Commercialized shame
Category Archives: Colombia
Golden Dawn Immigrants-Fake NeoNazi’s
All those links were sent to me on Twitter and I am more than glad to post them,I do beleive I will find more on those people due time.No threats allowed according to the WP policy or the HR declaration. So please stay vigilant of what you are going to post :)I checked all blog categories so that the post can get the most views possible. Regards!
“##Spiros Macrozonaris## IMMIGRANT Golden Dawn Deputy leader in Montreal, Canada” :
Facebook profile :
INTERESTING FACEBOOK POST MR. MACROZONARIS, HE CANNOT EVEN WRITE GREEK! BAD NAZI BAD! :
His NON 100% PURE GREEK son’s Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/macrozonaris?ref=ts&fref=ts
1. Greek Immigrant who married a “foreigner” >>>>>French-Canadian Doris Morrissette, they bore a son, Nicolas Macrozonaris (World-Class Sprinter – CANADIAN Olympian 🙂 ..who unfortunately is not 100% Pure Greek…
2. Conversations with Nicolas on Twitter, lead to nothing, he is ‘pretending’ that he has NO knowledge of what Golden Dawn supports and believes YET he states that he does not condone his fathers “actions”
Twitter @Macrozonaris TWEETER CONVERSATIONS with Nicolas –>
###### MUST WATCH #####
Video from CBC Montreal, from week of Oct 12th – INTERVIEW with Spiros Macrozonaris – next to him sits LOOSER Ilias Hondronicolas : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-3rbLI4K78
#Ilias Hondronicolas ———> on PHOTO second guy from the left :
#MORE HONDRONICOLAS:
(FRIENDS WITH ELENI ZAROULIA SHARING HER PHOTOS!)
( MUST SEE )
#MORE PAPAGEORGIOU:
The borrachero tree and scopolamine
(NaturalNews) The borrachero tree, which is marked by beautiful white and yellow blossoms that droop ever so innocuously from the plant’s slender branches, holds a secret that few people outside northern South America know about. The tree’s seeds, flowers, and pollen possess hallucinogenic chemical substances that, when inhaled or consumed, are capable of eliminating a person’s free will, and turning him or her into a mindless zombie that can be fully controlled without any inhibitions.
Back in May, the U.K.’s Daily Mail ran a report on the borrachero tree, also known as the “drunken binge” tree, explaining how a substance derived from it, scopolamine, blocks a person’s ability to form memories, and temporarily inhibits his ability to make free will choices. When inhaled or consumed, in other words, scopolamine can turn any person into a robot that will do whatever another person tells him to do, even if it means robbing his own house.
“The drug … turns people into complete zombies and blocks memories from forming,” wrote the U.K.’s Daily Mail about scopolamine, which is technically a refined, chemically-altered version of the natural, mind-altering substances found in the borrachero tree. Scopolamine is often used in Colombia and elsewhere by criminals to mind-control others for the purpose of committing crimes.
What would it take to be considered the world’s scariest drug? A documentary that has gone viral in two days has a suggestion –– it’s one that criminals use to erase your memory and renders you incapable of exercising your free will.
The drug, called scopolamine, also known as ‘The Devil’s Breath,’ is derived from a particular type of tree common in Colombia called the Borrachero tree.
The word “borrachero,” which roughly translates to “get-you-drunk,” grows wild in Bogota,Colombia.
This tree which naturally produces scopolamine is so famous in the countryside that mothers warn their children not to fall asleep below its cunningly beautiful yellow and white flowers.
“We probably should put some sort of fence up,” jokes biologist Gustavo Morales at Bogota’s botanical gardens to Reuters, eyeing children playing with borrachero seeds everywhere. The pollen alone is said to conjure up strange dreams.
And when extracted and made into a colorless, odorless and tasteless powder, scopolamine does more than induce strange dreams. Quickly dissolved in liquids, criminals slip the powder into drinks or sprinkle it on food. Reuters states that victims become so docile that they have been known to help thieves rob their homes and empty their bank accounts. Women have been drugged repeatedly over days and gang-raped or rented out as prostitutes.
It was stories like these that initially made VICE News Correspondent Ryan Duffy pretty excited to travel to Bogota, Colombia.
“I had only a vague understanding of [scopolamine], but the idea of a substance that renders a person incapable of exercising free-will seemed liked a recipe for hilarity and the YouTube hall of fame,” Duffy writes.
Besides thinking of ways of how he could pull pranks on his friends when he returned, “the original plan was for me to sample the drug myself to really get an idea of the effect it had on folks,” he said.
That quickly changed.
“By the time I arrived a few days later, things had changed dramatically,” he writes. “All elements of humor and novelty were rapidly stripped away during my first few days in town.”
Duffy, who initially couldn’t wait to go to Colombia says by the time he and his team were wrapping things up and preparing to leave the country, couldn’t wait to get as far away as possible “from Colombia and that drug,” he said.
“After meeting only a couple people with firsthand experience, the story took a far darker turn than we ever could have imagined, and the Scopolamine pranks I had originally imagined pulling on my friends seemed beyond naive and absurd,” he added.
Instead, he came away with a new objective: “This story, and the people who tell it, truly deserve to be heard.”
World’s Scariest Drug
A story cannot be heard without a teller. And since they valued the people and the story enough to tell it, the 35 minute exclusive documentary, “World’s Scariest Drug” has already racked up 330,328 views since Vice News uploaded it to YouTube two days ago on May 11.
As these words are being written, at 8pm Sunday evening, there are (994)… (995) … (996) comments and counting that include:
“I will never go to Colombia,” says jumts18, a YouTube viewer.
“This video has to be a joke,” says another.
After some research, another wrote: “I read somewhere that they use this drug for motion sickness around the world. What the fuck.”
Far from being a joke,the late Dr. Stephen M. Pittel, who was a nationally known forensic psychologist and pioneer of research on the drug culture of San Francisco, wrote that “reports of date-rapes, thefts, kidnapping and other crimes in the U.S. and Canada have been attributed to Burundanga – a potent form of scopalamine that has been used for decades in Columbia in native rituals, as a weapon and by criminals who prey on tourists.”
He said The Wall Street Journal reported in 1995 that the use of Burandanga was increasing rapidly as the favored method of assault by immigrant Columbian criminal gangs in the U.S. who now also use it as a major form of currency.
“In one common scenario, a person will be offered a soda or drink laced with the substance,” the article stated. “The next thing the person remembers is waking up miles away, extremely groggy and with no memory of what happened. People soon discover that they have handed over jewelry, money, car keys, and sometimes have even made multiple bank withdrawals for the benefit of their assailants.”
“This happened to my great aunt, a woman in her late 60’s in Medellin,” says Mel from Naples, Fl, on the Daily Mail web site. “Someone drugged her by blowing [the powder] in her face and took her to the bank where she emptied her bank account willingly for her assailant,” he writes. “When she came out it she couldn’t remember who the person was.”
That may be why in more recent years, the U.S. State Department issued a warning telling travelers to beware of “criminals in Colombia using disabling drugs to temporarily incapacitate tourists and others.”
In Bogata and Cali, Burundanga is given to unsuspecting visitors in chewing gum, chocolate, drinks or dusted on pieces of paper. Even small doses of the drug are reported to cause “submissive” behavior, while larger doses apparently cause almost instantaneous unconsciousness, followed by complete anterograde amnesia (inability to recall recent events)
And why Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada advises against all travel to most rural areas of Colombia. The Government of Canada warns that if traveling to Colombia to avoid “going to bars alone. Never leave your drink or food unattended.
There have been numerous incidents of drugs being used (including scopolamine) to incapacitate travelers in order to rob them. Scopolamine can be administered through aerosols, cigarettes, gum, or in powder form. Typically, travelers are approached by someone asking for directions; the drug is concealed in a piece of paper and is blown into the victim’s face. Exercise extreme caution, as scopolamine can cause prolonged unconsciousness and serious medical problems.”
But still some people think the documentary and warnings such as these show a prejudice towards Colombia and Colombians. “It’s so sad that people just sees us Colombians as drug dealers and drug consumer [sic] and to say its a fucked up country is very offensive,” Youtube user rt987 said Sunday. “Colombia has very good people and off [sic] course we have problems as every other country. and we are looking forward to have them solved, making people scared of Colombia i [sic] think is pathetic, Colombia is a great place to live, and to visit.”
But it’s not just the United States or Canada issuing warnings. On its website, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Colombia warns all those interested in “traveling to Colombia to be careful with scopolamine, commonly called burundanga that when mixed with a drink, a cigarette or inhaled (for example on paper in the guise of asking for directions), will lose it absolutely.” The drug is used for robberies and kidnappings in local pubs.
As the documentary states, Colombia has one of the highest kidnapping rates in the world.
It’s like they’re a child
Part of Duffy traveling to Colombia, was to interview those who deal the drug and those who have fallen victim to it.
The animated Demencia Black falls in the former category.
As the Daily Mail reports, Black, a drug dealer in the capital of Bogota, says that one gram of Scopolamine is similar to a gram of cocaine, but later called it “worse than anthrax.”
Black also said what makes the drug so frightening is its simplicity in administration.
Black told Vice that criminals can blow scopolamine in the face of an unsuspecting victim, and within minutes, that person is under the drug’s effect.
A 21 year old prostitute that you’ll meet in the documentary uses scopolamine on her clients to rob them. Reuters reported one such incident involving three young Bogota women who preyed on men by smearing the drug on their breasts and luring their victims to take a lick.
Now under the influence, the men readily gave up their bank access codes. The breast-temptress thieves then held them hostage for days while draining their accounts.
“You can guide them wherever you want,” he explains matter of factly. “It’s like they’re a child.”
The drug, he said, turns people into complete zombies and blocks memories from forming. So even after the drug wears off, victims have no recollection as to what happened.
Your brain on scopolamine
So how does this happen? How can a drug leave a person not only with amnesia, but with the inability to exercise free will.
Memories are facilitated through a brain chemical called acetylcholine. When Scopolamine comes onboard it competes with acetylcholine, wins the competition and blocks the acetylcholine receptor in the brain, so that the lock and key fit isn’t made. This lock and key fit — lock (acetylcholine receptor) fit with the key (brain chemical acetylcholine) — is important in how you make memories.
What we remember goes through three key stages: the initial making of the memory (encoding), creation of long-term memories (storage/consolidation) and recall (retrieval).
Scopolamine blocks the first stage, memory encoding, which takes place in the hippocampus – an area critical for memory. In other words, the information never gets stored in the first place.
So you can understand why scopolamine is so popular with criminals such as rapists and robbers. But what makes it popular for criminals, makes it troubling for police. According to Reuters, since scopolamine completely blocks the formation of memories, unlike most date-rape drugs used in the United States and elsewhere, it is usually impossible for victims to ever identify their aggressors.
“When a patient (of U.S. date-rape drugs) is under hypnosis, he or she usually recalls what happened. But with scopolamine, this isn’t possible because the memory was never recorded,” said Dr. Camilo Uribe, the world’s leading expert on the drug.
And freewill?
An inability to react to external aggression (submissive behavior), probably associated with another part of the brain called the amygdala.
Diagram showing locations of several important parts of the human brain as viewed from the front.
In a post called “The amygdala–our inner nut,” Jean Browman explains
The amygdala is one of the two almond-shaped (the name comes from the Greek word for almond) groups of nuclei that are responsible for our fight-or-flight response. (Actually we have two, one on each side of the brain.) One of the things amygdalae do is shut down the thinking part of our brain so we can take immediate action in an emergency. In some cases this can save our lives.
Or as you will learn in the documentary, take our lives.
As Wired UK reported last year, “we can only speculate that the criminal underworld has unwittingly stumbled upon one of the greatest discoveries of 21st-century neuroscience.”
Except, the discovery might not be so unwitting, after all. Before the criminals used scopolamine, scopolamine was used on the criminals.
Scopolamine and “twilight sleep”
At the beginning of the twentieth century, physicians began to use scopolamine, along with morphine and chloroform, to induce to induce a state of ‘twilight sleep’ during childbirth. While under the influence of the drugs, the women suffered less from labor pains, but experienced somnolence, drowsiness, disorientation, hallucinations and amnesia. Mothers woke up after giving birth, not remembering what happened.
But in 1916 the rural Texan obstetrician Robert House noticed the drug had another unusual effect: that although the new moms were unable to remember what happened during delivery, they were nonetheless able to answer questions accurately and often volunteered exceedingly candid remarks.
House had asked a patient’s husband for the scales to weigh the newborn. When the man could not find them his wife, still in a semi-conscious limbo, said “They are in the kitchen on a nail behind the picture.”
House concluded that “without exception, the patient always replied with the truth. The uniqueness of the results obtained from a large number of cases examined was sufficient to prove to me that I could make anyone tell the truth on any question.”
Enter the CIA
Because of the residual effects in newborns, the technique was abandoned in the mid 60’s. But before it was abandoned in the 1960s, it caught the eye of the CIA.
According to the Central Intelligence Agency website, “In 1922 it occurred to House that a similar technique might be employed in the interrogation of suspected criminals.” and he arranged to interview under scopolamine two convicts from the Dallas county jail who volunteered as test subjects to demonstrate their innocence. To authorities, however, their guilt ” seemed clearly confirmed,” the article states.
Under the drug, both men denied the charges on which they were held; and both, upon trial, were found not guilty. One of the prisoners afterwards confirmed House’s hypothesis: “After I had regained consciousness I began to realize that at times during the experiment I had a desire to answer any question that I could hear, and it seemed that when a question was asked my mind would center upon the true facts of the answer and I would speak voluntarily, without any strength of will to manufacture an answer.’
The CIA says: Enthusiastic at this success, House concluded that a patient under the influence of scopolamine “cannot create a lie” Because he said the drug ‘will depress the cerebrum to such a degree as to destroy the power of reasoning’. … there is no power to think or reason.”
His experiment and this conclusion attracted wide attention, and the idea of a “truth” drug was thus launched upon the public consciousness.
Scopolamine in Interrogation: “Truth Serum”
The phrase “truth serum” is believed to have appeared first in a news report of House’s experiment in the Los Angeles Record, sometime in 1922.
But in time, what was found with infants when they induced twilight sleep during children, was also found with criminals during interrogations: the residual effects out weighed the benefits. According to the CIA:
Because of a number of undesirable side effects, scopolamine was shortly disqualified as a “truth” drug. Among the most disabling of the side effects are hallucinations, disturbed perception, somnolence, and physiological phenomena such as headache, rapid heart, and blurred vision, which distract the subject from the central purpose of the interview.
Furthermore, the physical action is long, far outlasting the psychological effects.
The CIA writes that only a handful of cases in which scopolamine was used for police interrogation came to public notice, though there is evidence suggesting that some police forces may have used it extensively.
“One police writer claims that the threat of scopolamine interrogation has been effective in extracting confessions from criminal suspects, who are told they will first be rendered unconscious by chloral hydrate placed covertly in their coffee or drinking water.”
Placed covertly in their coffee or drinking water. Sound familiar?
Why is the drug such a rampant problem in Colombia?
According to Reuters, some analysts blame it on a culture of crime in the Andean nation, home to the world’s largest kidnapping and cocaine industries, not to mention Latin America’s longest-running guerrilla war. But according the young prostitute has another idea: She says everything about using scopolamine is about hurting people.
Pure and cheap, scopolamine is that country’s way, at least in part, she says, of hurting others who themselves have been hurt. Her cocky bravado melts away, just for a moment during the video, when she describes that this is the only way she knows how to live.
She describes that she learned this behavior while living on the streets in order to survive her childhood. In an unguarded and searing moment, the camera pans the room and shows the viewer shots of teddy bears that surround her as she explains further that having the life that she has and being hurt in the past, makes her feel like she is worthless.
A person who does not hold value within themselves, because they’ve never experienced someone of worth holding value for them, so that they internalize they themselves are worthy of care, will reflect that in not holding value for others. She confirms this when she says that since her life doesn’t matter it doesn’t matter what she does.
As she wipes tears away and before the bravado returns, she reflects, that she never wanted or imagined having a life doing what she does. “I never imagined it,” she says.
Read more: http://digitaljournal.com/article/324779#ixzz22SV8gEpK
“Scopolamine is a drug like no other. Nothing can compare,” said Demencia Black, a Colombian drug dealer, to Vice’s Ryan Duffy during an interview that was later compiled into a full-length, investigatory documentary. “You could be walking … and suddenly ‘poof’ (implying that you quickly blow scopolamine powder in someone’s face) … with just that flash the person is totally drugged.”
“You wait a minute and when you see it kick in, then you know that you own that person. You can guide them wherever you want. It’s like they’re a child. You say, ‘Take me to your house, give me your checkbook, take out your savings, give me your credit card numbers,’ just like that.”
This is precisely what happened to a woman named Carolina who was drugged with scopolamine and apparently told to rob her own house, and hand over the belongings to her captors. Though she does not remember any of it, Carolina says she happily gathered all of her belongings, as well as her boyfriend’s savings and camera equipment, and helped load it up into the vehicles of her captors.
Carolina counts herself blessed, despite her losses, as many others have had much worse things done to them while under the influence of scopolamine. Reports indicate that scopolamine is often used for much worse crimes, including as a means by which to influence a person to commit more atrocious acts like rape or even murder.
All of this information about scopolamine brings to mind the recent Batman massacre in Colorado which, as we reported on recently, does not seem to match the official story (http://www.naturalnews.com). Incongruous evidence and conflicting eyewitness reports have led many to wonder whether James Holmes, the man being blamed for the crimes, was under the influence of mind-control drugs during the incident that caused him to become the convenient scapegoat for a much more sinister agenda instigated by outside forces. (http://www.naturalnews.com)
Threat of Mercury Poisoning Rises With Gold Mining Boom
One rainy evening in the gold mining city of Segovia in northeastern Colombia, José Leonardo Atehortua was working late at the refinery — or entable — where miners bring their ores to be processed. Atehortua entered the cramped, concrete room and began his labor — roasting balls of amalgam composed of equal parts gold and mercury, an ancient process used to separate one of the world’s most valuable elements from one of the most toxic.
The next thing Atehortua remembers it was morning. He wanted to rise to his feet, to say something, but when he tried to speak saliva poured uncontrollably over his lips and down his chin. He had tunnel vision. He was unable to move his eyes. His limbs were stiff as a plank. He was lying on a cot in the entable surrounded by men saying “José está azogado” — Jose is mercuried.
The mercury poisoning of Atehortua reflects a growing threat in Colombia and other parts of the world as small-scale gold mining expands in response to rising gold prices. Gold and mercury are interdependent commodities. When the price of gold increases — as it has since 2002 — so does mercury pollution. The source of this pollution is a little known but widely practiced variety of small-scale gold mining, found throughout rural districts of the developing world.
To separate precious gold from common stones, small-scale miners cart their ore to town, where it is mixed with mercury in cylindrical mills filled
An estimated 15 to 20 million gold prospectors are now active in more than 60 countries.
with steel balls that grind the ore into a fine flour. Mercury and gold bind as one, until, sundered by fire, the more volatile mercury is vaporized from the elemental union. The result, in backwater towns like Segovia, can be the exposure of large numbers of people to high levels of mercury vapor, which, in extreme cases like Atehortua’s, can lead to life-threatening mercury poisoning.
The small-scale mining sector, much of it illegal and unregulated, is expanding worldwide faster than at anytime in history and, with it, the health threats posed by mercury. This global gold rush began in Brazil in the late 1970s, before sweeping every mineralized country in South America, Asia, and Africa, with an estimated 15 to 20 million prospectors now active in more than 60 countries.
Today’s small-scale mining industry is motivated less by adventure than survival. Poverty-driven miners rely on inexpensive, outdated, polluting technologies and chemicals — chief among them mercury — with heavy costs for human health and the environment.
Nowhere is this problem of mercury contamination more urgent than in Colombia. Gold mining is Colombia’s fastest growing industry, with 200,000 small-scale miners producing more than 50 percent of the country’s gold. This growth has turned Colombia into the world’s leading per-capita emitter of mercury, especially in states such as Antioquia, where Segovia is located.
Ground-level concentrations of mercury gas in gold-processing hamlets like Segovia are so high, experts fear the outbreak of an environmental health crisis worse than any caused by mercury since Minamata, Japan, where releases of mercury from a factory in the mid-20th century killed more than 1,700 people. Last year, scientists working for the United Nations Global Mercury Project recorded levels of mercury gas in Segovia’s center — near public schools and crowded markets — 1,000 times higher than World Health Organization limits.
As Atehortua was being transported to a local clinic, he recalled how nausea and headache had punished him with such intensity the previous night that he had stopped his work to lie down. Unable to be treated at the clinic, Atehortua was sent to the state capital, Medellín, where his blood could be filtered with activated carbon. There the doctors told him to dictate a will. “You are going to die,” they said.
(Atehortua later told his story to Kris Lane, a professor of Latin American history at the College of William & Mary, who interviewed Atehortua in 2008 and 2009 as part of his research for his book on Colombian mining, The Colour of Paradise. Lane relayed Atehortua’s story to me.)
In the ensuing weeks, Atehortua’s molars fell out; he was besieged by ringing in his ears, loss of hearing and appetite, impaired vision and
Segovia and four nearby cities release as much as 100 tons of mercury each year into the air and soil.
balance, and damaged kidneys — ailments common to acute mercury vapor intoxication. But somehow kidney dialysis worked, and, slowly, movement returned to his arms and legs. Four months later, Atehortua returned to the entable, famous among Segovia’s miners as the azogado who had miraculously recovered from paralysis.
“Unfortunately, people in Segovia say about José Atehortua, ‘Too bad for him, but great story,’ rather than ‘Watch out or this could happen to you,’” says Lane.
It is unclear what made the night of Atehortua’s poisoning different from other nights. One theory is that the unusually late shift occurred in the entable just as the air temperature was dropping and the day’s accumulated mercury vapor was precipitating from the ceiling. What is clear is the attack on Atehortua’s nervous system ought to have sounded alarms about an imminent threat to the urban residents of Antioquia’s mining regions.
“There is no other case in the world like this where an urban population of 150,000 people is exposed to such high levels of mercury vapor,” says Marcello Veiga, a professor of geochemistry and mining engineering at the University of British Columbia and former director of the United Nations Global Mercury Project. “The entables must move from the cities.”
Ordinarily, gold processing occurs in rural districts or industrial zones, away from densely-populated areas. But in Colombia, where security forces are preoccupied battling violence from all directions, the risks of working in the bush are too extreme to operate unprotected. (While I was there last fall, bandits robbed and murdered four brothers at their mine.) So gold refiners seek the security of city centers. In Segovia and four nearby cities, an estimated 350 entables release 50 to 100 metric tons of mercury each year into the air and soil of northeast Antioquia.
Yet cases where mercury-afflicted miners return to work in heavily contaminated areas remain common because of the Colombian Health Ministry’s practice of testing urine rather than blood; only blood tests can gauge how much mercury may have reached a person’s brain. “When the level of mercury in urine is normal,” Veiga says, “the patient can return to the same polluted work environment, without any evaluation of how much mercury has accumulated in the brain.”
Meanwhile, evidence is accumulating that more chronic varieties of the acute symptoms endured by Atehortua are affecting the most vulnerable segment of the population. In neurological tests administered to 196 children in Segovia, aged 7 to 13, 96 percent failed at least one measure of intoxication, whose indicators include attention, memory, language, and executive functions. These data are included in a UN health report, published in January, which describes the mercury situation in Antioquia as “dramatic.”
“It is no exaggeration,” the report concludes, “that in Segovia and Remedios” — the towns are adjacent — “the proportion of the population exposed to a high risk of mercury intoxication approaches 100 percent.”
After the birth of industrial-scale mining in the late 19th century, small-scale mining receded to the corners of crumbling, impoverished states, offering a refuge for the global poor — “drought-driven work” — during periods of privation and crop failure. Unlike industrial mining operations, small-scale mines never abandoned mercury. Cheap, abundant, and easy to use, mercury used in gold mining causes 30 percent of global mercury pollution, eclipsing all sources except mercury gas emitted from coal-fired power plants. But because of a widespread perception that small-scale mining was no longer a global force, serious efforts to document these toxic emissions only began in the last decade.
In Colombia, two modest technical adjustments — adding mercury after, rather than during, the grinding of ores, and capturing its vapor in ovens — could eliminate nearly all mercury emissions from entables. But most miners and processors lack the resources to change, while the country’s culture of conflict means there are no easy solutions.
Operating entables inside municipal limits has been illegal in Colombia since 1995, when a federal decree gave mayors a ten-year window to relocate refineries. Ten years turned into 15. The federal government pointed to the state agencies, the state to the mayors, the mayors to the miners, all to no effect. The mayors did not want to lose their votes. They also did not want to lose their lives.
At a September meeting of 55 public officials in Medellin, Miguel Enrigue Franco Menco, the mayor of Nechí — another gold mining town in Antioquia — issued a sober lament of his state’s mercury crisis. “Responsibility falls on the mayors,” he said. “But behind the gold market
‘The proportion of the population exposed to a high risk of mercury intoxication approaches 100 percent,’ said the UN.
there is violence threatening us, and public officials are turning a blind eye to this problem. We have fear.”
The mayor of Nechí was countered, swiftly and unsentimentally, by a vow from the region’s attorney general, Fanny Enriquez, to imprison any mayor who failed to move the entables. “Comply with the law!” she cried into a microphone, drowning protests from miners and mayors.
During my recent trip to Colombia, I had planned to tour entables in Segovia, but protests over the arrival of a Canadian mining company made that journey impossible. Trade union leaders were persuading miners that UN efforts to curb mercury emissions were part of a foreign conspiracy to expropriate their mines under environmental pretense.
I went instead to the town of Amalfi, visiting a small mine with modest quarters for sleeping six, a privy, and a kitchen. Under a tin roof were eight ball-mills, lined up next to each other near an opening in the rock face just wide enough for a cart the size of a small sled to be wheeled down into the darkness.
The mine starts as a sharply sloping tunnel descending 50 or 60 meters, before leveling off into the first large opening where dynamite had blasted a space big enough to stand upright. From here the miners had followed quartz veins, expanding underground into a disorienting series of tunnels that dip another 50 meters, leaving you fatigued from ducking beneath low clearings and squeezing between narrow walls.
Carted up from the mine below, the ores are run through a sluice to strain and separate large from small rocks, then combined with mercury in the ball-mills where they are ground for five or six hours. After that, the floured concentrate is panned in a wide-lipped cedar bowl, until what’s left is the gold and mercury amalgam, ready to be burned.
“Of course we know miners who are mercuried,” said Cesar Zapata, the mine’s operator. “We want to change. The problem is we don’t know how, and we don’t have means. And we don’t have means because we are not legal.”
Many miners are aware of the danger posed by mercury. One common practice to keep from inhaling mercury vapor is for miners to hold a large leaf over the roasting amalgam. “The problem,” said Oseas García Rivera, who directs a mercury pollution project administered jointly by the government and UN, “is they take that leaf and go like this” — he pretended
Development experts view environmental needs as inseparable from questions of poverty and property.
to throw something into the forest — “so the mercury ends up in the environment anyway.”
Garcia is among an increasingly vocal wing of development practitioners who view environmental needs as inseparable from questions of poverty and property. Only when miners have access to credit and capital, the thinking goes, can they invest sustainably in pollution controls. And without formal mining claims, small-scale gold miners in Colombia and elsewhere have no collateral against which they can borrow.
But mobilizing governments to recognize mineral rights in the small-scale mining economy is a struggle, especially when foreign companies wield influence through investment in large-scale resource extraction.
Among small-scale miners, the perception is they are engaged in a game that is rigged against them. “The companies arrive and the laws are immediately changed to help them, while we have to wait ten years to get titles,” says Roberto Lema Castro, president of a national miners association called Fenamicol.
Such problems present a vexing paradox: Acute environmental health crises such as urban mercury emissions demand immediate intervention, yet sustainable solutions lie in healing deeper social and political afflictions.
“We have too many problems to expect one big solution,” García Rivera says. “But what we can hope for is to get a group of entables, five or ten, to try a different way, and use mercury as an excuse, a tool, to create a progressive process.”Source
Rational Conflict Resolution: What Stands In the Way?
by Johan Galtung, 14 May 2012 – TRANSCEND Media Service
Basel, Switzerland, World Peace Academy
Six conflicts, four current, one past and one future are shaping our present reality. Conflict is a relation of incompatibility between parties; not an attribute of one party. It spells danger of violence and opportunity to create new realities. Thus, to understand the shoa the narratives of unspeakable German atrocity and infinite Jewish suffering are indispensable. But so are the narratives of German-Jewish relations, Germans to others, Jews to others. Failure to do so blocks rationality: if conflict is in the relation, then the solution is in a new relation. This is not blaming the victim. What matters most is changing the relation. Are we able?
First case: USA vs Latin America-Caribbean. The recent meeting of the Organization of American States ended 32 against 1, USA. The 32 wanted Cuba readmitted and decriminalization of marijuana. Obama vetoed both; the relation a scandal, overshadowed by a sex scandal.
Solution: The USA yields to democracy on both, negotiates some time for the transition, and a review clause after 5 years. The USA also welcomes CELAC–the organization of Latin American and Caribbean states without USA and Canada–with OAS as a meeting ground for equitable and amicable South-North relations. Washington would be embraced by CELAC and the whole world. A sigh of relief. And the world could continue its fight against the far more lethal tobacco.
What stands in the way? A falling empire clinging to the past, fear of looking weak, elections, huge problems like a crisis economy and social disintegration: Charles Murray Coming Apart and Timothy Noah The Great Divergence. Backyard treatment of the US backyard.
Second case: Israel vs Iran; the nuclear issue; war or not. Uri Avnery[i]: “–in our country we are now seeing a verbal uprising against the elected politicians by a group of current and former army generals, foreign intelligence [Meir Dagan, Mossad] and internal security [Yuval Diskin, Shin Beth] chiefs–condemn the government’s threat to start a war against Iran, and some of them condemning the government’s failure to negotiate with the Palestinians for peace.”
Diskin: “Israel is now led by two incompetent politicians with messianic delusions and a poor grasp of reality. Their plan to attack Iran will lead to a world-wide catastrophe. Not only will it fail to prevent the production of an Iranian atom bomb–it will hasten this effort–with the support of the world community.
Uri Avnery on the not exactly dialogical, talmudic response:
“They did what Israelis almost always do when faced with serious problems or serious arguments; they don’t get to grips with the matter itself but select some minor detail and belabor it endlessly. Practically speaking no one tried to disprove the assertions of the officers, neither concerning the proposed attack on Iran nor the nuclear issue. They focused on the speakers, not on what was said: Dagan and Diskin are embittered because their terms of office were not extended. They felt humiliated–venting personal frustration”. Then Diskin on Netanyahu: “a Holocaust obsessed fantasist, out of contact with reality, distrusting all Goyim, trying to follow in the footsteps of a rigid and extremist father-altogether a dangerous person to lead a nation in real crisis” according to Avnery.
Solution: A Middle East nuclear free zone with Iran and Israel; 64 percent of Israelis are in favor, Iran the same provided Israel is in it. Could also be a model for the Korean peninsula. Agreement to try, a sigh of relief all over, both countries would be embraced.
There are problems: under whose auspices and whose monitoring. How about Pakistan and Ali Bhutto’s “islamic bomb”, impossible without India that has superpower denuclearization as condition?
There are answers, all worth discussing, in depth, seriously.
Israel is wasting its time. A wonderful talmudic tradition, a precious freedom of expression–generally very present in Ha’aretz–and misused for personal abuse instead of for solutions to very real crises. Like Peter Beinart, The Crisis of Zionism, and Gershom Gorenberg, The Unmaking of Israel (2011).
What stands in the way? The horrors of the past defining the discourse. Like some Iraqis use the Baghdad massacre in 1258, some Israelis use the holocaust as a framework for world events, blind to the differences, and to what could have been done at that time. And many let this pass not to hurt Israeli-Jewish feelings or for fear of being labeled as anti-Semites or holocaust-deniers. Not Dagan, Diskin and some generals. Nor real friends searching for solutions: not anti-Semites, nor holocaust deniers, nor prisoners of the past.
Third case: Israel vs Palestine. I have argued since 1971 a Middle East Community of Israel with five Arab neighbors, Palestine recognized according to international law, 1967 borders with some exchanges, Israeli cantons on the West bank and Palestinian cantons in northwest Israel. Solution: A two-state Israel-Palestine nucleus within that six-state community within an Organization for Security and Cooperation in the Middle East (or West Asia). Model: Germany-France 1950, + EEC as of January 1 1958, + OSCE from 1990 onwards. Open borders, a council of ministers, commissions for water, border patrols, economy; capitals in the two Jerusalems; right of return, also for Palestinians: numbers to be discussed, as Arafat insisted.
What stands in the way? Key Israeli and Arab contra-arguments: “Surrounded by hostile Arabs we cannot let them in that close, they overpower us numerically, push us into the sea” says one; “The Jews penetrate us economically and run our economies”, says the other.
There are answers: Decisions would have to be by consensus. Start slowly with free flow of goods, persons, services and ideas; settlement and investment perhaps later. Build confidence. Change a relation badly broken by naqba into a peaceful, evolving relation.
Fourth case: A recipe for disaster: minorities, outsiders in key niches like economy-culture: Turks vs Armenians, Hutus vs Tutsis, Indonesians vs Chinese. But not Malays vs Chinese due to Mahathir’s discrimination in favor of the majority. Israel would gain from lifting the Arabs out of this social rank discordance; also a feature of Germany. Add the Versailles Treaty humiliation, Hitler and willing executioners.
Solution? Cancel the Versailles treaty in 1924, lift the German majority through education and employment into equality and we might have avoided World War II in Europe. What is rationality? Not justify, but explain, understand, and then remove the causes!
What stood in the way? Very few thought of this.
So much for a major fourth conflict of the past. Fifth case: rampant US anti-Semitism, now latent, using scapegoating to explain the decline of the USA and Israel; failing to grasp solutions for their eyes, both lost in the past, one in glory, one in trauma.
Imagine USA losing even more: support from allies, the magic of being exceptional-invincible-indispensable gone, torn between misery at the bottom and incredible riches at the top, the dollar no longer a world reserve currency, etc. A real fear right now: rampant anti-Semitism in the USA. This must be handled constructively, not by churning out anti-Semitism certificates, scaring US congressmen from questioning Israel, thereby jeopardizing US democracy itself. The tipping point from christian zionism to an anti-Semitism against Israel, Wall Street and American Jews in general may be close.
Solution: The US mainstream media become more pluralistic, less monochromatic, opening up to a range of discourses and solutions. Criticism of Israel and Wall Street is not enough, constructive solutions are needed. A solution culture, not a blaming culture. Like the ideas above for USA vs CELAC, Israel vs Iran, Israel vs Arab states. Nothing extreme, outlandish, and much to discuss.
But mainstream media constructive discussions are few in the US. There are hundreds of points to be made, like there once were when Europe was emerging from the ruins of World War II. Instead of degrading and humiliating Germany two brilliant French invited them into the family (now with its problems). Let thousand good ideas blossom! There is too much about the Cartagena sex scandal and too little about new ways of lifting the bottom of US poor into dignity, reducing the ever increasing inequality devastating the US economy.
What stands in the way? Clinging to the past, vested interests, the war industry, a blaming culture rather than a solution culture. But vast majorities and new and old media should be able to overcome.
Sixth case, very much related to this: debt bondage. China-Japan-EU vs USA; Germany vs Greece-Italy-Portugal-Spain-Ireland (GIPSI); the World Bank vs the Third World, with John Perkins’ Confessions of an Economic Hit Man as a gruesome illustration.
Yes, I have mentioned that fabrication by the Russian secret police, the Protocols–a conspiracy revealed long time ago. But like Mein Kampf condemnation is not enough, better know what one talks about. The Protocols read like a textbook on how to get others into debt bondage, starting with making workers believe they can be better paid and how these entitlements as they are called in the US debate can push a country into bondage. The first reaction to credit is a sigh of relief, the second is not knowing how to cut expenses or make some income to service the debt. The third is hatred mobilizing old traumas–look at Greece and Germany.
Solution: debt forgiveness, and contracting fewer debts. The time horizon can vary, and it must be accompanied by mobilization of all internal resources to lift the bottom up from suffering and into some acquisitive power, rejuvenating countrysides with agricultural cooperatives, trade among GIPSI countries. The threat to EU today is not only a single currency with no treasury–much better would have been the euro as a common currency–but a debt bondage gradient in what should be a more egalitarian community. The material out of which aggression is made. Not only forgiveness but also stimulus would be in Germany’s interest relative to the EU periphery, and the same goes for China relative to the USA (possibly coupled to agreed reduction of their arms budgets), and to the World Bank in general.
What stands in the way? Long on neo-liberal market ideology, short on eclecticism, of all good ideas, for alternative economies.
Conclusion: Humanity has vast positive and negative experiences. We should all join building on them, wherever they can be found.
(*) Some recent statements of mine, quoted out of context, have hurt some feelings. I apologize most sincerely for that, it was entirely unintended. One such context was the Breivik case in Norway with its many ramifications. A deeper context are the six conflicts addressed in this presentation.
NOTE:
[i] Uri Avnery, “A Putsch against War.” TRANSCEND Media Service-TMS May 7 2012.
_______________
Johan Galtung, a Professor of Peace Studies, is Rector of the TRANSCEND Peace University-TPU. He is author of over 150 books on peace and related issues, including ‘50 Years – 100 Peace and Conflict Perspectives’ published by the TRANSCEND University Press-TUP.
Editorials and articles originated on TMS may be freely reprinted, disseminated, translated and used as background material, provided an acknowledgment and link to the source, TRANSCEND Media Service-TMS, is included. Thank you.
Piping profits: the secret world of oil, gas and mining giants : the documentation
Ten of the world’s most powerful oil, gas and mining companies own 6,038 subsidiaries and over a third of them are based in secrecy jurisdictions, a new Publish What You Pay (PWYP) Norway report today reveals.
Secrecy jurisdictions facilitate illicit financial flows, to which the developing world loses US$1 trillion a year. The financial opacity created by the use of secrecy jurisdictions also undermines trust in markets and damages market efficiency.
Examining companies’ annual reports and stock exchange filings, PWYP Norway identified and located all of these companies’ subsidiaries. The report, Piping Profits found that:
2,083 (34.5%) of the 6,038 subsidiaries belonging to the 10 of the world’s most powerful Extractive Industry companies are incorporated in secrecy jurisdictions.
The global Extractive Industry’s favourite place to incorporate is by far the US state of Delaware with 15.2% of the subsidiaries located there.
The second favourite Extractive Industry Company (EIC) Secrecy Jurisdiction is the Netherlands, where 358 subsidiaries belonging to EI giants are based.
Chevron is the most opaque EIC major in this study. 62% of Chevron’s 77 subsidiaries are located in Secrecy Jurisdictions. ConocoPhillips is the second most opaque oil and gas major in this report with 57% of its 536 subsidiaries incorporated in Secrecy Jurisdictions.
Chevron, Conoco and Exxon are the three US EI major companies surveyed in this report. Combined, 439 (56.1%) of those three North American oil majors’ 783 subsidiaries are incorporated in Secrecy Jurisdictions.
Glencore International AG is the most opaque mining company in the Piping Profits survey with 46% of its 46 subsidiaries incorporated in Secrecy Jurisdictions.
These findings are of critical concern as natural resources offer the largest financial potential to improve economic and social opportunities for hundreds of millions of people living in least developed and emerging countries. By incorporating over a third of their subsidiaries in secrecy jurisdictions, the extractive industry is potentially complicit in suppressing these opportunities.
This is why, in order to combat this veil of secrecy, PWYP Norway believes every company should publish their full revenues, costs, profits, tax and the amount of natural resources it has used, written off and acquired in any given year in every country it operates. This is known as country-by-country reporting (CBCR).
The enormous scale of the Extractive Industry’s reliance on secrecy jurisdictions, which have the potential to be used by companies in complicated ownership structures to shroud revenues and profits, comes as pressure mounts on US and EU policymakers to come up with measures that could counter corruption and aggressive tax avoidance by forcing companies to reveal key financial information in every country where they do business.
Mona Thowsen, national co-ordinator of Publish What You Pay Norway, said: “What this study shows is that the extractive industry ownership structure and its huge use of secrecy jurisdictions may work against the urgent need to reduce corruption and aggressive tax avoidance in this sector.
“This is why there is a large and growing body of opinion throughout the world now demanding the introduction of CBCR because it is a vital tool to reduce corruption, secrecy and aggressive tax avoidance that particularly harms people in developing and emerging economies.”
The Piping Profit report also involved journalists from Bolivia and Ecuador attempting to establish key financial and operational performance information from strategically important natural resource companies in their countries. However a month-long concerted attempt to gain information from companies yielded nothing, reflecting the veil of secrecy which citizens face in the campaign to find out what is happening to their resources.
“I always heard it was very complex – and sometimes even dangerous – to obtain financial information about Extractive Industry activities,” said Bolivian Marco Escalera, co-ordinator for major Southern Hemisphere campaign group Somos Sur, after spending six weeks attempting to draw out key financial information from EICs operating in his country. “Whether it is the extractive industries or the state itself, they close ranks against the common enemy: civil society questions. The story is repeated over and over again: Access to timely and reliable information is not good enough.”
Notes to Editors
1) The 10 Extractive Industry Companies featured in Piping Profits are BP, Chevron, ConoccoPhillips, Exxon, Royal Dutch Shell plus Anglo-American, Barrick Gold Corporation, BHP Billiton, Glencore International AG and Rio Tinto.
2) All data was based on these companies’ subsidiaries and taken from Annual Returns filed at Companies House in the UK and Stock Exchange filings made at the US Securities Exchange Commission and the Toronto Stock Exchange in Canada.
3) Secrecy Jurisdictions are defined using an Opacity Score benchmark which was devised as part of the 2009 Financial Secrecy Index. All jurisdictions which scored over 50% are defined as Secrecy Jurisdictions. Our study, Piping Profits also scored companies against Tax Haven Lists created by the IMF and the US Internal Revenue Service. Please see the attached report.
4) Delaware is an acknowledged headquarters of global corporate secrecy where among other things details of trusts on public record are not available; international regulatory requirements are not sufficiently complied with; company accounts are not available on public record; beneficial ownership of companies is not recorded on public record and company ownership details are not maintained in official records.
5) The Netherlands is the largest host of conduit companies worldwide and is an important jurisdiction for corporate internal debt shifting.
6) The 2010 Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Act (Dodd-Frank) requires all American firms to report to the SEC the detailed payments made to any state in which it operates. The SEC is finalising how those rules will be applied. In addition, the European Commission is expected to present proposals for country-by-country financial reporting for extractive companies to the European Parliament and EU member states in October 2011 Source
The Global Competitiveness Report 2011-2012: the Documentation the IMF and the LIES
The Global Competitiveness Index 2011–2012: Setting the Foundations for Strong Productivity
XAVIER SALA-I-MARTINBEÑ AT BILBAO-OSORIO JENNIFER BLANKE MARGARETA DRZENIEK HANOUZTHIERRY GEIGER
World Economic Forum
The Global Competitiveness Report 2011–2012
is coming out at a time of re-emerging uncertainty in the global economy. At the beginning of the year, worldwide recovery appeared fairly certain, with economic growth for 2011 and 2012 projected by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) at 4.3 percent and 4.5 percent,respectively. However, the middle of the year saw uncertainties regarding the future economic outlook-emerge, as growth figures for many economies had to be adjusted downward and the political wrangling inthe United States and Europe undermined confidence in the ability of governments to take the necessary steps to restore growth.Recent developments reinforce the observation that economic growth is unequally distributed and highlight the shift of balance of economic activity. Onthe one hand, emerging markets and developing econo-mies, particularly in Asia, have seen relatively strong economic growth—estimated at 6.6 and 6.4 percent for 2011 and 2012, respectively, and attracting increasing financial flows. On the other hand, the United States, Japan, and Europe are experiencing slow and deceler-ating growth with persistent high unemployment and continued financial vulnerability, particularly in some European economies. GDP growth rates for advanced e conomies in 2011 are expected to remain at levels that,for most countries, are not strong enough to reduce the unemployment built up during the recession.In this context, policymakers across all regions are facing difficult economic management challenges. After closing the output gap and reducing the excess capacity generated during the crisis, emerging and developing countries are benefitting from buoyant internal demand,although they are now facing inflationary pressures caused by rising commodity prices. In advanced economies,the devastating earthquake in Japan and doubts about the sustainability of public debt in Europe, the United States, and Japan—issues that could further burden the still-fragile banking sectors in these countries—are undermining investor and business confidence and casting a shadow of uncertainty over the short-term economic outlook. Particularly worrisome is the situ-ation in some peripheral economies of the euro zone,where—in spite of the adoption of recovery plans— high public deficit and debt levels, coupled with anemic growth, have led to an increased vulnerability of the economy and much distress in financial markets, as fear sof default continue to spread. This complex situation in turn encumbers the fiscal consolidation that will reduce debt burdens to the more manageable levels necessary to support longer-term economic performance.
The Banana File Part VI : Bananas and Politics
———————————————————————
Chiquita SECRETS Revealed; Politics & History; “About the EU tour
that this minister in Panama wants to take is just highly dangerous
. . “And I was saying that we should, if we could politely do it
without ruffling too many feathers, get that minister’s trip
cancelled. So that would be exactly my program.” – Keith Lindner,
Chiquita vice chairman, on canceling the trip of Panamanian foreign
minister; Contributions buy influence
Publication: Cincinnati Enquirer
Date: May 3, 1998
By: CAMERON MCWHIRTER AND MIKE GALLAGHER
———————————————————————
Carl Lindner is well known in this town as a big contributor to both
Democrats and Republicans.
What is he getting for his money?
Mr. Lindner, chairman of the board and CEO of Chiquita Brands
International Inc., is buying the power of the White House and
Capitol Hill, according to advocates of campaign finance reform and
opponents of Chiquita’s trade battles with Europe.
“Although he has given more to Republicans, he has also been a
double giver. And double giving is the clearest evidence that this
money is not about elections, it’s about buying influence,” said Ann
McBride, president of Common Cause, the non-profit group leading
the campaign for finance reform. “The way Carl Lindner has given has
been to give to both parties so that no matter who wins, he’ll have
a place at the table.”
Mr. Lindner, a registered Republican who has spent at least two
nights at the Clinton White House, certainly has a place at the
table of the Democratic administration as well as both sides of the
aisle in Congress.
Mr. Lindner has made large contributions – totaling millions of
dollars – to Republican and Democratic candidates over the years.
But that largesse has come under scrutiny since 1993 when the
European Union established trade preferences limiting how many
bananas Chiquita could bring to Europe. Chiquita began asking the
White House to intervene while also making large donations to the
Democratic Party.
In 1995, the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office of the White House
took the company’s cause to the World Trade Organization (WTO), the
first case by the United States brought before the newly created
international body.
The U.S. decision to take up an international case on behalf of one
multinational company contributed to the recent debate about
campaign finance reform.
Dole and Del Monte, the two other large U.S. banana producers, did
not file requests with the White House. Dole proposed a compromise
in 1995 to avert the WTO action, but it was turned down.
Mr. Lindner and other Chiquita officials declined repeated requests
to meet with the Enquirer to discuss campaign contributions or any
other subject. Through attorneys hired to deal with the Enquirer,
Chiquita issued the following written statement:
“Neither Carl Lindner Jr. nor any other Chiquita, United Brands, or
American Financial official has ever asked for or received any
promises in return for political contributions related to the WTO
(World Trade Organization) proceeding or any other matter, nor have
any such promises or quid pro quos (things given in exchange for
something else) been anticipated or expected by Mr. Lindner or
Chiquita.”
The White House also firmly denied any improper support for
Chiquita’s case because of Mr. Lindner’s donations.
“It’s absolutely not true and has no foundation in reality,” said
Jay Ziegler, spokesman for the White House’s trade office.
But the Enquirer has obtained, through the Freedom of Information
Act, correspondence between the White House, members of Congress and
Chiquita dealing with the European banana issue beginning in 1994.
Though many portions of the letters have been blacked out by the
government, the correspondence demonstrates the influence that
Chiquita exerts on the U.S. trade office.
The correspondence shows that:
Powerful congressional leaders sent letters to the White House
pressuring the administration to support Chiquita’s position.
Chiquita supporters included U.S. Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, U.S. Sen.
Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, U.S. Rep. and Speaker of the House Newt
Gingrich, R-Georgia, U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, U.S. Sen. and
Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-
Conn., and others who had received donations from either the
Lindners, their controlled companies or company officials.
Chief support appears to have come from Bob Dole, while he was still
the senior Republican senator from Kansas. Many of these letters
were faxed to the trade office by Carolyn Gleason, Chiquita’s trade
attorney, registered lobbyist and key liaison to the Clinton
administration on this issue. On one letter from Mr. Dole dated June
21, 1995, then U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor scrawled a
note to his staffers: “Please give me a way to proceed. Pressure is
going to grow. MK”
Chiquita’s lobbyist, Ms. Gleason, sent faxes to the trade office –
at the office’s request – providing policy position papers on the
banana issue for U.S. embassy staff around the world. Other faxes
show Ms. Gleason writing legislation on this issue for the trade
office to submit to the Federal Register.
Staff of the White House’s trade office discussed how to manage the
press to Chiquita’s advantage. In an e-mail message sent June 14,
1996, Ralph Ives, deputy assistant U.S. trade representative and the
Clinton administration’s point man on the banana issue, wrote about
a segment on the trade dispute that was being planned by public
television’s News Hour.
“Chiquita is urging that we either try to kill this (preferable, but
not sure how) or either Peter (Allgeier, a trade office staffer) or
I agree to be interviewed….I will find out more after talking with
Chiquita.”
The segment never ran. Producers at the News Hour told the Enquirer
that they did some initial reporting on the subject but never
planned to air a segment on the dispute.
Mr. Lindner held at least two meetings with high-level staff of the
White House. In addition, Chiquita’s lobbyist, Ms. Gleason, had
frequent contact with the office.
In one letter, dated July 19, 1995, Mr. Lindner, and his son, Keith,
wrote to Mickey Kantor that they hoped to meet soon to discuss “our
larger case strategy and to discuss our mutual efforts in greater
detail.” They had meetings before and after the letter. Senators,
including Mr. Glenn, also met with Mr. Kantor on Chiquita’s behalf.
Tape-recorded internal Chiquita voice-mails, provided to the
Enquirer by a company source, also show the influence that Chiquita
has with the White House’s trade office. In a Jan. 30 message from
Keith Lindner, Chiquita’s vice chairman, to Steven G. Warshaw,
company president and chief operating officer; Robert Olson, chief
counsel; Ms. Gleason and others, Mr. Lindner recommended that
Chiquita try to cancel the trip of Panamanian Foreign Minister
Ricardo Alberto Arias to the European Union.
“About the EU tour that this minister in Panama wants to take is
just highly dangerous,” Keith Lindner said, adding later, “And I was
saying that we should, if we could politely do it without ruffling
too many feathers, get that minister’s trip canceled. So that would
be exactly my program.”
Later that day, Ms. Gleason called Mr. Olson and others with a
voice-mail message stating the trip had indeed been canceled.
A Chiquita consultant met with the Panamanian minister and convinced
him that the U.S. trade office could not meet with him on Monday,
but only later in the week, she said. The later meeting meant the
minister would not have time to travel to the EU.
Ms. Gleason then learned that the U.S. trade office had scheduled a
meeting for Monday.
“USTR (the trade office) went ahead and scheduled a meeting on
Monday,” she said. “That has since been corrected.”
The trade office moved the meeting with Mr. Arias from Monday to
Wednesday, meaning the minister would not have time to visit Europe,
according to Ms. Gleason’s voice-mail message.
In a statement issued through its attorneys, Chiquita stated,
“Chiquita never asked the United States Trade Representative to
reschedule meetings with the Panamanian foreign minister.”
Minister Counselor Fernando Eleta at the Panamanian Embassy in
Washington, D.C., said he could not believe “Chiquita would do
something like that.” He said he would withhold comment, however,
until he had a chance to review the Enquirer article.
Today, Chiquita plays a major role in formulating U.S. banana trade
policy. At the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
ba-nana conference in Rome last May, the U.S. delegation consisted
of three U.S. trade diplomats and four other people listed as
“advisers.”
The advisers were Michael O’Brien, president of European Offices of
Chiquita; Manuel Rodriguez, Chiquita’s assistant general counsel
from Cincinnati; Ms. Gleason; and Robert Moore, the head of a banana
trade group that represents the entire industry. No one from Del
Monte or Dole was represented on the U.S. delegation. According to
the head of the FAO’s Intergovernmental Group on Bananas, delegation
advisers are chosen by the individual governments.
Through Ms. Gleason, a partner in the law firm of McDermott, Will &
Emery, Chiquita presents its views in meetings and telephone calls
with Amy Wynton, chief of Agriculture for the State Department and
other top Clinton officials.
The Chiquita-State Department connection extends even further. When
an Enquirer reporter called the U.S. Embassy in Honduras to ask
about a former embassy staffer now working for Chiquita, embassy
staff said they could not provide the information. According to an
internal, tape-recorded voice-mail message obtained by the Enquirer
from a company source, embassy staff informed Chiquita of the call
later that same day.
Washington favors
Opponents of Chiquita’s actions in Washington, D.C. say Chiquita has
bought White House support for a cause that will hurt U.S. allies
only to help the bottom line of the Cincinnati company.
“It’s a clear issue of buying trade favors,” said Randall Robinson,
the head of TransAfrica Forum, a Washington, D.C.-based lobbying
group for African and developing world issues. “The President ought
to be ashamed of himself.”
Mr. Robinson, initially a supporter of President Clinton, and his
wife, Hazel Ross-Robinson, have taken up the trade issue because
they feel that if Chiquita can remove Europe’s banana protections,
developing economies in the Caribbean and Africa will be severely
damaged.
Ms. Ross-Robinson, who lobbies for Caribbean countries in
Washington, D.C., has organized visits by several political leaders
to the Caribbean islands to meet with farmers and has brought
farmers from the Caribbean and Africa to lobby Congress.
Mr. Robinson, the leader of the successful boycott effort of
apartheid South Africa in the 1980s, has twice dumped bananas as a
protest in Washington, D.C. to call attention to what he sees as the
White House sellout. At his urging, prominent black Americans,
including Bill Cosby and Jesse Jackson, have written the White House
to express concern about the Clinton administration’s support for
Chiquita’s position.
Mr. Robinson and other Chiquita opponents point to April 1994, when
Mr. Lindner and his associates contributed hundreds of thousands of
dollars to numerous state Democratic parties, shortly after then
U.S. Trade Representative Kantor took the banana case to the WTO.
The money was donated to state parties and did not have to be filed
with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), making it harder to
track because the donations were spread among many offices.
Caribbean leaders saw the connection as a payback by President
Clinton to Mr. Lindner.
“There was no reason for them to go to the WTO,” said Jamaican
Ambassador to Washington, D.C. Richard Bernal. “We were given
assurances by Ambassador Kantor that the U.S. wanted to resolve
this. It was a breach of faith with the Caribbean.”
Recently, the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a non-profit research
institute focusing on Latin American issues, called on the Federal
Election Commission to investigate Mr. Lindner’s donations because,
they said, Mr. Lindner has “bought himself a U.S. foreign policy.”
According to a Common Cause analysis of soft money donations, Mr.
Lindner, relatives and officers of his companies gave a total of
$3,164,460 in “soft money” donations to Republican and Democratic
national fund-raising committees from 1988 through the first six
months of 1997. Most of the money went to Republicans.
Soft money donations can be given in an unlimited amount to
political committees. Contributions to individual candidates for
national office are restricted.
In March 1998, Common Cause ranked American Financial Group and
related companies as the fourth largest giver in soft money to both
parties in 1997. (Tobacco firm Philip Morris was the top giver.) The
group reported that American Financial, its subsidiaries and
executives gave $310,000 in soft money to Republicans and $75,000
to Democrats in 1997 alone.
Soft money donations are legal, but they have become the focal point
in the debate about campaign finance reform.
Ms. McBride said Mr. Lindner was “one of the biggest soft money
givers and one of the pioneers in double giving.”
Mr. Lindner’s donations have favored Republican candidates, but he
also has given millions to Democrats, and stayed in the Lincoln
bedroom twice at the invitation of President Clinton.
Mr. Lindner was called by Vice President Al Gore in October 1994
while the White House was considering diplomatic action against the
European Union on the trade issue. White House records reviewed by
the Associated Press show that in the following weeks, Lindner
companies and associates donated $250,000 to the Democratic National
Committee.
A Dec. 2, 1994, White House memo referred to the October calls made
by the Vice President from the White House. Mr. Lindner, one of the
persons named in the memo, was listed as giving $150,000, apparently
part of the $250,000, according to the Associated Press.
Another memo indicates that Mr. Lindner invited Vice President Gore
to stay at his Florida estate. According to the White House, Mr.
Gore did not take Mr. Lindner up on his offer.
Mr. Lindner’s and Chiquita’s reach in Washington, D.C. goes beyond
campaign contributions. Chiquita also has hired the influential
lobbying group Public Strategies Washington, Inc., paying it
$279,402.08 in 1996 alone.
“Carl Lindner and Chiquita are giving hundreds of thousands of
dollars to both Democrats and Republicans and are getting people to
support them,” said E. Courtenay Rattray, executive director of the
Jamaican banana exporting company Jamco. “This is just money
politics.”
But as Mr. Lindner’s supporters have pointed out in the past, Mr.
Lindner was involved in money politics long before the banana trade
issue in Europe. He was a major contributor to Richard Nixon. He
contributed heavily to Ronald Reagan’s candidacy, and helped fund
both of his inaugurations. He also gave heavily to George Bush’s
1988 and 1992 campaigns.
The Center for Public Integrity, a public interest group, stated in
a report that Mr. Lindner was one of the major “career patrons” of
Sen. Bob Dole. Mr. Lindner and Chiquita officials heavily supported
Mr. Dole’s 1996 presidential bid. Mr. Dole was also a frequent
passenger on Mr. Lindner’s private jet.
Despite recent calls for campaign finance reform, Mr. Lindner still
makes large contributions.
According to FEC reports on 1996 election cycle donations, Mr.
Lindner and other leading Chiquita and subsidiary officials gave to
the congressional and Senate campaigns in at least 35 states. They
also gave “soft money” contributions to political committees on both
sides of the aisle.
The bulk of the donations were given to Republican candidates, but
substantial funds went to Democratic “soft-money” organizations. For
example, Mr. Lindner himself gave money to the National Republican
Senatorial Committee and also to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign
Committee. The Clinton – Gore campaign, the Democratic National
Committee, the “DNC Services Corporation” and other soft money
groups also received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Mr.
Lindner, his family and officials of his companies, according to FEC
records stored on the computers of a non-partisan public interest
group, the Center for Responsive Politics.
For the 1997-1998 election cycle, FEC records show that as of April
1, Mr. Lindner’s American Financial Group has given $150,000 in soft
money to various committees, making the company the largest soft
money contributor in Ohio. The second largest soft money contributor
in the state is Mr. Lindner himself, with $125,000 in donations.
Mr. Lindner, his relatives and company officials also have given
thousands to various candidates and political action committees.
Candidates receiving money so far in the 1997-98 election cycle
include Mr. DeWine, Sen. Alphonse D’Amato, R-New York, Rep. Rob
Portman, R-Ohio, Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, and Rep. John Boehner,
R- Ohio.
Gary Ruskin, who runs the Congressional Accountability Project, a
Washington, D.C.-based interest group that tracks financial
contributions in Congress, said that he sees Mr. Lindner’s name
repeatedly when reviewing campaign finance filings.
“The guy is fascinating,” he said. “He shows up all the time.”
Mr. Lindner’s name often comes up in Capitol Hill discussions about
campaign finance reform.
The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, planning hearings on
campaign finance reform, issued subpoenas to Mr. Lindner and
Chiquita for documents regarding campaign contributions last August.
But the hearings were dropped in November, when chairman Sen. Fred
Thompson, R-Tenn., announced that his committee would not pursue the
issue, citing lack of cooperation from other politicians and
lobbyists.
The majority of Sen. Thompson’s committee had first-hand knowledge
of Mr. Lindner’s political giving. Both Mr. Thompson and Mr. Glenn,
the ranking Democrat, had received direct contributions from Mr.
Lindner. So had five of the other 10 committee members.
The World Trade Organization
The World Trade Organization was created in January 1995 to
implement the goals set out in several world trade agreements,
particularly the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The
objective of GATT is to reduce trade barriers among countries that
have signed the accord so that eventually nations can trade as
freely as possible. The United States, the European nations and most
of the major industrial economies of the world are members of GATT.
One of the key functions of the WTO, headquartered in Geneva,
Switzerland, is to resolve trade disputes between nations. A nation
that feels another GATT member is not trading fairly can ask for a
special WTO panel to investigate and resolve the matter. Only
nations can bring this request to the WTO, so Chiquita had to enlist
the help of the United States and several Latin American governments
to present its case against the European Union’s banana trade
restrictions.
(Copyright 1998)
———————————————————————
Chiquita SECRETS Revealed; Politics & History; “If Chiquita come in,
we are no way, they will do us in . . . We don’t know who to
believe anymore, and we don’t know the future.” – Humbert Nicholson,
small banana farmer in Grande Rivere, St. Lucia.; Island economies
on the line
Publication: Cincinnati Enquirer
Date: May 3, 1998
By: CAMERON MCWHIRTER AND MIKE GALLAGHER
———————————————————————
Chiquita’s efforts to end European trade protections for bananas
grown in the Carribean could devastate a string of tiny island
nations whose economies depend on small independent farmers who know
nothing else.
“We afraid, but we are still planting bananas because that is all we
know,” said Nicholas Espirit, 42, who farms four acres in the north
island village of Bells. “We scared about this Chiquita business.
It’s a pressure, man, it’s a pressure.”
Mr. Espirit worries about how to feed his five children if the
banana business – the vast bulk of the region’s exports – goes bust.
That scenario could happen if Chiquita gets its way in a world trade
dispute with the European Union (EU).
Currently, several developing nations – including the tiny Caribbean
islands of Dominica, St. Lucia and St. Vincent- receive preferences
for their bananas because they were former colonies of Europe.
Since 1993, the European Union has imposed an elaborate importing
system that granted preferences to former colonies that export
bananas while limiting access to the European market for banana
exporters with large operations in Central and South America.
Chiquita, backed by the Clinton administration, wants to end those
protections.
Both Chiquita and the Clinton administration, which has formally
taken Chiquita’s objections to the trade dispute panel of the World
Trade Organization (WTO), have stated repeatedly that their argument
is with the Europeans, not the Caribbean. But farmers on these
islands are convinced that if Chiquita gains a larger share of the
highly profitable European market, their tiny economies will be
crushed.
Through its attorneys, Chiquita issued a statement that the banana
regime set up by the European Union benefitted mainly “European
banana distributors, rather than Caribbean or African nations.”
Removing the European protections won’t just hurt these small
islands. It would have a severe impact on at least 10 independent
nations and European territories, from the Caribbean to Africa, a
combined population of almost 35 million.
The island nations of the Eastern Caribbean-Dominica, St. Lucia and
St. Vincent – would be among the hardest hit if the WTO’s ruling
stands and the system is dismantled.
“I’m not a very emotional man,” Peter Carbon, Dominica’s minister of
agriculture and environment, told the Enquirer. “But if we lose
bananas, there will be no country.”
The islands provide only a small percentage of bananas to Europe’s
protected market – at most 3 percent annually. All the countries and
territories that receive the protections account for only about 15
percent of all the bananas that go to Europe, according to the EU.
If Chiquita were to grab this market share, the European consumer
probably would notice little change at the local grocery. But the
business loss would have catastrophic implications for nations like
Dominica, St. Lucia and St. Vincent.
“The worst case scenario is you have increased poverty, increased
hunger, educational opportunities for children declining,” said
Lawrence Grossman, an expert on the Eastern Caribbean banana
industry and an associate professor at Virginia Tech. “What Chiquita
will gain compared to what will be lost in the Caribbean, well, it
truly creates a tragic situation.”
Bananas
Bananas were introduced to the Eastern Caribbean by the British at
the turn of the century. The crop did extremely well on the
mountainous, humid islands. For the first time, farmers had a large
export crop that would grow easily on the hillsides. Banana plants
could not survive a hurricane, but they would grow back after only
nine months or so. For small farmers, bananas have become a perfect
crop because they can be farmed year-round.
Today, the government of Dominica estimates that at least 20,000
people out of a workforce of 35,000 depend on the banana, or “le
fig” as it is known in the patois of that part of the world. The
estimates on St. Lucia and St. Vincent are considered about as high.
While bananas help the region’s economy, poverty still reigns. The
per capita gross domestic product on Dominica is estimated at about
$2,100, less than one-tenth the almost $25,000 per capita gross
domestic product of the United States. Signs of poverty are visible
everywhere on these islands, from the open sewers in the capital to
the shack homes of villages.
However, internal Chiquita documents obtained by the Enquirer show
that the company has made major political efforts in the islands
since 1994. That year the company sent representatives to St. Lucia
to make the offer of a joint venture with local growers. Under the
deal, Chiquita would have become the exclusive European distributor
of these islands’ bananas.
Chiquita hired G. Philip Hughes, former ambassador to the islands
under the Bush Administration, to meet with government and banana
industry officials in the Eastern Caribbean, according to company
records. His mission was to persuade them to create a joint venture
with Chiquita and transfer the island’s special banana export
licenses to Chiquita. Those licenses allow growers to ship a certain
number of bananas duty free to Europe.
Mr. Hughes said he was hired by Chiquita as a consultant for about
nine months.
“I knew the leaders in the governments intimately and I knew the
issues that they confronted economically,” said Mr. Hughes, who
currently is an executive for the Association for International
Practical Training, based outside Washington D.C.
Chiquita had a lot to gain from the venture, as it listed in one of
its executive summaries on the issue:
It would get the islands’ European banana trade licenses, allowing
Chiquita to send up to 2.5 million more tons of bananas to the
lucrative European market.
It would save money in shipping and in sending bananas to southern
Europe while shipping its Latin American bananas to the wealthier
markets of Northern Europe.
In its documents sent to island officials, Chiquita stress-ed that
it would provide the islands with technical support, offer slightly
more for bananas and other benefits.
Mr. Hughes, the former ambassador, had “reconnaissance meetings”
with government officials in the Eastern Caribbean as well as
Washington and New York. But despite lobbying efforts by Mr. Hughes,
officials on St. Lucia and other islands turned down Chiquita’s
offer.
“Chiquita was offering a terrific deal,” Mr. Hughes said. “But they
had one problem: the mind-set of the Caribbean leaders… The
leaders really had a negative mind-set about Chiquita. They really
considered it almost their enemy.”
When the island governments rejected the offer, Chiquita’s agents
went to the growers’ associations and in some cases to the farmers
themselves. The banana growers associations refused the offers
because they didn’t trust Chiquita’s intentions, according to
Rupert Gajadhar, chairman of the St. Lucia Banana Growers
Association.
Mr. Gajadhar said the offer from Chiquita agents was attractive to
some farmers and caused a split in the farmers movement. Tensions
between some farmers and the government led to violence, strikes and
riots. In 1993, two farmers were shot and killed and another 25 were
wounded when police opened fire on a roadblock set up by the Banana
Salvation Committee, a grassroots group of banana farmers.
Mr. Gajadhar said he believed the salvation committee today is
supported by Chiquita and that the group’s leader, Patrick Joseph,
meets regularly with Chiquita officials.
Mr. Joseph, a newly elected senator for the Labour Party, told the
Enquirer that he has met many times with Chiquita, but denied the
company was funding his operation.
“I always maintain that if Chiquita had given me money, and it means
that it would help the cause that I am fighting, I would accept the
money,” he said. “But so far they haven’t offered me money. Neither
am I asking them for any.”
Mr. Joseph said he and his supporters see the Caribbean banana
industry as a lost cause. Chiquita will destroy West Indian banana
production because it can grow bananas cheaper in Central America.
He said the government should focus its energies on helping banana
farmers find some other work.
“We do live in a capitalist society, and in capitalism the strong
eat up the weak. Basically, that’s what it is about,” he said.
Mr. Hughes said the company was simply trying to obtain island
licenses so it could sell more bananas under the banana protection
scheme created by the European Union.
But many banana farm leaders on St. Lucia see Chiquita as a sinister
force out to crush West Indian banana growers for the sake of
profit. Elias John, president of the St. Lucian National Farmers’
Association, said farmers initially thought the Chiquita agents
simply wanted to buy their bananas. But then farmers began to
believe Chiquita wanted to get control of the islands’ banana import
licenses to Europe.
“When we begin to get the truth, things were coming out about the
amount that they used for the American (presidential) campaign and
all that. We lost our faith and began to realize they were just
after us to destroy us,” he said.
Gripping a rusty cutlass while propping himself next to a banana
plant, farmer Humbert Nicholson surveyed his 15-acre hillside farm
in Grande Rivere, St. Lucia.
“If Chiquita come in, we are no way,” said the 53-year-old farmer.
“They will do us in.”
Standing in worn rubber boots caked with mud, wearing grimy pants
and a shirt so old the armpits have worn out, Mr. Nicholson is a
typical Eastern Caribbean banana farmer – hard working and poor.
“We don’t know who to believe anymore,” Mr. Nicholson said. “And we
don’t know the future.”
Decision could devastate islands
If the Caribbean banana industry collapses, the problem also could
hit the United States in a powerful way: a dramatic increase in
illegal drugs coming through the region.
“At the end of the day, when you have destroyed the economies of the
islands and other countries, what is the fallback position? Crime,
drugs, mass migration, insecurity of property,” said Grayson
Stedman, 56, the owner of a Dominican banana plantation and former
chief financial officer of a local banana farmers’ cooperative.
This view isn’t just being espoused by citizens of the Caribbean. In
1996, U.S. Gen. John Sheehan, commander of the U.S. Atlantic Command
responsible for drug interdiction efforts in the Caribbean, told a
Washington, D.C. policy forum that the Caribbean banana industry
must be maintained for U.S. interests.
“If you start deteriorating the economic infrastructure in the
region, it is going to become my problem,” he told the group.
The Caribbean islands are strategically located along key drug-
shipment points from Colombia. Drug Enforcement Agency officials
report that Colombia supplies most of the cocaine and much of the
marijuana for the U.S. illegal drug market. Desperate farmers with
empty fields and hungry children could make eager recruits for the
drug cartels, officials say.
Caribbean Islands worry about enonomic future, farms
The economies of the Windward Islands in the Eastern Caribbean have
been dependent on bananas for much of this century. If European
Union banana protections opposed by Chiquita are overturned, the
islands expect their already weak economies to collapse. Below are
two islands that will be hit the hardest.
Dominica
Population: 83,000
Size: 290 square miles
Top crops: bananas, citrus, mangoes
A former British colony, Dominica has been independent since 1978.
St. Lucia
Population: 159,639
Size: 238 square miles
Top crops: bananas, coconuts, cocoa
A former british colony, St. Lucia has been independent since 1979
Economies threatened
Other countries and territories that would be impacted if their
preferential access to the European Union was overturned include:
Jamaica (Caribbean)
population: 2.6 million
crops: sugar, coffee, bananas
Ivory Coast (West Africa)
population: 15 million
crops: coffee, rubber, bananas
Cameroon (West Africa)
population: 14.7 million
crops: cocoa, coffee, cotton, bananas
St. Vincent and the Grenadines (Caribbean)
population: 120,000
crops: bananas, coconuts
Martinique (Caribbean)
population: 403,000
crops: bananas
Guadeloupe (Caribbean)
population: 412,000
crops: bananas, sugar
Canary Islands (Atlantic)
population: 1.6 million
crops: bananas
The Banana File Part V:The Toxins and Chemicals used
———————————————————————
Chiquita SECRETS Revealed; Environment; Unregistered toxins used
despite claims
Publication: Cincinnati Enquirer
Date: May 3, 1998
By: CAMERON MCWHIRTER AND MIKE GALLAGHER
———————————————————————
Chiquita’s environmental partner, the Rainforest Alliance, claims
that Chiquita’s “Better Banana” certified farms “only use products
that are registered for use in the United States, Canada and
Europe,” according to the alliance’s “General Production Standards”
and agreed to by Chiquita.
But the Enquirer found that Chiquita systematically uses chemical
products on its certified farms that are not registered for use,
meaning they are not allowed to be used, in the United States,
Canada or one or more countries of the European Union.
These pesticides include:
Bitertanol, sold as Baycor: In documents provided to the Enquirer,
Chiquita stated that it has used this product since 1993. According
to documents provided to the Enquirer by the manufacturer – the
Bayer Corporation – the pesticide is not, and never has been,
registered for use in the United States. U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) spokesman Albert Heier confirmed that
bitertanol is not approved for use in the United States on bananas
or any other crop. The pesticides’ full impact on people or the
environment is not known at this time because the EPA has not
conducted tests on the product, Mr.
Heier said.
In a statement issued to the Enquirer through its attorneys,
Chiquita stated that company policy “allows only for the use of
agrichemicals that are approved by the United States Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) for use on bananas.”
Denise Kearns, spokesperson for the EPA on pesticide issues, said
that the EPA has set a “tolerance level” for bitertanol, that is the
level of detectable pesticide residue at which the EPA will allow a
crop to be imported into the United States. But this level, set
after scientific review, does not constitute approval for use in the
U.S. on bananas or any other crop, Ms. Kearns said.
Bitertanol also is not registered for use in Canada, according to
Antony Simpson, spokesman for Health Canada’s Pest Management
Regulatory Agency, the Canadian government’s counterpart to the
EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs. The pesticide is approved for
use in the European Union.
Chlorpyrifos, sold as Lorsban. This product is widely used by
Chiquita to put in plastic bags that hang over the banana bunches as
they grow. It is registered for use in the United States. However,
the EPA is reviewing safety levels for all organophosphate
compounds, and chlorpyrifos is one product that could be severely
restricted because of health and environmental risks, according to
published reports by the Washington State Department of Agriculture.
Last year, the EPA declared chlorpyrifos as a “Restricted Use
Product,” a restriction allowing for use only under special
circumstances with specific EPA approval.
Chlorpyrifos is not authorized for use in Finland and Sweden,
according to European Union government reports.
Carbofuran, sold as Furadan: This pesticide is used to combat
nematodes, small worms that attack the banana plants. Chiquita has
used the product since 1975. The product is listed by the EPA as
“severely restricted” in the United States. According to EPA
documents, the product’s high risk of danger to people and the
environment make it “a pesticide for which virtually all registered
uses have been prohibited by final government regulatory action,”
but it can still be used in some special cases. The product also is
severely restricted in Canada, according to Health Canada. Its use
is not authorized in Finland.
Ethoprop, sold as Mocap: This organophosphate also is registered for
use in the United States but is being reviewed by EPA. Like
chlorpyrifos it has been singled out as facing severe restrictions,
according to the Washington State Department of Agriculture.
Ethoprop is not registered for use in Canada, according to Health
Canada. It is not authorized for use in Finland, Sweden, Denmark and
Luxembourg, according to European Union government reports.
Terbufos, sold as Counter: This product is registered for use in the
U.S., but it is being reviewed by EPA for possible restrictions. It
is not authorized for use in Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Ireland, the
United Kingdom and Portugal according to European Union government
reports.
Azoxystrobin, sold as Bankit: This fungicide used in aerial spraying
is not registered for use in Canada, according to Health Canada.
Imazalil, sold as Fungaflor: This fungacide, applied to bananas
before shipment, is not registered for use in Canada, according to
Health Canada.
Tridemorph, sold as Calixin: This fungicide used in aerial spraying
is not registered for use in Canada, according to Health Canada. It
is not authorized for use in Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Portugal.
Where chemicals are approved for use
Chiquita’s environmental partner, the Rainforest Alliance, has
regulations to which Chiquita has agreed that state the company
cannot use chemicals on its alliance certified banana farms that are
not authorized for use in the U.S., Canada and Europe. But according
to Chiquita’s own list of approved pesticides, it does.
Chemicals: Azoxystrobin
Sold as: Bankit
Type: Fungicide
Used for: Black Sigatoka
Authorized for use in:
U.S.: Yes
Canada: No
European Union*: Unknown
Chemicals: Bitertanol
Sold as: Baycor
Type: Fungicide
Used for: Black Sigatoka
Authorized for use in:
U.S.: No
Canada: No
European Union*: Yes
Chemicals: Carbofuran
Sold as: Furadan
Type: Nematicide
Used for: Nematodes
Authorized for use in:
U.S.: Yes
Canada: Yes
European Union*: No
Chemicals: Chlorpyrifos
Sold as: Lorsban
Type: Insecticide
Used for: Insects
Authorized for use in:
U.S.: Yes
Canada: Yes
European Union*: No
Chemicals: Ethoprop
Sold as: Mocap
Type: Nematicide
Used for: Nematodes
Authorized for use in:
U.S.: Yes
Canada: No
European Union*: No
Chemicals: Imazalil
Sold as: Fungaflor
Type: Fungaflor
Used for: Crown Rot organisms
Authorized for use in:
U.S.: Yes
Canada: No
European Union*: Yes
Chemicals: Terbufos
Sold as: Counter
Type: Nematicide
Used for: Nematodes
Authorized for use in:
U.S.: Yes
Canada: Yes
European Union*: No
Chemicals: Tridemorph
Sold as: Calixin
Type: Fungicide
Used for: Black Sigatoka
Authorized for use in:
U.S.: Yes
Canada: No
European Union*: No
* A “no” in this column means that one or more of the 15 nations of
the European Union do not authorize the use of this chemical on its
farms.
Sources: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Health Canada and
European Union reports.
(Copyright 1998)
———————————————————————
Chiquita SECRETS Revealed; Environment; Workers sprayed in the
fields
Publication: Cincinnati Enquirer
Date: May 3, 1998
By: CAMERON MCWHIRTER AND MIKE GALLAGHER
———————————————————————
In the fiercely competitive banana trade, Chiquita Brands has made a
strong effort to set itself apart as the industry’s “environmental
leader.”
Chiquita’s brochures, posters and company website proudly trumpet
its partnership with the Rainforest Alliance, a New York-based
environmental group known worldwide for setting up environmental –
business partnerships.
Since 1993, the two have worked on the “ECO-O.K. – Better Banana”
program, an environmental certification to assure protection for
workers and the environment on Costa Rican farms of Chiquita’s
subsidiaries, Compania Bananera Atlantica Ltda. (COBAL) and the
Chiriqui Land Company. The program, originally called “ECO-O.K.” but
later changed to “Better Banana,” has since expanded to Chiquita
subsidiary farms in Panama and Colombia.
But an Enquirer investigation into Chiquita’s use of pesticides on
plantations shows disregard not only of the company’s stated
environmental guidelines and partnership agreements with the
alliance, but also the safety of its tens of thousands of field
workers.
The Enquirer found:
Aerial spraying when workers are in the fields, is a practice
condemned by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),
scientists and even Chiquita’s environmental partner, the Rainforest
Alliance. The spraying violates the rules of the “Better Banana”
program.
The Rainforest Alliance’s policy paper on the “Better Banana”
program states, “All workers and neighbors must be warned when
pesticides are being applied.” According to the program’s general
regulations, workers and neighbors are not supposed to be exposed to
aerial spraying.
Chiquita’s subsidiaries use pesticides in Latin America that are not
registered for use in the United States, Canada or Europe. They do
so even though Chiquita has issued public statements and agreed to
an environmental contract with the Rainforest Alliance that on its
farms certified by the alliance it will “only use products that are
registered for use in the United States, Canada and Europe.”
Chiquita subsidiary farms use pesticides in aerial spraying that are
highly toxic to fish and birds, contrary to Chiquita’s stated
environmental policies.
These findings come as the “Better Banana” project is under
criticism from scientists in Central America, Europe and the United
States. Chiquita’s showcase environmental program has been attacked
as disingenuous, superficial and unverifiable.
“The changes are more aesthetic than anything else,” said Catharina
Wesseling, a scientist with the Karolinska Institute of
Environmental Medicine in Stockholm, Sweden, and author of the book
Health Effects from Pesticide Use in Costa Rica. “They don’t address
the real problems.”
However, an executive of a Washington, D.C. – based conservation
group, Conservation International hired by Chiquita to visit its
certified subsidiary farms called the project “very positive.”
Scientists critical of the program say it doesn’t adequately address
a problem that the entire banana industry has been wrestling with
for decades: use of pesticides that endanger the health of workers,
villagers or the environment in Latin America.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which is responsible for
checking pesticide levels on bananas imported for American
consumers, said the overwhelming majority of bananas brought into
the United States and tested by the administration show pesticide
residue well within safety standards set by EPA. However,
scientists and environmentalists said the methods and amount of
pesticide use practiced by Chiquita and other large banana growers
endangers banana workers and the environment where the bananas are
grown.
Aerial spraying
Chiquita’s “Environmental Charter” states that the company works “to
protect the rainforest; to maintain clean water; to minimize the use
of agrochemicals; to reduce, re-use and recycle waste; to support
environmental education; and to ensure our workforce is well-trained
and works safely.” Those guidelines also are supported by the
Rainforest Alliance.
But the Enquirer has found that Chiquita subsidiaries have sprayed
toxic cocktails, varying mixtures of potent chemicals, on their
plantations without removing workers first. These aerial sprayings
can take place more than 40 times a year on plantations that are
threatened by a widespread banana disease. Often these pesticides
fall on workers, nearby villages, rivers or forests.
Eric Holst, coordinator for the Rainforest Alliance’s “Better
Banana” certification program in New York, said that aerial spraying
while workers are in the fields would be a violation of the
certification program. “We require that workers have protection from
the application of chemicals. That clearly is a violation.”
Through its attorneys, Chiquita provided the Enquirer with a list of
chemicals it has approved for use on its banana farms. For aerial
spraying, the company uses the fungicides propiconazole, benomyl,
mancozeb, azoxystrobin, thiophanate-methyl, tridemorph and
bitertanol.
Propiconazole and benomyl have both been found to be possibly
cancer-causing for humans by the EPA. Mancozeb, azoxystrobin,
thiophanate-methyl and tridemorph are considered hazards to fish by
the EPA. Bitertanol is not allowed for use on farms in the United
States, while azoxystrobin and tridemorph are not allowed for use in
Canada.
A source at Chiquita’s headquarters in Cincinnati provided the
Enquirer with tape recordings of internal voice-mail messages,
several of which dealt with the issue of aerial spraying while
workers are in the fields.
After the Enquirer asked Chiquita’s attorneys and a Rainforest
Alliance official about the company’s aerial spraying policy, Robert
Kistinger, president of Chiquita Banana Group based in Cincinnati,
said in an Oct. 29, 1997 voice-mail message to John Ordman,
Chiquita’s senior vice president of finance, that he wanted
officials to figure out “how quickly we can begin to implement a
procedure for taking our workers out of the fields when we spray …
It is something we have to think about getting done fairly quickly.”
For workers, the unannounced aerial spraying is a constant fear.
“Some of the workers are affected by the aerial spraying, especially
with rashes,” Luis Perez Jimenez, 31, a leaf cutter on COBAL’s
Cocobola plantation, said through a translator. “They never tell us
about the aerial spraying. We just see it coming and boom, it’s
here.”
Small crop dusters will fly low over the banana trees and emit
clouds of pesticides that settle over the tall, leafy plants. They
also settle on workers, nearby villagers, animals, and open water.
As two Enquirer reporters witnessed, on recently sprayed farms the
air is heavy with a stifling chemical stench. Breathing is difficult
and the pesticide residue covers everything.
At Cocobola, one of COBAL’s larger farms, and nearby COBAL’s Gavilan
farm hundreds of employees can be working in the fields at any one
time. The plantation, laced with irrigation canals, is adjacent to
Rio Sucio, a large river in northeast Costa Rica.
Mr. Perez, through a translator, said that a white film gets all
over his clothes and body when spraying occurs.
“I don’t get any protective clothing,” said Mr. Perez, whose job is
to cut diseased leaves from plants. “The white stuff gets all over
my arms and on my clothes. I get a lot of rashes.”
Jose Gomez, 45, another worker on the Cocobola plantation, also said
the planes come over with no warning.
“You’re just working and then suddenly you see it coming,” he told
the Enquirer as he stood amid lush rows of banana plants. “I try to
hide under the banana leaves when I hear the planes. If the
chemicals get on me, I get rashes on my back. I try to be careful
when the planes come. I try to protect myself under these leaves.”
Mr. Gomez, through a translator, said that he was afraid of the
long-term impact of the pesticides on his health, but this job was
the only work he could find in the region.
Under the “Better Banana” certification program touted by Chiquita,
workers who apply pesticides with spray packs are supplied with
protective clothing and training on how to handle pesticides. But
thousands of other field workers like Mr. Gomez, who do not apply
pesticides, receive no protective clothing. Enquirer reporters
observed, and were told by workers, union leaders and company
officials, that field workers not directly involved in the
application or storage of pesticides do not receive protective
clothing.
Speaking of the industry-wide problem of aerial spraying on banana
workers, Sandra Marquardt, an environmental consultant in San
Francisco who formerly headed up Greenpeace International’s efforts
to stop the U.S. export of banned pesticides, said, “These airplanes
come over and just nail the suckers.”
Dole and Del Monte, the two other large U.S. banana companies, also
employ aerial spraying. But neither has joined the “Better Banana”
program or publicly acknowledged any alliance with an environmental
group claiming to limit workers’ exposure to pesticides.
In response to Enquirer questions, Chiquita, through its attorneys,
issued a three-page statement on aerial spraying but did not address
the issue of workers being sprayed in the fields.
The company stated that the spraying was necessary to combat a
banana disease called Black Sigatoka.The airborne fungus causes
streaks on the plants, makes the fruit smaller and eventually kills
the plant if unchecked.
The attorneys said the company has hired environmental consulting
groups to conduct water monitoring of nearby rivers, and those
groups have found almost no contamination.
Despite the concerns ex-pressed by Mr. Kistinger in his October
voice-mail message, aerial spraying of fields while workers were in
them was still going on four months later.
In a Feb. 23 voice-mail message to Mr. Ordman, Mr. Kistinger
pointed out the company’s political and public relations problem
with continuing aerial spraying while workers are in the fields.
“One of the key focuses that we have not been successful so far …
has been the issue of aerial spraying,” Mr. Kistinger said. “The
environmental groups, the social groups, the NGO (non-governmental
organizations) say it is not right to be spraying people when they
are working in the field. … And so far we have been able to make
very little progress in this regard.”
Prodding his executives to develop an alternative to spraying
workers, Mr. Kistinger added that there is “enormous build-up of
pressure” from the public in Europe to protect banana workers.
Noting that steps must be taken to curb the practice, “even if
they’re small at this point” it is “very necessary to do from a
public relations’ standpoint.”
Chiquita recently has created an “environmental” website on which it
has posted a position paper on aerial spraying. On the website,
Chiquita states that spraying is necessary to protect the banana
crop. But the company stated it is working on several methods of
applying the pesticides from the ground, which it claims would
reduce pesticide exposure to workers and the environment.
Earth College science professor Jorge Arce Portuguez said Sigatoka
has become the major pest threatening the banana industry in recent
years. Earth College is an agricultural science college in central
Costa Rica partially funded by the U.S. government and supported by
dozens of major American universities. The industry’s only answer so
far has been to increase the potency and regularity of aerial
spraying, he said. But the disease has adapted quickly, becoming
resistant to many of the chemicals.
“In 1990, we controlled Sigatoka with more or less 25 to 30 aerial
sprayings per year,” he said. “Now, seven years later … we are
dropping by plane more than 40 times per year.”
Anti-Sigatoka chemicals make up the bulk of pesticides used on most
banana plantations, according to Lori Ann Thrupp, senior associate
and expert on sustainable agriculture at the World Resources
Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank on environmental
issues.
Drifting pesticides
In a 1996 edition of the science journal Ambio, Scott Witter,
associate professor at Michigan State University’s Institute of
International Agriculture, and colleague Carlos Hernandez published
a report on the Costa Rican banana industry that found that 15
percent of aerial pesticides completely drifted off the studied
plantations because of wind; 40 percent drifted away from the plants
and into the ground; and 35 percent washed off in the rain. Only 10
percent of the fungicide sprayed actually stayed on the plant.
“There’s considerable debate about how much drift there is,”
Professor Witter told the Enquirer. “We had in that article
references for as much as 90 percent of it not ending up on the
banana plants. Some of the transnationals say ‘no, no, it’s more
like only 40 percent that’s lost.’ But still that’s a lot of
fungicides going off into the water supply. You have a lot of the
poor folks who take their water directly from surface sources. They
end up ingesting these. Costa Rica is blessed with a tremendous
amount of rainfall, and so dilution in many instances becomes a
solution to some of the pollution.
But over time, it does tend to bio-accumulate.”
In a statement issued through its attorneys, Chiquita stated that it
is aware of the drift problem and has worked in recent years to
reduce drift by installing special pesticide spray nozzles on its
airplanes and other measures.
In the village of Bananito Norte, in the heart of banana country
southeast of the coastal city of Limon, Esther Rodriguez Anchia
lives with her husband and three children in a one-room wooden shack
next to Chiquita’s Super Amigo packing plant and Chiquita subsidiary
plantations.
When the crop dusters come over, her family is sprayed with the
chemicals, she said.
“There is no warning,” Mrs. Rodriguez said through a translator.
“It just comes, usually once a week but sometimes twice. My children
get very rashy when the planes come. I just have them run inside,
but we usually are stuck with the rashes. I’m very allergic myself,
so it’s much worse for me. I have to visit the doctor all the
time.,” she said.
Mrs. Rodriguez, 52, said the aerial spraying has made her hate the
village.
“I would love to fly away from here,” she said.
(Copyright 1998)
———————————————————————
Chiquita SECRETS Revealed; Life on a banana plantation; Growing
Chiquita bananas: pesticides and hard work
Publication: Cincinnati Enquirer
Date: May 3, 1998
By: Cameron McWhirter and Mike Gallagher
———————————————————————
On farms from Mexico to Ecuador, Chiquita and its affiliates grow
millions of bananas every year for consumers in North America and
Europe. The fruit is grown and harvested in a labor-intensive
process that involves an army of workers, lots of equipment,
crop-dusting airplanes, foam cushions, string, bags, special
cartons, refrigerated trucks and trains, and tons of pesticides.
While production methods vary slightly from plantation to
plantation, the basic operations illustrated below remain the same.
This illustration is a composite plantation, drawn from Enquirer
reporters’ visits to Chiquita subsidiary plantations and Chiquita-
affiliated farms in Honduras and Costa Rica, as well as interviews
with plantation workers and environmental scientists.
1. Commercial banana plants grow from 15 to 30 feet in height and
are grown in long rows on large irrigated plantations. Most bananas
consumed in the United States are grown in the lowlands of Central
and South America. The average banana plant produces fruit about
every nine months. The stem usually grows to contain about 150
bananas. When the manager decides, the fruit is cut green from the
plant and dropped carefully on the back of a worker carrying a
cushion to stop any bruising of the fruit.
2. Herbicides: To kill off other plants growing around the bananas,
workers apply herbicides. The chemicals are toxic and wash into the
ground and ground water during rains.
3. Nematicides: To kill off nematodes, small worms that attack
banana plants from the roots, workers cover the ground around the
plants with nematicides. These chemicals are highly toxic and make
an area extremely dangerous for 24 to 48 hours after application.
4. Banana plants do not have strong trunks, they can easily be
knocked over in a tropical windstorm. To prevent ‘blowdowns,’
workers tie the plants down with string.
5. Aerial spraying is an integral part of pesticide application in
commercial banana farming. The main purpose is to combat Black
Sigatoka, an airborne fungus that can destroy a plantation’s crop.
In areas that are infected with the fungus, including much of
Central America, airplanes may spray fields more than 40 times a
year.
The spray lands on the plants’ upper leaves, the ground, irrigation
canals, streams and rivers and nearby homes, workers and residents,
scientists told the Enquirer.
Workers on Chiquita subsidiary plantations and other farms producing
Chiquita bananas told the Enquirer that they receive no warning when
the planes come over and they often hide under banana leaves to
escape the pesticide dust. Nearby villagers complain the aerial
spraying often drifts into their yards, sending children running
into the houses to escape rashes. Many worker villages are located
close to banana plantations.
6. The water used in the in the packing plants to wash pesticides
off the bananas comes from the irrigation canals and then is routed
back out into the water supply. Chiquita has built berms in recent
years on some plantations to limit pesticides from flowing directly
into rivers. But many irrigation canals, laced throughout every
plantation, remain directly exposed to pesticides.
7. Plastic bags imbedded with the powerful chemical chlorpyrifos
protect the the growing fruit from insects throughout its entire
gestation. In previous years,the bags were simply discarded after
use, though the major banana companies have now started recycling
programs.
8. At harvesting, the stem is placed on a large overhead cable
system that runs throughout the plantation. Workers place foam
cushions among the fruit to stop bruising. The fruit is then pushed
along the cable toward the “Empacadora,” the packing plant.
9. In the packing plant, workers remove the cushions. Other workers
then cut the stems into smaller bunches.
10. The bunchesare then put in a “pila de seleccion,” a selecting
trough, where selectoras, usually women, choose the bananas and cut
them further down to shipping size with small hooked knives.
11. Larger troughs called ‘pilas des leches,” milk troughs, wash off
the pesticides applied in the fields as well as natural fluids from
the banana plant.
12. New pesticides are applied to the bunches after they are placed
on a conveyer belt. The new pesticides, either thiabendazole or
imazalil, are applied to prevent “crown rot,” a fungus that attacks
the extremities of the banana bunch. On some plantations, Chiquita
has installed small plastic containment systems that save money on
pesticide costs and reduce worker exposure to the pesticides. But
most plantations do not have this system, according to Chiquita
statements issued through its attorneys to the Enquirer.
13. Boxes of banana bunches, freshly applied with pesticides, are
put on large skids for shipment. On all the plantations visited by
the Enquirer, most workers viewed by reporters did not wear gloves
when handling the pesticide-covered bananas.
14. Trucks or trains are brought to the plant and loaded with the
skids. The bananas are taken to port, where the large refrigerated
containers are lifted onto ships. The ships then sail to various
destinations, usually in North America or Europe. About ten days to
two weeks after being harvested, the bananas are on display and for
sale at local groceries.
Pesticides in the banana ecosystem
The ecosytem of a banana plantation is extremely wet and hot. The
soil is very loose, helping the banana plants grow but also making
it easy for pesticides to spread throughout the system.
It often rains in these areas, flushing pesticides into the ground
and water table. The banana industry’s answer to this dissipation
has been to apply pesticides frequently.
Ways pesticides get into the environment:
Air: Airplanes drop toxic chemicals regularly from the air.
Pesticides fall on the plants, but also on workers, the ground and
irrigation canals and streams.
Ground: Workers apply pesticides to the ground around the plants.
These chemicals seep into the ground with every rainfall.
Water: Pesticides also get into water that is used to wash bananas
in the packing plants. That water then flows back into the
irrigation canals.
Bags: Plastic bags with the insecicide chlorpyrifos cover all the
banana bunches from their inception. The chemical leaks off the bags
in rain storms and flows into the ground and water.
Black Sigatoka
is a banana plant disease that plagues most areas where Chiquita
bananas are produced. The airborne fungus eats away at the plant
leaves, turning them black. The disease shrinks the size of the frui
and makes it ripen too quickly to be shipped to market. Eventually,
the disease kills the plant. Some researchers are now trying to find
a Sigatoka resistant banana that will still appeal to consumers,
but nothing has been discovered thus far. To date, the industry’s
reaction to the problem has been to increase aerial spraying of
powerful pesticides.
The roots of the banana
Humans have been cultivating bananas since almost the beginning of
civilization. Varieties of the plant are referred to in ancient
Chinese and Arabic manuscripts.
Believed by scientists to have developed in southeast Asia more than
4,000 years ago, the plant eventually spread to other parts of Asia
and into Africa. The species’ scientific classification, Musaceae,
comes from the Arabic word for the fruit, mu’uz. Spanish and
Portuguese explorers are believed to have come into contact with the
plant in their travels to West Africa, where they adopted a
variation of a local term, banana. Spanish explorers brought bananas
to the Americas in the 1500s.
Today hundreds of banana varieties thrive in almost every tropical
region of the world. But more than 90 percent of the bananas found
at grocery stores in the United States and Europe are one variety,
the yellow Gran Cavendish. The banana is one of the most productive
plants in the world. In the right climate and weather it produces
year round, and for decades at a time.
The plant itself is actually an herb. What looks like a trunk of a
banana “tree” is in fact densely packed leaves growing up from a
base clump of roots. The plants that produce commercial Gran
Cavendish bananas do not produce seeds for reproduction, and are
‘sexless’ perennials. Planted in rows on giant farms, they
regenerate after each harvest. The plant grows a stalk, called in
Latin America “la Madre” or the mother, which produces a purple stem
with white flowers from its center. The stem transforms into a large
‘hand’ of as many as 150 bananas each. The “hand,” which eventually
bends over from the weight of the fruit, can weigh up to 140 pounds.
The fruit is harvested before it is ripe, and cut into the bunches
that are transported to grocery stands. Once the fruit is harvested,
the stalk is cut and a little stalk , called “el hijo” or
“offspring” in Spanish, sprouts from the same root to begin the
process again. Bananas are comprised mostly of sugary carbohydrates,
but it is also a source of vitamins A and C as well as potassium.
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