14 evildoers....gorgs!

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The 14 Worst Corporate Evildoers

A Global Exchange Report

http://www.alternet.org/story/29337/

 

Corporations carry out some of the most horrific human rights abuses of

modern times, but it is increasingly difficult to hold them to account.

Economic globalization and the rise of transnational corporate power

have created a favorable climate for corporate human rights abusers,

which are governed principally by the codes of supply and demand and

show genuine loyalty only to their stockholders.

 

Several of the companies below are being sued under the Alien Tort

Claims Act, a law that allows citizens of any nationality to sue in US

federal courts for violations of international rights or treaties. When

corporations act like criminals, we have the right and the power to

stop them, holding leaders and multinational corporations alike to the

accords they have signed. Around the world--in Venezuela, Argentina,

India, and right here in the United States--citizens are stepping up to

create democracy and hold corporations accountable to international

law.

 

Caterpillar

 

For years, the Caterpillar Company has provided Israel with the

bulldozers used to destroy Palestinian homes. Despite worldwide

condemnation, Caterpillar has refused to end its corporate

participation house demolition by cutting off sales of specially

modified D9 and D10 bulldozers to the Israeli military.

 

In a letter to Caterpillar CEO James Owens, The Office of the UN High

Commissioner on Human Rights said: " allowing the delivery of your ...

bulldozers to the Israeli army ... in the certain knowledge that they

are being used for such action, might involve complicity or acceptance

on the part of your company to actual and potential violations of human

rights... "

 

Peace activist Rachel Corrie was killed by a Caterpillar D-9, military

bulldozer in 2003. She was run over while attempting to block the

destruction a family's home in Gaza. Her family filed suit against

Caterpillar in March 2005 charging that Caterpillar knowingly sold

machines used to violate human rights. Since Corrie's death at least

three more Palestinians have been killed in their homes by Israeli

bulldozer demolitions.

 

Chevron

 

The petrochemical company Chevron is guilty of some of the worst

environmental and human rights abuses in the world. From 1964 to 1992,

Texaco (which transferred operations to Chevron after being bought out

in 2001) unleashed a toxic " Rainforest Chernobyl " in Ecuador by leaving

over 600 unlined oil pits in pristine northern Amazon rainforest and

dumping 18 billion gallons of toxic production water into rivers used

for bathing water. Llocal communities have suffered severe health

effects, including cancer, skin lesions, birth defects, and spontaneous

abortions.

 

Chevron is also responsible for the violent repression of peaceful

opposition to oil extraction. In Nigeria, Chevron has hired private

military personnel to open fire on peaceful protestors who oppose oil

extraction in the Niger Delta.

 

Additionally Chevron is responsible for widespread health problems in

Richmond, California, where one of Chevron's largest refineries is

located. Processing 350,000 barrels of oil a day, the Richmond refinery

produces oil flares and toxic waste in the Richmond area. As a result,

local residents suffer from high rates of lupus, skin rashes, rheumatic

fever, liver problems, kidney problems, tumors, cancer, asthma, and eye

problems.

 

The Unocal Corporation, which recently became a subsidiary of Chevron,

is an oil and gas company based in California with operations around

the world. In December 2004, the company settled a lawsuit filed by 15

Burmese villagers, in which the villagers alleged Unocal's complicity

in a range of human rights violations in Burma, including rape, summary

execution, torture, forced labor and forced migration.

 

Coca-Cola

 

Coca-Cola Company is perhaps the most widely recognized corporate

symbol on the planet. The company also leads in the abuse of workers'

rights, assassinations, water privatization, and worker discrimination.

Between 1989 and 2002, eight union leaders from Coca-Cola bottling

plants in Colombia were killed after protesting the company's labor

practices. Hundreds of other Coca-Cola workers who have joined or

considered joining the Colombian union SINALTRAINAL have been

kidnapped, tortured, and detained by paramilitaries who are hired to

intimidate workers to prevent them from unionizing.

 

In India, Coca-Cola destroys local agriculture by privatizing the

country's water resources. In Plachimada, Kerala, Coca-Cola extracted

1.5 million liters of deep well water, which they bottled and sold

under the names Dasani and BonAqua. The groundwater was severely

depleted, affecting thousands of communities with water shortages and

destroying agricultural activity. As a result, the remaining water

became contaminated with high chloride and bacteria levels, leading to

scabs, eye problems, and stomach aches in the local population.

 

Coca-Cola is also one of the most discriminatory employers in the

world. In the year 2000, 2,000 African-American employees in the U.S.

sued the company for race-based disparities in pay and promotions.

 

Dow Chemical

 

Dow Chemical has been destroying lives and poisoning the planet for

decades. The company is best known for the ravages and health disaster

for millions of Vietnamese and U.S. Veterans caused by its lethal

Vietnam War defoliant, Agent Orange. Dow also developed and perfected

Napalm, a brutal chemical weapon that burned many innocents to death in

Vietnam and other wars. In 1988, Dow provided pesticides to Saddam

Hussein despite warnings that they could be used to produce chemical

weapons.

 

In 2001, Dow inherited the toxic legacy of the worst peacetime chemical

disaster in history when it acquired Union Carbide Corporation (UCC)

and its outstanding liabilities in Bhopal, India. On Dec. 3, 1984, a

chemical leak from a UCC pesticide plant in Bhopal gassed thousands of

people to death and left more than 150,000 disabled or dying. Dow still

refuses to address its liabilities in Bhopal.

 

Dow Chemical's impact is felt globally from its Midland, Michigan

headquarters to Plymouth New Zealand. In Midland, Dow has been

producing chlorinated chemicals and burning and burying its waste

including chemicals that make up Agent Orange. In Plymouth, New

Zealand, 500,000 gallons of Agent Orange were produced and thousands of

tons of dioxin-laced waste was dumped in agricultural fields.

 

DynCorp

 

Private security contractors have become the fastest-growing sector of

the global economy during the last decade--a $100-billion-a-year,

nearly unregulated industry. DynCorp, one of the providers of these

mercenary services, demonstrates the industry's power and potential to

abuse human rights. While guarding Afghan statesmen and African oil

fields, training Iraqi police forces, eradicating Colombian coca

plants, and protecting business interests in hurricane-devastated New

Orleans, these hired guns bolster the security of governments and

organizations at the expense of many people's human rights.

 

DynCorp's fumigation of coca crops along the Colombian-Ecuadorian

border led Ecuadorian peasants to sue DynCorp in 2001. Plaintiffs

argued that DynCorp knew--or should have known--that the herbicides

were highly toxic.

 

In 2001, a mechanic with DynCorp blew the whistle on DynCorp employees

in Bosnia for rape and trading girls as young as 12 into sex slavery.

According to a lawsuit filed by the mechanic, " employees and

supervisors were engaging in perverse, illegal and inhumane behavior

[and] were purchasing illegal weapons, women, [and] forged passports. "

DynCorp fired the whistleblower and transferred the employees accused

of sex trading out of the country, eventually firing some. None were

prosecuted.

 

Ford Motor Company

 

Among automakers, Ford Motor Company is the worst. Every year since

1999, the US Environmental Protection Agency has ranked Ford cars,

trucks and SUVs as having the worst overall fuel economy of any

American automaker. Ford's current car and truck fleet has a lower

average fuel efficiency than the original Ford Model-T.

 

Ford is also in last place when it comes to vehicle greenhouse gas

emissions. According to a recent report by the Union of Concerned

Scientists, Ford has " the absolute worst heat-trapping gas emissions

performance of all the Big Six automakers. "

 

Despite the company's recent greenwashing PR campaign, its record has

actually worsened. According to Ford's own sustainability report,

between 2003 and 2004, the company's US fleet-wide fuel economy

decreased and its CO2 emissions went up. Ford has also lobbied against

lawmakers' efforts to increase fuel economy standards at the national

level and is also involved in a lawsuit against California's fuel

economy standards.

 

KBR (Kellogg, Brand, And Root): A Subsidiary of Halliburton Corporation

 

KBR is a private company that provides military support services.

Notorious for its questionable bookkeeping, dishonest billing practices

with US taxpayer dollars and no-bid contracts, KBR has violated human

rights on the U.S. dollar.

 

KBR's dubious accounting in Iraq came to light in December 2003 when

Pentagon auditors questioned possible overcharges for imported

gasoline. In June 2005, a previously secret Pentagon audit criticized

$1.4 billion in " questioned " and " unsupported " expenditures.

In 2002

the company paid $2 million to settle a Justice Department lawsuit that

accused KBR of inflating contract prices at Fort Ord, California.

 

Many third-country national (TCN) laborers have been hired by KBR to

" rebuild " Iraq. Generally hailing from impoverished Asian countries,

they have unexpectedly become part of the largest civilian workforce

ever hired in support of a U.S. war. Once abroad, the workers find

themselves with few protections and uncertain legal status. TCNs often

sleep in crowded trailers and wait outside in scorching heat for food

rations. Many lack adequate medical care and put in hard labor seven

days a week, 10 hours or more a day.

 

Lockheed Martin

 

Lockheed Martin is the world's largest military contractor. Providing

satellites, planes, missiles and other lethal high-tech items to the

Pentagon keeps the profits rolling in. Since 2000, the year Bush was

elected, the company's stock value has tripled.

 

As the Center for Corporate Policy (www.corporatepolicy.org) notes, it

is no coincidence that Lockheed VP Bruce Jackson--who helped draft the

Republican foreign policy platform in 2000--is a key player at the

Project for a New American Century, the intellectual incubator of the

Iraq war.

 

Lockheed Martin is not the only defense contractor that goes behind the

scenes to influence public policy, but it is one of the worst. Stephen

J. Hadley, who now has Condoleeza Rice's old job as Assistant to the

President for National Security Affairs, was formerly a partner in a DC

law firm representing Lockheed Martin. He is only one of the

beneficiaries of the so-called revolving door between the military

industries and the " civilian " national security apparatus. These war

profiteers have a profound and illegitimate influence on our country's

international policy decisions.

 

Monsanto

 

Monsanto is, by far, the largest producer of genetically engineered

seeds in the world, dominating 70% to 100% of the market for crops such

as soy, cotton, wheat and corn.

 

Monsanto is the world's leading producer of the herbicide glyphosate,

marketed as Roundup. Roundup is sold to small farmers as a pesticide,

yet harms crops in the long run as the toxins accumulate in the soil.

Plants eventually become infertile, forcing farmers to purchase

genetically modified Roundup Ready Seed, a seed that resists the

herbicide. This creates a cycle of dependency on Monsanto for both the

weed killer and the only seed that can resist it. Both products are

patented, and sold at inflated prices. Exposure to the pesticide is

documented to cause cancers, skin disorders, spontaneous abortions,

premature births, and damage to the gastrointestinal and nervous

systems.

 

According to the India Committee of the Netherlands and the

International Labor Rights Fund, Monsanto also employs child labor. In

India, an estimated 12,375 children work in cottonseed production for

farmers paid by Indian and multinational seed companies, including

Monsanto.

 

Nestle USA

 

The problem of illegal and forced child labor is rampant in the

chocolate industry, because more than 40% of the world's cocoa supply

comes from the Ivory Coast, a country that the US State Department

estimates had approximately 109,000 child laborers working in hazardous

conditions on cocoa farms. In 2001, Save the Children Canada reported

that 15,000 children between 9 and 12 years old, many from impoverished

Mali, had been tricked or sold into slavery on West African cocoa

farms, many for just $30 each.

 

Nestle, the third largest buyer of cocoa from the Ivory Coast, is well

aware of the tragically unjust labor practices taking place on the

farms with which it continues to do business. Nestle and other

chocolate manufacturers agreed to end the use of abusive and forced

child labor on cocoa farms by July 1, 2005, but they failed to do so.

 

Nestle is also notorious for its aggressive marketing of infant formula

in poor countries in the 1980s. Because of this practice, Nestle is

still one of the most boycotted corporations in the world, and its

infant formula is still controversial. In Italy in 2005, police seized

more than two million liters of Nestle infant formula that was

contaminated with the chemical isopropylthioxanthone (ITX).

 

Additionally, violations of labor rights are reported from Nestle

factories in numerous countries. In Colombia, Nestle replaced the

entire factory staff with lower-wage workers and did not renew the

collective employment contract.

 

Philip Morris USA and Philip Morris International (a.k.a. The Altria

Group Inc.)

 

Among tobacco companies, Philip Morris is notorious. Now called Altria,

it is the world's largest and most profitable cigarette corporation and

maker of Marlboro, Virginia Slims, Parliament, Basic and many other

brands of cigarettes.

 

Documents uncovered in a lawsuit filed against the tobacco industry by

the state of Minnesota showed that Philip Morris and other leading

tobacco corporations knew very well of the dangers of tobacco products

and the addictiveness of nicotine. To this day, Philip Morris deceives

consumers about the harm of its products by offering light, mild and

low-tar cigarettes that give consumers the illusion these brands are

" healthier " than traditional cigarettes.

 

Although the company says it doesn't want kids to smoke, it spends

millions of dollars every day marketing and promoting cigarettes to

youth. Overseas, it has even hired underage " Marlboro girls " to

distribute free cigarettes to other children and sponsored concerts

where cigarettes were handed out to minors.

 

As anti-tobacco campaigns and government regulations are slowing

tobacco use in Western countries, Philip Morris has aggressively moved

into developing country markets, where smoking and smoking-related

deaths are on the rise. Preliminary numbers released by the World

Health Organization predict global deaths due to smoking-related

illnesses will nearly double by 2020, with more than three-quarters of

those deaths in the developing world.

 

Pfizer

 

Pfizer is the largest pharmaceutical company in the world; it is also

one of the worst abusers of the human right of universal access to

HIV/AIDS medicine.

 

In addition to Viagra, Zoloft, Zithromax and Norvasc, Pfizer produces

the AIDS drug fluconazole under the name Diflucan, and sells it at

prices that poor people with AIDS cannot afford. The company refuses to

grant generic licenses of fluconazole to governments in countries like

Brazil, South Africa, or Dominican Republic, where patients are forced

to pay $20 per weekly pill, though the average national wage is only

$120 per month.

 

Pfizer also values shareholder profits over safety standards. In Europe

in 2005, it withdrew from scientific studies of a new class of AIDS

drugs called CCR5 inhibitors, choosing instead to rush its own untested

CCR5 inhibitor onto the European market without full information about

the drug's side effects.

 

Suez-Lyonnaise Des Eaux (SLDE)

 

The privatization of water has had a disastrous impact on the human

right to clean water, and the French company Suez is the worst

perpetrator of this abuse. The company's billions of dollars in profit

come at the expense of poor people living in countries where thousands

lack access to potable water, and, because of private water contracts,

are also facing skyrocketing water prices.

 

Suez goes by many names around the world--Ondeo, SITA and others--to

mask its worldwide net of controversial activities. In Manila,

Philippines, after seven years of water privatization under a Suez

company (Maynilad Water) contract, studies showed that water rates

increased in some neighborhoods by 400 to 700 percent. These studies

also showed that the negligence of the company resulted in cholera and

gastroenteritis outbreaks that killed six people and severely sickened

725 in Manila's Tondo district.

 

In Bolivia, a Suez company (Aguas de Illimani) left 200,000 people

without access to water and caused a revolt when it tried to charge

between $335 and $445 to connect a private home to the water supply.

Countless people were unable to afford this charge in a country whose

yearly per capita GDP is $915.

 

Unfortunately, the IMF and World Bank are playing a key role in pushing

water privatization all over the world. Many countries have been

required to open up their water supply to private companies as a

condition for receiving IMF loans, and the World Bank has approved

millions of dollars in loans for the privatization of water systems.

 

Wal-Mart

 

Wal-Mart is the biggest corporation in the world. It owns 5,100 stores

worldwide and employs 1.3 million workers in the United States and

400,000 abroad, as well as millions more in the factories of its

suppliers.

 

Many people have heard of the way that Wal-Mart steamrolls its way into

every possible town, destroying local supermarkets and countless small

businesses. We have also heard about Wal-Mart's long track record of

worker abuse, from forced overtime to sex discrimination to illegal

child labor to relentless union busting. Wal-Mart also notoriously

fails to provide health insurance to over half of its employees, who

are then left to rely on themselves or taxpayers, who provide for a

portion of their healthcare needs through government Medicaid.

 

Less well known is the fact that Wal-Mart maintains its low price level

by allowing substandard labor conditions at the overseas factories

producing most of its goods. The company continually demands lower

prices from its suppliers, who, in turn, make more outrageous and

abusive demands on their workers in order to meet Wal-Mart's

requirements.

 

In September 2005, the International Labor Rights Fund filed a lawsuit

on behalf of Wal-Mart supplier sweatshop workers in China, Indonesia,

Bangladesh, Nicaragua and Swaziland. The workers were denied minimum

wages, forced to work overtime without compensation, and were denied

legally mandated health care. Other worker rights violations that have

been found in foreign factories that produce goods for Wal-Mart include

locked bathrooms, starvation wages, pregnancy tests, denial of access

to health care, and workers being fired and blacklisted if they try to

defend their rights.

 

http://www.gmwatch.org/print-archive2.asp?arcid=6044

 

 

 

 

When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a

cross.

-Sinclair Lewis