Buy Our Tomatoes or Starve
US - The corporate forces that have screwed up our present have big plans for our future. Last October, the International Industrial Conference heard from 250 business leaders from around the world. Monsanto CEO Robert Shapiro did a good job of describing the problem: "One billion people today suffer from chronic malnutrition. There is no more land for agriculture. We've already lost 15 to 20 percent of our topsoil ... Fresh water is in limited supply." Shapiro's solution? New genetically engineered crops created - and controlled - by Monsanto.

The Power Behind the Pet Vets
US - The 134-year-old American Veterinary Medicine Association (AVMA) has become a ward of the powerful pet food industry. At its 1997 convention, AVMA President Mary Beth Leininger accepted "an unprecedented level of corporate support for our profession and our Association" from Bayer Animal Health and Hill's Pet Nutrition. Hill's awarded the AVMA a three-year, $1 million grant and Bayer announced "a five-year financial commitment to the AVMA." An AVMA news release further notes that Hill's also helps out by sponsoring presentations at national veterinary meetings and by "furnishing [pet food] diets to the [country's] 31 veterinary colleges and 68 technology schools."

World Trade Court's Sorry Record
SWITZERLAND - In the first three cases brought before the World Trade Organization, the WTO's panel of three all-powerful judges deliberated in secret and upheld the complaints of corporations. "As feared, the WTO has ruled in favor of corporate interests, striking down national and subnational legislation protecting the environment and public health," The Ecologist reports. In January 1996, the WTO ruled the US Clean Air Act violated Venezuela and Brazil's right to sell dirty gasoline in the US. [Other two rulings: July/August 1997]

Nuclear Reactionaries
CHINA - US negotiators, meeting in Beijing, swept aside concerns about China's role in human rights violations and nuclear proliferation last October to accommodate the US nuclear lobby, which wants access to a $50 billion market supplying China with nuclear reactors. Westinghouse Electric, Asea Brown Boveri, Bechtel Power, and Stone & Webster Engineering conducted an expensive public relations campaign that included personally lobbying members of the US National Security Council and the principal US negotiator in Beijing. The nuclear lobby cited a Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) study that endorsed nuclear sales to China. The Washington Post revealed that the CSIS report was financed by the Nuclear Energy Institute, a pro-nuclear trade organization, and that eight of the 12 authors of the report "represented reactor designers, nuclear engineering firms and the [NEI]."

Something's Phony About This
JAPAN - Nippon Telegraph & Telephone complains that it is losing money on Japan's nationwide system of coin-operated public payphones. In 1996, payphone revenues were down ¥42.8 billion yen ($371 million). Look Japan identified the cause as "the boom in cellular communications." Meanwhile in the US, the Federal Communications Commission deregulated payphones nationwide in October. The cost for activating 2.1 million public phones has since risen from 20 or 25 cents to 35 cents - a respective 40 or 75 percent hike. Communications activists complain that increasing the costs of public phones places a hardship on the poor and poses a danger to public safety as well. The move to service a wealthy minority of cellular phone users is creating a growing communications gap between the rich and the poor.

Britain Cancels Third World Debts
UK - Last September, International Development Secretary Clare Short announced that Britain plans to void $211.5 million in Commonwealth country debts on the condition that the countries involved use the savings to help relieve poverty. Short stated her hope that Britain's initiative would persuade other donor nations to undertake similar debt-relief measures.

US: The World's Biggest Miser
US - A report by InterAction, a coalition of 158 US NGOs, reveals that the industrialized nations have failed to keep a pledge made at the 1992 Earth Summit to commit 0.7 percent of their wealth to relieving world poverty. In the years since Rio, foreign aid has fallen 17 percent, while 4.3 billion people now try to survive on less than $2 a day. Only Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands have kept their pledge. Contributions from the world's 21 wealthiest countries fell $3.8 billion in 1996, to a mere 0.25 percent - the lowest percentage on record. The US stood out as the world's biggest miser. While Denmark's per capita contribution to relieving world poverty stands at $338, the US per capita donation is a mere $34.

Koreans and US to Cut Miskito Coast
NICARAGUA - Last year, President Arnoldo Aleman [Casa de la Presidencía, Managua, Nicaragua, fax: 011-505-228-7911] granted a Korean multinational and five US timber firms concessions to log 150,000 acres of Nicaragua's North Atlantic Autonomous Region. The NAAR boasts the hemisphere's largest rainforest north of the Amazon and is home to the Sumu, Rama and Miskito people. Nicaragua's Supreme Court has ruled that the sale violates a 1987 law that granted autonomy to the region's indigenous people. According to the Native Forest Network [POB 57, Burlington, VT 05402, (802) 863-0571], Aleman has ignored the court ruling and dispatched military forces to tear down the indigenous flags flying over Puerto Cabezas and begin the forced eviction of people from their communal lands.

Politician Keeps Election Promise!
FRANCE - Defying pressure from French business leaders, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin kept his promise to cut the French work week from 39 hours to 35 hours by January 1, 2000. The move will give millions of workers added leisure time with no loss in pay while creating new employment for the 12.5 percent of the population that is currently without work. On October 10, Jospin outlined his plan to have employers cut employee hours 10 percent while increasing the number of employees by 6 percent. Jospin's action is also a slap at the advocates of the Global Economy. "Growth will not suffice to create jobs," Jospin told the press, "so a cut in working time is needed."

Steal a Million, Pay a Pittance
US - A Los Angeles court has sentenced a meat-processing executive to five years in jail for what prosecutors called "the largest act of corporate embezzlement in US history." Yasuyoshi Kato siphoned $62 million into his private bank account and spent the booty on fancy cars and "a pair of $10,000 macaws for his estranged wife." Kato's court-ordered restitution? $500. He can probably afford it.

Fast-Tracks and Big Bucks
US - A study by the Institute for Policy Studies [IPS, 733 15th St. NW, No. 120, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 234-9382] reveals that corporate members of America Leads on Trade (a lobbying group formed last September to push for "fast-track" authorization of trade deals) laid off 13,000 of their own workers following passage of NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement). According to IPS, General Electric, Allied Steel, TRW, Sara Lee and Johnson & Johnson were among the lay-off happy industries promoting the idea that "fast-track" authority would create US jobs. "The level of hypocrisy among these firms is astounding" said IPS's Sara Anderson.

Clinton Questions Free-Trade
BRAZIL - Last October, in his first public admission that the Global Economy was a failure, President Bill Clinton told reporters during a visit to a Brazilian slum that "It is wrong for only a few to reap the benefits of the wonderful changes going on while many remain mired in poverty." Clinton called on the powerful few who have been enriched by global trade to "give a hand" to others. Failure to make good on the "social compact," Clinton warned, threatens to "erode faith in democracy and free markets."

Big Oil Starts Big Banking
US - Last fall, Chevron became the first oil company to set up its own system of ATMs, installing 467 of the $15,000 cash-vending machines in 76 percent of its gas stations in 11 western states. With banks mergers triggering the closure of thousands of branch offices, the number of ATMs has grown to more than 165,000 nationwide - up nearly 20 percent from 1996. But instead of installing the new ATMs in poorly served communities, these new mechanical cash cows are being bolted down in commercial shopping malls, bowling alleys, airports, McDonald's restaurants and Chevron stations. Chevron pockets a $1.50 surcharge on each transaction. Mobil and Conoco are now preparing to go the ATM route.

A Leading Cause of Death: Jobs
US - In a typical year, 6,500 US workers are killed on the job, 13.2 million are injured and another 60,000 succumb to job-related illnesses. According to an article in Archives of Internal Medicine, workplace deaths, dismemberments and disease cost the US economy $171 billion a year, "much larger than those for [AIDS and] ... larger than those for Alzheimer's disease." The body count is actually much higher, notes lead researcher J. Paul Leigh, an economist at California's San Jose State University, since the study used "data from a year of high unemployment" and did not include people older than 65, or members of the military.

US: Still World's Biggest Gun-Runner
US - For the sixth year in a row, the US maintained its lead as the world's major exporter of bombs, tanks and jet fighters, beating out its closest competitors, Britain and Russia. Together, the three countries supply two-thirds of the planet's death-dealing weapons. The Congressional Research Service reports that the US cornered 35.5 percent of the death-and-mayhem market in 1997 - up nearly 23 percent over 1996. US government deals on behalf of US weaponmakers generated $11.8 billion in orders from Egypt, Thailand and a host of other nations.

Native Medicine "Threatens" Free Trade
THAILAND - In 1997, the Thai government drafted a bill encouraging the conservation of indigenous knowledge and genetic resources by protecting traditional healers and indigenous medicinal plants and herbs. The proposed law would recognize nature-based medicines and prevent their exploitation by commercial interests. The US immediately threatened to haul Thailand before the World Trade Organization on charges of violating the agreement on Trade Related Intellectual Property (TRIP). The Working Group on Farmer's Rights, Genetic Resources and Traditional Medicine [witton@wnet.net.th, fax: 011-66-2-952-8312] has accused the US of political interference and has lodged a complaint with the intergovernmental Commission on Genetic Resources.

Old Miss's Turmeric Patent Revoked
INDIA - India's Council of Scientific and Industrial Research has successfully challenged the University of Mississippi's attempt to patent turmeric and claim monopoly rights to sell the spice as a medicine for treating wounds. Future challenges might not be allowed if India succumbs to World Trade Organization pressure to adopt US-style patent laws. Indian biodiversity activist Vandana Shiva complains that US patent laws "allow biopiracy to be practiced as a rule." Corporations have claimed patents on a number of other traditional Indian plants, including neem, jar amla, dudhi, bagbherenda and Rangoon-ki-bel.

Drug Corruption Hits US
US - The US Custom Service's lead agent in a 1991 drug-smuggling case was indicted last September for allegedly accepting "$4,000 and a pair of running shoes" from an informant in the case. Agent Frank Gervacio headed the investigation of Thanong Siriprechapong, a former member of the Parliament of Thailand, who is accused of bringing more than 45 tons of marijuana into the US. The US Justice Department reportedly covered up Gervacio's misdeed for nine months. The agent now faces two years in prison, and Siriprechapong could go free.

Nike's Shoddy Performance
VIETNAM - Under pressure from human rights critics, Nike hired the public accounting firm Ernst & Young to investigate labor and environmental conditions at its shoe-making plants in Vietnam. Despite finding hazardous and unjust working conditions, Ernst & Young's audit concluded that Nike was in compliance with its own "code of conduct." However, a visit to Nike's Tae Kwang Vina plant by Dara O'Rourke of the Transnational Resource & Action Center [TRAC, (415) 561-6337] found that, six months after the Ernst & Young audit, "workers were [still] working long hours for little pay in unsafe conditions, often without protective equipment and with little or no training about ... potential hazards." O'Rourke interviewed workers who "had never been informed that the chemicals they were using to assemble Nike sneakers were toxic." TRAC's China Brotsky stated: "Our report clearly illustrates that accredited human rights, labor and religious organizations must independently monitor these factories, not accountants on industry payrolls." [For more information, see "Smoke from a Hired Gun," on the Corporate Watch website, www.corpwatch.org.]