Pratap Chatterjee
Encyclopedia
Pratap Chatterjee is an India
n/Sri Lanka
n investigative journalist and progressive author. He is a British citizen and was raised in India, although he has lived in California for many years. He served as the executive director of CorpWatch
, an Oakland
-based corporate accountability organization from 2003 to 2008. He is also a producer and radio host at KPFA
-FM in Berkeley, California
.
Chatterjee has also served as a community advisor to KQED, the San Francisco public radio
and television station. He was a member of the board of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network from 2001 to 2005, and was an Environmental Commissioner for the city of Berkeley from 1998 to 2003. He helped start a new project called Crocodyl, which aims to research corporations using wiki technology and global South/North collaboration.
His first book was a critique of the 1992 Earth Summit
in Rio de Janeiro, written with Matthias Finger, titled The Earth Brokers: Power, Politics and World Development (Routledge Books, 1994) that analyzes the United Nations response to global environmental crises.
In the late 1990s, Chatterjee did a great deal of research surrounding the 1849 California Gold Rush
and how it affected Californian American Indians
which resulted in a booklet titled Gold, Greed & Genocide http://www.1849.org which he later turned into a DVD with a 16-page classroom activities and discussion guide distributed by Oyate.
Chatterjee has traveled extensively in Central Asia and the Middle East to investigate the role of private military contractors working in Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2004, Chatterjee published the well-received Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation (Seven Stories Press). His footage was used in Michael Moore's 2004 film Fahrenheit 9-11 and he was interviewed in Robert Greenwald's film Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers
In February 2009, Chatterjee published a detailed history of the role of Texas companies Halliburton and KBR titled Halliburton's Army: How A Well-Connected Texas Oil Company Revolutionized The Way America Makes War (Nation Books). In March 2009, he published several videos and an article of the failure of development aid in rural Afghanistan that was circulated via TomDispatch and on Salon. He followed this up with an article on the poor treatment of Afghan translators working under contract with Ohio-based Mission Essential Personnel for the U.S. military.
He has been published in a number of popular media, including the Financial Times
, The New Republic
, The Guardian
, and The Independent
. He often appears as a guest expert in a wide variety of media ranging from Fox TV to Democracy Now!
. His writing has won a number of awards, from the National Newspaper Association and Project Censored
, among others.
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
n/Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...
n investigative journalist and progressive author. He is a British citizen and was raised in India, although he has lived in California for many years. He served as the executive director of CorpWatch
CorpWatch
CorpWatch is a research group based in San Francisco, California, USA. The group's mission is non-profit investigative research and journalism to expose corporate malfeasance and to advocate for multinational corporate accountability and transparency...
, an Oakland
Oakland, California
Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...
-based corporate accountability organization from 2003 to 2008. He is also a producer and radio host at KPFA
KPFA
KPFA is a listener-funded progressive talk radio and music radio station located in Berkeley, California, broadcasting to the San Francisco Bay Area. KPFA airs public news, public affairs, talk, and music programming. The station signed on-the-air April 15 1949, as the first Pacifica Station...
-FM in Berkeley, California
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
.
Chatterjee has also served as a community advisor to KQED, the San Francisco public radio
KQED-FM
KQED-FM is an NPR-member radio station owned by Northern California Public Broadcasting in San Francisco, California.KQED-FM was founded by James Day in 1969 as the radio arm of KQED Television. The founding manager was Bernard Mayes who later went on to be Executive Vice-President of KQED TV and...
and television station. He was a member of the board of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network from 2001 to 2005, and was an Environmental Commissioner for the city of Berkeley from 1998 to 2003. He helped start a new project called Crocodyl, which aims to research corporations using wiki technology and global South/North collaboration.
His first book was a critique of the 1992 Earth Summit
Earth Summit
The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development , also known as the Rio Summit, Rio Conference, Earth Summit was a major United Nations conference held in Rio de Janeiro from 3 June to 14 June 1992.-Overview:...
in Rio de Janeiro, written with Matthias Finger, titled The Earth Brokers: Power, Politics and World Development (Routledge Books, 1994) that analyzes the United Nations response to global environmental crises.
In the late 1990s, Chatterjee did a great deal of research surrounding the 1849 California Gold Rush
California Gold Rush
The California Gold Rush began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The first to hear confirmed information of the gold rush were the people in Oregon, the Sandwich Islands , and Latin America, who were the first to start flocking to...
and how it affected Californian American Indians
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
which resulted in a booklet titled Gold, Greed & Genocide http://www.1849.org which he later turned into a DVD with a 16-page classroom activities and discussion guide distributed by Oyate.
Chatterjee has traveled extensively in Central Asia and the Middle East to investigate the role of private military contractors working in Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2004, Chatterjee published the well-received Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation (Seven Stories Press). His footage was used in Michael Moore's 2004 film Fahrenheit 9-11 and he was interviewed in Robert Greenwald's film Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers
Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers
Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers is a 2006 documentary film made by Robert Greenwald and Brave New Films about the ongoing Iraq War and the behavior of companies with no-bid contracts working in Iraq....
In February 2009, Chatterjee published a detailed history of the role of Texas companies Halliburton and KBR titled Halliburton's Army: How A Well-Connected Texas Oil Company Revolutionized The Way America Makes War (Nation Books). In March 2009, he published several videos and an article of the failure of development aid in rural Afghanistan that was circulated via TomDispatch and on Salon. He followed this up with an article on the poor treatment of Afghan translators working under contract with Ohio-based Mission Essential Personnel for the U.S. military.
He has been published in a number of popular media, including the Financial Times
Financial Times
The Financial Times is an international business newspaper. It is a morning daily newspaper published in London and printed in 24 cities around the world. Its primary rival is the Wall Street Journal, published in New York City....
, The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
, The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, and The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
. He often appears as a guest expert in a wide variety of media ranging from Fox TV to Democracy Now!
Democracy Now!
Democracy Now! and its staff have received several journalism awards, including the Gracie Award from American Women in Radio & Television; the George Polk Award for its 1998 radio documentary Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship, on the Chevron Corporation and the deaths of...
. His writing has won a number of awards, from the National Newspaper Association and Project Censored
Project Censored
Project Censored is a non-profit, media criticism and investigative journalism project within the Sonoma State University Foundation. It is managed through the School of Social Sciences at the university....
, among others.
Articles
- Chatterjee, Pratap. "DiyarbakırDiyarbakırDiyarbakır is one of the largest cities in southeastern Turkey...
Dispatch: Border Guard." The New Republic, February 13, 2003. http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030224&s=chatterjee022403 - Chatterjee, Pratap. "Gold, Greed, and Cyanide." Dollars & SenseDollars & SenseDollars & Sense is a magazine dedicated to providing left-wing perspectives on economics.Published six times a year since 1974, it is edited by a collective of economists, journalists, and activists committed to the ideals of social justice and economic democracy.It was initially sponsored by the...
, January 1, 1999. Economic Affairs Bureau; 26 pages. ASIN B00098L4SK. - Chatterjee, Pratap. "Scramble for the Caspian: Big Oil Looks to Divvy up Caspian SeaCaspian SeaThe Caspian Sea is the largest enclosed body of water on Earth by area, variously classed as the world's largest lake or a full-fledged sea. The sea has a surface area of and a volume of...
Oil Riches." Multinational MonitorMultinational MonitorThe Multinational Monitor is a bimonthly magazine founded by Ralph Nader in 1980. It is published by Essential Information. Although its primary focus is on analysis of corporations, it also publishes articles on labor issues and occupational safety and health, the environment, globalization,...
, September 1, 1998. Essential Information, Inc.; 11 pages. ASIN B00098K6R0. - Chatterjee, Pratap. "Guarding the Multinationals: DSL and the International Private 'Security' Business." Multinational Monitor, March 1, 1998. Essential Information, Inc.; 9 pages. ASIN B000986GQK.
- Chatterjee, Pratap. "Toxic Racism: Chippewas Resist Deadly Dumping." Dollars & Sense, May 1, 1997. Economic Affairs Bureau; 6 pages. ASIN B00097N7RC.
- Chatterjee, Pratap. "PeruPeruPeru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
Goes Beneath the Shell: Shell Oil Co.Royal Dutch ShellRoyal Dutch Shell plc , commonly known as Shell, is a global oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the fifth-largest company in the world according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine and one of the six...
's Natural Gas Operations in Peru." Multinational Monitor, May 1, 1997. Essential Information, Inc.; 7 pages. ASIN B00097O95G. - Chatterjee, Pratap. "The Mining Menace of Freeport-McMoRanFreeport-McMoRanFreeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc., often called simply Freeport, is the world's lowest-cost copper producer and one of the world's largest producers of gold...
." Multinational Monitor, April 1, 1996. Essential Information, Inc.; 11 pages. ASIN B00096JXP8. - Chatterjee, Pratap. "World Bank Brownout": Electricity Projects in India Displaces Slum Dwellers." Multinational Monitor, December 1, 1995. Essential Information, Inc.; 7 pages. ASIN B00093TTDW.
- Chatterjee, Pratap. "EnronEnronEnron Corporation was an American energy, commodities, and services company based in Houston, Texas. Before its bankruptcy on December 2, 2001, Enron employed approximately 22,000 staff and was one of the world's leading electricity, natural gas, communications, and pulp and paper companies, with...
Deal Blows a Fuse." Multinational Monitor, July 1, 1995. Essential Information, Inc.; 12 pages. ASIN B00093O8GK. - Chatterjee, Pratap. "Invasion of the 'Body Shoppers': India's Information Technology Industry." Multinational Monitor, May 1, 1995. Essential Information, Inc.; 9 pages. ASIN B00093NROY.
- Chatterjee, Pratap. "Slush Funds, Corrupt Consultants and Bidding for Bank Business." Multinational Monitor, July 1, 1994. Essential Information, Inc.; 9 pages. ASIN B00092XK5G.
- Chatterjee, Pratap. "True Confessions of the World Bank." Multinational Monitor, July 1, 1994. Essential Information, Inc.; 7 pages. ASIN B00092XK60.
External links
- KPFA's Terra Verde Weekly environmental affairs program founded and co-hosted by Pratap Chatterjee; airs Fridays 1:30-2:00 p.m., with audio of previous programs archived at website
- Pratap Chatterjee - Halliburton's Army: How a Well-Connected Texas Oil Company Revolutionized the Way America Makes War, February 18, 2009, talk at Powell's City of Books in Portland, Oregon, from recent book tour.