Day 284 - 22 Oct 96 - Page 38


     
     1
     2   MR. MORRIS:   Yes.  And secondly --
     3
     4   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Well, I thought those were two separate
     5        ones.
     6
     7   MR. MORRIS:   Yes, they are.  Sorry, yes.  But, no, sorry the
     8        second point I wanted to make.  So the first point is they
     9        are two separate statements in that text.  And the next
    10        thing I wanted to say about it is it says that McDonald's
    11        and many other corporations are collectively contributing
    12        to a major ecological catastrophe.  It does not say
    13        McDonald's is contributing to a major ecological
    14        catastrophe; it says McDonald's and many other corporations
    15        are contributing to a major ecological catastrophe,
    16        combined.  What they are also doing in a combined way is
    17        forcing the tribal peoples, et cetera.
    18
    19        If we can also rely....  Sorry, no, the statement about
    20        major ecological catastrophe is -- well, I am not sure.  In
    21        some ways that colonial invasion paragraph also relates to
    22        the previous page, although it is under a different
    23        heading, because the nature of the economic imperialism is
    24        a kind of colonial invasion, and then especially when you
    25        consider the last sentence in that last paragraph:  This is
    26        a typical example of the arrogance and viciousness of
    27        multi-national companies in their endless search for more
    28        and more profits.  And where do we find other examples?
    29        We find it in the previous page.
    30
    31   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   That is a third and separate sting then.
    32        You have got responsibility or blame for starvation in the
    33        third world, destruction of the rainforest or tropical
    34        forest, you would say, which is the ecological side, and
    35        then you have got this third sting, forcing tribal peoples
    36        in the rainforest off their ancestral territories; is that
    37        right?  It seems to me at moment you can argue that with
    38        some strength.
    39
    40   MR. MORRIS:   Yes, I think that the eviction of small farmers is
    41        a bad thing in itself, whether it results in hunger or not,
    42        and therefore if people are being displaced by the cash
    43        crop economy, then that is defamatory of McDonald's and is
    44        a separate discrete point.  That could result in hunger and
    45        it could result in destruction of forests as they move into
    46        the forest, or indeed moving into slums in shanty towns on
    47        the edges of Sao Paulo.
    48
    49        I think that there is a general sting, if that be the right
    50        word, in the overall power of multi-national corporations 
    51        and the US dollar. 
    52 
    53   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  That is what I tried to put to you this
    54        morning, was it not?
    55
    56   MR. MORRIS:   Yes.  Was I reluctant to agree?   I was not clear
    57        about --
    58
    59   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   About McDonald's using their power as a
    60        multi-national, et cetera to do various things.

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