Political Crossfire Forums

[Ekim]

Would anyone be able to help me out? I'm trying to double check the past situations in Brazil where a total of eight union leaders (maybe?) have been killed by hired paramilitaries. These paramilitaries were hired by the heads of the factories in Brazil which Coke knows about but doesn't do anything about it.

So if you have any information let me know?
Thanks.

[Kindred]

[Press releases from the UK-Colombia Solidarity Campaign]

"We ask Coca Cola to stop killing ... and you to stop drinking Coke" Carlos Julia, SINALTRAINAL, Colombia

An international boycott of Coca Cola products will be launched this Tuesday. Its main aim is to stop the policy of violent treatment that has left eight Colombian Coca Cola workers assassinated in recent years. The boycott has been called by Colombian food and drinks workers union SINALTRAINAL and has the endorsement of the country's main trade union federation the CUT as well as the World Social Forum.

SINALTRAINAL accuses Coca Cola of working in consort with paramilitary death squads to remove union activists and hence the union organisation from its plants. Accusations centre on the murder of Carepa plant in Antioquia where 5 union members were assassinated between 1994 and 1996.

The union and the families of assassinated Coca Cola workers have also brought a civil court case under the US Alien Torts Act which is being considered by courts in Miami. On 31st March 2003 US District Court Judge Jose E. Martinez ruled that the case for compensation for human rights violations committed by paramilitaries on behalf of Coca-Cola bottlers Panamerican Beverages, Inc. ("Panamco") and Bebidas y Alimentos ("Bebidas") in Colombia can go forward.

Secretary of the UK based Colombia Solidarity Campaign, Andy Higginbottom said in London this weekend:

"Lawyers point out the significance of the US court decision. It has held that the allegations were sufficient to allow the case to proceed on a theory that the paramilitaries were acting in a symbiotic relationship with the Colombian government. Colombia's current president Alvaro Uribe Velez was governor of Antioquia at the time. And in many ways the Carepa case exposes the sort of policies that he is attempting to now implement nationally."

SINALTRAINAL and its supporters have called for a year long boycott of all Coca Cola products until a number of demands have been met, including that there are no more assassinations, that Coca Cola prints a memoriam of the murdered workers on its product labels and pays full reparations to the victims' families. The union also demands that Coca Cola supports an annual forum on human rights for workers in multinational companies.

SINALTRAINAL and its supporters have held three international public hearings in the last year. The first one was outisde Coca Cola's coprorate headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia on 20th July 2002, followed by a hearing in the European Parliament in Brussels on 10th October and concluding with a forum in Bogota, Colombia on 5th December 2002. The campaign will be simultaneously launched in Bogota, several European capitals and the United States.

Colombia Solidarity Campaign organiser David Rhys-Jones adds that in the UK: "Many groups around the country want to participate in the boycott campaign. The very fact that Coca Cola is sold just about everywhere means that the message of its wrong doings in Colombia can reach a mass audience."

For more information contact David Rhys-Jones: 07932 034477

Colombia Solidarity Campaign, PO Box 8446, London N17 6NZ.

E-mail: colombia_sc@hotmail.com Web site www.colombiasolidarity.org.uk



COCA COLA WORKERS WHO HAVE BEEN ASSASSINATED

AVELINO ACHICANOY ERAZO

Worker at Embotelladora Nariñense S.A. -COCA COLA [Nariño Bottlers Ltd] in the city of Pasto in south west Colombia. He was assassinated by a shot through the right ear on 30th July 1990, at a time when the workers were on strike because their employer had refused to negotiate a set of demands presented by the Sintradingascol (Colombian National Union of Fizzy Drinks Workers). Avelino was member of the union's Executive Committee and a member of the strike committee.

[John Galt]

I'm addicted to Coke. I just drank a 2 liter bottle.

[DEFCON 1]

These rent -a -mob goofs were in town for the G8. Stood out side of a Mom and Pop Coke franchise and protested.

I have their web site but I don't want to contribute to the actions of the mentally ill.

[Kindred]

You don't even know what they were protesting, because you didn't read the article, and know nothing about the ills of economic disparity based globalisation.

[DEFCON 1]

A.D wrote: You don't even know what they were protesting, because you didn't read the article, and know nothing about the ills of economic disparity based globalisation.

Blah blah blah Mr. Arm Chair Revolutionary. I was handed one of their hand out's BY THEM. See, your down there in that goat herding hell hole and I am up here at ground zero and get to rub elbows with all the maggots you idolize.


Here, have a nice hot Coke alternative brought to you by your brothers in arms.

[Ekim]

Thanks A.D., I already got that site though. Right now I'm trying to find unbiased articles on it, not from protesters and groups like that. We need to find an article written by an unbiased person/party with facts so people here like Defcon1 and John Gault won't be able to to ignore it like they do everything else.

[Kindred]

DEFCON 1 wrote: A.D wrote: You don't even know what they were protesting, because you didn't read the article, and know nothing about the ills of economic disparity based globalisation.

Blah blah blah Mr. Arm Chair Revolutionary. I was handed one of their hand out's BY THEM. See, your down there in that goat herding hell hole and I am up here at ground zero and get to rub elbows with all the maggots you idolize.


Here, have a nice hot Coke alternative brought to you by your brothers in arms.


yeah right, ha!

Idolise? pfft, melbourne has one of the largest progressive movments in the world. Armchair revolutionary? Ha! What have you ever done for your beliefs?

[DEFCON 1]

More than you.

progressive movements = consisting of wack jobs that don't use deodorant. I had a chance to smell them during G8

[curisz]

Ah yes, the true nature of unfettered capitalism. They'll turn their back on murder or needless deaths as long as it means a few more bucks in their pocket. I certainly don't believe that executives at coke hired any hit men, but if they, say, asked the well compensated government in columbia for help controlling the strikers and strikers started getting killed, and coke did nothing, thats pretty much just as bad.

Its pretty appalling that you conservatives would just blow off allegations like that and pretend its somehow patriotic or something to support coke without even bothering to attempt to refute such accusations.

[DEFCON 1]

curisz wrote: Ah yes, the true nature of unfettered capitalism. They'll turn their back on murder or needless deaths as long as it means a few more bucks in their pocket. I certainly don't believe that executives at coke hired any hit men, but if they, say, asked the well compensated government in columbia for help controlling the strikers and strikers started getting killed, and coke did nothing, thats pretty much just as bad.

Its pretty appalling that you conservatives would just blow off allegations like that and pretend its somehow patriotic or something to support coke without even bothering to attempt to refute such accusations.


Quote: but if's

Pretty much fuels snotty nosed socialist wanna be's and psycho's

[curisz]

Um, defcon, was that your idea of a refutation? At least attempt to address the issue with either information or some sort of argument.

It is a fact that Columbia has a record of abusing its people, even so far as outright murder. It is a fact that Columbian government officials and there well connected friends get a lot of benefit from western companies setting up shop there. It is a fact that workers were unsatisfied with their working conditions and called a strike. And apparently it is a fact that several strike leaders were murdered.

Does this prove that the columbian government, or some faction of it, ordered the murders? No. Does it prove that Coke or some of its local executives were complicit in those murders? No. But the allegations are reasonable enough to merit investigation. Since the Columbian government has a stake in concealing this, if it is true, they cannot be counted on to investigate. Therefore what do you do? Just drop it and say "oh well, s*cks for them" while buying another six pack?

Why should coke be involved in a state with such a poor record on human rights instead of providing jobs here in America? Why should a successful American company like coke even be in a position to have workers in that country strike against them? They could easily be one of the best employers in columbia if they wished, and have a workforce that thanks their lucky stars for coke each and every day, yet in a country with a low per capita income and high unemployment, conditions were bad enough at their plant to motivate a strike?

But you don't even care to give these issues consideration, or at least have the decency to walk silently away and concentrate on issues that are more important to you. Instead, you feel compelled to respond with arrogant, snide, and dismissive remarks.

Tell me please, as clearly as you are capable of, if someone were to show you incontrovertible proof that Coke executives were complicit in this, and that Coke policy regarding strikes in third world countries was to hand money to government officials and ask them to deal with it, what would your reaction be? What action would you reccommend against Coke? Or would you just say something like "they probably had it coming!" and continue to swig from your 2 liter bottle?

[DEFCON 1]

Quote: Why should coke be involved in a state with such a poor record on human rights instead of providing jobs here in America?



Then lets pull out of Africa, get the Aids money back and empty the shelves at Wall Mart. Soon we will be able to start living at hostels and showering once a week .

Quote: Why should a successful American company like coke even be in a position to have workers in that country strike against them? They could easily be one of the best employers in columbia if they wished, and have a workforce that thanks their lucky stars for coke each and every day, yet in a country with a low per capita income and high unemployment, conditions were bad enough at their plant to motivate a strike?

Prosperity was good enough at Coke, a capitalist icon to motivate the socialist labor moment there. But lets leave and let them pic coca leaves and work for the drug cartel. Everone knows that is safe work and no leftist ever set up a web site to protest that.

I could what a novel the size of War and Peace as a retort, but if I started it with (What if's and Maybe's) everything after that would be a assumption.

[curisz]

Then lets pull out of Africa, get the Aids money back and empty the shelves at Wall Mart. Soon we will be able to start living at hostels and showering once a week .

As far as Africa, i don't see what humanitarian aid has to do with corporate investment. As far as the rest, are you claiming that American prosperity relies on cheap foreign labor?[

Prosperity was good enough at Coke, a capitalist icon to motivate the socialist labor moment there. But lets leave and let them pic coca leaves and work for the drug cartel. Everone knows that is safe work and no leftist ever set up a web site to protest that.

I don't know what conditions were like at that plant, neither do you, but you seem to imply that you have no interest in knowing

I could what a novel the size of War and Peace as a retort, but if I started it with (What if's and Maybe's) everything after that would be a assumption.[/quote]

I didn't ask you for science fiction. I took the argument from asking questions about coke, to a hypothetical argument and a question as to what actions you feel should be taken if an American corporation were to be found guilty of criminal acts in a third world country. So lets hear it! What do you think should be done in such a situation? What should individuals do? What should the company do? What should the president do? Leave coke out of it if you like, lets say its acme inc.What is Mr. DefCon's ethical stance on this issue? If you were making a law regarding the conduct of American based companies in their activities in other countries, what would be in it. Let's talk overarching principles here, forget, for the moment whether you think there is culpability or not in this particular case.

[DEFCON 1]

Africa makes Columbia look like Xanadu.

Human rights violations originated in Africa among Africans and are prevalent today and not only U.S corporations are there, but European corps. are also.

My point is that not all countries share our criminal justice system and freedoms and protections and since you said you don't no what goes on in Central and South America or at Coke there other than psycho babble, then I guess I have work to do or I would reply line for line with pretty colors.

[curisz]

That's fine DefCon. Whenever you figure out what your position is on this issue, I'll be happy to read it. You see, i am interested in hearing and discussing well reasoned arguments from the loyal opposition.

By the way, why do you have so much animosity toward the organization of a boycott by private citizens? Isn't that the way conservatives prefer people to influence business, rather than through government regulations?

[DEFCON 1]

curisz wrote: That's fine DefCon. Whenever you figure out what your position is on this issue, I'll be happy to read it. You see, i am interested in hearing and discussing well reasoned arguments from the loyal opposition.

By the way, why do you have so much animosity toward the organization of a boycott by private citizens? Isn't that the way conservatives prefer people to influence business, rather than through government regulations?

Ah errr You wanna boycott a business in this country for actions in another and you have no proof of their actions and you are asking me about animosity.

Scratch head....

[curisz]

well, see, a boycott isn't like a court of law. Free individuals can choose to boycott a company for no reason at all. I can boycott sherman williams because that cover the earth sign with red paint all over the planet is grotesque. A boycott can be used to at least pressure coke into admitting what they know, or dealing with the allegations in some way. At any rate, they will never get ANY answers or evidence either way if they do nothing.

I'm not saying I'm boycotting them, I was just making the point that typically conservatives like to deregulate companies, and claim that the public can police them by boycotting them if they do something they dislike. Boycotting is, in fact, the free market solution to business regulation. Therefore it surprised me that a free-market advocate such as yourself would evidence such hostility to the idea of a boycott. Or do conservatives only invoke the concept of boycotts because they assume the public lacks the will to really follow through with them?

Now, how about a nice post on how you would go about policing American based Multinationals?

[DEFCON 1]

I don't have hostility about it, That is your choice of words to reinforce your argument. I boycott $hit all the time. I don't buy Pepsi

[curisz]

Pretty much fuels snotty nosed socialist wanna be's and psycho's

progressive movements = consisting of wack jobs that don't use deodorant. I had a chance to smell them during G8

Blah blah blah Mr. Arm Chair Revolutionary. I was handed one of their hand out's BY THEM. See, your down there in that goat herding hell hole and I am up here at ground zero and get to rub elbows with all the maggots you idolize. [/quote]



Not hostile? Really? Come on Defcon, tell me about what you would do about this situation. Tell me your ideas. You do have some ideas don't you? I know you can do better than just spewing this sort of stuff. I'm off to work. I look forward to reading what you have to say when I get home.