Tag Archives: extractive industry

Latest Developments, June 21

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In the latest news and analysis…

Business as usual
Forum for the Future’s Jonathon Porritt argues the fact that Unilever is part of the UK’s delegation to the Rio+20 conference while British Prime Minister David Cameron is not, is “a sign of our unsustainable times”:

“Twenty years on from the 1992 Earth Summit, it seems to be almost universally accepted that governments have less scope and less appetite for governing, and that much more influence (if not power) has flowed over to big business and capital markets.
That’s not necessarily seen as a good thing by most people in the NGO community. In their eyes, no amount of ‘corporate responsibility’ can possibly compensate for the damage done in the name of profit maximisation.”

Dodgy draft
Former Bolivian climate negotiator Nele Marien expresses disappointment at the draft text agreed to in the run-up to Rio+20:

“It is nothing new to state that we are living in a limited world with limited recourses, and that we are at the edge of surpassing some critical tipping points for Mother Earth. To keep on growing economically in this setting is just a logical impossibility. Nevertheless, the RIO+20 text never considers these aspects of the environmental problem – in fact doesn’t make any assessment of the critical situation of nature at all- but on the contrary mentions ‘sustained economic growth’ about 23 times, as an objective in itself, and as a solution to the multiple crisis that the world faces today.”

Uruguay to legalize it
Al Jazeera reports that Uruguay plans to legalize the production and sale of marijuana in an effort to fight crime:

“The government will also urge that marijuana sales be legalised worldwide, Huidobro said, adding the measure could discourage the use of so-called hard drugs.
Marijuana consumption is already legal in Uruguay.
‘We want to fight against two different things: one is drug consumption and the other is drug trafficking. We think the ban on certain drugs is creating more problems in society than the drug itself,’ [Defence Minister Eleuterio Fernandez Huidobro] told a news conference.”

The state of corporate accountability
The Business and Human Rights Resource Centre has released its first annual briefing on corporate legal accountability, in which it covers human rights lawsuits against companies around the world:

“A few countries, including UK, USA, France, Germany and Netherlands, have heard some lawsuits against companies for alleged abuses occurring in other countries. But even in these countries, such lawsuits are rare.
…
‘Home’ governments (where companies are headquartered) fail to make extraterritorial remedies available for multiple reasons. In part, they simply do not wish to constrain their companies in their operations abroad. There are rarely strong constituencies pushing them to hold their companies accountable. And these measures are often opposed by host states as an infringement on sovereignty.”

Mining violence
The Georgia Straight reports that activists are calling on a pair of Canadian mining companies to “publicly order an absolute halt to all violence” against their opponents in Mexico and Guatemala:

“One of these cases involved the shooting of Yolanda Oquely Veliz on June 13. The 33-year-old Veliz was shot by men on a motorcycle after she left a blockade near the entrance to Radius Gold’s mine in San José del Golfo, Guatemala. She survived the attack but remains in serious condition.
They also cited the shooting of Bertín Vásquez Ruiz and Guadalupe Vásquez Ruiz on June 16. The two opponents of Fortuna Silver’s operations in Mexico were wounded.”

Dead man washing
The Wall Street Journal reports on the ease with which international crime syndicates can launder money in the UK:

“According to a new report from non-profit Global Witness, a U.K.-registered company saw about $700 million flow through its account at a Kyrgyzstan bank despite the fact that its identified owner, a Russian from a remote area, had died three years before the company was registered. Moreover, records cited by Global Witness said he attended a company meeting in London after his death.”

Drone math
ProPublica looks into seemingly conflicting US estimates of the number of civilians killed by drones in Pakistan:

“It’s possible that all these claims are true. But if they are, it implies that the government believes there were zero or almost zero civilian deaths between the beginning of 2008 and August 2009, and then again zero deaths between August 2010 and July 2011. Those periods comprise a total of 182 strikes.”

Green grabbing
The ESRC STEPS Centre’s Melissa Leach argues there is a “dark side” to attempts at building a so-called green economy:

“Green grabbing builds on well-known histories of colonial and neo-colonial resource alienation in the name of the environment – whether for parks, forest reserves or to halt assumed destructive local practices. Yet it involves novel forms of valuation, commodification and markets for pieces and aspects of nature, and an extraordinary new range of actors and alliances. Pension funds and venture capitalists, commodity traders and consultants, GIS service providers and business entrepreneurs, ecotourism companies and the military, green activists and anxious consumers among others find once-unlikely common interests. ”

The right kind of investment
The Financial Times reports that foreign investment is not always a good thing, especially when it involves agricultural land, as was the case in Africa when global food prices soared in 2008:

“Experts say that, ultimately, many of the plans of 2008-09 failed to materialise as the food crisis abated and investors became more aware of the political risks and huge logistic difficulties. But as populations grow and consumption habits change, the trend of foreign investor interest in Africa’s soils is expected to continue.”

Multilateral blues
In the wake of the G20’s latest summit in Mexico and as the UN’s Rio+20 conference kicks off, Foreign Policy’s David Rothkopf discusses what the recent “depressing panoply of multilateral misfires” will mean for the future of global governance:

“What we are seeing today is the kind of failure of leadership likely to produce consequences so disturbing that ultimately they will help move us past the multilateral rhetoric of idealists to the urgency that comes of clear-eyed realism about what works, what doesn’t, and what we really need.  Multilateralism will ultimately flourish not because it is more equitable but because we cannot solve global problems without it. Today’s leaders — through their inaction and missteps — may inadvertently be doing more to ensure cooperation among their successors than they did when they actually seemed to care about such issues earlier in their careers.”

Latest Developments, June 12

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Uranium politics
La Tribune reports that France’s new socialist president, François Hollande, has said he wants to see uranium production stepped up in Niger, where French state-owned company Areva is trying to get its new Imouraren mega-project up and running:

“In making this statement, François Hollande is following in the footsteps of his predecessors who supported the efforts of Areva to ensure the supply of uranium to France. A difficult task. Tensions are recurring with Niamey, which has been trying for years to get a bigger share of mining revenues. In 2007-2008, during the renegotiation of mining terms, Niger accused Areva of supporting the country’s Tuareg rebellion and expelled the local director. In trying to break Areva’s monopoly, Niamey has granted more than a hundred exploration licenses since 2006 to Chinese, Canadian, Indian, South African and Anglo-Australian companies.
…
In April, Nigerien staff at the Imouraren site undertook a seven-day warning strike to protest labour conditions, saying they were working 12 hours a day. Areva countered that this sort of disruption would make it difficult to begin production as anticipated in 2014.” (Translated from the French.)

Water grabbing
A new report by GRAIN warns that the “current scramble for land in Africa” has important implications for access to the continent’s water sources:

“Those who have been buying up vast stretches of farmland in recent years, whether they are based in Addis Ababa, Dubai or London, understand that the access to water they gain, often included for free and without restriction, may well be worth more over the long-term, than the land deals themselves.
…
‘The value is not in the land,’ says Neil Crowder of UK-based Chayton Capital which has been acquiring farmland in Zambia. ‘The real value is in water.’
And companies like Chayton Capital think that Africa is the best place to find that water. The message repeated at farmland investor conferences around the globe is that water is abundant in Africa. It is said that Africa’s water resources are vastly under utilised, and ready to be harnessed for export oriented agriculture projects.
The reality is that a third of Africans already live in water-scarce environments and climate change is likely to increase these numbers significantly. Massive land deals could rob millions of people of their access to water and risk the depletion of the continent’s most precious fresh water sources.”

US soldiers in Africa
The Army Times reports that at least 3,000 American soldiers will do tours of duty in Africa next year as part of the US military’s “new readiness model”:

“Africa, in particular, has emerged as a greater priority for the U.S. government because terrorist groups there have become an increasing threat to U.S. and regional security.
Though U.S. soldiers have operated in Africa for decades, including more than 1,200 soldiers currently stationed at Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti, the region in many ways remains the Army’s last frontier.”

Corruption cover-up
The Sydney Morning Herald reports on a scandal that has engulfed Australia’s central bank as a result of bribery allegations involving some of its subsidiaries:

“[Note Printing Australia], which is fully owned and supervised by the Reserve Bank, and Securency, half-owned by the RBA, were also charged with allegedly bribing officials in Vietnam, Malaysia, Nepal and Indonesia in order to secure banknote supply contracts.
The companies make and print Australia’s banknotes and export them to more than 30 countries.
The scandal has embroiled the leadership of the RBA, with senior central bank officials receiving explicit evidence of bribery back in 2007 but choosing to handle the matter internally rather than go to police.”

Digging a deeper hole
Reuters reports that Indian authorities are investigating whether a Swiss-based arms company tried to avoid being blacklisted for corruption by attempting to bribe government officials:

“An Indian businessman was charged on Saturday with attempting to bribe government officials in connection with allegations that Swiss-based Rheinmetall Air Defence AG paid him $530,000 to use his influence to stop the company from being blacklisted.
…
India’s Defence Ministry has put in place strict guidelines for arms deals in an effort to crack down on bribery and corruption at a time when Asia’s third-largest economy is on a weapons-buying spree to modernise its military. India is the world’s largest arms buyer.”

Valuing nature
The UN Environment Program’s Achim Steiner writes that a so-called green economy will require changes to “our current economic thinking at a systemic level”:

“Why, for example, does the world pursue a paradigm of economic growth that rests upon eroding the very basis of earth’s life-support systems? Can wealth be redefined and reframed to include access to basic goods and services, including those provided by nature free of cost, such as clean air, a stable climate, and fresh water? Is it not time to give human development, environmental sustainability, and social equity an equal footing with GDP growth?”

Myth of apolitical human rights
STAND’s Sean Langberg blogs about the global human rights movement’s “four dominant schools of thought” as identified by the University of Buffalo’s Makau Mutua who puts certain multilateral institutions in the same category as a former Congolese dictator:

“Political Strategists or Instrumentalists are primarily individuals within government or institutions that exist to serve the interests of a state. Mutua takes exceptional issue with these advocates and believes they only employ a human rights narrative when it serves to better their cause. He cites Mobutu Sese Seko, NATO, and the World Bank as individuals or institutions that profess(ed) an allegiance to civil rights, but do/did so in rhetoric only. Mutua believes that instances of this disconnect are becoming more common as human rights movement continues to be ‘apolitical’ and ‘universal.’ ”

Victors’ justice
Trinity College’s Vijay Prashad criticizes NATO’s lack of transparency regarding its military campaign in Libya last year:

“The scandal here is that NATO, a military alliance, refuses any civilian oversight of its actions. It operated under a U.N. mandate and yet refuses to allow a U.N. evaluation of its actions. NATO, in other words, operates as a rogue military entity, outside the bounds of the prejudices of democratic society. The various human rights reports simply underlie the necessity of a formal and independent evaluation of NATO’s actions in Libya.”

The Defining Fight of Our Lives

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(The following Beyond Aid piece appeared in The Tyee last week with a different picture and a slightly altered title but is otherwise unchanged.) 

There is a saying where Vidalina Morales de Gámez comes from, that you can live without gold but you can’t live without a glass of water each day.

Where she comes from is El Salvador’s Cabañas region, which for much of the last decade has been the scene of a struggle between Vancouver-based Pacific Rim Mining Corporation and those who oppose the planned El Dorado gold project they say threatens already scarce water supplies.

The National Roundtable against Metallic Mining in El Salvador (La Mesa) member found herself in Vancouver this past weekend, six years into her involvement in the fight, standing on the southwest corner of Dunsmuir and Howe, the place her opponents call home, demanding that they stay out of hers.

“For us, it’s so difficult to come here,” she told The Tyee just after megaphoning her message in Spanish to a crowd that organizers pegged at a little under 200. “But they come to our land with such ease and do what they want. It’s unbelievable.”

Taking the fight to Pacific Rim’s turf, even on a Saturday when the offices were closed, was a bittersweet experience for the 44 year-old mother of five. It was a release, she said, but there was also fear.

“I felt nervous because they are watching those of us who are on the frontlines. So there is fear because of what’s happened in our country.”

Among those happenings are the unsolved murders of three anti-mining activists, alleged death threats against others and a multi-million-dollar lawsuit brought before a World Bank arbitration panel by Pacific Rim against the government of El Salvador for refusing to issue the required environmental permits. That legal battle entered a new phase last week.

The buck stops here
Morales’s battle was just one of many providing the inspiration for Shout Out Against Mining Injustice, a two-day Vancouver event hosted by the Council of Canadians “aimed at exposing the appalling environmental and human rights abuses of Canadian mining companies.”

The list of speakers included representatives of mining-affected communities from Chile to Northern Ontario, as well as environmental and human rights activists, a member of parliament and a union boss.

As the name suggests, Shout Out Against Mining Injustice was not about finding a middle ground on which to meet mining companies. Instead, the focus was on building international solidarity among communities affected by Canadian mining projects, as well as with a wider set of environmental and human rights allies.

The day before the Pacific Rim protest, the event kicked off with a demonstration led by members of the Tsilhqot’in Nation outside the offices of Taseko Mines Limited, where the company hoping to establish the New Prosperity mine in B.C.’s Cariboo-Chilcotin region was holding its annual general meeting.

In addition to such direct action, there was much discussion of injustices ranging from alleged assassinations to the destruction of sacred indigenous sites. A recurring theme in such accounts, apart from the depiction of Canadian companies as ignoring the rights of poor and indigenous populations, was the sense — as with both El Dorado and New Prosperity — that even when a government initially says no to a project, the local population cannot rest easy.

Given that three-quarters of the world’s mining companies have their headquarters in Canada, Maude Barlow, the national chairperson of the Council of Canadians, called the struggle for responsible mining “the defining fight of our lives.” And a number of panelists spoke of the ways, through investments and pensions, that average Canadians contribute to and benefit from mining profits.

“Your resources fund these companies, so you are co-responsible for legal action against them,” said Silvia Quilumbango, president of the Ecuadorean environmental group DECOIN, which recently helped bring an unsuccessful lawsuit in an Ontario court against the Toronto Stock Exchange for complicity in alleged human rights abuses by the now-delisted Copper Mesa Mining Corporation.

Effecting change
But of course, courts can only dispense justice as defined by the laws they are charged with upholding. And these laws, according to Sack Goldblatt Mitchell LLP’s Steven Shrybman, are increasingly stacked in favour of corporations.

The main culprit, as he sees it, is the vast and growing global architecture of “pernicious” international trade agreements that have emphasized corporate rights over responsibilities during the past two decades. A “patchwork” of about 3,000 such deals designed to “circumvent the domestic judicial process” has essentially created a de facto multilateral agreement on investment, despite that proposed pact’s apparent defeat back in 1998.

According to Shrybman, there are three potential pressure points for grassroots efforts to push for greater corporate accountability in the extractive sector: the companies, the federal government and the courts.

He advised “monkey-wrenching any dispute that you can,” citing his fellow panelists’ calls for a public campaign to shame Pacific Rim into dropping its lawsuit against the government of El Salvador.

But as a lawyer, he favours a “more systemic approach” than simply going after individual companies. Because he believes that courts can be affected by “noise” from the population, he thinks average Canadians can help “re-energize” domestic courts to take on corporate abuses committed abroad. He pointed to last week’s filing of a lawsuit by a group of Ecuadorans against Chevron in an Ontario court as a positive sign, even though neither plaintiff nor defendant is actually Canadian.

As for the government, Shrybman argued the ideal course of action would be for it to repudiate international trade agreements. But failing that, he sees Burnaby-New Westminster MP Peter Julian’s proposed bill C-323 as a step towards redressing “the grotesque imbalance between the rights of corporations and the rights of the state.”

Culture shift
Julian was also in attendance at the conference to discuss his bill, which is modeled on the U.S. Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA), an arcane 18th century law that has been resurrected in recent years by lawyers trying to hold corporations to financial account for their actions in other countries.

But Julian knows he is swimming against the tide with his proposal. With the conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court set to re-hear arguments in a lawsuit brought by Nigerian plaintiffs against oil giant Shell, the ATCA itself could soon lose its new-found potential as a tool for punishing overseas corporate wrongdoing.

More immediately relevant to the Canadian context is the current make-up of parliament. Julian said he was “vilified” by Conservatives for his decision to attend Shout Out Against Mining Injustice. Indeed, in the House of Commons on Friday, Fort McMurray-Athabasca MP Brian Jean said Julian “should be ashamed of himself…Attacking the natural resources sector, he is attending a Council of Canadians conference that actually opposes the mining industry and Canadian companies around the world. The member for Burnaby-New Westminster is spending his weekend attacking trade and our resource sector.”

As a result of the prevailing political climate, Julian said he is not planning to push ahead with his bill “in the next few months,” as he sees little prospect of passing it at present. Nevertheless, he ended his speech with a short, big promise: “We will achieve mining justice in Canada.”

For that justice to extend to her tiny country, Morales believes Canadians may need to change more than their laws.

“In El Salvador, we don’t have the luxury of just going to the corner store or mall to buy what we need. We have to produce it,” she said, looking out a window onto Vancouver’s industrial waterfront, as though she needed a reminder of Canada’s fixation on economic growth. “I think that people here often don’t realize that or open their minds to seeing the world in a different way.”

Latest Developments, June 7

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Mining fears
Accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers has published its annual report on the state of the world’s top 40 mining companies, in which it expresses concern over “resource nationalism” despite record combined profits of $133 billion in 2011:

“Ownership of resources and mining industry fiscal regimes remain high on the agenda for many governments around the world. Nations are looking to take an increasing share of profits and resources through a range of measures. Ongoing discussions and debates, formal reviews of fiscal regimes, or recently enacted changes have been seen in countries such as Australia, Chile, Ghana, Peru, and South Africa.
…
Governments are under pressure from local communities and other key stakeholders, and as a result, the stability that previously existed in many nations is deteriorating. High commodity prices have increased the industry’s visibility, triggering stakeholders to seek a bigger piece of the pie.”

Sales assistants
Embassy Magazine reports that the Canadian government is actively helping domestic arms manufacturers find buyers abroad:

“In the last few years, the Canadian Commercial Corporation, a Crown corporation, has helped Canadian firms sell everything from military hardware and weapons to wiretapping technology, forensics for ballistics, surveillance, document detection, sensor systems, bulletproof vests and helmets, training, and other services.
They are partnering with government ministers to get the job done. It’s called ‘co-operative marketing,’ according to CCC president Marc Whittingham.
The way it works is that firms tell the organization which markets they’re interested in, and when corporation representatives or a minister is travelling, they are able to ‘further that pursuit,’ he said.”

Banking rules
The New York Times reports that a hearing into JPMorgan Chase’s “multibillion-dollar trading loss” has led to more talk of the need to impose stricter limits on the activities of US banks:

“Several Democrats have seized on the news of the bank’s loss, saying the case underscores a need to enforce a strict Volcker Rule.
The rule, named for Paul A. Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, would ban banks from trading with their own money, a practice known as proprietary trading. Support for the new regulations gained momentum after JPMorgan’s loss disclosure last month.
But the scope of the rule, which regulators plan to complete in the coming months, is unclear. For one, it allows banks to use hedges to offset risk. Regulators have yet to decide how broad to make that hedging exemption, prompting some Democrats to push for clarity.”

Oil troubles
Business Daily reports that the recent discovery of oil in Kenya by UK-based Tullow Oil has touched off tensions in local communities:

“The oil find in Turkana is touching on land ownership and compensation and last week a meeting to discuss the discovery aborted as locals and legislators demanded more involvement in the decisions on the black gold resource.
‘Engagement with the locals has not been smooth. We had planned a forum for Wednesday on the oil discovery but it has aborted on account of consensus. MPs from the two counties and those in relevant committees of Parliament have said they were not consulted,’ said [Energy Ministry Permanent Secretary Patrick] Nyoike.”

Hip hop wars
Columbia University’s Hishaam Aidi writes on the significance of the growing debate over hip hop in Europe:

“European government officials are increasingly worried about the influence that Muslim rap artists wield over youth, and are scrutinising hip hop practices in the immigrant neighbourhoods, trying to decide which Muslim hip hop artists to promote and which to push aside.
…
The debate over hip hop, Europe’s dominant youth culture, stands in for a much larger debate about race, immigration and national identity. With many of the biggest stars being Muslim, the disputes over which Muslim hip hop artists are ‘moderate’ or ‘radical’ are also disagreements over what kind of Islam to allow into the public space.”

Burma caution
Burma partnership’s Khin Ohmar argues that the international community needs to put the brakes on the sudden race to invest in her country:

“There are no such things as environmental impact or social impact assessments. There is no participation from any group that represents people’s interests in the decision-making process. Rule of law is extremely weak, with a subordinate and ineffective judiciary, arbitrary arrests, widespread corruption and a culture of impunity.
Burma is quite simply not ready. Investment, particularly in the country’s unstable ethnic areas, serves to exacerbate human rights abuses and causes major environmental and social damage. As long as the military has the biggest say in the development of Burma, the status quo won’t really change. Foreign investors should wait until the nation is reconciled before proceeding with the unabated enthusiasm currently on display.”

Big money
UC Berkeley’s Robert Reich looks at the impacts the US Supreme Court’s “grotesque 2010 Citizens United vs Federal Election Commission decision” is having on the country’s presidential election campaign:

“According to the reliable inside-Washington source Politico, the Koch brothers’ network alone will be spending $400m over the next six months trying to defeat Obama, which is more than Senator John McCain spent on his entire 2008 campaign.
Big corporations and Wall Street are also secretly funneling big bucks into front groups like the US Chamber of Commerce that will use the money to air anti-Obama ads, while keeping secret the identities of these firms.”

Fragile union
The Financial Times’ Martin Wolf writes on the inherent difficulty of maintaining an economic union without corresponding political cohesion:

“Given such uncertainty, panic is, alas, rational. A fiat currency backed by heterogeneous sovereigns is irremediably fragile.
Before now, I had never really understood how the 1930s could happen. Now I do. All one needs are fragile economies, a rigid monetary regime, intense debate over what must be done, widespread belief that suffering is good, myopic politicians, an inability to co-operate and failure to stay ahead of events.”

Latest Developments, June 6

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Asymmetric agreement
Inter Press Service reports that not everyone thinks Central America has done well for itself in the recently negotiated free trade agreement with the European Union:

“ ‘Central America obtained meagre access quotas for agricultural products such as sugar, textiles, beef and rice,’ whereas the EU ‘gained full opening of Central American markets for a wide range of key agricultural and industrial goods, such as dairy products, vehicles, medicines and machinery,’ [the Mesoamerican Initiative on Trade, Integration and Sustainable Development (CID)] says in a communiqué.
Moreover, on intellectual property, CID questions the major concessions granted to the EU in terms of protected geographical designations, patents and copyright: in the area of services, the bloc was granted complete access in the fields of finance, transport and energy, among others.
Meanwhile, ‘Central America has yielded ground in terms of workers’ rights and environmental protection compared with other treaties,’ since ‘the agreement with the EU does not provide for penalties for those who infringe these rights for the sake of commercial interests,’ says CID.”

Genetically modified lawsuit
Agence France-Presse reports on the suit brought by 5 million Brazilian farmers against US agribusiness giant Monsanto over crop royalties:

“ ‘Monsanto gets paid when it sell the seeds. The law gives producers the right to multiply the seeds they buy and nowhere in the world is there a requirement to pay (again). Producers are in effect paying a private tax on production,’ said lawyer Jane Berwanger.
In April, a judge in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, Giovanni Conti, ruled in favor of the producers and ordered Monsanto to return royalties paid since 2004 or a minimum of $2 billion.
Monsanto appealed and a federal court is to rule on the case by 2014.
In the meantime, the US company said it was still being paid crop royalties.”

Democracy, Walmart-style
The Associated Press reports that despite allegations of bribery in Mexico and “unprecedented dissent against key executives,” all of Walmart’s board members were re-elected:

“With descendants of Walmart’s founder owning about 50 percent of Walmart’s shares, activist shareholders had little chance of voting out the board members. But the numbers, particularly when excluding the Walton family and other insiders, show a more staggering loss of confidence.
…
The vote came after a story by The New York Times published in April said the world’s largest retailer allegedly failed to notify law enforcement after finding evidence that officials authorized millions of dollars in bribes in Mexico to get speedier building permits and other favors. [CEO Mike] Duke was head of Walmart’s international business at the time of the probe in 2005, and [Lee] Scott was CEO. It’s not clear what board members like Walton knew.”

Drone warning
The Guardian reports that a former top CIA official has warned that America’s  indiscriminate drone policy is dangerous to the US as well as innocent bystanders:

“ ‘We have gone a long way down the road of creating a situation where we are creating more enemies than we are removing from the battlefield. We are already there with regards to Pakistan and Afghanistan,’ [Robert Grenier, who headed the CIA’s counter-terrorism center from 2004 to 2006] said.
…
‘I am very concerned about the creation of a larger terrorist safe haven in Yemen,’ Grenier said.”

War on Mexicans
SF Weekly’s Michael Lacey writes about the potential consequences of the US Supreme Court’s expected ruling in favour of Arizona’s controversial Senate Bill 1070, which “forces all police officers to ascertain immigration status whenever a cop interacts with a brown person”:

“Like the pre-Civil War era of free and slave states, America is about to divide along color lines.
Six states already have a version of Arizona’s bill and are awaiting the ruling for implementation. In all, 16 states filed amicus briefs urging the Supreme Court to support S.B. 1070.
Where once we depended upon the federal government to protect minorities from firehoses and segregated schoolhouses named Booker T. Washington or George Washington Carver, this month the Supreme Court is poised to tell us how far local cops can go to detain brown people.”

Transparent motives
Swiss National Councillor Isabelle Chevalley asks why Australian mining companies go to Africa when their continent still has large uranium reserves:

“The director of Australian mining company Paladin Energy answered, saying: ‘Australians and Canadians have become too aware of uranium mining’s problems. Now we have to go to Africa.’ At least the answer is clear.
Let’s open our eyes and demand transparency on the origin of the uranium we use in our power plants!” (Translated from the French.)

A little respect
Kwani? founding editor Binyavanga Wainaina takes issue with the West’s continued condescension towards Africa:

“If your spouse has arrived in Kenya and does not have a job, soon he or she will be fully networked and earning lots of pounds/euros/dollars, making sure the babies of Africa are safe, making sure the animals of Africa are kept safely away from Africans, making sure the African woman is kept well-shielded from the African man, making sure the genitals of Africa are swabbed, rubbered and raised into a place called awareness. Because you are a good person, who believes in multiculturalism, and that politicians are evil.”

CSR substance and spin
Oxfam’s Erinch Sahan writes on the difficulty of separating fact from fiction when virtually every large company claims to treat corporate social responsibility as a “core” concern:

“Frustrated that I can’t get beyond the online PR spin, I’ve taken to asking them questions like ‘when push-comes-to-shove, and it’s costly to be responsible, who wins the fight, your buying manager or your corporate responsibility team?’ The answer, unfortunately, is almost always ‘buying’.
…
The side of the business that is concerned with product quality is usually the first side to buy into the business case to act responsibly. This is because long-term supplier relationships are good for quality and usually good for development. But the performance of the buyers, who hold real sway in these companies, is measured on profit margin, so they need to get the lowest price and usually drive who the company does business with.”