Recent weeks have been a peak period for big corporations' AGMs, many of which have been targeted by demonstrators and by (very) smallscale shareholders claiming their legal right to attend - and to embarrass the directors by raising issues they would rather weren't talked about.
BAE SystemsAnna Jones reports: More usually known by their former name, British Aerospace, BAES attracted activists from the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) and elsewhere to their AGM - at…
On 1 April a special party took place: the celebration of the demise of various international conventions on pillage. Ahoy Me Hearties! Iraq has set the standard: we can now happily invade, pillage and privatise - no one will complain, they all want their share!
The party took place outside the offices of Windrush Communications, the British company responsible for organising the “Iraq Procurement Conferences”, conferences where fellow pirates meet up to share the spoils, or - as…
On 13 April, activists all over the world held demonstrations to oppose the sale of bulldozers to Israel by the US multinational Caterpillar.
Caterpillar equipment sold to the Israeli army destroys Palestinian homes, schools and agricultural land in the occupied territories. It has also been employed in the construction of the separation wall, which has been declared illegal by the International Court of Justice.
Mainstream criticismThe day of action was called to coincide…
A lengthy legal struggle by two campaigners has been vindicated with a final victory in the the European Court of Human Rights: on 15 February the ECHR ruled that the McLibel 2 - Helen Steel and Dave Morris - had been denied freedom of expression and a fair trial when they were sued for libel by the multinational junk food giant McDonald's.
In other words, officialdom has caught up with what the rest of the world knew more than 10 years ago.
What's wrong with McD?McDonald'…
Crossing the Irish Sea, the “Battle of the Bog” reached London at the end of September, as protests were held outside Shell's South Bank headquarters.
Carried out in solidarity with the Irish “Shell to Sea” campaign to resist the development of a gas pipeline in a pristine conservation area in Rossport, Co Mayo, protesters managed to catch the police and local security off-guard when they dumped two tonnes of sand on Shell's doorstep and dropped a 40-foot banner reading “danger - keep…
In January 2003, as plans for war in Iraq mounted, US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld ruled out re-initiating the military draft, saying, “there is no need for it at all. It seems to me that the way we're currently organised and operating is vastly preferable. We have people serving today - God bless them - because they volunteered.”
In some sense he is right, the compulsory draft was eliminated in the United States in 1973. However, Rumsfeld's comment misses two important points…
There are many reasons not to drink Coca-Cola, but this most symbolic of drinks has yet to face a coordinated boycott campaign. However, it is now facing a combination of court cases and international public hearings accusing it of employing paramilitaries to kill and harass trade unionists in Colombia.
Seven Colombian trade union negotiators working for companies associated with Coca Cola have been killed, mostly in the mid-1990s, but there are currently around 50 who have been…
Colombia has become a model of the extreme use of violence to impose neoliberal globalisation. Every form of social organisation that resists is being eliminated: indigenous people, peasants, workers are assassinated for opposing the objectives of investors. Each year more trade unionists are assassinated in this country than in the whole of the rest of the world.
Coca-Cola and its Colombian subsidiary, Panamco SA participate in this dirty war against social movements. So it is that…
If it weren't for the generous injection of black humour, this book would feel almost unbearable. There's no doubting it's a great read, full of revelatory investigation into a huge array of issues, but it's enough to bring you out in a sweat every time you pick it up, with its extensive evidence on how every corner of corporate life is riddled with systemic abuse, and every self-declaring bastion of democracy is hiding some big secrets.
Few of the bigger stories are new in…
In the spirit of satyagraha, three survivors of the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster began a hunger strike outside the Indian parliament on 28 June.
In July around 100 survivors took to the streets of New Delhi for a nonviolent sit-down. The “indefinite” hunger strike has been taken up by sympathisers in what, according to organisers, is becoming “a mass action, taken up in relay by people all over the world”.
These actions are being taken in protest at the possible…
In south-eastern Nigeria, hundreds of unarmed Ijaw women used boats to occupy four Chevron-Texaco pipeline stations.
Protests against oil companies operating in Nigeria have been taking place for a while. These recent and dramatic actions were taken in response to the grinding poverty in which local people live in this oil-rich region. Chevron-Texaco have operated in the region for more than 30 years, but the activists say there is little to show for all the wealth generated.…
In October 2001, after taking over parts of the Swat, Dir and Korakoram highway in northern Pakistan, Sufi Mohammad led his 5000-strong army of Tehrik Nifaz Shariat-I-Mohammadi [one of five extremist religious groups currently banned in Pakistan] to attack the US forces operating in Afghanistan, with weapons ranging from World War One antiques to mortars used by modern-day armies.
But the fact is that most of these illiterate and misguided soldiers lost their lives to unfriendly…
Internationally, the role of the private sector in the criminal justice system is now substantial and set to expand. On top of contracted services such as food, cleaning, laundry and medical care, the last 20 years have seen private companies take charge of designing and building prisons as well as managing them, particularly in the US, Australia and Britain; with Puerto Rico, Canada and South Africa following closely.
A cheap deal?
In the US, the prison-industrial complex…
Early morning on 4 March an alliance of anti-capitalist activists and human rights campaigners, held a successful blockade of Coca-Cola's distribution centre and full service vending depot in Longwell Green, Bristol.
The protest prevented lorries from leaving the depot and disrupted shipments intended to come into the site, causing (it is believed) shortages throughout the region. Protesters were taking direct action against the multinational company to highlight Coca Cola's…
As thousands of protesters filled the streets of Washington in April 2000, closing the US capital to oppose the policies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, their peers in Bolivia were demanding the right to drinking water.
Following massive protests against the privatisation of the nations water supply, the Bolivian government had declared martial law. A leader of the Bolivian movement, Oscar Olivera, escaped the repression just in time to join the Washington…
