investments," says Neil Tangri of US-based Essential Action. "The World Bank is subjugating our economic and social independence," chorused Dr. Vineeta Gupta, a doctor from India. "It's time we shut the Bank down. This boycott is a great start."
In the last 50 years, more than 10 million people have been forced off their lands by Bank-funded dams. Trillium Assets Management of Boston and Progressive Assets Management of New York have vowed not to buy the bank's bonds, and churches, universities, labor unions and municipalities are being asked to do the same. "We need to break the power of the World Bank over developing countries, as the divestment movement helped break the power of the Apartheid regime over South Africa," declared Dennis Brutus, a debt-relief campaigner and former political prisoner in South Africa. [World Bank Boycott, 137 San Fidel Rd., NW, Albuquerque, NM 87107, (505) 432-1164, www.worldbankboycott.org.]
Philly Kicks Coke Silly
US -- Opponents of rampant commercialization scored an important victory in March when Philadelphia's public school system voted not to sign an exclusive contract with the Coca Cola company. The ten-year contract would have offered the cash-strapped school district $43 million, one of the largest such deals offered to date. The contract would have installed Coke vending machines in 170 elementary schools, doubling the number of machines to more than 1,300.
When parents made it clear that they did not want Philadelphia's 212,000 school kids to experience "the nutritional content of Coca-Cola," school officials offered to limit drinks (in elementary schools) to the company's non-soda drinks -- Minute Maid, Frutopia and Dasani. This was not good enough for Pat Albright, the parent of a third-grader, who objected that the contract "threatens what remains of the separation between public education and corporate interests." The Center for Commercial-Free Public Education's "School Watch Team" [1714 Franklin St., Suite 100-306, Oakland, CA 94612, (510) 268-1100, unplug@igc.org, www.commercialfree.org] believes that this "may signify a turning point in the battle against exclusive cola contracts."
If You Farm, You Better Farm Big
US -- In 1970, a loaf of bread sold for 27 cents and the farmer who grew the wheat got three of those pennies (about 11 percent). Today, a cheap loaf of bread that costs 86 cents brings a farmer less than four cents profit (less than four percent). America's struggling small farmers are not being helped by the US Department of Agriculture, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense [651 Pennsylvania Avenue, SE, Washington, DC 20003, (202) 546-8500, www.Taxpayer.net]. In February, Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman raised the $150,000 Congressional cap on subsidies to large farms. A review of the $23 billion spent during the first three years of the Freedom to Farm Act shows that the law "favors large, corporate farms and agribusiness partnerships and is biased against small and medium-sized producers." A study by the Environmental Working Group [www.ewg.org] found that between 1996 and 1998, the top ten percent of farmers and landowners walked off with nearly $14 billion in subsidies (averaging nearly $100,000 each) while the bottom 90 percent had to scrape by on about $6,900. In Mississippi, the largest ten percent of the state's farmers monopolized 83 percent of the subsidies (averaging $217,000). Alabama, Tennessee and South Carolina showed similar inequities.
Make the Climate Polluters Pay
Switzerland -- The World Wildlife Foundation (WWF) has challenged Western industrialized countries to "stand by the internationally recognized principle of 'polluter pays' and set up a compensation fund for developing counties that are victims of natural disasters linked to climate change." The call came a week after a disastrous storm flooded Mozambique and days after the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu disappeared beneath a storm surge. "Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people are already suffering the effects" of climate change, said WWF's Jennifer Morgan. "Governments have to accept that it they are not prepared to take domestic measures to reduce their CO2 emissions, they will have to pay the price."
The US, the world's biggest CO2 polluter, has yet to ratify the Kyoto Climate Protocol and has failed to dramatically reduce CO2 emissions. "If the US tobacco industry can be held responsible for smoking-related deaths and illnesses and ordered to pay hefty fines," Morgan argues, "wealthy countries must be held responsible for the contribution their carbon pollution is almost certainly making to recent droughts and floods." [WWF, 1250 24th Street, NW, Washington, DC, 20037 (202) 778-9514, www.wwf.org.]
Banking on the Earth
Amsterdam -- ABN-AMRO, The Netherlands' largest bank, has launched a Sustainable World Fund "to integrate environmental and social considerations with traditional financial ones." The bank's decision comes in response to a surprising poll at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that identified environment collapse as a major concern of world leaders. "Eco-efficiency is rarely, if ever, addressed by traditional securities analysis," ABN-AMRO stated, but "over the past five years, it has emerged as an increasingly powerful leading indicator for superior management quality and strategic foresight -- the key determinants of a company's potential for long-term financial out-performance." The bank's EcoValue '21 database analyzes environmental performance of more than 850 companies to provide clients with "a competitive edge." According to Innovest, an investment research firm working on the project, the EcoValue '21 platform is already being used by a number of Fortune 500 companies.
Coke, McD's Soil Green Olympics
Australia -- In 1992, Australia won the bid to host the Summer 2000 Olympics by promising to the first environmentally benign "Green Games." Greenpeace charges that two main Olympic sponsors -- McDonald's and Coca Cola -- plan to violate the green guidelines by using hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) refrigerants at the site. "HCFs are one of the most potent global warming gases ever invented," Greenpeace charges. Over a span of 20 years, "one ton of HFC causes 3,300 times more climate change destruction that one ton of carbon dioxide." The companies chose to ignore readily available "green" refrigeration alternatives.
Privatization Equals Piratization
Bolivia -- The promise of privatization has gone bankrupt in Bolivia. The International Monetary Fund told Bolivians that handing public assets -- telephone, water, roads, electricity -- over to private profiteers would lower prices and improve efficiency. Instead, prices have soared and service has nose-dived as corporate owners unleashed massive firings in order to increase their returns. After Bolivia's two oil refineries were privatized in October 1999, gas prices jumped 15 percent, triggering transportation strikes. Seventy percent of the country's 8 million people live in poverty and the unemployment rate is believed to be much higher than the official estimate of 26 percent.
The only bright spot is in Cochabamba, where a foreign water privatization scheme was chased out of the country by a popular revolt after water prices soared 400 percent (see "Bolivia's Water War Victory" in this issue). "This victory over privatization is the first of its kind in Latin America," La Paz economist Jorge Viana exulted. "After 15 years of neo-liberalism, Bolivians are rising up to end economic policies that benefit the few at the expense of the majority."
Not a Safeway to Buy Food
US -- A coalition of environmental, agricultural, consumer and religious groups failed to convince Safeway, Inc. to remove genetically modified (GM) products from its grocery store shelves. "There is no consumer demand for these products, and a growing consumer backlash against them," declared As You Sow Foundation spokesperson Michael Passoff. Safeway officials countered that safeguards were "unnecessary," and a resolution to ban GM ingredients was rejected by 97 percent of Safeway's shareholders. Reuters noted that the defeat "follows several high-profile victories for the US anti-frankenfood movement, with major companies such as McDonalds, Gerber and Heinz vowing to remove genetically-altered ingredients from selected products."
Businessman Jailed for 17 Years
US -- In April, a federal judge sentenced Idaho mine operator Allan Elias to serve 17 years in prison for ordering unprotected workers dressed in jeans and T-shirts to clean out a 25,000-gallon cyanide storage tank. Elias also was ordered to pay $6 million to the family of a worker who suffered permanent brain damage from the exposure. According to CNN, "occupational safety inspectors had repeatedly warned Elias about the dangers of cyanide [and advised] giving workers protective gear."
Huelga Del Monte
Guatemala -- The Campaign for Labor Rights [clr@igc.org] has called for a boycott against Del Monte Corp. after the banana-processing giant illegally fired 900 of its workers in Guatemala. When workers attempted to challenge the firings, they were threatened with death and driven from their homes.
Gap Slaps Leather
India -- In response to an international campaign by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), Gap Inc. pledged to stop purchasing leather from Indian cows. It is illegal to kill cows in India, but an undercover video narrated by Pamela Anderson Lee showed Indian cows being smuggled across state borders to their death. Environment News Service reports that the cows and calves were "marched for days to slaughter their eyes smeared with chili peppers and their tails broken in an effort to keep them moving." Singer Chrissie Hynde brought added pressure on the company when she was arrested in a protest at Gap's flagship store in New York. Leather goods from India and China will be banned from Gap stores and its subsidiaries Old Navy and Banana Republic. Companies still using leather from India and China include Florsheim Shoes, Nordstroms, Hush Puppies.
