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Newsletter Issue 1 Jan - Feb 2001 |
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BABYLONIAN TIMES Unreal Ale Macchu Piccu – heart of the Inca empire, Peru’s most prized heritage site … trashed by a beer ad? Yes, last autumn employees of New York ad firm J Walter Thompson snuck onto the site in the early hours, defying the limits of their permits by bringing heavy equipment including a 1,000lb crane, and set up a makeshift bar on the sacred Intihuatana sundial – a massive granite block that forms the centrepiece of the Macchu Piccu complex (think the highaltar at Westminster Abbey). During the shoot, the film crew quickly learnt why their heavy equipment had been banned from the site – the crane came crashing down on the ancient stone, smashing one edge to fragments. The beer ad was for local brewer Cervesur – we don’t have their sales figures available, but we believe they’ve discovered there is such a thing as bad publicity. ABC news 15/9/00 No smoke without corporate responsibility? Nottingham University took the corporate prostitution of UK higher education to new depths in December by accepting a £4m grant from British American Tobacco. Not only is this the same company that kills thousands every year by selling cigarettes, but it has also been accused of marketing to children in the Third World and of deliberately concealing evidence of the negative health effects of smoking, and is currently under investigation by the DTI over allegations of involvement in large-scale tobacco smuggling. Ironic, then, that they should be giving money to set up an ‘International Centre for Corporate Responsibility’. Karl Brookes, from anti-smoking group ASH asked, ‘Will they be allowing the arms industry to sponsor a school for peace studies?’ However, the university's vice-chancellor, Sir Colin Campbell, claimed BAT was working hard to address the ‘changing expectations of society and its stakeholders’ – does that mean the expectation that people won’t be given fatal diseases to boost corporate profits? Or the expectation that people who peddle deadly drugs to minors should be in prison? Presumably not. One person who took a dim view of the donation was Nottingham Uni student Jon Rouse, who asked for his £50 ‘student of the year’ prize to be given to the Cancer Research Campaign, in protest at his university’s ‘horrible error of judgement’. BBC 5/12/00, 14/12/00 Vultures feeding on live flesh Just when you though the corner was perhaps being turned in the Third World debt crisis, just when it looked as if embarrassment and expediency were combining to force Northern governments to stop sucking quite so much Southern blood, a new twist has appeared in the tale. Out there in the wilds of the global financial market a new scavenger is circling – the ‘vulture funds’, offspring of New York’s hedge funds, which buy up Third World debt on the secondary market, then sue for payment in defiance of debt relief programs. For example, New York-based hedge fund Elliott Associates L.P. bought $20 million worth of Peru's debt for just $11 million in 1996. Paul Singer, a general partner said ‘Peru would either... pay us in full or be sued.’ Elliott Associates then pursued the Peruvian government through the courts for full payment of the debt plus capitalised interest, finally receiving $58 million on Oct 7 2000. In the process, Peru was blocked from paying other creditors first, nearly forcing a default on its debt payments, which would have thrown the country further into economic chaos. Individuals in this case have been involved in similar cannibalistic operations with debts from Panama, Ecuador, Poland, Côte d'Ivoire, Turkmenistan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. To call them vultures is unfair – vultures only eat dead flesh, whereas Paul Singer and his colleagues Jay Newman and Michael Straus are feeding on the lives of the poorest people in the world. Singer calls it ‘sound business practice’. www.jubilee2000uk.org/ Quack marketing According to the Financial Times, drug companies now spend more on branding and marketing than on research and development. It doesn’t matter if the pill works, as long as the reps can sell it to doctors, seems to be the message. Final proof, if such were needed, that concern for people’s health now takes second place to profits. Financial Times, 24/10/00 Like TheHungerSite…? Then check out the latest ventures by GreaterGood.com at: www.therainforestsite.com, www.thekidsaidssite.com, www.thechildsurvivalsite.com, www.thebreastcancersite.com, www.thelandminesite.com Of course, a cynic might claim it boils all boils down to sponsored ad-watching and crumb-tossing courtesy of corporations rich enough to supply a fair chunk of the $80bn necessary to end absolute poverty out of their PR budgets. And it’s perfectly reasonable that TheBreastCancerSite supplies free mammograms to women in the US – the richest country in the world obviously can’t afford to fund basic health screening for its own citizens. It would be churlish to suggest that the ‘good’ which ‘for-profit’ company GreaterGood.com has in mind is its own and its corporate backers… Upgrade your population! ‘There is a decade or two of analogue people out there that will take time to be replaced by completely digital people.’ John Mole, analyst at PriceWaterhouseCoopers', in a BBC report on why the internet revolution hasn’t really happened yet. BBC 4/12/00 Did you know... ‘Transnational corporations control 70% of world trade and 80% of all land growing export crops. Yet they employ only 3% of the world’s paid labour’ 80% of UK farm subsidies go to the biggest 20% of UK farmers. (The Ecologist) British Butter imports 1996: 47million kilos British Butter exports 1996: 49million kilos In a recent survey of 166 studies on the effects of aspartame on human health, 74 had industry-related funding and 92 were independently funded. Of the industry sponsored articles, 100% attested to aspartame’s safety. Of the independently funded articles, 92% demonstrated some type of adverse reaction. Four-fifths of websites are in English, a language understood by only one in 10 people worldwide. |
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