Experts speak on G-7 summit
The Institute for Public Accuracy spoke with anti-globalization activists, in attendance at this summer's G-7 Summit in Köln, Germany, about global trade and global debt. Njoki Njoroge Njehu, Director of the 50 Years Is Enough Network: "So far, the G-7 are still maintaining adherence to IMF structural adjustment programs as qualifying criteria for countries to receive minimal levels of debt relief. We want food, medicine, shelter, schools that work, and clean water. The international Jubilee 2000 movement and people in impoverished countries have called for debt cancellation by the year 2000. The debts must be canceled."

Maria Luisa Mendonça, Director of the Brazil Program for Global Exchange: "Brazil sends more money to the World Bank than it receives. The IMF and World Bank are busy encouraging the government of Brazil to protect foreign investors and speculators while unemployment is 20 percent and rising; 400,000 small-scale farmers lost their land in the last four years; and salaries have remained stagnant for the past five years. The G-7 meeting holds no promise of positive change for Brazil's poor and working-class majority."

Ellen Frank, associate professor of economics at Emmanuel College in Boston: "The economic policies that G-7 countries have - through the IMF - forced on the developing countries do benefit some groups in the United States. Multinational corporations are big winners since they reap huge profits from the resulting lower prices of raw materials, even as they charge the same prices for finished products. But small businesses and most workers are hurt by the global instability: export markets have collapsed for many goods, and wages have fallen worldwide."

William Darity Jr., professor of economics at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill: "Every one of the G-7 countries has a problem of inter-group, race and/or ethnically based employment, income, and social status disparities. Illustrating the continuation of the 'last hired, first fired' phenomenon for African Americans, it took years of sustained economic growth in this country to make inroads on black youth unemployment. Similarly, Germany's Turkish and other immigrant workers, France and the UK's African, Middle Eastern and South Asian workers, Japan's Korean workers and Canada's non-white workers are in the same position as minority workers in the United States. But the G-7 leaders focus exclusively on commercial policies and they refuse to challenge the economic interests of the groups who benefit most from those policies." For more information, contact: Institute for Public Accuracy, 915 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045; phone: (202) 347-0020; web: <http://www.accuracy.org>

Harvest of shame
In November, Delta & Pine Paraguay dumped 30,000 sacks of expired cottonseed - 660 tons - in Rincón-i-Ybycuí, a rural community 75 miles from the capital Asunción. The seeds were treated with high concentrations of toxic pesticides - including the organophosphates acephate and chlorpyrifos - dumped over four acres of land, and covered with a thin layer of soil. The disposal site is on private land in the center of a rural population of three thousand, 200 yards from an elementary school. Health problems were immediately reported. Vertigo, nausea, headaches, neurological disorders, memory loss, insomnia and skin rashes appeared immediately, and worsened as the first rains brought with them a malevolent odor that hung over the area. Toxic sludge oozed from local water wells.

Ironically, the poison's first victim, Ruiz Aranda, had been active in the Commission for the Defense of the Environment and Human Rights formed by the local community to draw attention to the dumping and demand government action. His death certificate states that he was treated by the attending physician for "acute poisoning due to pollution caused by toxins of the Delta & Pine Land seed deposited on the property of Julio Chávez..." Thirty years old at the time of his death, Mr. Ruiz left behind five children. Delta & Pine Land Co. is in the process of merging with the agro-chemical, seed, and biotechnology giant Monsanto. Delta & Pine Land jointly holds the patent rights, and the exclusive licensing rights, to the notorious "Terminator" technology.

Burma trade saved
A US appeals court says a Massachusetts law barring state authorities from doing business with companies that trade with Burma is unconstitutional. The law was passed in 1996 in an effort to tighten sanctions against the military government in Burma for human rights abuses. The law has affected high-profile companies throughout the world, including Eriksson, Siemens, Apple Computer, and Unilever.

More than 20 American states and local governments - including New York City and San Francisco - have passed laws attempting to punish companies for dealing with oppressive governments.

Green and green
Fujitsu Ltd says it had a net gain of as much as four billion yen (33 million dollars) in economic benefits in 1998, as a result of "environmentally friendly expenditures."' Fujitsu included the activities of its 1,338 affiliates, and describes "benefits" as contributions to environmental protection activities in support of production, energy conservation resulting from reduced use of electricity, oil and gas, as well as decreased paper use. Benefits also include proceeds from the sale of used products and reuse of material. Jumping on the bandwagon, Sony announced recently that it is setting up guidelines to calculate what it is spending to protect the environment, and what it has gained as a result of such efforts, if any.

Infantry
A new international coalition is calling on governments to ban the use of children as soldiers. According to the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, more than 300,000 children under 18 years old are fighting in armed conflicts around the world. Hundreds of thousands more children are members of armed forces who could be sent into combat at any moment. Although most recruits are over 15 years of age, significant recruitment starts at 10 years, and even younger children have been drafted. Current international standards allow children as young as 15 to be recruited into armed forces and participate in hostilities. Efforts through a UN working group to raise the age to 18 have been blocked by the United States and a handful of other countries.

The United States, which currently accepts 17-year old volunteers into its armed forces, has vigorously opposed an 18-year minimum, despite the fact that 17-year olds make up less than one-half of one percent of its active forces.

Information on the numbers of child soldiers in the world, including recruitment ages in governmental armed forces, is also being published on the Internet by Swedish Save the Children <http://www.rb.se>, which holds the world's most comprehensive database on the subject.

US arms sales set record, again
A recent report released by the Washington research center Demilitarization for Democracy says that 1997 was a record year for the US export of arms and military training to dictatorships. US military exports totaled $8.3 billion that year to 52 countries in which the State Department itself says "citizens are not allowed to choose their government democratically." New records were also set "for overall US arms exports, at $21.3 billion, and exports to developing nations, at $15.6 billion."

The no-Gap generation
More than 100 high school student protesters from 15 New York and New Jersey schools converged on New York's Herald Square Gap store in June for an afternoon of chanting "No more sweatshops!" At the rally, a delegation of students went into the store to deliver a letter to the store manager demanding that the Gap disclose the locations of all of its factories, and clean up its sweatshops in the US territory of Saipan.

The Gap has been cited for paying poverty wages and union busting in El Salvador, Bangladesh, and other places. Now the European Clean Clothes Campaign is taking the Gap to task for paying Russian workers only 11 cents an hour - just about the lowest wage in the world. For further information, visit <http://www.egroups.com/group/stop-sweatshops>.