-----Original Message-----
From: [transnationale.org] [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 14 May 2002 16:20
To: john.armitage
Subject: Newsletter May 6, 2002
Newsletter from the transnational corporations observatory
Monday, May 6, 2002
FILES > FOOD > PROCESSED
Nestle, Hershey, Mars, others are named in toxic-metals suit
Our scientific research clearly shows that chocolate products contain lead
and cadmium, heavy metal poisons also known to the state of California s
health experts to be hazardous to human health, Deborah A. Sivas, president
of the THE AMERICAN ENVIRONMENTAL Safety Institute. The chocolate
manufacturers have neither taken appropriate actions to remove potentially
dangerous levels of lead and cadmium from their chocolate products, nor
notified consumers of the health risks, she said.
http://www.transnationale.org/anglais/forums/alimentation__industrielle/show
message.asp?messageID=386
FILES > ENVIRONMENT > POLLUTION
Enron s scar on South America
Of Enron Corp. s many political maneuvers in Washington before its fall into
bankruptcy, winning the promise of federal financing for a 390-mile pipeline
from Bolivia to Brazil through the Chiquitano Dry Tropical Forest may have
the most enduring consequences.
http://www.transnationale.org/anglais/forums/environnement__pollution/showme
ssage.asp?messageID=397
Colombian Tribe Topples Mighty Oil Giant
There's not much good news coming out of war-torn Colombia these days.
Friday was a notable exception. With no great fanfare, Occidental Petroleum,
the multinational giant that has gained infamy in environmental circles,
announced at its annual shareholder meeting in Santa Monica, Calif. that it
was relinquishing control of Siriri, the oil block in Colombia on the
ancestral land of the U'wa people.
http://www.transnationale.org/anglais/forums/environnement__pollution/showme
ssage.asp?messageID=396
Study: Discarded cell phones pose health hazard
Within three years, Americans will discard about 130 million cellular
telephones a year, and that means 65,000 tons of trash, including toxic
metals and other health hazards. Internationally, Australia has implemented
a nationwide cell phone recycling program and the European Union is
considering actions to make manufacturers responsible for electronic product
wastes.
http://www.transnationale.org/anglais/forums/environnement__pollution/showme
ssage.asp?messageID=399
FILES > FINANCE > DEREGULATION
Enron Memos Show California Manipulation
Enron Corp., the insolvent energy trader, gave U.S. regulators memos
outlining how traders manipulated the California electricity market to raise
prices. The two memos discuss methods of creating and then ```relieving'
phantom congestion'' on California's power grid and ``laundering''
electricity by moving it in and out of the system, a Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission official said in a letter to an Enron attorney. An
Enron memo dated Dec. 6, 2000 said a technique for raising prices ``is now
being used by other market participants.''
http://www.transnationale.org/anglais/forums/finance__dereglementation/showm
essage.asp?messageID=438
Tube 'almost' in private hands
The government's controversial privatisation of London Underground has taken
a step closer. London Transport has signed contracts with the engineering
firms that will do the job of modernising the system over the next 30 years.
http://www.transnationale.org/anglais/forums/finance__dereglementation/showm
essage.asp?messageID=439
FILES > FINANCE > EMPLOYMENT
U.S. companies announced plans to cut 112,649 jobs in April, a 10% increase
over the 102,315 cuts announced in March. April marked the 16th time in 17
months that monthly job losses totaled more than 100,000. The four-month
average in 2002 is more than five times greater than the monthly average
recorded during the height of the 1990-91 recession. Since the beginning of
this year, U.S. companies have announced 555,783 job cuts, just 3% fewer
than the number of cuts posted between January and April of last year. The
total number of cuts last year was a record 1,956,876. A total of 38,176 job
cuts were announced in the telecommunications industry, 13,297 in the
automotive sector and 10,776 in the service sector. (from Challenger, Gray &
Christmas, May 2, 2002)
Layoff announcements in april 2002 (53 companies, 135286 job cuts)
http://www.transnationale.org/anglais/dossiers/finance/emploi_042002.htm
British Telecom is to cut about 2,200 jobs from its IT services division
Ignite.
http://www.transnationale.org/anglais/forums/finance__emploi/showmessage.asp
?messageID=437
Telewest to cut 1,500 jobs
http://www.transnationale.org/anglais/forums/finance__emploi/showmessage.asp
?messageID=436
FILES > INFORMATION > DISINFORMATION - PUBLIC RELATIONS
Science for sale
The mad cow cover-up is just one of the many industrial threats to public
health and the environment that Stauber has brought to light as founder and
director of the nonprofit Center for Media and Democracy. His first book,
Toxic Sludge Is Good for You, also written with Rampton, investigated the
abuses of the corporate public relations industry.
Bay Guardian: How does the new book differ from Toxic Sludge, which also
dealt with the abuses of the public relations industry?
John Stauber: This book looks at a particular type of public relations ploy
that was pioneered in the early part of the 20th century by Eddie Bernays,
"the father of public relations." This is the trick of creating
noble-sounding organizations staffed with "experts" and projecting these
experts through the media. They claim to represent consumer interests but,
in fact, are overwhelmingly funded by groups such as the tobacco industry,
the petroleum industry, or the pesticide industry.
Trust Us was originally conceived as a book about the "sound science"
movement, which consists of industry-funded front groups with nice-sounding
names like the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC). TASSC was
started in 1993 for the express purpose of denouncing and exposing "junk"
science.
The scam here is that these groups have names that sound like consumer or
health organizations, but they're industry fronts. Their strategy has been
extremely successful: the term "junk science" is now overwhelmingly used by
the mainstream media just as industry intends it to denigrate, attack, and
smear environmental-health advocates, worker-safety advocates, community
activists, and public interest scientists who are trying to warn the public
and expose the dangers of a myriad of products and pollutants.
BG: How does this strategy work?
JS: The job of these groups is to confuse the public so that you don't know
what to believe. Take dioxin, for example. Dioxin is the most
birth-defect-causing chemical known and a carcinogen. It's a very serious
problem, and it's been ignored, thanks to industry lobbying and P.R. One way
it's ignored is through the work of these groups like the Advancement of
Sound Science Coalition, which puts out misleading information through the
mouths of scientists who are promoted as being independent experts.
BG: Why doesn't the media catch on that these are front groups?
JS: One way these groups convince the news media that they're independent
scientific groups is they carefully recruit scientists who get money from
industry and who agree with industry to be on their advisory boards. Many of
these scientists are some of the leading scientists in their field, but that
doesn't mean they don't have very strong pro-industry biases.
BG: How does trend impact the coverage of things like genetically modified
foods?
JS: One of the issues we write about in the book is the L-tryptophan
disaster of 1989 and 1990, which should have woken us up to the potential
dangers of genetically engineered food but didn't because the news media
didn't give it much attention. What happened was people began dying of a
horrible disease called eosinophilia-myalgia syndrome, or EMS. It was caused
by an over-the-counter supplement people take to help them relax called
L-tryptophan. This version was manufactured by Showa Denko, one of Japan's
largest chemical companies, the world's largest producer of L-tryptophan,
and they had just made a pretty drastic change in the manufacturing process.
They switched over to a genetically engineered bacteria to produce more of
this stuff faster, and this contaminant was created that killed people.
This is exactly what people who have been warning about the dangers of
genetic engineering have been saying: that we really don't know the
implications of what we're doing. We could create new contaminants never
seen before that could kill people or make them sick. We'll never know for
certain whether or not it was the genetic engineering that created this
contaminant because Showa Denko succeeded in covering the whole thing up;
they've paid billions of dollars settling suits out of court. The reason
this issue didn't get a lot of play in the press at the time even though
people like Jeremy Rifkin were saying, "Hey, take a look at this; it looks
like this is the first case of a genetically engineered diet product killing
people" is that "independent university scientists" were out there in the
media trashing them, saying there's absolutely no way that genetic
engineering had anything to do with this.
http://www.transnationale.org/anglais/forums/information__desinformation/sho
wmessage.asp?messageID=5
FILES > INSTITUTIONS > UNITED-STATES
The Carlyle Connection
How the Pentagon Learned to Love the Weapon No One Wanted
http://www.transnationale.org/anglais/forums/institutions__etatsunis/showmes
sage.asp?messageID=410
FILES > THIRD WORLD > FREE TRADE ZONES
Levis: Made in China?
Last month, Levi Strauss & Company, a brand practically synonymous with the
U.S.A., decided to shutter virtually all domestic production and shift its
manufacturing overseas. While news of the layoffs -- roughly 22 percent of
Levi's global workforce -- resounded heavily across the worn wooden floors
of Levi's San Francisco headquarters, the halt is also bad news for
America's textile industry. More than just closing shop, Levi's failure to
manufacture on home turf reflects a sobering reality for the industry. This
is the final death knell of a decades-long lament.
While companies such as Gap, Guess and Ralph Lauren have long farmed out
production overseas, Levi's recent move to combat crumbling sales is a
disheartening one for workers. Although the company hasn't remained
untouched by sweatshop scandal (in 1992, the Washington Post exposed Levi's
exploitation of Chinese prison labor to make jeans), Levi was the first
major manufacturer to draw up a code of labor standards. Wal-Mart, and then
almost all leading U.S. garment retailers, soon jumped on the bandwagon. As
a whole, the industry's track record has been less than stellar -- witness
the sweatshop campaigns of the 1990s -- but Levi tried to buck the trend.
"Those were the last of the good jobs," says Medea Benjamin, referring to
jobs at Levi's American factories. Benjamin is cofounder of Global Exchange,
a San Francisco-based nonprofit that monitors trade and human rights. "Now
Levi's has joined the race to the bottom to become another sweatshop
company."
http://www.transnationale.org/anglais/forums/tiersmonde__zones_franches/show
message.asp?messageID=411
Brussels judge studying TotalFinaElf rights case
Four Burmese refugees, invoking a controversial Belgian human rights law,
filed a suit on April 25 accusing the company of being an accomplice to
crimes against humanity.
They accuse CEO Thierry Desmaret of complicity in the torture and forced
labor of workers building a TotalFinaElf pipeline in the South East Asian
country, their lawyer said. "It's the first time a company and its CEO have
been involved in a crimes against humanity case
"When TotalFinaElf built their pipeline, they gave financial and logistical
aid to the military regime -- including military who were present at the
site of the pipeline, who had to free the zone, and (who) used the local
population for forced labor.
http://www.transnationale.org/anglais/forums/tiersmonde__zones_franches/show
message.asp?messageID=410
Sweatshop underneath Shakira's clothes
Shakira, the Latina rock superstar currently on a promotional tour around
Australian television shows, may not know she has some dirty laundry in her
wardrobe.
A reputed Brooklyn sweatshop that is refusing to pay wages owed to dozens of
Hispanic immigrants, made clothes last year for Delia's, a teen fashion
label that uses Shakira to promote its sales.
http://www.transnationale.org/anglais/forums/tiersmonde__zones_franches/show
message.asp?messageID=409
Transnationale.org covers more than 9600 companies broken into 50 sectors.
Use this reference list to see the 20 largest companies in each sector,
ranked by sales:
http://www.transnationale.org/anglais/etn.htm#leaders
Company profiles are updated on a weekly basis, 92 company profiles updated
this week:
http://www.transnationale.org/anglais/etn.htm#update
To modify your subscription to this newsletter:
http://www.transnationale.org/anglais/association/bulletin_modif.asp
The transnational corporations observatory
B.P. 96
13693 Martigues Cedex
FRANCE
http://www.transnationale.org/anglais/
************************************************************************************
Distributed through Cyber-Society-Live [CSL]: CSL is a moderated discussion
list made up of people who are interested in the interdisciplinary academic
study of Cyber Society in all its manifestations.To join the list please visit:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/cyber-society-live.html
*************************************************************************************
|
