-Caveat Lector-
More from the "Project Censored" yearbooks:
Among the Top Ten Censored Stories of 1996:
BIG PERKS FOR THE WEALTHY HIDDEN IN MINIMUM WAGE BILL
Source: THE NEW REPUBLIC, 10/28/96, "Bare minimum: Goodies
for the rich hidden in wage bill," by John Judis (Reprinted in
Santa Rosa Press Democrat, 10/13/96).
On August 20, 1996, President Clinton signed into law the
Small Business Job Protection Act of 1996, ostensibly geared to
aid small business owners and their employees. The publicized
intent of the bill was to raise the minimum wage from $4.25 to
$5.15 an hour.
However, according to John Judis, senior editor of the New
Republic, the minimum wage bill included at least ten other
significant provisions aimed at neither small business owners nor
their employees. Indeed, Judis charges, these unpublicized
provisions may negate whatever good the bill may do.
Among the lowlights:
*The bill reinstates tax incentives which encourage
leveraged buyouts (LBOs):
In a moment of temporary sanity, Congress put into the 1986
tax reform bill a measure preventing firms that
engage in LBOs from claiming a tax deduction for the exorbitant
fees they pay investment banks and advisors. However, this year's
minimum wage bill once again makes these fees deductible and does
so retroactively, creating a billion-dollar-boon for companies
that contested the 1986 ruling.
And in the case of employee LBOs, generally thought to be
favorable, Congress slipped into the minimum wage bill a
provision that would eliminate a special incentive that allowed
banks to exclude half of the interest payments they received on
loans for employee buyouts; discouraging employee LBOs of
otherwise doomed companies.
*Incentives for multinational corporations:
The new minimum wage bill has successfully protected
American multinationals from paying taxes on unrepatriated
foreign income, a long-standing tax loophole for overseas
corporations. In Clinton's 1992 Presidential campaign, he vowed
to do away with these tax incentives; however, in 1993 his
administration backed down, merely requiring overseas firms to
reinvest their unrepatriated profits in foreign plants and
equipment rather than banking them. Under the new minimum wage
bill, however, this year's Congress rescinded even that.
*Weakened retirement and pension protection:
The bill does away with a requirement that companies must
offer the same benefits to lower-wage employees as they do to
higher-wage employees, and effectively reverses the Employee
Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), which states that
if an insurance company takes too much in fees or invests in
risky ventures they can be sued.
Additionally, the bill does away with a surtax on luxury car
purchases and diesel fuel for yachts, ends a surtax on one-year
pension withdrawals over $150,000 (a boon for the ultra-rich),
and allows newspaper publishers to treat their distributors and
carriers as independent contractors rather than employees in
order to avoid paying their Social Security and unemployment
compensation.
Among the Top Ten Censored Stories of 1997:
CLINTON ADMINISTRATION AGGRESSIVELY
PROMOTES U.S. ARMS SALES WORLDWIDE
Sources: THE BULLETIN OF ATOMIC SCIENTISTS, "Costly
Giveaways," Oct 1996, by Lora Lumpe, and IN THESE TIMES, "Guns
'R' Us," Aug 11, 1997, by Martha Honey
The United States is now the principal arms merchant for the
world. U.S. weapons are evident in almost every conflict
worldwide and reap a devastating toll on civilians, U.S. military
personnel, and the socio-economic priorities of many Third World
nations.
On June 7, 1997, the House of Representatives unanimously
approved the Arms Transfer Code of Conduct. This Code would
prohibit U.S. commercial arms sales or military aid and training
to foreign governments that are undemocratic, abuse human rights,
or engage in aggression against neighboring states; yet the
Clinton administration, along with the Defense, Commerce, and
State Departments, has continued to aggressively promote the arms
industry at every opportunity. With Washington's share of the
arms business jumping from 16 percent worldwide in 1988 to 63
percent today, U.S. arms dealers currently sell $10 billion in
weapons to non-democratic governments each year.
During Clinton's first year in office, U.S. foreign military
aid soared to $36 billion, more than double what Bush had
approved in 1992.
Most U.S. weaponry is sold to strife-torn regions such as
the Middle East. These weapons sales fan the flames of war
instead of promoting stability, and put U.S. troops based around
the world at growing risk.
The last five times the U.S. troops were sent into conflict,
they found themselves facing adversaries that had previously
received U.S. weapons, military technology, or training.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon uses the presence of advanced U.S.
weapons in foreign arsenals to justify increased new weapons
spending "ostensibly" to maintain U.S. military superiority.
Given that international arms sales exacerbate conflicts and
drain scarce resources from developing countries, why does the
Clinton administration push them so vigorously?
Proponents of arms sales say that these sales are a boon to
the economy and that they create jobs. However, the government's
own studies reveal that for every 100 jobs created by weapons
exports, 41 are lost in non-military U.S. firms. And as U.S. arms
exports have soared, some 2.2 million defense industry workers
have lost their jobs.
Thus the more plausible motive is the drive for corporate
profits.
It is no small detail that U.S. global arms market dominance
has been accomplished as much through subsidies as sales. In
return for arms manufacturers' huge political contributions, much
of the U.S. arms exports are paid with government grants,
subsidized loans, tax breaks and promotional activities. With the
1996 welfare reform law cutting federal support for poor families
by about $7 billion annually --an amount almost equal to the
yearly subsidies given to U.S. weapons manufacturers-- it is the
poor at home and abroad who will pay the price for escalating
arms exports.
Lawrence Kolb, a Brookings Institute fellow and former
assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan, sums up the
problem: "It has become a money game: an absurd spiral in which
we export arms only to have to develop more sophisticated ones to
counter those spread out all over the world. (And) ..it is very
hard for us to tell other (countries) not to sell arms when we
are out there peddling and fighting to control the market."
BIG BUSINESS SEEKS TO CONTROL AND INFLUENCE UNIVERSITIES
Sources: CAQ, "Phi Beta Capitalism," Spring 1997, Lawrence
Soley, and DOLLARS AND SENSE, "Big Money on Campus," Mar/Apr
1997, Lawrence Soley
Academia is being auctioned off to the highest bidder.
Increasingly, industry is creating endowed professorships,
funding think tanks and research centers, sponsoring grants, and
contracting for research.
Under this arrangement, students, faculty, and universities
serve the interests of corporations instead of the public in the
process selling off academic freedom and intellectual
independence.
At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a number
of programs serve corporate interests. One is the MIT's
Industrial Liaison Program, which charges 300 corporations from
$10,000 to $50,000 per year in membership fees. The fees buy the
expertise and resources of MIT's departments and laboratories.
Professors participating in the program can earn points towards
professional travel, office equipment, and other prizes.
Although universities often claim that corporate moneys come
without strings attached, this usually not the case. A British
pharmaceutical corporation, Boots, gave $250,000 to University of
California at San Francisco (UCSF) for research comparing its
hypothyroid drug, Synthroid, with lower cost alternatives.
Instead of demonstrating Synthroid's superiority as Boots had
hoped, the study found that the other drugs were bioequivalents.
This information could have saved consumers $356 million if they
had switched to a cheaper alternative, but Boots took action to
protect Synthroid's domination of the $600 million market.
The corporation prevented publication of the results in the
Journal of the American Medical Association, and then announced
that the research was badly flawed. The researcher was unable to
counter the claim because she was legally precluded from
releasing the study.
University Presidents often sit on the boards of directors
of major corporations, inviting conflicts of interest and
developing biases that undermine academic freedom and interfere
with the ability of the university to be critical or objective.
For example, City University of New York Chancellor Ann Reynolds
sits on the boards of Abbott Laboratories, Owens-Corning,
American Electric Power, Humana, Inc., and the Maytag
Corporation. Her $150,000 salary as chancellor is approximately
doubled by what she gets as a board member. University of Texas
Chancellor William Cunningham, after coming under public fire for
conflict of interest, resigned his seat on the board of directors
of Freeport-McMoRan Corporation, and cashed in his stock options
netting $650,422.
While university presidents and chancellors gain from their
corporate activities, industry and business are returned favors.
University boards of trustees are dominated by captains of
industry, who hire chancellors and presidents with pro-industry
biases. New York University's board includes former CBS owner
Laurence Tisch, Hartz Mountain chief Leonard Stern, Salomon
Brothers brokerage firm founder, William B. Salomon, and real
estate magnate-turned publisher Mortimer Zuckerman.
Federal tax dollars fund about $7 billion worth of research,
to which corporations can buy access for a fraction of the actual
cost. This is the largely the result of two 1980s federal laws
which allow universities to sell patent rights derived from
taxpayer-funded research to corporations encouraging
"rent-a-researcher" programs. The result of these changes has
been a covert transfer of resources from the public to the
private sector and the changing of universities from centers of
instruction to centers for corporate R & D.
ARMY PLAN TO BURN SURPLUS NERVE GAS IN OREGON
THREATENS COLUMBIA RIVER BASIN
Source: EARTH FIRST! "Army Plans to Burn Surplus Nerve Gas
Stockpile," Mar 1997, by Mark Brown and Kayrn Jones
Despite evidence that incineration is the worst option for
destroying the nation's obsolete chemical weapons stockpile at
the Umatilla Army Depot, the Oregon Environmental Quality
Commission (EQC) gave the green light to the Army and Raytheon
Corporation to spend $1.3 billion of taxpayer money to construct
five chemical weapons incinerators.
Despite strong protests, on February 7, 1997, the EQC made
its final decision to accept the United States Army's application
to build a chemical weapons incineration facility near Hermiston,
Oregon.
Some examples of the chemicals to be incinerated include
nerve gas and mustard agent; bioaccumulative organochlorines such
as dioxins, furans, chloromethane, vinyl chloride, and PCBs;
metals such as lead, mercury, copper and nickel; and toxins such
as arsenic. These represent only a fraction of the thousands of
chemicals and metals that will potentially be emitted throughout
the Columbia River watershed and from the toxic ash and effluents
which pose a significant health threat via entrance to the
aquifer.
Citizen groups, environmental organizations, health
organizations, and local Native Americans have protested
incineration of the chemical agents stored at the Umatilla Army
depot. Extensive technical literature supports the Native
American opposition to chemical agent incineration.
Cancer, birth defects, reproductive dysfunction, immune
system disorder and neurological damage can occur at even very
low exposure to these toxic incinerator emissions.
Their position is reinforced by the problems which continue
to arise in other incinerator facilities. The Umatilla
incinerator will be modeled after the Toole, Utah Chemical
Weapons Disposal Facility.
Yet Toole Army manager Tim Thomas admitted there has been
agent detection in heating, ventilation, and air conditioning
vestibules since Toole began incinerating in 1996. Additionally,
there have been agent stack alarms once or twice a week, and the
Army doesn't know why. Decontamination fluid continues to leak
though cracks in the Toole concrete floor into the electrical
control room.
These serious revelations about chemical agent incinerator
defects are a mirror of those reported at the Army's prototype
facility, Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Destruction System
(JACADS), located 800 miles southwest of Hawaii. According to the
Army's own reports, a fire, an explosion, 32 internal releases of
a nerve agent, and two nerve gas releases into the atmosphere
have resulted in EPA fines of $100,000.
JACADS 450 percent over budget and had over 30 Resource
Conservation and Recovery Act non-compliances in 1995.
Contrary to what incineration advocates claim, there is no
urgent need to incinerate, since the stockpile at Umatilla has
small potential for explosion or chain reaction as a result of
decay. A 1994 General Accounting Office report estimates that the
actual number of years for safe weapons storage is 120 years
rather than the 17.7 years originally estimated by the National
Research Council. Thus, the timeline for action could conceivably
be lengthened until all the alternatives, such as chemical
neutralization, molten metals, electro-chemical oxidation, and
solvated electron technology (SET), are considered. A delay is
supported by a National Academy of Sciences report entitled
Review and Evaluation of Alternative Chemical Disposal
Technologies, which states that there has been sufficient
development to warrant re-evaluation of alternative technologies
for chemical agent destruction.
UNITED STATES COMPANIES ARE WORLD LEADERS
IN THE MANUFACTURE OF TORTURE DEVICES FOR EXPORT
Source: THE PROGRESSIVE, "Shock Value: U.S. Stun Devices
Pose Human-Rights Risk," Sep 1997, by Anne-Marie Cusac;
Mainstream Media Coverage: Chicago Tribune, 3/4/97, page 5, Zone
N; Washington Times, 3/4/97, page 16A
In its March 1997 report entitled "Recent Cases of the Use
of Electroshock Weapons for Torture or Ill-Treatment," Amnesty
International lists 100 companies worldwide that produce and sell
instruments of torture.
Forty-two of these firms are in the United States. This
places the U.S. as the leader in the manufacture of stun guns,
stun belts, cattle probe-like devices, and other equipment which
can cause devastating pain in the hands of torturers.
According to the Amnesty International report, the following
are some of the American companies currently engaged in the
production and sale of such weapons: Arianne International of
Palm Beach Gardens, Florida; B-west Imports Inc., of Tucson,
Arizona; and Taserton, of Corona, California. Arianne
International makes the "Myotron," a compact version of the stun
gun. B-West joined with Paralyzer Protection, a South African
company, to produce shock batons that deliver a charge of between
80,000 and 120,000 volts.
Taserton was the first company to manufacture the taser, a
product which shoots two wires attached darts with metal hooks.
When these hooks catch a victim's skin or clothing, the device
delivers a debilitating shock. Los Angeles police officers used
the device against Rodney King in 1991.
These weapons are currently in use in the U.S. and are being
exported to countries all over the world. The U.S. government is
a large purchaser of stun devices, especially stun guns,
electroshock batons, and electric shields. The American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU) and Amnesty both claim the devices are
unsafe and may encourage sadistic acts by police officers and
prison guards, both here and abroad.
"Stun belts offer enormous possibilities for abuse and the
infliction of gratuitous pain," says Jenni Gainsbourough of the
ACLU's National Prison Project. She adds that because use of the
belt leaves little physical evidence, this increases the
likelihood of sadistic, but hard-to-prove, misuse of these
weapons. In June 1996, Amnesty International asked the Bureau
of Prisons to suspend the use of electroshock belt, citing the
possibility of physical danger to inmates and the potential for
misuse.
Terence Allen, a specialist in forensic pathology who served
as deputy medical examiner for both Los Angeles and San Francisco
coroner's offices, in 1991 linked the taser to fatalities. With
electrical current, Allen says, the chance of death increases
with each use. Allen warns, "I think what you are going to see is
more deaths from stun weapons."
Manufacturers of electroshock weapons continue to denounce
allegations that use of their devices is dangerous and may
constitute a gross violation of human rights. Instead, they are
making more advanced innovations. A new stun weapon may soon be
added to police arsenals, the electroshock razor wire, specially
designed for surrounding demonstrators who get out of hand.
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