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On May 23, 1996, Mr. Tom Beanal, leader of the Amungme Tribal Council and principal in a $6 billion suit against Freeport-McMoRan, spoke at Loyola University, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA.

Tanzania, a country twice the size of California, is located in East Africa, just south of Kenya. Last year I was there for 3 months researching the impact of World Bank and IMF economic policies on the country's small farmers who make up the overwhelming majority of the population. Recently, Tanzania overtook South Africa to become Africa's third biggest producer of tobacco, after Zimbabwe and Malawi.

Gold is an intoxicating substance. Witness the rapidity with which investors threw their money into a relatively obscure Canadian mining corporation called Bre-X, when that company claimed to have discovered the largest single deposit of the metal in history.

Excerpted from the San Francisco's Forum On Global Tobacco Control Policies. Dr. Judith Mackay looks at the ''New Opium War.''

Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc, headquartered in New Orleans, is one of the world's largest and lowest cost copper and gold producers, from its Grasberg mine in Irian Jaya. In 1996 it was regarded as one of the ten worst corporations by the Multinational Monitor magazine.

Asian community leaders -- mindful of ''World No Tobacco Day'' on May 31 -- say their battle to reduce high smoking rates among Asian Americans is making inroads but can't succeed as long as cigarette advertisers keep targeting their neighborhoods.

The San Francisco Tobacco Free Coalition will actively work in solidarity with domestic and international grassroots communities, groups, organizations, government agencies, and Ministries of Health to promote social, economic, and environmental justice. As 33% of San Franciscans are immigrants, the Coalition believes that it must think globally and act locally in the development of a Global Tobacco Control Policy Framework.

Larry Keuhn, the former head of British Columbia Teachers' Federation, looks at the reshaping of education to fit the needs of global corporations by critiquing a paper prepared by South Korea's Ministry of Labor and the economic integration of the Asia-Pacific region.

This month's winner is the Chlorine Chemistry Council (CCC). The CCC is a U.S.-based lobby group representing a chlorine subcommittee of another U.S. industry group, the Chemical Manufacturers Association. Amidst the groundswell of evidence that chlorine chemicals and their accidental byproducts are slowly destroying life on earth, the CCC is responding with gigantic public relations campaigns and contributions to Washington politicians.

Today the Albemarle Corporation is one of the top three producers of methyl bromide in the world. Founded in 1887 to produce blotting papers for fountain pens, Albemarle stayed a paper products company for many years.