Privatizing FEMA?
US – The Federal Emergency Management Agency understands that climate change is real: It has to pay the burgeoning bills for responding to floods, hurricanes and fires. Recently, FEMA took the air with TV ads warning people to protect themselves from the ravages of global warming. And what was FEMA’s advice? Call an insurance company and buy some “protection.” (Coincidentally, the insurance industry is running TV scare- ads focused on climate change and extreme weather events.)

McD’s Unleashes Revolutionary Fervor
TURKEY – McDonald’s probably wishes it had never tried opening a branch on the Middle East Technical University (METU) campus in Ankara. The student Party for Socialist Power ran off 5,000 copies of a pamphlet attacking McD’s as “a symbol of imperialist culture” with a record of exploiting both workers and natural resources. The pamphlet triggered a university-wide debate. Eleven student clubs and a majority of METU’s professors joined in the criticism, and an anti-McDonald’s petition gathered 4,000 signatures in the first week. The lead singer for Bulutsuzluk Özlemi, a popular rock band, backed the students and declared that he would not patronize McDonald’s “even if they gave away free hamburgers.” To the dismay of METU’s pro-McDonald’s administration, the school’s annual Revolution Festival was transformed into a “Down with McDonald’s Festival.” Ten thousand students rushed the METU stadium, pushing past guards and tearing doors from their hinges on their annual struggle to reach the stadium field and spell out the word “Revolution” in candles. This year, the candles bore an additional message: “Mc, GET OUT.”

Don’t SLAPP MOSES
US – In a major First Amendment victory, the Orwellian-named waste- handler American Ecology Corp and two subsidiaries – American Ecology Environmental Services Corp and US Ecology – dropped a two-year-old SLAPP suit against a small Texas citizens group called Mothers Organized to Stop Environmental Sins (MOSES). Powerful corporations use SLAPP (Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation) suits to silence critics through costly and debilitating legal harassment. American Ecology sued Glazer and her 77-year-old mother for “defamation” and “business disparagement.” MOSES had criticized the hazardous waste company’s facility near Winona, Texas. Celebrating the victory, Ralph Nader noted the need “for legislation to protect citizens, especially those of more modest means, from these frivolous SLAPP suits that put a chill on our First Amendment rights.” The Winona plant is now closed and the Glazers are bruised but unbowed. “There was and will be no silencing of these lambs,” Glazer declared. “I believe that the first and great commandment is: ‘Don’t let them scare you!’”

The Ambassador from Big Oil
BANGLADESH – Big Oil has a friend in UN Ambassador Bill Richardson who confidentially advised Bangladesh officials that: “I’m troubled by reports that the future of the joint venture between Occidental Petroleum and Unocal to develop [oil and gas fields in Bangladesh]… is in jeopardy.” Richardson instructed Bangladesh to “move swiftly to grant the extension… so they can get on with their important work. Nothing would please me more than to inform President Clinton that the US companies were awarded the blocks they are seeking.” When Richardson’s comments were published in Janakantha, the leading Dhaka daily, one Bangladeshi official called the intervention “brazen” but added, “We don’t think we can do much about it.”

A Plot of Gold
US – Yarnell, Arizona was the perfect retirement community – until Bema Gold, a Canadian mining company, announced plans to tear down Yarnell Mountain in search of gold and leave behind a 350-foot-deep pit laced with 7 million pounds of cyanide. In the process, 11 millions tons of acidic rock filled with heavy metals would be displaced by blasting – 63,000 tons a week, 24 hours a day. Bema Gold also plans to close the only highway out of town twice each week, leaving the elderly population cut off from family and health care. Yarnell is reported to by a flyway for 200 species of birds, including goshawks and southwestern willow flycatchers.

Pollution and Repression: Same Oil Story:
CHAD – A coalition of 86 activist groups from 28 countries have asked the World Bank to reconsider a $115 million loan to fund an oil project in Chad, pointing to human rights violations in Chad and inadequate environmental planning by Exxon. Exxon, Shell and France’s ELF have invested $3.5 billion in hopes of sucking 900 million barrels of oil from fields in southern Chad. A 1,050-km (652-mile) pipeline would carry the crude oil through Cameroon to the Atlantic for shipment to refineries in Europe. In March, 100 unarmed civilians were massacred by security forces in Chad’s oil belt. Louis Djomo of the African Forest Action Network expressed concern about water pollution since “the pipeline will cross several of our largest rivers” and noted that watersheds, protected forest areas and biodiversity are severely threatened by the planned oil pipeline. Human rights observers fear an oil bonanza would lead to an increase in repression in the south. Amnesty International’s Irene Mandeau has warned that “the Doba Basin will become the next Ogoniland,” a reference to the blood-and-oil stained farmlands of Nigeria.

Women are from Venus, Seeds are from Mars
US – Earlier this year, Seeds of Change, an idealistic company formed in the 1980s to “preserve and spread a diversity of organic seeds through the gritty, caring hands of backyard gardeners,” was bought out by M&M-Mars, Inc., the candy company. As Seeds of Change Vice President Steve French explained to the incredulous editors at Food & Water magazine, “I don’t think there are any real differences between Seeds of Change and Mars…. whether it’s a Mars product or it’s a Seeds of Change product, the product benefits are very, very similar if we’re talking about nutrition here.”

Lethal Ethyl Legalized
CANADA – In 1997, Prime Minister Jean Chretien was praised for backing a bill that banned fuels containing the toxic octane-boosting chemical methyl- cyclopentadienyl manganese tricarbonyl (MMT). Canadian environmentalists and nationalists were understandably apoplectic on July 20, when Ottawa overturned the year-old ban and agreed to pay MMT’s US manufacturer, Ethyl Corp., $10 million for “legal costs and lost sales.” Ethyl Corp. sued the Canadian government under provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) which views bans on hazardous projects as “barriers” to free trade. Canadian officials denied they had caved in to pressure from the US but Canadians were unconvinced. “It is outrageous that a US-based multinational has more weight with the Chretien government than our Parliament, public health and our own environment,” Sierra Club-Canada Director Elizabeth May told the Boston Globe.

San Francisco’s a MAI-Free Zone!
US – On April 20, the San Francisco city attorney and the board of supervisors unanimously approved a resolution opposing the Multinational Agreement on Investing and any “similar international agreements that could restrict San Francisco’s ability to regulate within its jurisdiction, decide how to spend its procurement funds and support local economic development.” Under MAI rules, the interests of foreign speculators and investors would supersede local laws. Cities that refused to do business with foreign dictatorships could be penalized for mounting a “restraint to free trade.” Organizers with the California Free Trade Campaign celebrated the victory by declaring “This is grassroots democracy at work. Globalization from the bottom up!” In July, Boulder, Colorado also became an MAI-Free Zone. To find out how to pass similar laws in your community, contact CFTC [address?, (415) 775-0822, julietbeck@aol.com].

British Farmers Invade Eastern Bloc
EASTERN EUROPE – “The quality of the environment in our cities is quite poor due to industrial pollution, but the quality of our countryside is high, and wildlife is plentiful,” BirdLife Hungary conservationist Szabolcs Nagy told the Chronicle Foreign Service. That could change as an invasion of speculators from Britain, Holland, Germany, Scandinavia and Australia are snapping up farmland in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic at fire- sale prices ($6.50 to $52 an acre). “If left to the free market, there is a real danger that the wildlife of the region will be damaged,” warns Hannah Bartram, with the UK’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. British farmers pushed the great bustard to extinction in England and has reduced Britain’s once-widespread corncrakes into a small pocket of survivors in Scotland. In 1997, a British farming consortium bought 13,000 acres of unspoiled grassland in Hungary – a critical bird habitat where the threatened great bustard still survives – and immediately plowed up 2,600 acres. “If former Eastern bloc countries are to avoid repeating the mistakes made by Western countries,” Bartram stated, “positive steps need to be taken to promote low-intensity and low-pesticide farming.”

A United State of Arrogance
EUROPE – A report in the Los Angeles Times describes Europeans as “dismayed and dumbfounded” by a US that demands superpower respect but fails to behave like a grown-up nation. “Europeans point out that the more than $1 billion in back dues the US owes to the United Nations has become hostage to a partisan congressional dispute over abortion,” the Times reported. “How can a country that played such a constructive role in building multilateralism become captive to such thinking?” moans Karl Kaiser of the German Foreign Policy Association. Then there was the Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse-gases. The US was one of 150 countries to sign the accord but, to the disbelief of Europeans, the Republican-controlled Congress declared this critical compact “dead on arrival” in the US. “In an alliance, you have to consider the positions of your partner, or you won’t have them when you need them,” wrote Le Monde Diplomatique senior editor Serge Halimi. “The Americans have to realize they can’t decide on their own what is good or bad for the entire international community,” declared Yves Boyer of France’s Center for the Research and Study of Strategies and Technologies. A senior European diplomat recalled for the Times his shock when Senator Alfonse D’Amato (R-NY) angrily told him: “To hell with international law. You’re either with us or against us, and I only hope for your sake you make the right decision.” Today, on many of the most important global issues, the US stands virtually alone. As even former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was forced to admit after the global community refused to side with the US in its latest spate with Iraq: “America, not Saddam Hussein, appears to be the problem.”

Bad Times for Canadian Journalism
CANADA – In May, Southam Inc. acquired two daily newspapers and five community papers on Vancouver Island. Southam’s majority shareholder is Hollinger International. Hollinger is controlled by Conrad Black, a rightwing, free-market Canadian media mogul who lists Napoleon Bonaparte and William Randolph Hearst as role models. Former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a Hollinger boardmember, describes herself as being somewhat to the left of Black politically. Black now controls 61 of Canada’s 105 dailies and 450 papers around the world, including the Chicago Sun-Times. Hollinger’s employees complain of low wages and budget cuts to finance Black’s new Canadian national paper (secret working title, The Times), which is set to debut in October.

Something’s Eskew in Washington
US – Anti-tobacco forces had “a powerful argument: that this is about kids versus Big Tobacco, about saving lives,” adman Carter Eskew told the Washington Post. This didn’t stop the former Democratic campaign strategist from putting together “Project Blue,” a $40 million TV ad campaign that almost single-handedly killed the Senate tobacco bill. As Eskew (who, ironically, is a health and fitness buff) explained, he merely resorted to a “tried and true theme”: Blame Washington. Eskew’s series of 11 attack ads bellowed warnings about “Half a trillion dollars in new taxes… 17 new government bureaucracies” and brazenly declared that anti- tobacco politicians were “voting to destroy our way of life.” As the Post explained, “Since the public health groups… did not have the money for television spots, Eskew had the airwaves to himself.”

Clinton’s “Green-Trade” Brown-Out
US – “Broken Promises,” a Sierra Club study [408 C St., NE, Washington, DC 20002, (202) 547-1141, www.sierracub.org], accuses the Clinton Administration of abandoning its promises for a green trade policy in a “mindless pursuit of economic globalization” that threatens “endangered species, the purity of our water and air, the safety of our food and the health of our forests.” Among the many examples cited: the April 1998 World Trade Organization (WTO) ruling against protecting endangered sea turtles; the acceptance of reduced safety inspections of imported foods under free- trade rules; the lowering of pest controls for imported wood, which exposes domestic forests to exotic pests, and; the State Department’s attack on Maryland for adopting sanctions against Nigerian goods. Refusing to do business with foreign dictators is illegal under the business-über-alles dictates of the WTO agreement.

A Global Green Union
AUSTRALIA – After six months of meetings in Trades Hall, representatives from scores of workers unions and green organizations, announced the formation of a “green union caucus.” The Earthworker campaign [Anthony Amis, Friends of the Earth, 312 Smith St., Collingwood, PO, Box 222, Fitzroy, 3065, Australia] will work as a “bridge between unions and green organizations, scientists, academics and community activists.” Earthworker is assembling an international database with “the capacity to arm any union with up-to-the-minute environmental information on any industry.” While the European Community is creating 1.2 million new solar-industry jobs in Europe, Australia’s pioneering alternative energy businesses have been unable to secure government support. To overcome this, Earthworker plans to establish a Green Levy to raise funds for assistance and start-up capital for green industries.

He Can’t Say That, Can He?
US – Herb Greenberg, economics reporter for the San Francisco Examiner, exploded in an incredible rant in a July 26 column. “The reality in corporate America is that crime pays. If it doesn’t, why would so many companies be routinely restating quarterly figures – after, of course, bonuses based on stock and earnings benchmarks have been doled out?… [W]hy has the Justice Department said so little about securities fraud? It’s one thing to nail… a penny stock firm for illegal misrepresentation and churning customer accounts. It’s another to go after the execs from companies like Waste Management, Sunbeam or Cendant. Reality is that the feds are outspent, outsmarted and, most important, outmanned…. [E]ven when the feds do pounce, so many years can lapse between the start of an investigation and the time the boom finally is lowered that nobody really remembers the crimes.”