SOURCES: COVERT/ACTION QUARTERLY, Fall 1995, “NAFTA’s Corporate Con Artists”; Author: Sarah Anderson and Kristyne Peter; MOTHER JONES, January/February 1995, “A Giant Spraying Sound”; Author: Esther Schrader SYNOPSIS: The promises of prosperity that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) would bring the USA and Mexico were most loudly proclaimed by USA*NAFTA, a pro-NAFTA business coalition. [...]

SOURCE: EARTH ISLAND JOURNAL, Summer 1995, “Campaign Against Methyl Bromide: Ozone-Killing Pesticide Opposed”;* Author: Anne Schonfield SYNOPSIS: Methyl bromide is a pesticide that is at least 50 times more destructive to the ozone layer, atom for atom, than chlorofluoro-carbons (CFCs) yet America’s chemical industry is fighting to prevent it from being banned. In 1992, the [...]

SOURCE: MOTHER JONES, March/April 1995, “Medscam”; Author L.J. Davis SYNOPSIS: The United States’ $1 trillion annual health bill is 14 percent of the gross domestic product, making the medical industry the largest business in the land. Of this sum, a staggering amount is stolen. According to the National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association, the yearly swag [...]

SOURCE: THE NEW YORK TIMES, 11/21/94, “Poison in the Earth: A special report; Nuclear Roulette for Russia: Burying Uncontained Waste”*; Author: William J. Broad SYNOPSIS: For more than three decades, the Soviet Union and now Russia secretly pumped billions of gallons of atomic waste directly into the earth and, according to Russian scientists, the practice [...]

SOURCE: MOTHER JONES, September/October 1995, “agency under attack;” Author: Leslie Weiss SYNOPSIS: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), sometimes criticized in the past for being too cozy with corporations, is now under attack for exactly the opposite reason. A powerful bloc of critics in the drug industry has joined hands with the Republican Congress and [...]

SOURCES: WASHINGTON POST, 5/1/95, “US Seeks Arms Ingredient As It Pushes Nuclear Pact,” and 5/28/95, “House Bill Would Order Nuclear Reactor As New Source of Tritium;” Author: Thomas W. Lippman. SYNOPSIS: Even as the United States urges the rest of the world to indefinitely extend a treaty requiring signatories to work toward elimination of nuclear [...]

SOURCE: THE NATION, 7/3/95, “Keeping On-Line Speech Free: Street Corners in Cyberspace;”* Author: Andrew L. Shapiro SYNOPSIS: You may not have noticed, but the Internet, one of the hottest news stories of 1995, was essentially sold last year. The federal government has been gradually transferring the backbone of the U.S. portion of the global computer [...]

SOURCE: SOUTHERN EXPOSURE, Fall/Winter 1995, “Working in Harm’s Way;” Author: Ron Nixon SYNOPSIS: Every day, children across America are working in environments detrimental to their social and educational development, their health and even their lives. In 1992, a National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) report found that 670 youths aged 16 to 17 [...]

SOURCE: PUBLIC CITIZEN, July/August 1995, “Cut Corporate Welfare: Not Medicarel;” Author: John Canham-Clyne SYNOPSIS: Congress could go a long way toward balancing the budget by 2002 without slashing Medicare, Medicaid, education, and social welfare. In fact, the Washington-based Center for the Study of Responsive Law has identified 153 federal programs that benefit wealthy corporations but [...]

SOURCE: CONSUMER PROJECT ON TECHNOLOGY, 7/14/95, “Federal Telecommunications Legislation,” an Internet newsletter*; Authors: Ralph Nader, James James Love, and Andrew Saindon. SYNOPSIS: America’s “marketplace of ideas,” upon which our democracy rests, began shutting its doors in the summer of 1995. The harbinger of the bad news for the public was aptly titled the Telecommunications Deregulation [...]