US pledges $16 million for IMF security

Members of the Washington D.C. police force take part in civil disturbance training at the Metropolitan Police Training Center in Lorton, VA, August 23, 2001.

By Spencer S. Hsu

Washington, DC, Aug. 24— The Bush administration will reimburse the District of Colombia for up to $16 million of the projected $29 million cost of providing security for next month’s meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington, officials announced yesterday.

The deal fell short of the city’s requests for aid in preparing for as many as 100,000 protesters.

Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Margret Nedelkoff Kellems said the balance left to the District to pay was “not an ideal outcome, certainly,” and she said the city intended to press the two international development agencies to shoulder some expenses in the city where they are headquartered. Otherwise, she said, the District would use its emergency reserves.

IMF spokesman William Murray said the fund has not received an aid request from the US government and that payment would be unprecedented. “The fund and the bank take the traditional view that host countries are responsible for providing a secure working environment,” he said.

“The federal government recognizes that, in this instance, the costs for managing this event should not rest solely on the taxpayers of the District of Columbia,” Sean O’Keefe, deputy director of the US. Office of Management and Budget, said in a letter to Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D).

“We’re pleased we were able to come to terms,” Kellems said at a news conference with DC Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey.

The agreement capped financial preparations for the Sept. 29-30 meetings of the two groups. The dates heightened anxieties in the perennially strapped District, because they fall at the end of the city government’s fiscal year.

Authorities said they expect mostly peaceful protests. But police and protesters have clashed at recent world economic summits in Seattle, Quebec and Genoa, Italy. Last month’s Group of Eight meeting, at which police and protesters rioted and one protester was shot dead by police, reportedly cost the Italian government $100 million.

Protesters, though, have decried the efforts and questioned the motives of officials.

Some organizers accused DC police of inflating the numbers of expected demonstrators to justify the $29 million plan.

“It’s inappropriate for police forces to be used as private security for unpopular global financial institutions,” said Matthew Smucker, 23, an organizer with Mobilization for Global Justice, which he said plans legal, nonviolent protests that would not warrant extra security.

Ramsey said: “If we have large numbers of people show up but they basically remain peaceful ... then we’ll be okay.... If they engage in large-scale, violent behavior, then we’re going to have a problem with or without this money being in place, because of the numbers that we’re talking about.”

Of the federal funds, up to $11 million will go to transport, house, feed and pay more than 3,000 law enforcement officers from other jurisdictions who will be brought in to virtually double the District’s police force for four days.

The government also committed to purchase up to $4.9 million worth of riot gear, medical supplies and operating equipment, including protective suits and helmets for about 2,000 police, rescue and emergency workers. The equipment will remain federal property.

The District agreed to pay $6.7 million in expected overtime costs for District police and other local government workers, $4.4 million to speed up installation of new police communication and video equipment and $1.5 million for various other expenses.

The $29 million does not include a $2 million, nine-foot-high concrete and metal fence planned to cordon off swaths of downtown to create a security zone around IMF and World Bank headquarters, meeting sites and the White House. That expense has been taken over by the Secret Service, DC officials said.

“We’re confidant we can do everything we need to do to ensure security,” Kellems said. “The city can afford what the city is putting up.”

The Bush administration agreed to repay the District for expenses by Dec. 31, in time for the city to include the sum in its annual financial statements.

Source: Washington Post

DuPont convicted of racketeering in Benlate case

Aug. 17— A Florida jury has found DuPont Co., makers of the fungicide Benlate (benomyl) liable for racketeering, negligence, fraud and defective product claims in a lawsuit filed by two Costa Rican-based plant nurseries. DuPont was ordered to pay $78.3 million to the nurseries, but announced that it would appeal the decision.

This is the latest in a long line of cases against DuPont that have resulted in litigation and settlement charges totaling approximately $1.3 billion to the company over the last ten years. In April 2001, DuPont announced that it would phase out sales of Benlate around the world by the end of 2002.

The racketeering charges were based on information gathered from internal DuPont documents showing that the company conducted tests in Costa Rica in 1992, but destroyed the records as claims against Benlate mounted. The growers’ attorney maintained that DuPont had launched a corporate “damage control” program by assigning an attorney to supervise the testing, skewing some results, and discarding those that were unfavorable.

A plant pathologist from Pennsylvania State University, testifying for the growers, stated that DuPont documents dating back to 1980 describe Benlate as an unstable product prone to deterioration in hot, moist conditions. According to his testimony, some plants treated with Benlate grew to only 10% of their expected height, miniature roses in Florida dropped all of their leaves within two days of treatment, and Hawaiian orchids treated with Benlate were too malformed to sell. The plant pathologist attributed the problems to a natural byproduct of the breakdown of Benlate that, in his opinion, turned the fungicide into an herbicide.

DuPont’s attorney stated that after US testing in 1992, “DuPont reached the conclusion, the inescapable biological conclusion, that Benlate could not be the cause of the damage.” According to DuPont, the problem was due to a one-time incident of herbicide contamination at a Benlate mixing plant. However, growers’ complaints about crop damage continued long after the contamination occurred.

In a related story, attorneys representing growers in another Benlate case five years earlier made a side deal with DuPont as part of the settlement. The attorneys, who represented 20 farmers and nurseries suing DuPont for Benlate damage, personally collected $6.4 million in return for agreeing to never bring another Benlate case against the company. The growers accepted a settlement of $59 million from DuPont, but were not told about the side agreement with their lawyers, who also received $20 million in fees for the case.

Some of the growers have since filed a malpractice suit against the lawyers and are also seeking punitive damages. DuPont defends the payment to the lawyers saying that the company didn’t feel it was in its interest to bankroll the additional cases that these attorneys were threatening to pursue. DuPont maintains that while the side agreement was confidential, the confidentiality did not apply to the lawyers’ clients. Attorneys for the plaintiffs are in the discovery phase and no trial date has been announced.

Source: PANUPS: Pesticide Action Network Updates Service

ELF sabotages biotech building

Plainview, Long Island, New York, Sept. 2— The Earth Liberation Front (ELF) has officially claimed responsibility for sabotaging a new bio-tech building at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories on August 21, 2001. This is the second time the ELF has targeted this facility in just over one year.

A communiqué sent by the ELF stated, “Activists inflicted heavy damage to their exterior air filtration and coolant systems, by smashing thermostats and computer instruments, and damaging extensively insulation to coolant pipes. The building was donned with slogans denouncing genetic engineering, one reading ‘tampering with biodiversity extinction’, the other reading ‘Love ELF’. Upon retreat, windows were also smashed.”

The Earth Liberation Front is an international underground organization that uses direct action in the form of economic sabotage to stop the destruction of the natural environment and exploitation of life. Since 1997 in North America alone, the ELF have caused over $40 million in damages to entities profiting from the destruction of life.

The communiqué continued, “This was a warning shot from the Long Island community to the Labs, that the technologies they develop have potentially drastic and lethal consequences. Be forewarned that we are watching your every move, and if you thought for one second that you could keep your new Plainview lab location under wraps you were gravely mistaken. We watch your every step. ELF”

The ELF previously struck Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories on July 13, 2000, destroying two acres of genetically modified corn and greenhouses containing seedlings.

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories are responsible for research related to the “discovery of hybrid vigor (which) led to increased corn production and to a revolution in crop breeding.” This is now more commonly referred to as “the green revolution” (high-tech farming solutions which actually had the opposite of their stated, intended effect) and is identified by thousands of scholars and activists from the Global South as a root cause of the starvation and depletion of soil and bio-diversity occurring at an unprecedented pace around the planet.

Source: North American Earth Liberation Front Press Office: www.earthliberationfront.com

Bush counsel delays Reagan records release

By Deb Riechmann

Washington, DC, Sept. 2— For the third time, the Bush administration has delayed release of 68,000 pages of Ronald Reagan’s White House records, including vice presidential papers from President Bush’s father. The papers were to have come out in January, 12 years after Reagan left office as provided under law.

The White House delayed the release to June 21, then to the last day in August. On Friday, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales sought a third extension, this time with no deadline, so the administration can review the records and consult representatives of former presidents Reagan, Bush and Clinton. The delay in opening the Reagan records “has been necessary for this administration to review the many constitutional and legal questions raised by (the) potential release of sensitive and confidential presidential records,” Gonzales wrote in a letter to the National Archives sent Friday. He did not say why this examination was still incomplete, but the letter suggests the additional review will require “a few additional weeks.”

Reagan’s records are the first set scheduled to be released under the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which followed Watergate and former President Nixon’s attempts to hold on to his papers and tape recordings.

The White House said in seeking earlier delays that because the release would set a precedent for future administrations, extra time was needed to make sure it was done right. The White House has denied allegations by some historians that Bush is trying to protect his current aides, many of whom worked for Reagan and Bush’s father.

“I think it’s a scandal to hold them back,” Anna Nelson, a historian at American University, said Friday. “I think the whole point of the Presidential Records Act is to open documents. It goes against the spirit of the law.” She said she suspects the White House is worried what people like Secretary of State Colin Powell or Budget Director Mitch Daniels Jr. might have written in briefing papers when they worked for Reagan. Among others who worked for Reagan and now work for Bush are chief White House economist Lawrence Lindsey, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, Interior Secretary Gale Norton and Ken Dam, nominated for the No. 2 job at the Treasury Department.

Vanderbilt University history professor Hugh Graham said another reason the White House might be holding up the papers is that presidential papers of Bush’s father are scheduled to be released in 2005, just as the president could be starting a second term. “To keep stringing this out is a mockery of the 12-year law,” Graham said. He said the White House was showing little regard for historians and others eager to study the records.

Source: Associated Press

Burmese workers suing Unocal in Los Angeles

By Terry Collingsworth

Aug. 30— California Superior Court Judge Victoria Chaney released an opinion today in Los Angeles that Burmese villagers who have filed suit against Unocal Corporation, the Los-Angeles-based oil and natural gas drilling company, will have their day in court.

“This is a major victory. Despite Unocal’s best efforts, the Burmese villagers who suffered unspeakable violence at the hands of Unocal’s security force in Burma, will get to tell their stories. We look forward to having a Los Angeles jury decide who is telling the truth about human rights violations on Unocal’s pipeline project in Burma,” said Terry Collingsworth, general counsel of the Washington-DC based International Labor Rights Fund, lead plaintiffs’ counsel in the case.

In March, 2000, Federal District Court Judge Ronald S.W. Lew ruled that the Burmese villagers’ case should be heard in a California state court. Judge Lew dismissed their claims under the Federal Alien Tort Claims Act on grounds that the court had no jurisdiction. Lew’s 41-page opinion in the federal case damaged Unocal, however, because he found that “the evidence does suggest that Unocal knew that forced labor was being utilized and that the Joint Venturers benefited from the practice.”

Judge Lew also wrote that there is evidence that “the military forced Plaintiffs and others, under threat of violence, to work on [Unocal’s pipeline infrastructure] projects and to serve as porters for the military for days at a time.” Judge Lew specifically refused, however, to dismiss the state law claims despite Unocal’s repeated urging. He remanded those claims to state court for resolution. Judge Chaney also rejected Unocal’s claim that the federal ruling precluded a state trial.

Now, the state law claims will be allowed to proceed in California court, offering the Burmese workers an opportunity to hold Unocal responsible for their injuries. The Burmese believe that Unocal violated California’s constitution and unfair business practice law, citing the company’s involvement in the Burmese army’s use of torture, physical assaults, and forced labor in the construction of a natural gas pipeline through Burma.

Teen says she was fired due to HIV

Schofield, Wisconsin, Sept. 2— A 16-year-old girl who was born with the HIV virus has filed a discrimination complaint against her first employer alleging she was fired because of her illness.

Korrin Krause worked only one day as a grocery bagger at Quality Foods IGA before the manager called her mother to verify she had HIV and said she no longer had a job, Krause alleges.

“I broke down and cried,’’ she said. “I’m an innocent kid trying to live her life.”

The store’s lawyer, Thomas Crone, did not immediately return messages left at his home and office by The Associated Press on Sunday.

Krause said she was fired in February and later filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which bars employers from asking about a worker’s HIV status or discriminating against them because of it.

A commission official concluded in May there was reasonable cause to believe a violation had occurred, invited both sides to work on a settlement and said compensatory and punitive damages would be considered.

“The idea that this young woman could possibly transmit the virus by bagging groceries is ridiculous,” said Krause’s lawyer, Christopher Krimmer.

Source: Associated Press