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WAKE UP! WAKE UP! IT'S YER COOL BANANA!
Issue 204, Friday 12th March 1999
KILLER CORPS GO BANANAS
"Has the world gone mad or is it me?"- Dave Brock, Master of the Universe
Late last year, the guardians of freedom and democracy felt compelled to mount a tactical trade offensive against small Caribbean farmers, as a golden thankyou to Carl H. Lindner, the Chief Execution Officer of Chiquita Brands International, who donated $500,000 dollars to Democrat funds.
Only hours after receiving this philanthropic gesture the Clinton administration lodged a complaint with the World Trample Organisation (WTO) charging the EU with having a 'discriminatory' approach to importing bananas. That is, the EU support the Caribbean economies which rely on banana exports for survival, in preference to the economies of the expansionist corporations which have controlled Central America's "banana republics" with an iron fist for decades.
The US is now threatening action against a range of European business from Italian light fittings to Scottish cashmere sweaters, in response to the $520 million US banana giants Chiquita, Dole and Del Monte claim they 'lose due to unfair trade' each year. Chiquita alone is worth $14 billion.
Like one of those baby fishies that just gets bigger and bigger by eating all the smaller baby fishies in the same creek who think it's harmless cos it looks the same as them, the US Killer Corps have gone to war on their allies.
The ACP banana trade is rooted in colonialism which has left Caribbean economies dependent on exports to Europe for survival
Now small Caribbean farmers are facing ruin because the Chiquita-Dole cartel, which own massive plantations in Latin America, effectively act as price setters.
"Take a drive around the island and the decline is evident. Everybody you
speak to will tell you that the banana industry is heading for the rocks. Just
a few years ago there were 6500 banana growers, these days there are only
between 3000 and 4000 in an atmosphere of total uncertainty."
- Windward Islands Farmer's Association
The real costs of banana production are not included in the current retail price. Banana production in the Windwards is characterised by smallholders, who grow their fruit on family owned farms. The system is labour intensive, and use of agrochemicals is low. Despite the pressures, banana quality from the Islands is on the up. Bananas are Britain's most popular fruit and consumption is increasing. In a fair world you would think there would be room for the smallholders. But Chiquita has 70% of the EU banana market and wants the lot.
"The market is now governed solely by the classic supply and demand
mechanism. Within the new system, only the most competitive producers will be
able to supply the European market."
- Banana Link
So let's look at the world of banana dollars and see if we like it.
- Transnational business methods in the 'banana republics' have followed a familiar pattern of eviction, exploitation and negligence.
- In Guatemala, a union officer organising Chiquita plantation workers was shot dead in 1994 while other trade unionists received death threats.
- In Honduras, in 1996, an entire village of 600 people in a banana plantations was bulldozed by troops. Chiquita said the land was no longer suitable, and people must be evicted so it could be sold - then they leased it to a former employee who continued with slashed labour costs. Chiquita was later revealed to have bought food and fuel for the army unit carrying out the clearances.
- And last week Chiquita laid off 6000 workers in Honduras and Guatemala only 120 days in the wake of a hurricane. They have received no financial assistance for the last two months. The company is trying to get unions to agree to lower wages and reduced social benefits.
Frequent applications of the pesticide DBCP (banned in the countries which produced it) together with inadequate protection, has led to more than 20,000 cases of male sterility amongst workers. Both Chiquita and Dole are involved in legal cases brought by those affected. For every ton of bananas shipped, two tons of waste are left behind while an average Costa Rican consumes an incredible 4kg of pesticides a year, eight times the world average. Chiquita's track record is one of aggression, intimidation and brutality in pursuit of massive profits
SchNEWS ain't 'avin it and maybe you ain't either, so this weeks alternative is to discriminate like fuck against Chiquita and support fair trade bananas by buying those labelled Windward Islands (5 Isles bananas) We do not recommend readers find out where Chiquita CEO Lindner lives, buy a Chiquita banana, tie up the slimeball, and shove said banana, now coated in a powerful fixative up the tosser's rectum.
World Development Movement
25 Beehive Place, London SW9
7QR
Tel: 0171 737 6215 Web:
http://www.oneworld.org/wdm
Banana Link
38-40 Exchange St, Norwich NR2 1XA
PARK PRANKS
The protest camp at Ashton Court Park in Bristol is calling it a day. For nearly a year protestors have tried to stop the expansion of Durnford Quarry into the park. With the meadow 'translocated' and blasting imminent, it was time to say goodbye, but not without the last few laughs.Ashton Court was given to the people of Bristol in 1959 with the condition that nothing be done that 'would detract from its value as a recreation ground or prejudice the enjoyment of the people'. Realising that turning the park into an open quarry and destroying the habitats of rare orchids and other wildlife might just 'prejudice their enjoyment' of it, two protestors abseiled into the quarry and occupied a ledge above a load of explosives that were due to be detonated five minutes later. They were evicted by police after 32 hours and are in court at the end of the month. Meanwhile the quarry manager had his lawn translocated onto his driveway - and a daffodil planted on the roof of his car. Translocation means digging up everything and placing the land elsewhere. Surprise, surprise, it never works but it makes for good greenwash!
DOUBLE BILLING SPECTACULAR
Thursday 18th MarchREBEL ALLIANCE
7 pm sharp upstairs at Hobgoblin Pub, London RoadFollowed by
SchNEWS BENEFIT
EXODUS COLLECTIVEGROUND ZERO
@ New Madeira Hotel, 19-23 Marine Parade (along the seafront)
8 - 9.30 pm SchNEWS live! & talk and film from the Exodus
Collective
then music till 2 am
Just £3
Transport is hopefully being sorted to get people from the Alliance to Maderia Hotel
RIGHT TO STAND ON ROADSIDE VICTORY
All at SchNEWS towers can sleep soundly tonight, safe in the knowledge that we are free to stand on the verge next to the road-side and not fear arrest. The Lord Chancellor decided last Thursday to uphold the quashing of the conviction of two people who were hanging out round Stonehenge one summer solstice, and nicked under the trespassory assembly section of the Criminal Justice Act (CJA). The clause was originally intended to make assemblies of 20 or more people a criminal offence, but the ruling could make this unworkable.However, before you get carried away with all these new rights, and run out there to stand on your nearest road-side, beware! You can only do so if you have a "reasonable purpose", or the " activity in question does not amount to a public or private nuisance and does not obstruct the highway by unreasonably impeding the primary right of the public to pass and repass"(got that) Rest assured, we can continue to protest peacefully, while our lungs fill up with carbon monoxide.
RIGHT TO WALK IN THE COUNTRYSIDE SHOCKER
While you're recovering from the shock of discovering that you can stand on the verge of the A303, there's more! Jump for joy, Michael "Swampy" Meacher ,this week announced a right to roam across 4 million acres of open land in the UK. It is surely only a matter of time before all land in the UK is collectivised, and we live in anarchist communes, eating root vegetables, sharing stories of the revolution.However, don't get too excited, as there's no timetable for legislation, and it could get amended beyond all recognition by House of Commons committees, or by those well known guardians of the freedom to access, the House of Lords. Richard Moyse from Land Is Ours told SchNEWS "It's a start, but not entirely satisfactory".
Meanwhile the Local Access Forums could end up a bureaucratic nightmare over-seen by the Countryside Agency, which as we pointed out in last weeks SchNEWS is headed by landed gentry bod and former president of the Country Landowners Association, Ewan "just like putting an alchoholic in charge of a pub" Cameron.
- Mass Trespass Sunday March 21st Meet Brighton Station 10 am sharp. Six miles walk. No dogs. £5 travel costs. Tel 01273 620815
- Sat April 3rd land occupation somewhere in the south of England, to clebrate 350th anniversiary of Diggers occupation of St.George's Hill.
Box E, 111 Magdalen Rd., Oxford, OX4 1RQ
Tel: 01865 722016 Web: http://www.oneworld.org/tlio
As SchNEWS went to press, the evicition at Crystal Palace entered its tenth day with people still down the tunnels trying to stop a massive leisure complex being built in the park (see SchNEWS 203). While Bromley Council moan about "professional protestors…preventing those in the surrounding area who are unemployed and unskilled from the opportunities that will…" blah, yawn) they stay stony silent about the fact that some private security guards from Pilgrim Security have been nicked during the eviciton after robbing the local off-licence and petrol station.
There's a massive party planned this Saturday (13th) Meet 12 noon at the Palace Paarde. Contact the Campaign 0181 693 8200
RUSSIAN REVOLUTION DEJA VU
A Workers' Collective Committee has taken over a machine-building plant in Yasnogorsk, a town of 20,000 people near Moscow. The 4,200 workers are battling the Communist Party local authority and the (Yeltsinite) privatization program for the plant. In 1990, the factory was turned into a joint stock company in which the workers held a majority of shares. Last September the workers and shareholders of the plant dismissed the Administration at a general meeting. When the "owners" of the plant refused to recognize the results, the workers seized control. A Soviet-stylee Workers Collective was set up and now oversees admin, production, selling, all finances, distribution of wages and the town as a whole. Last December 10,000 people from Yasnogorsk marched to block the railway line into Moscow to support demands for the release from prison of the worker-elected directors of the factory and to stop the privatization move. It was only the mobilization of special police forces which prevented the workers from paralyzing one of the main railways in Russia. The Yasnogorsk workers say, "This is our revolution" and are appealing for international solidarity in the fight against the trend towards private property and global capitalism.RIP
Once again the message from Colombia is 'Don't fuck with the oil barons.' Two years ago the U'wa people won a law suit to stop US firm Occidental Petroleum (working with Shell of course)from drilling in their lands. They had threatened mass sucicide believing that if oil('the blood of the earth') was extracted it would mean the end of the tribe. Helping them with their legal battle and deeply committed to the Uwa people, was Terence Freitas who along with Ingrid Washinawatok and Lahe'ena'e Gay were kidnapped last week on their way to the reserve. Their bodies were found bound,blindfolded and bullet ridden. No one has yet claimed responsibility for their deaths.SchNEWS dedicates this weeks issue to them.
- Berito KuwarU'wa from the tribe will open the Earth Centre near Doncaster on March 28th. Contact 01709 512000
AND FINALLY
Heard the one about Hunt Liason Police officer from Wiltshire who got together with his mates from the Countryside Alliance and Master of Fox Hounds Association and produced, after 'lenghty consultation' a code of conduct for hunt protestors "which everyone agreed was the way forward". Apart of course Hunt Sabs and the League Against Cruel Sports (LACS), who seem to have been overlooked in the 'lenghty consultation' process. The code includes gems like"Do not attempt to intefere with the hunt, engage in any form of sabotage be it direct action or subtle tactics (ie use of whips, horns, sprays, shouting/yelling or the use of your vehicle in any manner to obstruct/cause nuisance to the hunt".
"In the interests of safety should an injured fox be required to be dug out and humanely destroyed a 50 metre exclusion zone will be in force."
Which would just about make hunt sabbing totally ineffective… Talking of coppers,the first hard evidence (if any was needed) that foxes suffer stress and exhaustion from being hunted came early in February, when a fox being chased by a hunt, sought refuge down a rabbit hole. 'Copper' the fox was eventually rescued by sabs and taken to a vet and is now recovering. SchNEWS wishes 'copper' well - tho' we think the idea of sending 'Get well soon cards' a little odd. Wouldn't it prefer a nice juicy….
DISCLAIMER
"Come on punk, make my day!"[Graphic: Banana with shades and a big gun]
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Last updated 18 March 1999
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