transnat multi-nat corps

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">519</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">disambiguation: main is mostly about the concept? this more about specific corps</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">redumbdent?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">One of Schlumberger’s tricks of the trade is its near-statelessness</b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. Unlike Halliburton, it is not US-owned. Despite being a publicly listed company both in the US and the UK, and having “headquarters” in London (a sleek glass skyscraper just yards from Buckingham Palace), Paris, The Hague and Houston, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Schlumberger is formally incorporated in Curaçao, a Caribbean offshore haven with ties to the Netherlands.</span></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/how-multinational-corporations-pad-their-budgets-with-the-wealth-of-developing-countries/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/how-multinational-corporations-pad-their-budgets-with-the-wealth-of-developing-countries/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Amazon.com Inc. was brought to court by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in 2017 for transfer pricing discrepancies.</b> In 2005 and 2006, the multinational tech <b>company transferred $255 million in royalty payments to its tax haven in Luxembourg</b>, but according to the IRS these royalty payments should have amounted to $3.5 billion. <b>This transfer pricing adjustment would have increased Amazon’s federal tax payments by more than <a href="https://mnetax.com/amazon-wins-transfer-pricing-case-tax-court-20243-20243" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">$1 billion</a>. </b>Even for the U.S., a country with decent (although waning) infrastructure, the loss of this much cash in federal tax revenue is substantial. Take for instance the water crisis in <b>Flint, Michigan—if the city’s estimated costs of <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2016/04/22/flints-crisis-can-be-fixed-with-55m-in-new-pipes-lansing-mayor.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">$55 million</a> to replace the pipes are accurate, then Amazon’s tax payments could have saved the 100,000 residents from lead poisoning 18 times over.</b></font></p><div class="p2_25" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="alt_ad_block story-page-in-content-graph-2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="teadsNative" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><ins class="adsbygoogle" data-ad-client="ca-pub-5155643920455169" data-ad-slot="8080761699" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true" data-adsbygoogle-status="done" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: block; height: 60px;"><ins id="aswift_0_expand" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-table; border: none; height: 60px; position: relative; visibility: visible; width: 630px; background-color: transparent;"><ins id="aswift_0_anchor" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: block; border: none; height: 60px; position: relative; visibility: visible; width: 630px; background-color: transparent;" /></ins></ins></div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Water supply is not the only infrastructural problem that arises when export countries suffer from a dramatic loss of tax revenue. Education, hospitals, telecommunications, and roads also decline. And in developing countries—the countries that endure the most severe backlashes of transfer and trade mispricing—this infrastructure is often never properly constructed in the first place. The much-needed cash is, instead, sitting in a tax haven.</font></p><div class="p3_25" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The anonymous whistleblower who, in 2015, leaked the 11.5 million documents that we now know as the “Panama Papers” shared in a <a href="https://panamapapers.sueddeutsche.de/articles/572c897a5632a39742ed34ef/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">manifesto</a> that “income inequality” was their motivation in revealing the levels of financial abuse that tax havens create. </b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A key concern for the whistleblower is that tax havens are “metastasizing” across the earth’s surface—214,000 offshore entities are cited in the Panama Papers. The “metastasizing” certainly continued after the release of the Panama Papers—just two years later, a <a href="https://uspirgedfund.org/reports/usp/offshore-shell-games-2017" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">U.S. PIRG study</a> found that 73 percent of the Fortune 500 companies operated 9,755 tax haven subsidiaries....as being “the core of a global system that allows large corporations and wealthy individuals to avoid paying their fair share, depriving governments, rich and poor, of the resources they need to provide vital public services and tackle rising inequality.”</span></font></p><div class="p4_25" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tax havens are a geopolitical <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/07/tax-haven-curse/491411/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">nightmare</a>, and transfer pricing is a legal accounting trick to get money into tax havens.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Transfer Mispricing, Defined</font></strong></p><div class="p6_25" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There’s a wide range of these kinds of tax avoidance games played by multinationals: Transfer mispricing, abusive transfer pricing, trade misinvoicing, base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS), and re-invoicing—they all fall under the umbrella of trade mispricing, or the intentional falsification of transactions on an international level, and are the process that has allowed the old colonial relations of productions to continue. Arguably, the polynymity of this deceptive practice is evidence of its ubiquity, but “thievery” could just as well replace any of these titles.</font></p><div class="p7_25" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The short-term goals for mis- or re-invoicing vary. In some cases the desired outcome is to dodge capital controls (a strategy commonly used in emerging markets to <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20110324021806///www.mof.go.jp/jouhou/soken/kenkyu/ron056.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">reduce</a> rapid cash outflows). In other cases, the incentive for misinvoicing is to claim tax incentives or avoid paying duty. Generally, the scheme is this: shift profits out of high tax countries and into low tax countries, or tax havens, while ensuring that the majority of the expenses are assigned to high tax countries.</font></p><div class="p8_25" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2015, Global Financial Integrity (GFI) published a <a href="https://secureservercdn.net/45.40.149.159/34n.8bd.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/IFF-Update_2015-Final-1.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">study</a> revealing that in 2013 an astounding US$1.1 trillion was stolen annually—or nearly $3 billion a day—from developing countries due to trade mispricing. If you wonder why developing countries seem rather slow to develop, here’s a big part of the answer. The head-spinning loss of $3 billion a day in taxable revenue begs the question: is “corporate practice” simply legal thievery?...

the pricing of commodities traded between or within multinational enterprises—is a legal practice and a key feature of cross-border and intra-firm transactions. The United Nations prefers to use the broader phrase “trade pricing” in addressing this practice and defines it as a “<a href="https://www.un.org/esa/ffd/tax-committee/ta-transfer-pricing.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">normal incident</a> of the operations of multinational enterprises (MNEs).” Because the word “incident” evokes concern, it should not go unnoticed. One of the most disruptive consequences of transfer pricing is that international transactions are now governed by the common interests of the “associated enterprises” of an MNE group. That is, market forces no longer control the transactions because with the allowance of transfer pricing, an increasing percentage of global trade (this includes the international transfer of goods and services, capital, and intangible goods, or intellectual property) now occurs as an internal practice between affiliated entities.</font></p><div class="p11_25" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Theoretically, internal transfer pricing is supposed to follow the arm’s length principle. This principle follows the idea that transfer prices should be controlled and recorded as if internal trades were happening amongst independent entities, or at “arm’s length.” But like the IRS case against Amazon.com reveals, proving arm’s length is not so straightforward. So while the “arm’s length principle” is very much written into place (<a href="https://www.oecd.org/ctp/transfer-pricing/transfer-pricing-country-profiles.htm" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Brazil is listed</a> as the only country without domestic legislation or regulation that makes reference to the arm’s length principle), even research from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations recognize that this principle is very much impossible to implement.</font></p><div class="p12_25" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Unable to ignore the ease with which a company could engage in abusive transfer pricing, the OECD and the G20 countries first drafted the “<a href="https://www.oecd.org/ctp/BEPSActionPlan.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">BEPS Action Plan</a>” in 2013 as part of a broader effort to enhance transparency for tax administrations to assess transfer pricing. At large, base erosion and profit shifting undermine the integrity of any tax system. But the direct “harm” BEPS created for individual taxpayers and governments was only part of the motivation for implementing the 2013 action plan. The other motivating factor was the added risk to businesses, including the risk to an MNE’s reputation in the event its effective tax rate was viewed as being “too low” as it would impede, locally, “fair competition” for corporations functioning only in those domestic markets. With this latter motivation, little promise ought to be expected from the plan as it maintains a focus on risks brought to MNEs.</font></p><div class="p13_25" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Setting potential reputation risks aside, the incentive for companies to strategically misprice trade or shift their profits is to avoid tax or duty payments. The incentive is to shield wealth. And while there is no single way to avoid tax payments and dues, there is one necessary component: tax haven subsidiaries.

...Tax haven subsidiaries function as cash canals to transport taxable profits with the goal of lowering or, if you are Amazon Inc., entirely avoiding tax payments. But a company’s subsidiary in a tax haven requires financial sleights of hand to get the cash safe. Take for instance the Goldcrest method Amazon used in Luxembourg. It shifted its intellectual property rights (or intangibles) that were held by its U.S. parent company to its subsidiary, Amazon Lux. The subsidiary then collected royalties tax-free on international sales. Google and Ikea, similarly, decided to play the “Going Dutch” move, using their subsidiaries in the Netherlands.</font></p><div class="p16_25" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The “Swiss Sidestep” is another tax play, and rather than royalty payments, “management service fees” are the key element. By paying a value-added service fee to a sister company in a European tax haven, a company can “side-step” tax payments by converting profits into fees. And, then, of course, there is the privacy and protection that a company gets on the island of Mauritius—with the “Mauritius Maneuver” a person can send their cash to Mauritius to avoid income tax and then bring it back—without a trace—as “foreign investment.”

...Each of these fictional narratives that frame the legal movement of cash across borders has one theme in common: wealth protection and, therefore, poverty production.</font></p><div class="p18_25" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Colonial Undertones of Transfer Pricing</font></strong></p><div class="p19_25" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It is not the case that some industries are more prone than others to transfer mispricing, or even that developed countries are immune to this manipulative business practice—the IRS case against Amazon is a great example of this. But, it is the case that developing countries are more vulnerable to the impact of transfer mispricing. Suppose a company extracts 2 megatons (MT) of cobalt from Papua New Guinea (PNG) and then exports the 2 MT (or 1 million kilograms) at the price of US$5 per kilogram, but imports into Canada—by way of Mauritius or the Netherlands—the same 2 MT of cobalt at the price of US$10. The result for PNG is the loss of tax revenue on $5 million. Even at a mere 5 percent tax rate with these modest and imaginative figures, a loss of US$250,000 for PNG is significant.</font></p><div class="p20_25" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The impact of trade and transfer mispricing on developing countries is not just monetary. There is a series of moral effects as well. In the hypothetical PNG scenario, for instance, one glaring concern that arises from this manipulative business practice is the implication that the people of PNG are somehow unaware of the value of their own resources.

Trade mispricing, then, alienates people from their own place, and in a manner similar to a worker’s alienation from their product. A red flag must be raised to the psychological impact of pricing discrepancies that suggest cobalt, somehow, has a lesser value within the borders of PNG than within, say, Canada or Belgium.</font></p><div class="p22_25" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The combination, or the intersection, of these two matters—these monetary and moral effects—is evidence that trade and transfer (mis)pricing, the crux of an MNE—are symptoms of an ongoing colonial hangover. The antidote? Establish strict and enforceable regulations so that one nation’s economic sovereignty does not come at the expense of another nation’s resource sovereignty.</font></p><div class="p23_25" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tanya Rawal-Jindia is a researcher at <a href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/staff/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research</a>.</font></span></p><div class="p24_25" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This article was produced by <a href="https://independentmediainstitute.org/globetrotter/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Globetrotter</a>, a project of the Independent Media Institute.</font></span></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/social-movements-in-latin-america-are-under-attack-despite-colombia-peace-plan/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/social-movements-in-latin-america-are-under-attack-despite-colombia-peace-plan/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><h1 class="post-title single-post-title entry-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Social movements in Latin America are under attack despite Colombia ‘peace plan’</font></h1><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">With Venezuela occupying the small bandwidth our media has for news about Latin America, there is virtually no information about Colombia, where a horrible wave of violence in the past two years has taken the lives of hundreds of social movement leaders and activists around the country,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> especially in places such as Cauca, Antioquia, Santander and Arauca. That’s why Colombia’s social movements organized the Humanitarian Refugee Convergence, which took place April 28-May 2 in Bogota, Colombia. It brought together over 1,000 activists from indigenous, black, women and campesino (farmer) organizations, as well as groups representing victims of Colombia’s long armed conflict, to speak out against the violence and call on the government to protect their lives.</span></font></div><div class="p1_13" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During the Convergence, we had a chance to talk to Wilmer Castillo, a spokesperson for the National Agrarian Coordination, a group that brought campesinos from around the country to Bogota.</font></span></p><div class="p2_13" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="alt_ad_block story-page-in-content-graph-2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="teadsNative" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><b style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For people in the United States, the only issue we hear about regarding Latin America is the conflict in Venezuela. Americans, if they know anything about Colombia, might know that a peace agreement was signed with the armed groups in 2016 and they probably think that the situation in Colombia is now calm. Can you tell us what is actually happening here?</font></b></span></p><div class="p3_13" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It has been falsely reported in the international press that the armed conflict in Colombia has ended. The armed conflict ended with only one guerrilla organization, the FARC. There are still two others, the EPL, the Popular Liberation Army; and the ELN, the National Liberation Army. The present right-wing government of Ivan Duque has canceled the negotiations that were going on with the ELN, which has worsened the armed conflict. Even though the FARC was demobilized and has moved into the arena of nonviolent, political struggle, creating a political party, the armed struggle continues in the places where these two other groups remain active.</font></span></p><div class="p4_13" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Another reason to tell the world that there is no peace in Colombia is because the causes that led to the armed rebellions have not been addressed. On the contrary. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">There are still multinational companies that invade our lands and displace our rural communities.</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> There are still paramilitary groups that terrorize our organizations. There is still a military strategy to consolidate the land and hand it over to the multinationals. So one of the primary reasons that the armed conflict still exists is because of the economic model that is so destructive.</span></font></span></p><div class="p5_13" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">To make matters worse, the government’s armed forces not only fight against the armed insurgents, but against our communities and social movements as well. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Their bullets are not just killing insurgents; they are also killing the organized communities that defend their lands and try to build an alternative movement in this country. This alternative goes against the interests of the neoliberal model that has given, and continues to give, all the riches of our territory to the multinational corporations and to national private businesses. When we fight against this model, we are murdered and jailed, which is why we are organizing this Humanitarian Refugee Convergence.</span></font></span></p><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What connection does the U.S. government or U.S. companies have to the conflict?</font></b></p><div class="p7_13" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Unfortunately, foreign companies have invaded our territory and robbed our resources—oil, gold, water and now a series of minerals that they have discovered as the mining technology has advanced. There is also agribusiness. Many of these companies come from the United States. In addition to the companies that extract our resources, there is transnational private capital that sets the economic rules.</font></span></p><div class="p8_13" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">As for the U.S. government, it has interfered in our internal affairs from the time of our founding as a nation in 1810. Together, the U.S. government and companies have directly interfered in our way of life by imposing an economic model to benefit foreign interests and reinforcing that model with military agreements. I’m sorry to say that our armed forces have been shaped and trained by the U.S. military.</span><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> The U.S. military has taught them how to terrorize and attack the people who rise up, how to destroy the organizations we have created to defend ourselves from the </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">multinationals.</span></b></font></span></p><div class="p9_13" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><b style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What is your message to U.S. activists?</font></b></span></p><div class="p10_13" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We have always had support from U.S. groups and we appreciate that support. We need to build on those links and find ways to educate more people about the horrible wave of violence our people are suffering. We also have to find more ways to support your struggles. We feel an affinity for the struggles you are waging in the United States and we have always believed in the unity of peoples’ struggles around the world for emancipation, autonomy and sovereignty.</font></span></p><div class="p11_13" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We need an alternative model globally that would allow the construction of another civilization, one that would save our planet and life itself. We, the great majority of people in the world, are victims of only one system: capitalism. So together we have to build another world, one in which all worlds fit, one in which all our rights are respected and our planet is protected. That’s the world we are dreaming about.</font></span></p><div class="p12_13" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">This article was produced by </span><a href="https://independentmediainstitute.org/local-peace-economy/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Local Peace Economy</span></span></a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">, a project of the Independent Media Institute.</span></font></span></p><div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">==</font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>