The United States was voted the "Worst Company in the World," in a reader poll conducted by the Censored News
blog that ended today. Readers, primarily Indigenous Peoples, voted
Monsanto as the second Worst Company in the World. Peabody Energy
Corp., recently granted a life of mine permit to expand coal mining on
Navajo and Hopi lands, was voted the third Worst Company in the World.
Barrick
Gold Corp., which began the destruction of the Western Shoshone's Mount
Tenabo region during Thanksgiving, was voted the fourth Worst Company
in the World. Blackwater Worldwide, responsible for murders and
brutality worldwide, was voted the fifth Worst Company in the World.
GEO Group, Inc., formerly Wackenhut, profiteering from the misery of
migrants and people of color in prisons, was voted the sixth Worst
Company in the World.
Cameco uranium mining and Sithe Global/Navajo
Nation, tied for the seventh Worst Company in the World. Israel's Elbit
Systems and Raytheon tied for eighth place. Boeing, constructing the
US/Mexico Apartheid Border Wall, followed in ninth place. Newmont
Mining was voted the 10th Worst Company in the World by the readers of
Censored News blog, which focuses on the censored news of Indigenous
Peoples and international human rights.
The United States emerged in
truth as one of the worst violators of international human rights
during the Bush regime, with torture, kidnappings and secret renditions
in violation of the Geneva Conventions. The bogus war in Iraq resulted
in the widespread murder and displacement of Iraqi people. Corporations
seized the freefall of US democracy, with mercenaries, private prison
profiteers and war manufacturers reveling in their profits. During the
Bush regime, the United States ceased to be viewed as a democracy by
many US citizens, who now view the United States as a company comprised
of select individuals seeking corporate gain and control.
It was not
just the US corporations that benefited. In the corporate get-rich
schemes to construct the US/Mexico border wall, the contractor Boeing
subcontracted Israel's Apartheid border wall builder, Elbit Systems,
for the multi-million dollar dysfunctional debacle of the US border spy
towers. While xenophobia and racism toward migrants ruled in US
television news, Wackenhut, owned by G4S in England and Denmark, seized
the opportunity to profiteer from a Homeland Security contract for the
transportation of migrants from the US/Mexico border.
Monsanto, in
second place, continued to threaten the future of humanity with
genetically altered seeds. Depleting the world of a rich diversity of
seeds and crops, Monsanto continues to destroy sustainable systems of
food production around the world. Monsanto was the primary supplier of
Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. Even Prince Charles exposed
Monsanto recently, revealing that thousands of farmers have committed
suicide in India because of Monsanto's promise of riches. Those
promises only resulted in failed crops and a flood of debt in India's
"Suicide Belt" after switching to genetically modified seeds.
Navajos
and Hopis united and protested a life of the mine permit for Peabody
coal mining on Black Mesa. However, the US Office of Surface Mining
approved the permit in December, continuing the US genocide on Black
Mesa, where more than 14,000 Navajos have already been relocated to
make way for coal mining. The so-called Navajo Hopi land dispute was
orchestrated by Peabody Coal.
The Navajo Nation Council's 88 members
receive their salaries and travel expenses primarily from energy
leases, while many Navajos live without running water and electricity.
Klee Benally, Navajo, said the US permit was a blatant act of US genocide. Calvin
Johnson, Navajo, said, "Our local leaders, including the president of
the Navajo Nation, continue to pursue this senseless plan to give
Peabody a life of mine permit and continue using pristine water for
coal operations without the impacted resident's decision, which
continues to be ignored. When will our leaders stand up and fight for
us?" Vernon Masayesva, Hopi, said the US permit, "The decision was
announced during the Hopi Soyalung ceremonies throughout our villages.
Soyalung is when Hopis plant their prayers for the coming year. It is a
time the priests carry out sacred rituals to renew the earth, and pray
for peace and harmony throughout the world. It is similar to the Jewish
Chunaka observance, of bringing light to darkness.This is the ancient
ritual the Office of Surface Mining has rudely interrupted. It is a
blatant action sanctioning Peabody to exploit our natural resources for
the benefit of its wealthy owners, officers and stockholders."
Barrick
Gold, responsible for the deaths of Indigenous Peoples around the
world, began its onslaught on the sacred lands of the Western Shoshone
at Mount Tenabo during the Thanksgiving holidays. Before leaving
office, President Bush Sr. made it possible for Barrick to lease lands
for gold mining in Nevada. Once out of office, Bush Sr. went to work
for Barrick as a senior consultant.
In Australia, DR Congo, Ghana,
Tanzania and New Guinea, Indigenous Peoples are fighting Barrick's
destruction in solidarity with the Western Shoshone. They are fighting
the coring out of mountains for minute particles of gold and the
poisoning of water with cyanide leaching.
Carrie Dann and other
Western Shoshone grandmothers said the United States is trespassing on
Western Shoshone treaty land, destroying mountains, trees, food and
medicine, while leaving dirty polluted water ponds for birds and
animals. "Why doesn't the mining company go dig up the Vatican or
the Mormon Tabernacle instead of Western Shoshone lands, I'm sure they
will find gold there," said Mary McCloud, Western Shoshone grandmother,
mourning the bulldozing of the pines near the ceremonial grounds on
Mount Tenabo in November.
Near the Porgera mine in New Guinea,
Jethro Tulin of the Akali Tange Association, told Barrick Gold, "Your
security guards have been shooting and killing our people and raping,
even gang-raping, our women with impunity for years now."
Another Canadian gold mining corporation, Goldcorp Inc., is
destroying communities in Guatemala. Antonio Morales, Maya Mam,
Guatemalan indigenous leader was assassinated on August 7, 2008, as he
returned to his home in Colotenango, Guatemala. Morales was a national
leader in three of Guatemala's most important Indigenous organizations
which have actively opposed large scale mining projects, including
Montana Exploring, a subsidiary of Goldcorp.
GEO Group, formerly
Wackenhut, and other private prisons continued to profiteer from the
orchestrated hysteria against migrants and people of color at the
southern border, gaining lucrative US and state prison and detention
contracts from California to Texas. GEO was recently named in charges
filed in Texas, in an attempt to prosecute Vice President Dick Cheney
and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for private prison
profiteering, resulting in the death of at least one inmate.
A
second private prison profiteer, Corrections Corp of America, imprisons
and abuses migrant women and children at the T. Don Hutto Residential
Center in Taylor, Texas. Cameco is the Canadian company which
purchased the mysterious shipment of 500 tons of yellowcake uranium
from Iraq, transported by the US to Montreal in July of 2008. Cameco
continues to push for uranium mining on Lakota lands, resulting in the
poorest of the poor struggling to fight the world's largest uranium
mining company in court in Nebraska. In Australia, Aboriginals at Alice
Springs continued their protests of Cameco, while research studies in
Port Hope, Canada, show the people are being poisoned by Cameco's
uranium mining.
"The result of testing conducted on a small group of
residents of Port Hope has found contamination by uranium of military
or industrial origin. Four of nine people tested had unusual types of
uranium in their bodies, including one who carried measurable
quantities of depleted uranium, which is used to make armour-piercing
weapons, and another who had uranium at levels about three times higher
than average concentrations of the element," according to the Globe and
Mail.
Sithe Global, in a relationship with the Navajo Nation elected
government, is pushing to build a coal fired power plant, Desert Rock,
on Navajo lands in New Mexico. Grassroots Navajos at Dooda Desert Rock
continue to fight the power plant, which would be the third power plant
in the area, where the air, land and water are already poisoned by
unreclaimed uranium tailings from the Cold War and widespread oil and
gas wells. Sithe Global's financier is Blackstone Group, cofounded by
Steve Schwarzman of the Bush elite Skull and Bones secret society based
at Yale University.
Israel's Elbit Systems, a producer of Apartheid
spy and border wall systems in Israel, continued to gain US contracts,
including Boeing's subcontract for the border wall. Raytheon Missiles
continued to be protested in Tucson for its weapons production and
contamination. Raytheon has a manufacturing plant on the Navajo
Nation's commercial farm of Navajo Agricultural Products Industries,
where potatoes, corn and other crops are produced with Monsanto's
genetically-modified seeds.
Boeing continued to build the US/Mexico
border wall, as Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff waived all
federal laws to build the border wall, including the laws designed to
protect endangered species and the graves of Native Americans. On the
Tohono O'odham Nation, Boeing dug up the graves of the Tohono O'odham
ancestors in 2007. In Arizona, border wall construction endangered the
jaguar, Sonoran pronghorn and other species in violation of all federal
laws. Further, Indigenous Peoples traveling in their own territories on
the border are harassed, threatened and treated as criminals by the US
Border Patrol.
Tohono O'odham human rights activists continued to be targeted as they defined their homeland as an occupied militarized zone.
The
poorest of the poor in America used their last dollars in 2008 to fight
the United States construction of the US/Mexico border wall and seizure
of their lands, including the Lipan Apache in Texas who are in court to
protect their lands from seizure by Homeland Security for the border
wall.
At the northern border, the United States pushed for more militarization of the region. Kahentinetha
Horn, publisher of Mohawk Nation News, is among the authors published
in Censored News. Kahentinetha was beaten by Canadian border guards on
June 14, 2008 and suffered a heart attack as border police tightened a
stresshold. Mohawk Nation News editor Katenies was also beaten and
jailed. Kahentinetha is recovering and the two Mohawk grandmothers have
filed suit.
In recent articles, the Mohawk Nation News exposed the
fact that carbon market scams seek the seizure of Indigenous Peoples
forests for corporate profiteering and the fact that Canadian officers
are being trained in Israel, where the border has become a militarized
war zone. The carbon credit scam, profiteering for the World Bank and
private corporations, is one of the most censored stories worldwide.
Throughout
the United States, the poorest of the poor fought for justice during
the Bush regime, often resulting in arrest or imprisonment. While the
US and multi-national corporations received millions, billions and
trillions in bailouts, widespread unemployment and hunger increased in
the US.
While the US spy factory vaporized rights guaranteed by the US Constitution, the US media gave up the fight.
While
the corporate seizures of lands was dismal during the Bush regime,
Indigenous elders spoke of a time of cleansing and regeneration.
"We
will outlive their ways. Our ways will outlive America's ways. It is
because we regard the earth as sacred," said Floyd Red Crow Westerman
said before his passing to the Spirit World.
In the Censored News
poll, one-half of those voting chose the United States as the Worst
Company in the World (50 percent.) The other percentages of total votes
were: Monsanto (30 percent) Peabody Coal (26 percent) Barrick Gold (20
percent) Blackwater (17 percent) GEO (15 percent) Cameco and Sithe
Global/Navajo Nation tied (14 percent) Raytheon and Israel's Elbit
Systems tied (12 percent) Boeing (11 percent) and Newmont Mining Corp
(9 percent.) |