Day 284 - 22 Oct 96 - Page 18


     
     1        multi-national corporations have power over the situation
     2        where people become hungry.  The next point, obviously we
     3        have got the investments, is the beef, the dollar hungry
     4        rulers in the third line down, on the hungry for dollars;
     5        i.e. the fact that rulers and governments and powerful
     6        companies and privileged elites, those with some kind of
     7        powerful interest in the third world, are looking to US
     8        corporations and international trade and therefore
     9        dependent on them.
    10
    11   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   It is just any additional defamatory -- I do
    12        not want you to strain to find it, I don't want you to
    13        think because I have asked the questions there may be more
    14        there.  I have got your point, which I will consider, about
    15        causing eviction, whether it be by actually buying the land
    16        or not, but causing it by the general inference.
    17
    18   MR. MORRIS:   Yes.
    19
    20   MR JUSTICE BELL:  And what you are casting your eye over, and
    21        I have mentioned it now because it may be more relevant, if
    22        it has any relevance at all, in other parts.  What you are
    23        looking for is meanings which are defamatory which
    24        McDonald's have not pleaded but which you say are there and
    25        which you say you justified with the evidence.
    26
    27   MR. MORRIS:   Right.  Well, what I did was I just went through
    28        just now identifying every potentially defamatory meaning
    29        in that section which McDonald's had not pleaded.
    30
    31   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   Keep going then.
    32
    33   MR. MORRIS:   Obviously, it goes on then about the power of the
    34        US dollars results in poor countries producing more and
    35        more food for export to the States; out of 40 of the
    36        world's poorest country 36 export food to the USA, the
    37        wealthiest.  The fact that, and the next section,
    38        countries, third world countries where most children are
    39        under-nourished, are actually exporting the staple crops as
    40        animal feed to fatten; i.e. to fatten cattle for turning
    41        into burgers in the first world.  That, of course, is
    42        highly relevant to the soya evidence in the case, the use
    43        of Brazilian soya by German cattle for McDonald's use.
    44
    45        The next allegation is the best farmland in poor countries
    46        is being used for our benefit, which would relate also to
    47        the soya.  The fact is that we have had evidence that soya
    48        production results in the eviction of people who have no
    49        alternative but to go on to deforest further areas, and
    50        some of the soya production is as a result of deforestation 
    51        itself.  We have had evidence on that as well.  But there 
    52        is a further defamatory allegation that the best farmland 
    53        is used for cash crops as well, whether it is for beef or
    54        for soya.  Then these cash crops, where it says McDonald's
    55        is directly involved in this economic imperialism.  So, it
    56        is the cash crop economy that is being identified there.
    57
    58        Under 'gross misuse of resources', in that box -- which
    59        McDonald's have made no complaint about whatsoever in the
    60        case, it is not even part of the defamatory words

Prev Next Index