Friday! Adam & Joe’s ‘SE7EN’

Possibly because it’s Friday 13th!

(Non) Transparency International

Or perhaps Shills International, check this out [click here for the article complete with links]-

Transparency International’s wall of silence by Calvin Tucker
The facts are straightforward. Last April, TI published a report about the global oil industry which ranked oil companies according to whether they were of high, medium or low transparency. Venezuela ’s state-owned oil company, PDVSA, was given the lowest possible ranking on the basis that it did not produce properly audited accounts and was withholding basic financial information about revenues, taxes and royalties.

The Chavez government says that it spends the proceeds of its oil industry on providing a free health and education system, and on raising the living standards of the working class and poor. The opposition counters that Chavez is mismanaging PDVSA and cooking the books in order to cover up inefficiency and corruption.

Unsurprisingly, TI’s report was seized upon by the opposition as evidence in support of their claims. PDVSA was a “company of low transparency”, and although TI did not directly suggest that PDVSA was corrupt, they do say that companies that withhold basic information from the public “leave the door open to corruption”.

But TI’s report was wrong. Not just any old wrong. But completely, utterly, glaringly wrong. All the information that TI claimed PDVSA was refusing to disclose was freely available in their Report and Accounts and published on their website and in the press.

TI’s financial involvement with the oil industry stretches back over many years. “TI gratefully acknowledges the generous contributions of… Shell and ExxonMobil,” they say on their website. Generous contributor ExxonMobil is no friend of Venezuela’s socialist government. Earlier this year they took PDVSA to the British High Court in a bid to seize their assets, and lost.

So how did this “non-partisan” NGO (which also received a million pounds from the British Government last year) get it so wrong?

The one organisation that could provide a definitive answer is maintaining a wall of silence.

On May 14, I phoned Transparency International’s headquarters in Berlin and spoke with their senior press officer, a lady called Gypsy Kaiser. Ms Kaiser insisted that their report was accurate and that PDVSA had only disclosed basic financial information after they went to print. I checked the dates. Ms Kaiser was wrong. The missing information had been published months earlier in PDVSA’s 2006 accounts, and was also available in their recently released 2007 accounts. I called back and left two messages on Ms Kaiser’s answer-phone. My calls were not returned.

A few days later, I wrote a piece for the Guardian’s ‘Comment is free’ section, debunking TI’s report. In the course of my investigations, I came across something very funny, and something very disturbing. The funny thing was a newspaper photograph of of the head of PDVSA holding up a copy of their Report and Accounts, containing all the information TI said didn’t exist.

The disturbing thing was that a document released under the Freedom of Information Act showed that during the 2002 coup, a lady called Mercedes de Freitas had emailed the US Government’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to defend the newly installed military dictatorship. At the time, Ms de Freitas was director of a NED funded opposition organisation called Fundacion Momento de la Gente. She is now head of Transparency International’s Venezuela bureau, and according to TI it was her who was entrusted with the task of compiling the data on PDVSA.

I called Gypsy Kaiser again, and asked if she had read my article. She had. I wanted to know whether TI would be withdrawing their report and holding an investigation into the partisan affiliations of their Venezuela bureau. Ms Kaiser declined to say, and instead invited me to put my questions in writing. I did.

After two more days of silence, I called Ms Kaiser’s boss, André Doren, Director of Communications. Perhaps he would be more communicative? He told me that he had people working on the answers and promised to call me back the following day. He didn’t. I emailed him to ask why. He didn’t reply. I left a message on his answer-phone. He didn’t respond. Presumably he was too busy exposing opaque organisations.

Another week passed, and still no answers from TI. I tried their regional office for the Americas . An official told me that they “stand by their report”. Even though it’s wrong? “That’s your opinion,” she replied.

“But the information that you say doesn’t exist, does exist.”

“Talk to our press office,” she advised.

Despite having a strong sense of déjà vu, I phoned the press office and spoke once again with Gypsy Kaiser. She was positively seething. “Calling our staff is inappropriate behaviour,” she barked at me, like an angry school teacher. “But you won’t answer my questions,” I protested. “We will,” she responded.

“But when? I’ve already waited three weeks. ”

“I’m not giving you a date. Let’s just say it will be sooner rather than later.”

A week on and I’m still waiting. Obviously her definition of “sooner” is my definition of “later”.

In the meantime, TI are busy mailing their inaccurate report on Venezuela to businesses, NGOs and governments all over the world. No investigation has been held into what went wrong. And their Venezuela bureau continues to be run by a person who backed the 2002 coup against democracy.

Transparency International doesn’t like answering questions. But I have one more for them. Isn’t it about time they changed their name? (ht2 BoRev.Net)

Raytheon 9 Statement

raytheon9.org– On 11 June 2008, by a unanimous verdict of the jury, the Raytheon 9 were found not guilty of three counts of criminal damage at the Raytheon offices, Derry Northern Ireland on 9 August 2006.
Immediately afterwards, the defendants addressed supporters and press outside Belfast’s Laganside Court. Colm Bryce began:
The Raytheon 9 have been aquitted today in Belfast for their action in decommissioning the Raytheon offices in Derry in August 2006. The prosecution could produce not a shred of evidence to counter our case that we had acted to prevent the commission of war crimes during the Lebanon war by the Israeli armed forces using weapons supplied by Raytheon.
We remain proud of the action we took and only wish that we could have done more to disrupt the ‘kill chain’ that Raytheon controls.
This victory is welcome, for ourselves and our families, but we wish to dedicate it to the Shaloub and Hasheem families of Qana in Lebanon, who lost 28 of their closest relatives on the 30 July 2006 due to a Raytheon ‘bunker buster’ bomb.
Their unimaginable loss was foremost in our minds when we took the action we did on 9 August, and the injustice that they and the many thousands of victims of war crimes in Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan have suffered, will spur us on to continue to campaign against war and the arms trade that profits from it.
We said from the beginning that we came to this court not as the accused but as the accusers of Raytheon. This court case proved that Raytheon in Derry is an integral part of the global Raytheon company and its military production. This is no longer a secret or in doubt. Raytheon have treated the truth, peaceful protest, local democracy and this court with complete contempt. The most senior executive who appeared said that the charge that Raytheon had ‘aided and abetted’ the commission of crimes against humanity was “not an issue” for him. Raytheon should have that contempt repaid in full and be driven out of Derry and every other place they have settled. They are war criminals, plain and simple. They have no place in our society and shame on all those in positions of power or influence who would hand them public funds, turn a blind eye to their crimes, cover their tracks or make excuses for them.
These crimes continue daily and hourly in the Middle East. It is up to those of us who oppose those wars of domination and occupation to build a movement that matches the enormity of what is being done by Western governments. We hope that this victory gives courage and heart to all those involved in that movement and the many more who need to be for us to achieve our aim of stopping these wars. Until then, the very least we can do, to show solidarity with our brothers and sisters in the Middle East is to dissociate ourselves from the corrupt governments of the US and Britain. That means opposing the visit to Belfast of the world’s biggest war criminal, George W Bush on 16 June.
We feel totally vindicated by this decision and wish to extend our heartfelt thanks to all of those who gave us support, especially to our families and friends, to the members of the Derry Anti War Coalition and the Irish Anti-War Movement , to our excellent legal teams. Of course, we particularly want to thank the jury who listened intently through three weeks of evidence before ensuring that justice was done today.

Eamonn McCann then addressed supporters and press saying:
The outcome of this case has profound implications.
The jury has accepted that we were reasonable in our belief that: the Israel Defence Forces were guilty of war crimes in Lebanon in the summer of 2006; that the Raytheon company, including its facility in Derry, was aiding and abetting the commission of these crimes; and that the action we took was intended to have, and did have, the effect of hampering or delaying the commission of war crimes.
We have been vindicated.
We reject entirely and with contempt the statement by Raytheon this evening suggesting that the result of the trial gives them concern about the safety of their employees. This is an abject attempt to divert attention from the significance of the outcome. Not a shed of evidence was produced that we presented the slightest danger to Raytheon workers. The charge of affray was thrown out by the court without waiting to hear defence evidence.
Our target has always been Raytheon as a corporate entity and its shareholders and directors who profit from misery and death.
There is now no hiding place for those who have said that they support the presence of Raytheon in Derry on the basis that the company is not involved in Derry in arms-related production. We have established that not only is the Derry plant involved in arms-related production, it is also, through its integration into Raytheon as a whole, involved in war crimes.
We call on all elected representatives in Derry, and on the citizens of Derry, to say now in unequivocal terms that the war criminal Raytheon is not welcome in our city.
We call on the office of the Attorney General and the Crown Prosecution Service, in light of this verdict, to institute an investigation into the activities of Raytheon at its various plants across the UK, with a view to determining whether Raytheon is, as we say it is, a criminal enterprise.
We believe that one day the world will look back on the arms trade as we look back today on the slave trade, and wonder how it came about that such evil could abound in respectable society. If we have advanced by a mere moment the day when the arms trade is put beyond the law, what we have done will have been worthwhile.
We took the action we did in the immediate aftermath of the slaughter of innocents in Qana on July 30th 2006. The people of Qana are our neighbours. Their children are the children of our neighbours. We trashed Raytheon to help protect our neighbours. The court has found that that was not a crime. This what the Raytheon case has been about.
We have not denied or apologised for what we did at the Raytheon plant in the summer of 2006. All of us believe that it was the best thing we ever did in our lives.