Globalisation:IBLF Supporters & their Activities

GlaxoSmithKline

The Confederation of British Industry (CBI)

GSK is on The Environmental Affairs Committee, which is an unrepresentative committee and is dominated by major polluting industries e.g Glaxo Smith Kilne, Onyz, Rolls-Royce, British Airways,Vauxhall Motors,BMW, Exxon-Mobile.

CBI claims to represent a broad section of UK business, but there are trends of clear alignment with CBI and members of the government regarding support and encouragemnet of neo-liberal economic policies e.g. regulation.

Rather than a burden, regulation can drive innovations that benefit environment, health and society as well as the economy i.e. The World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Report 2004-2005 over 100 countries showed Finland, Sweden and Norway with traditionally high environmental protection and taxation feature in the top 10 most competitive countries

Animal Testing

It is one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies and has a direct influence on UK Government policy, including animal experimentation policy, for which it has lobbied for a relaxation of regulations.

Glaxo-SmithKline (GSK) got an emergency injunction rushed through the High Court on Tuesday May 9th to stop activists publishing names and addresses of shareholders. A letter from an unknown animal rights group had already been sent to at least 160 investors to warn them they had two weeks to sell their shares or be named on a website. Activists want to sever the drug giant’s links with doomed animal torturers Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS).

GSK actually cut ties with HLS eight years ago, after a documentary exposed some of the shocking cruelty in their animal labs - but linked up again as soon as the dust had settled a year later. Glaxo boss, Jean Pierre Garnier has been telling reporters that they’re a benevolent company really... Testing drugs on a few fluffy rabbits is OK because the goal it to save people from disease. But pharma companies spend just 0.2% of their money developing drugs for poverty related diseases like tuberculosis, which affect almost one fifth of the world’s population. Instead Glaxo prefers to pump their cash into Western vanities like slimming products, in an attempt to follow a trail of cash rather than the most common diseases.

The Government publicly condemned the campaign by animal rights activists to force GSK to pull its contracts from the controversial Huntingdon Life Sciences lab. And peers have voted through a new law which will make it harder to get hold of personal details.

Failing Global Health Needs

14 Million people die each year from infectious diseases, most of them in developing countries. The medical treatments available are often archaic and ineffective, especially for so-called ‘neglected diseases’ (Malaria, Tuberculosis, Sleeping Sickness, Chagas disease, and leishmaniasis), whose victims are almost exclusively from developing countries and poor. These diseases are linked with poverty and unsanitary living conditions; new drugs are desperately needed.

At present, private pharmaceutical companies control the development of new medicines. People in Developing countries, who make up 80 per cent of the world’s population, only represent about 20 per cent of worldwide medicine sales. Since these people are relatively poor, GlaxoSmithKline, along with other major pharmaceutical companies, do not see it as profitable to develop medicines for their needs, and do negligible research into medicines which would help them. “Of all annual health related research, only 0.2 per cent is spent on pneumonia, diarrhoea, and tuberculosis-three poverty related ailments which account for 18 per cent of the global disease burden.”(Oxfam, Briefing paper on GlaxoSmithKline, 2001). This failure, in effect, kills untold numbers of people every year. It is the fault of the pharmaceutical industry putting their company profits above the lives of people, but it is also the fault of governments and other bodies like the United Nations for depending on market forces to provide people with basic necessities.

GlaxoSmithKline dominates the $4 billion a year AIDS drugs market. It has been singled out by numerous public health, relief, and charitable agencies such as Oxfam and Médecins Sans Frontières for its persistent use of stall tactics, litigation, and threats in order to maintain high AIDS drug prices despite the unrelenting global pandemic.

In 2001 GSK attempted to block legislation that would allow the government to import or manufacture generic aids drugs to treat the 4.7 million South Africans who were HIV positive. Thanks to massive global protests which shattered the whole industry's public image, the case was unconditionally dropped by the thirty nine companies contesting the case. However, the case had managed to delay South Africa's treatment programme by three years. According to Oxfam, countless thousands of lives could have been saved if the drugs giants had not blocked access to treatment in 1997.

Ingredients - Carbonated Water, Glucose Syrup (26%), Citric Acid,Lactic Acid, Flavourings (incl. caffeine), Perservatives (Sodium Benzoate, Sodium Bisulphite), Antioxidant 9Ascorbic Acid), Colour (Sunset Yellow)

Sodium benzoate (E211), an artificial food preservative. A research study published by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) in September 2007 showed that mixtures of artificial food colourings and sodium benzoate could affect hyperactive behaviour in susceptible children.According to the FSA, studies have also shown that sodium benzoate and other benzoates (E210, E211, E212, E213, E214, E215, E216, E217, E218 and E219) could make the symptoms of asthma and eczema worse in children who already have these conditions. Under EC guidelines, medicines should carry a warning that sodium benzoate and other benzoates may be “mildly irritant to the skin, eyes and mucous membranes”. Foods and drinks carry no such warning, despite been consumed in much greater quantities.

Abbot Laboratories

Failing Global Health Needs

Despite being claiming to offer a vital HIV drug at cost price to the developing world, Abbot failed to register or supply the heat stable version of its drug Kaletra in any African countries.

Jan 2006 decided to withdraw 7 life saving drugs from Thai market in retaliation for the Thais attempting to access low costing generic versions of essential drugs incl. the important HIV drug Kaletra. The process of importaing/making cheaper drugs is called cumpolsory licensing and is expressly permitted under international trade rules.

Aids is a leading cause of death in Thailand, where 600,000 peopel are living with HIV. Increasing no.s of people are becoming resistant to first-line HIV treatment and thus need access to more expensive second-line drugs, such as Kaletra.

Deloitte

All of Bush's ten largest donors for the period are linked to bundlers who have pledged to donate from $100,000 to $250,000 as part of the president's Pioneer and Ranger Programs. "Rangers," = fundraisers who pledge to raise $250,000 for the president.

Seven of the ten are financial services companies: The largest donors for the quarter were Pricewaterhouse Coopers ($122,750), MBNA Corp. ($93,750), Deloitte & Touche LLP ($73,525), Southern Co. ($67,147), and Goldman Sachs Group ($65,750). The other 3 donors were Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. ($58,904), United Services Automobile Association Group ($57,775), Rooney Holdings/Rooney Brothers ($56,000), and UBS AG Inc. ($54,850).

May 1, 2003 the Wall Street Journal reported that the Bush administration has “drafted sweeping plans to remake Iraq’s economy in the U.S. image.” To this end the U.S. is planning to privatize state-owned enterprises, create a modernized Baghdad stock exchange, a reformed central bank, and rewrite the tariff and tax code systems. The plan was officially released on June 6.

“Economic Recovery, Reform and Sustained Growth in Iraq” - continues the trend in recent USAID RFPs for work supporting the U.S. occupation by “limiting competition” to only ten firms. The firms eligible to apply for this contract are: Bearing Point; Booz, Allen and Hamilton; Nathan; IBM Global Services; Development Alternatives, Inc.; Carana; Abt Associates; Chemonics; Deloitte & Touche; and Financial Markets International, Inc. TheRFP goes on to outline plans to “rationalize” and “modernize” the Iraqi banking and financial sectors, create taxation, legal and regulatory regimes to facilitate this process, along with the further integration of Iraq into international economic networks. It also calls for a public relations campaign to sell these fundamental changes to the Iraqi people.

=Rio Tinto

Our approach to sustainable development embedded through all levels of our organisation from our Chief executive and Chairman through to the day to day operations. We try to minimise the adverse effects of our activities and improve every aspect our performance. In addition, wherever we operate, we hold the health and safety of our employees and the environment to be a core value.

We work as closely as possible with our host countries and communities, respecting their laws and customs and ensuring a fair share of benefits and opportunities.

Rio Tinto Group

Rio Tinto has been described as the most powerful mining company in the world. In 2005 its profits were $7.7bn from a turnover of $20.7bn. Rio Tinto in its present form was formed in 1995 and is run jointly from London and Melbourne. The group controls a host of mining companies involved in extracting aluminium, copper, diamonds and a range of other minerals from sites across Australia, the Americas, Europe and Africa. Rio Tinto's trademarks are major environmental destruction, evasion of taxes and ill treatment of mining workers and of local communities. Notable cases have been the Jabiluka uranium mine in Australia and racist discrimination against black workers in Namibia. UK operations include an aluminium smelter in Holyhead, Wales.

Depicted in the 80s as the 'ugly face of multinational capitalism', Rio Tinto is one of the three largest mining companies in the world. Its subsidiary Freeport manages the largest copper, gold and silver mine on earth: the Grasberg mine in West Papua (formerly Irĺan Jaya).

The Grasberg mine is associated with decades of serious social and environmental impacts[27]. It has been reported that Freeport is protected by a corrupt politics and that the Indonesian militia, who guard the mine, have been accused of killing indigenous people. Freeport freely admit they paid for armed security; during 2002 the company paid $5.6 million to the armed forces. It has been suggested that the relationship between the militia and the company has led to gross human rights violations.

Rio Tinto is culpable for contributing to environmental devastation, displacement and killing of indigenous people. In 1996, Multinational Monitor placed Freeport in the ten worst corporations of the year for polluting areas near the copper mine; it's important that ten years later the ongoing atrocities in West Papua are not forgotten.