Green TD in unethical investments scandal

national | miscellaneous | news report Monday June 09, 2003 00:47 by hunter hunterthompsonmachinegun at yahoo dot co dot uk

Green Party TD Ciaran Cuffe has shares worth €1.3 million in unethical (by his own party's standards) companies - such as war profiteers Chevron-Texaco - if an artcile in today's Sunday Independent is to be believed.

(picture shows Ciaran in Springtime)

Mr Cuffe, TD for Dun Laoghaire, is said to have shares "inherited from his mother" in quite a few high profile, environmentally menacing multi-national companies. Among the list are such esteemed respectors of the envirnoment and human rights as Chevron-Texaco, General Electric, Procter & Gamble.

General Electric, for example, is the "number one Super Polluter"(1) in America.

Most Irish Greens also believe in the theory of local economy, and claim to be anti-multinational. Yet, to use the example of General Electric again, GE are number five in the Fortune 500 with revenues of $89.3 billion and earnings of $8.2 billion in 1997. Hardly encouraging the 'local economy'.

General Electric has also led the effort to avoid the cleanup and restoration of sites they helped create. Polluter pays - isn't that why Greens support the bin tax?

As for the rest of the major companies Cuffe has shares in, I'm sure a few minutes on google and I could dig up quite a lot, but for brevity's sake, lets just acknowledge that Proctor & Gamble test products on animals - which is enough for me, a lifelong vegetarian.

Interestingly, as his excuse, Mr Cuffe says that as the shares were passed on from his mother, who died three years ago, "the investments are currently under review to weed out any unethical shares", and that he didnt want to invest in companies with bad environmental records. I assume he also meant to add "human rights records."

However, seeing as over the last year we have all been on anti-war marches together, you would think Mr Cuffe - however little he knew about the ethics of his investments - would realise for example that a) Chevron-Texaco is Condi Rice's old stomping ground, and b) C-T are going to make mega-bucks out of this war we were all protesting AGAINST.

Random quote: "Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas - reserves I'd love Chevron to have access to." - former C-T CEO, Ken Derr.

Interestingly there is not a single reference to Chevron-Texaco on the Green Party site. Although their comrades in the USA are quite vociferous in their condemnations.

Ciaran can be contacted at Ciaran@CiaranCuffe.Com or on (01) 618 3082 (Dail Office)

And remember everybody, and I quote: "The Green Party in Ireland put the quality of life of citizens before the profit-interest of big business."

Oh yeah. Believe it when I see it.

Notes
(1)http://tinyurl.com/dsnl