From valerie.kwaipun at gmail.com Fri Dec 1 12:30:37 2006 From: valerie.kwaipun at gmail.com (Valerie Kwai Pun) Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2006 13:30:37 -0500 Subject: [Corporations] Corporate Bullying? Involvement of Newmont Gold Ghana in the Unlawful Arrest of Mining Activists Message-ID: * JOINT STATEMENT ON THE ARREST OF MR. IBRAHIMA AIDARA OF OXFAM AMERICA AND WACAM ACTIVISTS* The West Africa Regional Governance Advisor of Oxfam America, Ibrahima Aidara was arrested with six other WACAM activists at the Brong Ahafo Regional Police Command at Sunyani on the 27th November 2006, from 12.30 to 16.30, while they were meeting with community people in Yamfo, one of the communities affected by the operations of Newmont Gold Ghana Limited's Ahafo Mine. Newmont had agreed that Mr. Ibrahima Aidara and WACAM officials should have a mine tour/meeting at the Ahafo Mine Project Site on 28th November. The meeting at Yamfo was held to give WACAM and Mr. Ibrahima Aidara first hand information on complaints of human rights abuses of some residents of Yamfo and ex-employees of Newmont in order to have effective engagements with Newmont officials on some community concerns. The Police arrested them based on a complaint by officials of Newmont namely; Mr. Barnes Kufuor; Newmont Information Officer at Yamfo; Mr. Samuel Kumi, Newmont employee, and Mr. Yaw Kyei, Youth Vice-Chairman who is closely associated with Newmont. Though the meeting was held at the Community Centre at Yamfo, the Regional Police Commander, ACP Opare Addo accused the organisers of holding a meeting at public place without permit. The Newmont officials also claimed that the organisers of the meeting used the name of Newmont to organise the meeting. It is shameful and an act of cowardice that poor, powerless citizens cannot freely organise a private meeting to discuss issues bothering their livelihood because they are not complying with the desires of a powerful multinational company. In this circumstance, it is with great regret that we would like to announce that we would not be able to attend the planned Ahafo Mine Tour and meeting with Newmont officials, because our security is not guaranteed. We would also have to discuss the arrest and bail terms with our lawyers. We are sorry to note that Newmont does not believe in popular mobilisation of community people to express their opinion on issues of concern to their lives. This is a breach of trust and an embarrassment to our two organisations. We also see in it an attempt by Newmont not only to intimidate community people but also our organisations. Infact, ACP Opare Addo, the Regional Police Commander, stated before witnesses that he would not want to come back into the Yamfo community to shoot people as had occurred in the past. The statement of the Regional Police Commander of Brong Ahafo Region is an acceptance of the use of brutal force to intimidate community people to the extent of shooting when Newmont has a reason to prevent popular organisation. We also want to state that WACAM and Oxfam America would never want to be associated with the name of Newmont for various reasons which we believe would defeat our purpose of being independent of any mining company. We believe that the officials of Newmont framed up that story to set the stage for the arrest of Mr. Ibrahima Aidara and WACAM activists in order to intimidate the people of Yamfo who have suffered human rights abuses. Indeed, the community people who were present at the meeting indicated that if the name of Newmont had been used in the organisational work, they would not have attended the meeting. We know how to organise our members to meetings. We are also worried about the safety and security of our activists working in the Ahafo area since a local FM station had started receiving threats through anonymous letters when they started focusing on the effects of Newmont's operations on the communities in the area. Our concern stems from the fact that activists in Peru campaigning against the effects of the Yanacoccha mine owned by Newmont have been killed under mysterious circumstances after receiving threats of death. Specifically, on 2nd November, Edmundo Becerra Corina, an Environmentalist and an opponent of Yanacoccha's gold mining project was shot dead in Yanancanchilla, Cajamarca province. Similarly, Dr Mirtha Vasquez Chuquilin, Executive Director of GRUFIDES, Father Marco Arana and other members of GRUFIDES campaigning against the expansion of Yanacoccha mine have been receiving anonymous death threats. We are worried about the spate of Police brutalities on poor and defenceless mining communities, usually instigated by powerful and influential mining companies. We are disappointed that this incident happened a few days after Her Excellency Mary Robinson, former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights had issued a release calling on both government and mining companies to take steps to end growing violence in mining communities perpetrated by security agencies. We wish that hopefully in the future, Newmont will request all her allies and partners to comply with its standards of corporate accountability to communities who are adversely affected by its operations. We wish to raise the following concerns of communities affected by Newmont's operations: ? Set up a sustainable access to farmland and livelihood restoration for the nearly 10,000 people physically and economically displaced by the mine in Ahafo South ? Mine only with the consent of affected communities and pay adequate compensation in Ahafo North, where almost 10,000 people might be affected. ? Do not mine in forest reserves ? Fully disclose information on potential social/environmental impacts of their activities on communities ? Stop dumping mine waste and faecal matters in rivers (The case of Asuopre River) ? Stop using police and military forces to brutalise and violate communities' rights to have meetings, peaceful protests and demonstrations. ? Independent monitoring mechanism to track and mitigate the mine's impact and do not try to undermine this independence by any mean such as bribery or corruption and intimidation ? Newmont should recognise and respect human rights in accordance with socially responsible corporate practices. ? Newmont should implement appropriate mechanisms for consultation, participation and dialogue with relevant stakeholders, with appropriate time frames and timely information, as a way to reduce mistrust and conflicts ? Newmont should commit itself to allow independent audits of their environmental and social practices, and should accept popular participation in these audits. We strongly condemn the arrest of Mr. Ibrahima Aidara and the activists of WACAM. We call on the Honourable Minister of Interior and the Inspector General of Police to investigate such actions of the Police and mining companies that violate the right of community people to basic freedoms especially, the right to freedom of association as enshrined in the Constitution of Ghana. Signed: Daniel Owusu-Koranteng Ibrahima Aidara Executive Director of WACAM Oxfam America, Senegal Dated: 28th November, 2006 At: Kenyasi. To: Nicholas Cotts; Regional Director Africa - Newmont Mawuena A. Dumor; Manager Communication - Newmont cc: The Honourable Minister of Interior, Accra The Inspector General of Police Accra The Press -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: /pipermail/corporations_corporations.org/attachments/20061201/c61e0fca/attachment-0001.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: WACAM press statement on Yamfo arrest_11_28_06.doc Type: application/msword Size: 38912 bytes Desc: not available Url : /pipermail/corporations_corporations.org/attachments/20061201/c61e0fca/attachment-0001.doc -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: /pipermail/corporations_corporations.org/attachments/20061201/c61e0fca/attachment-0002.htm -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: /pipermail/corporations_corporations.org/attachments/20061201/c61e0fca/attachment-0003.htm From mspears at missvalley.com Sat Dec 2 23:46:45 2006 From: mspears at missvalley.com (MikeSpears) Date: Sat, 2 Dec 2006 23:46:45 -0600 Subject: [Corporations] How multinational corporations avoid paying their taxes Message-ID: <000501c7169e$6c630120$87256ad8@Michael> How multinational corporations avoid paying their taxes http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/printer_1475.shtml Special Reports How multinational corporations avoid paying their taxes By Peter Rost, M.D. Online Journal Guest Writer Nov 28, 2006, 00:47 The biggest tax scam on earth has a very innocent sounding name. It is called ?transfer prices.? That almost sounds boring. It is, however, anything but boring. Abuse of transfer prices is a key tool multinational corporations use to fool the U.S. and other jurisdictions to think that they have virtually no profit; hence, they shouldn?t pay any taxes. Corporations involved in this scam are ?model corporate citizens,? or so they would like us to believe. The truth is that they rob us all blind. The money we lose can be estimated in the tens of billions, or possibly hundreds of billions of dollars every year. We all end up paying higher taxes because rich corporations make sure they don?t. But don?t take my word for this. A few weeks ago, U.K.-based GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, together with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced that GSK will pay $3.4 billion to the IRS to settle a transfer pricing dispute dating back 17 years. The IRS alleges that GSK improperly shifted profits from their U.S. to the U.K. entity. And U.K. pharmaceutical companies are not alone with these kinds of problems. Merck, one of the largest U.S. drug companies, also this month disclosed that they face four separate tax disputes in the U.S. and Canada with potential liabilities of $5.6 billion. Out of that amount, Merck disclosed that the Canada Revenue Agency issued the company a notice for $1.8 billion in back taxes and interest ?related to certain inter-company pricing matters.? And according to the IRS, one of the schemes Merck used to cheat American taxpayers was by setting up a subsidiary in tax-friendly Bermuda. Merck then quietly transferred patents for several blockbuster drugs to the new subsidiary and then paid the subsidiary for use of the patents. The arrangement in effect allowed some of the profits to disappear into Merck?s own ?Bermuda Triangle.? I have described many more ways the global drug industry cheats and defrauds our government in my recent book, ?The Whistleblower, Confessions of a Healthcare Hitman.? In this article, however, I?m going to focus on how they, and other rich multinationals, use the tax system to defraud us. So what?s going on here, how have multinational drug companies been able to gouge us for years selling expensive drugs and then avoid paying tax on their astronomical profits? The answer is simple. For companies in certain businesses, such as pharmaceuticals, it is very easy to simply ?invent? the price a company charges their U.S. business for buying the company?s product which they manufacture in another country. And if they charge enough, poof; all the profit vanishes from the US, or Canada, or any other regular jurisdiction and end up in a corporate tax haven. And that means American and Canadian taxpayers don?t get their fair share. Many multinational corporations essentially have two sets of bookkeeping. One set, with artificially inflated transfer prices is what they use to prepare local tax returns and show auditors in high tax jurisdictions, and another set of books, in which management can see the true profit and loss statement, based on real cost of goods, are used for the executives to determine the actual performance of their various operations. Of course, not every multinational industry can do this as easily as the drug industry. It would be difficult to come up with $6,000 toilet seats. But the drug industry, where real cost of goods to manufacture drugs is usually around 5 percent of selling price, has a lot of room to artificially increase that cost of goods to 50 percent or 75 percent of selling price. This money is then accumulated in corporate tax havens where the drugs are manufactured, such as Puerto Rico and Ireland. Puerto Rico has for many years attracted lots of pharmaceutical plants and Ireland is the new destination for such facilities, not because of the skilled labor or the beautiful scenery or the great beer -- but because of the low taxes. Ireland has, in fact, one of the world?s lowest corporate tax rates with a maximum rate of 12.5 percent. In Puerto Rico, over a quarter of the country?s gross domestic product already comes from pharmaceutical manufacturing. That shouldn?t be surprising. According to the U.S. Federal Tax Reform Act of 1976, manufacturers are permitted to repatriate profits from Puerto Rico to the U.S. free of U.S. federal taxes. And by the way, the Puerto Rico withholding tax is only 10 percent. Of course, no company should have to pay more tax than they are legally obligated to, and they are entitled to locate to any low tax jurisdiction. The problem starts when they use fraudulent transfer pricing and other tricks to artificially shift their income from the U.S. to a tax haven. According to current OECD guidelines, transfer prices should be based upon the arm?s length principle -- that means the transfer price should be the same as if the two companies involved were indeed two independents, not part of the same corporate structure. Reality is that standard operating procedure for multinationals is to consistently violate this rule. And why shouldn?t they? After all, it takes 17 years for them to pay up, per the above GSK example, even when they get caught. Another industry which successfully exploits overseas tax strategies to cheat us all is the hi-tech industry. In fact, Microsoft Corp. recently shaved at least $500 million from its annual tax bill using a similar strategy to the one the drug industry has used for so many years. Microsoft has set up a subsidiary in Ireland, called Round Island One Ltd. This company pays more than $300 million in taxes to this small island country with only 4 million inhabitants, and most of this comes from licensing fees for copyrighted software originally developed in the U.S. Interesting thing is, at the same time, Round Island paid a total of just under $17 million in taxes to about 20 other countries, with more than 300 million people. The result of this was that Microsoft's worldwide tax rate plunged to 26 percent in 2004, from 33 percent the year before. Almost half of the drop was due to ?foreign earnings taxed at lower rates,? according to a Microsoft financial filing. And this is how Microsoft has radically reduced its corporate taxes in much of Europe and been able to shield billions of dollars from U.S. taxation. But remember, this is only one example. Most of the other tech companies are doing the same thing. Google recently also set up an Irish operation that the firm credited in a SEC filing with reducing its tax rate. Here?s how this is done in the software industry and any other industry with valuable intellectual property. A company takes a great, patented, American product and then develops a new generation. Then, of course, the old product disappears. Some, or all, of the cost and development work for the new product takes place in Ireland, or at least, so the company claims. The ownership of the new generation product and all income from licensing can then legally be shared between the U.S. parent company and the offshore corporation or transferred outright to the tax haven. The deal, to pass IRS scrutiny, has to be made using the ?arms-length principle.? Reality is that the IRS has no way of controlling all these transactions. Unfortunately those of us working and paying tax in the U.S. can?t relocate our jobs and our income to Ireland or another tax haven. So we have to make up the income shortfall. In the U.S. we have a highly educated society with a very qualified workforce, partly supported by our taxpayers. This helps us generate breakthrough products. But once a company has a successful product, they have every incentive to move the second generation of a successful product overseas, to Ireland and a few other corporate tax havens. There is only one problem for U.S. companies with this strategy, and that is that if they repatriate this money to the U.S., they have to pay full corporate taxes. In fact, according to BusinessWeek, U.S. multinational corporations have built up profits of as much as $750 billion overseas, much of it in tax havens such as the Ireland, the Bahamas, and Singapore to avoid the stiff 35 percent levy they'd face if they repatriated the funds back into the U.S. But of course, Congress, which is basically paid for by our multinational corporations, generously provided for a one-time provision in the corporate tax code, so that they could repatriate profits earned before 2003, and held in foreign subsidiaries, at an effective 5.25 percent tax rate. And so the game goes on. In the end, multinational corporations live in a global world which allows them to pretty much send their money to corporate tax havens at will, and then repatriate this money almost tax free, with the help of the U.S. Congress. The people left holding the bag are you and me. If you want to know learn more about the corruption in the drug industry, read my new book, "The Whistleblower, Confessions of a Healthcare Hitman." Peter Rost, M.D., is a former Vice President of Pfizer. He became well known in 2004 when he emerged as the first drug company executive to speak out in favor of reimportation of drugs. He is the author of "The Whistleblower, Confessions of a Healthcare Hitman." See: the-whistleblower-by-peter-rost.blogspot.com. Copyright ? 1998-2006 Online Journal Email Online Journal Editor -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: /pipermail/corporations_corporations.org/attachments/20061202/a7288546/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/octet-stream Size: 42 bytes Desc: not available Url : /pipermail/corporations_corporations.org/attachments/20061202/a7288546/attachment.obj From paraconsistent at comcast.net Wed Dec 13 07:38:06 2006 From: paraconsistent at comcast.net (Eubulides) Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2006 05:38:06 -0800 Subject: [Corporations] friends in high places Message-ID: <000e01c71ebb$ec939100$6501a8c0@paraconsistent> Higher Hurdles Set in Corporate Crime Cases Business Pressure Spurs Rules Change By Carrie Johnson Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, December 13, 2006; D01 The Justice Department announced new rules yesterday that will make it harder for prosecutors to bring criminal charges against companies, bending to intense pressure from business groups that claim the government has overreached in its pursuit of financial malfeasance. In presenting the revised rules, Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty called the changes a substantial and direct response to a lobbying drive by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, among others. Since devastating bankruptcies at Enron and WorldCom prompted Congress to pass a stringent corporate accountability law four years ago, business interests increasingly have pushed back on efforts to police their operations, arguing that the government has imposed too many costs on companies with too few benefits for investors. The new concessions focus on the sensitive issue of when prosecutors can force companies to waive their legal rights to protect e-mail messages and other internal communications, essentially instructing government lawyers that they must jump through additional hoops before winning access to information they desire. Previously, prosecutors could consider the failure to waive those rights in deciding whether to charge a company with a crime. Under the revisions, prosecutors who seek information about suspected wrongdoing must first win approval from the top official in their home offices before asking a business to waive its attorney-client privilege. Government lawyers who want to review contacts between a company and its attorneys under a privilege waiver must go all the way to the Justice Department in Washington for permission from its second-highest-ranking official. The issue carries profound implications for businesses that run afoul of the law. Indictments against companies, particularly financial services firms, can be a death knell, as with the obstruction of justice case four years ago against the accounting firm Arthur Andersen. As a result, former prosecutor Andrew Weissmann said, such moves should require formal consent by top Justice Department authorities. Weissmann said the government follows a similar approach before sentencing individuals to death. "Corporations deserve the same oversight, since a corporate indictment can lead to similar dire consequences," he added. The new rules also bar prosecutors from directing companies under investigation to stop paying employees' attorneys fees, a strategy that was declared unconstitutional last summer by a federal judge in New York who blasted the government, saying it "let its zeal get in the way of its judgment." In practice, former government lawyer Timothy J. Coleman said, the changes likely will reduce the number of waiver requests by adding another layer of red tape, taking resources away from the investigation itself and directing often unwanted attention onto a rank-and-file prosecutor. The revisions come just days after Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) introduced a bill that would force the Justice Department's hand. Lawmakers have held two hearings this year on the issue, spurred by a coalition of trade groups that yesterday assailed the new policy as "a day late and a dollar short," in the words of Frederick J. Krebs, president of the Association of Corporate Counsel. At the same time, a handful of prosecutors in U.S. attorneys offices around the nation said they viewed the changes as a clear attempt to placate business interests that have been pushing back on rules in recent weeks. The motivation among industry groups is in no small part a pocketbook issue. Waiving legal privileges to avoid criminal indictment can put scores of sensitive documents into the hands of plaintiff lawyers, driving up the costs of settling related shareholder lawsuits. Last month, a report by a private committee, financed in part by an executive who is fighting civil charges and with support from Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., proposed indicting companies only as a "last resort" and requiring state officials to get permission from federal authorities in Washington before filing such charges. In an interview, Deputy Attorney General McNulty rejected the notion that the concessions would cripple ongoing fraud investigations. "Our efforts to prosecute corporate crime will continue vigorously," he said. In the short term, however, the revisions will buy Justice additional time before Congress takes up more far-reaching legislation proposed by Specter last week. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), who will lead the Judiciary panel come January, said the government had curtailed "its most excessive practices" but expressed reservations about how the changes would work over time. The move carries potent symbolic value in a climate in which business has been emboldened in its efforts to return to a pre-Enron regulatory environment. "The tide has turned," said Craig Margolis, a defense lawyer for a former executive at the audit firm KPMG, which waived its legal rights last year to help prosecutors build a case against more than a dozen former officials. "It should restore needed balance to the investigation of business entities and their employees." From catalyst at actionpa.org Thu Dec 28 17:20:29 2006 From: catalyst at actionpa.org (Mike Ewall) Date: Thu, 28 Dec 2006 18:20:29 -0500 Subject: [Corporations] Chipping People: One Generation Is All They Need Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20061228181956.088a4ea8@mail.actionpa.org> From: Toronto Star (Ontario, Canada) (pg. D1), Dec. 10, 2006 OP-ED: ONE GENERATION IS ALL THEY NEED By Kevin Haggerty By the time my four-year-old son is swathed in the soft flesh of old age, he will likely find it unremarkable that he and almost everyone he knows will be permanently implanted with a microchip. Automatically tracking his location in real time, it will connect him with databases monitoring and recording his smallest behavioural traits. Most people anticipate such a prospect with a sense of horrified disbelief, dismissing it as a science-fiction fantasy. The technology, however, already exists. For years humane societies have implanted all the pets that leave their premises with a small identifying microchip. As well, millions of consumer goods are now traced with tiny radio frequency identification chips that allow satellites to reveal their exact location. A select group of people are already "chipped" with devices that automatically open doors, turn on lights, and perform other low-level miracles. Prominent among such individuals is researcher Kevin Warwick of Reading University in England; Warwick is a leading proponent of the almost limitless potential uses for such chips. Other users include the patrons of the Baja Beach Club in Barcelona, many of whom have paid about $150 (U.S.) for the privilege of being implanted with an identifying chip that allows them to bypass lengthy club queues and purchase drinks by being scanned. These individuals are the advance guard of an effort to expand the technology as widely as possible. >From this point forward, microchips will become progressively smaller, less invasive, and easier to deploy. Thus, any realistic barrier to the wholesale "chipping" of Western citizens is not technological but cultural. It relies upon the visceral reaction against the prospect of being personally marked as one component in a massive human inventory. Today we might strongly hold such beliefs, but sensibilities can, and probably will, change. How this remarkable attitudinal transformation is likely to occur is clear to anyone who has paid attention to privacy issues over the past quarter-century. There will be no 3 a.m. knock on the door by storm troopers come to force implants into our bodies. The process will be more subtle and cumulative, couched in the unassailable language of progress and social betterment, and mimicking many of the processes that have contributed to the expansion of closed-circuit television cameras and the corporate market in personal data. A series of tried and tested strategies will be marshalled to familiarize citizens with the technology. These will be coupled with efforts to pressure tainted social groups and entice the remainder of the population into being chipped. This, then, is how the next generation will come to be microchipped. It starts in distant countries. Having tested the technology on guinea pigs, both human and animal, the first widespread use of human implanting will occur in nations at the periphery of the Western world. Such developments are important in their own right, but their international significance pertains to how they familiarize a global audience with the technology and habituate them to the idea that chipping represents a potential future. An increasing array of hypothetical chipping scenarios will also be depicted in entertainment media, furthering the familiarization process. In the West, chips will first be implanted in members of stigmatized groups. Pedophiles are the leading candidate for this distinction, although it could start with terrorists, drug dealers, or whatever happens to be that year's most vilified criminals. Short-lived promises will be made that the technology will only be used on the "worst of the worst." In fact, the wholesale chipping of incarcerated individuals will quickly ensue, encompassing people on probation and on parole. Even accused individuals will be tagged, a measure justified on the grounds that it would stop them from fleeing justice. Many prisoners will welcome this development, since only chipped inmates will be eligible for parole, weekend release, or community sentences. From the prison system will emerge an evocative vocabulary distinguishing chippers from non-chippers. Although the chips will be justified as a way to reduce fraud and other crimes, criminals will almost immediately develop techniques to simulate other people's chip codes and manipulate their data. The comparatively small size of the incarcerated population, however, means that prisons would be simply a brief stopover on a longer voyage. Commercial success is contingent on making serious inroads into tagging the larger population of law-abiding citizens. Other stigmatized groups will therefore be targeted. This will undoubtedly entail monitoring welfare recipients, a move justified to reduce fraud, enhance efficiency, and ensure that the poor do not receive "undeserved" benefits. Once e-commerce is sufficiently advanced, welfare recipients will receive their benefits as electronic vouchers stored on their microchips, a policy that will be tinged with a sense of righteousness, as it will help ensure that clients can only purchase government-approved goods from select merchants, reducing the always disconcerting prospect that poor people might use their limited funds to purchase alcohol or tobacco. Civil libertarians will try to foster a debate on these developments. Their attempts to prohibit chipping will be handicapped by the inherent difficulty in animating public sympathy for criminals and welfare recipients -- groups that many citizens are only too happy to see subjected to tighter regulation. Indeed, the lesser public concern for such groups is an inherent part of the unarticulated rationale for why coerced chipping will be disproportionately directed at the stigmatized. The official privacy arm of the government will now take up the issue. Mandated to determine the legality of such initiatives, privacy commissioners and Senate Committees will produce a forest of reports presented at an archipelago of international conferences. Hampered by lengthy research and publication timelines, their findings will be delivered long after the widespread adoption of chipping is effectively a fait accompli. The research conclusions on the effectiveness of such technologies will be mixed and open to interpretation. Officials will vociferously reassure the chipping industry that they do not oppose chipping itself, which has fast become a growing commercial sector. Instead, they are simply seeking to ensure that the technology is used fairly and that data on the chips is not misused. New policies will be drafted. Employers will start to expect implants as a condition of getting a job. The U.S. military will lead the way, requiring chips for all soldiers as a means to enhance battlefield command and control -- and to identify human remains. From cooks to commandos, every one of the more than one million U.S. military personnel will see microchips replace their dog tags. Following quickly behind will be the massive security sector. Security guards, police officers, and correctional workers will all be expected to have a chip. Individuals with sensitive jobs will find themselves in the same position. The first signs of this stage are already apparent. In 2004, the Mexican attorney general's office started implanting employees to restrict access to secure areas. The category of "sensitive occupation" will be expansive to the point that anyone with a job that requires keys, a password, security clearance, or identification badge will have those replaced by a chip. Judges hearing cases on the constitutionality of these measures will conclude that chipping policies are within legal limits. The thin veneer of "voluntariness" coating many of these programs will allow the judiciary to maintain that individuals are not being coerced into using the technology. In situations where the chips are clearly forced on people, the judgments will deem them to be undeniable infringements of the right to privacy. However, they will then invoke the nebulous and historically shifting standard of "reasonableness" to pronounce coerced chipping a reasonable infringement on privacy rights in a context of demands for governmental efficiency and the pressing need to enhance security in light of the still ongoing wars on terror, drugs, and crime. At this juncture, an unfortunately common tragedy of modern life will occur: A small child, likely a photogenic toddler, will be murdered or horrifically abused. It will happen in one of the media capitals of the Western world, thereby ensuring non-stop breathless coverage. Chip manufactures will recognize this as the opportunity they have been anticipating for years. With their technology now largely bug-free, familiar to most citizens and comparatively inexpensive, manufacturers will partner with the police to launch a high-profile campaign encouraging parents to implant their children "to ensure your own peace of mind." Special deals will be offered. Implants will be free, providing the family registers for monitoring services. Loving but unnerved parents will be reassured by the ability to integrate tagging with other functions on their PDA so they can see their child any time from any place. Paralleling these developments will be initiatives that employ the logic of convenience to entice the increasingly small group of holdouts to embrace the now common practice of being tagged. At first, such convenience tagging will be reserved for the highest echelon of Western society, allowing the elite to move unencumbered through the physical and informational corridors of power. Such practices will spread more widely as the benefits of being chipped become more prosaic. Chipped individuals will, for example, move more rapidly through customs. Indeed, it will ultimately become a condition of using mass-transit systems that officials be allowed to monitor your chip. Companies will offer discounts to individuals who pay by using funds stored on their embedded chip, on the small-print condition that the merchant can access large swaths of their personal data. These "discounts" are effectively punitive pricing schemes, charging unchipped individuals more as a way to encourage them to submit to monitoring. Corporations will seek out the personal data in hopes of producing ever more fine- grained customer profiles for marketing purposes, and to sell to other institutions. By this point all major organizations will be looking for opportunities to capitalize on the possibilities inherent in an almost universally chipped population. The uses of chips proliferate, as do the types of discounts. Each new generation of household technology becomes configured to operate by interacting with a person's chip. Finding a computer or appliance that will run though old-fashioned "hands-on"' interactions becomes progressively more difficult and costly. Patients in hospitals and community care will be routinely chipped, allowing medical staff -- or, more accurately, remote computers -- to monitor their biological systems in real time. Eager to reduce the health costs associated with a largely docile citizenry, authorities will provide tax incentives to individuals who exercise regularly. Personal chips will be remotely monitored to ensure that their heart rate is consistent with an exercise regime. By now, the actual process of "chipping" for many individuals will simply involve activating certain functions of their existing chip. Any prospect of removing the chip will become increasingly untenable, as having a chip will be a precondition for engaging in the main dynamics of modern life, such as shopping, voting, and driving. The remaining holdouts will grow increasingly weary of Luddite jokes and subtle accusations that they have something to hide. Exasperated at repeatedly watching neighbours bypass them in "chipped" lines while they remain subject to the delays, inconveniences, and costs reserved for the unchipped, they too will choose the path of least resistance and get an implant. In one generation, then, the cultural distaste many might see as an innate reaction to the prospect of having our bodies marked like those of an inmate in a concentration camp will likely fade. In the coming years some of the most powerful institutional actors in society will start to align themselves to entice, coerce, and occasionally compel the next generation to get an implant. Now, therefore, is the time to contemplate the unprecedented dangers of this scenario. The most serious of these concern how even comparatively stable modern societies will, in times of fear, embrace treacherous promises. How would the prejudices of a Joe McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover, or of southern Klansmen -- all of whom were deeply integrated into the American political establishment -- have manifest themselves in such a world? What might Hitler, Mao or Milosevic have accomplished if their citizens were chipped, coded, and remotely monitored? Choirs of testimonials will soon start to sing the virtues of implants. Calm reassurances will be forthcoming about democratic traditions, the rule of law, and privacy rights. History, unfortunately, shows that things can go disastrously wrong, and that this happens with disconcerting regularity. Little in the way of international agreements, legality, or democratic sensibilities has proved capable of thwarting single-minded ruthlessness. "It can't happen here" has become the whispered swan song of the disappeared. Best to contemplate these dystopian potentials before we proffer the tender forearms of our sons and daughters. While we cannot anticipate all of the positive advantages that might be derived from this technology, the negative prospects are almost too terrifying to contemplate. What might Hitler, Mao or Milosevic have accomplished if their citizens were chipped, coded, and remotely monitored? Copyright (c) 2006, Toronto Star Newspapers Limited.