The American Prospect
September 10, 2001
Title: Bailing Out Private Jails”
Author: Judith Greene

Faculty evaluator: Pat Jackson
Student researchers Erich Lehmann, Michelle Oliva

Corporate media coverage:
The Wall Street Journal, 11/6/01

For close to a decade the private prison industry was booming because state legislators thought they could be both tough on crime and fiscally conservative by contracting with private prisons. However, private prisons have been rife with more abuse and lawsuits than state run prisons, leading to a decline in state level support. By last year not a single state solicited private contracts and many contracts were rolled back or even rescinded as a result of inefficiency and abuses.

The largest private prison in the US, The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), has been criticized for widespread abuses and high rates of escape. In April of 2001, prison guards at Cibola county Correctional Center in New Mexico tear-gassed 700 inmates who had staged a daylong nonviolent protest of conditions at the facility. Additionally a score of lawsuits have been filed for beatings of prisoners, lack of proper medical treatment, and corruption among staff. Other private companies have similar records. Wackenhut prisons, the second largest private-prison company, has had many similar problems and repeated breakouts of violence.

Problems are often the consequence of companies’ attempts to hold down costs. Prisons for profit have resulted in low pay for guards and a high turnover rate of under-qualified staff. Whereas guards who work for state run prisons receive benefits and are usually union members, private prisons tend to hire less-qualified, lower-cost personnel.

While most state correctional officials are aware of the problems, the federal government continues to expand contracts with the private prison industry. Private prison industry officials make significant campaign contributions and their lobbyists have spread their influence widely in Congress. High-ranking private prison company officials have served as directors of the Federal Bureau of Prisons under former presidents Reagan and Bush. U.S. government pending private prison contracts are up to over $4.6 billion for the next ten years. With the new federal contracts, CCA, which carried more than $1 billion in outstanding debt, was able to avoid bankruptcy and continue in business.

Harsh drug laws have increased the federal prison population but federal immigration polices are less known. The 1996 Immigration Reform Act expanded the list of crimes for which non-citizens could be deported after serving their sentences. About 36,000 non-citizens are now in federal prisons. This is close to double what it was only seven years ago. Immigrants make up 9.3 percent of the US population, but disproportionately compose 29 percent of the federal prison population. About half of federal prisoners are Mexican, 10 percent Colombian, 7 percent Cuban, and the rest are a mix of other nationalities. Only 1.5 percent were sentenced for violent offenses compared with 15 percent in state prisons.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP) is now proposing up to 7,500 low security beds in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma. Additionally several thousand are being proposed elsewhere in the nation. The private, for-profit prison industry is deemed most likely to receive these upcoming contracts.

Prison reform advocates and correctional officers are fighting the expansion of private prisons. Democratic Congressman Ted Strickland of Ohio, and Republican Congressman John E. Sweeney of New York have introduced federal legislation that would deny contracts with private prisons from the Federal Bureau Of Prisons or by states who contract with private prisons. Nevertheless, the federal government is making sure the private prison industry continues

UPDATE BY AUTHOR JUDITH GREENE: “Bailing Out Private Jails” questioned the appropriateness of a federal contracting initiative for private prisons designed to segregate immigrant prisoners convicted of low-level, non-violent offenses who face deportation once their sentences are served out. The article raised issues about the deficient track-record of the private prison industry, detailed how bungled management and shoddy operations had brought the Corrections Corporation of America to the brink of bankruptcy, and charged that lucrative federal contracts were bailing the company out of the financial consequences of their mismanagement. Two months after publication of “Bailing Out Private Jails” in The American Prospect, these concerns were echoed in a front page story in the Wall Street Journal.

After public exposure of the critical issues surrounding the immigrant prison contracting initiative, the Federal Bureau of Prisons awarded one last contract to CCA, but the agency cancelled four more in-the-pipeline contract solicitations that had been slated for awards during 2002. At the state level, the market for new private prisons remained stalled. Facing severe budget constraints, public officials in California and Ohio targeted a number of private prisons for closure. Anti-privatization activists won a hard-fought battle to stop Cornell Companies from obtaining legislative approval for a 1,200-bed private prison they proposed to build in that state. Correctional authorities in Puerto Rico ended two prison management contracts with CCA and slated a third for termination, after they determined that public operation of the prisons would be more cost-effective.

By the summer of 2002, CCA continued to struggle to regain its financial footing, but with 8,500 empty prison beds, the company still had far to go. In the wake of the events of September 11, 2001, private prison company executives expressed hopes that a large-scale increase in detention of undocumented immigrants (if it materialized) would serve to boost the federal market for detention beds, with the Immigration and Naturalization Service replacing the Federal Bureau of Prisons as the new target of opportunity.

Prison activists, students, immigration rights advocates, and unionists continue to organize opposition to the spread of private prisons and detention centers, and to diminish the role these companies play in fueling the prison-industrial complex. Some of the key organizations and contacts include:

Kate Rhee
Prison Moratorium Project
388 Atlantic Avenue 3rd Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11217
Phone: (718) 260-8805
krhee@nomoreprisons.org
http://www.nomoreyouthjails.org
http://www.nomoreprisons.org

Rose Braz
Critical Resistance
1212 Broadway, Suite 1400
Oakland, CA 94612
Phone: (510) 444-0484
Fax: (510) 444-2177
Rosebraz@aol.com
http://www.criticalresistance.org

For further information contact:

Judy Greene
Justice Strategies
199 Washington Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11205
Phone: (718) 857-3316
Fax: (718) 857-3315
greenej1@mindspring.org

The post 25. Federal Government Bails Out Failing Private Prisons appeared first on Project Censored.

Madison Capital Times
August, 2001
Title: Wal-Mart Ravages Workers’ Rights
By John Nichols
Reprinted In Asheville Global Report 9/6/01

Faculty evaluator: Phil McGough
Student researcher: Kathy Jensen

Wal-Mart has been pouring a considerable amount of money into a political campaign supporting a law that will reduce the wages and benefits for workers in Oklahoma. Oklahomans voted on the “right to work” law in September of 2001. The law bans labor contracts that require workers to pay union dues or representation fees. The law also makes it difficult for unions to negotiate solid contracts. Wal-Mart hopes to use Oklahoma as a model for a renewed campaign to reduce the wages and benefits for workers nation wide.

This campaign will inevitably undermine the ability of unions to effectively organize. The right to work law has union members angered and concerned, as expressed by a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers “Union members across the country should take note of Wal-Mart’s support of measures like ‘right to work’ before they spend any of their union wages at Wal-Mart stores.” Right to work laws were developed in the 1940s by segregationists to keep African-Americans, Latinos, and white workers in the South and Southwest from unionizing. Right to work laws were among the vile legacies of an era when conservatives worked at the state and national level to erect legal barriers to racial progress. Only two states have passed right to work laws since the civil rights era.

In the 21 States with right to work laws, the medium household income is $4,882 less than states where workers are free to organize effective unions. These states have higher poverty rates and less health insurance coverage than states without right to work laws.

Oklahoma rejected a right to work law in 1964, when Martin Luther King Jr. came to campaign against the proposal. This time around however powerful right-wing interests combined with Wal-Mart to push the initiative. The Daily Oklahoman contributed advertising space and Governor Frank Keating and U.S. Senator Don Nickles campaigned in support of passage.

Nichols writes, “In a sense, it is a good investment for Wal-Mart, which often has a hard time finding workers willing to accept low wages paid at it stores. If the Oklahoma campaign is a success, right-to-work advocates hope to use it as a model for passing similar initiatives in Colorado, Indiana, Kentucky, Montana, New Hampshire and New Mexico.”

UPDATE: On September 25 the voters of Oklahoma passed the right-to-work law by a 54% margin. Wal-Mart contributed $250,000 to the campaign. AFL-CIO had filed legal challenges to the law.

The post 24. Wal-Mart Takes Union Busting to the State Level appeared first on Project Censored.

The Animals’ Agenda
March/April 2001
Title: Pissing their Lives Away

Faculty Evaluator: Wendy Ostroff
Student Researchers: Kelly Hand, Adam Cimino, Haley Mueller

Premarin, the top selling hormone replacement therapy (HRT) for menopausal women, is made from pregnant mares’ urine (PMU). Estrogen is extracted from the urine and is sold in many different forms to help with the symptoms of menopause. Approximately 9 million women are currently taking some form of Premarin and that number is expected to rise due to aging baby boomers. Premarin, made by Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories, a subsidiary of American Home Products, is the only human estrogen replacement drug that is derived from animal products, most others are derived from soy and vegetables. The patent on Premarin, owned by Wyeth-Ayerst, is about to expire. This may well result in the manufacture of an array of generic substitutes, and is likely to increase the number of horses used in this industry.

Pregnant horses are four legged drug machines-being repeatedly impregnated and confined to narrow stalls as their urine is collected. Horses are kept inside for 6 months out of the year. The horses are housed in cramped stalls 8’x 3 1/2’x5’. Horses are hooked up to a urine collection bag that is fixed into position just below their tail. These urine collection devises (UCDs) are painful and unhygienic. Urine soaks the skin of the vulva and can cause severe infection and painful lesions. The horses are tied with a short rope to keep them from taking more then a single step in either direction, or from lying down. After several years on line, the mares are shipped to slaughterhouses where they are butchered so their meat can be exported to Europe or Japan for human consumption.

Today, there are 439 PMU farms still in existence. The majority are in Canada and a few are in North Dakota. In 1999 there were about 55, 000 to 65,000 mares on the “pee lines”. Guidelines state that horses should be offered water no less then two times per day. However, PMU farmers prefer to water as little as possible to keep the concentration of estrogen in the urine high. They are paid based on the concentration not the volume of urine collected.

Every spring, each mare gives birth to a foal. These foals spend the first few months with their mothers and then are rounded up in September to allow their mothers to rejoin the lines. Most of these young horses are then taken to feed lots were they are fattened up and sold for slaughter. The meat is then exported to European and Asian markets for human consumption.

Ollie Bracken a retired Manitoba, Canada PMU farmer, stated in a 1995 interview that he retired from PMU farming because, “When you have to see a colt being born and then have to destroy it, it’s rough because they’re just babies. I just don’t think it was right to continue what I was doing.”

According to a former PMU farmer from New York, “piss farms,” as he called them, were located in New York and Vermont in the early 50s. Urine was collected by Wyeth-Ayerst, a subsidiary of American Home Products in Philadelphia, and taken to Montreal where it was processed into a powdered form and then shipped back to New York to be made into tablets and marketed

Most of the media attention regarding PMU farms has focused primarily on the mass production and slaughter of the foals born to the tens of thousands of mare annually. The heightened European demand for horse meat, due to the effects of mad cow and hoof-and-mouth disease has resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of horses slaughtered, and has caused the price of horse meat to go up.

COMMENTS BY BARBARA SEAMAN, C0-FOUNDER OF THE NATIONAL WOMEN’S HEALTH NETWORK: Premarin, the most popular variety of hormone replacement therapy, was approved as a menopause treatment by the FDA on May 8, 1942. From 1991 to 1999, it was the best selling drug in the United States. It is now number three, behind Synthroid and Lipitor.

The relationship between Premarin and animal rights presents a valuable model of how industry interests protect themselves on a grand scale without regard to community well being. In her article, “Pissing their Lives Away,” Susan Wagner writes about how Wyeth-Ayerst, the manufacturer of Premarin, has been exploiting and abusing horses for sixty years. Not just a clever name, Premarin is made from PREgnant MARes urINe. While Wagner raises compelling points about the issue of animal abuse, perhaps the most revealing drug company strategy discussed involves Wyeth-Ayerst’s successful blockage of the approval of generic Premarin.

When a drug is approved, drug companies are granted a patent for a limited number of years before other, often smaller, companies are allowed to develop and market generic versions. By the mid 1990’s, the patent on Premarin had sat in expiration for more than 25 years. In 1997, a company called Duramed pharmaceuticals applied for approval of a generic, soy-based, non-animal version of Premarin called Cenestin. Previous to this application, the only condition for generic approval was identical active ingredients. A massive political battle ensued, with Wyeth-Ayerst exerting considerable financial pressure on powerful forces in Washington to intervene on their behalf. The result was the establishment of new, more ambiguous standards for generic drugs, in which testing for total active chemical similarity became the new measuring stick. Since, in 50 years, not all the chemicals in Premarin had been adequately clarified, it would be difficult to determine generic “bio-equivalency.” In rejecting Duramed’s application, the FDA specifically sited the absence of a chemical called DHES as essential to their conclusions. Previously qualified as an “impurity,” DHES was a little understood, animal specific element present in Premarin. Because the role of DHES in Premarin had not been documented, and Cenestin did not contain DHES, FDA argued that generic approval would be impossible, despite the total lack of evidence that DHES has any active properties. Cenestin was approved shortly after as a new drug rather than a generic.

This outrageous triumph of economic and political influence over patient interests is typical of the tactics employed by drug companies to protect and promote their top selling drugs. A generic, non-animal Premarin would be a great thing for HRT consumers. It would provide a lower priced drug for the same results. It would also begin the important process of converting to the consumption of non-animal estrogens. Women continue to pay high prices (around $300 a year), and horses continue to suffer, so that Wyeth Ayerst can continue to reap maximum benefits from a drug that for much of its sixty year history has been one of the top ten drugs in the United States.

Given the new consensus in the scientific community that neither animal nor plant based estrogen may be a healthy choice, perhaps 2002 will prove to be the year when the tide of the estrogen sea turns. If so, perhaps the history of HRT will serve as a model for exposing and controlling corrupt drug company policies. It is a story waiting patiently but imperatively to be told.

The post 23. Horses Face Lives of Unnecessary Abuse for Drug Company Profits appeared first on Project Censored.

Mother Jones Magazine
November / December 2001
Title: Aquaculture’s Troubled Harvest
Author: Bruce Barcott

PEW Oceans Commission Report on Marine Aquaculture, 2001
http://www.pewoceans.org
Title: Marine Aquaculture in the United States: Environmental Impacts and Policy Options
Authors: Rebecca J. Goldburg, Matthew S. Elliott, Rosamond L. Naylor

Faculty evaluator: Bill Crowley
Synopsis by: Anthony Sult, Adam Cimino

Farmed fish provide one-third of the seafood consumed by people worldwide. In the US, aquaculture supplies almost all of the catfish and trout as well as half of the shrimp and salmon. In the early 1990s, the fledgling aquaculture industry was hailed as a remedy to the problem of marine over-fishing and the subsequent decline in jobs for fishermen. Unfortunately, aquaculture’s harm to people and surrounding environments may be greater than its highly anticipated benefits.

A recent Canadian study found that a single serving of farmed salmon contains three to six times the World Health Organization’s recommended daily intake limit for dioxins and PBCs. A salmon farm of 200,000 fish releases an amount of nitrogen, phosphorus, and fecal matter roughly equivalent to the nutrient waste in untreated sewage from 20,000 to 25,000 people. Farmed salmon (usually called Atlantic or cultured Atlantic salmon) are genetically modified to be larger and have a 50 to 70 percent higher metabolic rate. When these super-fish get into the wild they compete unfairly for food resources, causing an increased rate of starvation among wild fish.

There is also a wide range of chemicals used in aquaculture, including antibiotics, parasiticides, pesticides, hormones, anesthetics, minerals, and vitamins. The use of these antibiotics is a health risk for fish as well as people, since it promotes the spread of antibiotic-resistance in both human and fish pathogens.

Canada is a major target for salmon farming. At first, salmon farms were welcomed for the jobs they would bring. Within a few years, however, large foreign corporations bought out many of the smaller operators. As the new operators took control, farms expanded and anchored their net pens in places where wild salmon smolts rested and fed on their way out to sea. Shrimp fishermen began pulling up traps full of back muck – a gooey mixture of feces, excess antibiotic-laden fish feed, and decayed salmon carcasses that had drifted out of the pens.

Other problems persist. Piercing acoustic sirens have been installed over salmon pens to keep seals and sea lions away, the noise has caused killer whales to flee the Canadian archipelago. To rid their fish of sea lice, farmers dose them with ivermectin, a potent anti-parasitic known to kill some species of shrimp. Farmed fish contracted antibiotic-resistant stains of furunculous, a fatal disease that produces ugly skin ulcers; wild salmon that migrated past their pens also contacted the disease. Said one Canadian fishing guide, “I’ve been catching salmon up here all my life. I’d never seen a fish with a lesion until the farms came in.”

Glen Neidrauer, a game warden who patrols the archipelago for Canada’s department of Fisheries and Oceans, said,” I can appreciate the values of the jobs, but why would you jeopardize a place so pristine? We’re not just talking fish. All the birds, bears, and sea mammals depend on the wild salmon. I wonder how long you can mess with that until they finally don’t return.”

COMMENTS BY ERVAND PETERSON, PROFESSOR OF ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES, SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY: Human numbers continue to grow exponentially and feeding ourselves is an ever-expanding venture. The oceans today are experiencing impacts never before seen. Evidence of overfishing’s impacts continues to mount. Aquaculture has been the industrialized technology employed to grow and harvest numerous aquatic resources.

For the past 40 years, beginning in Norway, salmon have been farmed in ocean pens. Environmental regulations in Norway have driven many to the Western Hemisphere. Today the inlets of British Columbia are caged off for the farming of salmon – Atlantic salmon to be accurate. Despite promises to contain the fish, an estimated 40,000 to 1 million have escaped and are spawning in streams native salmon use. Other impacts that have been documented show “dead zones” immediately adjacent to the salmon pens. A pen of 200,000 fish produces as much fecal waste as a city of 64,000 people.

We have seen this problem before with land grown livestock. Swine farms are notorious for their environmental impacts. Now we are seeing these impacts from aquaculture in the US and Canada.

UPDATE BY AUTHOR BRUCE BARCOTT: This is merely one answer to the question that will dominate both environmental and consumer reporting in the next decade: What’s in our food?

In the case of farmed salmon, the answer is too many antibiotics and a legacy of polluted marine waters. I came away from the story fairly hopeful, because this is an issue where individual consumers, not bought-off politicians, hold the power. The equation is simple, if strangely counterintuitive: Eat wild salmon to save wild salmon. Because the farmed stuff is junk, through and through.

In early 2002, the Canadian government lifted its 7-year moratorium on expanding British Columbia salmon farms. Multinational corporations could add 10 to 15 new B.C. farm sites every year, effectively doubling the industry’s footprint over the next decade. Chile continues to dump below-market-price farmed salmon into the U.S., driving down worldwide prices and making it nearly impossible for Alaskan wild salmon fishermen, who operate sustainable, well-managed fisheries, to make a living. Meanwhile, Canadian researcher Michael Easton published a study in May 2002 that found elevated levels of PCBs in British Columbia farmed salmon. “Depending on whether you are a child or not,” said Easton, “you would be advised not to eat farmed salmon more than once a week.”

Before you get active on this issue, the best thing you can do is eat the stuff. Try a farmed salmon side-by-side with the real wild thing. You will become well informed with every forkful. Best info, pro and con, starts at Canada’s David Suzuki Foundation (http://www.davidsuzuki.org) and the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association websites (http://www.salmonfarmers.org).

The post 22. Fish Farms Threaten Health of Consumers and Aquatic Habitats appeared first on Project Censored.

The Progressive Populist
June 1, 2001
Title: Temps are Ready for Organizing If AFL-CIO Provides the Muscle
Author: Harry Kelber

Faculty/Community Evaluator: Michael Robinson
Student Researcher: Eduardo Barragan, Connie Lytle

Labor Ready Inc. is a national temporary employment agency that employed over 700,000 people in 2000. Labor Ready has 839 offices in 49 states and in Canada, and stands ready to place temporary workers as strikebreakers in union labor disputes. During the recent Northwest steal strike, it was Labor Ready who provided hundreds of strike breakers to Kaiser Aluminum in Spokane Washington.

Labor Ready temps are often paid minimum wage for what can be very rigorous construction work. They receive no health benefits and can be seriously mistreated in their temporary places of employment. Workers are required to arrive at dispatch offices between 5-6:00 A.M. and wait for daily referrals. Workers are not paid for the waiting time at the dispatch office. Labor Ready workers have to pay an average of $1.58 when they cash their daily paycheck at the company’s cash dispensing machines. In 1999 the company raked in $7.7 million in fees from these machines. Labor Ready’s worker injury rate is three times the national average.

The AFL-CIO Building and Constructions Trade Department (BCTD) has supported class action lawsuits by former Labor Ready employees, and would like to see a national union organizing efforts to protect temporary workers nationwide.

BCTD President, Edward Sullivan stated, “Our organizing committee is wrestling with the growing threat posed by temporary employment agencies, which are selling themselves as ‘hiring halls without the union’ and sending thousands of construction workers out to jobs everyday.” Some 75 building and construction trades councils, and more than 100 local unions in 30 states are participating in BCTD’s campaign to organize temporary workers. Labor Ready has been forced to close 10% of its hiring offices because of union activities, but there is still no noticeable improvement in wages or working conditions nationwide.

There are practical reasons a national union drive is difficult. Many temp workers are unskilled or semi-skilled, with hourly wage rates of less than one-third the average union scale. Only about one-third of Labor Ready’s employees work in construction. Most workers are used in manufacturing, trucking, landscaping, yard work, and other day-labor assignments. It is very difficult to organize such a transitory labor force.

UPDATE BY AUTHOR HARRY KELBER: As of the summer of 2002, AFL-CIO unions still have not shown any interest in organizing Labor Ready, perhaps the largest employer of temporary manual labor in the United States with more than 750 branch offices that hire out 650,000 workers a year. In fact, the AFL-CIO’s official magazine, America@Work, and its other publications did not carry my story or any other about the plight of the Labor Ready temps, among the nation’s most exploited workers.

The AFL-CIO’s Building and Construction Trades Dept., while it continues to expose Labor Ready’s sleazy business practices, has steadfastly refused to become involved in attempting to organize the company’s employees, even though favorable conditions exist for a successful recruiting campaign.

The AFL-CIO is currently faced with an organizing crisis. It is woefully short of its announced goal to recruit one million new members this year. Labor Ready is an accessible target that is ripe for a multi-union campaign that could enlist the support of local unions in each community where a Labor Ready office is located.

So why won’t the AFL-CIO take on Labor Ready – or at least say why it won’t?

The post 21. Large U.S Temp Company Undermines Union Jobs and Mistreats Workers appeared first on Project Censored.

The London Observer
October 8, 2000
Title: Gene Scientists Disable Plants’ Immune Systems
Author: Antony Barnett

Faculty evaluator: Albert Wahrhaftig
Student researcher: Alessandra Diana, Gabrielle Mitchell

Scientists working for Swiss food giant Novartis have developed and patented a method for ‘switching off’ the immune systems of plants, to the outrage of environmentalists and Third World charities who believe the new technology to be the most dangerous use so far of gene modification.

Patents filed by Novartis, manufacturers of Ovaltine, reveal that its scientists expect to be able to use the radical biotechnology for almost every crop on earth. Novartis claims that the new use of genetic modification (GM) will give farmers greater control over disease and boost production. But critics insist that it will make Third World farmers dependent on buying the company’s chemicals each year to produce healthy harvests.

A spokeswoman for Novartis said, “We are trying to help farmers, not hinder them. We are looking at ways to improve the way plants fight disease.” She agreed that the company had discovered a way of genetically modifying crops so that their immune systems were disabled, but stressed that this was for research purposes only. The process involves transferring a single DNA molecule, described by the firm as the NIM gene, to the plant. This gene then reacts with the plant’s immune system, allowing it to be switched on selectively by the use of chemicals when disease threatens. But the patent also describes plants where the entire immune system has been switched off, making them highly prone to disease.

Environmentalists fear the new technology could have a disastrous ecological impact if crops with suppressed immune systems are allowed to cross-pollinate with surrounding plant life. The use of GM technology, which uses chemicals to activate genetic traits, was specifically condemned by the UN earlier this year. It recommended that the technology not be field-tested and called for a moratorium on its development until the impact had been fully assessed.

The patent documents seen by The Observer suggest that Novartis intends to use the new GM technology on barley, cucumber, tobacco, rice, chilli, wheat, banana, and tomatos. The company cites an extensive list of more than 80 crops, including several cereals, dozens of fruits such as apples, pears, and strawberries, vegetables like beans and lentils, and cash crops like cotton and tea.

Alex Wijeratna of Action Aid, a charity that works with farmers in developing countries, said, “We find it extremely frightening that such a powerful multi-national [corporation]is working on this type of technology, which seems aimed at protecting their profits by threatening the rights of poor farmers.”

Dr. Sue Mayer, director of Gene Watch, says, “These companies should halt development of these potentially dangerous products until there has been a proper assessment of whether they are good for agriculture.”

The post 20. Novartis’ Gene Research Endangers Global Plant Life appeared first on Project Censored.

Dollars and Sense
July/August 2001
Title: The Business of War in the Democratic Republic Of Congo: Who benefits?
Authors: Dena Montague, Frieda Berrigan

Voice (Pioneer Valley, MA)
March/April, 2001
Title: Depopulation and Perception Management (Part 2: Central Africa)
Author: keith harmon snow

Honorable Mention: From Previous Censored Yearbook 2001
Title: U. S. Military and Corporate Recolonization of the Congo
Source: CovertAction Quarterly
Date: Summer 2000
Title: U. S. Military and Corporate Recolonization of the Congo
Author: Ellen Ray

Faculty evaluator: Philip Beard,
Student researchers: Arinze Anoruo, Chris Salvano

Western multinational corporations’ attempts to cash in on the wealth of Congo’s resources have resulted in what many have called “Africa’s first world war,” claiming the lives of over 3 million people. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been labeled “the richest patch of earth on the planet.” The valuable abundance of minerals and resources in the DRC has made it the target of attacks from U.S.-supported neighboring African countries Uganda and Rwanda.

The DRC is minerial rich with millions of tons of diamonds, copper, cobalt, zinc, manganese, uranium, niobium, and tantalum also known as coltan. Coltan has become an increasingly valuable resource to American corporations. Coltan is used to make mobile phones, night vision goggles, fiber optics, and capacitators used to maintain the electrical charge in computer chips. In December of 2000 the shortage of coltan was the main reason that the popular sale of the Sony Play Station 2 video game came to an abrupt halt.

The DRC holds 80% of the world’s coltan reserves, more than 60% of the world’s cobalt and is the world’s largest supplier of high-grade copper. With these minerals playing a major part in maintaining US military dominance and economic growth, minerals in the Congo are deemed vital US interests.

Historically, the U.S. government identified sources of materials in Third World countries, and then encouraged U.S. corporations to invest in and facilitate their production. Dating back to the mid-1960s, the U.S. government literally installed the dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko, which gave U.S. corporations access to the Congo’s minerals for more than 30 years. However, over the years Mobutu began to limit access by Western corporations, and to control the distribution of resources. In 1998, U.S. military-trained leaders of Rwanda and Uganda invaded the mineral-rich areas of the Congo. The invaders installed illegal colonial-style governments which continue to receive millions of dollars in arms and military training from the United States. Our government and a $5 million Citibank loan maintains the rebel presence in the Congo. Their control of mineral rich areas allows western corporations, such as American Mineral Fields, to illegally mine. Rwandan and Ugandan control over this area is beneficial for both governments and for the corporations that continue to exploit the Congo’s natural wealth.

American Mineral Fields (AMF) landed exclusive exploration rights to an estimated 1.4 million tons of copper and 270,000 tons of cobalt. San Francisco based engineering firm Bechtel Inc. established strong ties in the rebel zones as well. Bechtel drew up an inventory of the Congo’s mineral resources free of charge, and also paid for NASA satellite studies of the country for infared maps of its minerals. Bechtel estimates that the DRC’s mineral ores alone are worth $157 billion dollars. Through coltan production, the Rwandans and their allies are bringing in $20 million revenue a month. Rwanda’s diamond exports went from 166 carats in 1998 to 30,500 in 2000. Uganda’s diamond exports jumped from approximately 1,500 carats to about 11,300. The final destination for many of these minerals is the U.S.

UPDATE BY AUTHOR DENA MONTAGUE: Nearly four million people dead in four years of war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and the world remains silent in the face of an abominable atrocity. The war in the DRC is not only significant because of its infamous status as the world’s deadliest war; but also because of the active participation of an international contingent of multinational corporations, terrorist networks, arms brokers, and governments all clamoring for the legendary wealth of the Congo while exacerbating the war.

Ugandan and Rwandan backed rebels and the Congolese central government met for nine weeks beginning in March 2002 in Sun City, South Africa to negotiate aspects of the Inter-Congolese dialogue as a part of the Lusaka Peace Accords. In a significant development emerging from the Dialogue – Jean Pierre Bemba, a known Mobutuist and leader of Uganda sponsored rebel party, Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC), has been appointed Prime Minister of the DRC in a power sharing agreement strongly encouraged by western governments. Rather than being held accountable by the international community for war crimes committed against Congolese civilians and the massive exploitation of Congolese natural resources detailed by the UN during the four-year war, Bemba, a multimillionaire will be leading the country he helped decimate.

In response to its isolation from the power sharing agreement, Rwandan backed RCD has formed an alliance with veteran Congolese opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi. Rwanda has not ceased discussions of an enduring armed partition of the DRC, of which it remains in control of approximately one third of the country. The power sharing agreement emerging from Sun City has effectively marginalized civil society groups who have been organizing peacefully for democracy, and instead rewards armed struggle in the country. Meanwhile, Rwanda and Uganda continue to attract international investors as well as military assistance from the U.S. and others. Thousands of Rwandan troops are currently engaged fighting in the eastern region of the country at the continued expense of civilian lives.

The war in the DRC is layered in such a way that it appears as a wartime telenovella. Its complexity tends to distract the layman observer from the fundamental facts. This war is yet another stage in international efforts to control the wealth of the Congo-a story that dates back to the 19th century.

The only major U.S. media response to the war in the DRC has been a weeklong Nightline report, “The Heart of Darkness” that was originally scheduled to air the week of September 11th and was postponed until February. Although the Nightline special was significant in drawing attention to the neglected story and the unbearable suffering of the Congolese people, it did little to explain the root causes of the war. Other than the Nightline report, only an occasional story on the fledgling peace process appears in major newspapers.

There are few outlets that give a comprehensive account of the war. International Crisis Group has published a series of in-depth reports about the conflict. http://www.intl-crisis-group.org/

Occasionally the Washington Post covers the DRC. Reporter Karl Vick was one of the first to uncover the story of coltan mining. http://www.allafrica.com/ compiles daily reports on the DRC. Other magazines that are less accessible frequently cover the war – New African Magazine and Africa Confidential.

For an historical perspective on conflict in the Congo- Books: King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild, and The Assassination of Patrice Lumumba by Ludo De Witte.

The post 19. American Companies Exploit the Congo appeared first on Project Censored.

Harpers
January 2001
Title: Shoals Of Time: Are We Witnessing The Extinction of the World’s Coral Reefs?
Author: Julia Whitty

Faculty evaluator: Ervand Peterson
Student researcher: Connie Lytle

One-quarter of all coral reefs have been destroyed by pollution, sedimentation, over-fishing, and rapid global climate change. Coral reefs have survived enormous changes in our planet’s past, but today they are experiencing challenges from a multitude of new fronts. Remaining reefs are in such peril that governments are preparing for the contingency that millions of island residents will need to be relocated.

Corals are among the simplest of invertebrate animals. They are composed of little more than a hollow tube, the gastric cavity, which is surrounded by a fringe of stinging tentacles with which they capture prey. Generation after generation of new corals grow atop the limestone skeletons of dead corals, until a reef is formed. The growth is less than one inch per year, and the colonies can live a thousand years or more. Coral colonies occur in the narrow band of equatorial water at the 21°C isotherm, where the delicate balance between sunlight, temperature, salinity, nutrients, and gases meets the exacting requirements of the tiny coral animals, and compose the largest aquatic architecture on the planet.

Ordinarily, more than 6.5 million zooxanthellae inhabit each square inch of coral, and in return these algae contribute the by-products of their photosynthesis: oxygen, carbohydrates, and alkalinity. The corals’ calcium carbonate production is considered a likely mediator of atmospheric CO2, making this collaboration between plant and animal a contributor to the stability of our atmosphere. The reefs contain nearly one-quarter of all marine life and, as they are visibly altered by climatic and sea level changes, are often called “the record-keepers of the sea.”

Under assault from pollution, coastal development, agricultural runoff, overpopulation, and over-fishing, the world’s reefs are exhibiting their vulnerability in many ways. Each year new coral diseases are discovered, some caused by such factors as the desertification of Africa, where huge volumes of dust in the atmosphere are dropping viral and fungal spores onto the weakened seas.

In the last two decades, worldwide coral bleaching events associated with higher seawater temperatures have destroyed reefs throughout entire ocean basins. Increasing global temperatures, resulting in a lack of proteins, lipids, and carbohydrates necessary for coral reproductive and skeleton building causes bleached corals. A 1991 bleaching event in French Polynesia led to the death of 25% of all Acropora corals. The 1997-98 El Nino killed 70% of all corals in the Indian Ocean from Africa to India, and the reefs of the Galapagos Islands have yet to show signs of recovery from the bleaching event 17 years ago. Increases in ultraviolet rays entering the atmosphere have contributed to the bleaching effect in the coral reefs worldwide.

The worldwide trade in aquarium fishing, currently worth $200 million per year, is another source of coral reef destruction. The collection methods of exotic fish include using poisons, primarily sodium cyanide, which destroy entire ecosystems in order to capture the few remaining fish on the perimeter. Blast fishery, also common in such places as the Philippines, is a practice whereby fish for local consumption are collected with explosives, killing the fish at the epicenter, and incapacitating those on the perimeters. The blasts reduce the reefs to rubble, from which they may never recover.

UPDATE BY AUTHOR JULIA WHITTY: Since the publication of this article, I am now working on a book (“The Fragile Edge: Secrets & Struggles of the Coral Reef) for Houghton Mifflin. Research for this book will take me to Australia, the Philippines, Indonesia, and elsewhere, to show important new developments in the science and conservation of reefs. Some of the problems alluded to in the article are already coming to pass, as sea levels continue to rise and island-dwelling people face the loss of their homes and their nations. Elsewhere, conservation efforts are paying off, albeit on a fairly small scale.

I still consider the fate of coral reefs to be vital to our own well-being on earth. Sadly, this story, and other environmental stories, rarely make the evening news or the front pages of newspapers. As we fight a “war of national security” against terrorism, I wonder how it is that we fail to see or act upon the threats to global security that face us from the self-induced loss of biodiversity, the destruction of habitats, and global climate change. The “freedoms” and the “way of life” that we fight Al Quaeda for are at least as threatened by our continued misuse of the planet.

Harper’s Magazine originally offered me this article, so I had no struggle in trying to present it. But I know from years of making nature documentaries that there is strong resistance to telling the environmental truth—even when that truth can reveal important solutions.

Readers interested in learning more can track my coral travels (autumn 2002) at http://www.BlueVoice.org. I will also be working closely with The Great Barrier Reef Research Foundation: http://www.barrierreef.org.

The post 18. World’s Coral Reefs Dying appeared first on Project Censored.

Columbia Journalism Review JR
Date: September/October 2001
Title: Smoke Gets In Your Eyes: The Globalization Protests and the Befuddled Press
Author: John Giuffo

Faculty evaluator: Suzanne Toczyski
Student researchers: Caroline Hubbard, Cathy Jensen, Derek Fieldsoe

Corporate media coverage: NY Times, 2/5/02, A-15

The US press failed to inform the public of the core underlying issues of the major anti-globalization protests of recent years. Dramatic images such as protesters enshrouded in tear gas, facing down a line of police officers dressed in riot gear have come to dominate the media coverage and overshadow the actual reasons that thousands of people are taking to the streets.

In July of 2001, over 100,000 people went to Genoa to protest the G-8 meetings. Corporate television gave little recognition to the issues that were being raised by the protesters. CNN showed few protesters actually sharing their views or reasons for protesting. Instead, news correspondents briefly summed up the protest in terms of who was there. This broad summary format was significantly lacking attention to specifics of the meetings or the protests. On Fox networks, the Genoa protesters were all but ignored.

A hard look at more than 200 stories by major news outlets including: ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX, NBC, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, and Newsweek, shows serious weaknesses in the coverage of the four largest protests-the International Monetary Fund meeting in Prague in September 2000; the Hemispheric Free Trade talks in Quebec City in April, 2001; the European Union summit in Gothenburg, Sweden in June of 2001; and the G-8 meeting that took place in Genoa in July of 2001. The problem is not so much the focus on the small percentage of protesters who acted violently but that the coverage lacks context.

The message that protesters are trying to get across is that they want more democratic control (and less corporate control) over the rules that affect the environment and labor conditions around the world. This includes more democratic control over supranational organizations such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization, whose un-elected leaders, the protesters argue, override democratically determined laws and regulations in the name of “development” and “free trade.”

There are many instances of police brutality at these large protests, yet what tends to be emphasized by the mainstream news sources are the few acts of violence perpetrated by the protesters. For example, at the Genoa protest that took place last year, approximately seventy members of an Italian SWAT team barged through the doorway of a site where protesters were organizing. This led to the hospitalization of sixty-one demonstrators.
However, few news sources reported the police violence, and most sources focused on protester violence. CBS News released a Web report that indicated that the protesters were injured during the previous day’s events. European news sources and Independent News organizations, such as Indymedia.org put out full reports of police brutality against the protesters.

An article in The New York Times, written by Andrew Jacobs supports the notion that the media coverage of anti-globalization protests is appalling. Jacobs reports, “most press accounts focused on security concerns and the potential for violence…leaving little room for explanations of why people were protesting in the first place.”

UPDATE BY AUTHOR JOHN GIUFFO: We’ve heard the phrase “September 11 changed everything” so often that it has become a cliché to call it a cliché. But in terms of the global justice movement, 9-11 changed a lot. Support of violence as a legitimate protest tactic was waning before the attacks, but it dropped off the radar afterwards. The drama of the globalization-related protests was play-acted anarchy compared to our glimpse of the real thing that fall morning, and it seems like we’ve lost our collective stomach for such measures.

The few protests since, such as the New York City World Economic Forum protest in late January, have been relatively violence-free, comparatively under-attended affairs. Before, the violence had usually been the story, but the big story during the New York protests was that there was no story, and that the police had maintained order in a still-shaky city. None of the core issues the movement addressed have changed, but their perceived importance has waned in the swirl of global violence that has wracked the world in the past year. Quite simply, it seems like we’ve got bigger things to worry about. The coverage reflects that. The number of foreign correspondents at American news organizations has been shrinking for twenty years, and there are only so many left to go around. Protests in Sao Paolo, Brazil lost out to Operations Condor in the mountains of Afghanistan.

There’s another complicating factor – what can best be described as a sort of “message drift.” One of the movement’s main strengths has been its ability to subsume a multitude of complaints under the banner of anti-corporate democratization. But since the conflicts in Afghanistan and the Middle East have drawn away the keyboards and cameras of journalists, the anti-corporate protesters have been willing to share the stage with pacifists and pro-Palestinian protesters. Even IndyMedia, the main organizing news and message site of the movement, in a post to the site on January 11 conflated the economic issues behind the protests with what it called “the violence being committed against the people of Afghanistan.”

That’s not to say all the media are distracted. Some news organizations have done an admirable job recognizing the need to dedicate space for explanation and detail when covering the protests. A good example is the Washington Post, which covered the mid-April World Bank/pro-Palestinian protests relatively comprehensively, (arguably because it was a hometown affair) pausing to take time to explain the protesters’ preparations, the issues behind the economic and anti-Israel protests.

The global justice movement is very much in flux, and that has been one of the central challenges to it getting its message out. Calls for taking sides in the Middle East and against intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq threaten to drown out other voices advocating for clean air, or fair trade, or re-regulation in corporate ownership structures. There is a limited amount of space in newspapers, and only so much news airtime on television. The more messages that reporters have to get into their stories, the less they can explore those messages. It would seem the global justice movement has to decide what it wants to be when it grows up.

The post 17. Corporate Media Ignores Key Issues of the Anti-Globalization Protests appeared first on Project Censored.

Weekend Australian
February, 23, 2003, p. 1
Title: Love Letter Tracks Terrorist’s Footsteps
Author: Don Greenlees

World Socialist Website: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/mar2002/cia-m20_prn.shtml
March 20, 2002
Title: U.S. Oversees Abduction, Torture, Execution of Alleged Terrorists
Author: Barry Grey

Original U.S. Source: *

The Washington Post
March 11, 2002, pg. A01
Title; U.S. Behind Secret Transfer of Terror Suspects”
Authors: Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Peter Finn, W.P. Foreign Service, March 11, 2002, pg. A01

Faculty evaluator: Noel Byrne
Student Researcher: Sarah Potts

Corporate media coverage:
Pittsburgh Post – Gazette, 3/17/02, A-4

US agents are involved in abducting people they suspect of terrorist activities and sending them to countries where torture during interrogation is legal, according to US diplomatic sources. Suspects are shipped to allied countries where they are denied legal assistance and imprisoned without any specific charges made against them. The prisoners have been taken to countries such as Egypt and Jordan (whose intelligence agencies have close ties to the CIA) where they can be subjected to interrogation tactics, including torture and threats to family, which are illegal in the United States.

One of the abductees, Muhammad Saad Iqbal Madni was believed by the CIA to be an al-Qaeda member with possible links to Richard Reid, the American Airlines shoe bomber. In January, 2002 the CIA provided Indonesian intelligence officials with information that lead to Iqbal’s arrest. A few days later, the Egyptian government requested that Iqbal-who had carried a passport for Egypt as well as Pakistan-be extradited in connection with terrorism, although they did not specify the crime. Indonesian agents quickly took him into custody, and two days later, without legal hearing or access to a lawyer, Iqbal was put on board an unmarked, US-registered Gulfstream V jet, arranged by the CIA, and flown from Jakarta to Egypt.

Indonesian government officials told local media that Iqbal had been sent to Egypt because of visa violations. However, a senior Indonesian government official told reporters that revealing the US role in Iqbal’s case would have prompted criticism from Muslim-oriented political parties in the region. “We can’t be seen as cooperating too closely with the United States,” he said. Nevertheless, the official confirmed that, “This was a US deal all along. Egypt just provided the formalities.”

According to one US diplomat, “After September 11th, these sorts of movements have been occurring. It allows us to get information from terrorists in a way we can’t do on U.S. soil.”

Although such “movements” have intensified since 9/11, the U.S. has long been involved in this practice of kidnapping. These abductions, known to those in the business as “rendition,” violate local and international extradition laws as well as internationally recognized human rights standards. According to the Post’s sources, from 1993 to 1999, suspects were rendered to the U.S. from a variety of countries, including South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, and the Philippines. US officials have acknowledged some of these operations, but the Washington Post’s sources say that dozens of other covert renditions occurred, the details of which remain cloaked in secrecy.

Some documented cases include reports of suspects being interrogated, tortured, and even executed. In 1998, US agents apprehended Talaat Fouad Qassem, the reputed leader of an Egyptian extremist organization, in Croatia. Qassem had been traveling to Denmark, where he had been promised political asylum. Egyptian lawyers say that the US agents removed Quassem to a US ship stationed off the Croatian coast. On board, he was questioned by the agents before being taken to Cairo, where a military tribunal had already sentenced him to death in absentia.

Also in 1998, five members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad were taken into custody by Albanian police working in tandem with CIA agents. The five suspects were interrogated for three days before being shipped to Egypt on a CIA-chartered plane. The U.S. alleged that this group of people had been planning to bomb the US embassy in Albania’s capital. Two of the five people were put to death.

*The details of this covert and illegal abduction campaign were brought to light in the U.S. by a Washington Post article printed on March 11, 2002, entitled, “U.S. Behind Secret Transfer of Terror Suspects.” The article cites various U.S. and Indonesian officials (sources unidentified by name) recounting and commenting upon these violations. Although the article appeared on the Post’s front page, the story was picked up by only one other corporate media source in the U.S., and the Post itself – as of this writing – has not followed up its own story with any new information.

UPDATE BY AUTHOR DON GREENLEES: One of the unanswered questions is what happened to Muhammad Saad Iqbal Madni after he was handed over to the CIA and taken to Cairo? US officials have refused to comment on the case. Indeed, there is still no official confirmation that he was ever placed in the custody of the CIA for extradition to Egypt. Was his interrogation conducted by U.S. or Egyptian personnel? Was he, in fact, ever taken to Egypt? Even alleged terrorists are presumably entitled to some protection under the law. In Madni’s case, it has not been possible to determine his fate. Rumours circulated among non-US Western intelligence agencies earlier this year that Madni had died in interrogation. US officials in Jakarta, requesting anonymity, have denied that allegation.

Given the secrecy surrounding Madni’s capture in Jakarta and handover to the CIA, it is reasonable to assume he is not the only alleged terrorist to have been placed in the custody of US officials and taken to a third country for interrogation, where the absence of civil rights and US legal protections could afford interrogators more freedom. Soon after the article on Madni appeared in The Weekend Australian, The Washington Post ran an article suggesting there were other cases of individuals being detained by the CIA and sent to countries where interrogation could be more easily carried out. The subject justifies further inquiry. Without the guilt of suspects having been legally ascertained, detentions are clearly open to abuse. How long will suspects be held and on what grounds? What restraint exists on the conduct of the interrogations? These are questions of interest to civil libertarians everywhere, particular in countries where non-democratic rulers could use the crackdown on terrorism as a means of sidelining critics.

The Weekend Australian article also sought to highlight the performance of the Indonesian authorities in dealing with the threat of terrorism. The absence of adequate law enforcement and the lack of co-ordination between law enforcement agencies, the weakness of immigration controls and the reluctance of the government to take legal action against extremist elements who have broken the law continue to make Indonesia vulnerable to entry by international terrorists. Madni’s success in entering Indonesia is seen as evidence of this weakness. But a consistent concern of pro-democracy groups in Indonesia is whether many of the hard won civil freedoms of the past four years could be eroded as Jakarta comes under pressure to improve its contribution to fighting potential terrorist threats.

The post 16. CIA Kidnaps Suspects for Overseas Torture and Execution appeared first on Project Censored.