Notably the three reports do not address the issue of nepotism within the Afghan government. For more on how the family of the vice-president of Afghanistan profited from the electricity sector project, see this story: "Paying Off the Warlords."
Following up on our August 2009 feature, Jack Currie, the project manager for Black & Veatch's Tarakhil power plant, wrote CorpWatch in November to say that he was not dismissed from the Qudas project in Iraq but "left after my stint was complete due to family matters, pressures of being in a war zone."
He also added that the commissioning and operation of the Qudas plant in Iraq was 'challenged' because it did not have the correct quality fuel available to run the new engines, the new engines were designed to run on naptha, which was not available at the time, and the crude oil used caused significant problems. Black & Veatch was asked to start up engines that were installed by the Iraqis -- and despite having no drawings or manuals managed to get them up and running.
Yaguarete Porá, a Global Compact participant
from Brazil, has won Survival’s Greenwashing Award 2010. Survival is an
international organization that supports tribal peoples worldwide.
Yaguarete has won the award
for "dressing up the wholesale destruction of a huge area of the
Indians' forest as a noble gesture for conservation", says Survival's
director Stephen Corry.
The company owns 78,549 hectares of forest that is part of the Ayoreo-Totobiegosodetribe's ancestral territory. After satellite photos were published around the world revealing that it has destroyed thousands of hectares of the tribe's forest, the company issued a press release announcing it intends to create a "nature reserve"on its land.
But plans submitted by Yaguarete to Paraguay’s Environment Ministry reveal that the amount of "continuous forest" in the reserve will be just 16,784 hectares out of the 78,549 hectares total, and the company in fact plans to convert around two thirds of the land to cattle ranching.
Some
of the Totobiegosode have already been contacted and vehemently
condemned the plans for the 'reserve', pointing out that it violates
their rights under both Paraguayan and international law. The contacted
Totobiegosode have been claiming legal title to this land since 1993,
but most of it is still in private hands.
The Totobiegosode are the only uncontacted Indians in the world having their territory destroyed for beef production.
Survival director, Stephen Corry, said that "This is textbook
'greenwashing': bulldoze the forest and then 'preserve' a bit of it for
PR purposes. The public won't fall for it. Yaguarete should stop
playing games and pull out of the Totobiegosode's territory once and
for all."
The one redeeming feature of the abominable Supreme Court ruling
on corporate electoral expenditures is the majority’s retention of the
rules on disclaimers and disclosure. While opening the floodgates to
unlimited business political spending, the Court at least recognizes
that the public has a right to know when a corporation is responsible
for a particular message and a right to information on a corporation’s
overall spending.
Writing for the majority, Justice Kennedy states: “The First
Amendment protects political speech; and disclosure permits citizens
and shareholders to react to the speech of corporate entities in a
proper way. This transparency enables the electorate to make informed
decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages.”
There’s no question that steps must be taken to mitigate the
Citizens United ruling, whether through changes in corporation law,
shareholder pressure, enhanced public financing of elections, or even a
Constitutional amendment.
Yet while these efforts progress, it is also worth taking advantage
of the Court’s affirmation of the principle of transparency and push
for even greater disclosure than what we have now. Groups such as the
Sunlight Foundation are already moving in this direction.
The effort could begin with pressing the Federal Election Commission
to tighten the existing reporting rules on what are known as “electioneering communications” and to enforce them more diligently. But that’s not enough.
In the wake of Citizens United, we’ve got to demand more information
on the many ways corporations exercise undue influence not only on
elections but also on legislation, policymaking and public discourse in
general. Now that Big Business is a much bigger threat to popular
democracy, we have to subject corporations to intensive full-body scans
to find all their hidden weapons of persuasion. The following are some
of the areas to consider.
Lobbying. In his State of the Union Address,
President Obama said that lobbyists should be required to disclose
every contact with the executive branch or Congress. That’s fine, but
why stop there? Many corporations do their lobbying indirectly, through
trade associations which disclose little about their sources of
funding. How about rules that require those associations to disclose
the fees paid by each of their members and require publicly traded
companies to disclose exactly how much they pay to belong to each of
their various associations?
Front Groups. Corporations also indirectly seek to
influence legislation and public opinion by bankrolling purportedly
independent non-profit advocacy groups. Such front groups—such as those
taking money from fossil-fuel energy producers to deny the reality of
the climate crisis—do not have to publicly disclose their contributor
lists. Why not require publicly traded companies, at least, to reveal
all of their payments to such organizations?
Union-Busting. Encouragement of collective
bargaining is still, in theory, official federal policy. Yet many
companies violate the principle—and the rights of their workers—by
using corporate funds to undermine union organizing campaigns. The
existing rules on the disclosure of expenditures on anti-union
“consultants” are too narrow and not vigorously enforced. That should
change.
These are only a few of the ways that undue political influence and
other forms of anti-social corporate behavior could be addressed
through better disclosure. Yet, as we’ve seen, transparency by itself
does not counteract corporate power unless something is done with the
information.
This came to mind in reading the last portion of the Citizens United
ruling. Not all five Justices in the majority went along with the idea
of maintaining the disclaimer and disclosure rules. Parting with
Kennedy, Roberts, Scalia and Alito, Justice Thomas argued not only that
corporate independent expenditures should be unrestricted, but also
that they should be allowed to take place under a veil of secrecy.
He bases his argument not on legal precedent, but rather on dubious
anecdotal evidence that some supporters of California’s
anti-gay-marriage Proposition 8 were subjected to threats of violence
after their names appeared on public donor lists. Thomas thus suggests
that corporations should be able to make their political expenditures
anonymously to avoid retaliation.
While I am in no way advocating violence, I think activists need to
use the information that becomes public as the result of expanded
disclosure to make corporations pay a price for any attempts to buy our
political system. If we can get them to worry about (non-violent)
retaliation to the point that they limit their expenditures, then we
will have gone a long way toward neutralizing the pernicious effects of
the Citizens United ruling.
After J.P. Morgan was questioned by Congressional investigator
Ferdinand Pecora during a 1930s investigation of the causes of the
Great Crash, the legendary financier complained
that Pecora (photo) had “the manners of a prosecuting attorney who is
trying to convict a horse thief.” Morgan was also embarrassed when a
Ringling Bros. publicity agent placed a diminutive circus performer on
his lap in the middle of the proceedings.
At this week’s public hearing of the Financial Crisis Inquiry
Commission, the nation’s most powerful bankers were, unfortunately,
treated with a lot more deference. Sure, there was one satisfying
exchange between FCIC Chairman Phil Angelides and Goldman Sachs CEO
Lloyd Blankfein in which Angelides likened the firm’s practice of
betting against the very securities it was peddling to clients to that
of selling someone a car with faulty brakes and then buying an
insurance policy on the buyer.
But those moments were rare. For the most part, the bankers came
away unscathed. Most of the ten commissioners treated them not as
suspected criminals whose misdeeds needed to be probed, but rather as
experts whose opinions on the causes of the crisis were being
solicited. This gave the bankers abundant opportunities to pontificate
about industry and regulatory practices while avoiding any
incriminating admissions about their own firm’s behavior.
For example, Commissioner Heather Murren, CEO of the Nevada Cancer
Institute, asked Blankfein whether there should be “more supervision of
the kinds of activities that are undertaken by investment banks?” This
allowed him to babble on about the “sociology…of our regulation before
and after becoming a bank holding company.”
The bankers seemed to have expected tougher questioning. Their
opening statements sought to soften the interrogation by conceding some
general culpability, though it was done in a mostly generic way. Jamie
Dimon of JP Morgan Chase admitted that “new and poorly underwritten
mortgage products helped fuel housing price appreciation, excessive
speculation and core higher credit losses.” John Mack of Morgan Stanley
acknowledged that “there is no doubt that we as an industry made
mistakes.” And Brian Moynihan, the new CEO of Bank of America, noted:
“Over the course of the crisis, we, as an industry, caused a lot of
damage.”
But much too little time was spent by the commissioners exploring
how the giant firms represented on the panel contributed to that
damage. A search of the transcript of the hearing produced by CQ
Transcriptions and posted on the database service Factiva indicates
that the word “predatory” was not used once during the time the four
top bankers were testifying.
The commissioners failed to challenge most of the self-serving
statements made by the bankers to give the impression that, despite
whatever vague transgressions were going on in the industry, their own
firms were squeaky clean. Even Angelides failed to pin them down. When
he asked Blankfein to state “the two most significant instances of
negligent, improper and bad behavior in which your firm engaged and for
which you would apologize” the Goldman CEO admitted only to
contributing to “elements of froth in the market.” Angelides asked
whether that included anything “negligent or improper.” Blankfein again
evaded the question and the Chairman gave up.
The bankers also went unchallenged in making statements that were
incomplete if not outright erroneous. When Blankfein, for example,
claimed that Goldman deals only with institutional investors and
“high-net-worth individuals,” no one pointed out the firm’s ties to Litton Loan Servicing, which has handled large numbers of subprime and often predatory home mortgages.
The Goldman chief also made much of the fact that he and other top
executives of the firm took no bonuses in 2008. That’s true, but he
failed to mention that, according to Goldman’s proxy statement, he alone became more than $25 million richer that year when previously granted stock awards vested.
The bankers were at their slipperiest when it came to the few
questions about the issue of being too big to fail. They would not, of
course, admit to being too big, but in spite of every indication that
the federal government would never allow another Lehman Brothers-type
collapse to occur, they labored mightily to argue that they could
conceivably go under. This notwithstanding the fact that a couple of
them had just thanked U.S. taxpayers for the financial assistance their
firms had received.
I suppose it’s possible that the Commission is saving its best shots
for later stages of the investigation and its final report, but its
handling of the banker hearing deprived the public of a chance to see
some of the prime villains of the current crisis get a much-deserved
tongue-lashing.
Posted by Tonya Hennessey on December 14th, 2009 TakePart.com
Originally posted on TakePart.com, Participant Media's Social Action site.
Even now, after 17 years of working in the international NGO arena, fighting for environmental and human rights, and social justice, I am still taken aback by multinational corporations and the disproportionate power and influence these entities have amassed on the global stage. Don’t get me wrong: commerce and markets are as old as humankind, so it’s not about that.
But who holds multinational corporations accountable when things go wrong--especially overseas--and how? And what happens when one company buys another, one that is holding significant public liability? Doesn’t the liability go along with the purchase?
On the night of December 2-3, 1984, Union Carbide’s pesticide factory in Bhopal, India, leaked a deadly cloud of methyl iso cyanate gas that floated out into the surrounding area. 8,000 people lost their lives in the immediate aftermath of that terrifying night. According to Bhopal Medical Appeal, at least 25,000 people have died in total as a result of the tragedy.
Last week was the 25th Anniversary of this man-made disaster. And Dow Chemical has yet to clean up the contaminated site. The International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal estimates 100,000 more people--now including 2nd generation impacted children--are still suffering. Deformities, disabilities, miscarriages and other illnesses such as chronic respiratory problems are among the maladies documented.
I was hoping to get this blog post up last week, too, so as not to be late in honoring the survivors and the victims on this awful anniversary. Pesky deadlines and the unanticipated prevented me from doing so before I caught my flight on Thursday to Amsterdam, on my way to the climate talks now beginning in Copenhagen, Denmark. “Damn,” I thought, “I’ve missed the anniversary window, and now my blog would be late.”
Then it hit me. Wait a minute…talk about late! Twenty-five years is a long time to wait for Dow and Union Carbide to right this devastating wrong, and it’s even longer when the tragedy keeps on giving. Because site contamination has still not been adequately contained, nor cleaned up, the poisons continue to pollute the groundwater that more than 30,000 people rely on for drinking water.
Again, how is it that a corporation gets away with this? Countries have been invaded over lower numbers of victims (no number is a good number here), and if a non-state actor released a cloud of noxious gas that killed 8,000 pretty much off the bat, wouldn’t that be considered an act of terrorism? Or at the least, egregious criminal wrong-doing? Wouldn’t the clamor be deafening to hold to account those responsible?
Despite all this, Bhopali survivors are not giving up their struggle for justice. Take a look at this inspiring photo gallery of the rally they held last week on December 3rd.
December is also the first anniversary of Children Against Dow-Carbide, an association of about 60 youngsters. As 17-year old Safreen Khan, one of the co-founders of the youth group interviewed in our article, puts it, “The Bhopal struggle is not 25 years old. With our entry, the struggle has just entered its youthful phase, and we'll keep the fight alive for as long as it takes.”
What can you do to TakePart?
Inform yourself about what happened in Bhopal in 1984 through the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal, and about the chemical industry, its impacts, and alternatives.
It is bigger than all but three (only ExxonMobil, BP and Shell are
larger). It is facing the largest potential corporate liability in
history ($27 billion) for causing the world's largest oil spill in the
Ecuadorian rainforest. It is the only major U.S. Corporation still
operating in Burma and, with its partner Total Oil Corp., is the single
largest financial contributor to the Burmese government. It is the
dominant private oil producer in both Angola and Kazakhstan, with
operations in both countries mired in human rights and environmental
abuses. It is the only major oil company to be tried in a U.S. court on
charges of mass human rights abuse, including summary execution and
torture (for its operations in Nigeria).
It is the only oil company to hire one of the Bush Administration's
"torture memo" lawyers (William J. Haynes). It is the largest and most
powerful corporation in California, where it is currently being sued
for conspiring to fix gasoline prices. It has led the fight to keep
California as the only major oil producing state that does not tax oil
when it is pumped from the ground, thereby denying the state an extra
$1.5 billion annually. It is the largest industrial polluter in the Bay
Area and is among the largest single corporate contributors to climate
change on the planet.
Chevron is also the focus of one of the world's most unique and well-organized corporate resistance campaigns.
That campaign got a jolt of energy when Yes Man Andy Bichlbaum came
to San Francisco on Halloween weekend for a special screening of The Yes Men Fix the World.
Global Exchange and I teamed up with Andy (the movie's co-writer,
director, and producer) and a host of the Bay Areas most creative
activists, to lead an entire movie audience out of the theater, into
the streets, and in protest of Chevron.
We spread the word early, far, and wide: The Yes Men are coming! The
Yes Men are coming! They will not only fix the world, they will fix
Chevron too!
Larry Bogad, a Yes Man co-hort and professor of Guerilla Theater,
helped concoct a masterful street theater scenario. A crack team of
protest and street theater organizers was compiled, including David
Solnit of the Mobilization for Climate Justice and Rae Abileah of Code Pink. Rock The Bike signed on and the word kept spreading.
On Sunday, the Roxie Theater in San Francisco's Mission District was
filled beyond capacity with an audience that came ready to protest.
They laughed, clapped, booed, and cheered along with the film. When the
movie ended, Andy answered questions, I talked about Chevron, and Larry
laid out the protest scenario.
Three Chevron executives, protected from the early ravages of climate change in SurvivaBalls,
were dragged up the street by dozens of Chevron minions with nothing
but haz-mat suits to protect them. Those unable to afford any
protection (i.e. The Dead) followed close behind. Next came resistance:
the Chevron street sweepers, actively cleaning up Chevron's messes who
were followed by the protesters, ready to change the story.
We didn't have a permit, but we took a lane of traffic on 16th
street anyway. The police first tried to intervene, then they "joined
in," blocking traffic on our way to Market and Castro.
As we marched and the music blared, people literally came out of
their houses and off of the streets to join in. Passersby eagerly took
postcards detailing Chevron's corporate crimes.
Once we arrived at the gas station, I welcomed everyone and
explained that we were at an independent Chevron (as opposed to
corporate) station, whose owner (whom I'd been speaking with regularly)
had his own list of grievances with his corporate boss. The particular
station was not our target of protest, but rather, the Chevron
Corporation itself.
Larry and Andy than led the entire crowd in a series of Tableaux
Morts. The Chevron executives in their SurvivaBalls drained the
lifeblood from the masses. The people began to rebel, forcing the
SurvivaBalls into the "turtle" position to fend off the attacks.
Ultimately, the separate groups saw their common purpose in resisting
Chevron's abuses. The dead rose, the Chevron minions rebelled, and the
sweepers and protesters joined together. They all chased the Chevron
executives off into the distance, and then danced in the streets,
rejoicing in their shared victory!
The Chevron Program
I direct at Global Exchange seeks to unite Chevron affected communities
across the United States and around the world. By uniting these
communities, we build strength from each other, and become a movement.
By expanding, strengthening, and highlighting this movement, we bring
in more allies and create a powerful advocacy base for real policy
change. Those changes will reign in Chevron, and by extension, the
entire oil industry. And, by raising the voices of those hardest hit by
the true cost of oil and exposing how we all ultimately pay the price,
we help move the world more rapidly away from oil as an energy resource
altogether.
Berkeley City Council last night approved a resolution urging the U.S. Senate to approve S.1700,
the “Energy Security Through Transparency Act” by U.S. Sen. Richard
Lugar, R-Ind., which would urge the Obama Administration to require
that companies disclose payments to foreign governments for oil, gas
and mineral rights. Oakland City Council passed a similar resolution last week.
“Good governance in extractive industries contribute to a better
domestic investment climate for U.S. businesses, increase the
reliability of commodity supplies, promote greater U.S. energy security
and thereby strengthen our national security,” says the summary on Lugar’s Web site.
San Francisco-based Justice in Nigeria Now hails the cities’ actions as a moral victory.
“I was tortured and imprisoned by the Nigerian military for my
peaceful protests against Shell Oil’s destruction of our land,” Suanu
Kingston Bere, a Nigerian activist who spoke at the Berkeley City
Council meeting, said in JINN’s news release. “I believe the City’s
support sends a strong message that communities in the U.S are
concerned about the human rights abuses and environmental damage
associated with oil extraction. I do not want to see my people continue
to go through what I went through.”
Berkeley’s resolution also calls on the State Department to support
third-party peace talks in the Delta to address environmental
destruction and lack of investment in the oil producing region. The
resolution was co-sponsored by Councilmembers Jesse Arreguin, Darryl Moore and Max Anderson and was introduced to the council through the Berkeley Peace and Justice Commission, which worked with JINN to draft it.
JINN says 50 years of oil exploitation in the Niger Delta has
produced over $700 billion in oil revenues shared between the Nigerian
government and oil giants like San Ramon-based Chevron as well as Exxon Mobil and Shell.
More than 40 percent of Nigeria’s oil is exported to the U.S. Yet
despite the corporate oil wealth, local residents’ quality of life has
deteriorated – their drinking polluted, their food fisheries poisoned,
their access to education, health care and even electricity limited.
“Oil companies in Nigeria have had long a relationship with the
notoriously corrupt and historically brutal Nigerian government where
rampant corruption, fraudulent elections and violent suppression of
peaceful protests are the norm in the Delta,” Nigerian writer and
activist Omoyele Sowore said in JINN’s news release. “The proposed ESTT
Act in the Senate is an important step toward holding oil companies
accountable for their collusion with the Nigerian government, which
protects their profits while killing and injuring innocent local people
and destroying the Delta’s fragile environment.”
The best time to announce the worst news is late on Friday. The
federal government and public relations firms have known this for
years. So it was that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS)
scheduled its press conference last Friday for 3 p.m., Pacific Daylight
Time or (even better!) 6 p.m. in the east.
As planned, the news that stocks of Bering Sea pollock – America’s
largest fishery – have declined to a 30-year-low was reported only in
the fishing trade press and the Seattle and Anchorage papers. Mission accomplished.
Every summer, NMFS technicians survey pollock. The amount of fish
allowed to be caught in 2009 was based on the 2008 summer survey. The
2010 quota will be based on the 2009 survey and so on. On one hand,
these surveys are about “environmental protection.” (Alas, we must us
the dreaded quotation marks, because the environment has not
been protected.) On the other hand, the surveys are a
government-subsidized service for the industrial trawler fleet that
pulls the pollock from the sea.
On the other, other hand (we’re playing three hands today), most
people don’t know what a pollock is, but we eat enough of it. (As I
mentioned two paragraphs ago, it’s America’s largest fishery.) All that
imitation crabmeat in the supermarket wet case? Pollock. (And why must
pollock imitate crabmeat? American fisheries management.)
Pollock is the whitefish in all those
disgusting frozen fish sticks. Pollock is, or was, the fish in the
sandwiches at the fast food restaurants. Now that pollock is in severe
decline, McDonald’s is considering switching to hoki. This has nothing
to do with environmental awareness; McDonald’s requires a steady supply
of a consistent product at a predictable price. Hoki, a whitefish
that’s overfished by industrial trawlers in New Zealand waters, will be
a temporary fix, a few years at best. Thanks, Ronald.
Where was I? Oh right, severe decline. Three years ago, NMFS
allowed the trawlers to take 1.5 million metric tons of pollock out of
the Bering Sea. This year, because the decline was already evident in
last year’s survey, the quota was set at 815,000 metric tons. The
industry trade press headlines news like this as: “Pollock prices
likely to rise.”
The At-Sea Processors Association, the trade group that represents
the industrial trawlers, will try to convince the feds to keep the
quota high and if the past is any evidence, they’ll do it. That’s why
the fish population is crashing. What’s worse, they may bully the feds
into continuing the pollock roe season. Roe, of course, is fish talk
for eggs. The trawlers deliberately target the pregnant females, strip
the eggs out of their bellies and sell them for big bucks on the Asian
market.
What the Epicureans of Korea and Japan eat for dinner is what
doesn’t become a fish in the Bering Sea, with tragic consequences for
the sea and the other animals that live there. Pollock have
traditionally been mighty breeders, the rabbits of the northern seas
(one reason we fish them so hard). As such, they’ve provided much of
the food for the rest of the animals in the ocean, like Steller sea
lions and Pribilof fur seals. Because we humans got greedy with the
trawlers and the roe, now those species (and more) are in trouble.
Yes, eating the eggs is a great way to deplete a population of fish
(or any other wild creature) and yes, there’s more to it than that.
Global warming plays a role, with warm water moving north into the
Bering Sea, making conditions for pollock love less favorable than
they’ve been in decades past. The pollock don’t cause global warming,
though, nor do sea lions or fur seals. So yeah, we should stop burning
so many fossil fuels, but until we do, we have to back off with the
trawlers and give the pollock time to rebuild their numbers.
An irony here (not the irony, there’s too much irony for
that) is that Bering Sea pollock are often referred to (by the
industrial trawling people) as “the best-managed fishery in the world.”
Sadder still is that the statement is not far from accurate. Look at
Atlantic cod, that population crashed 15 years ago and has yet to come
back.
Yes, they can. And
they will, if the Supreme Court decides for corporations and against
real human beings and their democracy in a case the Court will be
hearing today, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.
Until
reaching the Supreme Court last year, this case has involved a narrow
issue about whether an anti-Hillary Clinton movie made in the heat of
the last presidential election is covered by restrictions in the
McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. However, in a highly unusual move
announced on the last day of the Supreme Court's 2008 term, the
justices announced they wanted to reconsider two other pivotal
decisions that limit the role of corporate money in politics.
The Court ordered a special oral argument on the issue, before the full start of their 2009 term in October.
The
Court will today hear argument on whether prior decisions blocking
corporations from spending their money on "independent expenditures"
for electoral candidates should be overturned. "Independent
expenditures" are funds spent without coordination with a candidate's
campaign. The rationale for such a move would be that existing rules
interfere with corporations' First Amendment rights to free speech.
Overturning
the court's precedents on corporate election expenditures would be
nothing short of a disaster. Corporations already dominate our
political process -- through political action committees, fundraisers,
high-paid lobbyists and personal contributions by corporate insiders,
often bundled together to increase their impact, threats to move jobs
abroad and more.
On the dominant issues of the day -- climate
change, health care and financial regulation -- corporate interests are
leveraging their political investments to sidetrack vital measures to
protect the planet, expand health care coverage while controlling
costs, and prevent future financial meltdowns.
The current system
demands reform to limit corporate influence. Public funding of
elections is the obvious and necessary (though very partial) first step.
Yet
the Supreme Court may actually roll back the limits on corporate
electoral spending now in place. These limits are very inadequate, but
they do block unlimited spending from corporate treasuries to influence
election outcomes. Rolling back those limits will unleash corporations
to ramp up their spending still further, with a potentially decisive
chilling effect on candidates critical of the Chamber of Commerce
agenda.
The damage will be double, because a Court ruling on
constitutional grounds would effectively overturn the laws in place in
two dozen states similarly barring corporate expenditures on elections.
More
than 100 years ago, reacting to what many now call the First Gilded
Age, Congress acted to prohibit direct corporate donations to electoral
candidates. Corporate expenditures in electoral races have been
prohibited for more than 60 years.
These rules reflected the
not-very-controversial observation that for-profit corporations have a
unique ability to gather enormous funds and that expenditures from the
corporate treasury are certain to undermine democracy - understood to
mean rule by the people. Real human beings, not corporations.
In
arguing to uphold the existing corporate expenditure restrictions, the
Federal Election Commission has emphasized these common sense
observations.
"For-profit corporations have attributes that no
natural person shares," the FEC argues. Noting that corporations are
state-created -- not natural entities -- the FEC explains that
"for-profit corporations are inherently more likely than individuals to
engage in electioneering behavior that poses a risk of actual or
apparent corruption of office-holders." The FEC also notes that
corporate spending on elections does not reflect the views of a
company's owners (shareholders).
Although the signs aren't good, there is no certainty how the Court will decide Citizens United.
There is some hope that the Court will decide that it is inappropriate
to roll back such longstanding and important campaign finance rules, in
a case where the issue was not presented in the lower courts, and where
the litigants' dispute can be decided on much narrower grounds.
Public
Citizen is organizing people to protest against a roll back of existing
restrictions on corporate campaign expenditures. To join the effort, go
to www.dontgetrolled.org.
People are pledging to protest in diverse ways -- from street actions
to letter writing -- today, and in the event of a bad decision, and
also networking for solutions to corporate-corrupted elections.
Ours
is a government of the people, by the people, for the people -- not the
corporations and their money. Corporations don't vote, and they
shouldn't be permitted to spend limitless amounts of money to influence
election outcomes.
Robert Weissman is president of Public Citizen.
Public Citizen attorney Scott Nelson serves as counsel to the original
sponsors of the McCain-Feingold law, who have filed an amicus brief in
the case, asking that existing restrictions on corporate election
expenditures be maintained.
In July 2006, CorpWatch exposed evidence that a Dutch shipbuilding company, selling military equipment to Chile, was offering bribes to officials there. CorpWatch’s reporting is now fueling calls by anti-corruption activists and opposition politicians for a formal parliamentary investigation into the operations of the company, Rotterdamse Droogdok Maatschappij (RDM).
The RDM case may become the first test for the Netherlands’ new anti-corruption legislation and for its will and ability to prosecute corporations for making foreign bribes.
The RDM bribery scandal dates back to 1998 when the company sold 202 Leopard tanks to the Chilean army. The Rotterdam-based company had purchased the tanks as scrap metal from the Dutch Department of Defense and rebuilt them. It then paid bribes to Chilean army officials facilitating the sale.
Joep van den Nieuwenhuyzen, the Dutch businessman, and officials of his company—who offered and facilitated the bribes—have never been prosecuted in relation to this case. The Dutch Public Prosecutor’s Office told CorpWatch that at the time of RDM’s bribes, the Netherlands had no laws against offering bribes to officials overseas. Legislation to make these practices illegal was introduced in 2001. Further muddying the waters, RDM went bankrupt in 2006, and Joep van den Nieuwenhuyzen, its owner, was jailed for fraud. He was released two years ago.
The current Dutch government investigation will delve further into the extent and mechanics of the bribery scheme, and interview key politicians active at the time. A Dutch parliamentary team is following up on the case in the Netherlands and in Chile. Key targets of the investigation include Edmundo Perez Yoma, Chile’s former minister of defense and currently its interior minister, along with his then deputy Mario Fernandez, now member of the Constitutional Court. Both are suspected of facilitating the bribery. Chile has announced similar investigations.
One Dutch official at the time of the tank sales, then Minister of Defense Joris Voorhoeve, joined the call for parliament to undertake a broad investigation into RDM’s bribes. He defended his own role. While Voorhoeve acknowledges that he issued an export license for the 202 Dutch Leopard tanks, he maintains he is appalled and shocked by the allegations of bribery. “The Netherlands government would never agree to pay bribes to get a deal closed,” he said, “nor participate in any other form of corruption.” The sales were justified, he said, because when they took place in 1998, Chile had become a democracy and General Augusto Pinochet, who had ruled from 1973 to 1990, was no longer president. But in fact, the former dictator still wielded considerable influence as senator for life and commander-in-chief of the armed forces, positions he retained until his death in 2006.
The parliamentary investigation, while welcomed by many, is late in coming. For years politicians ignored requests by the Netherlands Socialist Party for a formal investigation—again, sparked in part by CorpWatch’s reporting on the money RDM paid to the former dictator and his entourage.
According to a Swiss newspaper, van den Nieuwenhuyzen, currently a Swiss resident, said that he was not aware that the company he once owned was under investigation for payments to Chilean army officials.
But former RDM workers and associates charged that the company paid millions to Chilean colonels and brigadier generals through a third party, with $1.6 million going to a private consultant to the late general Pinochet. RDM said the $1.6 million was a donation to the Pinochet Foundation, a Santiago-based organization that promotes the general’s legacy.
Chilean and cooperating Dutch private investigators that examined the Pinochet’s overseas bank accounts have found that the dictator had stashed almost $28 million overseas, mainly in European bank accounts. Dutch investigators will look for links between that money, the two recently jailed Chilean army officers, and Pinochet.
The spokesperson of the Dutch Socialist Party in Rotterdam told CorpWatch that there have been no successful prosecutions of corporations in the Netherlands for foreign bribes, because it is extremely difficult to secure evidence in foreign countries. Of the scores of cases under consideration, none have yet reached the courts. If RDM is charged, it will be the first time Dutch officials or businesspeople are prosecuted under the new regulations.
These days just about every large corporation would have us believe
that it is in the vanguard of the fight to reverse global warming.
Companies mount expensive ad campaigns to brag about raising their
energy efficiency and shrinking their carbon footprint.
Yet a bold article in the latest issue of business-friendly Bloomberg Markets
magazine documents how some large U.S.-based transnationals are
complicit in a process that does more to exacerbate the climate crisis
than anything else: the ongoing destruction of the Amazon rain forest.
While deforestation is usually blamed on local ranchers and loggers, Bloomberg
points the finger at companies such as Alcoa and Cargill, which the
magazine charges have used their power to get authorities in Brazil to
approve large projects that violate the spirit of the country’s
environmental regulations.
Alcoa is constructing a huge bauxite mine that will chew up more
than 25,000 acres of virgin jungle in an area, the magazine says, “is
supposed to be preserved unharmed forever for local residents.” Bloomberg
cites Brazilian prosecutors who have been waging a four-year legal
battle against an Alcoa subsidiary that is said to have circumvented
the country’s national policies by obtaining a state rather than a
federal permit for the project.
Bloomberg also focuses on the widely criticized grain port
that Cargill built on the Amazon River. Cargill claims to be
discouraging deforestation by the farmers supplying the soybeans that
pass through the port, but the Brazilian prosecutors interviewed by Bloomberg expressed skepticism that the effort was having much effect.
Apart from the big on-site projects, Bloomberg looks at
major corporations that it says purchase beef and leather from
Amazonian ranchers who engage in illegal deforestation. Citing
Brazilian export records, the magazine identifies Wal-Mart, McDonald’s,
Kraft Foods and Carrefour as purchasers of the beef and General Motors,
Ford and Mercedes-Benz as purchasers of leather.
The impact of the Amazon cattle ranchers was also the focus of a Greenpeace report published in June. That report put heat on major shoe companies that are using leather produced by those ranchers.
Nike and Timberland
responded to the study by pledging to end their use of leather hides
from deforested areas in the Amazon basin. Greenpeace is trying to get
other shoe companies to follow suit.
Think of the Amazon the next time a company such as Wal-Mart tells
us what wonderful things it is doing to address the climate crisis.
Chipotle
is getting burned by the very scheme it cooked up as what it thought
was a great public relations opportunity - sponsoring free screenings
of Food, Inc. - is becoming a PR fiasco.
Food, Inc. director
Robert Kenner and co-producer Eric Schlosser speak out and Chipotle has
to answer tough questions in Tom Philpott's must-read article on Grist.org "Chipotle Grilled: Burrito chain’s Food, Inc. sponsorship generates off-screen drama over farm-worker issues."
Schlosser
explains that while many of Chipotle's efforts are great, he
nonetheless "cares more about human rights than any of those things."
He continues: "If Taco Bell, Subway, Burger King, and McDonald’s can
reach agreement with the CIW, I don’t see why Chipotle can’t."
Kenner
likewise, the article states, "made clear that he disagreed with the
company’s position on the CIW" even if he agrees with other things
Chipotle is doing. Kenner explains: "I was hopeful that by associating
itself with a film that promotes workers’ rights, [Chipotle] might be
inclined to sign with the Coalition . . . And now I’m not confident
they will.”
Our cameo
in this unfolding fiasco is also noted: "Chipotle clearly resents such
critical statements at events designed to demonstrate its
sustainability cred. At one of its screenings in Denver, Chipotle
employees barred people
from the Campaign for Fair Food to speak after the
screening—overturning an arrangement that had been made with Food,
Inc’s public-education campaign. " After investigating the incident,
the article decides: "In other words, people wanting to discuss the CIW
issue aren’t to be given stage time at the Chipotle-sponsored Food,
Inc. screenings."
Of
course Denver wasn't the only city where Chipotle got heat from Fair
Food activists while trying to bask in Food, Inc.'s glory. All over the
country allies of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers took to the movies to deflate Chipotle's hot air about "food with integrity" with some sharp truths about farm labor in Chipotle's supply chain. See the great photo report from the nationwide "Battle of the Burrito" on the CIW website.
References to this PR fiasco are popping up in unforseen places such as thedailygreen or even more surprising the mainstream investor blog The Motely Fool. And the bed which Chipotle made for itself in which it now must lie can't be feeling any more comfortable.
The lesson for Chipotle to learn from its bungled Food, Inc. PR experiment? The ecorazzi blog has these fitting words: "you can’t have your 1000+ calorie burrito and eat it too."
Wal-Mart has taken the latest in a long series of steps to make
itself look good by imposing burdens on its suppliers. The mammoth
retailer, which is thriving amid the recession, recently announced
plans to require its more than 100,000 suppliers to provide information
about their operations that would form the basis of a product
sustainability index.
Rating products is a good idea. It’s already being done by various
non-profit organizations that bring independence and legitimacy to the
process. Wal-Mart, by contrast, brings a lot of negative baggage. In
recent years, Wal-Mart has used a purported commitment to environmental
responsibility to draw attention away from its abysmal record with
regard to labor relations, wage and hour regulations, and employment
discrimination laws. It also wants us to forget its scandalous tax
avoidance policies and its disastrous impact on small competitors. The
idea that a company with a business model based on automobile-dependent
customers and exploitative supplier factories on the other side of the
globe can be considered sustainable should be dismissed out of hand.
Yet Wal-Mart is skilled at greenwashing and is, alas, being taken
seriously by many observers who should know better.
On close examination, Wal-Mart’s latest plan is, like many of its
previous social responsibility initiatives, rather thin. All the
company is doing at first is to ask suppliers to answer 15 questions.
Ten of these involve environmental issues such as greenhouse gas
emissions, water use, waste generation and raw materials sourcing. The
final five questions are listed under the heading of “People and
Community: Ensuring Responsible and Ethical Production.”
Two of them involve “social compliance.” It is an amazing act of
chutzpah for Wal-Mart, which probably keeps more sweatshops in business
than any other company, to claim moral authority to ask suppliers about
the treatment of workers in their supply chain.
The questions in this category seem to assume that suppliers don’t
do their own manufacturing. This is a tacit acknowledgement of how
Wal-Mart has forced U.S. manufacturers to shift production offshore,
and often to outside contractors. Now Wal-Mart has to ask those
companies to be sure they know the location of all the plants making
their products and the quality of their output.
The point about quality was one that CEO Mike Duke (photo) emphasized
when announcing the rating system. This is also highly disingenuous.
For years, Wal-Mart was notorious for pressing suppliers to reduce the
quality of their goods to keep down prices. Now the behemoth of
Bentonville is suddenly a proponent of proponent of products that “are
more efficient, that last longer and perform better.” Will Wal-Mart pay
its suppliers higher prices to cover the costs of improving quality?
I
can’t bring myself to jump on Wal-Mart’s bandwagon. If I want product
ratings I will turn not to Mike Duke but rather to someone like Dara
O’Rourke, who founded a website called Good Guide
that rates consumer products and their producers using independently
collected data from social investing firms such as KLD Research and
non-profits such as the Environmental Working Group. It uses criteria
such as labor rights, cancer risks and reproductive health hazards that
are unlikely to ever find their way into the Wal-Mart index.
Good Guide also rates companies, including Wal-Mart, which receives a mediocre score
of 5.3 (out of 10), and it reaches that level thanks to its marks on
p.r.-related measures such as charitable contributions and some but not
all environmental measures. In the category of Consumers it gets a 4.1,
Corporate Ethics 3.9, and for Labor and Human Rights 4.1 (which is
generous).
Maybe Wal-Mart should focus on improving its own scores before presuming to rate everyone else.
After thirteen years and
countless hours by lawyers, community members, and activists around the
world, Royal Dutch Shell finally settled the Wiwa v Shell case in a New York court for $15.5 million.
Plaintiffs in the case, which included Ken Saro-Wiwa Jr., and the
families of other Ogoni men hanged in November 1995, charged the
Royal Dutch/Shell company, its Nigerian subsidiary, and the former
chief of its Nigerian operation, Brian Anderson, with complicity in the
torture, killing, and other abuses of Ogoni leader Ken Saro-Wiwa and
other non-violent Nigerian activists in the mid-1990s in the Ogoni
region of the Niger Delta.
Shell says
they settled the case as a "humanitarian gesture" to the Ogoni. Does
anyone really believe that after fighting for more than a decade to
keep this out of court, Shell suddenly woke up and felt great
compassion for the Ogoni? Please.
Shell settled because they were scared, and they knew the evidence
against them was overwhelming. They publicly say they had nothing to do
with the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the other Ogoni, and yet there
were documents and video that they fought hard to keep out of the public eye.
Evidence that was to be introduced in the case included an internal Shell memo
where the head of Shell Nigeria offered to intervene on Saro-Wiwa's
behalf, if only Saro-Wiwa and others would stop claiming that Shell had
made payments to the military.
Witness were set to testify that they saw Shell vehicles
transporting Nigerian soldiers, that they saw Shell employees
conferring with the military, that they saw money being exchanged
between Shell employees and military officers, and that they heard
military officers, including the brutal Major Okuntimo of the Rivers
State Internal Security Task Force, make admissions regarding the work
they were doing on behalf of Shell.
We have known some of Shell's involvement in this tragedy for a long
time. In early May of 1994, Ken Saro-Wiwa Sr. faxed me a memo authored
by Major Okuntimo which read "Shell operations still impossible unless ruthless military operations are undertaken for smooth economic activities to commence" and further called for "pressure on oil companies for prompt regular inputs."
I received that fax and immediately called Ken. He said "this is it.
They're going to kill us all. All for Shell." It was the last time I
talked with him. Several weeks later he was arrested on the trumped up
charges for which he was ultimately hanged.
In the last day, lots of people have asked me if $15.5 million is
enough to compensate for the hanging of nine men, the death of
thousands more, and for the destruction of an ecosystem. No of course
not. But was it on par with what a jury would have awarded in this
case? Yes, lawyers tell me, for sure.
More importantly, does the settlement bring relief to Ken Wiwa Jr.
and the families of the other men who were executed? If you read Ken's thoughtful and moving piece in the Guardian, the answer is clearly yes. That alone should be cause for celebration.
Ken Sr.'s famous last words from the gallows were "lord take my soul
but the struggle continues." In this moment, perhaps more than ever
before, we need to heed that call to action. The settlement in this
case brings satisfaction to the plaintiffs for an event that happened
14 years ago. It in no way, shape or form excuses or absolves Shell of
their ongoing destruction of the Niger Delta environment.
One of the central complaints of Niger Delta communities for forty
years has been gas flaring, which sends plumes of toxic pollutants into
the air and water of the Niger Delta. Gas flaring endangers human
health, harms local ecosystems, emits huge amounts of greenhouse gases,
wastes vast quantities of natural gas, and is against Nigerian law.
Shell does it nowhere else in the world in volumes that are even
remotely comparable to what they flare in the Delta.
But Shell is still flaring gas in Nigeria.
While there is no doubt that the settlement represented a
significant victory for the plaintiffs' in this one human rights case
against Shell, true justice will not be served as long as the people of
Nigeria continue to suffer the terrible impact of Shell's operations.
Shell estimates it would cost about $3 billion -- only 10% of just
their last year's profits -- to end Shell's gas flaring in Nigeria once
and for all.
But instead of putting their great "humanitarian concern" into
action, Shell points the finger at the Nigerian government and demands
that they pay to end this practice.
Send a message to Shell's CEO
Jeroen van der Veer, and let him know that if he really wants to prove
his great concern for the Ogoni people, he'll end gas flaring once and
for all.
When people with strong ideological perspectives are often outraged
by media coverage of their pet issues. When both sides are mad, you
know you're doing something right. But how often do you hear
corporations furious about they way they are covered in the business
section? The section seems to lend itself to favor-currying and
soft-shoeing.
In the lead-up to Chevron's annual shareholders meeting tomorrow in San Ramon, the company landed a puff piece on KGO focusing on its efforts to decrease its water usage. No mention of the Amazon controversy, and no mention of outside pressure on Chevron, EBMUD's largest water user.
I'm disappointed to say that a Chronicleinterview
with the company's top lawyer also softballs the issues, while giving
Chevron the opportunity to present its side of the story with no
opportunity for response from the company's many critics. [Update: Chron editors tell me there will be more coverage of Chevron later in the week.]
Well, Chevron's opponents, including San Francisco's Amazon Watch, have taken matters into their own hands, releasing an alternate annual report that presents the externalities
not listed in the company's balance sheet, which shows a record profit
of $24 billion, making the company the second most profitable in the
United States.
Did you know that Chevron's Richmond refinery was built in 1902 and emitted 100,000 pounds of toxic waste in 2007, consisting of no less than 38 toxic substances? The EPA ranks it as one of the worst refineries
in the nation. With 17,000 people living within 3 miles from the plant,
you'd think the San Ramon-based company would take local heat from more
than just a couple dozen activists.
Chevron has sought to brand itself an "energy" company, one eagerly pursuing alternatives to petroleum. Its aggressive "Will You Join Us?"
ad campaign asked regular folks to reduce their energy consumption,
suggesting that Chevron was doing the same. In actuality, the company
spent less than 3 percent of its whopping capital and
exploratory expenditures on alternative energy. And it has refused to
offer better reporting on its greenhouse gas emissions, despite strong
shareholder support for it. (The aggressive, and misleading, ad
campaign seems to have ired the report's researchers as well: The
report is decorated by numerous parodies, and some have been
wheat-pasted around town.)
It's a very well researched report, written by the scholar Antonia Juhasz,
clearly divided into regional issues, and it's a much needed
counterbalance to the friendly coverage Chevron is otherwise getting.
(Juhasz was interviewed on Democracy Now this morning.)
For information on protesting the shareholder meeting early tomorrow morning, click here.
Posted by Laura Carlsen on April 3rd, 2009 Americas Policy Program, Center for International Policy
At the end of
March, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) celebrated its 50th
anniversary in Medellin. The occasion presents an opportunity to revise
concepts and move toward a fairer development model. It is logical to
think that among the festivities, a process of evaluation and
self-critique would begin regarding the bank's actions and work in the
region.
The circumstances demand it. The continent has been plunged into a
grave economic crisis, in part because of the string of structural
reforms, deregulation, foreign market dependence, and privatization
that the IDB has supported in the region. Limits on the use of
non-renewable fuels have become more and more obvious while climate
change threatens to affect the production of basic foods and increase
the frequency of natural disasters. Forced migration characterizes
modern life and growing inequality has become the most important
challenge faced by all the countries in the region.
Medellin: site of the 50th anniversary of the IDB. Photo: www.skyscraperlife.com.
In spite of this gray outlook, it seemed that until now everything
suggested that the IDB would prescribe more of the same medicine. They
predicted an increase in loans to the region for the record figure of
US$18 billion for 2009 as a response to the crisis. This will generate
a new wave of debt in the recipient countries, while at the same time
the development model behind the loans faces a crisis of credibility
due to its dubious results. For the IDB, development is seen as a
process of ensuring the transnational mobility of capital, enabling
foreign investment, the transfer of goods, and access to natural
resources. In recent years, this model has been imposed on regions that
were previously closed off due to their geographical location or
because of little interest from big business. Now that the value of
natural resources is increasing and national economies have opted for
exports, mega-projects including transportation infrastructure and
hydroelectric power plants, among others, have become attractive again.
They generally target regions with a low population density, and, in
many cases, significant indigenous populations. While these communities
are often forgotten by their national governments and suffer high
levels of marginalization, at the same time their territories are rich
in both culture and biodiversity.
The IDB has been a major promoter of infrastructure mega-projects
designed to drive this vision. Two mega-project master plans have been
of particular interest to the IDB: The Plan Puebla-Panama (also known
as the Mesoamerican Integration and Development Project) and the
Initiative for the Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South
America (IIRSA). These plans include the construction of
super-highways, dams, electricity networks, and more. The projects
signal a drastic change in the use of land and resources. Local,
regional, and national markets—which generate more jobs and constitute
the majority of food distribution—are seen as a hindrance, and natural
resources—conserved by indigenous communities—are considered the spoils
of transnational business.
Among its objectives, the IDB aims to generate development in these
regions. However, a recent study revealed that the mega-projects
financed by the IDB in many cases end up displacing thousands of people
who are supposed to be the beneficiaries. The construction of dams is
the clearest example because it entails the involuntary displacement
through the flooding of vast areas which often include pre-existing
communities. One example is the La Parota hydroelectric dam in
Guerrero, Mexico which would displace around 25,000 people and has
currently been halted due to popular resistance. A group of 43
grassroots organizations met prior to the IDB meeting in Medellin. They
presented studies and testimonies on the impacts of these projects in
an effort to change the IDB's policies. Through the campaign known as
"The IDB: 50 years financing inequality," these groups argue that,
rather than alleviate the issue of poverty, mega-projects channel the
profits gained from natural resources into the hands of the private
sector and destroy the social fabric and community networks necessary
for indigenous survival.
The solution to poverty that the IDB fundamentally proposes would
seem to be: reduce poverty by expelling the poor. The two meetings—that
of the IDB authorities and that of the organizations which question its
practices—present an opportunity to revise the concept of development
and move toward a fairer development model.
Amid the worst financial and economic crisis in decades, the U.S.
business press tends to get caught up in the daily fluctuations of the
stock market and, to a lesser extent, the monthly changes in the
unemployment rate. By contrast, London’s Financial Times is looking at the big picture. It recently launched a series
of articles under the rubric of The Future of Capitalism. In addition
to soliciting varying views on this monumental question, the paper
published a feature this week presuming to name the 50 people around the world who will “frame the way forward.”
Kicking off the series, the FT’s Martin Wolf was blunt in asserting
that the ideology of unfettered markets promoted over the past three
decades must now be judged a failure. Sounding like a traditional
Marxist, Wolf writes that “the era of liberalisation [the European term
for market fundamentalism] contained seeds of its own downfall” in the
form of tendencies such as “frenetic financial innovation” and “bubbles
in asset prices.”
An article
in the series by Gillian Tett casually notes that “naked greed, lax
regulation, excessively loose monetary policy, fraudulent borrowing and
managerial failure all played a role” in bringing about the crisis.
Richard Layard of the London School of Economics weighs in with a piece
arguing that “we should stop the worship of money and create a more
humane society where the quality of human experience is the criterion.”
Did editorial copy intended for New Left Review mistakenly end up in the FT computers?
Wolf finished his initial article
with the statement: “Where we end up, after this financial tornado, is
for us to seek to determine.” Yet who is the “we” Wolf is referring to?
Following the damning critique of markets and poor government
oversight, the last ones we should turn to for leadership are the
powers that be. Yet that is exactly the group that dominates the list
of those who, according to the editors of FT, will lead the way
forward. The 50 movers and shakers include 14 politicians, starting
with President Obama and Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao; ten central
bankers; three financial regulators; and four heads of multinational
institutions such as the IMF and the WTO. Also included are six
economists, including Paul Krugman and Obama advisor Paul Volcker, and
three prominent investors, among them George Soros and Warren Buffett.
The list also finds room for three chief executives (the heads of
Nissan, PepsiCo and Google) and, amazingly, the chiefs of four major
banks: Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, HSBC and BNP Paribas. It even
includes two talking heads: Arianna Huffington and Rush Limbaugh.
Except for Olivier Besancenot of France’s New Anticapitalist Party,
who is included among the politicians in a way that seems a bit
condescending, there is not a single person on the list directly
involved in a movement to challenge corporate power or even to
significantly alter the relationship between business and the rest of
society. There is not a single labor leader, prominent environmental
advocate or other leading activist. The editors at FT seem never to
have heard of civil society.
Then again, the problem may not be thickheadedness among FT editors.
Perhaps the voices for radical change have simply not been loud enough
to earn a place on a list of those who will play a significant role in
the shaping capitalism’s future. In fact, one of the articles in the FT
series suggests
that in Europe neither the Left nor the labor movement has taken a
leadership role in responding to the crisis, even as spontaneous
protests have erupted in numerous countries.
In the United States, where those forces are weaker, anger at the
crisis has to a great extent been channeled into support for the
Keynesian policies of the Obama Administration. That’s unavoidable in
the short term, but it doesn’t address the need for fundamental
alteration of economic institutions. If, as the Financial Times suggests, the future of capitalism is up for grabs, let’s make sure we all join the fray.
Before his execution, Socrates was visited in prison by his friend
Crito, who told him the bribes for the guards were ready and Socrates
could escape whenever he wished. Socrates refused to go.
Crito, angered, argued Socrates would a) leave his children orphans
and b) bring shame on his friends, because people would assume they
were too cheap to finance his escape. (Apparently, this sort of thing
was common in Athens in those days.)
Socrates replied that in his imagination, he hears the Laws of
Athens saying, “What do you mean by trying to escape but to destroy us,
the Laws, and the whole city so far as in you lies? Do you think a
state can exist and not be overthrown in which the decisions of law are
of no force and are disregarded and set at naught by private
individuals?”
In short, either Socrates or the rule of law had to die. Socrates
chose to die rather than diminish his city. Now, as then, he’d be a
lonely guy. His notion that the city lay within him – that he was the city of Athens – is striking.
All failure to enforce law – or to work
around it – is bad. This applies equally to speed limits, armed robbery
and banking regulations. Failure to enforce our agreed-upon standards
weakens our social bonds and undermines faith in both our justice
system and our government. If the police will not apprehend or the
courts will not prosecute or the legislatures draw protective circles
around certain elements in society, then society as a whole suffers.
There is within all of us an affinity for justice. The majority of
citizens have no training in law or political science, but we possess
intuitive notions of right and wrong. We’re willing to tolerate some
discrepancy on either margin of the page, but when things are pushed
too far out of balance on either side, then the door to vigilantism,
riot and revolution is opened.
This great imbalance – and we’re getting strong whiffs of it now –
is a failure by our institutions to enforce the terms of the American
social contract.
“America is a classless society.” “All citizens stand equal before
the law.” Blah, blah, blah. It’s illegal to rob a convenience store.
It’s illegal to defraud investors. The accused robber, who flashed a
knife and made off with eighty or a hundred bucks, sits behind steel
bars and waits for his overburdened public defender to get around to
speaking with him.
The accused fraudulent investment fund manager, who flashed a phony
set of books and made off with eight or fifty billion dollars, sits in
his cosmopolitan penthouse and consults a million-dollar legal team,
which he pays with ill-gotten dosh.
If we vigorously enforce laws on the working class and make only
half-hearted attempts to do so with the managing class, then the class
warfare Republican politician are always whining about comes closer to
reality.
Worse, by allowing Ken Lays, Bernie Madoffs and Allen Stanfords to
get off easy, it destroys real opportunity for people in the working
classes to realize the American dream for themselves and their
children. The crimes of the managing class – unlike the convenience
store robber – have the real effect of depriving millions – both here
and abroad - of their livelihoods and homes when the financial system
crashes.
In the news and before Congressional committee, we hear that
regulators were specifically warned for years that Bernie Madoff and
Allen Stanford were violating regulations.
While the beltway talkers argue over whether Wall Street bankers
should be allowed to keep their bonuses and exorbitant salaries, the
discussion that had yet to start is: why were these highly leveraged
instruments and securitized debt transactions legal in the first place?
We’re told incessantly that the Wall Street banking transactions were
so complicated that “no one really understands them.” There is,
however, the easily understood principle that one’s debts should be
balanced by one’s assets. Or one’s at least one’s assets should be
within shouting distance of one’s debts.
We have speed limits not because driving 110 is inherently evil, but
because it is unsafe and anyone who does shows reckless disregard for
themselves and others. And yet, a legion of reckless drivers loosed on
the interstate for a decade could not have wrought as much misery as
this handful of bankers, brokers and hedge fund managers.
We will now suffer for years. These will be hard times, but within
this hardship will be opportunities to rediscover the extent to which
our society lives within in us, as Socrates would have said.
For the past eight years, the oil giant formerly known as British
Petroleum has tried to convince the world that its initials stand for
“Beyond Petroleum.” An announcement just issued by the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency may suggest that the real meaning of BP
is Brazen Polluter.
The EPA revealed
that BP Products North America will pay nearly $180 million to settle
charges that it has failed to comply with a 2001 consent decree under
which it was supposed to implement strict controls on benzene and
benzene-tainted waste generated by the company’s vast oil refining
complex in Texas City, Texas, located south of Houston. Since the
1920s, benzene has been known to cause cancer.
Among BP’s self-proclaimed corporate values
is to be “environmentally responsible with the aspiration of ‘no damage
to the environment’” and to ensure that “no one is subject to
unnecessary risk while working for the group.” Somehow, that message
did not seem to make its way to BP’s operation in Texas City, which has
a dismal performance record.
The benzene problem in Texas City was supposed to be addressed as part of the $650 million agreement
BP reached in January 2001 with the EPA and the Justice Department
covering eight refineries around the country. Yet environmental
officials in Texas later found that benzene emissions at the plant
remained high. BP refused to accept that finding and tried to stonewall
the state, which later imposed a fine of $225,000.
In March 2005 a huge explosion (photo) at the refinery killed 15
workers and injured more than 170. The blast blew a hole in a benzene
storage tank, contaminating the air so seriously that safety
investigators could not enter the site for a week after the incident.
BP was later cited for egregious safety violations and paid a record fine of $21.4 million. Subsequently, a blue-ribbon panel chaired by former secretary of state James Baker III found
that BP had failed to spend enough money on safety and failed to take
other steps that could have prevented the disaster in Texas City. Still
later, the company paid a $50 million fine as part of a plea agreement on related criminal charges.
In an apparent effort to repair its image, BP has tried to associate
itself with positive environmental initiatives. The company was, for
instance, one of the primary sponsors
of the big Good Jobs/Green Jobs conference held in Washington earlier
this month. Yet as long as BP operates dirty facilities such as the
Texas City refinery, the company’s sunburst logo, its purported
earth-friendly values and its claim of going beyond petroleum will be
nothing more than blatant greenwashing.
Norway's Ministry of Finance announced Friday that it would exclude mining giant Barrick Gold and U.S. weapons producer Textron Inc from the country's pension fund for ethical reasons. This is an especially significant judgment for Canada, as Barrick Gold is currently Canada's largest publicly traded company.
While the Norwegian Council of Ethics full recommendation mentions conflicts involving Barrick in Chile, Tanzania, and the Philippines, the panel acknowledged that, "due to limited resources," it restricted its investigation of Barrick to the Porgera mine in Papua New Guinea. The Porgera mine has been a prime target for criticism for its use of riverine tailings disposal, a practice banned in almost every country in the world.
"It's unbelievably embarrassing," admitted Green Party deputy leader Adriane Carr. "It's got to be bad news for Canada when a foreign government says it's going to sell its shares in a Canadian company they figure is unethical."
This isn't the first time that Norway's Fund has divested from a gold mining company. In fact, looking at a list, the fund – with the notable exception of Walmart – divests exclusively from mining (primarily gold mining) corporations and corporations that produce nuclear weapons or cluster munitions... an interesting juxtaposition highlighting the comparable nature of mining to the production of weapons of mass destruction, especially in terms of long-term environmental consequences.
Compare that to Canada's treatment of gold mining companies. Just this last December, Peter Munk, the chairman and founder of Barrick Gold, received the Order of Canada, Canada's highest civilian honor. Additionally, within Toronto he is honored as a philanthropist, with the Peter Munk Cardiac Center and the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto both adorning his name. Similarly, Ian Telfer, the chairman of Goldcorp, the world's second largest gold miner behind Barrick, has the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa bearing his name.
These symbolic gestures, along with the fact that several Canadian Pension funds and even Vancouver-based "Ethical Funds" are still heavily invested in Barrick Gold, show that Canada has a long way to go in demanding that its companies honor human rights and halt its colonial-style, exploitative economic regime. In fact, by its own admittance, Canada's Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade stated that "Canada does not yet have laws to ensure that the activities of
Canadian mining companies in developing countries conform to human
rights standards, including the rights of workers and of indigenous
peoples." Since the date of that landmark confession, Canada has yet to adopt any intervening structures (like an ombudsperson) or develop any mandatory regulations for Canadian companies operating abroad.
Gold mining produces an average of 79 tons of waste for every ounce of gold extracted, 50 percent of it is carried out on native lands, and about 80 percent of it is used for jewelry, according to the "No Dirty Gold" campaign, a project of Oxfam and Earthworks. It is no wonder that in a portfolio with plenty of human rights abuses, the Norwegian Pension Fund decided to concentrate on gold miners, cluster munition manufacturers and nuclear weapon producers first. It is time that the rest of the world catch up.
Chipotle
is getting burned by the very scheme it cooked up as what it thought
was a great public relations opportunity - sponsoring free screenings
of Food, Inc. - is becoming a PR fiasco.
I
can’t bring myself to jump on Wal-Mart’s bandwagon. If I want product
ratings I will turn not to Mike Duke but rather to someone like Dara
O’Rourke, who founded a website called 
