From catalyst at actionpa.org Thu Jan 11 17:33:44 2007 From: catalyst at actionpa.org (Mike Ewall) Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2007 18:33:44 -0500 Subject: [Corporations] Judge Martinez + Coca-Cola: Conflict-of-Interest Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20070111183245.21c61008@mail.actionpa.org> NEWS RELEASE: Campaign to Stop Killer Coke http://www.killercoke.org FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 11, 2007 For more information, contact Pat Clark or Ray Rogers at (718) 852-2808 Judge Jose Martinez and Coca-Cola: Conflict-of-Interest Pattern Emerges The Florida federal judge whose rulings have repeatedly limited legal options for plaintiffs seeking to hold Coca-Cola accountable for crimes and human rights violations in Colombia is entangled in a web of questionable ties to the world's largest beverage company, the Campaign to Stop Killer Coke has recently discovered. U.S. District Judge Jose E. Martinez, elevated to the bench by President Bush in November 2002, is a proud and active alumnus of the University of Miami (UM) and its law school. He is "best known for his sideline: color commentator on Spanish radio for Los Huracanes," referring to the UM football and baseball teams, according to the Miami Herald (11/23/02). Coca-Cola directly subsidizes UM athletic programs under the terms of an exclusive beverage contract with the school, in effect since at least the 2003 football season. Judge Martinez's role as a radio sports analyst, which continued through the just-ended football season, was described on UM's Athletic Dept. website, sponsored by Coca-Cola. Judge Martinez has also "been active in UM matters, serving as a member of the Governing Board of the UM Hurricane Club," according to the biographical note supplied for an Oct. 30, 2006 luncheon at which he was the keynote speaker. UM identifies the Hurricane Club as "the primary fundraising arm of the athletic department," and a major share of the money it has collected before and since Martinez became a judge came from Coca-Cola. In 2003, Judge Martinez initially dismissed The Coca-Cola Company from lawsuits brought by the International Labor Rights Fund and the United Steelworkers, AFL-CIO, that documented collaboration between Coke's Colombian bottlers and paramilitary terrorists bent on destroying SINALTRAINAL, the major union representing Coca-Cola workers. His dismissal of The Coca-Cola Company, headquartered in Atlanta, from the 2001 lawsuits was based on the notion that Coke didn't have sufficient ownership or control of its bottlers to bear any responsibility for such crimes as the killing of 28-year-old union leader Isidro Gil at his workplace. Last September 29 ? after almost four years of inaction that underscored how justice delayed is really justice denied ? Martinez ruled that Coke's bottlers in Colombia weren't liable either, despite the fact that many Colombian Coke workers have been tortured, kidnapped and/or illegally detained by paramilitaries who often work closely with Coke's plant managers. All of Martinez's rulings are being appealed. Martinez's 2003 decision was made prior to any discovery, meaning that the plaintiffs had no chance to show the degree to which Coca-Cola controls foreign operations. The decision was also based on a single document: a sample bottlers' agreement that Coke admitted wasn't the actual agreement with the bottlers cited in the lawsuits. Martinez also failed to take into account documents admittedly created by The Coca-Cola Company that described its control over workplace practices and its right to inspect plants to insure that local managers abide by human rights conventions and obey domestic laws. Coca-Cola FEMSA is Coke's largest Latin American bottler and a defendant in the lawsuits. FEMSA's website lists The Coca-Cola Company as owning either 31.6% or 39.6% of its capital stock (both figures are used) and 46.4% of its capital voting stock. Many of Coca-Cola's top executives serve on Coca-Cola FEMSA's board of directors. As Forbes magazine noted in an article entitled "Coke's Sinful World" (12/22/03), "The biggest bottlers aren't subsidiaries of Coke, nor are they completely independent. Coke effectively controls them by maintaining big equity stakes and a heavy presence on their boards, and by providing their main source of business. Yet it keeps its stakes in the bottlers below 50% thereby avoiding getting hit with their piles of debt and any unpleasant liabilities." The judge's predisposition in favor of corporate interests came up during his brief confirmation hearing in 2002, when Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) pointed out that he "specialized in product liability litigation advising and defending large corporations." Martinez was a name partner in the law firm of Martinez & Gutierrez from 1991 to 2002. After his appointment to the bench, the firm was renamed Gutierrez & Associates, but it retained a web address (http://www.martlaw.com) that seems to reflect Martinez's continuing link to the firm and the many large corporations it represents. Martinez himself represented the Tobacco Institute in a January 2000 case before the Supreme Court. The website of Gutierrez & Associates lists among its associated law firms a Bogota, Colombia firm, Gamboa, Chelela, Gamboa & Useche. That firm's website, in turn, identifies as a name partner Carlos Alberto Useche-Ponce de Leon, a former vice president of Coca-Cola de Colombia, S.A., who also serves as an "Advisor" to the Council of American Companies. "Everything we have learned about Judge Martinez's connections to the interests of the University of Miami, its Coke-subsidized athletic department, Coca-Cola, and his former law firm suggests at least the appearance of impropriety, if not actual bias," said Ray Rogers, director of the Campaign to Stop Killer Coke. "To preserve the integrity of the judicial process, we believe he must be recused from the Coca-Cola cases." -30- From catalyst at actionpa.org Fri Jan 12 23:04:51 2007 From: catalyst at actionpa.org (Mike Ewall) Date: Sat, 13 Jan 2007 00:04:51 -0500 Subject: [Corporations] Alaska Natives Condemn Bush Oil Drilling Plan Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20070113000355.21d8efe0@mail.actionpa.org> Please Disseminate REDOIL NEWS RELEASE Contact: Norman Anderson (907)842-3566 or (907)439-2698/ nakneknorm101 at hotmail.com Faith Gemmill, REDOIL Network (907) 750-0188 / redoil1 at acsalaska.net For Immediate Release January 10, 2007 Alaskan Natives Condemn Bush lifting of Presidential Withdrawal for Offshore Development in Bristol Bay Fairbanks, Alaska - President Bush today executed his presidential authority to remove long-standing protection of Alaska Bristol Bay. This action by Bush withdraws the prohibition on offshore oil and gas development within what is one of the Nations most important commercial and subsistence use areas. REDOIL (Resisting Environmental Destruction on Indigenous Lands) has consistently supported the Bristol Bay regions tribes and communities and their right to subsistence and commercial fishing economic self sufficiency. REDOIL is a network of Alaska Native grassroots leadership. REDOIL recently sent a letter to President Bush and Governor Palin in support of maintaining the Presidential Withdrawal. The North Aleutian Basin is valuable to the local communities for its abundant subsistence resources that sustain traditional Alaska Native cultures and ways of life. Bristol Bay is one of the most productive areas of the United States Outer Continental Shelf regions. Several endangered species depend on these waters including the northern right whale whose critical habitat is likely to be designated within or directly adjacent to the area of highest industry interest. The region is ringed by unparalleled estuaries critical to the region's ecological productivity and the lease sale area overlaps with fisheries of national significance including pollock, cod, red king crab, herring and the world's largest salmon run. Bristol Bay fisheries are the base of the economy and livelihood for residents of the region. Bristol Bay is extremely sensitive to potential seismic testing, oil spills, and chronic pollutants from offshore drilling operations associated with both oil and natural gas development. The risk posed to Bristol Bay subsistence resources and the livelihood of local residents is unacceptable. Therefore REDOIL strongly condemns the Presidential lifting of the ban on offshore drilling within this critical commercial and subsistence use area. "This shortsighted decision to open Bristol Bay to offshore oil and gas leasing will have long term adverse physical, social, cultural, spiritual, and economic impacts to the Native communities that rely upon this critical subsistence and commercial use area to meet their needs. Salmon is one of the most important species that provides for and nurtures the way of life of the Native communities within this region. We will support the local communities and their opposition to offshore development and we intend to assist them to seek protection within the new congress despite todays' setback", states Faith Gemmill, Outreach Coordinator for the REDOIL Network. Alaska Natives, American Indians and Indigenous Peoples globally have always viewed human rights and a healthy environment as fundamentally linked. Careful management and protection of the Arctic environment is a requirement for the enjoyment of Alaska Native human rights, particularly as they relate to the "subsistence" or "traditional" economy. "As Indigenous Peoples of Alaska we have long fought for recognition of subsistence rights as a basic inherent fundamental human right," says Gemmill. Existing international law already protects subsistence rights. This right is recognized and affirmed by civilized nations in the international covenants on human rights. Article I of both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights read in part: "In no case may a people be deprived of its own means of subsistence." Alaska Native communities are constantly working toward basic survival. The term "subsistence" may not mean much to citizens of the United States, but to Alaska Natives the term "subsistence" is about their rights, livelihood and survival. Norman Anderson, subsistence fisherman from Nak Nek, Alaska concludes, "All five species of salmon are the mainstay of the economy of our communities. Lifting the Presidential Withdrawal is a threat to our subsistence resources which would be completely depleted from any offshore development within Bristol Bay. Through long term use and occupancy, we understand this ecosystem better than most. Oil and gas exploration would devastate our subsistence lifestyle. Any spill of any magnitude would destroy our way of life. The North Aleutian basin is our store. Anything that jeopardizes the purity of this area would detrimentally impact us." The REDOIL Network is supporting the local communities of Bristol Bay that have gone on record in opposition to offshore drilling of this critical region, these groups include an array of diverse groups of the fishing industry, Native Associations and Tribal Governments and Public Interest Groups. #### The REDOIL Network consists of grassroots Alaska Natives of the Inupiat, Yupik, Aleut, Tlingit, Gwich'in, Eyak and Denaiana Athabascan tribes who have formed a network to address the human and ecological health impacts of the unsustainable development practices of the fossil fuel industry in Alaska. The REDOIL Network strongly supports self-determination rights of tribes in Alaska as well as a just transition from fossil fuel development and promotes the implementation of sustainable development on or near Indigenous lands. The REDOIL Network is a project of the Indigenous Environmental Network. From manski at greens.org Thu Jan 25 13:01:24 2007 From: manski at greens.org (Ben Manski) Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 13:01:24 -0600 Subject: [Corporations] [DEN] Register Now: Affirmative Action in Higher Education Issue Briefing! Message-ID: <45B8FE84.7060102@greens.org> RSVP now! * * * * Don't miss it. On election day, 2006, as Congress shifted parties and voters looked for progressive change, a change in the other direction occurred in the state of Michigan. Michigan voters approached a ban on affirmative action in college admissions. What next in the struggle for racial justice and gender equality in higher education? Learn about where one of the nation's top affirmative action in higher education experts. AFFIRMATIVE ACTION BRIEFING w/Scott Lu TUESDAY, JANUARY 30th 10am Pacific, 11am Mountain, Noon Central, and 1pm Eastern PLEASE RSVP: Manski at LibertyTreeFDR.org Scott Lu is the Student of Color Campus Diversity Project Director of the United States Student Association. On Tuesday, January 30th, Mr. Lu will brief conference call participants on the current state of affirmative action in US college admissions. Want to know more? Participate in this briefing. Please RSVP to Manski at LibertyTreeFDR.org by January 28th. This will be the second of a series of regular conference call briefings on democracy issues in higher education. The briefings are free; however, the calls are not toll free (participants needing scholarships can be compensated for their calls). Each briefing will feature a presentation followed by question and answer. -- Ben Manski Co-Secretary, Four Lakes Green Party of Dane County http://www.FourLakesGreenParty.org "We, the generation that faces the next century, can add the solemn injunction 'If we don't do the impossible, we shall be faced with the unthinkable'." ~ Petra Kelly See also: Wisconsin Green Party http://www.WisconsinGreenParty.org Green Party of the United States http://www.GP.org Liberty Tree http://www.LibertyTreeFDR.org From manski at greens.org Mon Jan 29 13:04:07 2007 From: manski at greens.org (Ben Manski) Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2007 11:04:07 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Corporations] Fwd: [DEN] CALL TO ACTION: April Mobilization for Higher Education! Message-ID: <960868.33189.qm@web60620.mail.yahoo.com> Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2007 11:55:28 -0600 From: DEN PARTICIPATE & CIRCULATE . . . PARTICIPATE & CIRCULATE ------------------------------------------------------------------------ HTTP://www.DemocratizingEducation.org Get on board with the . . . APRIL MOBILIZATION FOR HIGHER EDUCATION Students + Youth + Faculty + Staff + Community = The Power to Rescue Higher Ed & Renew Democracy! Get involved now: 1. Recognize the crisis in Higher Education . . . 2. Read about the planned response, the April Mobilization . . . 3. Find out how you can play a key role this spring! 1. THE CRISIS Will they do it again? In the coming months, will state governments and campus officials again hike tuition? Will the federal and state governments again shortchange higher education? Will the pace of the corporatization and resegregation of higher education increase? The youth of America are already paying the price for decades of education cuts imposed by prior generations. Tuition costs have doubled, tripled, and in some cases quintupled from just a generation ago. The shift from student grants to loans has produced the most indebted generation of young people in American history. Highly trained professors, already undermined by attacks on tenure, are teaching less as lower paid teaching assistants and adjunct faculty teach more. Hundreds of thousands of young people who joined the Guard to fund their college education and defend their country have been sent to fight in the unpopular occupation of Iraq. And millions of young people from poor families - predominantly youth of color - have decided that a college education simply is not an option. As a people, Americans will face grim consequences if higher education becomes a tool of the multinational corporations, rather than a source of democracy and opportunity. They who pay the piper call the tune. After three decades of effective corporate lobbying, public and corporate taxes now pay less than half as much as a proportion of costs at public colleges and universities. In turn, corporations are directing their financial leverage and political influence to restructure public higher education on a corporate model: College vouchers, charter departments, charter campuses, and fully privatized corporate schools. Corporations are also calling the tune in setting the internal curriculum and research priorities for our universities; as campus executives emphasize those departments that can obtain outside corporate funding, fields with more social benefit (i.e. education, social work, sustainable agriculture) are left to wither. This is a critical moment. Now is the time for youth to demonstrate that the price is already too high. Now is the moment for us all to face the crisis in higher education, and to demand the financial and political changes that will put our schools, colleges, and universities on solid ground. 2. THE RESPONSE Join the April Mobilization. Demand full public funding for higher education; a rollback and eventual phaseout of tuition; the democratization of higher education in the USA. * * * Week of Action - April 16-20 * * * This will be a week of coordinated action and protest. On campuses and in communities across the USA, students, youth, faculty, staff, and community members will act together to force democratic changes in higher education funding, policy, and governance. Tactics may include sit-ins, rallies, strikes, pickets, marches, banner hangs, study-ins, silent processions, grade-ins, office visits, dorm-storms, lock-downs . . . whatever non-violent tactics that local organizers believe will be most effective in their campuses and communities. * * * Teach-Ins & Tent States - Month of April * * * Organizers will build momentum for the April mobilization by holding large-scale educational events in the weeks leading up to and including the Week of Action. These events will take the form of indoor teach-ins, in which campus and community facilities become host to workshops, lectures, and debates on the future of higher education in America, or of Tent State Universities, in which tent cities spring up on campus malls, squares, and quads, showing the displacement of the public mission of higher education in America. The April Mobilization for Higher Education is a project of the Democratizing Education Network (DEN), a network of student, youth, faculty, staff, and community organizers and groups dedicated a set of common principles: Democratizing Higher Education Charter Full Public Funding for Public Higher Education Free Access to Higher Education and Abolition of Tuition Affirmative Action to End Institutionalized Racism and Sexism Full Recognition of the Right of Students and Workers to Organize Democratic Self-Government of Higher Education Service to the Public Welfare, Not Corporate Profits Free Speech and Academic Freedom Debt Forgiveness of Student Loans Civic Education for a Democratic Society Education, Not War; Schools, Not Jails Since mid-2005, the DEN has united diverse campus and community constituencies around common projects and campaigns. These have included the Democratizing Education Convention (October, 2005), the Tent State University movement (April, 2006), and the Virtual March on Corporate Lobbyists (October, 2006). This summer, the DEN will host a second Democratizing Education Convention in Atlanta, Georgia, to be held in conjunction with the US Social Forum (June 22-24, 2007). 3. YOUR ROLE You can and should begin your preparations for the April Mobilization. This is a critical moment for a vital institution. Who will our colleges and universities serve? The poor and working people of the world? The as yet unfulfilled promise of American democracy? Future generations facing the ecological legacy of their parents? Or will higher education instead become a tool for corporations, an instrument for the indoctrination, segregation, and debt-enslavement of American youth? Here's what you can do: 1. Become a Participant. Register your organization as a local organizer of campus and/or community April Mobilization events. 2. Secure an Endorsement for the Mobilization. If you are involved in an international, national, state, or regional student, labor, or community organization, work to secure the official backing of your organization for the April Mobilization. 3. Make a Personal Endorsement. Lend your name to the April Mobilization. Then go one further: Personally take action to make it a success. Write a letter, editorial, or blog in support of the mobilization. Contribute funds to make it a success. Volunteer to help with organizing, webwork, literature production, and outreach. To register your participation, and get involved, please click here: HTTP://www.DemocratizingEducation.org Thank you. _____________________________________ The April Mobilization for Higher Education ~ A campaign of the student, youth, faculty, staff, and community-based members of the Democratizing Education Network (DEN). HTTP://www.DemocratizingEducation.org ------------------------------------------------------------------------ PARTICIPATE & CIRCULATE . . . PARTICIPATE & CIRCULATE -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: /pipermail/corporations_corporations.org/attachments/20070129/b0f78842/attachment.html From catalyst at actionpa.org Tue Jan 30 17:17:19 2007 From: catalyst at actionpa.org (Mike Ewall) Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2007 18:17:19 -0500 Subject: [Corporations] Microsoft's Vista Could Harm Health in Developing Countries Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20070130181615.144049b0@mail.actionpa.org> BASEL ACTION NETWORK ~ Turning Back the Toxic Tide ~ For Immediate Release: Microsoft's Vista Could Harm Health in Developing Countries "Tsunami of Electronic Waste" to hit Asian and African Shores? Seattle, WA. 30 January 2007. The Seattle based toxic trade watchdog, Basel Action Network (BAN), is concerned that Microsoft has done little to prevent or mitigate the massive hardware obsolescence that is likely to be caused by the release of its latest operating system known as Vista. The environmental organization predicts that the software launch will create a 'tsunami' of e-waste exported to developing countries already awash in e-waste exports, as consumers in rich countries dispose of their existing computers and buy new machines capable of running the new operating system. BAN noted the contradiction of Microsoft founder Bill Gates latest high-tech progeny in light of the charitable mission of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation "to bring innovations in health and learning to the global community." "Today with the release of Vista, Microsoft could bring both a massive digital dump and a perpetuation of the digital divide to the global community," said Jim Puckett, coordinator of the Basel Action Network. "It is shameful how little innovation and concern the electronics industry continues to demonstrate for the long-term consequences of their products in light of their abilities to innovate front-end gadgetry to encourage sales." he said. A study by the Softchoice Corporation[i] estimated that about half of the average business PCs in North America do not meet the minimum requirements for Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system, and 94 percent do not meet the system requirements for Vista Premium -- the enhanced business version. While some of this obsolescence can be solved with RAM upgrades, it is likely that many businesses will not bother with such labor intensive servicing but will simply discard their existing computers. According to BAN, more than 50% of these computers globally, are exported to developing countries either whole or dissassembled, where they are processed and disposed of in a manner that causes serious damage to workers and local environments. The result of this is that the gains of the electronics industry translate into serious environmental costs externalized to the poor. BAN earlier documented the cyber-age nightmares in such countries as China, India or Nigeria where women and children 'cook' lead-tin soldered circuit boards over small fires, soak chips in dangerous acid baths along river ways, smash lead and phosphor laden cathode ray tubes, and burn wires and plastic housings in open dumps.[ii] Further, BAN notes that every time software makes hardware obsolete, the digital divide is actually perpetuated, because the divide is not defined by the gap between those with computers and those without, but by those with the latest innovations and those without. And when exported obsolete computers are handed down to developing country consumers for re-use, a toxic timebomb is created there due to the fact that the electronics industry has made no effort to ensure that infrastructure is in put in place to properly collect and manage their products at end-of-life. "Most developing countries have no infrastructure whatsoever to collect and recycle computers, so when they die they are simply dumped and burned," Puckett said. "A truly responsible industry will take steps to ensure that innovation does not automatically equate to obsolescence, toxic waste and a growing population of hardware have-nots," he said. BAN hopes to work with its Seattle area neighbor Microsoft and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to ensure that innovation and obsolescence are de-linked in future. For more information: Contact Jim Puckett, +1.206.652.5555, jpuckett at ban.org Sarah Westervelt +1.206.652.5555, swestervelt at ban.org Visit Basel Action Network website: www.ban.org [i] As reported in e-week: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2068351,00.asp [ii] See reports and films -- Exporting Harm: The High Tech Trashing of Asia, and The Digital Dump: Exporting Re-use and Abuse to Africa, both available on the BAN website: www.ban.org NOTE: With this press release BAN will be sending Bill Gates a copy of its films, Digital Dump and Exporting Harm. BASEL ACTION NETWORK (BAN) c/o Earth Economics 122 S. Jackson, Suite 320 Seattle, Washington 98104 USA Phone: 1.206.652.5555, Fax: 1.206.652.5750 Email: jpuckett at ban.org Website: http://www.ban.org