Recently in Corporatization Category

New fight for Congo's riches. Nick Mathiason. Guardian/UK. 6/29/2008.

Scores of lucrative mining concessions handed out by President Joseph Kabila are in doubt after a report questioned their legality. Will a programme of renegotiation finally allow a beleaguered nation to exploit its huge mineral wealth?

Why Children Are Not 'Little Adults'. NY Times. 7/10/2008.

Earlier this week, the nation's leading pediatric group issued guidelines suggesting that some high-risk children be given cholesterol-lowering statin drugs that are typically prescribed for middle-aged men. The news shocked many pediatricians, who predicted a backlash from the public and doctors.

As G-8 meets, free trade under fire. Mark Trumbull. Christian Science Monitor. 7/07/2008.

Recent economic woes are raising new doubts about the benefits of globalization.

New pressures force U.S. farmers south of the border. Sara Miller Llana. Christian Science Monitor. 7/15/2008.

Tougher immigration control and stricter environmental and food safety regulations are prompting US firms to move farms to Mexico, Brazil, and everywhere in between.

The WTO's Raw Deal on Services. 7/17/08. FPIF. Desperate to clinch a new global trade deal, World Trade Organization chief Pascal Lamy is planning to convene a "mini-ministerial" meeting in the third week of July. The aim of the meeting is to come up with agreements to liberalize trade in agriculture, industry, and services. These sectors have been the focus of the so-called Doha Round of WTO negotiations that have dragged on since 2001.

U.S. says ending trade barriers key to food crisis. Reuters. 6/13/2008.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is boosting food aid and development support to combat the global food crisis, but poor countries must also scrap ill-considered export bans and farm trade barriers, a senior U.S. official said on Friday.

South Korea's Beef with America. Christine Ahn. Foreign Policy in Focus. 6/13/2008.

On June 10, one million South Koreans from all walks of life poured onto the streets of Seoul, the nation's capital, to protest the newly elected President Lee Myung Bak's deal with the United States to fully open Korean markets to U.S. beef.

The United States of Advertising. Kevin Connolly. BBC. 6/14/2008.

I have been taking a keen interest in television adverts for indigestion products lately.

This habit more or less coincided with my discovery of beef jerky, an American food whose classiness you can judge from the fact that it is mainly found in petrol stations.

Human cost of Brazil's biofuels boom. Patrick J. McDonnell. LA Times. 6/16/2008.

The country is a key producer of ethanol. Many of those cutting the sugar cane used to make the fuel are said to endure primitive conditions.

RBS issues global stock and credit crash alert. Abrose Evans-Pritchard. Telegraph/UK. 6/18/2008.

The Royal Bank of Scotland has advised clients to brace for a full-fledged crash in global stock and credit markets over the next three months as inflation paralyses the major central banks.

Destroying African Agriculture. Walden Bello. Foreign Policy in Focus. 6/03/2008.

Biofuel production is certainly one of the culprits in the current global food crisis. But while the diversion of corn from food to biofuel feedstock has been a factor in food prices shooting up, the more primordial problem has been the conversion of economies that are largely food-self-sufficient into chronic food importers. Here the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Trade Organization (WTO) figure as much more important villains.

Monsanto Seeks Big Increase in Crop Yields. Andrew Pollack, NY Times. 6/05/2008.

Monsanto, the leader in agricultural biotechnology, pledged Wednesday to develop seeds that would double the yields of corn, soybeans and cotton by 2030 and would require 30 percent less water, land and energy to grow.

Boeing, Dow Chemical Fined 926 Million Over Nuclear Pollution. Agence France Presse. 6/04/2008.

LOS ANGELES - A Denver, Colorado court has fined Dow Chemical Co. and Boeing Co. a combined 926 million dollars for property damages caused by plutonium contamination from a nuclear weapons plant.

World hunger's urban edge. Stephanie Holmes. BBC. 6/05/2008,

The global food price crisis has revealed not only the new face of hunger but also its voice.

Americans $1.7 trillion poorer. Tami Luhby. CNN. 6/05/2008.

Americans' net worth falls for the second straight quarter as home and stock prices decline, but it may not hurt consumer spending, experts say.

DEVELOPMENT: Food Summit Agrees Greater Liberalisation. Sabina Zaccaro. Inter Press Service. 6/05/2008.

ROME, Jun 5 (IPS) - The three-day world summit called by the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation to respond to the food crisis ended with plans and pledges - and a new push to liberalisation.

Trade boss criticises financial mess. Steve Schifferes. BBC. 5/30/2008.

The boss of one of the world's most important economic organisations has said the lack of regulation in world markets was the root cause of the financial crisis which has hit world economic growth.

PERU: Indigenous Groups Challenge Private Investment Decree. Milagros Salazar. IPS. 5/29/2008.

LIMA, May 29 (IPS) - More than 5,000 indigenous and peasant communities in Peru launched a petition drive this week with the aim of getting President Alan García's decree promoting private investment in communally owned land declared unconstitutional.

Economic Toll Mounts From High Oil Prices. Graham Bowley & David Jolly. NY Times. 5/23/2008.

Oil prices leaped above $135 a barrel in overnight trading on Thursday, a new record that underscored the growing pressures that runaway energy prices are placing on some of the biggest names in global industry.

BIODIVERSITY: Indigenous Peoples Fight Theft. Julio Godoy. Inter Press Service. 5/24/2008.

BONN, May 24 (IPS) - Amongst the suits in the luxurious hotel hall, Sebastian Haji immediately catches the eye. He is small, dark-skinned, and wears a crown of feathers on his head.

Family Seed Business Takes On Goliath of Genetic Modification. Marian Scott. The Edmonton Journal (Canada). 5/25/2008.

Heather Meek leafs through the seed catalogue she wrote on the family computer, on winter nights after the kids went to bed.There are Kahnawake Mohawk beans and Painted Mountain corn; Tante Alice cucumber and 40 varieties of heritage tomatoes.

Consent of the Governed: the reign of corporations and the fight for democracy. Jeffrey Kaplan. Orion Magazine. 11/2003.

DESCRIBING THE UNITED STATES of the 1830s in his now-famous work, Democracy in America, the young French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville depicted a country passionate about self-governance. In the fifty years since sovereignty had passed from the crown to the people, citizens of the new republic had seized upon every opportunity "to take a hand in the government of society and to talk about it. . . . If an American should be reduced to occupying himself with his own affairs," wrote de Tocqueville, "half his existence would be snatched from him; he would feel it as a vast void in his life."

Redesigning Corporate Law. Robert Hinkley. Resurgence 2002.

AFTER TWENTY-THREE years advising large corporations on securities offerings, mergers and acquisitions, I left my position because I was disturbed by the game. I realized that the many social ills created by corporations stem directly from corporate law. It dawned on me that the law, in its current form, actually inhibits executives and corporations from being socially responsible. So in June 2000 I decided to devote the next phase of my life to making people aware of this problem. My goal is to build consensus to change the law so that it encourages good corporate citizenship rather than inhibiting it.

Solidarity is in the air. Margaret Jones.

Resistance is as transnational as capital.
SEATTLE, 1999; WASHINGTON and Prague, 2000. Names and dates that by now are household words. Every few months, it seems, another festival of anti-globalization is celebrated, to the accompaniment of banners, chants, samba bands, tear gas -- and, it must be confessed, the throwing of cobblestones and the smashing of windows the mass media so delight to pounce on. These periodic anti-capitalist carnivals have become a cultural fixture almost as predictable as the World Cup. Whether they are merely a safety valve for the pent-up frustrations of activists worldwide, or the harbingers of sweeping global change, remains to be seen. In either case, they are, without a doubt, in common with the anti-globalization movement as a whole, the nurseries of some remarkable solidarity and creative co-operation between very disparate groups.

Is in vitro meat the future?. Carol Midgley. Times/UK. 5/09/2008.

Chicken, beef and pork that has never been a living animal could be better for people and the planet. But will it catch on?

Utah Mine Disaster Was Preventable, Report Says. Ian Urbina. NY Times. 5/09/2008.

The general manager and possibly other senior staff at the Crandall Canyon Mine near Huntington, Utah, where 9 miners died in August 2007, hid information from federal mining officials that could have prevented the disaster and should face criminal charges, according to a Congressional investigation whose results were released Thursday.

U.S. Legal Work Booms in India. Rama Lakshimi. Wa. Post. 5/11/2008.

New Outsourcing Industry Is Growing 60 Percent Annually

GURGAON, India -- When Aashish Sharma graduated from law school two years ago, his father had visions of seeing him argue in an Indian court and eventually become an honorable judge.

Tornado might sound death knell for Oklahoma town. Kevin Murphy. KC Star. 5/12/2008.

PICHER, Okla. | A tornado did what the federal government could not.

Ellis Jones had been a holdout in the government's quest to pay everyone to leave Picher, contaminated from its long-closed lead mines.

The Green Machine: Monsanto Co's Transgenic Products Tightens Their Control of Seed Market. Jennifer Kahn. Resugence Magazine. 1999.

This letter, sent by the agrochemical company Monsanto to 30,000 farmers last fall to warn them that saving and replanting seeds from genetically engineered crops constitute "piracy," appears to be the act of a company on the defensive. But, in truth, it's a display of corporate sovereignty, Monsanto's way of staking the flag of empire upon the land. Thanks to advances in transgenics--inserting a gene from one species into an unrelated organism's DNA--seeds are now considered "intellectual property." According to the Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI), more than one third of the world's commercial-seed sales are controlled by a handful of corporations. Among them, Monsanto--the world's third-largest agrochemical and second-largest seed company (with a majority of the U.S. cotton, corn, and soybean markets)--is the most aggressive.

"Transgenic Seed Companies Lie and Bribe". Interview with Jesús León Santos, Winner of Goldman Prize. Inter Press Service. 4/24/2008.

MEXICO CITY, Apr 24 (Tierramérica) - Biotech corporations that developed genetically modified seeds are bribing authorities and carrying out costly advertising campaigns "plagued with lies in order to create monsters that attack life," says Jesús León Santos, an indigenous man who is one of this year's winners of the Goldman Environmental Prize.

Environmental Cost of Shipping Groceries Around the World. Elizabeth Rosenthal. NY Times. 4/26/2008.

Cod caught off Norway is shipped to China to be turned into filets, then shipped back to Norway for sale. Argentine lemons fill supermarket shelves on the Citrus Coast of Spain, as local lemons rot on the ground. Half of Europe's peas are grown and packaged in Kenya.

UN: Biofuel Production 'Criminal Path' to Global Food Crisis. Environmental News Service. 4/29/2008.

GENEVA, Switzerland - The United States and the European Union have taken a "criminal path" by contributing to an explosive rise in global food prices through using food crops to produce biofuels, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food said today.At a press conference in Geneva, Jean Ziegler of Switzerland said that fuel policies pursued by the U.S. and the EU were one of the main causes of the current worldwide food crisis.

Chevron Complicit in Abuses in Burma - Rights Lobby. Marwaan Macan-Markar. Inter Press Services. 4/20/2008.

BANGKOK - An environmental group is warning U.S. energy giant Chevron to clean up its act in Burma or face legal proceedings where the multinational's links to gross human rights violations in the military-ruled country could be exposed.

Oil Majors Rapped Over Secrecy, Corruption. Abid Aslam. International Press Service. 4/30/2008.

WASHINGTON - Leading oil firms impede efforts to stamp out poverty and corruption by shrouding their financial dealings in secrecy, says a global watchdog.

Small-town residents living on deadly ground. Ronnie Greene. Miami Herald. 5/03/2008.

Residents of Tallevast blame toxins that leaked into the ground and their water supply as a factor in the 80 cancers of family members and neighbors over the years, and they want someone held accountable.

Multinationals Make Billions In Profit Out of Growing Global Food Crisis. Geoffrey Lean. Independent/UK. 5/04/2008.

Speculators blamed for driving up price of basic foods as 100 million face severe hunger

No let up in India farm suicides. Prachi Pinglay. BBC. 5/05/2008.

The rate of farmer suicides in India's Maharashtra state has gone up in recent years despite expensive relief schemes, a government report says.

Food Rationing Confronts Breadbasket of the World. Josh Gerstein. NY Sun. 4/21/2008.

Many parts of America, long considered the breadbasket of the world, are now confronting a once unthinkable phenomenon: food rationing. Major retailers in New York, in areas of New England, and on the West Coast are limiting purchases of flour, rice, and cooking oil as demand outstrips supply. There are also anecdotal reports that some consumers are hoarding grain stocks.

Biofuels starving our people, leaders tell UN. Allegra Stratton. Guardian/UK. 4/28/2008.

The leaders of Bolivia and Peru have attacked the use of biofuels, saying they have made food too expensive for the poor.

India rules out new farm debt aid. BBC. 4/22/2008.

India's agriculture minister has rejected calls for additional debt cancellation for millions of farmers.

Despite Tough Times, Ultrarich Keep Spending. Christine Haughney & Eric Konigsberg. NY Times. 4/13/2008.

Who said anything about a recession? Sometime between the government bailout of Bear Stearns and the Bureau of Labor Statistics report that America lost 80,000 jobs in March, Lee Tachman spent roughly $50,000 last month on a four-day jaunt to Miami for himself and three close friends.

DEVELOPMENT: Reinventing Agriculture. Stephen Leahy. IPS. 4/15/2008.

JOHANNESBURG, Apr 15 (IPS) - The results of a painstaking examination of global agriculture are being formally presented Tuesday with the release of the final report for the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD).

NBC Universal, ad agency to create product-centered programs. AP. 4/18/2008.

BURBANK, Calif. (AP) -- A newly formed NBC Universal production unit is teaming up with an advertising agency to create programs around sponsors' products, the company said.

South Korean workers on edge of burnout. Bruce Williams. LA Times. 4/19/2008.

SEOUL -- "Life Is Wonderfull" is the boast from Korea Telecom that shimmers from the billboard-size TV screens that loom over downtown Seoul, but you might get an argument at street level about the accuracy of the company's English slogan.

Food price rises are "mass murder": U.N. envoy. Reuters. 4/20/2008.

VIENNA (Reuters) - Global food price rises are leading to "silent mass murder" and commodities markets have brought "horror" to the world, the United Nations' food envoy told an Austrian newspaper on Sunday.

Exposed: The Great GM Crops Myth. Geoffrey Lean. Independent/UK. 4/20/2008.

Genetic modification actually cuts the productivity of crops, an authoritative new study shows, undermining repeated claims that a switch to the controversial technology is needed to solve the growing world food crisis.

DEVELOPMENT: Reinventing Agriculture. Stephen Leahy. International Press Service. 4/15/2008.

The results of a painstaking examination of global agriculture are being formally presented Tuesday with the release of the final report for the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD).

A faltering economy hasn't slowed American CEOs' pursuit of wealth. David Walsh. World Socialist Web Site. 4/16/2008.

The incomes of American chief executives surged ahead in 2007 and into early 2008, despite an economy that was beginning to unravel and various half-hearted (or less) efforts to bring the process under control.

Union Killings Peril Trade Pact With Colombia. Simon Romero. NY Times. 4/14/2008.

BOGOTÁ, Colombia -- Lucy Gómez still shudders when speaking of the murder of her brother, Leonidas, a union leader and bank employee who was beaten and stabbed to death here last month. His murder was part of a recent increase in killings of union members in Colombia, with 17 already this year.

Robots seen doing work of 3.5 million in Japan. Reuters. 4/08/2008.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Robots could fill the jobs of 3.5 million people in graying Japan by 2025, a thinktank says, helping to avert worker shortages as the country's population shrinks.

Toxic shock: how the banking industry created a global crisis. Jill Treanor. Guardian/UK. 4/08/2008.

The warnings began eight years ago, but even the most respected financiers did not understand all the risks

The banking industry is gripped by a credit crisis that has taken the US economy to the brink of recession. Two banks have, in effect, been nationalised, house prices are tumbling and it is harder to secure a home loan. In a major investigation, Jill Treanor looks at the flawed financial products at the heart of the credit crunch and explores how the banks brought the crisis on themselves and how it could mark a return to basics.

IMF plans gold sale to raise $6bn. BBC. 4/07/2008.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has proposed selling some of its gold holdings as part of radical plans to shore up its troubled finances.

Credit crunch costs '$1 trillion'. Stevern Schifferes. BBC. 4/09/2008.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned that potential losses from the credit crunch will reach $945bn (£472bn) and could be even higher.

For Many, a Boom That Wasn't. David Leonhardt. NY Times. 4/09/2008.

How has the United States economy gotten to this point?

It's not just the apparent recession. Recessions happen. If you tried to build an economy immune to the human emotions that produce boom and bust, you would end up with something that looked like East Germany.

In Justice Shift, Corporate Deals Replace Trials. Eric Lichtblau. 4/09/2008.

WASHINGTON -- In 2005, federal authorities concluded that a Monsanto consultant had visited the home of an Indonesian official and, with the approval of a senior company executive, handed over an envelope stuffed with hundred-dollar bills. The money was meant as a bribe to win looser environmental regulations for Monsanto's cotton crops, according to a court document. Monsanto was also caught concealing the bribe with fake invoices.

The World Bank's Carbon Deals. Janet Redman. Foreign Policy In Focus. 4/10/2008.

It was the first day in a long week of the consultations, PowerPoint presentations and high-level cocktail parties that accompany the World Bank's Spring Meetings in Washington, D.C. Already tensions were running high in a tightly-packed conference room downtown. Bank staff huddled on one side and non-profit groups on the other. The topic that drew so much attention first thing Monday morning: Climate change and the Bank's plans for plunging its fingers deeper into the expanding multi-billion-dollar carbon-trading pie.

Food Price Rises Threaten Global Security - UN. David Adam. Independent/UK. 4/09/2008.

Rising food prices could spark worldwide unrest and threaten political stability, the UN's top humanitarian official warned yesterday after two days of rioting in Egypt over the doubling of prices of basic foods in a year and protests in other parts of the world.

Globalization, trade and recession take a toll on Martinsville, Virginia. Tony Pugh. McClatchy. 4/10/2008.

Foreclosure Machine Thrives on Woes. Gretchen Morgenson & Jonathan Glater. NY Times. 3/30/2008.

Microfinance's Success Sets Off a Debate in Mexico. Elizabeth Malkin. NY Times. 4/05/2008.

VILLA DE VÁZQUEZ, Mexico -- Carlos Danel and Carlos Labarthe turned a nonprofit that lent money to Mexico's poor into one of the country's most profitable banks.

High Rice Cost Creating Fears of Asia Unrest. Keith Bradsher. NY Times. 3/29/2008.

HANOI -- Rising prices and a growing fear of scarcity have prompted some of the world's largest rice producers to announce drastic limits on the amount of rice they export.

Grain prices soar globally. Daniel Ten Kate. Christian Science Monitor. 3/25/2008.

Bangkok, Thailand - - Rice farmers here are staying awake in shifts at night to guard their fields from thieves. In Peru, shortages of wheat flour are prompting the military to make bread with potato flour, a native crop. In Egypt, Cameroon, and Burkina Faso food riots have broken out in the past week.

Mining forces out thousands in SA. BBC. 3/25/2008.

Nearly 20,000 South Africans have been displaced by mining giant Anglo American in its search for platinum, a BBC File on 4 investigation has found.

BRAZIL: Growing Foreign Appetite for Land. Mario Osava. International Press Service. 3/24/2008.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 24 (IPS) - It is a question of "national sovereignty, not xenophobia," said the president of Brazil's land reform agency, INCRA, explaining the need to regulate foreign land ownership in Brazil.

UN food agency issues emergency plea for $500m. Owen Bowcott. Guardian/UK. 3/25/2009

· Malnourished millions at risk of cut in supplies
· 'Perfect storm' of rising prices and biofuel boom

Food rationing will shortly be imposed on millions in desperate need unless donor countries make good a $500m (£250m) shortfall, the United Nations agency that combats starvation warned yesterday.

Mexican Farmers Protest End of Corn-Import Taxes. James McKinnely. NY Times. 2/01/2008.

MEXICO CITY - Tens of thousands of farmers clogged the streets of the capital on Thursday to protest the end of tariffs on corn from the United States, warning that the elimination of trade barriers could drive them out of business and lead more Mexicans to migrate north.

Urbanization threatens Namibia's traditional Himba culture. Stephanie Hanes. Christian Science Monitor. 2/05/2008.

Where an ancient tribe and modern Africa meet, bare-breasted women in animal-skin skirts and men with spears join the urban flow of traffic, supermarkets, and pool halls.

Opuwo, Namibia - As the sun drops behind the dusty main street here, the crowd at the informal market behind the OK Grocer gets bigger. Twenty-somethings in Western clothes slap hands in greeting, older men sit in the red dust drinking home-brewed beer out of plastic buckets, women haggle with stall merchants for the last best price on tomatoes and T-shirts

EU loses banana battle at WTO. Al Jazeera. 2/08/2008.

The World Trade Organisation has ruled against the EU's import tariffs on bananas.

RIGHTS-BRAZIL: Pantanal Indians Threatened by Deforestation. Mario Osava. IPS. 2/09/2008.

CAMPO GRANDE, Brazil, Feb 9 (Tierramérica) - The indigenous peoples of the central-western Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul do not look like the tribes portrayed in film, decked out in colourful clothing and adornments and depending on their natural surroundings to survive in the Amazon jungle. But some of their problems are similar to their Amazonian counterparts, and in some cases even more serious.

Cereal prices hit poor countries. BBC. 2/14/2008.

The rising price of cereals such as wheat and maize is a "major global concern", the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says.

Peru roads blocked in trade protest. Al Jazeera. 2/18/2008.

At least one person has died as farmers blocked roads and railways across Peru in protest over a free trade deal with the United States, the government says.

Drug Traces Common in Tap Water. AP. 3/10/2008.

A vast array of pharmaceuticals -- including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones -- have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows.

Grain Farmer Claims Moral Victory in Seed Battle Against Monsanto. Matt Hartley. Globe & Mail (Canada), 3/20/2008.

Percy Schmeiser's decade-long legal odyssey has finally come to an end - and he's got a cheque for $660 to prove it.

Peru Tribe Battles Oil Giant Over Pollution. Peter Collyns, BBC. 3/24/2008.

It is a familiar story. Big business moves into a pristine wilderness and starts destroying the environment and by turn the livelihoods of the indigenous people who live there.

What Created This Monster?. Nelson Schwartz & Julie Creswell. NT Times. 3/23/08. The role of deregulation of the financial industry and the use of derivatives to "Spread risk."

Depression drugs don't work, finds data review. David Rose. Times Online. 2/26/2008.

Millions of people taking commonly prescribed antidepressants such as Prozac and Seroxat might as well be taking a placebo, according to the first study to include unpublished evidence.

The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water. Maude Barlow. Foreign Policy in Focus. 2/25/2008.

Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt of Chapter 5 in Maude Barlow's latest book, Blue Covenant. She is touring with her book across the country; see Food and Water Watch for her full schedule.

The Future of Water

The three water crises - dwindling freshwater supplies, inequitable access to water and the corporate control of water - pose the greatest threat of our time to the planet and to our survival. Together with impending climate change from fossil fuel emissions, the water crises impose some life-or-death decisions on us all. Unless we collectively change our behavior, we are heading toward a world of deepening conflict and potential wars over the dwindling supplies of freshwater - between nations, between rich and poor, between the public and the private interest, between rural and urban populations, and between the competing needs of the natural world and industrialized humans.

Sex-Changing Chemicals Make Male Starlings Sing Sweet Songs. Brandon Keim. Wired News. 2/29/2008.

Pollutants that turn male fish into females have an unexpected effect on starlings: they cause the guys to sing sweet songs that lady starlings find irresistible.

Sub-prime CEOs defend high wages. BBC. 3/07/2008.

Executives have been defending before a Congressional committee large salaries and pay-off packages earned while their firms were hit by the sub-prime crisis.

Daniel Troy's Poison Pill. Stephanie Mencimer. Mother Jones. 3/07/2008.

Washington Dispatch: How a former Bush appointee has the high court poised to wipe out consumer suits over dangerous medical products—and possibly much more.