Soy and Torture in America's Prisons!

Listen to this Recorded Show from the LiberationWellnessHour.

Prisoners in Illinois are on the receiving end of political payback in the form of soy food. A legacy from the Blagojevich administration, toxic levels of soy in the prison food are causing serious health problems amongst the prisoners. A non-profit group has filed lawsuit on the inmates’ behalf. Sally Fallon, head of the WestonAPrice Foundation explains the amazing story of Soy and its devastating effect on prisoners in Illinois as well as the rest of America! Sally Fallon is in our opinion THE LEADING NUTRITION EXPERT in America, so don’t miss this episode!

Steven Soderbergh has pulled off a delicate balancing act with The Informant!, his newest film– he manages to satirize corporate crime without any preachiness. It’s a 1970s style character study meeting with broad farce. Soderbergh keeps the mostly true plot kicking along with irreverent narration by our untrustworthy protagonist and a bouncy Marvin Hamlisch score, and the end result is one of the funnier movies of the year. Matt Damon does his best work to date, in a performance reminiscent of Jack Lemmon, and Soderbergh shows that once again, his best work comes from working within the studio system… this is his best movie since Traffic.

Damon plays Mark Whitacre, an executive at Archer Daniels Midland, a food-processing conglomerate. After getting involved with the FBI on an attempt to stop an outsider from blackmailing the company, Whitacre is pushed by his wife (Melanie Lynskey) into telling FBI agent Brian Shepard (Scott Bakula) the truth about ADM– they’ve been fixing prices in the international lysine market. Agent Shepard and his partner, Agent Herndon (Joel McHale) jump at this opportunity to take down the crooks in a major corporate crime, and immediately put their trust in Whitacre, who sticks his neck out at great risk to himself, his family, and his way of life. There’s one big problem, however– Whitacre is a compulsive liar, and despite his good work in the field wearing a wire, time and time again his deceptions and delusions of grandeur make the agent ask… what in the world is wrong with this guy?

The take on this story is really where the film went right– Soderbergh decided instead of taking this in the direction of the usual corporate crime thriller (The Insider, etc.) to make it into a farce. Inspired move, Mr. Soderbergh, as I’ve never seen a film quite like this one before. It manages to make fun of the decisions Whitacre makes without ever being fully unsympathetic. Damon’s performance treats Whitacre as a quirky Ohioan everyman, whose mind wanders and who has big dreams. I have no doubts that the real Mark Whitacre felt the same way about himself before everything started to fall apart– the movie rings true, which is a remarkable feat when the events seem outrageous and the Marvin Hamlisch score sets a broad comedy tone.

It’s taken me a while to figure out exactly how to convey why this movie works as well as it does. Soderbergh took the subject of corporate crime, which is not funny, and a protagonist who in the end is diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which also is not funny… and decided to try to make it funny. He cast many stand-up comedians (Paul F. Tompkins, Richard Daley, Patton Oswalt, Tom Papa) in small roles, added a farcical score, and turned the entire system into a big comedy of errors. There’s a commitment to the vision and a sure-handed execution by Soderbergh that make the whole affair compelling and warm. Finally, there’s Damon, who we find ourselves liking despite his lunacy. It’s the most fleshed-out, full-blooded performance of his career, and one would hope there’s an Oscar nomination in the works. He carries the film, gets big laughs, and at the end, even when his delusions of grandeur have destroyed his own life, we still are utterly drawn in. It’s as smart and ably executed a comedy as we’re liable to see all year long.

Strategy: To replace oil based plastics with bio-degradable replacements for global packaging needs by development and licensing of innovative products for packaging companies. Lessening dependence upon oil and capitalizing on consumer and government preferences for clean, organic packaging.

Product: At pricing that is 20-25% higher than comparable oil based products; Cereplast designs and manufactures proprietary bio-based, sustainable plastics used in all major converting processes – such as injection molding, thermoforming, blow molding and extrusions.

Market- On November 11, the company said it expects the U.S. bio-plastics market to reach $10 billion in sales by 2020.  The U.S. market accounted for approximately $1 billion in sales in 2007, with some estimates pointing to bio-plastics capturing 30% of the total plastics market by 2019. Cereplast has some products that are food based, with a focus on algae based products as well. Cereplast is an investment in their technology and the market.

Competition: Metabolix, Archer Daniels Midland, Alcoa, Synthetic Genomics, Martek

Funding: A private investor group led by a Swedish Bank has contributed funding in 2009, Cereplast has the right to sell $20MM of common stock to Cumorah Capital, and most significantly in 2007 the company announced it received $14.5 million in new capital through a private placement of common stock from a group of leading “green” institutional funds, including UBS Global Innovator Fund, Swisscanto Green Invest Fund, Fortis L Fund Equity Environmental Sustainability World, and Credit Suisse Future Energy Fund.

Stock Symbol (OTCBB:CERP)

In a related note, Exxon has invested $600 million in Synthetic Genomics and BP has a $10 million investment in Martek Biosciences that compete with Cereplast.

Management: Frederic Scheer, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Cereplast

Comment: This company is an investment in a growing sector, but is their technology superior to larger and better funded competitors? Will their food based products overcome the hurdles that corn based ethanol faced?

Sources:

http://www.cereplast.com/pressrealeasedetail_ir.php?newsid=118
http://cleantech.com/news/4597/cereplast-unveils-bio-based-compost
http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20091111005157&newsLang=en

http://www.europeanplasticsnews.com/subscriber/headlines2.html?cat=1&id=1256200526

(Note: this is NOT the version in the school newspaper; rather, it is the longer version I submitted which was cut down by over one half to make that version.)

They say that truth is stranger than fiction.

This proves true in The Informant!, which hit theatres September 18th. It’s a comedy-infused corporate thriller inspired by real-life events. It is based off a book of the same name by Kurt Eichenwald and stars Matt Damon, with Scott Bakula and Melanie Lynskey as his supports.

Mark Whitacre (Damon) is an executive at Archer Daniels Midland, a farming conglomerate in Springfield, Illinois. This film details his 14-year relationship with the FBI and the intrigue and suspense in his partnership with FBI agent Brian Shepard (Bakula).

Matt Damon executes his character perfectly. By exploiting the archetype of a corporate mole, Damon crafts a fresh, original character. Bakula holds his own as a tactical, analytic FBI agent who likes to get the job done. Whitacre’s conscientious wife, Ginger (Lynskey), brings out his best and sometimes his worst behavior.

Informant! is not just a tale of corporate espionage. It also takes a more introspective look into Whitacre’s life. Damon narrates each new scene, talking about a rainbow of subjects, from paranoia in business to mimicry in evolution to stories he hears from co-workers. All this is set to a quirky, rambling score, which is an interesting hybrid between smooth jazz and R&B. Director Steven Soderbergh creates amazing visuals in this film, making the dull beiges and grays in a row of cubicles seem active and full of life, not to mention the way he brings out the actors’ talents.

This movie is quick paced from the first scene, a title card that tells the viewers that the film they are about to watch is based on a true story, with names, locations, and other miscellany intact. The comedic side shows itself early when a second part of the card appears at the bottom of the screen, saying “So there.” The theatre responded with uproarious laughter.

Unlike comedies of today, which rely on physical shtick, Informant! takes a more nuanced angle, varying from blunt, raucous dialogue to little “ah-hah” remarks embedded in the subtext. The jokes made in the film are more Dilbert than Foxtrot, and some of the references are rather obscure, like the references to Japanese takeovers and the corporate culture-modeled one-liners. This makes for a smart, witty screenplay that really shines.

I give The Informant! three and a half stars out of four, for a comedic and gripping tale that will have you simultaneously laughing out loud and on the edge of your seat. This is not Soderbergh’s first foray into the lives of whistleblowers (he directed 2000’s Best Picture-nominated Erin Brockovich), so it would not surprise me at all if this film is on AMPAS’s list this coming February. I wholeheartedly recommend this film!

Matt Damon’s bravura performance lifts a muddled script and direction.

Director Steven Soderbergh has spent a good chunk of his career unabashedly paying homage to the films of the 1960s and 70s, whether remaking them outright (Solaris) or channeling their peculiar, very specific rhythms and textures (The Limey, Out of Sight). With The Informant!, he’s supplied with true-life source material that fits approximately alongside such period semi-classics as Serpico and, though it didn’t arrive until 1983, Silkwood. While this latest film is mercifully free of the self-importance and dogging pace that plagues typical whistle-blower dramas, it doesn’t quite come together as well as it should, thanks to an erratic tone and frequent lack of clarity in explaining its myriad details. But it has Matt Damon, taking another step towards succeeding Tom Hanks as the Great American Movie Star by giving his strongest and most surprising performance in years.

Damon stars as Mark Whitacre, a PhD biochemist recruited into the management division of agricultural giant Archer Daniels Midland. The company produces all kinds of foods as well as the chemical and natural ingredients that go into making them, including the amino additive lysine. Whitacre, a self-described “technical guy,” has a hard time fitting into the company’s help-yourself management culture, so he’s taken aback upon discovering ADM conspires with its global competitors in an ongoing price-fixing conspiracy. “The average American is a victim of corporate crime by the time he’s finished breakfast,” he complains.

Whitacre contacts the FBI under the pretense of an extortion attempt launched by one of their Japanese collaborators. Awkwardly befriending FBI agent Brian Shepard (Scott Bakula) as he investigates the phony scheme, Whitacre reveals the true skullduggery within the company. Eventually, he wears a wire for more than two years as Shepard and his colleague Bob Herndon (Joel McHale) collect evidence against ADM and the other corporations.

But Whitacre is jumpy under the best of circumstances, prone to weird delusions of grandeur as well as struggles with paranoia. He buys too many cars and obsesses about his frequent flier miles, and plans elaborate or fantastic get-rich-quick schemes. Part of his angst, the script by Scott Z. Burns (The Bourne Ultimatum) explains, comes from the strain of maintaining his duplicity, a toll with which even federal undercover operatives have trouble coping. But , more problems surface as the investigation turns into a sting against ADM and years of details come to light in the slugfest between prosecutors and ADM attorneys. Chief among them: Whitacre spent years embezzling millions from the company, a fact that jeopardizes Shepard and Herndon’s years of hard work. Later, a diagnosis of bipolar disorder meant to bolster Whitacre’s own legal defense spins their relationship into malicious new territory.

Leave it to Soderbergh to make the federal government seem sensitive, even needy. Bakula and McHale play their lawman characters not as crusaders but as middle-management types not far removed from Whitacre’s employees, right down to the off-the-rack suits and low-maintenance hairstyles. The case could make the agents’ careers, and they know it, and that thought infuses every decision they make and sets the tone for every meeting with their superiors. As Whitacre comes unglued in the film’s third act, Shepard emerges as the most visible victim of his machinations and also, strangely, possibly the one with the most to lose.

Understanding exactly what happens following the government’s sting against ADM requires the closest attention possible, as the narrative thread becomes submerged in a long and repetitive series of scenes displaying meetings, conferences, and confrontations between the characters. There’s a sense of consequence, in that the actors are all believable and modern audiences are anyway bitterly aware of what a federal investigation entails. But the many scenes blur together, with little sense of meaning or connection with one another, until the total result feels less than the sum of its parts. Besides jail sentences, you’re not sure what’s at stake.

In a way, complete comprehension of every detail isn’t crucial. Most audiences have seen enough of these kinds of films (not least of which Soderbergh’s own Erin Brokovich) to understand the meetings scenes are just way stations on the trip to the big courtroom resolution finale, followed by the inevitable post-scripts. Still, there ought to be more sense of context, and importance given to the scenes for as much as Soderbergh obviously spends a great amount of time correctly representing their details. Talented performers like Tony Hale, Patton Oswalt and Clancy Brown appear on camera but find no use for their considerable presences except than to fill positions extras could probably handle just as well. Casting 60s-era satirists Tom and Dick Smothers as, respectively, ADM’s patriarch and a federal judge is an interesting, if possibly gratuitous, decision.

Through it all Damon manages to give his character an innate likeability that rests partly on pity: Whitacre simply cannot get out of his own way long enough to give a straight answer, no matter how important the question. Even at the end, as he sits in prison begging on camera for a presidential pardon (for helping to police big business - and from George W. Bush, no less) you can’t help but feel sorry for him despite his many mistakes and egregious arrogance. Had Soderbergh and/or Burns framed the story (based on Kurt Eichenwald’s book) as a character piece, the muddied details might seem less important to understanding. But in attempting to make a film that’s half-character study, half-social picture, both narratives feel slighted.

A coupe of parting gripes: it’s also puzzling that Soderbergh composes the film full of dreary earth tones and heavy fabrics and brass, suggesting the aesthetic of the early 1980s. Yet the film is set firmly in the 1990s and the current decade, when most such designs had long since gone out of style, even in relatively rural places like the film’s Illinois setting. The Sixties-groovy title graphics also serve no purpose either, except to distract.

- Michael Kabel
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Steven Soderberg’s The Informant! doesn’t hold together as a film and maybe that’s the point, but regardless it creates an uneven viewing experience that evokes little sympathy for its main character and imparts even less knowledge of how his tics form an actual human being. It’s no doubt a stylistic choice by Soderberg — Mark Whitacre, played by a tubby Matt Damon, is a high level corporate whistle-blower whose penchant for spinning complicated yarns and boldface lying confounds not only the FBI agents he’s cooperating with and later the lawyers working in his defense, but also the film’s own construction.

As a result, Whitacre’s narration seems increasingly erratic, the soundtrack stops making any sort of fucking sense, and the tone doesn’t careen so much as stay oddly consistent as the movie itself shifts beneath it. Damon plays it straight for laughs and he does well even when surrounded by a supporting cast of genuine comedic talents (even the Smothers Brothers make an appearance), but the oddball performances seem aimless and, despite this being based on a true story, nobody comes across as anything more than a cipher.

Damon’s Whitacre is a smart dude who while working to develop new uses for corn for the Archer Daniels Midland corporation gets caught as a key figure in an FBI investigation, then saves his own ass by leading the agents to an even larger scheme of international price fixing, becomes a whistle-blower of staggering magnitude (and equal parts ineptitude and uncanny savvy), and cements his own downfall by never shutting his fucking mouth.

Watching Whitacre weave through reality and apply his fractured logic to otherwise straightforward conversations makes for a fascinating character study, but unfortunately, all this is presented by himself or through the aesthetic of his disjointed brain. A probably bi-polar pathological fibber, he’s one hell of an increasingly unreliable narrator. While this type of psychotic tour guide has been used many times before in other films to great effect, Soderberg also positions himself as an unreliable filmmaker, allowing Whitacre’s dizzying thought process to hijack the film and leave us with nothing to anchor on to.

There’s a lot to admire about the film, notably the wry humour, the incredibly detailed set pieces and costumes, and the sheer unattractiveness of Matt Damon, rolled into a few extra pounds of flesh and strung up with ugly ties, but it’s all the sort of quirk heavy, beige suit, combover hair period piece we’ve seen George Clooney et al (Clooney serves as executive producer) do before and do better. Despite the titular exclamation mark, the film lacks a strong purpose or direction, and Soderberg unfortunately seems uninterested in pinning it down.

What do Pepsi, Kraft and Archer Daniels Midland have in common? Their chairman and CEOs are women.

These three were joined by the CEOs of WellPoint, Avon, DuPont, Yahoo!, Xerox and Sara Lee in the top 10 of the 50 Most Powerful Women list recently compiled by Fortune magazine.

And if you are good at math, you will have noted that only nine companies were listed. Because Oprah Winfrey, ranked number six, is not the CEO but is the Chairman of her company Harpo.

The glass ceiling may not be totally broken but these leaders have shattered it in a diverse and demanding group of industries.

Well done ladies, keep up the great work.

By Matthew Schwartz

In the recently released movie “The Informant!” Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon), does voice-over stream of consciousness assessing his time-saving habits (“I’ll even floss in the shower while the conditioner is in my hair”).

Whitacre, who in the 1990s blew the whistle on Archer Daniels Midland’s price-fixing tactics, may have struggled with bipolar disorder and defrauded $9 million from his own company, but, hey, every second counts when you’re trying to save time.

Flossing in the shower is probably something sales execs can appreciate. Aside from establishing new leads and closing deals, time management is the biggest challenge facing salespeople these days. Sales veteran Nancy Nardin thinks the situation is starting to get particularly acute.

Ready to rise up against the drudgery of administrative tasks?

It’s so bad that Nardin has started ‘The 215 Movement,’ an effort to identify the countless things that eat up the 215 days a year of actual selling available to sales executives, according to Nardin’s estimate.

Take away weekends, holidays, sick days, non-selling meetings and travel, sales execs end up with on average only 18 days a month to dig up prospects, advance the process, and seal the deal, or 215 days annually. “I want to throw a bucket of cold water on sales managers to wake them up that anything that takes away from pure selling activity is going to have a negative impact on sales,” said Nardin, founder and editor of SmartSellingTools.com, who was in sales for 20 years before launching her Web site; she also blogs about sales.

Sales managers have to “understand that these things are a nuisance even though they are critical to getting the job done,” Nardin added. “They have to put a list of these nuisances together and then systematically determine how to do them more efficiently.”

Some of the major culprits of time suck, er “215 killers,” include searching the Web for a contact name; finding the right collateral; coordinating meetings and planning a sales trip.

“It’s not a matter of multitasking – updating the sales force while you check the status of an order – but finding a way to do these things more efficiently using readily available tools,” Nardin said. She estimates that up to 75% of a salesperson’s time is wasted on administrative tasks. “Imagine the productivity increase if sales managers could get that down by even 15%?”

A major stumbling block is sales executives conditioned into thinking that search engines are a surefire way to find these tools.  “It’s difficult and time-consuming, at best, to find sales productivity tools with a Google search,” Nardin said. “What search terms would you use?”

She added that sales managers first need to look at all the time killers collectively and then figure out how to reduce the amount of time needed for each specific task. ”Save those precious few selling days for real selling. Only then will you see real productivity gains.”

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José Marcolini, um fazendeiro de Querência, Mato Grosso, tem uma documento do governo brasileiro que lhe dá permissão de desmatar 12.500 acres(50 mil quilômetros quadrados) de floresta virgem, segundo o New York Times, em artigo de Elisabeth Rosenthal.

Se desmatar, poderá vender a terra por US$1,300.00/acre, enquanto um grupo ambientalista brasileiro lhe oferece US$12,00/acre, por ano, para manter a floresta intacta.

“Para resistir à pressão, cercado de campos de soja, eu terei que ser pago – e muito”, ele disse.

Mato Grosso já fez jus ao seu nome, mas esse estado se tornou o epicentro do desmatamento, e lidera a produção de soja, milho e gado no Brasil.

Para cientistas, políticos e ambientalistas, a única forma de evitar que o desmatamento, que é responsável por 20% das emissões de dióxido de carbono no mundo, e 70% no Brasil, é pagando.

“As pessoas cortam árvores por uma razão econômica, e é preciso dar-lhes uma alternativa financeira”, diz Yvo DeBoer, secretário de mudanças climáticas da ONU. Os incentivos poderão incluir preços vantajosos para carne e soja que se produzem em área não-desmatada.

Em 1964, Pedro Alvez Guimaraez, hoje com 73 anos, se embrenhou na mata, desmatou e criou gado. Ele lamenta a morte da floresta, mas diz que sem isso não haveria hoje escola para os netos, nem viria a eletricidade.

Fala-se em substituir a floresta com palmeiras oleaginosas, mas essas não se comparam com a floresta no combate ao CO2. Faz-se assim na Indonésia, que junto ao Brasil e à Nigéria, lidera o ranking dos países dematadores.

No ano passado foi criado no Brasil o Fundo Amazônico, com a Noruega se propondo a investir US$1 bilhão, mas num território tão vasto, é difícil implementar a política do não-desmatamento.

Apenas no Mato Grosso foram desmatados 1.800 Km2 nos últimos cinco meses de 2007.

“Com tanto dinheiro para se ganhar, não haverá lei para manter esta floresta de pé”, diz um fazendeiro americano, John Carter, que se estabeleceu no Mato Grosso há 15 anos. “Mato Grosso deveria mudar o seu nome para Soja Grossa”.

O secretário de agricultura de Mato Grosso, Neldo Egon Weirich, se orgulha de seu estado ter se transformado numa potência econômica, ao invés de continuar a ser uma zona de malária. “Temos que fazer alguma coisa para o meio-ambiente, mas não podemos parar de produzir”.

John Carter fundou uma associação de fazendeiros- Aliança da Terra – para promover boas práticas ambientais e se comprometer a serem monitorados por satélite para não desmatarem mais suas terras. Eles negociam com grande agro-negócios, como Archer Daniels Midland e McDonalds, para comprarem apenas de fazendas certificadas.

A ONU está engajada em recompensar quem não desmata, e a cobrar de quem desmata demais. Mas é muito difícil estabelecer um preço para quem não desmata.

O fazendeiro Marcolini não deverá aceitar a oferta que lhe fizeram, mas, disse ele, “se fosse numa região mais remota da Amazônia, eu aceitaria a oferta de olhos fechados”.

Federal Correctional Country Clubs

http://finance.yahoo.com/real-estate/article/107340/the-nations-cushiest-prisons.html

“At the end of a day the performance of a company like Kraft has everything to do with the quality of the people that we have in the key roles and so I spend most of my time worrying about whether that’s the case, making sure…we have the right people in the right places, that they have the resources that they need to get the job done.”

– Kraft (KFT) CEO Irene Rosenfeld in a recent interview with NPR’s Marketplace. Today Kraft reported first-quarter profits were up 10% over last year. It was the one bright spot in a sea of bad quarterly earnings news from companies with top women from Fortune’s Most Powerful Women list.  Avon (AVP), whose chief is Andrea Jung, and Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), led by CEO Pat Woertz, suffered steep profit drops of 36% and 98% respectively. The announcement from Disney (DIS)–where Anne Sweeney is president of the Disney-ABC Television Group–was also dismal: net income plunged 46% to $613 billion from $1.13 billion a year ago. While Rosenfeld pays lip service to the importance of people, cost cuts and price increases are credited with Kraft’s standout performance this time around. –Jessica Shambora

Guest post from Tim Newman, Campaigns Assistant, International Labor Rights Forum

People around the world are celebrating Earth Day today [Wednesday, April 22nd].  The labor movement and the environmental movement have not always worked together productively.  As the demand for eco-friendly products increases, many businesses are introducing products that are meant to be less destructive to the environment, but these products are often made by exploited workers.  For example, NPR did a recent story about a new line of “green” footwear at Payless ShoeSource that is likely produced in sweatshops in China.  Policy Matters Ohio also did an excellent report about how a supplier for GE’s compact fluorescent lightbulbs (that are being promoted as an earth-friendly alternative) in China violates worker rights and breaks Chinese labor law.

At the same time, there is now an increasing amount of positive collaboration between the labor and environmental movement.

Farmers’ cooperatives in India are defending the nation’s food security and the future of Indian farmers against the neoliberal invasion of genetically modified (GM) seed. As many as 28,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide over the last decade as a result of debt incurred from failed GM crops and competition with subsidized US crops, yet when India’s Prime Minister Singh met with President Bush in March 2006 to finalize nuclear agreements, they also signed the Indo-US Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture (KIA), backed by Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), and Wal-Mart. The KIA allows for the grab of India’s seed sector by Monsanto, of its trade sector by giant agribusiness ADM and Cargill, and its retail sector by Wal-Mart.
Though the contours of KIA have been kept so secret that neither senior Indian politicians nor the scientific community know its details, it is clear that Prime Minister Singh has agreed to sacrifice India’s agriculture sector to pay for US concessions in the nuclear field.
In one of very few public statements by a US government official regarding KIA,  Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, states, “While the civilian nuclear initiative has garnered the most attention, our first priority is to continue giving governmental support to the huge growth in business between the Indian and American private sectors. Singh has also challenged the United States to help launch a second green revolution in India’s vast agricultural heartland by enlisting the help of America’s great land-grant institutions.”
Vandana Shiva translates, “These are twin programs about a market grab and a security alignment.” Burns announced that while the nuclear deal is the cutting edge, what the US is really seeking is agricultural markets and real estate markets, “to take over the land of people, not through a market mechanism, but using the state and an old colonial law of land acquisition to grab the land by force.”
Through KIA, Monsanto and the US have asked for unhindered access to India’s gene banks, along with a change in India’s intellectual property laws to allow patents on seeds and genes, and to dilute provisions that protect farmers’ rights. A combination of physical access to India’s gene banks and a possible new intellectual property law that allows seed patents will in essence deliver India’s genetic wealth into US hands. This would be a severe blow to India’s food security and self-sufficiency.
At the same time KIA has paved the way for Wal-Mart’s plans to open five hundred stores in India,  which will compound the outsourcing of India’s food supply and threaten 14 million small family venders with loss of livelihood….more

Genetically modified cotton seeds “could lead to total destruction of soil organisms, leaving dead soil unable to produce food”

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Many traders start their Option trading with one of two very simple positions.  The two positions are the Covered Call and the Married Put. 

The Covered Call Strategy involves writing (selling) a call against stock that is already owned.  If you write a Call without owning the stock it is called a “naked” call.  The Covered Call Strategy can be a procedure that makes any stock a “dividend” stock.  This strategy is perfect for a buy and hold investor.  This strategy makes a few assumptions:

     1)  The investor likes the stock and wants to own it.

     2)  The stock is not too volatile, meaning the price of the stock does not vary much, or stays within a channel.

     3)  The investor is willing to accept the full risk of a downward move in the stock.

There are two types of positions that can be employed when using the Covered Call Strategy.  The first, which is the one I will discuss here in detail, is selling near the money options that expire in the next month or two, and the second is selling extended duration options that are deep in the money.  If people want examples of strategy #2 please leave a comment.  In strategy #1, we sell options that expire in a month or two in order to capture the time value of the option.  The time value of an option accelerates to $0 as the option approaches expiration. 

For this discussion, lets look at Archer Daniels Midland (ADM).  Here is a chart of the last three months (I am using the last three months, because before that three months everything fell dramatically, and I am using current examples)

3 month Chart of ADM March 13, 2009

As you can see ADM has basically stayed between $24 and $30, so lets say we buy 100 shares today at $27.76 (full cost would be $2,776.00 + trading costs).  Here is a list of the near the money Call options expiring in April.

We could write (sell) the ADMDF $30 strike option for $0.95 (I would try a limit order at $1.00).  This $0.95 represents time value as there is NO intrinsic value in this option because it is Out of  the Money (OTM).  The ADMDE option priced at $3.50 has $2.76 of intrinsic value ($27.76 – $25.00) and $0.74 of time value ($3.50 – $2.76).  At this point we want ADM to continue to appreciate, slowly.  Remember, the investor wants to own this stock (would own it without writing calls).  Here is the risk/return graph for this position.

At this point, there are two possible outcomes:

     1)  ADM stays below $30, then the option expires worthless and we can sell the next option.  The return for the month is $0.45 ($0.95 less trading costs, I will assume $0.50, and this includes the trading costs on the stock, which is only paid in the first month) option premium received for a return of 1.6% for the month ($0.70 if we do not include the trading costs of the stock, for a 2.52% return for the month).  This as a simple Annual Percent Return (APR) of 19.45% (or 30.26%) not including compounding.

     2)  ADM is above $30, then the option will be exercised.  We sell ADM for $30 (this is the strike price of the option that we sold).  The return for the month is $2.44 ($30 Strike price – $27.76 Purchase price + $0.95 Option premium received – $0.75 trading costs) or 8.79% for the month (105.48% APR).  If this happens we can decide to repurchase ADM or look for another opportunity.

These outcomes do not include any dividends received for owning the stock through an ex-dividend date, if this were the case the dividend would need to be included as a gain in the calculation.

The worst case for this strategy is for the stock to decline drastically.  If this happens, the investor will need to decide whether to sell options that could produce a realized loss, sell the stock for a loss or hold the stock and hope for a positive return.

Next the Married Put…

I have never been a fan of corn syrup. It’s bad for you and the propaganda from the agribusiness giants such as Archer Daniels Midland just makes me sicker. One of the most powerful groups in Washington DC is the corn lobby.. their latest raison d’etre is eschewing the benefits of ethanol.

In 2007, 75% of renewable tax benefits went to corn-based ethanol.. 75%! Crazy because criticisms are that it’s bad for the environment, takes more fuel to produce it than the fuel it creates and it increases pressure on the world’s food supplies. But read the link to the article. It gets even better… or should I say worse.

Now the corn industry is in the news again. Tests have discovered mercury in high-fructose corn syrup. The very corn syrup that is used in most processed foods as a sweetener. I try hard not to buy anything with corn syrup in it but it’s everywhere. And to think that mercury is now everywhere — toxic mercury. The article in The Washington Post discusses a study by a non-profit watchdog group that found nearly one in three of 55 brand name foods contained mercury. It might now be everywhere but frankly that number is shocking. But don’t let me sway you. Have a read for yourself and weigh in.

Don’t get me started on hydrogenated oils…

You can live without a lot of things, but you can’t live without food and water. Whoever controls them controls you.

In the last few years there has been a dramatic increase in the concentration of ownership of our food and water into just a few giant international corporations.

According to Judith McGeary in Countryside Magazine, “A handful of corporations have an almost complete monopoly on the food supply for a majority of Americans.” These include Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, Coca-Cola, Tyson, Phillip Morris-Kraft, Nestle, Del Monte, etc. – corporations that are rapidly taking ownership of (privatizing) our food and water.

As Canada’s Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI) put it, “Access to food, health, and nutrition once considered a fundamental human right is now subject to the whims of the market system.”

And what a market it is! Annual retail value of global food sales is estimated to be two thousand billion dollars – over six times more than pharmaceutical sales. (Makes a seven hundred billion dollar bail-out sound almost trivial, doesn’t it?)

We know the results for the corporations, power and super-profits. But what are the results for the rest of us?

I quote from Food Facts, a non-profit report available here .  “The human toll of disease from poor nutrition is soaring. U.S. deaths from nutrition-related diseases (365,000 per year) are rapidly approaching the deaths attributable to the nation’s number one killer, tobacco.

Globally, the World Health Organization (WHO) reports soaring growth in three non-communicable diseases – heart disease, strokes, and diabetes. Unhealthy diets lie at the root of this surge.”

And once again, our government has played a significant role in this corporate take-over. Large government subsidies have made profitable the enormous increase in the production of high-fructose corn syrup and snack foods like corn chips. This makes junk food an affordable (albeit dangerous) choice over more expensive fruits and vegetables for many cash-strapped families .

Nor are those subsidies benefiting family farms. Between 2003 and 2005 66% of the $34.8 billion in U.S. farm subsidies went to just 10% of farmers.

So the large corporations are making big profits, the taxpayers are subsidizing them, average American eaters are losing – and 365,000 of them are dying each year – the ultimate losers. As RAFI put it, “Neglect of the public good is inevitable when the agenda is determined by the private sector in pursuit of corporate profits.”

What can you do? Garden and/or buy from your local organic growers. Here are a couple of web sites to give you a place to begin:
http://journeytoforever.org/garden_sqft.html
http://www.localharvest.org/

November 22 2008

The System Implodes: The 10 Worst Corporations of 2008

by Robert Weissman

2008 marks the 20th anniversary of Multinational Monitor’s annual list of the 10 Worst Corporations of the year.

In the 20 years that we’ve published our annual list, we’ve covered corporate villains, scoundrels, criminals and miscreants. We’ve reported on some really bad stuff — from Exxon’s Valdez spill to Union Carbide and Dow’s effort to avoid responsibility for the Bhopal disaster; from oil companies coddling dictators (including Chevron and CNPC, both profiled this year) to a bank (Riggs) providing financial services for Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet; from oil and auto companies threatening the future of the planet by blocking efforts to address climate change to duplicitous tobacco companies marketing cigarettes around the world by associating their product with images of freedom, sports, youthful energy and good health.

But we’ve never had a year like 2008.

The financial crisis first gripping Wall Street and now spreading rapidly throughout the world is, in many ways, emblematic of the worst of the corporate-dominated political and economic system that we aim to expose with our annual 10 Worst list. Here is how.

Improper political influence: Corporations dominate the policy-making process, from city councils to global institutions like the World Trade Organization. Over the last 30 years, and especially in the last decade, Wall Street interests leveraged their political power to remove many of the regulations that had restricted their activities. There are at least a dozen separate and significant examples of this, including the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, which permitted the merger of banks and investment banks. In a form of corporate civil disobedience, Citibank and Travelers Group merged in 1998 — a move that was illegal at the time, but for which they were given a two-year forbearance — on the assumption that they would be able to force a change in the relevant law. They did, with the help of just-retired (at the time) Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who went on to an executive position at the newly created Citigroup.

Deregulation and non-enforcement: Non-enforcement of rules against predatory lending helped the housing bubble balloon. While some regulators had sought to exert authority over financial derivatives, they were stopped by finance-friendly figures in the Clinton administration and Congress — enabling the creation of the credit default swap market. Even Alan Greenspan concedes that that market — worth $55 trillion in what is called notional value — is imploding in significant part because it was not regulated.

Short-term thinking: It was obvious to anyone who cared to look at historical trends that the United States was experiencing a housing bubble. Many in the financial sector seemed to have convinced themselves that there was no bubble. But others must have been more clear-eyed. In any case, all the Wall Street players had an incentive not to pay attention to the bubble. They were making stratospheric annual bonuses based on annual results. Even if they were certain the bubble would pop sometime in the future, they had every incentive to keep making money on the upside.

Financialization: Profits in the financial sector were more than 35 percent of overall U.S. corporate profits in each year from 2005 to 2007, according to data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Instead of serving the real economy, the financial sector was taking over the real economy.

Profit over social use: Relatedly, the corporate-driven economy was being driven by what could make a profit, rather than what would serve a social purpose. Although Wall Street hucksters offered elaborate rationalizations for why exotic financial derivatives, private equity takeovers of firms, securitization and other so-called financial innovations helped improve economic efficiency, by and large these financial schemes served no socially useful purpose.

Externalized costs: Worse, the financial schemes didn’t just create money for Wall Street movers and shakers and their investors. They made money at the expense of others. The costs of these schemes were foisted onto workers who lost jobs at firms gutted by private equity operators, unpayable loans acquired by homeowners who bought into a bubble market (often made worse by unconscionable lending terms), and now the public.

What is most revealing about the financial meltdown and economic crisis, however, is that it illustrates that corporations — if left to their own worst instincts — will destroy themselves and the system that nurtures them. It is rare that this lesson is so graphically illustrated. It is one the world must quickly learn, if we are to avoid the most serious existential threat we have yet faced: climate change.

Of course, the rest of the corporate sector was not on good behavior during 2008 either, and we do not want them to escape justified scrutiny. In keeping with our tradition of highlighting diverse forms of corporate wrongdoing, we include only one financial company on the 10 Worst list. Here, presented in alphabetical order, are the 10 Worst Corporations of 2008.

AIG: Money for Nothing

There’s surely no one party responsible for the ongoing global financial crisis.

But if you had to pick a single responsible corporation, there’s a very strong case to make for American International Group (AIG).

In September, the Federal Reserve poured $85 billion into the distressed global financial services company. It followed up with $38 billion in October.

The government drove a hard bargain for its support. It allocated its billions to the company as high-interest loans; it demanded just short of an 80 percent share of the company in exchange for the loans; and it insisted on the firing of the company’s CEO (even though he had only been on the job for three months).

Why did AIG — primarily an insurance company powerhouse, with more than 100,000 employees around the world and $1 trillion in assets — require more than $100 billion ($100 billion!) in government funds? The company’s traditional insurance business continues to go strong, but its gigantic exposure to the world of “credit default swaps” left it teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Government officials then intervened, because they feared that an AIG bankruptcy would crash the world’s financial system.

Credit default swaps are effectively a kind of insurance policy on debt securities. Companies contracted with AIG to provide insurance on a wide range of securities. The insurance policy provided that, if a bond didn’t pay, AIG would make up the loss.

AIG’s eventual problem was rooted in its entering a very risky business but treating it as safe. First, AIG Financial Products, the small London-based unit handling credit default swaps, decided to insure “collateralized debt obligations” (CDOs). CDOs are pools of mortgage loans, but often only a portion of the underlying loans — perhaps involving the most risky part of each loan. Ratings agencies graded many of these CDOs as highest quality, though subsequent events would show these ratings to have been profoundly flawed. Based on the blue-chip ratings, AIG treated its insurance on the CDOs as low risk. Then, because AIG was highly rated, it did not have to post collateral.

Through credit default swaps, AIG was basically collecting insurance premiums and assuming it would never pay out on a failure — let alone a collapse of the entire market it was insuring. It was a scheme that couldn’t be beat: money for nothing.

In September, the New York Times’ Gretchen Morgenson reported on the operations of AIG’s small London unit, and the profile of its former chief, Joseph Cassano. In 2007, the Times reported, Cassano “described the credit default swaps as almost a sure thing.” “It is hard to get this message across, but these are very much handpicked,” he said in a call with analysts.

“It is hard for us, without being flippant, to even see a scenario within any kind of realm of reason that would see us losing one dollar in any of those transactions,” he said.

Cassano assured investors that AIG’s operations were nearly fail safe. Following earlier accounting problems, the company’s risk management was stellar, he said: “That’s a committee that I sit on, along with many of the senior managers at AIG, and we look at a whole variety of transactions that come in to make sure that they are maintaining the quality that we need to. And so I think the things that have been put in at our level and the things that have been put in at the parent level will ensure that there won’t be any of those kinds of mistakes again.”

Cassano turned out to be spectacularly wrong. The credit default swaps were not a sure thing. AIG somehow did not notice that the United States was experiencing a housing bubble, and that it was essentially insuring that the bubble would not pop. It made an ill-formed judgment that positive credit ratings meant CDOs were high quality — even when the underlying mortgages were of poor quality.

But before the bubble popped, Cassano’s operation was minting money. It wasn’t hard work, since AIG Financial Products was taking in premiums in exchange for nothing. In 2005, the unit’s profit margin was 83 percent, according to the Times. By 2007, its credit default swap portfolio was more than $500 billion.

Then things started to go bad. Suddenly, AIG had to start paying out on some of the securities it had insured. As it started recording losses, its credit default swap contracts require that it begin putting up more and more collateral. AIG found it couldn’t raise enough money fast enough — over the course of a weekend in September, the amount of money AIG owed shot up from $20 billion to more than $80 billion.

With no private creditors stepping forward, it fell to the government to provide the needed capital or let AIG enter bankruptcy. Top federal officials deemed bankruptcy too high a risk to the overall financial system.

After the bailout, it emerged that AIG did not even know all of the CDOs it had ensured.

In September, less than a week after the bailout was announced, the Orange County Register reported on a posh retreat for company executives and insurance agents at the exclusive St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, California. Rooms at the resort can cost over $1,000 per night.

After the House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee highlighted the retreat, AIG explained that the retreat was primarily for well-performing independent insurance agents. Only 10 of the 100 participants were from AIG (and they from a successful AIG subsidiary), the company said, and the event was planned long in advance of the federal bailout. In an apology letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, CEO Edward Liddy wrote that AIG now faces very different challenges, and “that we owe our employees and the American public new standards and approaches.”

New standards and approaches, indeed.

Cargill: Food Profiteers

The world’s food system is broken.
Or, more accurately, the giant food companies and their allies in the U.S. and other rich country governments, and at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, broke it.

Thirty years ago, most developing countries produced enough food to feed themselves [CHECK]. Now, 70 percent are net food importers.

Thirty years ago, most developing countries had in place mechanisms aimed at maintaining a relatively constant price for food commodities. Tariffs on imports protected local farmers from fluctuations in global food prices. Government-run grain purchasing boards paid above-market prices for farm goods when prices were low, and required farmers to sell below-market when prices were high. The idea was to give farmers some certainty over price, and to keep food affordable for consumers. Governments also provided a wide set of support services for farmers, giving them advice on new crop and growing technologies and, in some countries, helping set up cooperative structures.

This was not a perfect system by any means, but it looks pretty good in retrospect.

Over the last three decades, the system was completely abandoned, in country after country. It was replaced by a multinational-dominated, globally integrated food system, in which the World Bank and other institutions coerced countries into opening their markets to cheap food imports from rich countries and re-orienting their agricultural systems to grow food for rich consumers abroad. Proponents said the new system was a “free market” approach, but in reality it traded one set of government interventions for another — a new set of rules that gave enhanced power to a handful of global grain trading companies like Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland, as well as to seed and fertilizer corporations.

“For this food regime to work,” Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved, told the U.S. House Financial Services Committee at a May hearing, “existing marketing boards and support structures needed to be dismantled. In a range of countries, this meant that the state bodies that had been supported and built by the World Bank were dismantled by the World Bank. The rationale behind the dismantling of these institutions was to clear the path for private sector involvement in these sectors, on the understanding that the private sector would be more efficient and less wasteful than the public sector.”

“The result of these interventions and conditions,” explained Patel, “was to accelerate the decline of developing country agriculture. One of the most striking consequences of liberalization has been the phenomenon of ‘import surges.’ These happen when tariffs on cheaper, and often subsidized, agricultural products are lowered, and a host country is then flooded with those goods. There is often a corresponding decline in domestic production. In Senegal, for example, tariff reduction led to an import surge in tomato paste, with a 15-fold increase in imports, and a halving of domestic production. Similar stories might be told of Chile, which saw a three-fold surge in imports of vegetable oil, and a halving of domestic production. In Ghana in 1998, local rice production accounted for over 80 percent of domestic consumption. By 2003, that figure was less than 20 percent.”

The decline of developing country agriculture means that developing countries are dependent on the vagaries of the global market. When prices spike — as they did in late 2007 and through the beginning of 2008 — countries and poor consumers are at the mercy of the global market and the giant trading companies that dominate it. In the first quarter of 2008, the price of rice in Asia doubled, and commodity prices overall rose 40 percent. People in rich countries felt this pinch, but the problem was much more severe in the developing world. Not only do consumers in poor countries have less money, they spend a much higher proportion of their household budget on food — often half or more — and they buy much less processed food, so commodity increases affect them much more directly. In poor countries, higher prices don’t just pinch, they mean people go hungry. Food riots broke out around the world in early 2008.

But not everyone was feeling pain. For Cargill, spiking prices was an opportunity to get rich. In the second quarter of 2008, the company reported profits of more than $1 billion, with profits from continuing operations soaring 18 percent from the previous year. Cargill’s 2007 profits totaled more than $2.3 billion, up more than a third from 2006.

In a competitive market, would a grain-trading middleman make super-profits? Or would rising prices crimp the middleman’s profit margin?

Well, the global grain trade is not competitive.

In an August speech, Cargill CEO Greg Page posed the question, “So, isn’t Cargill exploiting the food situation to make money?” Here is how he responded:

“I would give you four pieces of information about why our earnings have gone up dramatically.

1. The demand for food has gone up. The demand for our facilities has gone up, and we are running virtually all of our facilities worldwide at total capacity. As we utilize our capacity more effectively, clearly we do better.
2. Fertilizer prices rose, and we are owners of a large fertilizer company. That has been the single largest factor in Cargill’s earnings.
3. The volatility in the grain industry — much of it created by governments — was an opportunity for a trading company like Cargill to make money.
4. Finally, in this era of high prices, Cargill over the last two years has invested $15.5 billion additional dollars into the world food system. Some was to carry all these high-priced inventories. We also wanted to be sure that we were there for farmers who needed the working capital to operate in this much more expensive environment. Clearly, our owners expected some return on that $15.5 billion. Cargill had an opportunity to make more money in this environment, and I think that is something that we need to be very forthright about.”

OK, Mr. Page, that’s all very interesting. The question was, “So, isn’t Cargill exploiting the food situation to make money?” It sounds like your answer is, “yes.”

Chevron: “We can’t let little countries screw around with big companies”

The world has witnessed a stunning consolidation of the multinational oil companies over the last decade.

One of the big winners was Chevron. It swallowed up Texaco and Unocal, among others. It was happy to absorb their revenue streams. It has been less willing to take responsibility for ecological and human rights abuses perpetrated by these companies.

One of the inherited legacies from Chevron’s 2001 acquisition of Texaco is litigation in Ecuador over the company’s alleged decimation of the Ecuadorian Amazon over a 20-year period of operation. In 1993, 30,000 indigenous Ecuadorians filed a class action suit in U.S. courts, alleging that Texaco had poisoned the land where they live and the waterways on which they rely, allowing billions of gallons of oil to spill and leaving hundreds of waste pits unlined and uncovered. They sought billions in compensation for the harm to their land and livelihood, and for alleged health harms. The Ecuadorians and their lawyers filed the case in U.S. courts because U.S. courts have more capacity to handle complex litigation, and procedures (including jury trials) that offer plaintiffs a better chance to challenge big corporations. Texaco, and later Chevron, deployed massive legal resources to defeat the lawsuit. Ultimately, a Chevron legal maneuver prevailed: At Chevron’s instigation, U.S. courts held that the case should be litigated in Ecuador, closer to where the alleged harms occurred.

Having argued vociferously that Ecuadorian courts were fair and impartial, Chevron is now unhappy with how the litigation has proceeded in that country. So unhappy, in fact, that it is lobbying the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to impose trade sanctions on Ecuador if the Ecuadorian government does not make the case go away.

“We can’t let little countries screw around with big companies like this — companies that have made big investments around the world,” a Chevron lobbyist said to Newsweek in August. (Chevron subsequently stated that “the comments attributed to an unnamed lobbyist working for Chevron do not reflect our company’s views regarding the Ecuador case. They were not approved by the company and will not be tolerated.”)

Chevron is worried because a court-appointed special master found in March that the company was liable to plaintiffs for between $7 billion and $16 billion. The special master has made other findings that Chevron’s clean-up operations in Ecuador have been inadequate.

Another of Chevron’s inherited legacies is the Yadana natural gas pipeline in Burma, operated by a consortium in which Unocal was one of the lead partners. Human rights organizations have documented that the Yadana pipeline was constructed with forced labor, and associated with brutal human rights abuses by the Burmese military.

EarthRights International, a human rights group with offices in Washington, D.C. and Bangkok, has carefully tracked human rights abuses connected to the Yadana pipeline, and led a successful lawsuit against Unocal/Chevron. In an April 2008 report, the group states that “Chevron and its consortium partners continue to rely on the Burmese army for pipeline security, and those forces continue to conscript thousands of villagers for forced labor, and to commit torture, rape, murder and other serious abuses in the course of their operations.”

Money from the Yadana pipeline plays a crucial role in enabling the Burmese junta to maintain its grip on power. EarthRights International estimates the pipeline funneled roughly $1 billion to the military regime in 2007. The group also notes that, in late 2007, when the Burmese military violently suppressed political protests led by Buddhist monks, Chevron sat idly by.

Chevron has trouble in the United States, as well. In September, Earl Devaney, the inspector general for the Department of Interior, released an explosive report documenting “a culture of ethical failure” and a “culture of substance abuse and promiscuity” in the U.S. government program handling oil lease contracts on U.S. government lands and property. Government employees, Devaney found, accepted a stream of small gifts and favors from oil company representatives, and maintained sexual relations with them. (In one memorable passage, the inspector general report states that “sexual relationships with prohibited sources cannot, by definition, be arms-length.”) The report showed that Chevron had conferred the largest number of gifts on federal employees. It also complained that Chevron refused to cooperate with the investigation, a claim Chevron subsequently disputed.

Constellation Energy: Nuclear Operators

Although it is too dangerous, too expensive and too centralized to make sense as an energy source, nuclear power won’t go away, thanks to equipment makers and utilities that find ways to make the public pay and pay.

Case in point: Constellation Energy Group, the operator of the Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant in Maryland. When Maryland deregulated its electricity market in 1999, Constellation — like other energy generators in other states — was able to cut a deal to recover its “stranded costs” and nuclear decommissioning fees. The idea was that competition would bring multiple suppliers into the market, and these new competitors would have an unfair advantage over old-time monopoly suppliers. Those former monopolists, the argument went, had built expensive nuclear reactors with the approval of state regulators, and it would be unfair if they could not charge consumers to recover their costs. It would also be unfair, according to this line of reasoning, if the former monopolists were unable to recover the costs of decommissioning nuclear facilities.

In Maryland, the “stranded cost” deal gave Constellation (through its affiliate Baltimore Gas & Electric, BGE) the right to charge ratepayers $975 million in 1993 dollars (almost $1.5 billion in present dollars).

Deregulation meant that Constellation’s energy generating assets — including its nuclear facility at Calvert Cliffs — were free from price regulation. As a result, instead of costing Constellation, Calvert Cliffs’ market value increased.

Deregulation also meant that, after an agreed-upon freeze period, BGE was free to raise its rates as it chose. In 2006, it announced a 72 percent rate increase. For residential consumers, this meant they would pay an average of $743 more per year for electricity.

The sudden price hike sparked a rebellion. The Maryland legislature passed a law requiring BGE to credit consumers $386 million over a 10-year period. At the time, Constellation was very pleased with the deal, which let it keep most of its price-gouging profits — a spokesperson for the then-governor said that Constellation and BGE were “doing a victory lap around the statehouse” after the bill passed.

In February 2008, however, Constellation announced that it intended to sue the state for unconstitutionally “taking” its assets via the mandatory consumer credit. In March, following a preemptive lawsuit by the state, the matter was settled. BGE agreed to make a one-time rebate of $170 million to residential ratepayers, and 90 percent of the credits to ratepayers (totaling $346 million) were left in place. The deal also relieved ratepayers of the obligation to pay for decommissioning — an expense that had been expected to total $1.5 billion (or possibly much more) from 2016 to 2036.

The deal also included regulatory changes making it easier for outside companies to invest in Constellation — a move of greater import than initially apparent. In September, with utility stock prices plummeting, Warren Buffet’s MidAmerican Energy announced it would purchase Constellation for $4.7 billion, less than a quarter of the company’s market value in January.

Meanwhile, Constellation plans to build a new reactor at Calvert Cliffs, potentially the first new reactor built in the United States since the near-meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979.

“There are substantial clean air benefits associated with nuclear power, benefits that we recognize as the operator of three plants in two states,” says Constellation spokesperson Maureen Brown.

It has lined up to take advantage of U.S. government-guaranteed loans for new nuclear construction, available under the terms of the 2005 Energy Act [see “Nuclear’s Power Play: Give Us Subsidies or Give Us Death,” Multinational Monitor, September/October 2008]. “We can’t go forward unless we have federal loan guarantees,” says Brown.

Building nuclear plants is extraordinarily expensive (Constellation’s planned construction is estimated at $9.6 billion) and takes a long time; construction plans face massive political risks; and the value of electric utilities is small relative to the huge costs of nuclear construction. For banks and investors, this amounts to too much uncertainty — but if the government guarantees loans will be paid back, then there’s no risk.

Or, stated better, the risk is absorbed entirely by the public. That’s the financial risk. The nuclear safety risk is always absorbed, involuntarily, by the public.

CNPC: Fueling Violence in Darfur

Many of the world’s most brutal regimes have a common characteristic: Although subject to economic sanctions and politically isolated, they are able to maintain power thanks to multinational oil company enablers. Case in point: Sudan, and the Chinese National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC).

In July, International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo charged the President of Sudan, Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir, with committing genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The charges claim that Al Bashir is the mastermind of crimes against ethnic groups in Darfur, aimed at removing the black population from Sudan. Sudanese armed forces and government-authorized militias known as the Janjaweed have carried out massive attacks against the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa communities of Darfur, according to the ICC allegations. Following bombing raids, “ground forces would then enter the village or town and attack civilian inhabitants. They kill men, children, elderly, women; they subject women and girls to massive rapes. They burn and loot the villages.” The ICC says 35,000 people have been killed and 2.7 million displaced.

The ICC reports one victim saying: “When we see them, we run. Some of us succeed in getting away, and some are caught and taken to be raped — gang-raped. Maybe around 20 men rape one woman. … These things are normal for us here in Darfur. These things happen all the time. I have seen rapes, too. It does not matter who sees them raping the women — they don’t care. They rape girls in front of their mothers and fathers.”

Governments around the world have imposed various sanctions on Sudan, with human rights groups demanding much more aggressive action.

But there is little doubt that Sudan has been able to laugh off existing and threatened sanctions because of the huge support it receives from China, channeled above all through the Sudanese relationship with CNPC.

“The relationship between CNPC and Sudan is symbiotic,” notes the Washington, D.C.-based Human Rights First, in a March 2008 report, “Investing in Tragedy.” “Not only is CNPC the largest investor in the Sudanese oil sector, but Sudan is CNPC’s largest market for overseas investment.”

China receives three quarters of Sudan’s exports, and Chinese companies hold the majority share in almost all of the key oil-rich areas in Sudan. Explains Human Rights First: “Beijing’s companies pump oil from numerous key fields, which then courses through Chinese-made pipelines to Chinese-made storage tanks to await a voyage to buyers, most of them Chinese.” CNPC is the largest oil investor in Sudan; the other key Chinese company is the Sinopec Group (also known as the China Petrochemical Corporation).

Oil money has fueled violence in Darfur. “The profitability of Sudan’s oil sector has developed in close chronological step with the violence in Darfur,” notes Human Rights First. “In 2000, before the crisis, Sudan’s oil revenue was $1.2 billion. By 2006, with the crisis well underway, that total had shot up by 291 percent, to $4.7 billion. How does Sudan use that windfall? Its finance minister has said that at least 70 percent of the oil profits go to the Sudanese armed forces, linked with its militia allies to the crimes in Darfur.”

There are other nefarious components of the CNPC relationship with the Sudanese government. China ships substantial amounts of small arms to Sudan and has helped Sudan build its own small arms factories. China has also worked at the United Nations to undermine more effective multilateral action to protect Darfur. Human rights organizations charge a key Chinese motivation is to lubricate its relationship with the Khartoum government so the oil continues to flow.

CNPC did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Dole: The Sour Taste of Pineapple

Starting in 1988, the Philippines undertook what was to be a bold initiative to redress the historically high concentration of land ownership that has impoverished millions of rural Filipinos and undermined the country’s development. The Comprehensive Agricultural Reform Program (CARP) promised to deliver land to the landless.

It didn’t work out that way.

Plantation owners helped draft the law and invented ways to circumvent its purported purpose.

Dole pineapple workers are among those paying the price.

Under CARP, Dole’s land was divided among its workers and others who had claims on the land prior to the pineapple giant. However, under the terms of the law, as the Washington, D.C.-based International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) explains in an October report, “The Sour Taste of Pineapple,” the workers received only nominal title. They were required to form labor cooperatives. Intended to give workers — now the new land owners — a means to collectively manage their land, the cooperatives were instead controlled by wealthy landlords.

“Through its dealings with these cooperatives,” ILRF found, Dole and Del Monte, (the world’s other leading pineapple grower) “have been able to take advantage of a number of worker abuses. Dole has outsourced its labor force to contract labor and replaced its full-time regular employment system that existed before CARP.” Dole employs 12,000 contract workers. Meanwhile, from 1989 to 1998, Dole reduced its regular workforce by 3,500.

Under current arrangements, Dole now leases its land from its workers, on extremely cheap terms — in one example cited by ILRF, Dole pays in rent one-fifteenth of its net profits from a plantation. Most workers continue to work the land they purportedly own, but as contract workers for Dole.

The Philippine Supreme Court has ordered Dole to convert its contract workers into regular employees, but the company has not done so. In 2006, the Court upheld a Department of Labor and Employment decision requiring Dole to stop using illegal contract labor. Under Philippine law, contract workers should be regularized after six months.

Dole emphasizes that it pays its workers $10 a day, more than the country’s $5.60 minimum wage. It also says that its workers are organized into unions. The company responded angrily to a 2007 nomination for most irresponsible corporations from a Swiss organization, the Berne Declaration. “We must also say that those fallacious attacks created incredulity and some anger among our Dolefil workers, their representatives, our growers, their cooperatives and more generally speaking among the entire community where we operate.” The company thanked “hundreds of people who spontaneously expressed their support to Dolefil, by taking the initiative to sign manifestos,” including seven cooperatives.

The problem with Dole’s position, as ILRF points out, is that “Dole’s contract workers are denied the same rights afforded to Dole’s regular workers. They are refused the right to organize or benefits gained by the regular union, and are consequently left with poor wages and permanent job insecurity.” Contract workers are paid under a quota system, and earn about $1.85 a day, according to ILRF.

Conditions are not perfect for unionized workers, either. In 2006, when a union leader complained about pesticide and chemical exposures (apparently misreported in local media as a complaint about Dole’s waste disposal practices), the management of Dole Philippines (Dolefil) pressed criminal libel charges against him. Two years later, these criminal charges remain pending.

Dole says it cannot respond to the allegations in the ILRF report, because the U.S. Trade Representative is considering acting on a petition by ILRF to deny some trade benefits to Dole pineapples imported into the United States from the Philippines.

Concludes Bama Atheya, executive director of ILRF, “In both Costa Rica and the Philippines, Dole has deliberately obstructed workers’ right to organize, has failed to pay a living wage and has polluted workers’ communities.”

GE: Creative Accounting

General Electric (GE) has appeared on Multinational Monitor’s annual 10 Worst Corporations list for defense contractor fraud, labor rights abuses, toxic and radioactive pollution, manufacturing nuclear weaponry, workplace safety violations and media conflicts of interest (GE owns television network NBC).

This year, the company returns to the list for new reasons: alleged tax cheating and the firing of a whistleblower.

In June, former New York Times reporter David Cay Johnston reported on internal GE documents that appeared to show the company had engaged in long-running effort to evade taxes in Brazil. In a lengthy report in Tax Notes International, Johnston cited a GE subsidiary manager’s powerpoint presentation that showed “suspicious” invoices as “an indication of possible tax evasion.” The invoices showed suspiciously high sales volume for lighting equipment in lightly populated Amazon regions of the country. These sales would avoid higher value added taxes (VAT) in urban states, where sales would be expected to be greater.

Johnston wrote that the state-level VAT at issue, based on the internal documents he reviewed, appeared to be less than $100 million. But, “since the VAT scheme appears to have gone on long before the period covered in the Moreira [the company manager] report, the total sum could be much larger and could involve other countries supplied by the Brazil subsidiary.”

A senior GE spokesperson, Gary Sheffer, told Johnston that the VAT and related issues were so small relative to GE’s size that the company was surprised a reporter would spend time looking at them. “No company has perfect compliance,” Sheffer said. “We do not believe we owe the tax.”

Johnston did not identify the source that gave him the internal GE documents, but GE has alleged it was a former company attorney, Adriana Koeck. GE fired Koeck in January 2007 for what it says were “performance reasons.” GE sued Koeck in June 2008, alleging that she wrongfully maintained privileged and confidential information, and improperly shared the information with third parties. In a court filing, GE said that it “considers its professional reputation to be its greatest asset and it has worked tirelessly to develop and preserve an unparalleled reputation of ‘unyielding integrity.’”

GE’s suit followed a whistleblower defense claim filed by Koeck in 2007. In April 2007, Koeck filed a claim with the U.S. Department of Labor under the Sarbanes-Oxley whistleblower protections (rules put in place following the Enron scandal).

In her filing, Koeck alleges that she was fired not for poor performance, but because she called attention to improper activities by GE. After being hired in January 2006, Koeck’s complaint asserts, she “soon discovered that GE C&I [consumer and industrial] operations in Latin America were engaged in a variety of irregular practices. But when she tried to address the problems, both Mr. Burse and Mr. Jones [her superiors in the general counsel’s office] interfered with her efforts, took certain matters away from her, repeatedly became enraged with her when she insisted that failing to address the problems would harm GE, and eventually had her terminated.”

Koeck’s whistleblower filing details the state VAT-avoidance scheme discussed in Johnston’s article. It also indicates that several GE employees in Brazil were blackmailing the company to keep quiet about the scheme.

Koeck’s whistleblower filing also discusses reports in the Brazilian media that GE had participated in a “bribing club” with other major corporations. Members of the club allegedly met to divide up public contracts in Brazil, as well as to agree on the amounts that would be paid in bribes. Koeck discovered evidence of GE subsidiaries engaging in behavior compatible with the “bribing club” stories and reported this information to her superior. Koeck alleges that her efforts to get higher level attorneys to review the situation failed.

In a statement, GE responds to the substance of Koeck’s allegations of wrongdoing: “These were relatively minor and routine commercial and tax issues in Brazil. Our employees proactively identified, investigated and resolved these issues in the appropriate manner. We are confident we have met all of our tax and compliance obligations in Brazil.GE has a strong and rigorous compliance process that dealt effectively with these issues.”

Koeck’s Sarbanes-Oxley complaint was thrown out in June, on the grounds that it had not been filed in a timely matter.

The substance of her claims, however, are now under investigation by the Department of Justice Fraud Section, according to Corporate Crime Reporter.

Imperial Sugar: 13 Dead

On February 7, an explosion rocked the Imperial Sugar refinery in Port Wentworth, Georgia, near Savannah.

Tony Holmes, a forklift operator at the plant, was in the break room when the blast occurred.

“I heard the explosion,” he told the Savannah Morning News. “The building shook, and the lights went out. I thought the roof was falling in. … I saw people running. I saw some horrific injuries. … People had clothes burning. Their skin was hanging off. Some were bleeding.”

Days later, when the fire was finally extinguished and search-and-rescue operations completed, the horrible human toll was finally known: 13 dead, dozens badly burned and injured.

As with almost every industrial disaster, it turns out the tragedy was preventable. The cause was accumulated sugar dust, which like other forms of dust, is highly combustible.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the government workplace safety regulator, had not visited Imperial Sugar’s Port Wentworth facility since 2000. When inspectors examined the blast site after the fact, they found rampant violations of the agency’s already inadequate standards. They proposed a more than $5 million fine, and issuance of citations for 61 egregious willful violations, eight willful violations and 51 serious violations. Under OSHA’s rules, a “serious” citation is issued when death or serious physical harm is likely to occur, a “willful” violation is a violation committed with plain indifference to employee safety and health, and “egregious” citations are issued for particularly flagrant violations.

A month later, OSHA inspectors investigated Imperial Sugar’s plant in Gramercy, Louisiana. They found 1/4- to 2-inch accumulations of dust on electrical wiring and machinery. They found 6- to 8-inch accumulations on wall ledges and piping. They found 1/2- to 1-inch accumulations on mechanical equipment and motors. They found 3- to 48-inch accumulations on workroom floors. OSHA posted an “imminent danger” notice at the plant, because of the high likelihood of another explosion.

Imperial Sugar obviously knew of the conditions in its plants. It had in fact taken some measures to clean up operations prior to the explosion.

Graham H. Graham was hired as vice president of operations of Imperial Sugar in November 2007. In July 2008, he told a Senate subcommittee that he first walked through the Port Wentworth facility in December 2007. “The conditions were shocking,” he testified. “Port Wentworth was a dirty and dangerous facility. The refinery was littered with discarded materials, piles of sugar dust, puddles of sugar liquid and airborne sugar dust. Electrical motors and controls were encrusted with solidified sugar, while safety covers and doors were missing from live electrical switchgear and panels. A combustible environment existed.”

Graham recommended that the plant manager be fired, and he was. Graham ordered a housekeeping blitz, and by the end of January, he testified to the Senate subcommittee, conditions had improved significantly, but still were hazardous.

But Graham also testified that he was told to tone down his demands for immediate action. In a meeting with John Sheptor, then Imperial Sugar’s chief operating officer and now its CEO, and Kay Hastings, senior vice president of human resources, Graham testified, “I was also informed that I was excessively eager in addressing the refinery’s problems.”

Sheptor, who was nearly killed in the refinery explosion, and Hastings both deny Graham’s account.

The company says that it respected safety concerns before the explosion, but has since redoubled efforts, hiring expert consultants on combustible hazards, refocusing on housekeeping efforts and purchasing industrial vacuums to minimize airborne disbursement.

In March, the House of Representatives Education and Labor Committee held a hearing on the hazards posed by combustible dust. The head of the Chemical Safety Board testified about a 2006 study that identified hundreds of combustible dust incidents that had killed more than 100 workers during the previous 25 years. The report recommended that OSHA issue rules to control the risk of dust explosions.

Instead of acting on this recommendation, said Committee Chair George Miller, D-California, “OSHA chose to rely on compliance assistance and voluntary programs, such as industry ‘alliances,’ web pages, fact sheets, speeches and booths at industry conferences.”

The House of Representatives then passed legislation to require OSHA to issue combustible dust standards, but the proposal was not able to pass the Senate.

Remarkably, even after the tragedy at Port Wentworth, and while Imperial Sugar said it welcomed the effort for a new dust rule, OSHA head Edwin Foulke indicated he believed no new rule was necessary.

“We believe,” he told the House Education and Labor Committee in March, “that [OSHA] has taken strong measures to prevent combustible dust hazards, and that our multi-pronged approach, which includes effective enforcement of  existing standards, combined with education for employers and employees, is effective in addressing combustible dust hazards. We would like to emphasize that the existence of a standard does not ensure that explosions will be eliminated.”

Philip Morris International: Unshackled

The old Philip Morris no longer exists. In March, the company formally divided itself into two separate entities: Philip Morris USA, which remains a part of the parent company Altria, and Philip Morris International.

Philip Morris USA sells Marlboro and other cigarettes in the United States. Philip Morris International tramples over the rest of the world.

The world is just starting to come to grips with a Philip Morris International even more predatory in pushing its toxic products worldwide.

The new Philip Morris International is unconstrained by public opinion in the United States — the home country and largest market of the old, unified Philip Morris —and will no longer fear lawsuits in the United States.

As a result, Thomas Russo of the investment fund Gardner Russo & Gardner told Bloomberg, the company “won’t have to worry about getting pre-approval from the U.S. for things that are perfectly acceptable in foreign markets.” Russo’s firm owns 5.7 million shares of Altria and now Philip Morris International.

A commentator for The Motley Fool investment advice service wrote, “The Marlboro Man is finally free to roam the globe unfettered by the legal and marketing shackles of the U.S. domestic market.”

In February, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a new report on the global tobacco epidemic. WHO estimates the Big Tobacco-fueled epidemic now kills more than 5 million people every year.

Five million people.

By 2030, WHO estimates 8 million will die a year from tobacco-related disease, 80 percent in the developing world.

The WHO report emphasizes that known and proven public health policies can dramatically reduce smoking rates. These policies include indoor smoke-free policies; bans on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship; heightened taxes; effective warnings; and cessation programs. These “strategies are within the reach of every country, rich or poor and, when combined as a package, offer us the best chance of reversing this growing epidemic,” says WHO Director-General Margaret Chan.

Most countries have failed to adopt these policies, thanks in no small part to decades-long efforts by Philip Morris and the rest of Big Tobacco to deploy political power to block public health initiatives. Thanks to the momentum surrounding a global tobacco treaty, known as the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, adopted in 2005, this is starting to change. There’s a long way to go, but countries are increasingly adopting sound public health measures to combat Big Tobacco.

Now Philip Morris International has signaled its initial plans to subvert these policies.

The company has announced plans to inflict on the world an array of new products, packages and marketing efforts. These are designed to undermine smoke-free workplace rules, defeat tobacco taxes, segment markets with specially flavored products, offer flavored cigarettes sure to appeal to youth and overcome marketing restrictions.

The Chief Operating Officer of Philip Morris International, Andre Calantzopoulos, detailed in a March investor presentation two new products, Marlboro Wides, “a shorter cigarette with a wider diameter,” and Marlboro Intense, “a rich, flavorful, shorter cigarette.”

Sounds innocent enough, as far as these things go.

That’s only to the innocent mind.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Philip Morris International’s underlying objective: “The idea behind Intense is to appeal to customers who, due to indoor smoking bans, want to dash outside for a quick nicotine hit but don’t always finish a full-size cigarette.”

Workplace and indoor smoke-free rules protect people from second-hand smoke, but also make it harder for smokers to smoke. The inconvenience (and stigma of needing to leave the office or restaurant to smoke) helps smokers smoke less and, often, quit. Subverting smoke-free bans will damage an important tool to reduce smoking.

Philip Morris International says it can adapt to high taxes. If applied per pack (or per cigarette), rather than as a percentage of price, high taxes more severely impact low-priced brands (and can help shift smokers to premium brands like Marlboro). But taxes based on price hurt Philip Morris International.

Philip Morris International’s response? “Other Tobacco Products,” which Calantzopoulos describes as “tax-driven substitutes for low-price cigarettes.” These include, says Calantzopoulos, “the ‘tobacco block,’ which I would describe as the perfect make-your-own cigarette device.” In Germany, roll-your-own cigarettes are taxed far less than manufactured cigarettes, and Philip Morris International’s “tobacco block” is rapidly gaining market share.

One of the great industry deceptions over the last several decades is selling cigarettes called “lights” (as in Marlboro Lights), “low” or “mild” — all designed to deceive smokers into thinking they are safer.

The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control says these inherently misleading terms should be barred. Like other companies in this regard, Philip Morris has been moving to replace the names with color coding — aiming to convey the same ideas, without the now-controversial terms.

Calantzopoulos says Philip Morris International will work to more clearly differentiate Marlboro Gold (lights) from Marlboro Red (traditional) to “increase their appeal to consumer groups and segments that Marlboro has not traditionally addressed.”

Philip Morris International also is rolling out a range of new Marlboro products with obvious attraction for youth. These include Marlboro Ice Mint, Marlboro Crisp Mint and Marlboro Fresh Mint, introduced into Japan and Hong Kong last year. It is exporting clove products from Indonesia.

The company has also renewed efforts to sponsor youth-oriented music concerts. In July, activist pressure forced Philip Morris International to withdraw sponsorship of an Alicia Keys concert in Indonesia (Keys called for an end to the sponsorship deal); and in August, the company was forced to withdraw from sponsorship in the Philippines of a reunion concert of the Eraserheads, a band sometimes considered “the Beatles of the Philippines.”

Responding to increasing advertising restrictions and large, pictorial warnings required on packs, Marlboro is focusing increased attention on packaging. Fancy slide packs make the package more of a marketing device than ever before, and may be able to obscure warning labels.

Most worrisome of all may be the company’s forays into China, the biggest cigarette market in the world, which has largely been closed to foreign multinationals. Philip Morris International has hooked up with the China National Tobacco Company, which controls sales in China. Philip Morris International will sell Chinese brands in Europe. Much more importantly, the company is starting to sell licensed versions of Marlboro in China. The Chinese aren’t letting Philip Morris International in quickly — Calantzopoulos says, “We do not foresee a material impact on our volume and profitability in the near future.” But, he adds, “we believe this long-term strategic cooperation will prove to be mutually beneficial and form the foundation for strong long-term growth.”

What does long-term growth mean? In part, it means gaining market share among China’s 350 million smokers. But it also means expanding the market, by selling to girls and women. About 60 percent of men in China smoke; only 2 or 3 percent of women do so.

Roche: Saving Lives is Not Our Business

Monopoly control over life-saving medicines gives enormous power to drug companies. And, to paraphrase Lord Acton, enormous power corrupts enormously.

The Swiss company Roche makes a range of HIV-related drugs. One of them is enfuvirtid, sold under the brand-name Fuzeon. Fuzeon is the first of a new class of AIDS drugs, working through a novel mechanism. It is primarily used as a “salvage” therapy — a treatment for people for whom other therapies no longer work. Fuzeon brought in $266 million to Roche in 2007, though sales are declining.

Roche charges $25,000 a year for Fuzeon. It does not offer a discount price for developing countries.

Like most industrialized countries, Korea maintains a form of price controls — the national health insurance program sets prices for medicines. The Ministry of Health, Welfare and Family Affairs listed Fuzeon at $18,000 a year. Korea’s per capita income is roughly half that of the United States. Instead of providing Fuzeon, for a profit, at Korea’s listed level, Roche refuses to make the drug available in Korea.

Korea is not a developing country, emphasizes Roche spokesperson Martina Rupp. “South Korea is a developed country like the U.S. or like Switzerland.”

Roche insists that Fuzeon is uniquely expensive to manufacture, and so that it cannot reduce prices. According to a statement from Roche, “the offered price represents the lowest sustainable price at which Roche can provide Fuzeon to South Korea, considering that the production process for this medication requires more than 100 steps — 10 times more than other antiretrovirals. A single vial takes six months to produce, and 45 kilograms of raw materials are necessary to produce one kilogram of Fuzeon.”

The head of Roche Korea was reportedly less diplomatic. According to Korean activists, he told them, “We are not in business to save lives, but to make money. Saving lives is not our business.”

Says Roche spokesperson Rupp: “I don’t know why he would say that, and I cannot imagine that this is really something that this person said.”

Another AIDS-related drug made by Roche is valganciclovir. Valganciclovir treats a common AIDS-related infection called cytomegalovirus (CMV) that causes blindness or death. Roche charges $10,000 for a four-month course of valganciclovir. In December 2006, it negotiated with Médicins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and agreed on a price of $1,899. According to MSF, this still-price-gouging price is only available for poor and very high incidence countries, however, and only for nonprofit organizations — not national treatment programs.

Roche’s Rupp says that “Currently, MSF is the only organization requesting purchase of Valcyte [Roche’s brand name for valganciclovir] for such use in these countries. To date, MSF are the only AIDS treatment provider treating CMV for their patients.  They told us themselves this is because no-one else has the high level of skilled medical staff they have.”

Dr. David Wilson, former MSF medical coordinator in Thailand, says he remembers the first person that MSF treated with life-saving antiretrovirals. “I remember everyone was feeling really great that we were going to start treating people with antiretrovirals, with the hope of bringing people back to normal life.” The first person MSF treated, Wilson says, lived but became blind from CMV. “She became strong and she lived for a long time, but the antiretroviral treatment doesn’t treat the CMV.”

“I’ve been working in MSF projects and treating people with AIDS with antiretrovirals for seven years now,” he says, “and along with many colleagues we’ve been frustrated because we don’t have treatment for this particular disease. We now think we have a strategy to diagnose it effectively and what we really need is the medicine to treat the patients.”

Source

Sierra Leone: A mission for MSF(Doctors Without Borders)

Ethiopia

Ethiopia: Solar power, sustainable farming, rainwater harvesting and bore holes, fish ponds, etc.

Rema Village, Ethiopia

Rema Village

The Solar Energy Foundation, a German charity  has wired the homes in this remote Ethiopian village of 5,5000 with 1,100 solar panels. of 5,500 people here with 1,100 solar panels. Only 1% of rural Ethiopians have access to electricity. The solar panels make it possible for residents to have lights and radios in their small huts, provides refrigeration in the village’s health clinics, fuels water pumps, and creates local jobs for electrical technicians, who are trained by the Foundation.

Sub-Saharan Africa Stats

Solar Paneling Co. – Addis Ababa

Fisheries, Fish ponds

the government should put emphasis on integration of fish culture with other activities. Extensive polyculture (stocking two or more species) in small lakes and artificial water bodies is also recommended as a means to increase productivity per unit area. Simultaneous production of fish in ponds combined with livestock, poultry and horticultural crops in urban and pre-urban is also suggested as one of the most productive culture system.

water in ethiopia

Boreholes: Drilling for water in Ethiopia

An analysis of costs

Ethiopia School

Education in Ethiopia

funding a school in ethiopia

Building a school in Ethiopia

MDGs: Universal Education Goal #2:  2015

Every human being should have the opportunity to make a better life for themselves. Unfortunately, too many children in the world today grow up without this chance, because they are denied their basic right to even attend primary school. A sustainable end to world poverty as we know it, as well as the path to peace and security, require that citizens in every country are empowered to make positive choices and provide for themselves and their families.

OLPC

One Laptop Per Child

The mission of One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is to empower the children of developing countries to learn by providing one connected laptop to every school-age child. In order to accomplish our goal, we need people who believe in what we’re doing and want to help make education for the world’s children a priority, not a privilege.

G1G1 News blog: beginning in Nov. thru Amazon partnership.

The Digital Rainforest: Role of Information & Communication Technologies in Addressing Global Digital Divide

Addis Ababa: Ideas for Bethlehem School

Jimma Times – Independent newspaper in Ethiopia

ethiopian restaurant

Where the diner is an altar of thanks: a NY Times guide to Ethiopian dining

***

Sowing Seeds of Famine in Ethiopia

“The “economic therapy” imposed under IMF-World Bank jurisdiction is in large part responsible for triggering famine and social devastation in Ethiopia and the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, wreaking the peasant economy and impoverishing millions of people.

With the complicity of branches of the US government, it has also opened the door for the appropriation of traditional seeds and landraces by US biotech corporations, which behind the scenes have been peddling the adoption of their own genetically modified seeds under the disguise of emergency aid and famine relief.

Moreover, under WTO rules, the agri-biotech conglomerates can manipulate market forces to their advantage as well as exact royalties from farmers. The WTO provides legitimacy to the food giants to dismantle State programmes including emergency grain stocks, seed banks, extension services and agricultural credit, etc.), plunder peasant economies and trigger the outbreak of periodic famines.”

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 00:24:09 GMT

ADM: Contributions to Political Campaigns (2008)

The American River Transporation Company (ARTCO) is a subsidiary of the Archer Daniels Midland company.

ARTCO manages the transportation of ADM products along the Mississippi River, Ohio River, and Illinois River in the United States. ARTCO also manages transportation of Cocoa along the Madeira River in Brazil near Bolivia.

ARTCO owns 2,000 barges, plus dozens of towboats and harbor tugboats [2].

ARTCO ships many of ADM’s products, including as grain and oil seed, ethanol, and corn gluten meal.

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

A sampling of the Gates Foundation’s largest investments:

Between $100 million and $1 billion

• Abbott Laboratories
• Archer Daniels Midland

Related Articles

Reprinted from The Los Angeles Times, January 7, 2007 with an introduction by Barbara Loe Fisher of the National Vaccine Information Center

Bill Gates: Philanthropist or Profiteering Polluter?

“The Gates Foundation has poured $218 million into polio and measles immunization and research worldwide, including in the Niger Delta. At the same time that it is paying for inoculations to protect health, it has invested $423 million in Eni, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Total of France — the companies responsible for most of the flares blanketing the delta with pollution, beyond anything permitted in the United States or Europe. A sampling of the Gates Foundation’s largest investments between $100 million and $1 billion: Abbott Laboratories, Archer Daniels Midland, British Petroleum, Canadian National Railway, Exxon Mobil, Freddie Mac, French Government, Japanese Government, Merck, Schering Plough, Tyco International, Waste Management…Indeed, local leaders blame oil developments for fostering some of the very afflictions that the foundation combats.” – Charles Piller, Edmund Sanders, Robyn Dixon, LA Times

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has more than $60 billion at its disposal – an amount higher than the gross domestic products of 70 percent of the world’s nations – is reportedly financially backing corporations which pollute the same areas of Africa that are targeted for vaccines made by companies that Gates also funds. A report in the LA Times points out that:

The Gates Foundation endowment had major holdings in:

• Companies ranked among the worst U.S. and Canadian polluters, including ConocoPhillips, Dow Chemical Co. and Tyco International;
• Many of the world’s other major polluters, including companies that own an oil refinery and one that owns a paper mill, which a study shows sicken children while the foundation tries to save their parents from AIDS;
• Pharmaceutical companies that price drugs beyond the reach of AIDS patients the foundation is trying to treat.

For the second year in a row, PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi is the most powerful woman in the world, according to Fortune Magazine.

Rounding out the top five…

2. Irene Rosenfeld, CEO of Kraft Foods
3. Pat Woertz, CEO of Archer Daniels Midland
4. Anne Mulcahy, CEO of Xerox
5. Angela Braly, CEO of Wellpoint

Click here to read the entire list.

While there check out the International Power 50, and make sure to look at #43, it is none other than Manpower’s own Francoise Gri who is the President of France for Manpower Inc.

I Don’t Trust the FDA with My Personal Wellness

Ray Salomone

www.GrecoRomanWellness.com

According to REUTERS NEWS AGENCY, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced that we may already be eating the offspring of cloned animals and that “there is no difference between cloned and conventional products.”

Before I go ballistic on this, I’ll do my best to state my case:

As long as the behemoth meat producers say there is no difference and slip incredible lobbying money their way, the FDA says this. Just as the corporate conglomerate

Produce farmers say that irradiating the fruits and vegetables will cause “no known harm.”

This is sickening. In the truest sense of the word.

Eat local, eat organic and talk to the farmers who produce your food. Look them in the eye and hold them accountable. I’m on my way to a huge Farmer’s Market in New York City (yes, we have them here!). I speak to the farmers, I put them on notice.

I don’t trust the FDA and neither should you if you want to be well.

Do you want a FREE copy of my WARRIORS AND GODDESSES WORKOUT PLAN?

Send me an email through my website:

www.GrecoRomanWellness.com

Ray Salomone

Personal Trainer and Wellness Crusader

Global Ambassador of Wellness

Founder of the 100 a Day Push Up Club

(over 4,000 members worldwide)

Send this blog post to a loved one and help save their lives!

The Independent

Speculators blamed for driving up price of basic foods as 100 million face severe hunger. Monsanto reported net income for the three months up to the end of February this year had more than doubled. Cargill’s net earnings soared by 86 per cent and Archer Daniels Midland increased its net earnings by 42 per cent.

Market shoppers in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, one of the countries that is experiencing acute food shortages and rising costs

Giant agribusinesses are enjoying soaring earnings and profits out of the world food crisis which is driving millions of people towards starvation, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. And speculation is helping to drive the prices of basic foodstuffs out of the reach of the hungry.

The prices of wheat, corn and rice have soared over the past year driving the world’s poor – who already spend about 80 per cent of their income on food – into hunger and destitution.

The World Bank says that 100 million more people are facing severe hunger. Yet some of the world’s richest food companies are making record profits. Monsanto last month reported that its net income for the three months up to the end of February this year had more than doubled over the same period in 2007, from $543m (£275m) to $1.12bn. Its profits increased from $1.44bn to $2.22bn.

Cargill’s net earnings soared by 86 per cent from $553m to $1.030bn over the same three months. And Archer Daniels Midland, one of the world’s largest agricultural processors of soy, corn and wheat, increased its net earnings by 42 per cent in the first three months of this year from $363m to $517m. The operating profit of its grains merchandising and handling operations jumped 16-fold from $21m to $341m.

Similarly, the Mosaic Company, one of the world’s largest fertiliser companies, saw its income for the three months ending 29 February rise more than 12-fold, from $42.2m to $520.8m, on the back of a shortage of fertiliser. The prices of some kinds of fertiliser have more than tripled over the past year as demand has outstripped supply. As a result, plans to increase harvests in developing countries have been hit hard.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation reports that 37 developing countries are in urgent need of food. And food riots are breaking out across the globe from Bangladesh to Burkina Faso, from China to Cameroon, and from Uzbekistan to the United Arab Emirates.

Benedict Southworth, director of the World Development Movement, called the escalating earnings and profits “immoral” late last week. He said that the benefits of the food price increases were being kept by the big companies, and were not finding their way down to farmers in the developing world.

The soaring prices of food and fertilisers mainly come from increased demand. This has partly been caused by the boom in biofuels, which require vast amounts of grain, but even more by increasing appetites for meat, especially in India and China; producing 1lb of beef in a feedlot, for example, takes 7lbs of grain.

World food stocks at record lows, export bans and a drought in Australia have contributed to the crisis, but experts are also fingering food speculation. Professor Bob Watson – chief scientist at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, who led the giant International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development – last week identified it as a factor.

Index-fund investment in grain and meat has increased almost fivefold to over $47bn in the past year, concludes AgResource Co, a Chicago-based research firm. And the official US Commodity Futures Trading Commission held special hearings in Washington two weeks ago to examine how much speculators were helping to push up food prices.

Cargill says that its results “reflect the cumulative effect of having invested more than $18bn in fixed and working capital over the past seven years to expand our physical facilities, service capabilities, and knowledge around the world”.

The revelations are bound to increase outrage over multinational companies following last week’s disclosure that Shell and BP between them recorded profits of £14bn in the first three months of the year – or £3m an hour – on the back of rising oil prices. Shell promptly attracted even greater condemnation by announcing that it was pulling out of plans to build the world’s biggest wind farm off the Kent coast.

World leaders are to meet next month at a special summit on the food crisis, and it will be high on the agenda of the G8 summit of the world’s richest countries in Hokkaido, Japan, in July.

Additional research by Vandna Synghal

Action on behalf of justice is a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the gospel.
Justice in the World – 1971 Synod of Bishops

Two new scientific studies (University of Minnesota and Princeton) show that “if the full emissions costs of producing these fuels are taken into account . . . . They cause more greenhouse gasses than conventional fuels.”

The studies do hold out hope for the ‘second-generation’ biofuels such as switch grass grown on waste land, and algae — although other problems arise with these as well. Notably, increasing reliance on biofuels would use a great deal more water — an increasingly scarce resource itself — both in growing and in processing the biofuel feedstocks.

Widespread biofuel use also poses a new pollution threat. Formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, and other aldehydes are produced when the alcohols in biofuels are burned.

Formaldehyde is used to preserve dead bodies — it isn’t good for living ones. Remember the FEMA trailers? It is banned by the European Union as a carcinogenic. Acetaldehyde is both carcinogenic and mutagenic.

Gas chromatograph studies comparing the air of Osaka, Japan (where no ethanol is used) and Sao Paulo, Brazil (where lots of ethanol fuel is used) showed atmospheric formaldehyde to be 160 percent higher in Brazil, and acetaldehyde 260 percent higher.

Eclipsing all these problems is the work of Professor Tad W. Patzek whose calculations “show that the entire surface of the Earth cannot create enough additional biomass to replace more than 10 percent of current fossil fuel use.” To grow enough fuelstocks for biofuels to replace our current fossil fuel useage would require 10.8 million square miles — and the Earth only has 5.5 million square miles of arable land.

So, in short, big biofuels:

• Produce more greenhouse gasses just when we need less
• Increase water usage just when we need to conserve
• Produce more carcinogenic and mutagenic pollution
• Use more land than is available for all other uses, including food.

Use of ‘second-generation’ fuelstocks like algae could safely replace a limited portion of our fossil fuel. But corn as a biofuel feedstock is a net environmental liability. It needs lots of fertilizer and degrades the land, and uses up almost as much energy in its’ growth, production, and transportation as it’s use as a fuel can produce. Still, 95 percent of the biofuel now used in America is from corn.

Why? The short answer is — Archer Daniels Midland.

ADM makes high-fructose corn syrup — used notably in cold drinks, and just about every other processed food. High fructose corn syrup is made by a process of “wet-milling” corn. The very same process used to make ethanol.

ADM has “billions in assets geared toward buying, moving, storing, and processing corn” already in place. Small wonder they are determined to make sure that corn remains the American biofuel crop. (ADM is also the main industry player in biodiesel and favors using soybeans — which have the “lowest fuel-yield per acre of any major biodiesel crop”.)

So ADM has joined with old pals like Monsanto, Dupont, and Burson-Marstellar in a front-group called “Alliance for Abundant Food and Energy” — giving it a budget of “several million dollars” to push a high pressure lobbying and advertising campaign. You can be sure that however much they spend it is because they expect to make much, much more.

So that’s the bottom line — not increased greenhouse gasses, not increased water scarcity, not rising cancer and mutation rates, not rising food costs and attendant hunger and starvation — but big profit from big biofuels.