Top Mark Fails Coke

Certain things are guaranteed with a Mark Thomas product. He has a tenacity which would make the average Rottweiler look like a slacker and more front than Blackpool and Brighton combined. He uses language your Grandma probably wouldn’t use (unless she appears on the Catherine Tate Show) and a rapier wit sharper than, er, the sharpest of sharp rapiers.

FACTS, PERSONAL STORIES AND.....A DEATH THREAT

Some people would accuse activists like Mark Thomas of simply choosing big corporations and then making vague or unsubstantiated accusations about their behaviour but this is not the case in Mark Thomas v Coca-Cola. Belching Out the Devil – Global Adventures with Coca-Cola is packed with facts and personal stories, and the appendices include reference notes, Q&As and a copy of a death threat from a Colombian paramilitary group to a member of the trade union at a Coca-Cola bottling plant. If that sounds a bit heavy, so be it, but the book tells stories that need to be told and the author’s black humour makes it an entertaining and digestible if not particularly palatable read.

I won’t tell you the whole story now but here’s a few interesting snippets to whet your appetite.

USA

A visit to The World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta where you can be soaked in warm fuzzy propaganda for the bargain price of $15. Unsurprisingly, there is no record of Coca-Cola’s involvement in Nazi Germany or the origins of Fanta, for which the author suggests a new strap line – The Reich Stuff. Then the company AGM in Delaware where protest is managed to the fringes and corporate greed is celebrated.

COLOMBIA

Adventures in Bogota where he once used one of his limited repertoire of Spanish expressions, ‘Dispara el gordo primero’, roughly translated as ‘shoot the fat one first’! Despite being awash with US dollars allegedly intended for the war on drugs, Colombia has an appalling human rights record and 2,500 trade unionists have been killed since 1986. Stuff like that tends to get lost amid all the hype about FARC guerrillas. In fact, it’s right wing paramilitaries who are the greater threat to life but the authorities appear to turn a blind eye as they protect business interests.

TURKEY

In a country where it is illegal even to mention the Armenian genocide, human rights aren't high on the agenda and Coca-Cola appears to benefit from the repression of trade unionists occasionally enforced by police brutality. And a band which prefers entering the Eurovision Song Contest to playing at a major festival sponsored by the devil drink.

EL SALVADOR

Stories of child labour which are ignored by the company which also fails to help change communities so that same child labour – sometimes a family’s only means of survival – is no longer necessary. The author’s conclusion is that Coca-Cola has “not fully and properly met the recommendations made by the Human Rights Watch Report.” Also, an encounter with the world’s first sexy green cop in a community where Coca-Cola doesn’t employ anyone, pollutes the stream and causes people earning about $1.50 a day to pay out more money for their drinking water.

UK

An exposé of the spin which is Corporate Social Responsibility, a debate in the House of Commons committee room in Westminster and the lengths to which the company’s Global Workplace Rights Director will go in order to avoid answering some simple questions.

INDIA

Possibly the country most adversely affected by the company’s bad behaviour. Falling water levels resulting from bottling plants opened in drought areas. Coca-Cola’s refusal to shut down its plant in Kaladera as recommended in a report by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI). “So the women get up early, fight for water, have no time to bathe their kids and the children are taken out of school so they can get water for their family. What was it like before the Coca-Cola plant came? A voice from the crowd responds, ‘there was a lot of water then.’”

MEXICO

A country with 1.65 per cent of the world’s population but where Coca-Cola achieves 12 per cent of all its global sales, taking advantage of the lack of clean, available drinking water, particularly in schools. The ex-President Vicente Fox (2000-2006) is also the ex-President of Coca-Cola Mexico which happened to increase its sales by 56.5% between 1997 and 2007, partly due to the legalisation by the government of a cheap sweetener called cyclamate, banned from the USA and previously Mexico as it had been linked to cancer. And the company’s illegal campaign against a small competitor, a campaign stopped only by one gutsy Mexican shopkeeper who refused to be bullied (the company was fined the equivalent of US$13 million).

NEXT STEP?

Having researched the subject, I thought I knew quite a lot about Coca-Cola’s dubious activities around the world but my eyes were opened even wider by this book which is well-researched, written with a very human touch and laugh aloud funny. Go! Beg, borrow or buy a copy and we dare you to buy a Coca-Cola product again with a clean conscience.

LINKS

The Bookseller Crow (UK Independent Bookstore)

MARK THOMAS YOUTUBE LINKS

British Transport Police

Mark Thomas v McDonalds

My Life in Serious Organised Crime – Radio Clip

UK Arms Trade

LINKED ARTICLES ON TAKE THE RED PILL

*It’s the Real Thing – The Bad Coke Joke

Beware False Profits

Dying for a Drink

More Books Which Could Change Your Life (includes Mark Thomas’ book about the UK arms trade)

Water – Commercial Product or Human Right?