harelb@cabot.dartmouth.edu (Harel Barzilai) (06/17/91)
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UPCOMING THEME in misc.activism.progressive...
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"Environmental Disaster in Mexico" (Reuter)
Guardian Analysis of "Fast Track" (I) (CARNet)
Guardian Analysis of "Fast Track" (II) (CARNet)
"Excerpts from _The Victors, part II_ (Noam Chomsky)
"Salinas to Receive Enviromental Award" (Inter Press Service (IPS))
"Pollution Kills 100,000 Children In Mexico City Each Year"(Excelsior)
"PESTICIDES: background info" (Global Action Network on PeaceNet)
"PESTICIDES: An Alternative: Integrated Pest Management (IPM)" (GAN)
"Terror in our Fields...Poison in our Food" (Grey City Journal)
"PESTICIDES: Statistics and References" (GAN)
"Grape Boycott Video _The Wrath of Grapes_"(United Farm Workers (UFW))
"PESTICIDES: Organizations, publications, and other resoureces" (GAN)
"Nestle BOYCOTT" (Action for Corporate Accountability (ACA))
"_Chemical Valley_ to Air on PBS's 'P.O.V.' in July"
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O v e r v i e w w i t h e x c e r p t s :
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"Environmental Disaster in Mexico" (Reuter)
"The region [...] has become a dumping ground for toxic waste and
pesticides by multinational corporations whose actions are rarely
monitored by Mexico's cash-strapped environmental agency [...] an
official acknowledged [..] that only about 35 per cent of the
U.S.-owned factories along the 3,200 kilometre border were
believed to be complying with Mexican environmental laws covering
their operations and their disposal of toxic waste."
"The maquiladoras have thrived on Mexico's low labour costs to
become the most dynamic part of its manufacturing sector. Mexican
officials expect them to continue expanding as the two countries
eliminate trade barriers and push for increased border
industrialization."
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Guardian Analysis of "Fast Track" (I)
"Horror stories abound in this region deemed 'a virtual cesspool'
by a 1990 American Medical Association study [...] In 1988, a
General Motors subsidiary was discovered dumping hundreds of
barrels of toxics at a desert waste site less than two miles from
a public beach in Matamoros. [...] Border infrastructure has been
strained to the maximum by the growth promoted by these tax-exempt
industries."
"Mexican ecologists warn that the exclusion of ecological concerns
from the upcoming trade negotiations, insisted upon by both Bush
and Salinas, will extend the border model of "distorted
development" to the entire country. They suggest that Bush's dream
of "trade without barriers" refers more to freedom from labor and
environmental legislation than to national protectionism, which
has already been dropped uni-laterally by Mexico."
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Guardian Analysis of "Fast Track" (II)
"According to Aridjis, U.S.-Mexican trade relations are currently
permeated with a 'double standard'. He cites the fact that the
Mexican market is flooded with fruits and vegetables which have
been refused import into the U.S. because they bear residues of
banned pesticides produced by U.S. companies in Mexico."
"According to a study by the National University of Mexico, U.S.
oil reserves are sufficient to cover national consumption for 9
years (at 1989 production rates); Canada has enough for 11 years;
and Mexico, 59. By "pooling" access to the oil as a region, the
US could post-pone a serious consumption crisis for 11 years, but
Mexico's crisis would be hastened by 39 years."
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"Excerpts from _The Victors, part II_ (Noam Chomsky)
"Maude Barlow, chairperson of a Canadian study group, reports the
results of their inquiry into maquiladoras 'built by Fortune 500 to
take advantage of a desperate people,' for profits hard to match
elsewhere. They found factories full of teenage girls, some
14-years-old, 'working at eye-damaging, numbingly repetitive work'
for wages 'well below what is required for even a minimum standard
of living.' Corporations commonly send the most dangerous jobs here
because standards on chemicals are 'lax or non-existent.'
'In one plant,' she writes, 'we all experienced headaches and
nausea from spending an hour on the assembly line' and 'we saw
young girls working beside open vats of toxic waste, with no
protective face covering.'"
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"Salinas to Receive Enviromental Award" (Inter Press Service (IPS))
"visibility has dropped from 12 kms to only 500 metres in the last
10 years, and the concentration of harmful gases in the atmosphere
reaches highly critical levels nearly throughout the year...
[...]
"there are other indications that salinas' determined effort to
clean up the environment is ''hardly a drop in the ocean'',
biologist albertina toscano told ips...
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"Pollution Kills 100,000 Children In Mexico City Each Year" (Excelsior)
100,000 children die every year as a result of pollution in the
Mexico City metropolitan area, 250,000 people suffer from eye
diseases, between 2 and 10% of minors below the age of 16 suffer
from asthma, 5 million people suffer respiratory diseases, and
life expectancy has been reduced by up to ten years, according to
the National Environmentalist Groups.
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"PESTICIDES: background info" (Global Action Network on PeaceNet)
Although the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is supposed to
protect citizens from such hazards, during one 15 month period,
the General Accounting Office discovered that half of all the
imported food identified by the FDA as pesticide-contaminated was
marketed without any warning to consumers, or penalty to
importers. (Weir and Schapiro, 1981, p. 4)
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"Pesticides: An Alternative: Integrated Pest Management (IPM)" (GAN)
The 10,000 - 40,0000 [pesticde] poisonings that are thought to
result in death each year dwarf the 2,000 deaths caused by the
toxic gas leak at the pesticide manufacturing plant in Bhopal,
India. (Postel, 1987, p. 16)
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"Terror in our Fields...Poison in our Food" (Grey City Journal)
"The grape boycott has consumed most of Chavez's time for the past
five years [..] The United Farmworkers (UFW) wants consumers to
boycott California table grapes
In the San Joaquin valley, a grape-growing area, childhood cancer
rates are 1200% higher than the national average.
[...] Chavez [was on tour at] universities, following his arrest
and jailing last month. A California judge had issued a temporary
restraining order making it illegal to leaflet, picket, talk to
customers [!][...] Chavez and his grandchildren were arrested
under this order, but the judge who issued it later declared it
unconstitutional.
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"Pesticides: Statistics and References" (GAN)
Scientists reported a sixfold increase in the risk of
non-Hodgkin's lymphomia among Kansas farmers using certain
herbicides 20 days or more per year. (Postel, 1987, p. 25)
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"Grape Boycott Video _The Wrath of Grapes_" (United Farm Workers (UFW))
Side Note: There was a UFW boycott in the 1970's as well; to ban
DDT; at the time the companies said that without DDT, they
wouldn't be able to grow grapes. Two years after UFW's boycott
finally forced the companies to sign an agreement stopping the use
of all DDT (among other conditions), the U.S. federal government
banned DDT
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"Pesticides: Organizations, publications, and other resoureces" (GAN)
By implementing Integrated Pest Management, Brazil decreased its
pesticide use 80-90% on their soybean crops over 7 years.
(Postel, 1987, p. 27)
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"Nestle BOYCOTT" (Action for Corporate Accountability (ACA))
...ACA, a watchdog organization which has been monitoring Nestle's
compliance with its 1984 agreement which ended the first boycott,
claims that both Nestle and AHP are violating the World Health
Organization's infant formula marketing code, resulting in high
infant mortality rates in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Central
America.
...the mortality rate of bottle-fed infants in developing
countries is significantly higher than that of breast-fed babies.
According to UNICEF [United Nations Children's Fund], a million
infant lives could be saved each year through breast feeding
alone.
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"_Chemical Valley_ to Air on PBS's 'P.O.V.' in July"
CHEMICAL VALLEY, an hour-long television program exploring job
black-mail, racism, and the right to a safe environment will be
broadcast nationally...Shot in the shadows of the only U.S. plant
to manufacture MIC, the deadly chemical that killed 3,500 in
Bhopal, India, CHEMICAL VALLEY follows the ongoing confrontations
between those who fear for their livlihoods and those who fear for
their lives.