SSU Censored Researcher: Jeffrey Fillmore

The American Heritage Dictionary defines “inert” as “Not readily reactive with other elements.” This does not necessarily describe chemicals such as sulfuric acid or kerosene. However, a 1972 law allows household pesticide manufacturers to include these chemicals as “inert” ingredients in their products without revealing their presence to consumers.

There are over 20,000 different household pesticide products. These pesticides contain over 300 active ingredients and up to 2,300 inert ingredients. However, in accordance with the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) which prohibits disclosure of “secret” pesticide formulas, inert ingredients are not listed on product labels—ostensibly, to protect manufacturing secrets. While up to 99 percent of a household pesticide may be considered “inert” only the active ingredients are listed on the product label and regulated by law. In actual practice, pesticide manufacturers decide what to call inert and what to designate as an active ingredient subject to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulation. This has produced a situation where ingredients in some pesticide products are considered active and regulated by the EPA, but in other pesticide products are unregulated, inert ingredients missing from the label.

The truth is: Most “inerts” are not inert. They are biologically, chemically, and toxicologically active. Many inerts are in fact more toxic than the active ingredients. A 1991 EPA report lists over 1,400 of the inert ingredients used in housed pesticides as either potentially toxic, toxic, or of unknown toxicity. These “inert” ingredients of unknown toxicity include chemicals and compounds such as epoxy resin, malathion, kerosene, and sulfuric acid. One category of solvents known as xylenes, an “inert” ingredient in as many as 2,000 pesticides, is linked to increased frequency of leukemia in workers and may cause memory and hearing loss, liver and kidney damage, eye irritation, inflamed lungs, low birth weight, and even fetal death.

Evaluating the toxicity of inert ingredients has low priority at the EPA, receiving less than 1 percent of the pesticide program’s budget, and has no specific procedure or time frames for review.

While the reason given for withholding information on inerts of pesticides is supposedly to protect manufacturing secrets, Louise Mehler, Program Director of the California EPA’s Worker Pesticide Illness Surveillance Program, states, “The chemists here say that since the invention of the mass spectrometer, anybody who wants [to find out the ingredients] can really find out.”

The secrecy surrounding so-called inerts highlights the duplicity of a pesticide policy that claims to protect public health, while actually safeguarding private economic interests.

COMMENTS: Peter Montague, author of “Many Pesticides, Little Knowledge,” and editor of Rachel’s Environment & Health Weekly, wrote his article about the lack of knowledge surrounding “inert” ingredients in pesticides. “So far as I know,” he says, “this story received no coverage in the mass media. Even when a federal court in the District of Columbia ruled in October 1996, that the EPA had improperly denied information to the public about `inert’ pesticide ingredients, the story was ignored. “If the truth about ‘inerts’ were told in the mass media, people might organize to force full disclosure of inerts. The resulting knowledge might fuel greater concern for the danger of pesticides.”

According to Montague, the pesticide industry benefits from the lack of media attention given to the existence of “inert” chemicals. The food industry benefits secondarily, he says. “It is principally the pesticide industry that benefits because the food industry would adjust if the use of pesticidal chemicals diminished substantially. The pesticide industry is a $29 billion per year enterprise, dominated by six chemical giants,” he notes.

“If the general public knew that the safety of multiple pesticides in food couldn’t be established scientifically by governments, many members of the public might think twice about accepting pesticide-laden food as the norm. They might even make an extra effort to seek out minimally contaminated food, such as ‘organically grown’ produce and meat.”

As for recent developments concerning disclosure of “inert” substances, Montague points to the implications of the federal court’s decision. “After the federal court ruling on October 11, 1996, the American Crop Protection Association (a trade group for the pesticide industry) asked the judge to review the decision, which the judge did. The decision was sustained. However, this was not a sweeping decision, as some environmentalists have claimed. The decision said that the EPA cannot make a blanket policy against the disclosure of inerts, but must treat each pesticide on a case-by-case basis. Former EPA official James Chem told Pesticide and Toxic Chemical News (November 6, 1996), ‘The … case has placed a crack in the wall of confidentiality surrounding confidential statements of formula.’ Nevertheless, the wall of confidentiality remains,” says Montague.

According to Charmaine Oakley, author of “The Truth About Inerts,” “The mainstream media is skittish about pesticide issues in general and out-and-out criticisms of the pesticide industry in particular. The idea that pesticide labels do not adequately inform consumers of a product’s ingredients or associated risks cuts against the whole mainstream mentality that nothing really harmful is on the market. To report that, yes, big business values money over health and, no, the EPA doesn’t test a majority of pesticide ingredients would open a big can of worms.

“The public needs to know that chemicals designed for household use are poisons and are not indisputably safe … pesticide labels do not tell the whole story. .. that, in fact, they are lying by omission. More consumer skepticism about pesticides could save lives. Alternatives are available, and health concerns can motivate the public to action-exactly what the chemical industry doesn’t want.

“After Earth Island Journal published my story, the NCAPIEPA trial came to a close. The court ruled that inerts are not exempt from Freedom of Information Act requests. When someone asks what a pesticide’s ingredients are, the EPA is required to list them. This historic ruling significantly expands the public’s right-to-know (if the public finds out about the ruling). I haven’t seen any mass media exposure of the trial’s favorable conclusion,” says Oakley.

The post 25. The Truth About “Inert” Chemicals appeared first on Project Censored.

SSU Censored Researchers: Diane Ferre, Doug Hecker, Kevin Stickler, Lisa Zwirner

If recent history is any guide at all, one can only conclude that President Clinton’s free trade policies have been immensely valuable to drug smuggling cartels based in Italy, Colombia, Venezuela, and Mexico. The ongoing dolphin-safe tuna debate sharply illustrates U.S. indifference to the problem of international drug trafficking. According to the Administration’s own Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), approximately 90 percent of the worldwide flow of cocaine and heroin is transported and maintained by fishing fleets—with Mexico as one of the most successful traffickers.

By the late 1980s, the Mexican fleet, with 70 big boats, dominated smuggling operations. The country’s boats and canneries were privatized—with tuna industry shares divided up between prominent Mexicans in the ruling PRI party.

In the early 1990s, legislation for dolphin-safe standards on tuna fishing closed the lucrative US and western European tuna markets to Mexican, Venezuelan, and Colombian fleets that continued to use the outlawed “purse-seine net” technique. As a result, the Mexican fleet began to shrink, thus limiting their overall smuggling capacity. In the fall of 1995, Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo came to Washington for talks with President Clinton. During these talks, Zedillo raised the specter of a World Trade Organization complaint about the Mexican tuna ban. President Clinton assured him that US domestic legislation would solve the problem more prudently.

On May 8, 1996, the Clinton Administration’s legislative reversal of the ban cleared the House Resource Committee. With this passing, the Mexican tuna fleet, owned by narco-traffickers and high-ranking Mexican officials, is expected, once again, to expand.

As critics of the Clinton Administration’s policy have noted, Mexico has become so dependent on the hard currency it receives from drug trafficking that any significant crackdown on its narcotics cartels would jeopardize economic recovery, and further deterioration of Mexico’s economy would hurt NAFTA, destabilize Mexican politics, and increase immigration.

Today, with the help of NAFTA and tuna boat drug smuggling, Mexico has become one of the most important countries of legal trade and illegal drug trafficking-across the US border. And the free trade agreements will continue to be a boon for the world’s drug smuggling cartels because of the relaxed inspection of commercial cross-border traffic between Mexico and the US In addition, liberalized international banking rules have made it easier to launder billions in drug revenues.

The post 24. Dark Alliance: Tuna Free Trade, and Cocaine appeared first on Project Censored.

SSU Censored Researchers: Jeffrey Fillmore, Anne Shea

Scientists are discovering that chemicals in our environment are impacting our hormones and permanently changing how we live and who we are. Everyone is exposed throughout their lives to large numbers of man-made chemicals.

In a statement issued by a group of international scientists and physicians who attended a workshop in Erice, Italy, great concern was expressed regarding the effects of hormone-disrupting chemicals on the brain and the central nervous system.

Hormones are chemical messengers that travel in the bloodstream, turning on and off critical bodily functions to maintain health and well-being. Hormones control growth, development, and behavior in birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals, including humans. Disruption of these hormones in the wombs of humans or in the eggs of wildlife may reduce intellectual capacity and social adaptability. This loss has the ability to change the character of human societies or destabilize wildlife populations.

Industrial hormone-disrupting chemicals are found in native populations from the Arctic to the tropics; and, because of their persistence in the body, can be passed from generation to generation. These synthetic chemicals are found in pesticides, plastics, shampoos, detergents, cosmetics, and other products we use in our everyday lives.

Thyroid hormones are essential for normal brain functions throughout life. Interference with thyroid hormone function during development leads to abnormalities in brain and behavioral development. Similarly, exposure to man-made chemicals during early development can result in malformations.

Because certain PCBs and dioxins are known to impair normal thyroid function, it is suspected that they contribute to learning disabilities, including hyperactivity, attention deficit disorder, and perhaps other neurological abnormalities.

According to Dr. Theo Colborn, one of the participants at the workshop, and author of a book on the subject, most research funds used for testing new chemicals concentrate on cancer and ignore other risks, like hormone disruption.

“This preoccupation with cancer,” she points out in her book entitled Our Stolen Future (Colborn, Dr. Theo, Dianne Dumanoski, and John Peterson Myers, Dutton, 1996), “has blinded us to evidence signaling other dangers. It has thwarted investigation of other risks that may prove equally important, not only to the health of individuals, but also to the well-being of society.”

The statement ended by suggesting that a concerted effort should be undertaken to deliver this message to the public, key decision makers, and the media.

COMMENTS: Peter Montague, author of “Chemicals and the Brain, Parts I and II,” and editor of Rachel’s Environment & Health Weekly, says, “As I noted in my articles, so far as I can tell, only the Los Angeles Times and the Sacramento Bee covered any part of this story. Every other media outlet seems to have ignored it.

“For the past five years, the public has been given bits of information about industrial chemicals mimicking (or otherwise obstructing) the hormone system in wildlife and humans,” says Montague. “Much coverage has been devoted to the hypothesis that human sperm counts have been dropping for 50 years, presumably because male children developing in the womb are exposed to hormone-disrupting chemicals (pesticides, and so forth).

“The point of my story was that these same chemicals may be interfering with the intellectual development of children as well. I believe parents would be more concerned to learn that the IQs of their children were being diminished by chemicals than they would to learn that their sons’ sperm counts might eventually be found deficient.

“It seems clear to me that the chemical manufacturers (and, in some cases, major chemical users) benefit by having this story suppressed or ignored. The chemical manufacturers alone earn $170 billion per year,” says Montague.

“This story will continue to develop next year. The substance for my articles was a statement issued by a group of scientists, stating their conclusion that common industrial and household chemicals may damage the brain by disrupting the hormone system. In early 1997, this same group of scientists will publish a series of peer-reviewed papers supporting what they summarized in their initial statement. At that point, it will become clear that there is considerable evidence underlying their conclusions.

“This subject raises a most fundamental issue about the way our society treats chemicals. Presently the burden of proof for the safety of chemicals lies with the general public. Chemical companies can introduce new products at will. If a company conducts a health study of a new chemical, it must supply a copy of the study to the EPA at the time it announces its plans for marketing the new chemical—but the law does not require any health studies, so few are done. About 1,000 new chemicals come into commercial use each year, and no one has to demonstrate safety prior to marketing a new chemical. The public is then exposed to the new chemical and, if the public can prove that it is being harmed, then a regulatory control process may be initiated. (In the case of pharmaceuticals, the burden of proof is reversed; the manufacturer of a new drug must demonstrate its safety and efficacy to a reasonable degree prior to marketing.) I believe the evidence that some common chemicals can interfere with our hormones will generate a national debate over the ‘burden of proof ‘ and where it should lie.”

The post 23. Trouble in Mind: Chemicals and the Brain appeared first on Project Censored.

SSU Censored Researchers: Aaron Butler, Meiko Takechi Deborah Udall

While other countries have been using other environmentally safe chemicals as alternatives to ozone-depleting chloro-fluorocarbons (CFCs), the United States is using chemicals that are still threatening the ozone.

The global refrigerator business and the chemical industry that supplies it have grown to be multi-billion-dollar manufacturing industries in the United States, and it is largely because they are investing money in hydrochlorofluor-carbons (HCFCs) and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) as alternatives to CFCs.

CFC gases that are commonly used ,in refrigerators and air-conditioners are set to be banned because they damage the ozone. Since the ratification of the Montreal Protocol, the international agreement signed in 1987 to phase out the production of CFCs, the use of CFCs has fallen more than 75 percent from its 1988 peak of 1,260,000 tons to 295 tons in 1994. In Europe, chemical compounds known as hydrocarbons (HCs) are being extensively marketed and used as a replacement for CFCs. The advantages of HCs are that they are both ozone-friendly and have minimal impact on greenhouse gases (they are made from propane and butane and are unpatentable). There are over 5 million HC refrigerators now in use all over the globe.

In the United States, however, chemical manufacturers have invested their money in HCFCs and HFCs as alternatives to CFCs. They are ozone-friendlier than CFCs, but are also notorious greenhouse gases, which means they contribute to the pressing global threat of climate change. Perhaps most significantly, however, these combinations are patentable and companies like Dupont expect to make huge profits from them. Additionally, HCFCs and HFCs break down more rapidly and are about as harmful as CFCs over the short term. Because of their poor environmental impact, HFCs and HCFCs are poor substitutes for CFCs and are due to be discontinued in 10 years, which will render all the new HFC refrigerators now being made in the United States obsolete.

In their recent book, Mending the Ozone Hole (Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press), authors Arjun Makhijani and Kevin Gurney argue that it is technically possible to heal the ozone layer in about 35 years. However, because of HCFC and HFC production in the United States, unnecessary additional stress is being placed upon the ozone layer, and reliance on these chemicals are delaying ozone repair.

COMMENTS: Ed Ayres and Hilary French of the World Watch Institute co-authored “The Refrigerator Revolution.” As far as they know, the issue of ozone-friendly replacement chemicals “has received virtually no attention from the mass media. That may be partly due to a kind of mental compartmentalization: the people who were mobilizing to cope with ozone depletion-the widening of the ozone hole-were, so focused on reducing the huge quantities of CFCs being released into the atmosphere that they ignored the dangers of chemicals being prepared to replace them.” When new ozone-friendly hydrocarbon technology came along, “the media were thrown off by a disinformation campaign in which the conventional refrigerator manufacturers used scare tactics to try to kill off the new market.”

Ayres and French believe the general public could create a demand for the new technology just as the Europeans have, if it was aware that “the new ‘CFC-free’ refrigerators and air conditioners still contain other ozone-destroying chemicals and highly potent greenhouse gases, but that a newer technology being used in Europe is completely benign. The new market could make an important reduction both in the [environmental] damage being done to the Earth’s radiation shield and in the accumulation of greenhouse gases that may be causing climate change.”

When asked whose interests are served by the lack of media attention given to ozone-friendly replacements, the authors replied: “Refrigerator and air-conditioner manufacturers and chemical companies that bet on the wrong horse when it was time to replace CFCs now want to make sure their horse is the only one in the race …. The chemical companies especially benefit by making HFC and HCFC replacements for CFCs that are patentable. We believe that these companies don’t want the new, cleaner technology to prevail because it uses a process that is in the public domain, and that they therefore can’t make as much profit from it.”

Chris Bright, senior editor of World Watch, believes the issue covered in his piece, “Ozone Repair,” has not received sufficient attention by mainstream (particularly U.S. broadcast) media, due to “the difficulty that television news especially has in covering complex and long-term environmental issues, like ozone depletion. Television news likes its stories simple, short, and generally close to home,” says Bright, “but I think the greatest issues of our day—issues like the loss of biodiversity or the failure to achieve environmental justice in much of the world—tend to be messy, chronic, and very diffuse.”

The post 22. The Refrigerator Revolution and Repairing the Ozone Layer appeared first on Project Censored.

SSU Censored Researchers: Tina Barni, Meiko Takechi

With the overpopulation of undocumented immigrants, those in the custody of the Department of Justice’s Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) are now being widely transferred to local jails across the country. This transferring of prisoners has not only become a means of reducing the size of immigrants in the INS’s nine service processing centers, but it has also become an abusive and frequently lucrative business.

The immigrants are not only being held in contract facilities operated by such private security firms as Wackenhut Inc. and Corrections Corporation of America, but also in some 900 local jails across the country. INS claims that the transfers are due to overcrowded situations in its detention centers, but detainees claim that transfers are used as a form of intimidation and punishment. “Detention-for-profit” is also another issue. Some local governments have been paid as much as 82 million to hold the detained. Local jails and corrections companies have been projecting profits from INS contracts. Employment has also been created out of the influx of transfers. Louisiana’s Oakdale Detention Center, one of the largest INS detention facilities in the country, was created and widely supported by local officials and citizens to replace jobs when the town’s paper mill closed down. Conversely, detainees are also being considered by the Defense Department for use as a form of cheap and controlled labor.

Detainees are frequently subjected to verbal and physical abuse. The abuse is often undocumented and not investigated. In 1995, the INS finally issued a report admitting that it should have had more oversight of its Esmor facility—which was a contract facility that was closed down after an uprising by detainees protesting inhumane conditions, indefinite detention, and guard brutality. And while this self-criticism by the INS was welcomed, it has for years ignored similar complaints of mistreatment in its facilities.

Racism and a lack of accountability are also present, with discrimination extending to whistle-blowing INS officers who try to help. The Krome North Service Processing Center, an isolated INS detention facility at the edge of the Everglades in Miami, has a particularly notorious history of brutality and is the site of hostile activity against Africans.

Watchdog agencies have done little to remedy the situation. The Justice Department’s own watchdog agency, the Office of Inspector General (OIG), lacks both the resources and independence according to Human Rights Watch/America. Many of the OIG investigators were either Border Patrol or INS agents. Some 1,300 complaints against INS officers to the Justice Department have yielded only nine prosecutions, six guilty pleas, and one conviction.

COMMENTS: “Last year, the media did, of course, devote a lot of coverage to the ‘issue’ of immigration,” says author Mark Dow. “But according to the terms of the debate, both ‘pro’ and ‘con’ tend to share a view of immigrants as somehow alien. Being a notch below humanity, they easily become invisible victims. That’s theoretical; on a more practical level, I think it is simply hard for many people—including, in my experience, reporters—to believe that our government effectively sanctions the kinds of abuse I have tried to document. Also, the victims in these cases often fear speaking out, since they remain at the mercy of the system and the individuals who have abused them. Sometimes they have attorneys to speak for them; often they do not. So, in the limited coverage this issue does receive, the spokespeople for the abusive system (in this case the INS) usually get the last word.”

Dow believes wider media exposure of this subject would “first of all, help potential victims. The public, if informed, would have the opportunity to respond one way or the other. I believe that if the issue were covered honestly, then public opinion would increase the protection of those in INS custody, however slightly. As Tony Ebibillo, a Nigerian who was beaten and forcibly tranquilized by Miami INS officials, put it several years ago, ‘I am quite sure that everybody will agree with me that despite the fact that I was residing here illegally, I still have the right to be treated humanely.’

“In June 1996, the Office of the Inspector General issued a report entitled Alleged Deception of Congress. Interestingly, the report was released to Congress, but not to the public. The report details the elaborate efforts of Miami INS officials to deceive a visiting congressional delegation about the Miami INS operations, including the dangerous overcrowding of the Krome detention center (see my ‘Deception, Dehumanization and the INS,’ Haiti Progress, July 24-August 7, 1996).

“This deception received national media attention. In its aftermath, officials seem determined to make cosmetic changes to the local detention center. Reporters and activists have been allowed into Krome—a sure sign that the INS has something to sell. Time will tell how substantive the changes are. If Krome is indeed made more efficient, living conditions may improve for detainees—a welcome change. But one should not lose sight of the bigger picture: more and more immigrants are being detained and the privatization of detention continues to grow. Streamlining the INS detention machine—what a Pennsylvania attorney has termed a gulag—means the likelihood of even less (if that’s possible) meaningful oversight of what goes on inside the INS detention centers.

“In October and November 1996, a group of Indian Sikhs seeking political asylum went on a month-long hunger strike, beginning in a county jail in the Florida panhandle, and ending at the Krome detention center in Miami. INS officials met with the strikers and apparently convinced them that their cases would be fairly reviewed. The ‘detainees,’ as usual, have little recourse, particularly given the new, increasingly repressive immigration laws signed by President Clinton. They can only hope for the best,” says Dow.

According to Dow, his article in CovertAction Quarterly was used by attorneys in Pennsylvania to help raise money for a pro bono legal project for representing detained Chinese refugees, and the Amnesty International Refugee Office in San Francisco has used it as an educational tool.

The post 21. Inside INS Detention Centers: Racism, Abuse, and No Accountability appeared first on Project Censored.

SSU Censored Researchers: Anne Stalder, Lisa Zwirner

Last September, representatives from 84 countries gathered in Geneva for the Basel Convention. Their purpose was to pass an international ban which would put an end to the exporting of toxic wastes into poorer countries by the twenty-four wealthy nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). These rich nations generate 98 percent of the 400 million tons of toxic waste produced each year, most of which comes from European and American corporations that eagerly ship their hazardous by-products to Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. The United States is the only OECD country that refuses to support such a ban.

In 1994, President Clinton supported a ban on hazardous waste exports, but at last year’s Basel convention his Administration sent representatives to lobby against the ban. Rafe Pomerance, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State felt that such a ban, “would discourage recycling.” U.S. industries protested the ban, advancing the argument that Third World countries should be given an ‘opportunity’ to import, process, and repackage hazardous waste produced by First World corporations. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has urged the U.S. Government to meet with non-OPEC countries to convince them that it would be in their economies’ best interest to support free trade in toxins.

The problem with relying on other countries to dispose of or recycle these toxins is that they often do not have adequate facilities to do so in a safe manner. This has already led to negative environmental and health problems. Recently Greenpeace produced a video, “Slow-Motion Bhopal: Toxic Waste Exports to India.” Among many disturbing practices the Greenpeace video documents are car batteries and zinc ash which are sent to the Bharat Zinc plant in Bhopal, India where they are melted down and remolded into metal containers and other products that are sold to Indian consumers. Greenpeace also showed dangerous working conditions for the employees, many of whom are children. They wade barefoot without masks or gloves through a toxic dump-yard, inhaling lead at 100 times the level tolerated in the West. Tests of soil near the site disclosed severe lead contamination and poisons leaching into surrounding surface and ground water. Larry Summers of the Treasury Department wrote in a memo that it was quite sensible to locate toxic operations in the Third World, because a lower life expectancy in those countries kills off workers before cancers caused by toxins have time to kick in.

The post 20. U.S. Alone in Blocking Export Ban of Toxic Waste to Third World appeared first on Project Censored.

In its annual battle to preserve “most favored nation” (MFN) trade status, the Chinese government received a big boost from a powerful dose of U.S. corporate money—funneled through the public relations firm of Hill & Knowlton. The PR firm’s lobbying effort, dubbed the “China Normalization Initiative,” was paid for by such Fortune 500 companies as Boeing, AT&T, General Motors, Allied Signal, General Electric, and the Ford Motor Company.

The campaign, which paid off in June 1996 with the Congressional renewal of China’s MFN status, was necessary due to China’s reputation for human rights violations, child labor, and prison-camp abuses. The alleged torture of dissidents were also criticisms that Hill & Knowlton was paid to refute and/or minimize.

American companies involved in the pro-China PR blitz spent over $1 million on the campaign which was supposed to convince the public that the Chinese leadership is deserving of greater sympathy. Critics argue that 11,000 Chinese were executed last year by their government—some for minor crimes—and that an even greater number of abuses go unreported. The wretched conditions of Shanghai’s orphanages are also an ongoing human rights violation that is largely absent from the annual debate over the renewal of China’s MFN status.

The exploitation of China’s economic potential by American corporations is big business. Bilateral trade between the two countries rose to $55 billion last year and U.S. direct investment in China has gone from $358 million in 1990 to $5.4 billion in 1995. Corporations budgeting their money toward the pro-China PR campaign include:

o Boeing, which has racked up sales of $3.9 billion and estimates that China will purchase $100 billion worth of new aircrafts during the next two decades.

o AT&T, which projects earnings of $3 billion from China by the year 2000.

o GM, which in 1995 inked a $2 billion joint venture to manufacture automobiles for China’s domestic market.

o Motorola, which has $1.2 billion worth of investments in China—and they plan on constructing a new plant in China to manufacture pocket pagers.

o Ford Motor Company, which purchased a $40 million share in a truck manufacturing plant last November in China’s Jianxi province.

Among its many activities, Hill & Knowlton was instrumental in putting corporate representatives in touch with members of Congress, and hiring scholars to draft op-ed articles for major newspapers and to speak at media events. These “third party” advocates, as they are dubbed by industry, are well paid for their labors but seldom reveal their affiliations to the public.

Hill & Knowlton’s PR blitz clearly demonstrates how corporate America, aided by the U.S. government, distorts the image of a foreign government whose value as a trading partner conflicts with its disregard for international standards of conduct.

COMMENTS: According to Ken Silverstein, editor of CounterPunch, “The topic of the covert business lobby for China is barely touched upon in the mainstream press. And keep in mind that the area I addressed—Fortune 500 firms hiring a PR firm to manipulate news coverage—is but one aspect of a vast corporate campaign, budgeted in the tens and millions of dollars, to help China win friends and influence people (especially members of Congress). The ultimate goal of the campaign is to gain permanent most favored nation trade status for Beijing, in place of the current annual presidential review. None of this merits more than a glance from the press.

“The public would benefit from [media] exposure to this subject in several ways. First, people should know that a fair amount of what they read in their daily newspapers has been placed, directly or indirectly, by public relations firms (an example being the case covered by my article). A 1991 survey by Jericho Promotions, a PR firm in New York City, found that 38 percent of 2,432 journalists surveyed said they got half of their stories from public relations flacks and an additional 17 percent said they used their PR people for every story. Second, people should know that the foreign policy debate doesn’t take place in a vacuum and is greatly influenced by corporate money and private interests.

Silverstein did not seek to obtain wider exposure for this story but noted that CounterPunch is sent to many journalists, although none inquired about this particular issue. “I’ve learned from past experience that an ‘alternative’ publication really has to have a ‘blockbuster’ (i.e., pictures of a political figure in bed with a prostitute) in order to whet the interest of the mainstream press. In this case—a story about big business hiring a PR firm to manipulate public opinion—I felt it was a waste of time to even bother. After all, that’s just business as usual inside the beltway. Most reporters in Washington don’t even blink an eye at this sort of routine, everyday corruption (perhaps because so many of their friends and associates work in PR and other subsidiary sectors of the political-industrial complex). Thank god they’re so lazy,” says Silverstein. “Otherwise, there’d be no need for the alternative press.” According to Jim Hightower, author of “China Huggers,” “The slight coverage our country’s China policy receives is mostly relegated to the business sections, where it is mired in the arcane language of corporate economists or wrapped in the silly sloganeering of free-trade boosterism.

“America’s China policy is begging for a full media expose and a serious public discussion about what is at stake for ordinary folks—i.e., shipping more of our manufacturing jobs to China’s low-wage hellholes, giving America’s technological know-how to a competitor who will soon be using it against us, and selling out our people’s democratic values and fundamental belief in human rights. It is a corrupt policy that is being bought by the campaign contributions and lobbying fees of the U.S. corporate chieftains who will profit enormously at the expense of us and the Chinese people-a classic example of why the New Global Economy amounts to Globaloney.

“The top executives of conglomerates moving massive amounts of U.S. capital to China” are who benefit from the lack of media coverage given this issue, according to Hightower, “along with the politicians who take money from these conglomerates, and the dictatorial and murderous rulers of China. I might add that Disney Inc. (which owns ABC), General Electric (which owns NBC) and Westinghouse (which owns CBS) all have massive investments in China and have a huge direct financial stake in maintaining the Clinton policy.

“President Clinton has officially de-linked any human rights issue from considerations of trade with China, and he is aggressively pursuing a new strengthening of the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum (which met in Manila this month, including a Clinton audience with the Chinese president in, of all places, the ‘green room’ of the Bank of Manila) to forge a new ‘NAFTA’ that will include China.”

The post 19. Corporate America Spends Big $$ on Pro-China PR appeared first on Project Censored.

SSU Censored Researchers: Bob Browne, Jeffrey Fillmore

In March 1996, the United States Environmental Protection Agency, (EPA) repealed a 16-year-old ban on the importation of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), once used as lubricants for electrical transformers. Production and use of PCBs ended in the U.S. after it was learned that they are highly toxic carcinogens.

U.S. industries have disposed of most domestic PCBs. The preferred disposal method to date is burning. Five sites in the U.S. are approved for incineration of PCBs. Meanwhile, our neighbors, Canada and Mexico, have continued to collect old transformers and PCBs, and have stockpiled them, having no safe method of disposal. The ban on importation ideally would compel these other countries to develop their own safe methods of disposal. That hasn’t happened. Mexico, for example, still exports this toxic waste to Europe to be destroyed, and as of March had stockpiled about 8,000 tons of liquid PCBs.

Importation of Mexico’s and Canada’s PCBs is not a response to our neighbors’ looming environmental difficulties so much as it is a response to U.S. waste companies’ desire to establish lucrative new disposal contracts. Congressional representatives from Ohio, where one waste incineration site is located, reportedly lobbied, at the request of the local waste disposal firm, for the EPA to lift the ban. The firm, S.D. Meyers, would earn an estimated $100 million dollars from new contracts to dispose of Canadian toxic waste. Some experts doubt that U.S. disposal firms would be more efficient than Canadian firms, but they are certainly cheaper, sometimes running about one-quarter of the cost.

Scientists also believe the burning of toxic waste is inherently unsafe, with PCB incineration releasing such hazardous chemicals as dioxins, even PCBs themselves, into the air and water, and eventually the food chain. One chemist said that stored PCBs, even in such mass quantities, are not nearly as harmful as burned PCBs. For example, neighbors of an Arkansas disposal site reported black smoke and noxious fumes coming from that plant. Cancer cases and neurological disorders in the nearby town increased dramatically as well.

Moreover, predictions of the effects of PCB incineration are based on how emissions would affect theoretically clean air. But sites that would incinerate PCBs also burn a variety of other hazardous chemicals; add these emissions to air that is already polluted by other sources. PCB incineration does not, therefore, create a problem that may or may not be significant; it makes an existing problem even worse.

COMMENTS: According to Michael King, associate editor of The Texas Observer, “mainstream coverage of this story was confined to an AP dispatch or two, with no attention paid to the larger issues of PCB manufacture and the question of safe disposal (i.e., without incineration). There may have been a couple of stories at the time the ban was technically lifted; I have seen no coverage at all of the subsequent status of re-importation.”

King believes the obvious benefit of additional media coverage “would be public education of the ongoing risks involved in PCB incineration specifically, and toxic waste incineration generally.” King describes the “massive public risk” in Texas, where there are two hazardous waste incinerators as well as other sources, such as cement kilns, which have even less regulation, “and the prevailing winds certainly do not stop in Texas,” he says. “Great Lakes pollution has been traced to Texas and the Southeast—the continuing inattention to the dangers of waste incineration constitute a largely unacknowledged public health threat nationally and internationally.

“The obvious beneficiary of limited coverage is the hazardous waste industry (producers and incinerators). They have succeeded in maintaining the fiction that incineration destroys hazardous waste, when science and experience demonstrate that incineration simply disperses poisons (in the case of PCBs, the products of incineration are worse than the PCBs themselves) into the air and the food chain.

“As I write, the Mexican border remains open to re-importation, and the Canadian border is expected to be opened early next year; I do not know if Mexican PCBs are currently being re-imported under the new EPA regulations. An effort by Congressman Ken Bentsen to re-instate the ban failed for a lack of Senatorial sponsorship, and the Sierra Club reports that Bentsen’s original amendment would not have been effective in any case. The Sierra Club, however, in conjunction with Greenpeace, filed a lawsuit contesting the new EPA regulations; the suit remains pending in federal court and a decision is expected in December.

“I would hope that the new attention brought by Project Censored to this story might result in public pressure against the incineration of PCBs (here or abroad), and more generally at the whole issue of the incineration of toxic waste.”

The post 18. PCBs: Importing Poison appeared first on Project Censored.

SSU Censored Researchers: Aldo Della-Maggiora Stacey Merrick

Fifteen years after Ronald Reagan fired the air traffic controllers, strikes in America have dipped to a fifty-year low, a mere one-eighth the level of two decades ago. In response to this decline, labor has been fighting back through a strategy known as a ‘corporate campaign.”

The concept behind the “corporation campaign” involves “partnering” with other activist groups (environmental, consumer, etc.) and hitting powerful and highly diversified companies on all fronts. Such a coalition works by investigating the company being struck (or perhaps its parent company and/or its other subsidiaries), scrutinizing environmental and investment records, organizing consumer boycotts, submitting shareholder resolutions, complaining to regulatory agencies—and generally doing whatever it takes to pressure management into a fair settlement. As a result of some successes through the “corporate campaign” strategy, business is striking back by suing labor unions under the Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organization (RICO) Act—a statute originally created to fight organized crime.

In one representative case, the United Steelworkers local 9121 began a “corporate campaign” against Bayou Steel and RSR. This “corporate campaign” began due to Bayou Steel’s proposed contract that gave no pay raise and allowed any union job to be contracted out. The Steelworkers union, with the help of environmental consultants and community groups, documented numerous environmental and worker safety violations at both RSR and Bayouin fact, generating information that has been useful to activists seeking to block RSR from opening new factories. As a result, the Steelworkers are being sued by both RSR and Bayou under RICO.

Additionally, business leaders are now lobbying Congress to legally ban such “corporate campaign” strategies. In response, workers claim that management is simply trying to ban their most successful recent innovation—simply because it’s proven to be occasionally successful. Indeed, they counter, the strategy is based on the First Amendment and the free flow of truthful information.

And with laws already on the books’ allowing temporary and permanent replacement workers, and with threats of downsizing and corporate flight further casting shadows over labor, business leaders are now working with Congress to alter the rules.

COMMENTS: Writer Eyal Press says he heard that his article, “Union Do’s: Smart Solidarity,” was picked up by an NPR stringer, but he has not heard the program. To the best of his knowledge, the issue received no coverage in the mass media. “As far as newsweeklies and major papers, the closest thing I saw was a one-page article in Business Week on the general subject of corporate campaigns,” says Press. “But the story of the Steelworkers battle against Bayou Steel and the RSR corporation was not told in any detail.”

Press believes media exposure of this story would benefit the general public by educating. “First, I think the story illustrates what can be achieved when labor unions work together with environmentalists and community activists (and vice-versa). The stereotype of the labor movement, which is in part justified, is that it is narrowly focused and single-issue-oriented (’we look out for ours…’). This story challenges that stereotype. The workers involved in this struggle learned a lot about environmental issues (such as the dangers of lead), and also discovered that it can be in their interest to think about how industry affects communities, school children, etc. On the flip side, I think the story illustrates to ordinary citizens how they can work with unions to protect their communities from environmentally destructive and/or irresponsible companies. Finally, I think the story shed light on an important tool—corporate campaigns—which big business is quietly hoping to eliminate.

“The clear beneficiaries [of the lack of media coverage] are the corporations who wish to ban corporate campaigns for exactly the reasons outlined in the article. Corporate campaigns, like recent consumer campaigns waged against The Gap and Nike, can be a big headache for companies. So they’re trying to impose all kinds of restrictions on them, which in effect amount to an effort to restrict the free speech rights of labor unions.

“The gratifying feedback I did receive on the article came from labor and environmental activists who want to build bridges between these movements,” says Press. “Richard Yeselson of the AFL-CIO’s Industrial Union Department says that friends and allies of his discussed the article and passed it around.”

With regard to an update on the story, Press says, “Yeselson and others expect that Republicans in Congress will renew their efforts to ban corporate campaigns this year. Meanwhile, Bayou Steel and the union reached a settle-ment, but the company (and also RSR) maintains its lawsuit against the union.”

The post 17. Union Do’s: Smart Solidarity appeared first on Project Censored.

SSU Censored Researchers: Brant Herman, Mark Lowenthal

According to a General Accounting Office (GAO) report last year, the face value of worldwide trades involving derivatives—a high-risk type of financial contract whose value is derived from the performance of an underlying asset or market indicator (such as a price or interest rate)—was estimated to be $34.5 trillion. Due to both the amounts involved and the global reach of corporate investors, the economic systems of the world could be severely impaired should these financial entities fail. And an economic failure related to the scope and fragility of derivatives could result in a federal bailout reminiscent of the savings and loan fiasco.

Derivatives are limited to large financial players due to several reasons. First, only those with large sums of money can become involved. Second, due to the leveraged nature of these packages, the financial rewards can be huge when successful, but dangerous if not. Furthermore (and again, due to the leveraged nature), losses in the marketplace can be covered by future investments—creating a house of cards which could tumble at any time. The bankruptcy of Orange County, California a few years ago was directly related to their losses in the derivative market.

The danger in derivatives also stems from the fact that they are leveraged in both directions, up and down. They amount to huge bets stacked against the bettor, often with both buyer and seller inclined to cover losses with even bigger bets.

Yet despite the obvious risk derivatives pose, they are still widely used by corporations, mutual funds, and others wanting to hedge their interest and currency bets. Those who traditionally lose the most in the event of a derivatives failure are small investors, wage earners, pensioners, and taxpayers—people who are not even privy to the derivative market.

The GAO is indeed quite worried about the fragility of derivative investments, especially since the concentration of derivatives is in the hands of only fifteen U.S. companies intricately linked to foreign markets. “The sudden failure or abrupt withdrawal from trading of any of these large dealers,” warned the watchdog agency, “could cause liquidity problems in the markets and could also pose risks to the others, including federally insured banks and the financial system as a whole.”

Furthermore, a year after the GAO issued a warning to bankers and investors regarding the danger of derivatives, little has been done. One key reason is the $100 million legislators have received in recent election cycles from banks, investment firms, and insurance companies-aimed, in part, at protecting derivatives.

Derivatives pose a serious threat to the economic health of the world since they lack a solid financial foundation and are limited in use to the largest players in the world economy. Moreover, the unwillingness of policy makers to recognize the threat these types of investments pose to the global financial market leaves the citizens of the world vulnerable to an annihilation of financial stability brought upon them by investors beyond their realm.

COMMENTS: According to Arthur E. Rowse, author of “Golden Fleece,” the subject of risky derivatives “was almost completely ignored by the mass media, and when covered at all, it was relegated to the business pages. It continues to be ignored even though almost nothing has been done by regulatory agencies to prevent some of the disasters that have already occurred. The story of derivatives seems to be a lot like the savings and loan scandal. It’s far too complex and local for all the business press and a few large newspapers and magazines to handle in a timely and competent manner. Some reporters such as Brett Fromson of the Washington Post and Carol Loomis of Fortune, have done competent work, but TV news has been out to lunch. The only major report was done by 60 Minutes a few years ago.

“Some nine months before the Orange County disaster occurred, the story was dumped in the laps of the Los Angeles Times and Orange County Register. They booted it. (See American Journalism Review, March 1995: 22-29.) When the feds fined Bankers Trust $10 million in December 1994, it got only a few lines in major newspaper business sections. When the shocking internal tapes from Bankers Trust became public, Business Week made it a cover story, but it didn’t get far in the mainstream media even though the material was sensational and had an indirect bearing on all who deal with Bankers Trust (a new oxymoron).” Rowse did not check general newsweeklies for coverage.

“With more media exposure, legislators would have more incentive to either pass reforms or pressure business to institute more meaningful reforms of its own to protect the general public from catastrophic financial losses. It would also strengthen the backbone of the key agencies, the SEC and CFTC. Greater public exposure would also alert the general public, especially those now unaware of their involvement in derivatives through pension plans, mutual funds, brokerage accounts, banks, and other connections.

“The biggest dealers in derivatives, a small number of big banks such as Bankers Trust, benefit from the limited [media] coverage. Proof is the fact that BT is still prospering despite its extremely shabby treatment of its big derivative customers. Ordinary depositors are probably unaware of the extra risk they have taken and may continue to take by dealing with a bank so deeply involved in such shaky financial transactions.”

Rowse says he hasn’t followed the subject closely since he wrote the piece, which was a shortened version of an article submitted to The Nation six months earlier. “I am not aware of any large derivative scandals since then,” he says. “Under some pressure by regulators, large dealers have instituted what they say are closer controls over such business in order to be able to react more quickly to danger signals. But the overall situation appears to have changed little, and the forebodings of the GAO continue to twist in the wind awaiting the next disaster, which everyone hopes will not become a worldwide meltdown.”

The post 16. Derivatives: Risky Business appeared first on Project Censored.