The United States was voted the Worst Company in the World, followed by Monsanto, Peabody Energy Corp. and Barrick Gold

by Brenda Norrell

(January 01, Washington, Sri Lanka Guardian) The United States was voted the “Worst Company in the World,” by readers of the Censored News blog. 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, in the readers’ poll.

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 readers’ poll ended on Dec. 30, 2008, as news reached the US that Former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney was on board the Free Gaza Ship which was rammed three times by Israel as those onboard attempted to deliver medicine to Palestine. Onboard were three doctors and news reporter Sami al-Haj, who was earlier imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay.

During the Bush regime, the United States emerged in truth as one of the worst violators of international human rights, 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 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 were 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.)Censored News is on the web at: http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com - Sri Lanka Guardian