Vodafone, Monsanto, Marriott, BP, General Dynamics, etc.: Managing Exploitation and Regime-Change in North Africa

In the early days of Egyptian dictator Mubarak's active attempts at suppression of dissent, Vodafone Egypt (@Vodafone, part of Vodafone International @Vodafone_group and including @VodafoneUK, shareholders of whom partially own Verizon Wireless) aided Mubarak in shutting down the Internet.  Not being in Egypt or intimately associated with Egyptian residents, I must rely on social networks and news to make a judgment.  Given this, I saw a company interested first and foremost in trying to have it both ways.  They supported Mubarak's call to shut down the Internet and then sought to justify their actions as necessary because the regime could have shut them down anyway and it would have been more difficult to bring service back up.  Vodafone also offered weak apologies accompanied with free SMS messages (and a "power to you" message that was breathless in its juvenile dismissiveness regarding the part Vodafone played in Mubarak's brutal crackdown) after the regime had fallen.  It seems from all this, however, that Vodafone may have lingering but marginal reputational damage (see also this Pambazuka article about British students "[exposing] the activities of the Vodafone companies that avoided paying billions of dollars in taxes."), given that its role only skirted the surface of news about Egypt, and the @VodafoneEgypt tweets have perhaps successfully co-opted the "freedom" line to sell service.

This post is not only about Vodafone, however, but about the ability of transnational corporations to operate discretely and effectively throughout the world.  It is a truism that Coca-Cola successfully presents their face, and the brown sugar-water contents of their bottles, from the power centers of the City of London and Wall Street to the rural market center of Ndu in Cameroon.  Transnational corporations are effective to the extent that they control their public face, and the uprisings in North Africa and elsewhere are no exception.  Amongst the media saturation regarding Mubarak, Saleh, Gadaffi and the Bahraini royal family, corporate activities have been relatively marginal or abstract.  BP and General Dynamics have been mentioned in the context of Libya, while tear gas containers "made in the USA" have been mentioned with the manufacturer (Combined Tactical Systems of Jamestown, Pennsylvania) cited less often.  Petroleum corporations have been mentioned as leaving Libya in response to the uprising there.  Useful work has been done regarding the central place of workers' movements (e.g. Marriott workers) throughout Egypt as they struggle against "capital."  For example, www.arabawy.org and http://twitter.com/#!/3arabawy offer valuable reflections, news and resources regarding these movements and relations with more civic minded regime-change movements. However, what is Monsanto for example doing in Egypt?  I cannot find mention of Monsanto on arabawy.  Certainly the corporate leaders are actively engaged with the new regime as they have long been engaged with the Mubarak regime.

Corporate news sites (even Al Jazeera) will shy away from critique of the corporations responsible for their bottom lines.  It is the job of social newsmakers, social journalists, and activists to keep specific corporations on top of the social network news even as you sacrifice lives, and we all sacrifice fortune and sacred honor in transforming our governments and politics.

In the quiet times after the revolution; beware democratisers and structural adjusters

@alaa comments: "south africa taught me big struggle is the one after democracy, but that's still premature we are not at democracy yet in egypt."  This is quite true.  Forces of status quo, apathy, indifference and oppression have many tools in the toolkit.  Mubarak may be gone.  However, even as Mandela assumed his rightful place as leader of South Africa, the democratisers and structural adjusters were already at work with the alternative plan, where people would "participate," be "empowered" and take "ownership" over "their" development.  In reality, as Naomi Klein writes eloquently in The Shock Doctrine, South African elites were shocked into going along with a program of neoliberal restructuring and debt that left ordinary South African people mired in debt and isolation.

Edward Said wrote that "The fabric of as thick a discourse as Orientalism has survived and functioned in Western society because of its richness."  As @3arabawy and @alaa among others emphasize, the struggle continues.

Congo Conflict Minerals Debate and the Arrogance of Academic "Expertise"

The recent bill passed in the U.S. regarding conflict minerals has mobilized a strong debate about the Congo, an area that it seems is usually ignored in U.S. press. In this debate, the usual interests are out in force trying to influence how and where the debate is seen and felt. One would expect corporate interests in Congo, having failed to completely prevent awareness in places such as the United States, to attempt an energetic response. Among other strategies, corporate interests can undermine the credibility of those seeking to bring awareness; question how bad the situation in the Congo really is; constrict the debate through straw man, ad hominem and other arguments; and change (or seem to change) behavior if that is necessary to relieve pressure.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the current blogging is the willingness of academics such as Laura (Texas in Africa) and Chris (Chris Blattman) to disparage (with not a little arrogance) the work of activists such as the Enough campaign. The arguments of these academics about the need for nuance "in the back pocket" and accuracy are correct. In this context Findwhatworks' argument about the difference between simplification and distortion is quite useful. However, their charge that Enough does not have, or is not interested in, "back pocket" nuance is questionable. Given Chris' willingness to remain for much of his/her argument in the realm of dismissiveness (e.g. about "vulgar" arguments), one should further doubt the efficacy of the argument.

It is also surprising that the academics concentrate on the Enough Campaign and do not bring in Global Witness, No Blood Minerals, or other groups.

Friends of the Congo makes an important argument about expanding concentration beyond conflict minerals to look at militarization (AFRICOM) as well as regional powers (e.g. Rwanda's Kagame).

Robert Miller provides an excellent in-depth supply-chain analysis, assisted in large part by Global Witness, of which corporations are benefiting from Congo minerals.

For other good blogs on this issue, see Congo Siasa here and here

It is not wise to say "there are no politics involved" when talking about climate change

I am a defender of the climate change and global warming thesis, for three major reasons. First, it is clear that more carbon is being released through human activity, and few people will deny that carbon traps the sun's heat. Second, I know personally defenders who have more grounding than I in the science underlying the thesis as well as the politics associated with skepticism. Their arguments are quite persuasive, and I admire their integrity. Third, as a result of the above two, I subscribe to the reasonable caution principle whereby if there is a good chance that destructive climate change is happening, it is better to be safe than sorry.

I believe that the release of these hacked, perhaps altered, certainly decontextualized emails so close to Copenhagen is simply a means of underhanded politics. I also believe that it is not useful at all to fall back on the notion that there is no politics involved in the climate change science.

"There are no politics involved in the melting of the ice sheet; it is what it is," said co-author Michael Mann, a lead author of 2001's IPCC Third Assessment Report.

If anything is clear from the hacked emails, it is that there is politics because people are discussing climate change, as Rupert Read makes clear in his OpenDemocracy submission (this article and the associated comments being one of the better resources thus far). They have fantasies about doing bodily harm to opponents. They make tactical decisions not only about experimentation but also the politics of result presentation and discussion. This should not be papered over particularly when the emails are hacked and already selectively released. I believe that the climate scientists should now endeavor with haste to release more stores of relevant data and emails, as hard an exercise as this is, so that we defenders may be able to more effectively combat the skeptics.

Below are two other interesting passages from the Inter Press Service article referenced above. The first article provides additional data demonstrating climate change rates are increasing:

More striking, though, are recent findings that far outstrip what was foreseen by the 2007 IPCC assessment. The summer melting of Arctic ice over the three years since then, for instance, has been about 40 percent greater than the average prediction of the models in that earlier report.

The second passage shows the politics that are involved no matter how politically important it is for scientists to seem to be above politics.

The authors of Tuesday's report rushed to their colleagues' defence.

"It is, of course, a criminal activity...and it really has nothing to do with the science," said Somerville. "The science is not going to be changed by a smear campaign."

"When all these personal emails are subject to cherry picking...it's easy to take something that is actually quite innocent and make it somehow nefarious," explained Mann, whose own work had been the subject of attacks by climate science sceptics in 2003.

"If the critics had succeeded in discrediting Mike [Mann], it wouldn't have changed anything because there would have been others with the same conclusions," said Steig. "The science precedes us."

Allafrica.com-Adamu Adamu: Obama - Nobel War Prize

Though it will probably not be Obama, the time is not far when an American president will come who can cut down Zionism to size, liberate the American spirit, so that American statesmen will work only for the interest of their republic and no one else. When that time comes we will see the American Republic out there fighting wars of liberation, not wars of attrition or occupation.

allAfrica.com: Nigeria: Obama - Nobel War Prize (Page 1 of 1)

We must all dream of this occasion, and wonder about the mechanisms of Adamu's confidence that "the time is not far." Furthermore, is it not a contradiction to hope for "[cutting] Zionism down to size" and at the same time "work only for the interest of their republic"? Aside from the parochialism of national interest, is not coddling of Zionism part of the interests of "the republic"?

Biofuels, corporate agriculture and the predicted crisis of land and food

Recently, Pambazuka (here and here) and the Oakland Institute have brought to increasing attention what people have known for a long time: biofuels and other large-scale corporate agriculture development hurt production of food, no matter what proponents (including Brazil's Lula da Silva) say.

The Oakland Institute describes its report The Great Land Grab in this way:

The Great Land Grab critically examines the role of the private sector in agricultural development and exposes implications of private sector control over food resources. The report concludes that those who promote the benefits of private sector growth in agriculture fail to recognize that acquisition of crucial food-producing lands by foreign private entities poses a threat to rural economies and livelihoods, land reform agendas, and other efforts aimed at making access to food more equitable.

Nikolaj Nielsen, for Pambazuka News, likewise throws into question otherwise laudable work for reduction of fossil fuels, arguing that European countries such as Sweden are buying up food land in Africa to produce fuel.

Sweden, for instance, has set a 40 per cent target for 2020 and a new government bill requires its transport sector to be fossil-free by 2030.

While such initiatives may be applauded, Sweden is as a result investing heavily in research and influencing EU-wide policy that provides financial incentives for companies to buy up land in Africa for biofuel production.

Likewise, Ethiopia is putting pressure on food production through its initiatives for renewable energy:

For Ethiopia to replace its consumption of 29,000 barrels of oil a day by renewable energies it will need to cultivate 24 per cent of its entire surface. The highest yields are invariably located on arable lands or forests where rainfall is abundant.

News such as this has been percolating for many years, particularly as the food crisis hit.  That reports such as the above are validating concerns about the impact of biofuels (and corporate agriculture in general) on food production should bolster criticism of current biofuel strategies and more importantly the search for truly sustainable renewable energy systems.  As former World Bank Vice President Ismail Serageldin put it in a recent IPS article: "It is wrong to burn the food of the poor to drive the cars of the rich." (see also this Avaaz call-to-action).

Kennedy Road: What is Happening to South Africa?

What is happening to South Africa,and why is Kennedy Road not being widely publicized except in the movement literature (of which Pambazuka, below, is one of the best for Africa)?  It is perhaps important that South Africa is associated so closely with Brazil, one of the leaders of the "developing world" and now the country with the second largest gap between rich and poor. 

The country is spending US$1.1 billion just to build new stadiums, while those who fought apartheid wait in shack settlements for running water and electricity. Levels of human development are now lower than in 1994, and South Africa has overtaken Brazil as the country with the widest gap between rich and poor.

Pambazuka - Democracy’s everyday death: South Africa's quiet coup

But why have we heard so little about this brutal attack on some of society’s most vulnerable members? Is it because common opinion is true — that the ANC led the attack and so negative press has been avoided?

Is the ANC the big bad wolf in Kennedy Road?