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:

Company Profile: Exxon and the Ties to the Rockfellers

 

Web site: http://www.exxon.com

Public Company
Incorporated: 1882 as Standard Oil Company of New Jersey
Employees: 79,000
Sales: $117.77 billion (1998)
Stock Exchanges: New York Boston Cincinnati Midwest Philadelphia Basel Dusseldorf Frankfurt Geneva Hamburg Paris Zurich
Ticker Symbol: XON
NAIC: 211111 Crude Petroleum & Natural Gas Extraction; 324110 Petroleum Refineries; 324191 Petroleum Lubricating Oil & Grease Manufacturing; 325110 Petrochemical Manufacturing; 447100 Gasoline Stations; 486110 Pipeline Transportation of Crude Oil; 486910 Pipeline Transportation of Refined Petroleum Products; 212110 Coal Mining; 212234 Copper Ore & Nickel Ore Mining; 212299 All Other Metal Ore Mining; 221112 Fossil Fuel Electric Power Generation

As the earliest example of the trend toward gigantic size and power, Exxon Corporation and its Standard Oil forebears have earned vast amounts of money in the petroleum business. The brainchild of John D. Rockefeller, Standard Oil enjoyed the blessings and handicaps of overwhelming power—on the one hand, an early control of the oil business so complete that even its creators could not deny its monopolistic status; on the other, an unending series of journalistic and legal attacks upon its business ethics, profits, and very existence. Exxon became the object of much resentment during the 1970s for the huge profits it made from the OPEC-induced oil shocks. The uproar over the Exxon Valdez oil tanker spill in 1989 put the corporation once more in the position of embattled giant, as the largest U.S. oil company struggled to justify its actions before the public. At the end of the 1990s Exxon stood as the second largest of the world’s integrated petroleum powerhouses—trailing only the Royal Dutch/Shell Group. In addition to its oil and gas exploration, production, manufacturing, distribution, and marketing operations, Exxon was a leading producer and seller of petrochemicals and was involved in electric power generation and the mining of coal, copper, and other minerals. Exxon was also once again making history, through a proposed merger with Mobil Corporation, to create the largest petroleum firm in the world in one of the biggest mergers ever—and to reunite two of the offspring of the Standard Oil behemoth.
Prehistory of Standard Oil

The individual most responsible for the creation of Standard Oil, John D. Rockefeller, was born in 1839 to a family of modest means living in the Finger Lakes region of New York State. His father, William A. Rockefeller, was a sporadically successful merchant and part-time hawker of medicinal remedies. William Rockefeller moved his family to Cleveland, Ohio, when John D. Rockefeller was in his early teens, and it was there that the young man finished his schooling and began work as a bookkeeper in 1855. From a very young age John D. Rockefeller developed an interest in business. Before getting his first job with the merchant firm of Hewitt & Tuttle, Rockefeller had already demonstrated an innate affinity for business, later honed by a few months at business school.

Rockefeller worked at Hewitt & Tuttle for four years, studying large-scale trading in the United States. In 1859 the 19-year-old Rockefeller set himself up in a similar venture—Clark & Rockefeller, merchants handling the purchase and resale of grain, meat, farm implements, salt, and other basic commodities. Although still very young, Rockefeller had already impressed Maurice Clark and his other business associates as an unusually capable, cautious, and meticulous businessman. He was a reserved, undemonstrative individual, never allowing emotion to cloud his thinking. Bankers found that they could trust John D. Rockefeller, and his associates in the merchant business began looking to him for judgment and leadership.

Clark & Rockefeller’s already healthy business was given a boost by the Civil War economy, and by 1863 the firm’s two partners had put away a substantial amount of capital and were looking for new ventures. The most obvious and exciting candidate was oil. A few years before, the nation’s first oil well had been drilled at Titusville, in western Pennsylvania, and by 1863 Cleveland had become the refining and shipping center for a trail of newly opened oil fields in the so-called Oil Region. Activity in the oil fields, however, was extremely chaotic, a scene of unpredictable wildcatting, and John D. Rockefeller was a man who prized above all else the maintenance of order. He and Clark, therefore, decided to avoid drilling and instead go into the refining of oil, and in 1863 they formed Andrews, Clark & Company with an oil specialist named Samuel Andrews. Rockefeller, never given to publicity, was the “Company.”

With excellent railroad connections as well as the Great Lakes to draw upon for transportation, the city of Cleveland and the firm of Andrews, Clark & Company both did well. The discovery of oil wrought a revolution in U.S. methods of illumination. Kerosene soon replaced animal fat as the source of light across the country, and by 1865 Rockefeller was fully convinced that oil refining would be his life’s work. Unhappy with his Clark-family partners, Rockefeller bought them out for $72,000 in 1865 and created the new firm of Rockefeller & Andrews, already Cleveland’s largest oil refiners. It was a typically bold move by Rockefeller, who although innately conservative and methodical was never afraid to make difficult decisions. He thus found himself, at the age of 25, co-owner of one of the world’s leading oil concerns.

Talent, capital, and good timing combined to bless Rockefeller & Andrews. Cleveland handled the lion’s share of Pennsylvania crude and, as the demand for oil continued to explode, Rockefeller & Andrews soon dominated the Cleveland scene. By 1867, when a young man of exceptional talent named Henry Flagler became a third partner, the firm was already operating the world’s number one oil refinery; there was as yet little oil produced outside the United States. The year before, John Rockefeller’s brother, William Rockefeller, had opened a New York office to encourage the rapidly growing export of kerosene and oil byproducts, and it was not long before foreign sales became an important part of Rockefeller strength. In 1869 the young firm allocated $60,000 for plant improvements—an enormous sum of money for that day.
Creation of the Standard Oil Monopoly: 1870–92

The early years of the oil business were marked by tremendous swings in the production and price of both crude and refined oil. With a flood of newcomers entering the field every day, size and efficiency already had become critically important for survival. As the biggest refiner, Rockefeller was in a better position than anyone to weather the price storms. Rockefeller and Henry Flagler, with whom Rockefeller enjoyed a long and harmonious business relationship, decided to incorporate their firm to raise the capital needed to enlarge the company further. On January 10, 1870, the Standard Oil Company was formed, with the two Rockefellers, Flagler, and Andrews owning the great majority of stock, valued at $1 million. The new company was not only capable of refining approximately ten percent of the entire country’s oil, it also owned a barrel-making plant, dock facilities, a fleet of railroad tank cars, New York warehouses, and forest land for the cutting of lumber used to produce barrel staves. At a time when the term was yet unknown, Standard Oil had become a vertically integrated company.

One of the single advantages of Standard Oil’s size was the leverage it gave the company in railroad negotiations. Most of the oil refined at Standard made its way to New York and the Eastern Seaboard. Because of Standard’s great volume—60 carloads a day by 1869—it was able to win lucrative rebates from the warring railroads. In 1871 the various railroads concocted a plan whereby the nation’s oil refiners and railroads would agree to set and maintain prohibitively high freight rates while awarding large rebates and other special benefits to those refiners who were part of the scheme. The railroads would avoid disastrous price wars while the large refiners forced out of business those smaller companies who refused to join the cartel, known as the South Improvement Company.
Company Perspectives:

Ours is a long-term business, with today’s accomplishments a reflection of well-executed plans set in motion years ago. Likewise, Exxon’s success at building shareholder value in the future is dependent on plans we develop and implement today.

The following strategies have and will continue to guide Exxon as we strive to meet shareholder and customer expectations: identifying and implementing quality investment opportunities at a timely and appropriate pace, while maintaining a selective and disciplined approach; being the most efficient competitor in every aspect of our business; maintaining a high-quality portfolio of productive assets; developing and employing the best technology; ensuring safe, environmentally sound operations; continually improving an already high-quality work force; maintaining a strong financial position and ensuring that financial resources are employed wisely.

The plan was denounced immediately by Oil Region producers and many independent refiners, with near-riots breaking out in the oil fields. After a bitter war of words and a flood of press coverage, the oil refiners and the railroads abandoned their plan and announced the adoption of public, inflexible transport rates. In the meantime, however, Rockefeller and Flagler were already far advanced on a plan to combat the problems of excess capacity and dropping prices in the oil industry. To Rockefeller the remedy was obvious, though unprecedented: the eventual unification of all oil refiners in the United States into a single company. Rockefeller approached the Cleveland refiners and a number of important firms in New York and elsewhere with an offer of Standard Oil stock or cash in exchange for their often-ailing plants. By the end of 1872, all 34 refiners in the area had agreed to sell—some freely and for profit, and some, competitors alleged, under coercion. Because of Standard’s great size and the industry’s overbuilt capacity, Rockefeller and Flagler were in a position to make their competitors irresistible offers. All indications are that Standard regularly paid top dollar for viable companies.

By 1873 Standard Oil was refining more oil—10,000 barrels per day—than any other region of the country, employing 1,600 workers, and netting around $500,000 per year. With great confidence, Rockefeller proceeded to duplicate his Cleveland success throughout the rest of the country. By the end of 1874 he had absorbed the next three largest refiners in the nation, located in New York, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. Rockefeller also began moving into the field of distribution with the purchase of several of the new pipelines then being laid across the country. With each new acquisition it became more difficult for Rockefeller’s next target to refuse his cash. Standard interests rapidly grew so large that the threat of monopoly was clear. The years 1875 to 1879 saw Rockefeller push through his plan to its logical conclusion. In 1878, a mere six years after beginning its annexation campaign, Standard Oil controlled $33 million of the country’s $35 million annual refining capacity, as well as a significant proportion of the nation’s pipelines and oil tankers. At the age of 39, Rockefeller was one of the five wealthiest men in the country.

Standard’s involvement in the aborted South Improvement Company, however, had earned it lasting criticism. The company’s subsequent absorption of the refining industry did not mend its image among the few remaining independents and the mass of oil producers who found in Standard a natural target for their wrath when the price of crude dropped precipitously in the late 1870s. Although the causes of producers’ tailing fortunes are unclear, it is evident that given Standard’s extraordinary position in the oil industry it was fated to become the target of dissatisfactions. In 1879 nine Standard Oil officials were indicted by a Pennsylvania grand jury for violating state antimonopoly laws. Although the case was not pursued, it indicated the depth of feeling against Standard Oil, and was only the first in a long line of legal battles waged to curb the company’s power.

In 1882 Rockefeller and his associates reorganized their dominions, creating the first “trust” in U.S. business history. This move overcame state laws restricting the activity of a corporation to its home state. Henceforth the Standard Oil Trust, domiciled in New York City, held “in trust” all assets of the various Standard Oil companies. Of the Standard Oil Trust’s nine trustees, John D. Rockefeller held the largest number of shares. Together the trust’s 30 companies controlled 80 percent of the refineries and 90 percent of the oil pipelines in the United States, constituting the leading industrial organization in the world. The trust’s first year’s combined net earnings were $11.2 million, of which some $7 million was immediately plowed back into the companies for expansion. Almost lost in the flurry of big numbers was the 1882 creation of Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, one of the many regional corporations created to handle the trust’s activities in surrounding states. Barely worth mentioning at the time, Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, or “Jersey” as it came to be called, would soon become the dominant Standard company and, much later, rename itself Exxon.
Key Dates:

1870:
John D. Rockefeller and Henry Flagler incorporate the Standard Oil Company.
1878:
Standard controls $33 million of the country’s $35 million annual refining capacity.
1882:
Rockefeller reorganizes Standard Oil into a trust, creating Standard Oil Company of New Jersey as one of many regional corporations controlled by the trust.
1888:
Standard founds its first foreign affiliate, Anglo-American Oil Company, Limited.
1890:
The Sherman Antitrust Act is passed, in large part, in response to Standard’s oil monopoly.
1891:
The trust has secured a quarter of the total oil field production in the United States.
1892:
Lawsuit leads to dissolving of the trust; the renamed Standard Oil Company (New Jersey) becomes main vessel of the Standard holdings.
1899:
Jersey becomes the sole holding company for all of the Standard interests.
1906:
Federal government files suit against Jersey under the Sherman Antitrust Act, charging it with running a monopoly.
1911:
U.S. Supreme Court upholds lower court conviction of the company and orders that it be separated into 34 unrelated companies, one of which continues to be called Standard Oil Company (New Jersey).
1926:
The Esso brand is used for the first time on the company’s refined products.
1946:
A 30 percent interest in Arabian American Oil Company, and its vast Saudi Arabian oil concessions, is acquired.
1954:
Company gains seven percent stake in Iranian oil production consortium.
1972:
Standard Oil Company (New Jersey) changes its name to Exxon Corporation.
1973:
OPEC cuts off oil supplies to the United States.
1980:
Revenues exceed $100 billion because of the rapid increase in oil prices.
1989:
The crash of the Exxon Valdez in Prince William Sound off the port of Valdez, Alaska, releases about 260,000 barrels of crude oil.
1990:
Headquarters are moved from Rockefeller Center in New York City to Irving, Texas.
1994:
A federal jury in an Exxon Valdez civil action finds the company guilty of “recklessness” and orders it to pay $286.8 million in compensatory damages and $5 billion in punitive damages.
1997:
Company appeals the $5 billion punitive damage award; it reports profits of $8.46 billion on revenues of $120.28 billion for the year.
1998:
Company agrees to buy Mobil in one of the largest mergers in U.S. history, which would create the largest oil company in the world, Exxon Mobil Corporation.

The 1880s were a period of exponential growth for Standard. The trust not only maintained its lock on refining and distribution but also seriously entered the field of production. By 1891 the trust had secured a quarter of the country’ s total output, most of it in the new regions of Indiana and Illinois. Standard’s overseas business was also expanding rapidly, and in 1888 it founded its first foreign affiliate, London-based Anglo-American Oil Company, Limited (later known as Esso Petroleum Company, Limited). The overseas trade in kerosene was especially important to Jersey, which derived as much as threefourths of its sales from the export trade. Jersey’s Bayonne, New Jersey refinery was soon the third largest in the Standard family, putting out 10,000 to 12,000 barrels per day by 1886. In addition to producing and refining capacity, Standard also was extending gradually its distribution system from pipelines and bulk wholesalers toward the retailer and eventual end user of kerosene, the private consumer.
Jersey at Head of Standard Oil Empire: 1892–1911

The 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act, passed in large part in response to Standard’s oil monopoly, laid the groundwork for a second major legal assault against the company, an 1892 Ohio Supreme Court order forbidding the trust to operate Standard of Ohio. As a result, the trust was promptly dissolved, but taking advantage of newly liberalized state law in New Jersey, the Standard directors made Jersey the main vessel of their holdings. Standard Oil Company of New Jersey became Standard Oil Company (New Jersey) at this time. The new Standard Oil structure now consisted of only 20 much-enlarged companies, but effective control of the interests remained in the same few hands as before. Jersey added a number of important manufacturing plants to its already impressive refining capacity and was the leading Standard unit. It was not until 1899, however, that Jersey became the sole holding company for all of the Standard interests. At that time the entire organization’s assets were valued at about $300 million and it employed 35,000 people. John D. Rockefeller continued as nominal president, but the most powerful active member of Jersey’s board was probably John D. Archbold.

Rockefeller had retired from daily participation in Standard Oil in 1896 at the age of 56. Once Standard’s consolidation was complete Rockefeller spent his time reversing the process of accumulation, seeing to it that his staggering fortune—estimated at $900 million in 1913—was redistributed as efficiently as it had been made.

The general public was only dimly aware of Rockefeller’s philanthropy, however. More obvious were the frankly monopolistic policies of the company he had built. With its immense size and complete vertical integration, Standard Oil piled up huge profits ($830 million in the 12 years from 1899 to 1911). In relative terms, however, its domination of the U.S. industry was steadily decreasing. By 1911 its percentage of total refining was down to 66 percent from the 90 percent of a generation before, but in absolute terms Standard Oil had grown to monstrous proportions. Therefore, it was not surprising that in 1905 a U.S. congressman from Kansas launched an investigation of Standard Oil’s role in the falling price of crude in his state. The commissioner of the Bureau of Corporations, James R. Garfield, decided to widen the investigation into a study of the national oil industry—in effect, Standard Oil.

Garfield’s critical report prompted a barrage of state lawsuits against Standard Oil (New Jersey) and, in November 1906, a federal suit was filed charging the company, John D. Rockefeller, and others with running a monopoly. In 1911, after years of litigation, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s conviction of Standard Oil for monopoly and restraint of trade under the Sherman Antitrust Act. The Court ordered the separation from Standard Oil Company (New Jersey) of 33 of the major Standard Oil subsidiaries, including those that subsequently kept the Standard name.
Independent Growth into a “Major”: 1911–72

Standard Oil Company (New Jersey) retained an equal number of smaller companies spread around the United States and overseas, representing $285 million of the former Jersey’s net value of $600 million. Notable among the remaining holdings were a group of large refineries, four medium-sized producing companies, and extensive foreign marketing affiliates. Absent were the pipelines needed to move oil from well to refinery, much of the former tanker fleet, and access to a number of important foreign markets, including Great Britain and the Far East.

John D. Archbold, a longtime intimate of the elder Rockefeller and whose Standard service had begun in 1879, remained president of Standard Oil (New Jersey). Archbold’s first problem was to secure sufficient supplies of crude oil for Jersey’s extensive refining and marketing capacity. Jersey’s former subsidiaries were more than happy to continue selling crude to Jersey; the dissolution decree had little immediate effect on the coordinated workings of the former Standard Oil group, but Jersey set about finding its own sources of crude. The company’s first halting steps toward foreign production met with little success; ventures in Romania, Peru, Mexico, and Canada suffered political or geological setbacks and were of no help. In 1919, however, Jersey made a domestic purchase that would prove to be of great long-term value. For $17 million Jersey acquired 50 percent of the Humble Oil & Refining Company of Houston, Texas, a young but rapidly growing network of Texas producers that immediately assumed first place among Jersey’s domestic suppliers. Although only the fifth leading producer in Texas at the time of its purchase, Humble would soon become the dominant drilling company in the United States and eventually was wholly purchased by Jersey. Humble, later known as Exxon Company U.S.A., remained one of the leading U.S. producers of crude oil and natural gas through the end of the century.

Despite initial disappointments in overseas production, Jersey remained a company oriented to foreign markets and supply sources. On the supply side, Jersey secured a number of valuable Latin American producing companies in the 1920s, especially several Venezuelan interests consolidated in 1943 into Creole Petroleum Corporation. By that time Creole was the largest and most profitable crude producer in the Jersey group. In 1946 Creole produced an average of 451,000 barrels per day, far more than the 309,000 by Humble and almost equal to all other Jersey drilling companies combined. Four years later, Creole generated $157 million of the Jersey group’s total net income of $408 million and did so on sales of only $517 million. Also in 1950, Jersey’s British affiliates showed sales of $283 million but a bottom line of about $2 million. In contrast to the industry’s early days, oil profits now lay in the production of crude, and the bulk of Jersey’s crude came from Latin America. The company’s growing Middle Eastern affiliates did not become significant resources until the early 1950s. Jersey’s Far East holdings, from 1933 to 1961 owned jointly with Socony-Vacuum Oil Company—formerly Standard Oil Company of New York and now Mobil Corporation—never provided sizable amounts of crude oil.

In marketing, Jersey’s income showed a similar preponderance of foreign sales. Jersey’s domestic market had been limited by the dissolution decree to a handful of mid-Atlantic states, whereas the company’s overseas affiliates were well entrenched and highly profitable. Jersey’s Canadian affiliate, Imperial Oil Ltd., had a monopolistic hold on that country’s market, while in Latin America and the Caribbean the West India Oil Company performed superbly during the second and third decades of the 20th century. Jersey had also incorporated eight major marketing companies in Europe by 1927, and these, too, sold a significant amount of refined products—most of them under the Esso brand name introduced the previous year (the name was derived from the initials for Standard Oil). Esso became Jersey’s best known and most widely used retail name both at home and abroad.

Jersey’s mix of refined products changed considerably over the years. As the use of kerosene for illumination gave way to electricity and the automobile continued to grow in popularity, Jersey’s sales reflected a shift away from kerosene and toward gasoline. Even as late as 1950, however, gasoline had not yet become the leading seller among Jersey products. That honor went to the group of residual fuel oils used as a substitute for coal to power ships and industrial plants. Distillates used for home heating and diesel engines were also strong performers. Even in 1991, when Exxon distributed its gasoline through a network of 12,000 U.S. and 26,000 international service stations, the earnings of all marketing and refining activities were barely one-third of those derived from the production of crude. In 1950 that proportion was about the same, indicating that regardless of the end products into which oil was refined, it was the production of crude that yielded the big profits.

Indeed, by mid-century the international oil business had become, in large part, a question of controlling crude oil at its source. With Standard Oil Company (New Jersey) and its multinational competitors having built fully vertically integrated organizations, the only leverage remained control of the oil as it came out of the ground. Although it was not yet widely known in the United States, production of crude was shifting rapidly from the United States and Latin America to the Middle East. As early as 1908 oil had been verified in present-day Iran, but it was not until 1928 that Jersey and Socony-Vacuum, prodded by chronic shortages of crude, joined three European companies in forming Iraq Petroleum Company. Also in 1928, Jersey, Shell, and Anglo-Persian secretly agreed to limit each company’s share of world production to their present relative amounts, attempting, by means of this “As Is” agreement, to limit competition and keep prices at comfortably high levels. As with Rockefeller’s similar tactics 50 years before, it was not clear in 1928 that the agreement was illegal, because its participants were located in a number of different countries each with its own set of trade laws. Already in 1928, Jersey and the other oil giants were stretching the very concept of nationality beyond any simple application.

Following World War II, Jersey was again in need of crude to supply the resurgent economies of Europe. Already the world’s largest producer, the company became interested in the vast oil concessions in Saudi Arabia recently won by Texaco and Socal. The latter companies, in need of both capital for expansion and world markets for exploitation, sold 30 percent of the newly formed Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco) to Jersey and ten percent to Socony-Vacuum in 1946. Eight years later, after Iran’s nationalization of Anglo-Persian’s holdings was squelched by a combination of CIA assistance and an effective worldwide boycott of Iranian oil by competitors, Jersey was able to take seven percent of the consortium formed to drill in that oil-rich country. With a number of significant tax advantages attached to foreign crude production, Jersey drew an increasing percentage of its oil from its holdings in all three of the major Middle Eastern fields—Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia—and helped propel the 20-year postwar economic boom in the West. With oil prices exceptionally low, the United States and Europe busily shifted their economies to complete dependence on the automobile and on oil as the primary industrial fuel.
Exxon, Oil Shocks, and Diversification: 1972–89

Despite the growing strength of newcomers to the international market, such as Getty and Conoco, the big companies continued to exercise decisive control over the world oil supply and thus over the destinies of the Middle East producing countries. Growing nationalism and an increased awareness of the extraordinary power of the large oil companies led to the 1960 formation of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Later, a series of increasingly bitter confrontations erupted between countries and companies concerned about control over the oil upon which the world had come to depend. The growing power of OPEC and the concomitant nationalization of oil assets by various producing countries prompted Jersey to seek alternative sources of crude. Exploration resulted in discoveries in Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay and the North Sea in the late 1960s. The Middle Eastern sources remained paramount, however, and when OPEC cut off oil supplies to the United States in 1973—in response to U.S. sponsorship of Israel—the resulting 400 percent price increase induced a prolonged recession and permanently changed the industrial world’s attitude to oil. Control of oil was, in large part, taken out of the hands of the oil companies, who began exploring new sources of energy and business opportunities in other fields.

For Standard Oil Company (New Jersey), which had changed its name to Exxon in 1972, the oil embargo had several major effects. Most obviously it increased corporate sales; the expensive oil allowed Exxon to double its 1972 revenue of $20 billion in only two years and then pushed that figure over the $100 billion mark by 1980. After a year of windfall profits made possible by the sale of inventoried oil bought at much lower prices, Exxon was able to make use of its extensive North Sea and Alaskan holdings to keep profits at a steady level. The company had suffered a strong blow to its confidence, however, and soon was investigating a number of diversification measures that eventually included office equipment, a purchase of Reliance Electric Company (the fifth largest holdings of coal in the United States), and an early 1980s venture into shale oil. With the partial exception of coal, all of these were expensive failures, costing Exxon approximately $6 billion to $7 billion.

By the early 1980s the world oil picture had eased considerably and Exxon felt less urgency about diversification. With the price of oil peaking around 1981 and then tumbling for most of the decade, Exxon’s sales dropped sharply. The company’s confidence rose, however, as OPEC’s grip on the marketplace proved to be weaker than advertised. Having abandoned its forays into other areas, Exxon refocused on the oil and gas business, cutting its assets and workforce substantially to accommodate the drop in revenue without losing profitability. In 1986 the company consolidated its oil and gas operations outside North America, which had been handled by several separate subsidiaries, into a new division called Exxon Company, International, with headquarters in New Jersey. Exxon Company, U.S.A. and Imperial Oil Ltd. continued to handle the company’s oil and gas operations in the United States and Canada, respectively.

Exxon also bought back a sizable number of its own shares to bolster per-share earnings, which reached excellent levels and won the approval of Wall Street. The stock buyback was partially in response to Exxon’s embarrassing failure to invest its excess billions profitably—the company was somewhat at a loss as to what to do with its money. It could not expand further into the oil business without running into antitrust difficulties at home, and investments outside of oil would have had to be mammoth to warrant the time and energy required.
The Exxon Valdez: 1989–98

In 1989 Exxon was no longer the world’s largest company, and soon it would not even be the largest oil group (Royal Dutch/Shell would take over that position in 1990), but with the help of the March 24, 1989, Exxon Valdez disaster the company heightened its notoriety. The crash of the Exxon Valdez in Prince William Sound off the port of Valdez, Alaska, released about 260,000 barrels, or 11.2 million gallons, of crude oil. The disaster cost Exxon $1.7 billion in 1989 alone, and the company and its subsidiaries were faced with more than 170 civil and criminal lawsuits brought by state and federal governments and individuals.

By late 1991 Exxon had paid $2.2 billion to clean up Prince William Sound and had reached a tentative settlement of civil and criminal charges that levied a $125 million criminal fine against the oil conglomerate. Fully $100 million of the fine was forgiven and the remaining amount was split between the North American Wetlands Conservation Fund (which received $12 million) and the U.S. Treasury (which received $13 million). Exxon and a subsidiary, Exxon Shipping Co., also were required to pay an additional $1 billion to restore the spill area.

Although the Valdez disaster was a costly public relations nightmare—a nightmare made worse by the company’s slow response to the disaster and by CEO Lawrence G. Rawl’s failure to visit the site in person—Exxon’s financial performance actually improved in the opening years of the last decade in the 20th century. The company enjoyed record profits in 1991, netting $5.6 billion and earning a special place in the Fortune 500. Of the annual list’s top ten companies, Exxon was the only one to post a profit increase over 1990. Business Week’s ranking of companies according to market value also found Exxon at the top of the list.

The company’s performance was especially dramatic when compared with the rest of the fuel industry: as a group the 44 fuel companies covered by Business Week’s survey lost $35 billion in value, or 11 percent, in 1991. That year, Exxon also scrambled to the top of the profits heap, according to Forbes magazine. With a profit increase of 12 percent over 1990, Exxon’s $5.6 billion in net income enabled the company to unseat IBM as the United States’ most profitable company. At 16.5 percent, Exxon’s return on equity was also higher than any other oil company. The company also significantly boosted the value of its stock through its long-term and massive stock buyback program, through which it spent about $15.5 billion to repurchase 518 million shares—or 30 percent of its outstanding shares—between 1983 and 1991.

Like many of its competitors, Exxon was forced to trim expenses to maintain such outstanding profitability. One of the favorite methods was to cut jobs. Citing the globally depressed economy and the need to streamline operations, Exxon eliminated 5,000 employees from its payrolls between 1990 and 1992. With oil prices in a decade-long slide, Exxon also cut spending on exploration from $1.7 billion in 1985 to $900 million in 1992. The company’s exploration budget constituted less than one percent of revenues and played a large part in Exxon’s good financial performance. Meantime, Exxon in 1990 abandoned its fancy headquarters at Rockefeller Center in New York City to reestablish its base in the heart of oil territory, in the Dallas suburb of Irving, Texas. In 1991 the company established a new Houston-based division, Exxon Exploration Company, to handle the company’s exploration operations everywhere in the world except for Canada.

At the end of 1993 Lee R. Raymond took over as CEO from the retiring Rawl. Raymond continued Exxon’s focus on cost-cutting, with the workforce falling to 79,000 employees by 1996, the lowest level since the breakup of Standard Oil in 1911. Other savings were wrung out by reengineering production, transportation, and marketing processes. Over a five-year period ending in 1996, Exxon had managed to reduce its operating costs by $1.3 billion annually. The result was increasing levels of profits. In 1996 the company reported net income of $7.51 billion, more than any other company on the Fortune 500. The following year it made $8.46 billion on revenues of $120.28 billion, a seven percent profit margin. The huge profits enabled Exxon in the middle to late 1990s to take some gambles, and it risked tens of billion of dollars on massive new oil and gas fields in Russia, Indonesia, and Africa. In addition, Exxon and Royal Dutch/Shell joined forces in a worldwide petroleum additives joint venture in 1996.

Exxon was unable—some said unwilling—to shake itself free of its Exxon Valdez legacy. Having already spent some $1.1 billion to settle state and federal criminal charges related to the spill, Exxon faced a civil trial in which the plaintiffs sought compensatory and punitive damages amounting to $16.5 billion. The 14,000 plaintiffs in the civil suit included fishermen, Alaskan natives, and others claiming harm from the spill. In June 1994 a federal jury found that the huge oil spill had been caused by “recklessness” on the part of Exxon. Two months later the same jury ruled that the company should pay $286.8 million in compensatory damages; then in August the panel ordered Exxon to pay $5 billion in punitive damages. Although Wall Street reacted positively to what could have been much larger damage amounts and Exxon’s huge profits placed it in a position to reach a final settlement and perhaps put the Exxon Valdez nightmare in its past, the company chose to continue to take a hard line. It vowed to exhaust all its legal avenues to having the verdict overturned—including seeking a mistrial and a new trial and filing appeals. In June 1997, in fact, Exxon formally appealed the $5 billion verdict. Exxon seemed to make another PR gaffe in the late 1990s when it attempted to reverse a federal ban on the return to Alaskan waters of the Exxon Valdez, which had by then been renamed the Sea-River Mediterranean. Environmentalists continued to berate the company for its refusal to operate double-hulled tankers, a ship design that may have prevented the oil spill in the first place. In addition, in an unrelated but equally embarrassing development, Exxon in 1997 reached a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission in which it agreed to run advertisements that refuted earlier ads claiming that its high-octane gasoline reduced automobile maintenance costs.
Nearing the Turn of the Century: Exxon Mobil

In December 1998 Exxon agreed to buy Mobil for about $75 billion in what promised to be one of the largest takeovers ever. The megamerger was one of a spate of petroleum industry deals brought about by an oil glut that forced down the price of a barrel of crude by late 1998 to about $11—the cheapest price in history with inflation factored in. Just one year earlier, the price had been about $23. The oil glut was caused by a number of factors, principally the Asian economic crisis and the sharp decline in oil consumption engendered by it, and the virtual collapse of OPEC, which was unable to curb production by its own members. In such an environment, pressure to cut costs was again exerted, and Exxon and Mobil cited projected savings of $2.8 billion per year as a prime factor behind the merger.

Based on 1998 results, the proposed Exxon Mobil Corporation would have combined revenues of $168.8 billion, making it the largest oil company in the world, and $8.1 billion in profits. Raymond would serve as chairman, CEO, and president of the Irving, Texas-based goliath, with the head of Mobil, Lucio A. Noto, acting as vice-chairman. Shareholders of both Exxon and Mobil approved the merger in May 1999. In September of that year the European Commission granted antitrust approval to the deal with the only major stipulation being that Mobil divest its share of a joint venture with BP Amoco p.l.c. in European refining and marketing. Approval from the Federal Trade Commission proved more difficult to come by, as the agency was concerned about major overlap between the two companies’ operations in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic region. The FTC was likely to force the companies to sell more than 1,000 gas stations in those regions as well as accede to other changes to gain U.S. antitrust approval.
Principal Subsidiaries

Ancon Insurance Company, Inc.; Esso Australia Resources Ltd.; Esso Eastern Inc.; Esso Hong Kong Limited; Esso Malaysia Berhad (65%); Esso Production Malaysia Inc.; Esso Sekiyu Kabushiki Kaisha (Japan); Esso Singapore Private Limited; Esso (Thailand) Public Company Limited (87.5%); Exxon Energy Limited (Hong Kong); Exxon Yemen Inc.; General Sekiyu K.K. (Japan; 50.1%); Esso Exploration and Production Chad Inc.; Esso Italiana S.p.A. (Italy); Esso Standard (Inter-America) Inc.; Esso Standard Oil S.A. Limited (Bahamas); Exxon Asset Management Company (75.5%); Exxon Capital Holdings Corporation; Exxon Chemical Asset Management Partnership; Exxon Chemical Eastern Inc.; Exxon Chemical HDPE Inc.; Exxon Chemical Interamerica Inc.; Exxon Credit Corporation; Exxon Holding Latin America Limited (Bahamas); Exxon International Holdings, Inc.; Esso Aktiengesellschaft (Germany); Esso Austria Aktiengesellschaft; Esso Exploration and Production Norway AS; Esso Holding Company Holland Inc.; Exxon Chemical Antwerp Ethylene N.V. (Belgium); Esso Nederland B.V. (Netherlands); Exxon Chemical Holland Inc.; Exxon Funding B.V. (Netherlands); Esso Holding Company U.K. Inc.; Esso UK pic; Esso Exploration and Production UK Limited; Esso Petroleum Company, Limited (U.K.); Exxon Chemical Limited (U.K.); Exxon Chemical Olefins Inc.; Esso Norge AS (Norway); Esso Sociedad Anonima Petrolera Argentina; Esso Societe Anonyme Francaise (France; 81.54%); Esso (Switzerland); Exxon Minerals International Inc.; Compania Minera Disputada de Las Condes Limitada (Chile); Exxon Overseas Corporation; Exxon Chemical Arabia Inc.; Exxon Equity Holding Company; Exxon Overseas Investment Corporation; Exxon Financial Services Company Limited (Bahamas); Exxon Ventures Inc.; Exxon Azerbaijan Limited (Bahamas); Mediterranean Standard Oil Co.; Esso Trading Company of Abu Dhabi; Exxon Pipeline Holdings, Inc.; Exxon Pipeline Company; Exxon Rio Holding Inc.; Esso Brasileira de Petroleo Limitada (Brazil); Exxon Sao Paulo Holding Inc.; Exxon Worldwide Trading Company; Imperial Oil Limited (Canada; 69.6%); International Colombia Resources Corporation; SeaRiver Maritime Financial Holdings, Inc.; SeaRiver Maritime, Inc.; Societe Francaise EXXON CHEMICAL (France; 99.35%); Exxon Chemical France; Exxon Chemical Poly meres SNC (France).
[read more]

 

Guatemala Sinkhole Created by Humans, Not Nature

 

Human activity, not nature, was the likely cause of the gaping sinkhole that opened up in the streets of Guatemala City on Sunday, a geologist says.

A burst sewer pipe or storm drain probably hollowed out the underground cavity that allowed the chasm to form, according to Sam Bonis, a geologist at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, who is currently living in Guatemala City (map).

The Guatemala City sinkhole, estimated to be 60 feet (18 meters) wide and 300 feet (100 meters) deep, appears to have been triggered by the deluge from tropical storm Agatha.

But the cavity formed in the first place because the city—and its underground infrastructure—were built in a region where the first few hundred meters of ground are mostly made up of a material called pumice fill, deposited during past volcanic eruptions.

“Lots of times, volcanic pumice originates as a flow [of loose, gravel-like particles], and because of the heat and the weight, it becomes welded into solid rock,” Bonis said.

“In Guatemala City [the pumice is] unconsolidated, it’s loose,” he said. “It hasn’t been hardened into a rock yet, so it’s easily eroded, especially by swift running water.”

In general, the zoning regulations and building codes in Guatemala City are poor, Bonis said, and the few regulations that exist are often ignored. That means leaking pipes could have gone unfixed long enough to create the right conditions for the sinkhole. (Related pictures: “How Humans Can Trigger Earthquakes.”)

In fact, Bonis thinks calling the Guatemala City chasm a sinkhole is a misnomer—a true sinkhole is an entirely natural phenomenon. There is no scientific term for what happened in Guatemala, he said, adding that he recommends the pit be dubbed a piping feature.

Guatemala Sinkhole Not a Sinkhole

Natural sinkholes generally form when heavy, water-saturated soil causes the roof of an underground limestone cavity to collapse, or when water widens a natural fracture in limestone bedrock.

But there is no limestone beneath the section of Guatemala City where the new sinkhole appeared, at least not at the depth at which the hole formed, Bonis said.

“There may be limestone thousands of meters beneath the city, but not hundreds of meters,” he said.

Instead, nature likely sped up a process set in motion by human actions. (Related: “‘Mud Volcano’ in Indonesia Caused by Gas Exploration, Study Says.”)

Recent eruptions of several volcanoes in Guatemala covered the city in a fresh layer of volcanic ash. If this material got into the city’s pipes and drains, it may have clogged the passageways, making ruptures more likely, Bonis said.

Heavy rains from tropical storm Agatha may also have overloaded underground sewage or drainage pipes, leading to a growing cavity that eventually collapsed, Bonis speculated.

The geologist added that the new sinkhole shares remarkable similarities with a sinkhole that formed in Guatemala City in 2007.

“Both of these things occurred in the same general part of town. They look the same,” he said. “It’s more than a coincidence, especially if they trace” any faulty pipes associated with the 2010 sinkhole to pipes near the 2007 sinkhole.

The danger should not have been news to officials in Guatemala City, noted Bonis, who used to work for the Guatemalan government’s national geology institute.

As part of a volunteer team that investigated the 2007 sinkhole, Bonis co-authored a report warning the Guatemalan government that similar holes will very likely keep appearing unless action is taken to inspect the city’s sewer system for weaknesses. (Watch video of sewer divers in Mexico City.)

The government never replied, Bonis said—possibly due to a lack of funds.

“There’s a minimum of regulation, because that’s money that the government doesn’t have,” he said.

But, he added, “there’s got to be ways of inspecting the sewer system. … These are things that have to be done.”
National Geographic

 

US withholds funds to Honduran police

 

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — The U.S. government is withholding funds to Honduran law enforcement units directly supervised by their new national police chief until the U.S. can investigate allegations that he ran a death squad a decade ago, according to a State Department report released this week.

The report says the State Department “is aware of allegations of human rights violations related to Police Chief Juan Carlos Bonilla’s service” and that the U.S. government has established a working group to investigate.

The U.S. had pledged $56 million in bilateral security and development assistance for 2012 in Honduras, where tons of drugs pass through each year on their way to the United States. Under the new guidelines, the U.S. is limiting assistance so that it only goes to special Honduran law enforcement units, staffed by Honduran personnel “who receive training, guidance, and advice directly from U.S. law enforcement and are not under Bonilla’s direct supervision,” according to the report.

Foreign operations law requires that 20 percent of assistance to Honduras be withheld until the Secretary of State certifies that Honduras is taking steps to improve human rights conditions and investigate allegations of abuses. In an unusual twist, the report certifies the Honduran government is meeting human rights requirements, but nonetheless says the U.S. government is withholding aid to agents working under Bonilla.

State Department officials reached late Friday and Saturday could not confirm how much funding was being withheld nor how they determined the conditions were met.

Honduran President Porfirio Lobo’s spokesman Miguel Bonilla, who is not related to the police chief Bonilla, said Saturday that the administration has repeatedly pledged full support for the police chief and that under his leadership “there has been a real improvement in the security situation.” Honduran officials did not comment on the funds being withheld but said the government “has an unconditional commitment to human rights.”

Earlier this year, The Associated Press reported that Bonilla, nicknamed “The Tiger,” had been widely accused of killings and human rights violations in a decade-old internal Honduran police report. The report named Bonilla in at least three killings or forced disappearances between 1998 and 2002 and said he was among several officers suspected in 11 other cases.

Chief Bonilla’s spokesperson could not be reached for comment.

Only one of the allegations against the now-46-year-old Bonilla led to murder charges, however, and he was acquitted in 2004. The verdict was upheld by Honduras’ Supreme Court in 2009. Bonilla took office in May.

Human rights abuses have persisted under a series of law enforcement leaders. In a 2012 human rights report issued in June, the State Department said Honduran law enforcement agents have murdered and tortured people, though it did not mention Bonilla.

“Among the most serious human rights problems were corruption within the national police force,” the report added.

This week’s decision came after a series of letters from Honduran and U.S. academics, activists and members of Congress were sent to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton asking her to reconsider security aid to Honduras because of alleged human rights violations. In recent years there have been reports of kidnappings and killings by law enforcement, more than 65 people killed during farmland conflicts and dozens of deaths of gay and lesbian activists.

“Combatting drug trafficking is not a legitimate justification for the U.S. to fund and train security forces that usurp democratic governments and violently repress our people,” said the June 7, 2012, letter signed by hundreds of academics.

The U.S. suspended $31 million in assistance to Honduras in 2009 after a coup that ousted then-President Manuel Zelaya. Clinton resumed aid in 2010 after Lobo was elected.Source

 

You Can't Prove A Man Innocent If You Have Killed Them Already

 

ABOLITIONIST FOR ALL CRIMES
Countries whose laws do not provide for the death penalty for any crime
ALBANIA
ANDORRA
ANGOLA
ARGENTINA
ARMENIA
AUSTRALIA
AUSTRIA
AZERBAIJAN
BELGIUM
BHUTAN
BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA
BULGARIA
BURUNDI
CAMBODIA
CANADA
CAPE VERDE
COLOMBIA
COOK ISLANDS
COSTA RICA
COTE D’IVOIRE
CROATIA
CYPRUS
CZECH REPUBLIC
DENMARK
DJIBOUTI
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
ECUADOR
ESTONIA
FINLAND
FRANCE
GABON
GEORGIA

GERMANY
GREECE
GUINEA-BISSAU
HAITI
HOLY SEE
HONDURAS
HUNGARY
ICELAND
IRELAND
ITALY
KIRIBATI
KYRGYSTAN
LATVIA
LIECHTENSTEIN
LITHUANIA
LUXEMBOURG
MACEDONIA (former Yugoslav Republic)
MALTA
MARSHALL ISLANDS
MAURITIUS
MEXICO
MICRONESIA (Federated States)
MOLDOVA
MONACO
MONTENEGRO
MOZAMBIQUE
NAMIBIA
NEPAL
NETHERLANDS
NEW ZEALAND
NICARAGUA
NIUE
NORWAY

PALAU
PANAMA
PARAGUAY
PHILIPPINES
POLAND
PORTUGAL
ROMANIA
RWANDA
SAMOA
SAN MARINO
SAO TOME AND PRINCIPE
SENEGAL
SERBIA
SEYCHELLES
SLOVAKIA
SLOVENIA
SOLOMON ISLANDS
SOUTH AFRICA
SPAIN
SWEDEN
SWITZERLAND
TIMOR-LESTE
TOGO
TURKEY
TURKMENISTAN
TUVALU
UKRAINE
UNITED KINGDOM
URUGUAY
UZBEKISTAN
VANUATU
VENEZUELA

ABOLITIONIST FOR “ORDINARY CRIMES” ONLY
Countries whose laws provide for the death penalty only for exceptional crimes such as crimes under military law or crimes committed in exceptional circumstances
BOLIVIA
BRAZIL
CHILE EL SALVADOR
FIJI
ISRAEL KAZAKHSTAN
PERU

ABOLITIONIST IN PRACTICE
Countries which retain the death penalty for ordinary crimes such as murder but can be considered abolitionist in practice in that they have not executed anyone during the past 10 years and are believed to have a policy or established practice of not carrying out executions. The list also includes countries which have made an international commitment not to use the death penalty
ALGERIA
BENIN
BRUNEI DARUSSALAM
BURKINA FASO
CAMEROON
CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC
CONGO (Republic)
ERITREA
GAMBIA
GHANA
GRENADA

KENYA
KOREA (SOUTH)
LAOS
LIBERIA
MADAGASCAR
MALAWI
MALDIVES
MALI
MAURITANIA
MONGOLIA
MOROCCO
MYANMAR
NAURU

NIGER
PAPUA NEW GUINEA
RUSSIAN FEDERATION
SIERRA LEONE
SRI LANKA
SURINAME
SWAZILAND
TAJIKISTAN
TANZANIA
TONGA
TUNISIA
ZAMBIA

RETENTIONIST COUNTRIES
Countries which retain the death penalty for ordinary crimes
AFGHANISTAN
ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA
BAHAMAS
BAHRAIN
BANGLADESH
BARBADOS
BELARUS
BELIZE
BOTSWANA
CHAD
CHINA
COMOROS
CONGO (Democratic Republic)
CUBA
DOMINICA
EGYPT
EQUATORIAL GUINEA
ETHIOPIA
GUATEMALA GUINEA
GUYANA
INDIA
INDONESIA
IRAN
IRAQ
JAMAICA
JAPAN
JORDAN
KOREA (North)
KUWAIT
LEBANON
LESOTHO
LIBYA
MALAYSIA
NIGERIA
OMAN
PAKISTAN
PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY
QATAR
SAINT KITTS & NEVIS
SAINT LUCIA
SAINT VINCENT & GRENADINES
SAUDI ARABIA
SINGAPORE
SOMALIA
SOUTH SUDAN
SUDAN
SYRIA
TAIWAN
THAILAND
TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO
UGANDA
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
VIET NAM
YEMEN
ZIMBABWE

COUNTRIES THAT HAVE ABOLISHED THE DEATH PENALTY SINCE 1976
1976 PORTUGAL abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
1978 DENMARK abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
1979 LUXEMBOURG, NICARAGUA and NORWAY abolished the death penalty for all crimes. BRAZIL, FIJI and PERU abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes.
1981 FRANCE and CAPE VERDE abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
1982 The NETHERLANDS abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
1983 CYPRUS and EL SALVADOR abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes.
1984 ARGENTINA abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes.
1985 AUSTRALIA abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
1987 HAITI, LIECHTENSTEIN and the GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC1 abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
1989 CAMBODIA, NEW ZEALAND, ROMANIA and SLOVENIA2 abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
1990 ANDORRA, CROATIA,2 the CZECH AND SLOVAK FEDERAL REPUBLIC,3 HUNGARY, IRELAND, MOZAMBIQUE, NAMIBIA and SAO TOMÉ AND PRíNCIPE abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
1992 ANGOLA, PARAGUAY and SWITZERLAND abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
1993 GUINEA-BISSAU, HONG KONG4 and SEYCHELLES abolished the death penalty for all crimes. GREECE abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes.
1994 ITALY abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
1995 DJIBOUTI, MAURITIUS, MOLDOVA and SPAIN abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
1996 BELGIUM abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
1997 GEORGIA, NEPAL, POLAND and SOUTH AFRICA abolished the death penalty for all crimes. BOLIVIA and BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes.
1998 AZERBAIJAN, BULGARIA, CANADA, ESTONIA, LITHUANIA and the UNITED KINGDOM abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
1999 EAST TIMOR, TURKMENISTAN and UKRAINE abolished the death penalty for all crimes. LATVIA5 abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes.
2000 COTE D’IVOIRE and MALTA abolished the death penalty for all crimes. ALBANIA6 abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes.
2001 BOSNIA-HEZEGOVINA 7 abolished the death penalty for all crimes. CHILE abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes.
2002 TURKEY abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes. The FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF YUGOSLAVIA (now two states SERBIA and MONTENEGRO 9 ) and CYPRUS abolished the death penalty for all crimes
2003
ARMENIA abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes
2004
BHUTAN, SAMOA, SENEGAL and TURKEY abolished the death penalty for all crimes
2005
LIBERIA 8 and MEXICO abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
2006
PHILIPPINES abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
2007
ALBANIA6 abolished the death penalty for all crimes. and RWANDA abolished the death penalty for all crimes. KYRGYZSTAN abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes.
2008
UZBEKISTAN, CHILE and ARGENTINA abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
2009 BURUNDI and TOGO abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
2010 GABON removed the death penalty from its legislation.
2012 LATVIA abolished the death penalty for all crimes.

Notes:
1. In 1990 the German Democratic Republic became unified with the Federal Republic of Germany, where the death penalty had been abolished in 1949.
2. Slovenia and Croatia abolished the death penalty while they were still republics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The two republics became independent in 1991.
3. In 1993 the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic divided into two states, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
4. In 1997 Hong Kong was returned to Chinese rule as a special administrative region of China. Amnesty International understands that Hong Kong will remain abolitionist.
5. In 1999 the Latvian parliament voted to ratify Protocol No. 6 to the European Convention on Human Rights, abolishing the death penalty for peacetime offenses.
6. In 2007 Albania ratified Protocol No. 13 to the European Convention on Human Rights, abolishing the death penalty in all circumstances. In 2000 it had ratified Protocol No. 6 to the European Convention on Human Rights, abolishing the death penalty for peacetime offences.
7. In 2001 Bosnia-Herzegovina ratified the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, abolishing the death penalty for all crimes.
8. In 2005 Liberia ratified the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, abolishing the death penalty for all crimes.
9. Montenegro had already abolished the death penalty in 2002 when it was part of a state union with Serbia. It became an independent member state of the United Nations on 28 June 2006. Its ratification of Protocol No. 13 to the European Convention on Human Rights, abolishing the death penalty in all circumstances, came into effect on 6 June 2006.

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/abolitionist-and-retentionist-countries

 

The Echelon USA Surveillance Programme: the documentation

 

In the greatest surveillance effort ever established, the US
National Security Agency
(
NSA
) has createda global spy system, codename
ECHELON
, which captures and analyzes virtually every phone call, fax,email and telex message sent anywhere in the world.

ECHELON is controlled by the NSA and is operated in conjunction with the
Government Communications Head Quarters
(
GCHQ
) of England, the
Communications Security Establishment
(
CSE
)of Canada, the
Australian Defense Security Directorate
(
DSD
), and the
General CommunicationsSecurity Bureau
(
GCSB
) of New Zealand.

These organizations are bound together under a secret 1948 agreement,
UKUSA
, whose terms and textremain under wraps even today.The
ECHELON system
is fairly simple in design: position intercept stations all over the world to captureall satellite, microwave, cellular and fiber-optic communications traffic, and then process this informationthrough the massive computer capabilities of the
NSA
, including advanced voice recognition and
optical character recognition
(
OCR
) programs, and look for code words or phrases (known as the
ECHELON
“
Dictionary
”) that will prompt the computers to flag the message for recording and transcribing for futureanalysis.

Intelligence analysts at each of the respective “listening stations” maintain separate keyword lists for them to analyze any conversation or document flagged by the system, which is then forwarded to therespective intelligence agency headquarters that requested the intercept.But apart from directing their ears towards terrorists and rogue states,
ECHELON
is also being used for purposes well outside its original mission. The regular discovery of domestic surveillance targeted atAmerican civilians for reasons of “unpopular” political affiliation or for no probable cause at all in violationof the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments of the
Constitution
– are consistently impeded by veryelaborate and complex legal arguments and privilege claims by the intelligence agencies and the USgovernment.

The guardians and caretakers of our liberties, our duly elected political representatives, give scarceattention to these activities, let alone the abuses that occur under their watch.

Among the activities that the
ECHELON
targets are:
Political spying:
Since the close of World War II, the US intelligence agencies have developed aconsistent record of trampling the rights and liberties of the American people.

Even after the investigations into the domestic and political surveillance activities of theagencies that followed in the wake of the
Watergate fiasco
, the
NSA
continues to target

View this document on Scribd

 

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?

View this document on Scribd

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:

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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.

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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

(Copyright 1998)