It was only a few years ago that a group of offshore outsourcing companies based in India seemed poised to take over a large portion of the U.S. economy. Business propagandists insisted that work ranging from low-level data input to skilled professional work such as financial analysis could be done faster and much cheaper by workers hunched over computer terminals in cities such as Bangalore. The New York Times once described one of these offshoring companies as “a maquiladora of the mind.”

Among the most aggressive of the Indian firms was Satyam Computer Services Ltd., which signed up blue-chip clients such as Ford Motor, Merrill Lynch, Texas Instruments and Yahoo. In a 2004 report I wrote for the U.S. high-tech workers organization WashTech, I found that Satyam was also among the offshoring companies that were doing work for state government agencies. It was hired, for example, as a subcontractor by the U.S. company Healthaxis to develop a system for handling applications for medical insurance services provided by the Washington State Health Care Authority. As it turned out, Healthaxis’s contract was terminated, allegedly because of late delivery and poor quality in the work done by Satyam.

The Washington State fiasco may have been an early omen of things to come. Satyam has just admitted that for years it cooked its books and engaged in widespread financial wrongdoing. The revelation came in a letter sent to the company’s board of directors by Satyam founder and chairman B. Ramalinga Raju (photo), who simultaneously tendered his resignation.

Raju wrote that what started as “a marginal gap between actual operating profit and the one reflected in the books” eventually “attained unmanageable proportions” as the company grew. The fictitious cash balance grew to more than US$1 billion. “It was like riding a tiger,” Raju colorfully wrote, “not knowing how to get off without being eaten.”

While admitting that he engaged in very creative accounting, Raju insisted he did not personally benefit from the fraud, denying for instance that he had sold any of his shares in the company. I guess it is meant to be some consolation that among his sins Raju is not guilty of insider trading.

Apart from Raju, the party most on the hot seat is the company’s auditor, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, whose Indian unit gave Satyam’s financial reports a clean bill of health. The Satyam scandal is being called India’s Enron. It should probably also be called India’s Arthur Andersen as this seems to be another case in which an auditor was either oblivious to widespread accounting misconduct by one of its clients or complicit in it.

Some soul-searching is probably also in order for the many large U.S. corporations that have not hesitated to take jobs away from American workers and ship the work off to Indian companies such as Satyam. The revelation that much of the work has been going to a crooked company is all the more galling.

http://dirtdiggersdigest.org/archives/297

Dirt Diggers Digest is written by Philip Mattera, director of the Corporate Research Project, an affiliate of Good Jobs First.

More than 800 representatives from organizations throughout the Americas made their way to the northern city of La Esperanza, Honduras to take a strong stand against the militarization of their nations and communities. Following three days of workshops, the participants read their final declaration in front of the gates of the U.S. Army Base at Palmerola, Honduras, just hours from the conference site. The first demand on the list was to close down this and all U.S. military bases in Latin America and the Caribbean. By the end of the demonstration, the walls of the base sported hundreds of spray-painted messages and demands that contrasted sharply with their prison-like austerity.

Palmerola, formally called the Soto Cano Air Base, brought back some very bad memories among the hundreds of Central American participants. The U.S. government installed the base in 1981 and used it to launch the illegal contra operations against the Nicaraguan government. The base was also used to airlift support to counterinsurgency operations in Guatemala and El Salvador and train U.S. forces in counterinsurgency techniques during the dirty wars that left over 100,000 dead, and is now used as a base for the U.S.-sponsored "war on drugs."

The demilitarization conference also called for an immediate halt to the recently launched "Merida Initiative," the Bush administration's new Trojan horse for remilitarization of the region. The resolution asserts that the measure "expands U.S. military intervention and contributes to the militarization of our countries" and representatives from the Central American nations and Mexico included in the military aid package committed to a process of monitoring the funds and defeating further appropriations.

The Merida Initiative was announced by President Bush as a "counter-narcotics, counter-terrorism, and border security" cooperation initiative in October 2007. The model extends the Bush administration's infamous national security strategy of 2002 to impose it as the U.S.-led security model for the hemisphere. The approach relies on huge defense contracts to U.S. corporations, and military and police deployment to deal with issues ranging from drug trafficking to illegal immigration and seeks to extend U.S. military hegemony in foreign lands. It has been proven in Colombia and other areas where it has been applied to have the effect of increasing violence, failing to decrease drug flows, and leading to extensive human rights violations.

Among the 14 resolutions of the conference, three others reject aspects of the Initiative: the repeal of anti-terrorist laws that criminalize social protest and are a direct result of U.S. pressure to impose the disastrous Bush counter-terrorism paradigm; the demand to replace the militarized "war on drugs" model with measures of citizen participation, community heath, etc.; and the demand for full respect for the rights of migrants.

Although on the surface, Latin America is experiencing a period of relative calm after the brutality of the military dictatorships and the dirty wars, grassroots movement leaders from all over the continent described a context of increasing aggression. The indigenous and farm organizations that occupy territories coveted by transnational corporations have become targets of forced displacement. Social movements that protest privatization and free trade agreements have been dubbed terrorists and attacked and imprisoned under new anti-terrorist laws that are a poor legal facade for outright repression. The use of the military troops in counter-narcotic activities has become commonplace and often hides other agendas of the powerful. Police forces have come to deal with youth as if being young itself were a crime.

In viewing the threats of militarization in their societies, participants use a broader definition than just the presence of army bases and troops. "Militarism," states the Campaign for Demilitarization of the Americas, is " the daily presence of the military logic in our society, in our economic forms, in our social links, and in the logic of gender domination and the supposed natural superiority of men over women." Using this concept, the conference covered the profound need to change the educational system and social norms, to work from within communities, as well as making demands for changes in the external conditions that affect them.

Despite days of testimonies that sometimes included tears and anger, delegates to the conference expressed hope above all else. Ecuador's new constitution and decision to kick out the U.S. army base at Manta was cited as proof of progress.

Both concrete plans for action and an encouraging consensus emerged: the breadth of the challenge can be overwhelming but the dream of lasting peace provides an irresistible light at the end of the tunnel.

The declaration concludes on this note: "... through these campaigns and actions on the grassroots level, organized within each nation and throughout the continent, we can reach a day not long from now when we fulfill the dream of living free of violence, exclusion, and war."

Originally posted on October 17, 2008. Read the full declaration:
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5605

Why would "criminals" set fire to millions worth in mine equipment?

How was it that these "intruders" had an estimated 3,000 - 4,000 people backing them up?

In what appears to be a spontaneous civilian movement against Barrick Gold, the world's largest gold miner, thousands of people invaded Barrick`s North Mara Gold Mine this week in Tarime District and destroyed equipment worth $15 million. Locals say that the uprising was sparked by the killing of a local, identified as Mang'weina Mwita Mang'weina.  According to a Barrick Public Relations officer (as reported by the Tanzanian Guardian newspaper), "the intruders stoned the security personnel relentlessly until they overpowered them. The guards abandoned their posts and retreated to safety."

While Barrick implies that "high levels of crime" are the cause of this recent outbreak, recent reports suggest a different picture.

Allan Cedillo Lissner, a photojournalist who recently documented mine life near the North Mara mine, explains:

Evans Rubara, an investigative journalist from Tanzania, blames this action on angry locals from the North Mara area who are opposed to Barrick's presence there. "This comes one week after Barrick threatened to leave the country based on claims that they weren't making profit," comments Evans after explaining that Barrick does not report profit to avoid taxes in the country. "This is a sign to both the government of Tanzania and the International community (especially Canada) that poor and marginalized people also get tired of oppression, and that they would like Barrick to leave."

Only one week prior, Barrick's African Region Vice President, Gareth Taylor threatened to leave Tanzania due to high operating costs, claiming that the company did not make profits there. Barrick's Toronto office quickly denied this report, stating that "the company will work with the government to ensure the country's legislation remains 'competitive with other jurisdictions so that Tanzanians can continue to benefit from mining.'"

Interestingly, Taylors threat came shortly after he attended a workshop to launch the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) in Dar es Salaam.

One thing is clear, though; these reports of hundreds, backed by thousands, of villagers attacking mine infrastructure reflects a resentment that goes beyond mere criminal action. And this surge in violence should be examined in the context of the on-going exploitation and repressive environment surrounding the mine.

Spoiler Alert!

Back in the good old days of the Cold War, everybody’s favorite secret agent, James Bond, fought villains like Dr. No, an evil scientist out to sabotage U.S. missile tests, and Mr. Big, a Soviet agent using pirate treasure to finance espionage in America. But as Bond’s friend Mathis tells him in Quantum of Solace, released this month, “When one is young, it’s easy to tell the difference between right and wrong. As one gets older, the villains and heroes get all mixed up.”

The reference is to a shady new Bond villain, agent of the Quantum organization – one Dominic Greene. In public, Greene is a leading environmentalist whose organization, Greene Planet, buys up large tracts of land for ecological preserves. But behind the scenes, Greene has another agenda. As he says to his co-conspirators, “This is the most valuable resource in the world and we need to control as much of it as we can.”

The film makes a number of plays on the assumption that the resource in question is oil – but oil is so…twentieth century.

By the time Bond has pursued Greene from Italy to Haiti, from Haiti to Austria, and crash-landed his plane in a sinkhole in the high, barren desert of Bolivia, we make the discovery that this vital resource is – surprise! – water.

Colluding with Greene is a cast of evil characters taken straight from the history books. We have General Medrano, the ex-dictator of Bolivia, to whom Greene says, “You want your country back? My organization can give it to you.” We have the U.S. Ambassador, myopically sticking to the familiar program: “Okay, we do nothing to stop a coup, and you give us a lease to any oil you find.” And we have the British foreign office, continually wrangling with M15, Bond’s spy agency. When Bond’s boss, M, tells him that Greene is not an environmentalist but a villain, the Foreign Minister says, “If we refused to do business with villains, we’d have almost no one to trade with.”  Ain’t it the truth.

The fact that Quantum of Solace makes water the villain’s object of greed, replacing oil, gold, diamonds, and mutually assured destruction, is telling of the point we’ve reached. More telling still is the fact that our villain’s cover has him acting as an environmentalist, the ultimate corporate greenwasher. The fact that the action winds up in Bolivia – the country where, in real life, both Bechtel and Suez have tried and failed to take control of community water resources during and shortly after the reign of former-dictator-turned-neoliberal President Hugo Banzer – brings the plot frighteningly close to reality. The privatization of water in Bolivia back in 2000, and the massive popular response that turned out rural water stewards and urban ratepayers to riot for months until the multinational transgressor was ousted, was the spark that set social movements worldwide on red alert. Since then, numerous private water companies have been refused contracts on the grounds that popular movements, and, increasingly, governments, recognize the need to treat water as a human right and a public good – not a commodity.

If only the water movement had a few organizers with the physique, the gadgets, and the, er, style of Bond.

While we have many great documentaries telling the story of the global water wars, including this year’s Flow and Blue Gold, one is forced to wonder if 007 does a greater service to the water movement than even our most highly talented documentarians. After all, who better than Hollywood to characterize the greenwashing corporate water profiteers as straight up evil, sans the need to justify the hyperbole?

Matieu Amalric, the actor who played Dominic Greene, wanted to wear make-up for the role, but director Marc Forster “wanted Greene not to look grotesque, but to symbolize the hidden evils in society.” Similarly, the original screenplay had Greene having some “hidden power.” But in the final cut, the director seems to have decided that corporate power was power enough.

One wonders if Dominic Greene – had he not died drinking motor oil to quench his thirst in the Bolivian desert – might give the keynote speech at the upcoming World Water Forum in Istanbul (WWF). After all, the World Water Council (WWC) that puts on the forum is presided over by Loïc Fauchon, a former executive at one of the French subsidiaries of Suez, the world’s largest private water corporation.

As we learn from the WWF website, “One of the benefits of joining the WWC is the Council's ability to influence decisions related to world water management that affect organizations, business, and communities.” Perhaps their secret meetings will also be attended by executives of the Worldwide Fund for Nature, whose recent partnership with Coca-Cola aims to help the global soft-drink giant become “the most efficient company in the world in terms of water use,” with “every drop of water it uses…returned to the earth or compensated for through conservation and recycling programs.” And, with this blending of fact and fiction, it would hardly be surprising to find Greene’s signature on the CEO Water Mandate, which has companies with such devastating environmental track records as Dow Chemical, Shell Oil, Unilever, and Nestlé pledging to “help address the water challenge faced by the world today.”

When M, Bond’s overweening boss at M15, finds out about Quantum, she demands, “What the hell is this organization, Bond? How can they be everywhere and we know nothing about them?”

Well, my darling M, the answer is simple: like transnational corporations, and like the large NGO’s that work with the private sector to reform its practices and green its reputation, and like the International Finance Institutions whose interests are increasingly endangering the United Nations’ mandate to defend and protect human rights, they can be everywhere because their particular form of villainy works best when hidden in plain sight.

Thankfully, the world’s water is safe, because, behind the scenes, secret agent 007 is on the job.

Well, not true. But countless people and organizations worldwide, from the Red Vida to the African Water Network, from the People’s Health Movement to the Reclaiming Public Water Network, are vigilant in the defense of the human right to water. With the recent placement of water warrior Father Miguel D’Escoto, a Nicaraguan liberation theologian, in the presidential seat at the UN General Assembly, and his selection of Maude Barlow as a senior advisor on water, we are witnessing a tidal change in the highest levels of international cooperation.

They may not have the brutal take-no-prisoners attitude or the classy cocktail swagger of Mister Bond, but they represent a lot of people, and they’re on the right side.

So, corporate evil-doers, and your greenwashing NGO henchmen, beware. The forces of good are on the loose.

Originally posted at Food & Water Watch:

http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/blog/archive/2008/11/20/james-bond-takes-on-the-corporate-water-privateers/view

Originally posted Tuesday, October 14. 2008 -- It is an extraordinary time. On Friday, the Washington Post ran a front-page story titled, "The End of American Capitalism?" Today, the banner headline is, "U.S. Forces Nine Major Banks to Accept Partial Nationalization."

First, there should be some penalty for executives who led their companies -- and the global financial system -- to the brink of ruin. You shouldn't be rewarded for failure. And while reducing pay packages to seven digits may feel really nasty given Wall Street's culture of preposterous excess, in the real world, a couple million bucks is still a lot of money to make in a year.

Second, if the public is going to subsidize Wall Street to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, the point is to keep the financial system going -- not to keep Wall Street going the way it was. Funneling public funds for exorbitant executive compensation would be a criminal appropriation of public funds.

Third, the Wall Street salary structure has helped set the standard for CEO pay across the economy, and helped establish a culture where executives consider outlandish pay packages the norm. This culture, in turn, has contributed to staggering wealth and income inequality, at great cost to the nation. We need, it might be said, an end to the culture of hyper-wealth.

Fourth, as Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research says, the bailout package must be, to some extent, "punitive." If the financial firms and their executives do not have to give something up for the bailout, then there's no disincentive to engage in unreasonably risky behavior in the future. This is what is meant by "moral hazard."

If Wall Street says the financial system is on the brink of collapse, and the government must step in with what may be the biggest taxpayer bailout in history, says Baker, then Wall Street leaders have to show they mean it. If they are not willing to cut their pay for a few years to a couple of million dollars an annum, how serious do they really think the problem is?

Finally, and most importantly, financial sector compensation systems need to be changed so they don't incentivize risky, short-term behavior.

There are two ways to think about how the financial sector let itself develop such a huge exposure to a transparently bubble housing market. One is that the financial wizards actually believed all the hype they were spreading. They believed new financial instruments eliminated risk, or spread it so effectively that downside risks were minimal; and they believed the idea that something had fundamentally changed in the housing market, and skyrocketing home prices would never return to earth.

Another way to think about it is: Wall Street players knew they were speculating in a bubble economy. But the riches to be made while the bubble was growing were extraordinary. No one could know for sure when the bubble would pop. And Wall Street bonuses are paid on a yearly basis. If your firm does well, and you did well for the firm, you get an extravagant bonus. This is not an extra few thousand dollars to buy fancy Christmas gifts. Wall Street bonuses can be 10 or 20 times base salary, and commonly represent as much as four fifths of employees' pay. In this context, it makes sense to take huge risks. The payoffs from benefiting from a bubble are dramatic, and there's no reward for staying out.

Both of these explanations may be true to some degree, but the compensation incentives explanation is almost certainly a significant part of the story.

Different ideas about how to limit executive pay would address the multiple rationales for compensation reforms to varying degrees.

A two-year cap on executive salaries would help achieve the first four objectives, but by itself wouldn't get to the crucial issue of incentives.

One idea in particular to be wary of is "say on pay" proposals, which would afford shareholders the right to a non-binding vote on CEO pay compensation packages. These proposals would go some way to address the disconnect between executive and shareholder interests, reducing the ability of top executives to rely on crony boards of directors and conflicted compensation consultants to implement outrageous pay packages. But while they might increase executive accountability to shareholders, they wouldn't direct executives away from market-driven short-term decision making. Shareholders tend to be forgiving of outlandish salaries so long as they are making money, too, and -- worse -- they actually tend to have more of a short-term mentality than the executives. So "say on pay" is not a good way to address the multiple executive compensation-related goals that should be met in the bailout legislation.

The ideal provisions on executive compensation would set tough limits on top pay, but would also insist on long-term changes in the bonus culture for executives and traders. Not only should bonuses be more modest, they should be linked to long-term, not year-long, performance. That would completely change the incentive to knowingly participate in a financial bubble (or, more generously, take on excessive risk), because you would know that the eventual popping of the bubble would wipe out your bonus.

Four days ago, forcing Wall Street to change its incentive structure seemed pie in the sky. Today, thanks to the public uproar, it seems eminently achievable -- if Members of Congress seize the opportunity.

http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/editorsblog/index.php?/archives/98-Getting-Wall-Street-Pay-Reform-Right.html

Robert Weissman is managing director of the Multinational Monitor.

Originally posted at Dirt Digger's Digest on September 23, 2008 -- A number of leading Democrats and Republicans expressed strong misgivings last Monday about the autocratic plan for bailing out Wall Street that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson wants to ram through Congress. It remains to be seen whether this is mere posturing or serious opposition.

Critics are focusing on vital issues such as cost and oversight, but a lot less attention is being paid to the mechanics of Paulson’s proposal – specifically, the question of who would carry out the federal government’s purchase of $700 billion in “troubled” securities from banks. As I noted in my post a week ago Sunday, the draft legislation circulated over the weekend includes a provision that seems to allow Treasury to contract out the process. Treasury then put out a fact sheet making it quite clear it intends to use private asset managers to manage and dispose of the assets it acquires, though the document does not specifically allude to the purchasing. Paulson himself referred to the use of “professional asset managers” during an appearance on one of the Sunday morning talk shows.

It amazes me that there is not more outrage over this aspect of the plan. Paulson seems to be leaving open the possibility that the same firms that are being bailed out could be hired to run the bailout. This would mean that institutions receiving a monumental giveaway of taxpayer money could turn around and earn yet more by acting as the government’s brokers. Aside from the unseemliness of this arrangement, this would be an egregious conflict of interest.

The alternative proposal floated by Senator Chris Dodd, which accepts Paulson’s language on contracting out, includes a section on conflict of interest. But rather than stating what the rules should be, the draft leaves it up to the Treasury Secretary to do so. There were reports last Monday night that Treasury would go along with the inclusion of a conflict-of-interest provision.

Paulson’s approach to the Big Bailout, particularly the insistence that there be no punitive measures for the banks, shows he is not the right party to oversee ethical issues. Paulson apparently can’t help himself. He still has the mindset of a man who spent more than 30 years working on Wall Street, at Goldman Sachs. He is a living example of the perils of the reverse revolving door: the appointment of a private-sector figure to a key policymaking position affecting his or her former industry.

The weak conflict-of-interest provisions Paulson is likely to impose would probably not address the inherent contradiction in having for-profit money managers running the bailout program. Even if Treasury chooses managers whose firms are not getting bailed out, there is still the danger that they will use their inside knowledge to benefit their non-governmental clients (and themselves) or will collude with buyers to the detriment of the public.

A Reuters story of last Monday reported that a leading contender for a federal money management role is Laurence Fink and his firm BlackRock, which was involved in managing the portfolio of Bear Stearns when that firm was sold to JPMorgan Chase as part of an earlier bailout. Last March, BlackRock, which is 49-percent owned by Merrill Lynch (now part of Bank of America), announced it was forming a venture to “acquire and restructure distressed residential mortgage loans.” Will Paulson see that as a conflict of interest – or more likely as a credential?

Letting financial firms that have profited from the mortgage crisis manage the bailout gives the impression that we are permanently in the grip of Big Money. To Paulson’s way of thinking, that’s not a problem, but it could make a bad plan much worse.

http://dirtdiggersdigest.org/archives/200

Dirt Diggers Digest is written by Philip Mattera, director of the Corporate Research Project, an affiliate of Good Jobs First.

As the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department careen from one financial meltdown to another, desperately trying to hold together the financial system -- and with it, the U.S. and global economy -- there are few voices denying that Wall Street has suffered from "excesses" over the past several years.

http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/editorsblog/

Robert Weissman is managing director of the Multinational Monitor.

When you go to the Securities and Exchange Commission website these days, the first thing you see is an animation that looks like something out of The Matrix films or the TV show Numb3rs. It seems the agency’s accountants and lawyers are trying to look cool as they move toward the creation of a new system for distributing public-company financial information on the web.

Recently SEC Chairman Christopher Cox (photo) unveiled Interactive Data Electronic Applications (IDEA, for short), the successor to the EDGAR system that corporate researchers have relied on since the mid-1990s for easy access to 10-Ks, proxy statements and the like. The big selling point of IDEA is tagging. Companies (and mutual funds) will be required to prepare their filings so that key pieces of information are electronically labeled—using a system called XBRL—and thus can be easily retrieved and compared to corresponding data from other companies. The first interactive filings are expected to be available through IDEA late this year. EDGAR will stick around indefinitely as an archive for pre-interactive filings.

“With IDEA,” the SEC press release gushes, “investors will be able to instantly collate information from thousands of companies and forms, and create reports and analysis on the fly, in any way they choose.”

I just finished watching the webcast of Cox’s press conference earlier this week and came away with mixed feelings about IDEA. In one respect, it will be great to be able to readily extract specific nuggets of information. My concern is the emphasis being placed on disclosure as simply a collection of pieces of data. This may serve the needs of financial analysts and investors, but as a corporate researcher, I find that some of the most valuable portions of SEC filings are narratives rather than numbers—for example, the descriptions of a company’s operations, its competitive position and its legal problems that appear in 10-Ks.

As Cox finally mentioned about an hour into the press conference, tagging can be applied to text as well as numbers. Yet I can’t help worry that the direction the SEC is going in will tend to reduce narratives to bite-size portions that serve to diminish the full scope of disclosure. It was not comforting to hear William Lutz, the outside academic who is advising the SEC on a complete overhaul of its entire disclosure system, suggest during the press conference that the forms (10-K, 10-Q, etc.) companies are currently required to file will be phased out. Perhaps it was unintentional, but the impression Lutz and Cox gave is that future disclosure will be mainly quantitative.

This shift in focus from text to numbers would, I believe, increase the risk that company reporting on social and environmental matters, already inadequate, will be scaled back. That may not mean much for short-sighted investors, but it would be a major setback for corporate accountability.

http://dirtdiggersdigest.org/archives/173 

Dirt Diggers Digest is written by Philip Mattera, director of the Corporate Research Project, an affiliate of Good Jobs First.

The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games have been referred to as the “People’s Games,” the “High Tech Games” and the “Green Games,” but they could be more aptly described as the Commercial Games.

The scope of commercialism at the Olympics and the consequences of commercialization are detailed in "The Commercial Games," a new report from Multinational Monitor magazine and Commercial Alert (both of which I'm associated with).

To its credit, the Olympics do prohibit advertising in sports stadia or other venues. The Olympics also prohibit advertisements on uniforms (other than uniform maker logos).

Everywhere else, Olympic spectators, viewers and athletes, and the citizens of Beijing should expect to be overwhelmed with Olympics-related advertising.

A record 63 companies have become sponsors or partners of the Beijing Olympics, and Olympics-related advertising in China alone could reach $4 billion to $6 billion this year, according to CSM, a Beijing marketing research firm.

The Olympic Partners (TOP) program, run and managed by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) since 1985, includes 12 companies for the Beijing Olympics. These 12 companies -- among them, Coca-Cola, GE, Johnson & Johnson, Lenovo, Panasonic and Visa -- have paid $866 million to the International Olympic Committee.

The U.S. Olympic system is awash in corporate sponsor money. Well over 100 corporations are sponsoring the U.S. Olympic Committee or U.S. national teams.

Besides celebrating sport, there is an official ideology of the Olympics, called "Olympism." It aims to promote a pure blend of sport, culture and education.

Sports, of course, remain at the center of the Olympics, but commercialism has overwhelmed whatever other values the Olympics hope to embody. The overwhelming cultural influence at the Olympics is now commercial culture; and the overwhelming informational message is: buy, buy, buy.

Commercial relations interfere with proper functioning of the Olympics. In at least one notable case, commercial entanglements have called into question the integrity of a national sports governing body. A lawsuit and accusations around the activities of USA Swimming and the national team coach -- both sponsored by swimwear maker Speedo -- charge Speedo, the national team and the coach with antitrust violations. The lawsuit, filed by Tyr, a Speedo competitor, alleges the coach has trumpeted the benefits of LZR Racer, a new, high-profile Speedo suit, because of his financial ties to the company. Tyr says its Tracer Rise swimsuit, introduced weeks before the LZR Racer, is comparable to the Speedo product.

The Olympic race for corporate sponsors has also put the Olympics in unhealthy -- and sometimes quite unpleasant -- company.

+ The International Olympic Committee will not partner with hard liquor companies, but the IOC tolerates sponsorships by beer and wine companies. Anheuser-Busch says it is a sponsor of 25 national Olympic Committees, including those of China, Japan, Great Britain and the United States. A tequila maker, Jose Cuervo, is a sponsor of the U.S. Soccer Federation.

+ Notwithstanding the fundamental principles of "Olympism," which celebrate healthful living, two of the 12 Olympic TOP sponsors run businesses centered around the sales of unhealthy food: Coca-Cola and McDonald's. Snickers, the candy bar made by Mars, is an official BOCOG supplier. Hershey's is a sponsor of the USOC. Coca-Cola is a sponsor of FIFA, the international soccer federation. McDonald's and Sprite are sponsors of USA Basketball. McDonald's and Sierra Mist are sponsors of the U.S. Soccer Federation. Coca-Cola is a sponsor of USA Softball. Hershey's is a sponsor of USA Track & Field.

+ Many of the sports apparel and equipment makers partnered with the Olympics and official Olympic bodies -- among them Adidas, Nike and Speedo -- source their products from sweatshop factories. In a very disturbing development just before the start of the Olympics, Adidas reportedly announced it was transferring large amounts of its production out of China because wages set by the government were "too high" (!).

+ At least two major Olympic partners, the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) and Sinopec, have been linked to gross human rights violations in Sudan. Both companies are sponsors of the Beijing Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games.

There is no doubt that the horse is out of the barn on Olympic sponsorships, and the world is unlikely to see a commercial-free Games anytime soon.

Nonetheless, the most egregious problems with the Olympics' pervasive sponsorship arrangements can and should be addressed.

The IOC, National Olympic Committees, and international and national sports governing bodies can and should scale back the number of corporate sponsorships.

They can and should develop safeguards to ensure apparel and equipment sponsorships do not compromise sports governing bodies' decisions. Coaches of national teams should be prohibited from serving as paid spokespeople or consultants for apparel and equipment makers.

They can and should refuse to accept sponsorships from any alcohol company, including beer and wine companies. This recommendation does not reflect a prohibitionist impulse. It merely extends the insight in the present IOC ban on hard liquor sponsorships: promoting more alcohol consumption is unhealthful, and inappropriate for an event with enormous appeal to children.

They can and should end partnerships and sponsorship arrangements with junk food, soda and fast food companies. These companies' operations are incompatible with Olympic ideals of promoting fitness and healthful living, and the companies use the association with the Olympics to remove some of the tarnish of their unhealthy products.

They can and should insist that official, sponsoring apparel and equipment makers disclose where their products are manufactured, and ensure that their products are manufactured in a fashion that respects core labor standards.

They can and should refuse to enter into sponsorship arrangements with companies connected to gross human rights abuses. This is a simple ethical standard, and one required by the Olympic commitment to demonstrate "respect for universal fundamental ethical principles."

Will the IOC and other committees move in these directions? They refused to respond to repeated requests for comment. It may be, however, that it will be the corporate sector driving reduced commercialization of the Olympics. The opportunity to project a high-profile in China's fast-growing market has made the Beijing Olympics uniquely attractive; but already leading sponsors have indicated they do not intend to continue paying for the right to besiege the planet with Olympics-related marketing in connection with future Games.

Original post at:

http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/editorsblog/ 

Multinational Monitor Editor Robert Weissman is managing director of Commercial Alert, which opposes excessive commercialism in society.

The recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to slash the damage award in the Exxon Valdez oil spill case and the indictment of Sen. Ted Stevens on corruption charges are not the only controversies roiling Alaska these days. The Last Frontier is also witnessing a dispute over a proposal to open a giant copper and gold mine by Bristol Bay, the headwaters of the world’s largest wild sockeye salmon fishery. Given the popularity of salmon among the health-conscious, even non-Alaskans may want to pay attention to the issue.

The Pebble mine project has been developed by Vancouver-based Northern Dynasty Ltd., but the real work would be carried out by its joint venture partner Anglo American PLC, one of the world’s largest mining companies. Concerned about the project and unfamiliar with Anglo American, two Alaska organizations—the Renewable Resources Coalition and Nunamta Aulukestai (Caretakers of the Land)—commissioned a background report on the company, which has just been released and is available for download on a website called Eye on Pebble Mine (or at this direct PDF link). I wrote the report as a freelance project.

Anglo American—which is best known as the company that long dominated gold mining in apartheid South Africa as well as diamond mining/marketing through its affiliate DeBeers—has assured Alaskans it will take care to protect the environment and otherwise act responsibly in the course of constructing and operating the Pebble mine. The purpose of the report is to put that promise in the context of the company’s track record in mining operations elsewhere in the world.

The report concludes that Alaskans have reason to be concerned about Anglo American. Reviewing the company’s own worldwide operations and those of its spinoff AngloGold in the sectors most relevant to the Pebble project—gold, base metals and platinum—the report finds a troubling series of problems in three areas: adverse environmental impacts, allegations of human rights abuses and a high level of workplace accidents and fatalities.

The environmental problems include numerous spills and accidental discharges at Anglo American’s platinum operations in South Africa and AngloGold’s mines in Ghana. Waterway degradation occurred at Anglo American’s Lisheen lead and zinc mine in Ireland, while children living near the company’s Black Mountain zinc/lead/copper mine in South Africa were found to be struggling in school because of elevated levels of lead in their blood.

The main human rights controversies have taken place in Ghana, where subsistence farmers have been displaced by AngloGold’s operations and have not been given new land, and in the Limpopo area of South Africa, where villagers were similarly displaced by Anglo American’s platinum operations.

High levels of fatalities in the mines of Anglo American and AngloGold—more than 200 in the last five years—have become a major scandal in South Africa, where miners staged a national strike over the issue late last year.

Overall, the report finds that Anglo American’s claims of social responsibility appear to be more rhetoric than reality.  Salmon eaters beware. 

http://dirtdiggersdigest.org/archives/148

Dirt Diggers Digest is written by Philip Mattera, director of the Corporate Research Project, an affiliate of Good Jobs First.

Big business is talking more these days about the need to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Even long-time global warming denier Exxon Mobil feels the need to publicize what it is doing in this regard. Claims of reductions in GHG are not, however, meaningful unless those emissions are being estimated consistently to begin with.

A study issued yesterday by the Ethical Corporation Institute raises questions about how much we really know about the volume of GHG being generated by large corporations. According to a press release about the report (which is available only to those willing to fork over more than 1,000 euros), there are “staggering inconsistencies in how companies calculate and verify their greenhouse gas emissions.” The report found, for instance, that companies responding to the fifth annual Carbon Disclosure Project questionnaire used more than 30 different protocols or guidelines in preparing their emissions estimates. The report, it appears, surveys this potpourri of measurement techniques but does not attempt to resolve the differences.

The absence of consistency has not prevented the Carbon Disclosure Project from trying to use current reporting to understand the larger framework of GHG trends. In May, the Project issued the first results of its Supply Chain Leadership Collaboration, an initiative in which large companies such as Nestlé, Procter & Gamble and Unilever urge their suppliers to report on their own carbon footprint. It is unclear how much effort is made to ensure these results are reported in a uniform manner.

Along with the need for improved GHG reporting, there are growing calls for companies to disclose the liability risks (and opportunities, if any) associated with those emissions. Recently, a broad coalition of institutional investors and major environmental groups once again urged the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to clarify the obligations of publicly traded companies to assess and fully disclose the legal and financial consequences of climate change. The statement was aimed at reinforcing a petition filed with the SEC last year on climate-change disclosure.

Climate-change liability risks no longer exist just in the realm of the theoretical. Lawsuits have been filed against the major oil companies for conspiring to deceive the public about climate change—including one brought in the name of Eskimo villagers in Alaska who are being forced to relocate their homes because of flooding said to be caused by global warming.  Famed climate scientist James Hansen recently declared at a Capitol Hill event that oil and coal company executives could be guilty of “crimes against humanity.” If that isn’t a risk worth reporting, what is?

http://dirtdiggersdigest.org/archives/99

Dirt Diggers Digest is written by Philip Mattera, director of the Corporate Research Project, an affiliate of Good Jobs First.

Almost twelve years ago, when a group of us started CorpWatch, we did so because it seemed then that a few hundred transnational companies were intent on remaking the earth in their image. As we saw it, the corporate version of globalization undermined community, ecology and democracy. At that moment the Internet had just appeared on the scene, and it seemed to us, and to many others, a vehicle through which to build an alternative – a form of grassroots globalization that fostered human rights and environmental rights, and that helped hold corporations accountable across the globe. Thus CorpWatch was born.

In the ensuing dozen years, the corporate encirclement of the earth has only
grown – as has the grassroots response to it in every corner of the planet.
The Internet has boomed and become on the one hand, more corporatized than we might once have imagined and yet also an increasingly powerful tool for building democratic participation and communication (and I’m very proud that CorpWatch is still part of it). This dual nature of the Internet embodies a fundamental paradox of globalization. While globalization seems to concentrate power in the hands of a few in most every realm it touches, it also increasingly interconnects us, interweaving universal values into a multinational tapestry of cultures and politics.

I see this here in Argentina, where I’ve had the good fortune to live for the past year. As numerous people here will tell you, once, this country was so isolated from the rest of the world that a lot of folks were not aware of the magnitude of the horrors unleashed by the military dictatorship between 1976 and 1983. People knew enough and saw enough and felt enough to be afraid, and tens of thousands felt the direct impact as they or their loved ones were arrested, tortured, “disappeared.” But the truth was hard to come by; there was heavy local censorship, and there was no Internet. People abroad knew more about what was going on in Argentina, than many here did.  

Today, the country, like most of the rest of the world, is dialed-in, networked to the hilt, totally online. It seems almost unthinkable that something similar could happen here again. There is a strong consciousness of and commitment to human rights, and an understanding of the connection between what Argentina went through, and similar histories and battles elsewhere in the Latin American region  and the world. Argentina pulled itself out of the horrors of dictatorship, and as it has re-evolved as a nation, it has benefited in this way from globalization.

At the same time, the country is suffering many of the attendant ills. I asked my twelve year-old daughter what she had learned about the United States from spending a year outside of the country. Her reply was quick and clear – I’ve learned that the US controls the media in the rest of the world. From the mouths of babes...but after all, she learned to speak Spanish, in part, by watching American sitcoms dubbed into Spanish on the local TV. Meanwhile, although the country has reaped significant economic benefit from its agricultural prowess as a giant in the world soy market – the control of this commodity is increasingly in the hands of a few transnational corporations: Cargill, ADM and others. And the country’s forests are suffering as more and more trees are felled to make room for more and more soybeans. These facts will remain true, no matter the outcome of the current conflict between President Kirchner and the country’s farmers.

Finally, globalization and all its contradictions hits home directly for me here in the Buenos Aires neighborhood I’m living in. Once a zone of automechanics and warehouses, Palermo Viejo is today one of the hippest and most popular destinations in this wonderful city. Now known as Palermo Hollywood, it is a barrio in the midst of a vast transformation. Many of our neighbors have lived here for forty or more years – they are old-school butchers, bakers, antique dealers, bar owners. Yet they are increasingly surrounded by trendy boutiques and fashionable restaurants. Many are being squeezed out by big corporate real estate that has entered the scene and is speculating on a series of high-end apartment towers that will forever change the face of this low-slung old time neighborhood. In the midst of it all are a throng of artists, ex pats, and activists organizing for the soul of the barrio.

Don’t get me wrong; it ain’t all bad. To be honest, all the paradoxes and contradictions of the gentrification of this globalizing hub make it an exciting and wonderful place to live (for the moment). I decided to try and document the intersection – the convergence and contradiction – of these various separate realities-the old and the new of Palermo Viejo. You can check out my photo essay on the subject at http://www.palermobuenosaires.blogspot.com.  

Josh Karliner is Founder and a board member of CorpWatch.

Tim Shorrock, a veteran investigative journalist and a longtime subscriber to the Dirt Diggers Digest, has just come out with a book called Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing. Shorrock describes how an activity that used to be handled by spooks on the federal payroll has been steadily transformed into a $50 billion Intelligence-Industrial Complex.

Thanks to the contracting scandals surrounding Halliburton and its former subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root, the public learned of the extent to which the Pentagon has turned over routine functions to private military companies. The outrageous behavior of Blackwater has highlighted the use of mercenaries to protect U.S. diplomats and other VIPs in Iraq.

Shorrock shines a light on another group of corporations that are carrying out a more sensitive function that most people have no idea is being handed over to the private sector. Careful readers of the revelations concerning abuses at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq would have learned that interrogators alleged to have abused detainees included civilians employed by a company called CACI. But that is only the tip of a lucrative iceberg, Shorrock shows.

For example, he writes, more than half the people working at the super-secret National Counterterrorism Center in Virginia are employees of companies such as Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), BAE Systems and Lockheed Martin. The Center’s terrorist database is maintained by The Analysis Corporation, which subcontracted collection activities to CACI.

Since 9/11, Shorrock says, the Central Intelligence Agency has been spending 50-60 percent of its budget (or about $2.5 billion a year) on contractors—both individuals and companies. At the CIA and its sister spook agencies: “Tasks that are now outsourced include running spy networks out of embassies, intelligence analysis, signals intelligence (SIGINT) collection, covert operations, and the interrogation of enemy prisoners.”

Shorrock devotes an entire chapter to Booz Allen Hamilton, known to most people as a management consultant for large corporations but which pioneered the intelligence outsourcing industry (though it recently agreed to sell its federal business to the Carlyle Group). When Mike McConnell, a former Booz Allen executive, was named by President Bush as Director of National Intelligence, it was the first time, Shorrock notes, that a contractor was put in charge of the country’s entire spy apparatus.

Spies for Hire has much more to offer that cannot be adequately summarized here. I recommend that you read it in full. But let me let also note that profiles of some of the intelligence contractors discussed by Shorrock—such as CACI and ManTech International—can be found on the Crocodyl wiki to which I contribute. Also note that the updated edition of Jeremy Scahill’s valuable book Blackwater, recently issued in paperback, has a discussion (p.453 forward) on the mercenary company’s move into another form of privatized intelligence—a product called Total Intelligence Solutions that is designed to bring “CIA-style” services to Fortune 500 companies.

http://dirtdiggersdigest.org/archives/60

Dirt Diggers Digest is written by Philip Mattera, director of the Corporate Research Project, an affiliate of Good Jobs First.

See also feature articles by Tim Shorrock on CorpWatch.org:

Domestic Spying, Inc.

QinetiQ Goes Kinetic: Top Rumsfeld Aide Wins Contracts From Spy Office He Set Up 

Carlyle Group May Buy CIA Contractor: Booz Allen Hamilton

The U.S. Department of National Intelligence (the body that oversees spy agencies like the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency) recently decided it wanted to know what Iranian students were taught in school these days.

Most people might have considered the obvious: pick up the phone and ask an Iranian student or perhaps their parents, who have already had to spend many days and probably nights reading the books.

But fortunately for the DNI, such a treasonous act was not necessary.

Instead they hired SAIC, a major CIA and NSA contractor, to do the job. On December 31st, 2007, the company published the results: a 17 page report on 85 Iranian textbooks that the company downloaded off the Internet from the Iranian government's website.  The final report was not made public, but Secrecy News, an excellent electronic newsletter written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation of American Scientists, obtained a copy.

The textbooks that are used in Iranian schools "reveal a clear emphasis on Islam, as it has been interpreted by the leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran," is one of "the most important conclusions" of the study and they "provide a distorted view of Shia Islam as the only true path in Islam, and among religions."

Beyond this shocking headline, SAIC can also reveal that the Iranian government may be censoring detailed news of discrimination: While page 74-77 of the sociology textbook for the third year of high school makes reference to discrimination, there are no specific cases of discrimination in Iran mentioned, according to the company's analysts.

The CIA will be delighted to learn that, in accordance with popular belief, the textbooks do spread hate against the U.S. Page 64 of the  Islamic Teaching textbook for the fifth grade contains a quote from Ayatollah Khomeini that reads: "The Muslims must use the power of the Islamic Republic of Iran for crushing the teeth of this oppressive government [the USA] in its mouth."

Although SAIC says it studied Iranian mathematics and chemistry textbooks, the geeks at the NSA will be disappointed that they contained no smoking guns or secret equations.

The question CorpWatch wants to know - how much did the government pay for this study? For any of our readers out there with access to the spy budget, here's a clue: it is contract number: 2003*N443600*022

A Kalitta Air plane en route to Bahrain in the Middle East has crashed. The Michigan based company has been linked to the CIA rendition program. It is also the main contractor that flies home bodies of U.S. soldiers after they are killed in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ironically the cargo plane crashed the day before “Memorial Day,” a major U.S. federal holiday that commemorates U.S. men and women who die while in military service.

Amnesty International has reported that Kalitta Air has been linked to “covert intelligence and military operations” but unlike other CIA contractors that appear to be dummy companies run by fictitious individuals, it was founded by a Conrad Kalitta, a retired U.S. drag racing driver.

Kalitta first entered the freight business in 1967 when he started ferrying car parts in a Cessna 310. In November 2000, Kalitta Air, started running domestic and international scheduled or on-demand cargo service and support for the Pentagon’s Air Mobility Command based at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois.

Shortly before the invasion of Iraq, Kalitta started up a scheduled cargo service to Europe and in 2005 the company won a part of a $1.2 billion dollar contract to provide airlift services to the Air Mobility Command.

On Sunday, a 25 year old Boeing 747 Kalitta jet, N704CK, crashed on take-off from Brussels airport. The specific plane is one of four of the company’s 747-200F’s and it regularly flies on Kalitta’s European cargo service to New York and Chicago, according to the company’s web schedule.

The plane broke in half and Belgian firefighters, who rushed to the scene, coated the wings of the plane with special fire retardant foam as a precaution because the plane was still full of jet fuel. The five people on board were slightly injured although none were killed. The plane was carrying 76 tonnes of cargo, half of which Belgian media reported to be mail. Details of the remaining cargo were not revealed. 

Back in the U.S., the Wilmington News-Journal reported that the company planes were awaiting Monday’s commemoration ceremonies. “Along Delaware 1 near a busy Dover Air Force Base, travelers could catch glimpses in the distance of the original reason for Memorial Day. White, corporate-size jets owned by Kalitta Air waited in the sun to ferry home fallen troops whose final journey passes through the large military mortuary at Dover.”

(The company also leased one of its 747s to a Columbia Pictures film named “Air Force One,” a 1997 suspense thriller about the hijacking of the U.S. president's plane. The film starred Harrison Ford, Gary Oldman and Glenn Close.)

Last week, a Congressional committee properly raked Big Pharma over the coals for misleading advertising of pharmaceuticals.

A hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's oversight subcommittee focused on advertising campaigns for three drugs, including the remarkable case of Robert Jarvik. Jarvik is featured in endlessly re-run ads for Pfizer's blockbuster cholesterol drug Lipitor. Known as the inventor of the Jarvik artificial heart, he is not a cardiologist, not a licensed medical doctor and not authorized to prescribe pharmaceuticals. He's shown in the ads engaged in vigorous rowing activity, but in fact he doesn't row. Pfizer pulled the ads in February after controversy started brewing.

Among industrialized countries, only the United States and New Zealand permit drug companies to market directly to consumers. It's a bad idea, it drives bad medicine, and it should be banned.

But although it has the highest profile, direct-to-consumer advertising is a small part of Pharma's marketing machine.

Researchers Marc-André Gagnon and Joel Lexchin conclude in a recent issue of the journal PLOS Medicine that direct-to-consumer ads make up less than a tenth of industry marketing expenditures ($4 billion of $57.5 billion in 2004). And Gagnon and Lexchin's estimate of $57.5 billion on marketing excludes many industry expenditures that are really driven by marketing, including clinical trials conducted for marketing purposes.

Wal-Mart Stores has put out a press release patting itself on the back for promising the equivalent of about $430,000 for disaster relief and reconstruction for the area of China hit by a massive earthquake this week. The gesture was laudable but the amount was less than impressive.

After all, the giant retailer would be nowhere today without the countless Chinese workers who toil in sweatshops so that American consumers can be offered the cheap goods that are at the core of the company’s business model. Last year those largely Chinese-made goods brought Wal-Mart profits of $12.7 billion, or about $1.4 million every hour of every day. The $430,000 contribution thus represents less than 20 minutes of profit.

Wal-Mart also profits from Chinese consumers. The company operates more than 200 stores in China (through joint ventures and minority-owned subsidiaries), several of which have been shut down because of the tremblor. Wal-Mart was so eager to operate stores in China that it agreed to let its employees there be represented by unions (though of the government-dominated variety).

Wal-Mart has a history of using relatively inexpensive amounts of disaster relief to boost its reputation. After Hurricane Katrina hit the U.S. Gulf Coast in 2005, Wal-Mart maneuvered to get maximum exposure for its prompt delivery of relief supplies. A fairly routine operation for a company possessing the most advanced logistics infrastructure was seen as nearly miraculous, given the ineptitude of federal and state public officials.

The company made an initial faux pas (quickly reversed) in announcing that employees at its stores shut down by the storm would be paid for only three days. It also started out offering a measly $2 million in relief but soon overcame its parsimonious instincts and upped the figure by $15 million, thereby winning wide praise. The wave of favorable coverage went on for several months, thanks at least in part to the efforts of its army of p.r. operatives from Edelman and a conservative blogger who was paid to tout Wal-Mart’s hurricane work in the blogosphere.

Wal-Mart may have to part with more than $430,000 to get a similar public relations bonanza from China’s suffering.

http://dirtdiggersdigest.org/archives/51

Dirt Diggers Digest is written by Philip Mattera, director of the Corporate Research Project, an affiliate of Good Jobs First.

Adding Insult to Injury

A funny thing happened on the way to exercising my presumed right, as a shareholder, to attend yesterday’s annual shareholder meeting of private military contractor L-3 Communications, held at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Manhattan’s financial district.

I was one of a group including a translator, Marwan Mawiri, who worked for a year and ½ for Titan, now an L-3 subsidiary, in Iraq. Marwan has witnessed first-hand numerous problems with the way interrogation and translation contracting is being handled in Iraq – a practice that may be putting at substantial risk the national security and lives of the Iraqi people, of U.S. and multinational troops, officials and contractors, and of the United States itself.

The problem is clear: inadequate and downright bad vetting and hiring practices for analysts, interrogators and linguists. Indeed, the U.S. military has recently cancelled Titan’s translation contract due to poor practices along with waste, fraud and abuse.

What is also crystal clear is that the war in Iraq can neither be won, effectively prosecuted, nor competently withdrawn from until these problems are solved and until proper oversight is in place.

If people hired to translate in critical battlefield and other situations are not even fluent in at least Arabic and English; if screeners monitoring the entry and exit of people to U.S. military bases at times have no more qualification and training than having been a baggage screener at a U.S. airline (see CorpWatch’s new report [note: updated December 2008] "Outsourcing Intelligence in Iraq":); if interrogators are not qualified, experienced and trained to the highest standards possible, how can we ensure that we avoid future travesties due to bad intelligence? Such as the bad intelligence around the supposed Iraqi weapons of mass destruction program (which was, of course, Bush/Cheney and neocon-driven, not L-3-driven), that got the U.S. into this war  in the first place? (And remember, even when U.S. soldiers start coming home from Iraq, large numbers of private contractors will stay, making proper oversight all the more crucial.)

It turned out that L-3’s management wasn’t so happy to see us, and that my co-worker, Pratap Chatterjee and I, were supposed to have received a certain admission ticket to attend the meeting. The same went for our companions from the Iraq Campaign 2008 – a major coalition to oppose the war, which is now taking on private military contractors as part of their broader campaign on the high cost U.S. taxpayers are paying for the war in Iraq – and Foreign Policy in Focus, who were holding proxies. Funny that.

Looking out at the Statue of Liberty from the hotel lobby downstairs, where we gathered to figure out how to proceed, I pondered the damage this war has done to the liberties of so many Iraqi people, and to so many U.S. liberties and values that I hold dear. Like respect for human rights, compliance with the Geneva Conventions around torture, appropriate security that is handled with skill and integrity. I wasn’t surprised that L-3/Titan didn’t want to hear our message; though I sincerely hope some of the shareholders, managers, directors, staff and  financial analysts do take the time to read our report and to talk to current and former contractors like Marwan. We didn’t go in malice.

We went in genuine concern over business operations that, while they may be earning a pretty profit for large shareholders, pose a genuine reputational risk to the company for future liability. And are causing harm on the ground, to real people. We challenge L-3 Communications to become a truly ethical leader in business practices, not just in products and sales. Surely the sixth-largest U.S.  defense industry company (according to their website) has the intelligence to recognize bad practices and the ability to change them for the better.

Or are we simply destined for years more, as Huffington Post blogger Charlie Cray put it, of companies and investors milking a “Baghdad Bubble as a result of the Bush administration's refusal to hold them accountable”?

As the meeting ended, and the muckety-mucks began leaving the Ritz-Carlton to be chauffered away in their Lincoln Town cars and limousines, we gave these decision makers another opportunity to take a copy of CorpWatch’s report, or even to talk to us directly. The vast majority kept their blinders on and marched resolutely past.

Suddenly we saw General Carl Vuono (ret.). Vuono is former chief of staff of the U.S. Army, and long-time president of private military consulting firm MPRI, which is now also an L-3 subsidiary. Pratap and Marwan rushed to try and speak  with him, while a reporter and cameraman from Al-Jazeera English filmed and stood at the ready for the general’s reply. The general didn’t want to talk, but you can see some of the footage on YouTube. You can also watch Pratap and Marwan describe their experiences on Democracy Now!, where they were interviewed live this morning.

Pratap gave the general a copy of “Outsourcing Intelligence In Iraq” – maybe he’ll decide to have one of his staffers give it a read. We’d love to talk, and welcome any dialogue with officials of L-3.