junk and crap, amen

Every body's favorite thieving, Canadian citizenship renouncing, power hungry, Machiavellian royal courtesan Baron Black of Crossharbour was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison yesterday after being found guilty of 3 counts of fraud and one of obstruction of justice earlier this year.

Proving once again; piss off the shareholders and face serious consequences, but kill innocent colored people in distant lands and have a nice day. Case in point: The Bhopal disaster in India in 1984, where a Union Carbide plant released 40 tons of methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas, killing between 2500 and 5000 people. The fate of then Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson? Well...

Beginning in 1991, the local authorities from Bhopal charged Warren Anderson, who had retired in 1986, with manslaughter, a crime that carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. Anderson has so far avoided an international arrest warrant and a US court summons. He was declared a fugitive from justice by the Chief Judicial Magistrate of Bhopal on February 1, 1992 for failing to appear at the court hearings in a culpable homicide case in which he was named the chief defendant. Orders were passed to the Government of India to press for an extradition from the United States, with whom India had an extradition treaty in place. He went missing for several years, until he was discovered by Greenpeace “living a life of luxury in the Hamptons”. The Bhopal Medical Appeal believe that “neither the American nor the Indian government seem interested in disturbing him with an extradition”. Some allege that the Indian government has hesitated to put forth a strong case of extradition to the United States, fearing backlash from foreign investors who have become more important players in the Indian economy following liberalization. A seemingly apathetic attitude from the US government, which has failed to pursue the case, has also led to strong protests in the past, most notably by Greenpeace. A plea by India's Central Bureau of Investigation to dilute the charges from culpable homicide to criminal negligence has since been dismissed by the Indian courts.

Labels: corporations, corruption, history

I recently ran across this great clip from On The Map with Avi Lewis. It's an interview between CBC Journalist Avi Lewis and the ninja master of obfuscation, John Bolton, famous UN hater and (curiously) former US ambassador to same. The subject is the new Plunder Iraqi Oil Legislation. Or new Iraqi Oil Law, however you want to put it.

Lewis opens with a "...word from [Bolton's] sponsor:" cue Donald Rumsfeld, 2005

...that you give credence to those who suggest that we're there for the oil or that we're there to occupy them in perpetuity.

Bolton repeats over and over that "frankly I don't care what happens to Iraq politically", and in reference to other developing nations having local employment agreements with multinationals so why not in Iraq now he laughingly says "Because those are highly inefficient requirements for the oil companies."

Labels: corporations, Iraq, Oil, War of Terror

Contained within a report from the CBC about high cell phone rates in Canada is this information:

According to the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association, a typical American uses about 800 voice minutes a month, double that of a typical Canadian. In 2006, the government-mandated Telecommunications Policy Review Panel found this is because of "a persistent and growing gap between the rates between the two countries."

If we look at the average cost of 1 year of service in both countries, about $570 for Canadians and $635 for the US (both in USD) , and factor in that we talk about half as much, we're paying almost twice as much.

And that's only comparing Canada with the US. When we go to Europe things get crazy.

What about oh, I don't know...say, Denmark? In 2006, the average monthly price was $6.10. Six bucks a month! About $73 USD a year. And with 95% saturation, the Danes probably aren't holding back on the airtime (although I couldn't find any data on this). I'm going to assume that Danes are talking lots more than Canadians, and extrapolate that we're paying at least 10 times more on cell phone fees than Denmark.

I hate Telecoms.

Labels: Bell, corporations, telecommunications

Man, I really like bananas. They're yummy, nutritious, convenient and a sexy yellow. They go great with peanut butter and chocolate, match my blog's color scheme, and there's no plastic packaging to deal with. Just a great food all around. But back in the spring the lovely banana and I parted ways when Chiquita admitted to hiring paramilitaries in Colombia to keep the local population properly in line with it's feudal operations.

In court documents filed Wednesday, federal prosecutors said the Cincinnati-based company and several unnamed high-ranking corporate officers paid about $1.7 million between 1997 and 2004 to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known as AUC for its Spanish initials.

The AUC has been responsible for some of the worst massacres in Colombia’s civil conflict and for a sizable percentage of the country’s cocaine exports. The U.S. government designated the right-wing militia a terrorist organization in September 2001.

Their punishment? A $25 million fine, irrationally payable to the US Government. Not the Colombian victims, but into the gargantuan red, white and blue money pit.

By the way, Chiquita used to be known as The United Fruit Company, a textbook study of corporate power, racism, exploitation and violence.

So unless I come across a non Chiquita branded fruit of the Musa, yes I have no bananas.

But yesterday a lawsuit was brought against Chiquita on behalf of victims of the paramilitaries. From Democracy Now:

The American fruit giant Chiquita has been hit with a new lawsuit on behalf of victims of Colombian paramilitaries. Earlier this year Chiquita admitted to paying one point seven million dollars to a right-wing Colombian paramilitary group on the U.S. terrorist watch list. On Wednesday, nearly four hundred Colombian plaintiffs filed a civil suit seeking almost eight billion dollars in damages. Plaintiff attorney Jonathan Reiter said Chiquita should be held accountable for the killings it helped fund.

Chiquita says it fell victim to an extortion attempt and made the payments only to protect its employees. But a private investigator hired by the plaintiffs disputed Chiquita’s denials. The investigator, William Acosta, says his findings leave no doubt over Chiquita’s complicity.

Chiquita is already facing another lawsuit from relatives of one-hundred forty-four people killed by Colombian paramilitaries. The company has paid a twenty-five million dollar fine to the U.S. government but none of the money has gone to the victims’ families.

So here we have a corporation who's operations in Colombia rely on co-operation with paramilitary groups to protect their assets. Coincidentally, Colombia is at the center of the US' s misnamed war on drugs, with billions flowing into that country to supposedly combat cocaine production. A cursory glance at the correlation between the rising cost of the drug war and the rising use of cocaine in the US indicates the futility of the program (unless, of course, the purpose isn't to stop the drug trade but to control it, then it makes morbid sense).

Do you think that maybe one of the main reasons that there are paramilitaries in the first place is because of the war on drugs?

The real results of the drug war and corporate agribusiness are the marginalization and exploitation of the local populations, pitting them against each other using manufactured and artificial crises as part of a program of control and domination.

Labels: Chiquita, Colombia, corporations, war on drugs

Just an ugly little story within a story, concerning the system. Contained within a kind of sketchy report in the Financial Post concerning a Bell Mobility executive suddenly resigning, is this:

A source familiar with the departing executive, however, said he was working on a discount cellphone brand call Smartco, which was to be aimed at seniors.

BCE had spent millions and had a staff of 60 working on the brand, which even had television commercials filmed, before George Cope came on board as BCE’s chief operating officer in 2006. Mr. Cope scuttled the brand in favour of maintaining Bell’s “disciplined pricing” approach, the source said.

What you're saying, George Cope, is that your current pricing structure is just too damn profitable to change. So fucking profitable that you can throw away "millions" and fire 60 employees. Such a cash cow that you can disregard the obvious humanity of giving seniors cheaper ways of communicating.

I mean, they get discounts on a goddam bus pass..

Are you also the same twerpy little shit who came up with the pay as you go unlimited nights & weekends ripoff? Normally, the per minute rate is 30 cents a minute for the first two minutes and 5 cents a minute thereafter, for each call. Once you activate the night & weekends thievery, your regular per minute rate is suddenly raised to 35 cents. For every minute.

Was that your brilliance manifesting itself?

Of course, maybe I've got this all wrong. Maybe you're looking out for the best interests of the consumer. You know, the people upon which your entire existence is dependent. But hey, if the rest of us stop using Bell (which thousands will do as soon as Canada implements legislation allowing people to switch carriers and keep their numbers), at least that would give you lots of time to dream up clever new ways of saying "price gouging".

Labels: Bell, corporations, seniors

Labels: Bell, corporations, telecommunications