|
|||||||||||||||||
RELATED LINKSInternal LinksGrants to:
Profiles:
Other internal:
External LinksRobert Sirico at the Acton Institute Cursor.orgMediaTransparency.org sponsor More stories by Bill Berkowitz PERC receives Templeton Freedom Award for promoting 'enviropreneurs' Media Transparency writersAndrew J. Weaver FundometerEvaluate any page on the World Wide Web against our databases of people, recipients, and funders of the conservative movement. |
ORIGINAL RESEARCHBill Berkowitz The Corporate/Think Tank ComplexFather Robert Sirico's Acton Institute and ExxonMobil lash out against corporate responsibility activistsIn late-May, while the Indonesian government was ramping-up its military operation in Aceh Father Sirico, the president of the Grand Rapids, Michigan-based Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, brought along the Reverend Jerry Zandstra, the director of the Institute's Center for Entrepreneurial Stewardship. Their mission: Speak against human rights and environmental resolutions brought to the floor by a coalition of religious and environmental activists. Father Sirico told ExxonMobil stakeholders to disregard the "religious activism" directed against the company because "it stems from the desire of certain religious activists to force what is clearly a left-wing economic and political agenda on ExxonMobil specifically and society in general." The agenda of the human rights advocates and religious and environmental activists "is based upon specious economic arguments, many of which have been duly discarded and repudiated by the experience of history." And, these activists are putting "human lives at grave risk in the name of political ideology with a mere moral gloss." Pursue "your duty" to "act upon the reality of consumer demand, obligation to your shareholders, and the needs of your thousands and thousands of employees," Father Sirico said. The Rev. Zandstra chimed in by claiming that the presence of so many religious activists was less about ExxonMobil human rights violations and more about "accountability and control." Religious activists want to "set the ethical tone for ExxonMobil because [they believe] you cannot do it for yourselves." Religious activists believe that "our nation (sic) business leaders must be soulless, heartless creatures who, if left to their own devices would merely rape and pillage," the Rev. Zandstra said. He finished by complimenting the company on its "excellent" record "in human rights" and its "excellent" record in the environment. ExxonMobil, Aceh & Human RightsIn a late-June telephone interview, University of California, Berkeley, retired Professor Peter Dale Scott told me that ExxonMobil's human rights record "is no better or worse than most other oil companies. However, they aggravate human rights situations because attacks on rebel movements inevitably turn into a defense of oil company facilities. The companies' presence then becomes an integral part of the conflict and they [the companies] are closely identified with the regime." Robert Jereski, former Executive Director of the International Forum for Aceh, reported in June 2001 that "that ExxonMobil's wholly owned subsidiary, Mobil Oil Indonesia (MOI), provided crucial logistic support to the army," and that its facilities "were used [by the military] for interrogating and torturing local people, that the company's excavators were used to dig mass graves for military victims in the Sentang and Tengkorak hills, and that its roads were used to bring victims to the mass graves." ExxonMobil's natural gas facility in Aceh Province - the site of the current military assault by the Indonesian government against the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) - produced nearly a quarter of Mobil's earnings worldwide in the early 1990s, the Wall Street Journal has reported. "The [Indonesian] army provided security for Exxon-Mobil installations, and human rights activists have charged that the company's facilities were used by the army for rape, torture and murder. The corporation is being sued in the United States by relatives of victims," Prof. Scott, the author of "Drugs Oil and War" (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, March 2003), wrote in an August, 2001 Pacific News Service article. (In mid-June of this year, Unocal Corp. asked an 11-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco to dismiss a suit similar to the one brought against ExxonMobil. In this case, Unocal is being sued by Burmese villagers "claiming brutality by soldiers guarding the company's pipeline," the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Unocal is hoping that a two-century-old federal law - the 1789 Alien Tort Claims Act or ATCA - which "allows suits in U.S. courts for human rights violations abroad" will be repudiated. The Bush Administration has also "urged the court to dismiss the case against Unocal and repudiate post-1980 rulings allowing ATCA suits for violations of international law," the Chronicle pointed out.) In December 2002, the Free Aceh Movement and the Indonesian government signed an agreement that, according to Business Week, would have ended the centuries old conflict between Indonesia and Aceh: GAM would lay down its arms and the government would surrender some control over Aceh's oil and gas reserves. After talks broke down, Indonesia launched its military operations. Prof. Scott believes that negotiations "were doomed to break down because there won't be peace until there is a fundamental redistribution of the profits from oil included in any agreement." At stake in the conflict, reports Business Week, is access to "the Straits of Malacca, the world's second-busiest waterway after Britain's Dover Strait and a vital trans-Pacific route for supertankers," and an Indonesian oil company facility in Lhokseumawe, run by ExxonMobil LNG. ExxonMobil and the environmentA number of shareholder-raised resolutions brought to this year's confab - including ones on global warming and renewable energy resources - went down to defeat. A coalition of religious activists associated with the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) - including the Province of St. Joseph of the Capuchin Order, the resolution's primary filer, as well as the Dominican Sisters of Caldwell, NJ - brought one of three global warming resolutions: According to CSRWire, "the resolution pointed out that ExxonMobil's major competitors (ChevronTexaco, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Total Elf Fina) all have investments in renewable energy while ExxonMobil by its own admission has virtually none." The group also pointed out that "ExxonMobil's refusal to acknowledge that carbon dioxide emissions cause global warming was creating a PR backlash and serious reputation damage to the world's largest oil company." ExxonMobil "publicly softened its stance toward global warming over the last year"...[and has] "increased donations to Washington-based policy groups that...question the human role in global warming and argue that proposed government policies to limit carbon dioxide emissions associated with global warming are too heavy handed," the New York Times reported in late May. The company is now giving more than $1 million a year to conservative think tanks and public policy institutes including the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Frontiers of Freedom, the George C. Marshall Institute, the American Council for Capital Formation Center for Policy Research and the American Legislative Exchange Council. "Exxon has become the single-largest corporate donor to some of the groups, accounting for more than 10 percent of their annual budgets," according to the New York Times. The power of the Acton InstituteIn a recent op-ed piece in the Detroit News, Father Sirico asked: "Should a company be 'greenmailed' into adopting a dubious agenda clearly at odds with the company's obligations to countless employees and customers merely to satisfy the passions of professional agitators?" Revisiting the issue of shareholder resolutions and what he termed "high profile direct action campaigns" against multinational corporations, Father Sirico defended the Ford Motor Company's refusal to "adopt higher fuel economy standards for its fleet," an action he wrote, that "would be detrimental to both the company and consumers." Founded in 1990 by Father Sirico and Kris Alan Mauren, in recent years the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty has grown in scope and stature within the corporate and conservative communities. Father Sirico's imprint is all over a number of current social and economic policy debates: He has advised President Bush on "charitable choice" and welfare reform issues; edited a book for the Vatican aimed at reordering the Catholic Church's tradition social justice teachings and he helped launch a right wing religious-based environmental coalition aimed at countering liberal environmental organizations called the Interfaith Council for Environmental Stewardship (ICES). Father Sirico's op-ed pieces have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Times, the Detroit News and Investor's Business Daily. From the very beginning the Institute garnered considerable financial support from a phalanx of right wing foundations: Between 1991 and 2001, it received more than $2.5 million in grants from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Earhart Foundation, the Scaife Family Foundation and John M. Olin Foundation. It was not surprising that Father Robert Sirico - who did not return my telephone call - and the Rev. Jerry Zandstra, were given a platform at Exxon/Mobil's confab in Dallas. They were there to defend the corporation against attacks from its critics. Religious and environmental organizers want Ford, and companies like it, to "commit corporate suicide" and they want to stifle its "right to economic initiative," Father Sirico wrote in the Detroit News. Father Sirico's bottom line is the "bottom line": "Unnecessary regulation" and forcing companies "to cede their corporate governance to national and supra-national authorities" forces "creative initiative" to be "replaced with passivity...rather than innovation." In the end, this "results in less competition, loss of market share, higher consumer prices and increased unemployment." sign in, or register to email stories or comment on them.
|
MORE ORIGINAL RESEARCHBill Berkowitz PERC receives Templeton Freedom Award for promoting 'enviropreneurs'Right Wing foundation-funded anti-environmental think tank grabbing a wider audience for 'free market environmentalism' On the 15th anniversary of Terry Anderson and Donald Leal's book "Free Market Environmentalism" -- the seminal book on the subject -- Anderson, the Executive Director of the Bozeman, Montana-based Property and Environment Research Center (PERC - formerly known as the Political Economy Research Center) spoke in late-January at an event sponsored by Squaw Valley Institute at the Resort at Squaw Creek in California. While it may have been just another opportunity to speak on "free market environmentalism" and not the kickoff of a "victory tour," nevertheless it comes at a time when PERC's ideas are taking root.
Bill Berkowitz Neil Bush of Saudi ArabiaDuring recent visit, President’s brother describes the country as a 'kind of tribal democracy' In late February, only a few days after Saudi Arabia beheaded four Sri Lankan robbers and then left their headless bodies on public display in the capital of Riyadh, Neil Bush, for the fourth time in the past six years, showed up for the country's Jeddah Economic Forum. The Guardian reported that Human Rights Watch "said the four men had no lawyers during their trial and sentencing, and were denied other basic legal rights." In an interview with Arab News, the Saudi English language paper, Bush described the country as "a kind of tribal democracy."
Bill Berkowitz Newt Gingrich's back door to the White HouseAmerican Enterprise Institute "Scholar" and former House Speaker blames media for poll showing 64 percent of the American people wouldn't vote for him under any circumstances Whatever it is that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has come to represent in American politics, the guy is nothing less than fascinating. One day he's espousing populist rhetoric about the need to cut the costs of college tuition and the next day he's talking World War III. One day he's claiming that the "war on terror" may force the abridgement of fundamental first amendment rights and the next he's advancing a twenty-first century version of his Contract with America. At the same time he's publicly proclaiming how "stupid" it is that the race for the presidency has already started you know that he's trying to figure out how to out finesse Rudy, McCain and Romney for the nomination. And last week, when Fox News' Chris Wallace cited a poll showing that 64 percent of the public would never vote for him, he was quick to blame those results on how unfairly he was treated by the mainstream media back in the day.
Bill Berkowitz American Enterprise Institute takes lead in agitating against IranDespite wrongheaded predictions about the war on Iraq, neocons are on the frontlines advocating military conflict with Iran After doing such a bang up job with their advice and predictions about the outcome of the war on Iraq, would it surprise you to learn that America's neoconservatives are still in business? While at this time we are not yet seeing the same intense neocon invasion of our living rooms -- via cable television's news networks -- that we saw during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, nevertheless, a host of policy analysts at conservative think tanks -- most notably the American Enterprise Institute -- are being heeded on Iran by those who count - folks inside the Bush Administration.
Bill Berkowitz After six years, opposition gaining on George W. Bush's Faith Based InitiativeUnmentioned in the president's State of the Union speech, the program nevertheless continues to recruit religious participants and hand out taxpayer money to religious groups With several domestic policy proposals unceremoniously folded into President Bush's recent State of the Union address, two pretty significant items failed to make the cut. Despite the president's egregiously tardy response to the event itself, it was nevertheless surprising that he didn't even mention Hurricane Katrina: He didn't offer up a progress report, words of hope to the victims, or come up with a proposal for moving the sluggish rebuilding effort forward. There were no "armies of compassion" ready to be unleashed, although it should be said that many in the religious community responded to the disaster much quicker than the Bush Administration. In the State of the Union address, however, there was no "compassionate conservatism" for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Bill Berkowitz Frank Luntz calls Republican leadership in Washington 'One giant whining windbag'On the outs with the GOP, legendary degrader of discourse is moving to California He doesn't make great art; nothing he does elevates the human spirit; he doesn't illuminate, he bamboozles. He has become expert in subterfuge, hidden meanings, word play and manipulation. Frank Luntz has been so good at what he does that those paying close attention gave it its own name: "Luntzspeak."
Bill Berkowitz Spooked by MoveOn.org, conservative movement seeks to emulate liberal powerhouseFueled with Silicon Valley money, TheVanguard.org will have Richard Poe, former editor of David Horowitz's FrontPage magazine as its editorial and creative director As Paul Weyrich, a founding father of the modern conservative movement and still a prominent actor in it, likes to say, he learned a great deal about movement building by closely observing what liberals were up to in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Bill Berkowitz Ward Connerly's anti-affirmative action jihadFounder and Chair of the American Civil Rights Institute scouting five to nine states for new anti-affirmative action initiatives Fresh from his most recent victory -- in Michigan this past November -- Ward Connerly, the Black California-based maven of anti-affirmative action initiatives, appears to be preparing to take his jihad on the road. According to a mid-December report in the San Francisco Chronicle, Connerly said that he was "exploring moves into nine other states."
Bill Berkowitz Tom Tancredo's missionThe Republican congressman from Colorado will try to woo GOP voters with anti-immigration rhetoric and a boatload of Christian right politics These days, probably the most recognizable name in anti-immigration politics is Colorado Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo. Over the past year, Tancredo has gone from a little known congressman to a highly visible anti-immigration spokesperson. "Tancredo has thoroughly enmeshed himself in the anti-immigration movement and with the help of CNN talk show host Lou Dobbs, he has been given a national megaphone," Devin Burghart, the program director of the Building Democracy Initiative at the Center for New Community, a Chicago-based civil rights group, told Media Transparency.
Bill Berkowitz Institute on Religion and Democracy slams 'Leftist' National Council of ChurchesNew report from conservative foundation-funded IRD charges the NCC with being a political surrogate for MoveOn.org, People for the American Way and other liberal organizations If you prefer your religious battles sprinkled with demagoguery, sanctimoniousness, and simplistic attacks, the Institute on Religion and Democracy's (IRD) latest broadside against the National Council of Churches (NCC) certainly fits the bill.
|
|||||||||||||||
Religious Sector Organizations
Printer friendly
