WATER
(continued from)
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A World Without Water
Coca Cola draining water tables in India causing great hardship to the farmers and local families. The World Bank charging people in Africa to use water from the local rivers. Detroit water becomes so expensive that some people have to beg neighbours for water and CPS can take children from parents. Scheme by cities in US to allow the water systems to run down deliberately so that the people will accept privatization. In Bolivia, people cannot afford the high connection rates that equal 9 month's salary to some families. In Tanzania, the privatized company only turns on the taps for a few hours, 1-2 times a week, after midnite - the tourist spots have water all the time. The World Bank is pushing for worldwide privatization of water. Bolivian protest over water escalated when the government declared martial law and sent in troops with live ammunition.
Bitter Water - Coca Cola
Actual newspaper articles shown in video above:
Residues of toxic pesticides in 12 soft drink brands: CSE
Residues of toxic pesticides in 12 soft drink brands: CSE
By Our Staff Reporter
Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Aug 06, 2003
NEW DELHI AUG. 5. The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) today announced that 12 soft drink brands collected for testing from in and around Delhi contained residues of four extremely toxic pesticides and insecticides — lindane, DDT, malathion and chlorpyrifos. The multinational companies Coca-Cola and PepsiCo immediately challenged the report and indicated that they might consider legal action.
Presenting the findings at a press conference here today, the Director, CSE, Sunita Narain, said that in all the samples, the levels of pesticide residues far exceeded the maximum residue limit for pesticides in water used as "food'' as set down by the European Economic Commission (EEC).
She said that each sample had enough poison to cause long-term cancer, damage to the nervous and reproductive systems, birth defects and severe disruption of the immune system.
The tested soft drinks include Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Mountain Dew, Diet Pepsi, Mirinda Orange, Mirinda Lemon, Blue Pepsi, 7Up, Fanta, Limca, Sprite and Thums Up.
Ms. Narain said that according to the findings, Coca-Cola and Pepsi had almost similar concentration of pesticide residues. While contaminants in Pepsi were 37 times higher than the EEC limit, Coca-Cola overstepped the norm having 45 times the prescribed limit of pesticide contamination.
Faring the worst in the "health test'', according to her, was Mirinda Lemon followed by Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Fanta, Mirinda Orange, 7Up, Mountain Dew, Limca, Thums Up and Sprite. It was also found that pesticides in soft drinks were similar to bottled water, which the CSE had tested earlier this year.
Releasing the report, Ms. Narain said: "The inference drawn from the tests is that groundwater used for making soft drinks is infested with pesticides. Another interesting find was the fact that the same brands found and tested abroad did not contain these pesticides.''
``Why these companies are never booked in India is simply because one cannot take them to court since the norms that regulate manufacture of cold (soft) drinks here are not well defined. The `food' sector is virtually unregulated,'' she said.
Reacting to the CSE report, both the multinational companies — Coca-Cola and Pepsi — described it as "unreliable'' and indicated that they might resort to legal action.
The chairman of PepsiCo, Rajiv Bakshi, said, "Our company is well within the limits of the pesticide residue norms set by the European Union for water used in products within public domain. We conform to all norms and are open to all testing by an internationally-accredited independent laboratory and by experienced people.''
The chief executive officer of Coke, Sanjiv Gupta, said, "Our product is world class and is the same we sell in Europe and the U.S. These are tested by top grade labs like Vimta in Hyderabad and TNO in the Netherlands.'' Claiming that this was a "bigger'' controversy than the previous drinking water report, Mr. Gupta said his company had not moved the court previously because it thought "the controversy did not directly threaten the reputation of the company''.
Judgment on Coke plant to have far-reaching impact
By K.P.M. Basheer
Kochi, Dec. 20.
The Hindu, December 21, 2003, Sunday
http://archives.lists.indymedia.org/imc-editorial/2003-December/008216.html
The Kerala High Court’s directive on Tuesday in the Coca-Cola plant at Plachimada to stop extraction of groundwater, which had led to the drying up of village wells, will have a fare-reaching impact on the water agitations across the country.
And, for the people’s movements in Third World countries which have been looking to the 606-day-old Plachimada agitation as a sequel to the Kochamba (Bolivia) water resistance, it is significant victory in the fight against globalization and multinational corporations.
For, Justice K. Balakrishnan Nair’s directive to Coca-Cola is the victory of a small village panchayat [local self-governments at the village or small town level in India] headed by a Dalit against one of the largest companies in the world. The judge’s assertion that groundwater is a public property and that no one has the right to overexploit it and that the panchayats have a duty to protect groundwater against excessive exploitation could be used as a judicial weapon in the water struggles in the country.
The landmark judgment, which has deep implications for the people’s right to drinking water, was on a writ petition filed by the panchayat of Perumatty (that includes Plachimada), a village close to the Tamil Nadu border in Chittoor taluk of Palakkad district. The panchayat had challenged the State Government’s intervention in its decision to cancel the licence it had given to the Coca-Cola plant. Its move to get the plant closed, which was opposed by the State Government, was on the realization that the plant had been overexploiting groundwater to the detriment of several hundred households in the Plachimada and nearby areas. The panchayat’s move echoed the demand of the ongoing agitation by the Plachimada people that the Coca-Cola plant should be wound up.
The judge upheld the panchayat’s responsibility to protect groundwater. He asserted that nobody has the right to overexploit groundwater which is a public property. If every person in the village were to be allowed to draw groundwater as the Coca Cola plant did, the village would turn barren, the judge observed. The company had told the court that it was drawing 510 kilo liters of water daily. (However, the Plachimada agitationists claim the withdrawal was two or three times this figure). The judge said this was illegal. He said groundwater belonged to the people and the Government could not allow a private party to extract such a large quantity of water.
The Coca-Cola plant was commissioned in March 2000 in a region which gets only a third of Kerala’s average rainfall. The Perumatty panchayat as well as all political parties had welcomed the advent of the plant. However, in less than two years, the local people realized that because of the overexploitation of groundwater by the plant the water table in the area had dipped and a large number of wells in the plant’s neighbourhood had gone dry. The plant had permission to have one bore well but it now has six, apart from two very large open wells. Its daily withdrawal of water is said to equal 20,000 persons’ per capita water use.
The Plachimada inhabitants who protested the overexploitation launched an agitation in front of the plant in April last year. The panchayat and the political parties which earlier had not been favourable to the cause, started backing it as the agitation gained momentum and received all India support. Leading environmental, human rights and social activists visited Plachimada offering their support. The panchayat had on April 7 this year decided to cancel the company’s licence against which the latter had gone to the High Court.
Two developments had given a boost to the Plachimada agitation. One, the finding by the Centre for Science and Environment, Delhi’s finding of pesticides residues in Coke. Two, a BBC report that the sludge supplied by the Coca-Cola plant at Plachimada to the local farmers as manure contained heavy doses of toxic metals – cadmium and lead.
Following these, Plachimada grabbed international attention and water resistance movements across the world keenly watched the agitation. After the Silent Valley agitation against setting up a huge hydel project and the Chaliyar struggle against the Mavur Gwalior Ryons factory, the Plachimada resistance has been the longest environmental agitation in the State.
Judgment on Coke plant to have far-reaching impact
By K.P.M. Basheer
Kochi, Dec. 20.
The Hindu, December 21, 2003, Sunday
http://archives.lists.indymedia.org/imc-editorial/2003-December/008216.html
The Kerala High Court’s directive on Tuesday in the Coca-Cola plant at Plachimada to stop extraction of groundwater, which had led to the drying up of village wells, will have a fare-reaching impact on the water agitations across the country.
And, for the people’s movements in Third World countries which have been looking to the 606-day-old Plachimada agitation as a sequel to the Kochamba (Bolivia) water resistance, it is significant victory in the fight against globalization and multinational corporations.
For, Justice K. Balakrishnan Nair’s directive to Coca-Cola is the victory of a small village panchayat [local self-governments at the village or small town level in India] headed by a Dalit against one of the largest companies in the world. The judge’s assertion that groundwater is a public property and that no one has the right to overexploit it and that the panchayats have a duty to protect groundwater against excessive exploitation could be used as a judicial weapon in the water struggles in the country.
The landmark judgment, which has deep implications for the people’s right to drinking water, was on a writ petition filed by the panchayat of Perumatty (that includes Plachimada), a village close to the Tamil Nadu border in Chittoor taluk of Palakkad district. The panchayat had challenged the State Government’s intervention in its decision to cancel the licence it had given to the Coca-Cola plant. Its move to get the plant closed, which was opposed by the State Government, was on the realization that the plant had been overexploiting groundwater to the detriment of several hundred households in the Plachimada and nearby areas. The panchayat’s move echoed the demand of the ongoing agitation by the Plachimada people that the Coca-Cola plant should be wound up.
The judge upheld the panchayat’s responsibility to protect groundwater. He asserted that nobody has the right to overexploit groundwater which is a public property. If every person in the village were to be allowed to draw groundwater as the Coca Cola plant did, the village would turn barren, the judge observed. The company had told the court that it was drawing 510 kilo liters of water daily. (However, the Plachimada agitationists claim the withdrawal was two or three times this figure). The judge said this was illegal. He said groundwater belonged to the people and the Government could not allow a private party to extract such a large quantity of water.
The Coca-Cola plant was commissioned in March 2000 in a region which gets only a third of Kerala’s average rainfall. The Perumatty panchayat as well as all political parties had welcomed the advent of the plant. However, in less than two years, the local people realized that because of the overexploitation of groundwater by the plant the water table in the area had dipped and a large number of wells in the plant’s neighbourhood had gone dry. The plant had permission to have one bore well but it now has six, apart from two very large open wells. Its daily withdrawal of water is said to equal 20,000 persons’ per capita water use.
The Plachimada inhabitants who protested the overexploitation launched an agitation in front of the plant in April last year. The panchayat and the political parties which earlier had not been favourable to the cause, started backing it as the agitation gained momentum and received all India support. Leading environmental, human rights and social activists visited Plachimada offering their support. The panchayat had on April 7 this year decided to cancel the company’s licence against which the latter had gone to the High Court.
Two developments had given a boost to the Plachimada agitation. One, the finding by the Centre for Science and Environment, Delhi’s finding of pesticides residues in Coke. Two, a BBC report that the sludge supplied by the Coca-Cola plant at Plachimada to the local farmers as manure contained heavy doses of toxic metals – cadmium and lead.
Following these, Plachimada grabbed international attention and water resistance movements across the world keenly watched the agitation. After the Silent Valley agitation against setting up a huge hydel project and the Chaliyar struggle against the Mavur Gwalior Ryons factory, the Plachimada resistance has been the longest environmental agitation in the State.
The Cost of a Coke 2nd Edition ... Coca-Cola Exposed! Killer Cola
Actual articles shown in video above:
Coca-Cola (Coke) Sued for Human Rights Abuses in Colombia
United Steel Workers Union and the International Labor Rights Fund 20jul01
http://www.mindfully.org/Industry/Coca-Cola-Human-Rights20jul01.htm
The United Steel Workers Union and the International Labor Rights Fund will file suit tomorrow, July 20, in US District Court for the Southern District of Florida (Miami) against Coke and Panamerican Beverages, Inc., the primary bottler of Coke products in Latin America. Additional defendants include owners of a bottling plant in Colombia where trade union leaders have been murdered. The case was initiated by SINALTRAINAL, the trade union that represents workers at the Coke facilities in Colombia. SINALTRAINAL has long maintained that Coke is among the most notorious employers in Colombia and that the company maintains open relations with murderous death squads as part of a program to intimidate trade union leaders. The union is using the filing of this case on July 20, Colombian Independence Day, to renew its campaign to highlight that Colombia holds the terrible distinction of being ranked number one in the world for the number of trade union leaders murdered each year, and that Coke plays a key role in maintaining that distinction.
Other Plaintiffs include the Estate of Isidro Segundo Gil, a trade union leader who was murdered while working at the Coke bottling plant in Carepa, Colombia. The manager of that facility, owned by an American, Richard Kirby, who is also a defendant in this case, specifically threatened to kill the leaders of the union if they continued their union activities. He made good on the threat and ordered the murder of Mr. Gil. The other Plaintiffs are Luis Eduardo Garcia, Alvaro Gonzalez, José Domingo Flores, Jorge Humberto Leal and Juan Carlos Galvis, all leaders of SINALTRAINAL, and, while employed by Coke, were subjected to torture, kidnapping, and/or unlawful detention in order to encourage them to cease their trade union activities. These Plaintiffs allege that Coke employees either ordered the violence directly, or delegated the job to paramilitary death squads that were acting as agents for Coke.
"This case is extremely important for trade union and human rights. If we cannot get Coke, one of the most well known companies in the world, to protect the lives and human rights of the workers at its world-wide bottling facilities, then we certainly have a long way to go in making the global economy safe for trade unionists, " said Daniel Kovalik, Assistant General Counsel of the Steelworkers and co-counsel for the Plaintiffs. "While the offenses detailed in the Complaint occurred in an industry outside the Steelworkers' core jurisdiction, we are filing this case to show our solidarity with the embattled trade unions of Colombia. We absolutely must stand up together to stop such criminal activity against our union brothers and sisters regardless of where or in what industry it occurs." he added.
"The case is very strong from a legal perspective," said Terry Collingsworth, general counsel of the DC-based International Labor Rights Fund, who is co-counsel for the Plaintiffs, and who has brought similar cases against Exxon Mobil and Unocal Corporation for human rights violations in Aceh, Indonesia and Burma, respectively. "There is no question that Coke knew about and benefited from the systematic repression of trade union rights at its bottling plants in Colombia, and this case will make the company accountable," he stated.
The case is based on the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA), a law passed by Congress in 1789 aimed at protecting the new nation's international reputation by enabling non-citizens to use federal courts to hold Americans accountable for violations of international law. "The Plaintiffs allege that Coke and the other defendants violated clear standards of international law by maintaining a willful campaign of terror against members and leaders of SINALTRAINAL," explained Dan Kovalik, who interviewed many of the Coke victims in Colombia.
In addition to pursuing legal remedies in federal court, the Steelworkers and the International Labor Rights Fund join with SINALTRAINAL in asking workers and consumers around the world to send a message to Coke to end the terror at the Coke facilities in Colombia and make reparations to the victims.
Workers attacked at Coke factory in Turkey
Issued : Monday 29 August, 2005
http://www.labour.ie/youth/news/index/20050829102416.html
Trying to fight falling wage rates, workers distributing Coca-Cola in Turkey have been actively fighting for a union, in the face of aggressive management reprisals.
"Go on working by resigning from the union," said Coca-Cola representatives to a group of union members employed at Trakya Nakliyat ve Ticaret Ltd. Sti, Coca-Cola's distribution plant in Dudullu, Turkey, "otherwise, we, as the Coca-Cola Company, shall let no members of the union work with us."
The next day, they followed through with their threat, firing 50 union members without compensation. All the workers fired were members of the union, DISK/Nakliyat-Is. This mass firing followed at the heels of an earlier firing where 5 union leaders were dismissed, supposedly for their poor work performances.
Five days after the mass firings in Dudullu, 50 more union workers were terminated, but this time at the Yenibosna plant owned by the same owners. As in the case of the Dudullu plant, workers at Yenibosna were pressured by Coca-Cola officials and Trakya Nakliyat managers to resign from the union.
It is apparent that Coca-Cola and their business partners in Turkey are undertaking an anti-union campaign within Coca-Cola's distribution network by seeking to thwart unionizing efforts through the firing of union members, an unlawful violation of international labor standards and of Turkish law that protect the rights of workers to join a union.
On July 20th, in response to the anti-union campaign, workers from the Dudullu plant mobilized a protest against the firings and demanded reinstatement. Over 150 people, consisting of fired workers and their families entered the facility where DISK union officials and Coca-Cola representatives began to negotiate. At the moment that the union felt it was just about to reach an agreement with Coca-Cola, the police raided the plant, violently assaulting workers, their spouses and their children, using tear gas and other methods to disperse the protestors. In the end, many were injured and 92 people were arrested. Though most have been released, Istanbul's Security Administration continues to hold union leaders.
Given that the brutal attack against workers and their families occurred within plant grounds, the union is of the strong opinion that Coca-Cola officials sanctioned the violent police action. This is not the first time that Coca-Cola has been associated with anti-union violence or violations of human and labor rights. Coca-Cola must stop abusing the rights of workers. In the case of Turkey, Coca-Cola and its partners must:
1. Reinstate all terminated workers from Dudullu and Yenibosna with back-pay;
2. Drop all charges against the people that participated in the protest;
3. Stop the anti-union campaign in the plants, and issue to all workers a written statement that no workers will face retaliation for choosing to exercise their legal right to join a trade union; and
4. Recognize the union and commence negotiations toward collective bargaining agreement.
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Blue Gold - World Water Wars
Wars of the future will be fought over water as they are over oil today, as the source of human survival enters the global marketplace and political arena. Corporate giants, private investors, and corrupt governments vie for control of our dwindling supply, prompting protests, lawsuits, and revolutions from citizens fighting for the right to survive. Past civilizations have collapsed from poor water management. Can the human race survive?
