UK: BULLYING & BRIBERY
- THE NEW OLYMPIC GAMES

As London’s bid to host the 2012 Olympics steams patriotically ahead, a Corporate Watch investigation has revealed that Ken Livingstone’s London Development Agency (LDA) are threatening residents of the proposed Olympic site with Compulsory Purchase Orders if they do not agree to sell their homes and businesses, and relocate to make way for the developers.

At a meeting held last November in Stratford Town Hall, Tony Winterbottom, one of the LDA’s directors, confirmed that businesses would be ‘encouraged to relocate’, but that Compulsory Purchase Orders would be used if necessary. In fact, by his own admission, without the use of CPO’s, the LDA would only have half of the land needed to site the Games.

Residents of Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest, which all form part of the Olympic site plan, had been promised that that, should the bid go ahead, their boroughs would benefit from an almost magical transformation. ‘London 2012 would be the key catalyst to the most significant urban and environmental regeneration ever seen in London’ assures the bid’s official site. In fact, London’s Joint Planning Authorities Team (JPAT), responsible for overseeing the planning process, has just sent back part of the bid’s application, on the grounds that there were ‘sixty or seventy issues in the Environmental Statement which needed clarification’, according to a JPAT spokesman.
The meeting at Stratford Town Hall disclosed ‘widespread unease and frustration’ among local people. They are unlikely to be convinced by the finer details behind the official website’s grand promises. Benefit no. 3 of staging the Olympics is, according to the website: ‘Anecdotally, participation in sport has led to downturns in youth crime’. Leaving the ‘anecdotally’ aside, it is easy to wonder what kind of participation in sport, precisely. Watching the construction companies as they move in to turn Hackney Marshes - currently a thriving local football venue - into an Olympic coach park, perhaps.

The fact that, as the website points out, the Olympics are proven to be ‘a significant boost to the convention industry’, is also unlikely to console residents whose homes are under threat, or the local businesses which will supposedly flourish despite being forced to close up and move elsewhere. But there are, certainly, parties who will benefit. The letters of support on the official website tellingly include those from Bechtel, Jarvis, the Bank of Japan and McDonalds. It is, however, the taxpayers who will supply most of the money to host the Games - just as in Athens, where the Games are currently thirty percent over budget, leaving the Greek taxpayers, who have already stumped up £3.3 billion, to find an extra £1.5 billion to support them.

Other concerns with previous Olympics include the fact that in Los Angeles, Atlanta and Seoul, Korea, there was wholesale removal of homeless people and criminalising of poverty to make way for the businesses. In Atlanta, 8000 people were removed from the streets. Community and environmental groups are already making a noise over Vancouver’s pursuit to host the 2010 Olympic Winter Games, with critics concerned about the lasting economic, environmental, political and social impacts of doing so. While currently, in New York, a determined coalition of residents and small business owners looks likely to succeed in blocking that city’s bid for the 2012 Games. Unless London residents do the same, the way will then be left clear for London and Paris to fight it out between them. Bechtel and Jarvis, however, are certain to win; as are McDonalds, Visa, and CocaCola - just three of the Games’ official sponsors.

COLOMBIA: UNIONS WIN AGAINST COKE

Thirty workers had to go on hunger strike for 12 days to do it. But as a result Femsa, Coca Cola’s bottling plant in Colombia, finally agreed not to lay off 91 union members slated for unemployment. The company also agreed to give the hunger strikers two weeks paid vacation for ‘physical recuperation’ and, rather chillingly, to ‘purchase a national newspaper advertisement discouraging paramilitary reprisals against them’ . Unions and human rights activists around the world had sent protest messages to Coca Cola in Atlanta, and students in a dozen US cities had organised solidarity actions on their behalf.

WORLDWIDE: BOYCOTT

The last few months have seen calls by both Arundhati Roy and Naomi Klein to boycott corporations who have profited from the war on Iraq. Although neither mentioned specific companies, one researcher, Mike Bryan, pointing out that it’s difficult for the average person to boycott Halliburton or Bechtel, has suggested General Electric and MCI, both of whom feature in the lucrative series of contracts handed out by the US after the invasion.
The difficulty for British readers is that in the UK, General Electric only publicly sell luxury fridges - ‘American refrigerators fast becoming a necessity’ as their website helpfully states. The weapons systems they manufacture across the country are obviously reserved for an even more elite market. While MCI, although at one point connected with the internet company ‘fish’ (as in ‘fish4jobs’ etc) is a business driven enterprise, rather than an individually funded one.

However, a look at the list of companies ‘receiving the largest dollar volume of US Department of Defense prime contract awards’ in 2003 reveals a number of possible candidates. Exxon at number 29, Dell Computers at number 35 and Motorola at number 57; for example. Campaigners point out that someone who decides to buy a different mobile phone, for example, should write to Motorola and explain precisely why. (see also the new website www.warprofiteers.com for other insights).

Meanwhile people across the world are invited to participate in the annual Global Boycott Procter & Gamble Day VIII on Saturday 22nd May 2004 - one of the most popular and successful boycott campaigns in the world. And one in which there is a role for everyone - ‘from the armchair campaigner to experienced groups of activists’. The campaign is being waged by animal rights group Uncaged due to Procter and Gamble’s unrepentant animal testing for new cosmetic and household cleaning and pet food products and chemical ingredients. However Procter & Gamble has also done over $500 million worth of business with the Pentagon in the past two years, ranking it high on the list of war profiteers.

Ideas range from letter writing and raising petitions, to staging town centre campaign stalls and protests at supermarkets and P&G sites. contact: Uncaged Campaigns, 9 Bailey Lane, Sheffield S1 4EG, UK phone +44 (0) 114 272 2220, fax +44 (0) 114 272 2225, email info@uncaged.co.uk

IRAQ: WMD? No Problem!

Anyone cynical enough to wonder why the Bush administration haven’t just hidden some weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and then ‘discovered’ them, might find a report published by the Tehran Times on March 13th interesting. U.S. forces, claimed the newspaper, have unloaded a large cargo of parts for constructing long-range missiles and WMD in the southern ports of Iraq. The newspaper’s source (a member of the Iraqi Governing Council) went on to say that the rest of the weapons were probably transferred in vans to an unknown location somewhere in the vicinity of Basra overnight. “Most of these weapons are of Eastern European origin and some parts are from the former Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. The U.S. obtained them through confiscations during sales of banned arms over the past two decades,” he said.

The Tehran Times adds that this action comes as certain U.S. and Western officials have been pointing out the fact that no weapons of mass destruction have been discovered in Iraq, and as the issue of Saddam’s trial begins to take center stage. In addition, it says, former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix has emphasized that the U.S. and British intelligence agencies issued false reports on Iraq leading to the U.S. attack. While, it concludes, the suspicious death of weapons inspector David Kelly is also an unresolved issue in Britain.

In response, a security official for the coalition forces in Iraq said that he has not received any information about the unloading of weapons of mass destruction in ports in southern Iraq. CPA spokesman Shane Wolf told the Mehr News Agency that the occupation forces have received no reports on such events, but said he hoped that the coalition forces would find the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction one day.

SPAIN: DAM CRIMINALS

A man has been jailed for over four years for cutting the cables of a concrete pump at the construction site of the infamous Itioz dam in Spain. Ibai Ederra’s action had stopped construction for a year. It was part of a twenty year struggle by tens of thousands of people against the dam, which had been declared illegal by Spain’s Supreme Court - until the Constitutional Court changed the law specifically for Itioz. Ederra’s support group, the Solidarios, are appealing for people to write to him, and another objector, Inaki Garcia, in prison at: Carcel de Pamplona, Apdo 250, Iruna, Nafarroa, Spain.

MOSCOW: PROTEST TO BE BANNED

Last month, protestors gathered outside the State Parliament in Moscow, to voice their opposition to a new law which, when passed, will see the criminalising of peaceful protest. The deputy head of the Yabloko Party (equivalent to the Lib Dems) was part of the protest and was arrested. Sergey Mitrohin told the protesters: “We will continue to stage these demonstrations even if they pass this draconian law.” A senior member of the Communist faction in the Duma, Sergei Reshulsky, said: “This would be the end of political life in the streets.”

US: THE MACHINES KEEP TAKING OVER

American pundits are suggesting that George Bush looks set for another four years in the White House. Certainly, on past evidence, Bush and his cohorts have no trouble with getting White House residency - even if they haven’t won an election. Last time, thousands of mainly Democrat voters were illegally removed from US registers, allowing Al Gore to ‘lose’ the election by 537 votes.

Presumably, the new Republican backed voting machines will make the whole process much easier. The installation of the touch-screen computers, which leave no paper trail, is continuing across the country, with Diebold Election Systems launching a five-year, $1 million ‘outreach campaign’ to educate Maryland residents. The campaign, which includes radio and TV commercials, a website, more than 1.5 million brochures, and voting demonstrations, began just prior to Maryland’s March 2 primary. “The money would be better spent making the system more secure instead of trying to win voter confidence through public relations,” replied Johns Hopkins computer science professor Avi Rubin. A study co-authored by Rubin identified serious security flaws with Diebold machines.

Meanwhile, in San Diego, voters in the March 2nd primary elections there were forced to leave without casting ballots, as Diebold’s voting machines crashed yet again. (http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/breaking_news/8431896.htm?1c). The company blamed a ‘faulty power switch’.

UPDATE:
BLACKWOOD - PROTESTS WILL CONTINUE

Corporate Watch continues its report on the fight to save a local woodland in Wales.
After ten years of campaigning and protest, the oldest trees in St David’s Wood, Blackwood, were among the last to fall. As the bailiffs moved in to remove the last fifteen or so people trying to save the woodland, both local protestors and supporters were in tears. The ancient silver oak in the final protest camp - gone. The giant, perfect beech which stood alone in the centre of a field - gone. ‘That one will definitely stay’ a member of Caerphilly Council had promised, just weeks before. Hundreds of other trees, bat residences, dormouse habitats, buzzard roosts - gone. And never mind the legality. Appeals had been put in to stop the eviction of the protestors, and to preserve the dormouse sites (dormice, unlike protestors, being a protected species in the UK). But Costain, the construction company, had gone ahead anyway, presumably reckoning the costs of a fine (in the thousands) against the far higher costs of not completing the work.

But, say locals and supporters, the resistance is not over. The trees may be dead, and the road itself underway, but there is still the question of the two bypasses, which are due to connect to the road. They will be built over the small, hitherto peaceful valley, thereby turning it instantly into a miniature of Spaghetti Junction. Unwanted, unneccessary, destructive to local trade, polluting, hazardous and an eyesore, are how most of the Blackwood locals see the bypasses. Not that this has stopped their local council from going ahead with it. ‘It makes you wonder why we vote’ said a local mother, angrily. Questions abound about the £54 million in ‘regeneration’ money this exercise will cost, and why it could not be spent on other, more productive local projects. Rumours are rife about local corruption.

Add to this unease the fact that this whole construction is intended to service two American arms manufacturers - and people are confident that the protests will not die. The people who clung onto the trees may have been pulled down to earth, somewhat battered and exhausted. But that, many say, is not the end of the story. In the meantime, the construction’s destruction continues.

NOTE: Behind the road are two corporations already known for being among the most destructive on the planet. On one side of the road is General Electric - chief war profiteer and manufacturer of jet engines. While on the other side, on the estate in Oakdale - is General Dynamics. General Dynamics manufacture, among other things, the charmingly named ‘Advanced Precision Kill Weapon Systems’ as well as battle tanks, assault vehicles, nuclear submarines and destroyers.

The General Dynamics UK site boasts of delivering ‘world class C4ISTAR capability vital to customer needs’. Officially, C4ISTAR stands for Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance. When asked what, precisely, the branch in Wales would be making, an employee replied that he ‘wasn’t allowed to say’.

Forcing people in areas of low employment into manufacturing weapons of destruction is nothing new, of course, but one wonders how the promised local jobs (which range from hundreds to thousands, depending on the degree of hyperbole) will affect the unskilled teenagers and out of work miners in need of employment.

UPDATE: GM TEST SITES
Where have all the test sites gone?

For the first time in over 10 years none of the Gene Giants (Syngenta, Monsanto and Bayer) are conducting any UK field trials of GM crops.
Bayer CropScience halted their UK field trials in autumn 2003 because the government refused to let them conceal the locations. It was expected that Syngenta (working in conjunction with Monsanto) would plant R&D trials of their #77 sugar beet this spring. In 2003 Syngenta notified DEFRA of their test site locations by mid February, but as of early April 2004 no notification of trial locations for this year has been received.
Several GM crops companies have crops with active consents for trials in 2004 but as yet it appears that only one trial notification has been received by DEFRA. This is a research and development trial of GM peas by John Innes Centre in Norwich, (TG 180070). This is the second year of a two year trial.

More information on this trial from
www.defra.gov.uk/environment/gm/regulation/trials.htm

This year sees a massive reduction in the total number of GM field trials in the UK from a peak of 159 in 2000-2001 to 42 in 2002-2003 to just 1 in 2003-2004.

Information taken from: www.geneticsaction.org.uk/testsites