SSU Censored Researchers: Tom Ladegaard, Jason Sanders, and Corrie Robb
SSU Faculty Evaluator: Elizabeth Martinez

On May 7 and 8, 1998, KGO-TV, an ABC affiliate in San Francisco, broadcast a two-part series attacking the international movement to prevent the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal. Mumia, a black activist, has been on death row in the state of Pennsylvania for 16 years for the killing of a Philadelphia police officer in 1981. A large international movement has been active in demanding a retrial of his case that would include evidence not covered in his first trial.

KGO claimed to do an objective review of the case. KGO staff interviewed supporters of Mumia and many people from the other side. The final broadcast presented a very one-sided story, however, claiming that the evidence indeed showed that Mumia was guilty, and that four eyewitnesses saw the shooting. Only four eyewitnesses originally testified in the trial and their stories were not in complete agreement, but an additional six witnesses were added in the 1995-96-97 hearings for a new trial. Four of the new witnesses claimed that they saw another man running away from the scene at the time of the shooting (Mumia was shot by the police officer and was arrested on the scene). Additionally, the slain officer was found with a driver’s license of another person in his possession. KGO did not report about the third person running away, nor about the driver’s license.

KGO also asserted that, “In fact, there was extensive ballistics testimony, and although the bullets were mangled, tests showed them to be .38 caliber, with marking consistent with Jamal’s gun.” Weinglass and Kissinger report, however, that the medical examiner who removed the bullet from the officer’s body reported it to be a .44 caliber slug. Furthermore, Mumia was never tested for nitrate residues to prove that he had recently fired a gun, nor was his gun tested to see if it had been recently fired. None of these challenging facts were presented by KGO in their broadcast.

KGO included an interview with the widow of the slain police officer. She told an emotional story about how, during the trial, when her husband’s uniform was shown as evidence, Mumia turned around to her and smiled. The problem with this story is that, according to the [official] transcript, Mumia was absent from the courtroom on the day the shirt was displayed, say the authors.

The authors also claim that all of the above evidence and much more was given to KGO and that they have a tape of the KGO interview. KGO had every reason to know that much of the material they were presenting as fact was contested by knowledgeable parties to the case. Yet they failed to present the counter-arguments, thereby making Mumia look guilty and discrediting activists worldwide who have been calling for a retrial of the case.

UPDATE BY AUTHOR CLARK KISSINGER: “We chose to expose the KGO-TV series on Mumia Abu-Jamal because we suspected that it was a pilot for an attack by the national network. In June the Fraternal Order of Police raised the money to place a full-page ad in The New York Times calling for Jamal’s execution. On December 9, ABC’s news magazine program 20/20 ran a half-hour segment on Jamal, which repeated most of the outrageous claims in the KGO report. Once again fresh interviews were done with the prosecutor and the widow of the slain police officer, but Jamal was not allowed to speak.

“ABC’s excuse for not interviewing Jamal was a new state prison regulation prohibiting recorded interviews with any prisoners. When Jamal’s challenge to this regulation was accepted by the Federal District Court in Pittsburgh on December 7, ABC rushed to air the material they had on December 9 before a federal court could make Jamal available. The segment was hosted by White House correspondent Sam Donaldson.

“ABC’s attitude was expressed well in a letter to prison authorities suggesting that they should be allowed to interview Jamal because they were going to set the record straight and counteract an alleged excess of pro-Jamal material in the media. The letter went on to state: ‘We are currently working in conjunction with Maureen Faulkner and the Philadelphia Fraternal Order of the Police.’ For further information on the case and the media controversy, see http://www.calyx.com/refuse.’

The post 25. ABC Broadcasts Slanted Report on Mumia Abu-Jamal appeared first on Project Censored.

SSU Censored Researchers: Jason Bothwell and Aimee Polacci
SSU Faculty Evaluator: Mary Gomes

In the next 24 hours U.S. consumers will use 50 million #1 polethyene therephthalate (PET) plastic soda bottles. As quickly as we throw them away, the plastic bottle industry extracts more nonrenewable resources from the earth to make 50 million new soda bottles for us to toss away again. Some soda bottles will be recycled and converted into carpeting; bleaches, or jacket-fill—but not into new bottles.

In 1990 Coca-Cola made a promise to use its recycled plastic bottles in new production as it has successfully done in Europe and numerous other countries. Eight years later they have yet to follow through with that promise. This failure to act has kept the price of recycled PET bottles low in the marketplace and discouraged expanded PET recycling programs nationwide.

One organization that has tried to change the way the industry is doing things is the Grass Roots Recycling Network (GRRN). GRRN wrote to Coca-Cola in 1997, asking that it live up to its promises. GRRN asked Coca-Cola, as the leader in the soda industry, to begin immediately noting on their labels the percentage of recycled materials being used, begin using refillable bottles, and establish a voluntary deposit on Coca-Cola containers. Coca-Cola refused to even respond to the letter and has made no comment to date on the request.

GRRN is keeping the pressure on. They have initiated a petition asking Coca-Cola to “Do The Real Thing” and support recycling. When GRRN posted information on the Internet, 25 independent voluntary actions against Coke were staged across the country. Boycotts are being planned on university and college campuses in many different states.

Fourteen percent of airborne toxic emissions come from plastics production. The average plastics plant can discharge as much as 500 gallons of contaminated wastewater per minute. If Coca-Cola were to immediately move into even a 25 percent recycled content for their bottles, says Matsch, significant progress could be made on recycling in the United States. The price for PET bulk recycled product would increase and financial incentives would make recycling far more attractive to cities and recyclers throughout the United States.

The cost of using recycled bottles is actually quite low. Soda companies are making an average of 21 cents on each new bottle. The cost of using recycled bottles would only cost .01 cent more per bottle. So Coca-Cola which now makes an average 21 cents per bottle profit would still make 20.9 cents on each bottle with a full recycling program in place. Coca-Cola used to use returnable glass bottles but they now produce all their store-shelf products in plastic. There is no apparent reason why Cola-Cola can not use recycled bottles. Eight years is long enough for Coca-Cola to “do the real thing.”

UPDATE BY AUTHOR MARTI MATSCH: “More than a year after the campaign against Coca-Cola was launched, Coca-Cola still has not answered consumer demands to use recycled plastic bottles. They are shifting their packaging from recycled aluminum and glass to non-recycled plastic. Every second, 200 plastic bottles made of virgin, non-renewable resources are land-filled, while hazardous emissions poison our environment. Meanwhile, their increased demand for virgin plastic drove prices down which added $150 million to their bottom line in one year.

“The Grass Roots Recycling Network (GRRN) has responded with a new, ‘Take it Back!’ campaign. Consumers are encouraged to mail empty plastic Coke bottles to the company’s CEO, demanding the company take responsibility for its packaging and use recycled plastic. “Interest has sparked nationwide. Dozens of protest events have been held, and 81 organizations in 26 states have endorsed the campaign. The issue has not, however, received extensive coverage in the mainstream press. Small town newspapers, alternative publications, and the Internet have been the primary source of information.’

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

1. Mail rinsed, flattened plastic Coke bottles (with the cap) back to Coca-Cola addressed to Chairman and CEO M. Douglas Investor, One Coca-Cola Plaza, Atlanta, GA 30313. Put a mailing label on the bottle with a 55 cent stamp. No envelope or package is needed.
2. Call Coke at (800) 571-2653 and tell them you won’t buy Coke until they use recycled plastic.
3. Contact GRRN for more info or to organize a protest in your community. Tel: (706) 613-7121; e-mail:zerowaste@grrn.org; http://www.grrn.org.

The post 24. Coca-Cola Fails to Meet Recycling Pledge appeared first on Project Censored.

SSU Censored Researchers: Amy Loucks and Corrie Robb
SSU Evaluator: Kathleen Kesterke

Mainstream media coverage:

The Salt Lake Tribune, April 29, 1998, page A12
Dallas Morning News, May 11, 1997, page Al

A decades-old dispute with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has led the Western Shoshone tribe to take the conflict to an international level. What the BLM is calling a grazing issue, the Western Shoshone, a 10,000 member tribe, is calling a systematic and historical discrimination against American Indians. In early April 1998, the BLM fined a Shoshone family who have for decades been tending livestock on their ancestral land. The BLM not only issued an order to the Shoshone to remove the livestock from “public land,” but also levied fines totaling $564,000 against the Western Shoshone National Council (WSNC) and Mary and Carrie Dann, two sisters of the Shoshone tribe. The Shoshone consider this action to be a denial of their sovereignty and an attempt to interfere with their livelihood. After unsuccessful attempts to negotiate with the BLM and the Department of the Interior, and despite an unfavorable Supreme Court ruling, the Darns have sought the help of an international agency, the Organization of American States (OAS), charging human rights violations. The OAS’ Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has asked the United States to “stay” all actions pending further investigations; but, according to News From Indian Country (NFIC), the BLM has “not responded” to documents supporting Western Shoshone land rights.

Although a reservation was never created, in 1863, the Western Shoshone signed a pact with the U.S. government to receive food, clothing, and land, in exchange for stopping wagon train raids. A dozen Shoshone warriors signed with “x’s” on the pact, dubbed the “Treaty of Peace and Friendship at Ruby Valley.” Though in 1979 the Indian Claims Commission ordered the United States to pay the Shoshone $26 million for the land, the money has never been distributed to tribal members and is still, according to The Salt Lake Tribune,—held “in trust.”

Also in that ruling, the Dallas Morning News reports, the title was deemed to have been “lost to white encroachment.’ Although the Shoshone have never accepted payment for the land, in 1985 the Supreme Court upheld that the title of the land had “passed to the federal government,” according to The Tribune. In that article, the Danns say that the ruling was about whether there was payment, not about whether the Shoshone title is “intact.”

While the BLM claims that issues of overgrazing are the main reason for their fines and attempts to remove livestock and other equipment, the Dallas News reports that the millions of acres of desolate ranchland is “on the edge of one of the largest gold rushes in recent years, with mining companies scrambling to find gold.”

The mining companies are also paying meager penalties for environmental damage, says News From Indian Country. The Shoshone assert that the fines aimed at them are unfair compared to the meager penalties imposed upon mining companies for environmental damage on the same land. In 1992, Cortez Gold, which operates in the Crescent Valley near the Dann’s land, was initially charged $4,000 for violating their water pollution control permit. According to NFIC, Cortez later struck a deal with the BLM which waived their fine in return for an agreement to build a cattle guard and maintain a fence. In fact, this practice is not unusual and mining companies are rarely, if ever, punished in the first place.

The Western Shoshone do not enjoy the same treatment. The BLM has been unrelenting in their policy enforcement. It has not responded to documents supporting the Shoshone’s ancestral claim of the land and has refused repeated requests by WSNC to negotiate. According to the BLM, the $494,000 fine against the WSNC and the $70,000 fine against the Dann family will stand. “Fines are the newest way that the BLM is using to bring an end to traditional Western Shoshone peoples, and our spiritual and cultural ways,” said Carrie Dann. “We are tied to this land and we are not leaving.”

The fight for what they consider to be sovereignty and human rights has won the Shoshone an international human-rights award in 1993 from the Right Livelihood Foundation in Sweden. The $200,000 award, presented at the Swedish Parliament, was shared with three women from other countries. The Danns used their share to continue their fight on behalf of the Western Shoshone. They and other indigenous-rights activists have also caught the attention of the United Nations.

The Western Shoshone have made several attempts to negotiate the conflict with the Department of Interior and the BLM. The BLM has rejected the offers and continues to insist that the Western Shoshone be in full compliance with BLM regulations.

UPDATE BY AUTHOR PAT CALLIOTTE: “Mary and Carrie Dann are still actively pursuing their complaint before the Organization of American States’ (OAS) Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. This complaint was filed in 1993 by the Indian Law Resource Center on behalf of the Danns and other Western Shoshone to secure their aboriginal rights to their land. Over the past year, tribal resolutions have been passed by Te-Moak, Yomba, Ely, South Fork, Winnemucca, and Timbisha in support of the OAS complaint.

“The Bureau of Land Management is respecting the stay, issued in August 1998 by the Interior Board of Land Appeals (ILBA), for any BLM actions against a sacred hot spring, a cultural and spiritual encampment, and sections of the Dann Ranch that are on traditional Western Shoshone lands in Crescent Valley. The stay, which curbs any fines and other penalties against the Dams or the Western Shoshone National Council, and prohibits the BLM from razing any structures or confiscating any property, is binding until the ILBA rules on the appeal of Trespass Decisions issued on May 26, 1998.

“Other Western Shoshone not covered in the appeal, who continue to graze their traditional lands, are currently still subjected to BLM issuance of orders, fines and notices of impoundment. The Indian Law Resource Center hired a DC-based firm, the Hauser Group, to promote mainstream media coverage on the Western Shoshone/OAS issue. Tracy Zimmerman of the Hauser Group said that there was some media interest, but in midsummer there was nothing fresh occurring to encourage mainstream media to run the story.”

For more information:

Indian Law Resource Center, 602 North Ewing Street, Nelena, MT 59601, Tel: (406) 449-2006; or Fax: (406) 4492031.

Western Shoshone Defense Project, PO Box 211308, Crescent Valley, NV 89821, Tel: (775) 468-0230; or http://www.alphacdc.com/wsdp.

The post 23. Bureau of Land Management Charged With Human Rights Violations Against the Shoshone Nation appeared first on Project Censored.

SSU Censored Researchers: Jason L. Sanders, Yuki Ishizaki, and Aimee Polacci
SSU Faculty Evaluator: Perry Marker

AFT HIGHER EDUCATION DEPARTMENT REPORT, Title: “The Vanishing Professor,” http//www.aft.org

The bedrock of higher education, tenured full-time faculty, have become an endangered species. According to the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the number of tenured full-time faculty is rapidly decreasing on college campuses. Full-time faculty are being replaced by part-time faculty who are paid two-thirds what tenured professors earn, and receive substandard benefits. At least 43 percent of college instructors nationwide are now part-time faculty. The hiring of part-time lecturers increased by 266 percent between 1979 and 1995.

In 1995, 51 percent of the new fulltime faculty were appointed to short term, year-to-year positions, which were ineligible for tenure. From 1975 to 1995, the number of full-time instructors on the tenure track actually decreased nationally by 12 percent.

At the University of California, the budget has been cut dramatically since the beginning of the 1990s and the university encouraged over 2,000 early retirements. Today, the teaching staff at the University of California is comprised of only 20 percent tenured or tenure-track faculty; the remainder is made up of 58.2 percent graduate students, 11.6 percent part-timers, and 8.9 percent non-tenure-track instructors.

The City University of New York system, the premier urban higher education system in the United States, suffered a 21 percent decline of full-time faculty between 1987 and 1997.

Nationally, over two-thirds of all faculty at Community Colleges are part-time. On the 106-campus California Com-munity College system, the number of full-time faculty decreased by 8 percent in the last decade while the actual number of students increased by 8 percent. Part-time lecturers have taken up the slack, along with increasing class sizes and speed-ups for the remaining faculty. Today 30,000 part-time faculty, representing twice as many instructors as the full-time tenure faculty, teach 40 percent of the courses in the California Community Colleges.

Part-time faculty are not paid to serve on university committees, seldom participate in shared governance, and are treated as hired hands with lower pay and benefits within university communities. This diminished involvement on campuses can have a demoralizing effect on classroom performance, student access, and the university community as a whole. Tenured faculty have the advantage of being able to maintain high academic standards for students, while temporary part-time faculty may try to please students by giving higher grades and lowering requirements in order to insure higher student evaluations on their performance.

Higher education research in the United States leads the world. Research requires sustained periods of study and experimentation. The increased use of temporary faculty will eventually undermine this important function in the United States.

UPDATE BY AUTHOR BARBARA MCKENNA: “The declining number of full-time tenured faculty is a story that tends to get lost within the larger story of the forces transforming higher education in the 1990s. At the beginning of the decade, cash-strapped states cut funding of the public universities and two-year colleges. When the state economies bounced back, higher education funding did not. Thus, institutions set a course of ‘doing more with less’ that has brought a progression of lean, mean accommodations. These include corporatizing and downsizing operations and service, relying on a less expensive labor force (part-time and adjunct faculty, full-time, temporary instructors, graduate teaching assistants), and embracing technology and distance learning as an alternative to providing face-to-face instruction. If the effect of these accommodations would be a decline in the quality of education provided, it would be the full-time tenured faculty who, in a proprietary way, would note it and oppose it. Quietly allowing these faculty to retire and not be replaced makes it easier for institutions to put cost efficiency, rather than educational quality and serving students, as their first priority.

“This story has generated great interest among college faculty, some of whom have contacted our union for information on how they might fight the trend. Many readers have shared the story with their college administrations, to remind them that the vanishing professor trend will have an effect on quality down the road. We know they’ve also sent copies to state legislators. We are not aware of any mainstream press response.

The story was based on a longer report by the same name released by the American Federation of Teachers in July 1998. The report is available at http://www.aft.org/highedue/professor.”

The post 22. Academia at Risk as Tenured Professors Vanish appeared first on Project Censored.

SSU Censored Researcher: Rick Krigstein and Diana Nouveaux
SSU Faculty Evaluator: Jim Burkland

Colin J. Campbell and Jean H. Laherrere, two independent oil-industry consultants, predict that global production of conventional oil will start to decline within the next 10 years, and be unable to keep up with demand. Their analysis contradicts oil-industry reports which suggest we have another 50 years worth of cheap oil to sustain us. As the independent report points out, economic and political motives cause oil-producing companies and countries to publish the inflated figure, and this affects all of us.

An estimate of existing oil reserves is one of the factors used to predict the ultimate recovery of oil, that is, all the cheap oil there is to be had. Even with modern technology, says Scientific American, estimating reserves is an inexact science. Petroleum engineers express reserves in terms of probability. Geologists may calculate that an oil field has a 90 percent chance of containing 700 million barrels of recoverable oil, but only a 10 percent chance of containing 2,000 million barrels of oil.. Many companies and countries, however, freely report their reserves using any figure between 10 and 90 percent depending on which figures serve them best. For example, exaggerated estimates can raise the price of an oil company’s stock. Also, a government may use inflated reserve estimates in order to enhance their political clout and their ability to obtain loans.

Member-nations of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) have an even more tangible reason to inflate their reported reserve estimates: the higher their reserves, the more oil they are allowed to export. This rep-resents immediate income for those countries. During the 1980s, 6 of the 11 OPEC nations reported huge increases in their reserve amounts, ranging from 42 to 197 percent. There is good reason to suspect that this was done to increase their export quotas.

Many people believe that improved technology will get more oil out of the ground. It will, but oil companies routinely take improved technology into account when calculating reserve estimates. Current calculations already include improvements in recovery. Campbell and Laherrere’s analysis takes other factors into account. For instance, the rate of oil consumption has been rising at over 2 percent per year. The rate of discovery of new oil has been declining. Large reserves of unconventional oil such as heavy oil, tar sands, and shale oil exist, but it is not economically feasible to extract them. Also, to do so might cause extreme environmental, damage. Tar-sand oil has to be strip-mined, and heavy oils contain sulfur and heavy metals which must be removed.

Perhaps the biggest reason oil companies grossly inflate cheap oil estimates is that it removes a major motivation to develop alternative energy sources which would directly compete with oil as an energy source. The longer the oil companies (and countries) lull us into thinking there is plenty of cheap oil available, the longer we delay developing solar power, fuel cells and other technologies that could replace oil.

UPDATE BY THE AUTHOR C.J. CAMPBELL: “‘The End of Cheap Oil’ covered a subject of the utmost importance to our subspecies. Hydrocarbon Man is today virtually the sole surviving human subspecies. He was born 150 years ago and will have become extinct by the end of the next century. The peak of oil production within the next decade will be a turning point with immense political and economic consequences. With about half of the remaining conventional oil lying in five Middle East countries, world tensions are likely to erupt as the industrial countries vie with each other for access. Failure to understand that depletion is a natural phenomenon may lead to misguided military intervention.

“`The End of Cheap Oil’ emphasized the atrocious state of public data on production and reserves, which have been corrupted by vested interests. Accordingly, the study evolves all the time as new information on the status of depletion in different countries comes in. The interpretation of the data is, however, simply a case of solving the equation: Peak Discovery + Time = Peak Production.

“The article has been subject to comment in a wide range of serious journals in many countries, including the Observer newspaper of London, Barron’s Science, Science News, Geopolitique, and Die Stern. It has also led to lectures, seminars; and broadcasts. Even aircraft manufacturers and Walt Disney have reacted, seeing the impact on their businesses. But perhaps the most important response is the position of the International Energy Agency, the world’s premier authority on energy supply, which has advised the G8 of the impending peak.”

Further information and updates may be obtained from Campbell (etanjou@pengord.com); Laherrere
(j.h.laherrere@infonie.fr); and http://www.oil.crisis.com/laherrere

The post 21. Global Oil Reserves Alarmingly Over-Estimated appeared first on Project Censored.

SSU Censored Researcher: Brooke Herron
SSU Faculty Evaluator: Bryan Baker

According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), some 10 million people in the U.S. currently live on flood plains. Of these households at risk of flooding, only one-fourth actually carries insurance; the rest will rely on federal disaster relief funds if their homes are flooded. Many of these people face repeated flooding, and the American taxpayer is paying the tab.

Flood plains are nice flat places to build homes and businesses. Developers get a sweet deal from the government at the expense of U.S. taxpayers. As long as there is proof of economic benefit for developing in flood plains, developers can obtain: (1) a government-built levee to protect their investment, (2) the government’s near total subsidy of repairs should flood damage occur, and (3) the right to offer property buyers guaranteed, federally underwritten flood insur-ance policies through the National Flood Insurance Program.

The government’s levee-building program, started 100 years ago, was based on the logic of financial viability. Lowlands along rivers were desirably productive areas sought for agricultural purposes. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would build the levees to protect the land for agricultural use. In recent times, as cities and towns expanded into traditional farming areas, the extension of levee building and maintenance for suburban developments has increased. Damages from a suburban flood can have a significantly higher loss value than flooding of farm land.

Herman writes that the National Association of Home Builders and the National Association of Realtors are two leaders paying lobbyists to actively campaign for continuation of the levee subsidies. Both are big contributors to congressional candidates who support continued levee building and maintenance.

In the Mississippi floods of 1993, taxpayers paid between $12 and $16 billion to cover damages. The Federal Emer-gency Management Agency created a buyout plan to relocate families living within the boundaries of flood plains. A lot of press attention was given to the relocation of some 900 people who lived in Valmeyer, Illinois, as they moved the entire town to nearby limestone bluffs. The much publicized move was designed to show the public that Congress was doing something in the wake of the 1993 Mississippi floods. The program, however, has only succeeded in relocating 12,000 people, leaving millions still in harm’s way.

“Those who extract the most profit from building on the flood plain, experience none of the risk,” says Jeffrey Mount, a professor of geology at the University of California, Davis. Mount points out that areas such as Arboga, a town in nearby Yuba County, are being newly zoned for subdivisions on the very same land inundated by floods in 1997. Currently some 58,000 structures are being planned by developers in California Central Valley flood plains. “As long as you can build a house, sell it, and walk away, you will,” said Mount.

The Clinton Administration’s Council on Environmental Quality opposed the rebuilding of levees following the 1993 floods. Then came the 1994 elections: The Democrats were swept from congressional control and the proposed changes have been lost amid bipartisan bickering.

UPDATE BY AUTHOR MAW HERMAN: “In 1998 the federal government’s National Flood Insurance Program wrote an additional $60 billion in policies, and now covers $482.5 billion worth of homes, businesses, and property located in severely flood-prone areas. At the same time, the Federal Emergency Management Agency reported $268 million in damages from floods in 1998, which it called a relatively light year following $687 million in damages in 1997, and $1.1 billion in 1996.

“Meanwhile, flood risks have not changed in the past year, and the failure of policies to address these largely avoidable tragedies has gotten little attention. It is still the case that flood-control levees are maintained by the government if there is an economic incentive to do so, with little thought to the area’s history of flood damage. Free repair of those multi-million dollar levees, subsidized flood insurance for people who private insurers won’t touch, and the safety net of disaster relief are still considered a dubious sort of protection, but in practice have acted as incentives to stay in flood zones, keeping; people in harm’s way. And levees continue to fail.

“The year since publication of ‘Rain Check’ has, fortunately, been a lucky one. Though there was $268 million in flood damage, there was no Grand Forks Flood, Yosemite Flood, Great Mississippi Flood, Texas Flood, Arkansas Flood, or Louisiana Flood, to name just a few disasters of the past decade. On the other hand, when floods aren’t on the front. page, neither is flood policy; it’s hard to write about causes without a show of the effects.

“If flood policy was absent from national newspapers, though, it was not only because of Mother Nature’s momentary mercy, but also because some of those involved with the issue have simply given up on the press.

“‘I’ve stopped feeding stories to the newspapers,’ said one lobbyist, who asked to remain anonymous. ‘Honestly, I really don’t need you. I can get things done without it [press coverage],’ he said.”

The post 20. Developers Build on Flood Plains at Taxpayers’ Expense appeared first on Project Censored.

SSU Censored Researchers: Scott Gross and Brooke Herron
SSU Faculty Evaluator: Richard Gale

Mainstream media coverage: Associated Press, Press Democrat, November 14, 1998, page Al

The Clinton Administration and the Commerce Department have lobbied on behalf of U.S. toy and chemical manufacturers against proposed new European Union (EU) restrictions which would prevent children’s exposure to toxic chemicals released by polyvinyl chloride (PVC) toys such as teething rings. Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), suggesting that the U.S. government lobbied at the behest of toymaker Mattel and chemical manufacturer Exxon, may help explain the European Commission’s rejection of the proposed emergency ban. A cable from Vernon Weaver, the U.S. Representative to the EU in Brussels, sent “heartfelt thanks” to Washington and U.S. missions in Europe for “making contact” with member state representatives of the EU Product Safety Emergencies Committee. “We are told by Exxon Chemical Europe Inc. that the input was very effective and the weigh-in was invaluable.”

Health authorities in several European countries, including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands, have recommended a ban on PVC toys, such as teething rings and bath toys. The Spanish government requested action by the EU in March 1998. PVC, or polyvinyl chloride (also known as vinyl), is a common plastic that frequently contains toxic additives. The Front reports that no major U.S. retailers have taken precautionary action, chiefly because the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), which is responsible for toy safety regulations, has yet to take action.

At issue, writes Mr. Gray, are a family of chemicals called phthalates (phthalic esters or benzenedicarboxylic acid esters). Phthalates are used primarily as plasticizer additives to give vinyl products softness and elasticity. Plasticizers comprise over half the weight of some flexible vinyl products. Ninety-five percent of phthalates are used in the production of vinyl products. Although phthalates vary in toxicity, the most widely-used phthalates, DEHP [di(2- ethylhexyl)phthalate], have been linked in animal studies to a variety of illnesses including reproductive damage and damage to the kidneys and liver. Several agencies, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), have labeled DEHP a probable human carcinogen. Other studies suggest that phthalates or their metabolites can interact synergistically with other common chemical contaminants, may be slightly estrogenic, can affect blood pressure and heart rate, and may cause asthma when absorbed on airborne particles.

The simple truth about phthalates toxicity is revealed by the warning label on a bottle of DINP, the phthalate most commonly found in toys. The label on a bottle of DINP, sold to an experimental laboratory, says, “May cause cancer; harmful by inhalation, in contact with skin, and if swallowed; possible risk of irreversible effects; avoid exposure; and wear suitable protective clothing, gloves, and eye/face protection.” Although no standard method exists for the investigation of release of phthalates from toys, a group of Danish scientists found significant migration of phthalates used in toys. Some of Denmark’s biggest retailers then took precautionary action by pulling a number of chewable PVC :toys off their shelves. Since then, a number of retailers in Spain, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium have stopped selling PVC teething toys. Several European retailers, including Foetex and FDB in Denmark, and Brio and KF in Sweden, have already recalled PVC toys. The makers of Lego are eliminating soft PVC toys from their product line entirely. U.S. toymakers did voluntarily substitute another phthalate for DEHP in the mid 1980s, after the CPSC looked into the leaching of DEHP from teethers.

The Associated Press story dated November 14, 1998, while listing the deleterious effects of the plasticizers, states that “the process that caused the liver damage in animals does not occur in humans.” No mention is made about the strong lobbying efforts made by the United States on behalf of U.S. toy manufacturers and chemical manufacturers, after which the European Commission rejected the proposed emergency ban.

UPDATE BY AUTHOR CHARLIE GRAY: “Since our story about PVC in toys came out in the Multinational Monitor, media interest has grown tremendously. ABC’s 20/20 ran a major story in November. Many network affiliates and major newspapers, including The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times [and The San Francisco Chronicle] picked up the story.

“Toy companies have begun to respond. Toys R Us and other retailers pulled vinyl teething rings off their shelves. Mattel announced in September that it would soon stop selling vinyl toys containing phthalate additives for kids under three. Little Tikes said it would go entirely PVC-free. Most manufacturers followed Mattel, pledging only to take the phthalates out of their toys. This fails to address other important problems posed by PVC, including dioxins produced when: it is made or burned, and the many other toxic additives (including some phthalate replacements) used to make it flexible and stable. Safer, naturally flexible plastics are available for toys and other products.

“There has been a considerable backlash coming mostly from the chemical and vinyl industries. That’s because there’s a lot more at stake than toys—‘the industry will go the way toys go,’ one industry official told the Wall Street Journal (November 12). Numerous corporate front groups have blitzed the media with op-eds characterizing the issue as one based on emotion rather than science. Look for future stories about PVC medical products, construction materials, etc.”

For more information on PVC and other toxic chemical issues contact Greenpeace, Tel: (800) 326-0959 or (202) 462-1177; http://www.greenpeace. org/~campaigns/toxics.

The post 19. Clinton Administration Lobbied for Retention of Toxic Chemicals in Children’s Toys appeared first on Project Censored.

SSU Censored Researcher: Corrie Robb
SSU, Faculty Evaluator: Daniel Markwyn

Recently declassified government documents have shed new light on the decades-old debate over the fluoridation of drinking water, and have added to a growing body of scientific evidence concerning the health effects of fluoride. Much of the original evidence about fluoride, which suggested it was safe for human consumption in low doses, was actually generated by “Manhattan Project” scientists in the 1940s. As it turns out, these officials were ordered by government powers to provide information that would be “useful in litigation” and that would obfuscate its improper handling and disposal. The once top-secret documents, say the authors, reveal that vast quantities of fluoride, one of the most toxic substances known, were required for the production of weapons-grade plutonium and uranium. As a result, fluoride soon became the leading health hazard to bomb program workers and surrounding communities.

Studies commissioned after chemical mishaps by the medical division of the “Manhattan Project” document highly controversial findings. For instance, toxic accidents in the vicinity of fluoride-producing facilities like the one near Lower Penns Neck, New Jersey, left crops poisoned or blighted, and humans and livestock sick. Symptoms noted in the findings included extreme joint stiffness, uncontrollable vomiting and diarrhea, severe headaches, and death. These and other facts from the secret documents directly contradict the findings concurrently published in scientific journals which praised the positive effects of fluoride.

Regional environmental fluoride releases in the northeast United States also resulted in several legal suits against the government by farmers after the end of World War II, according to Griffiths and Bryson. Military and public health officials feared legal victories would snowball, opening the door to further suits which might have kept the bomb program from continuing to use fluoride. With the Cold War underway, the New Jersey lawsuits proved to be a roadblock to America’s already full-scale production of atomic weapons. Officials were subsequently ordered to protect the interests of the government.

After the war, experimentation and the dissemination of misinformation continued. Most notably, the authors state, bomb program scientists embarked on a campaign to calm the social panic about fluoride in the early 1950s, through lectures on fluoride toxicology and by promoting its usefulness in preventing tooth decay. Bomb program scientists played a leading role in the design and implementation of a fluoride study conducted in Newburgh, New York, from 1945 to 1956 in which fluoride was secretly added to public drinking water. In a classified follow-up operation referred to as “Program F,” blood and tissue samples were covertly collected from Newburgh citizens with the assistance of the State Health Department. The government eagerly studied the effects of fluoride in Newburgh, as a community-level fluoride exposure experiment.

The formerly top-secret papers—including letters, memos, and health reports—raise important questions about the U.S. government’s possible conflict of interest regarding fluoride use and promotion. If lower dose ranges were found hazardous by the Manhattan Project studies, these findings “might have opened the bomb program and its con-tractors up to lawsuits for injury to human health, as well as public outcry,” say the authors. The documents also state that “clinical evidence suggests that uranium hexafluoride may have a rather marked central nervous system effect…. It seems most likely that the F [code for fluoride] component rather than the T [code for the uranium] is the causative factor.”

It is feared that the Manhattan Project agenda directed researchers away from objectively evaluating the effects of fluoride well into the Cold War. “Information was buried,” concludes Dr. Phyllis Mullenix, the former head of toxicology at Forsyth Dental Center in Boston who was interviewed by Griffiths and Bryson. “There is so much fluoride exposure now, and we simply do not know what it is doing.”

UPDATE BY AUTHORS JOEL GRIFFITHS AND CHRIS BRYSON: “It’s an old story, fluoride. The early U.S. industrial polluters and their victims knew it best. It was just another day for them when the government announced fluoride would reduce children’s cavities. They would have been much better at enlightening the public about fluoride than the dentists of today, but they’re gone now.

“The fluoride story is a hangover from the Cold War, when the U.S. media would not abrogate `national security.’ They publicized the official line about fluoride, and that was that. The critical role of fluoride in the production of the atomic bomb and in many of the new industrial processes (rocket propellants, fluorocarbons, plastics, etc.) that made America the world’s leader after World War II was never mentioned. The nationwide damage wreaked by industrial fluoride pollution, and the role and motives of the bomb program and U.S. industry in establishing fluoride’s safety, was not mentioned either.

“At least a dozen mainstream media outlets here and in the U.K. expressed strong interest in our story, but all later declined. The facts were never in question. The 155 pages of supporting documentation are available for the cost of mailing from Waste Not, Tel: (315) 3799200. For further information, contact Dr. William Hirzy, Senior vice-president, National Treasury Employees Union, EPA Headquarters chapter, Tel: (202) 260-4683; or e-mail: hirzy.john@epa. gov. Also Mike Ewall, Pennsylvania Environmental Network, Tel: (215) 7434884; or e-mail: pen@envirolink.org.”

The post 18. Manhattan Project Covered Up Effects of Fluoride Toxicity appeared first on Project Censored.

SSU Censored Researchers: Victoria Calkins and Sam Rogers
SSU Faculty Evaluator: Phil Beard

In August 1992, media coverage of the civil war in Yugoslavia gained unprecedented influence on military decision-making processes in the West. Reports of horrifying conditions in camps run by the Bosnian Serbs galvanized world opinion. A visit to the camps of Omarska and Trnopolje by a British team from Independent Television (ITN) on August 5, 1992, gave rise to the image of the Serbs as the new Nazis of the Balkans. A widely published photo taken by ITN pictured an emaciated Muslim behind barbed wire with comrades imprisoned behind him. This famous photo became the symbolic link between the Bosnian Serbs and the Nazi concentration camps of World War II. International politicians sent troops into Bosnia. A wave of sanctions against Bosnian Serbs were established. In the United States, presidential candidate Bill Clinton took the initiative in his campaign, making references to the ITN pictures as he requested military action against the Serbs. The world became convinced that Bosnia was full of “bad Serbs” persecuting “good Muslims.”

ITN’s photo was not, however, as accurate as it seemed. The men in the photo were not standing behind barbed wire. In fact the Hague Tribunal confirmed that there was no barbed wire surrounding the Belsen ‘92 at Trnopolje. ITN’s photo was taken looking outward from a small fenced enclosure inside the camp, not from outside looking in as the photo implies. The emaciated Muslim shown with his shirt off was in fact a very ill man selected to be featured in the photo. The other men in the photo look healthier and are clothed. Trnopolje was not a concentration camp, it was a refugee and transit center. Many Muslims traveled there for protection and could leave whenever they wished.

While the coverage of this image was not directly responsible for international diplomacy and military planning, it was the trigger that brought on an avalanche of actions. This was aided by Croatian secessionists and Bosnian Muslims who hired Ruder Finn (an American public relations firm) to advance their cause by targeting key publics in the United States who would respond appropriately to their demonization of the Serbs. Ruder Finn focused their public relation releases to target women and the Jewish community in the United States. The Western press was soon filled with stories of rape camps, death camps, and horrendous attacks by Bosnian Serbs with little or no verification of particular events, and little coverage of the Bosnian Serb side of the war. As the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina got underway in mid-1992, American journalists who repeated unconfirmed stories of Serbian atrocities could count on getting published. On the other hand, there was no market for stories by a journalist who discovered that Serbian “rape camps” did not exist (German TV reporter Martin Lettmayer). Nor was there a market for reporters who wrote stories about Muslim or Croat crimes against Serbs (Belgian journalist Georges Berghezan). It became increasingly impossible to challenge the dominant interpretation in the major media. Western editors seemed to prefer to keep the story simple: one villain and as much blood as possible.

Foreign news has always been easier to distort. TV crews sent into strange places, about which they know nothing, send back images of violence that give millions of viewers the impression that “everyone knows what is happening,” and an aggressor is easily identified as the evil villain in need of the discipline of outside moral authorities.

UPDATE BY AUTHOR DIANA JOHNSTONE: “The truth about Yugoslavia may well be the most important censored, self-censored, distorted, and misunderstood story, not only of 1998, but of the whole decade. A drastic critical reevaluation is urgently necessary to prevent even greater disasters in the foreseeable future—notably in Kosovo. There, the one-sided anti-Serb bias has given both Albanian and Serb residents the impression that NATO is ready to support armed ethnic Albanian secessionists.

“Not only mainstream media, but even alternative outlets have turned down stories that fail to fit established stereotypes. However, even when journalists produce balanced reports, the effect is often offset by extremely biased editorials, car-toons, and commentaries, not to mention statements by Western government officials deliberately exploiting a troubled situation in order to justify a new expanded mission for NATO.

“By the end of 1998, it was clear that the conflict in Kosovo was merging dangerously with the debate over NATO’s new strategy, with both scheduled to dominate the news in the spring of 1999, when NATO’s 50th anniversary meeting appeared destined to coincide with the spring offensive of the armed ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo.

“There is no quick fix for understanding this story. A vast amount of information is available, but it takes time, experience and above all judgment to sort out truth from falsehood, and to evaluate the meaning of events. An excellent current source of information about Kosovo is the Web site of the Decani monastery:http://www.decani.yunet.com.”

UPDATE BY AUTHOR THOMAS DEICHMANN: “Since the publication of my article there have been few discussions in the media about it. Many editors ignored the story. Supportive comments often were overwhelmed by smear articles coming mostly from the London Observer and Guardian that questioned my professional and personal integrity. Despite the slurs, no evidence disputing my story has been presented.

“ITN chose to use the repressive British libel laws to keep my story under wraps in the U.K. The writ threatens the very existence of LM magazine which published my piece. This action is a serious threat to the freedom of the press. Since the writ was served, the plaintiffs have done little to get the case to court. The many delays suggest that ITN is reluctant to do so. LM has already spent around £50.000, and is anxious to start the proceedings so all matters can be up for public discussion.

“During the Bosnian war, some reporters started following a morally-driven agenda. My article invited a discussion about how this dangerous trend has started. From the response to my piece however, it is obvious that I questioned an established orthodoxy which is not allowed to be challenged.

“BBC world affairs editor John Simpson alluded to this in his recently published book Strange Places, Questionable People. With reference to my story and the anti-Serb media coverage of intolerant liberals and right-wingers, he recalled Salman Rushdie’s remark that religious people have ‘a God-shaped hole in their lives.’ Simpson concluded that ‘one of the strangest coalitions of modern times seems to have a crusade-shaped hole in their lives, and Bosnia was cut and shaped to fit it.’

“You can find all information about my story and the libel case, and about ways to support LM at:http://www.informinc.co.uk/ITN-vs-LM/. You can contact LM at: lm@informinc.co.uk, Tel: (44) 171269-9231, Fax: (44) 171-2699235. A German website with the article can be found at: http://www.novo-magazin.de/. If you want to get further involved in the issue you can reach me at: Thomas. Deichmann@t-online.de.”

The post 17. U. S. Media Promotes Biased Coverage of Bosnia appeared first on Project Censored.

SSU Censored Researchers: Jason Bothwell and Kelly Dahlstrom
SSU Faculty Evaluators: Linda Lopez and John Steiner

In many countries, multinational corporations have paid directly for private policing services from the local army; or have hired outside security companies to harass nationals who protest against the environmental impact of their operations. The firms involved represent a growing number of new corporate security operations around the world, linking former intelligence officers, standing armies, and local death squads.

One of these security companies is Defense Systems Limited (DSL). DSL is run by two ex-Special Air Service commandos out of London offices, across the street from Buckingham Palace. Their clients include petrochemical companies, multinational banks, embassies, nongovernmental organizations, and national and international organiza-tions. One of DSL’s biggest contracts is with Mark Heathcote, a former M16 (British equivalent of the CIA) officer who ran operations in Argentina during the Falklands War. Heathcote is now the chief of security for British Petroleum (BP). In 1996, DSL sent a group of British personnel to train Colombian Police on BP-owned rigs. Training included lethal-weapons handling, sniper fire, and close quarter combat.

Another firm, Executive Outcomes, also offers mercenary armies to multinationals. Executive Outcomes fielded a private mercenary army in Angola in 1993, and offers high-tech security forces to corporations all over the world. In Nigeria, the Anglo-Dutch multinational Shell corporation has been accused of causing major pollution in the Niger Delta for the last 38 years. Shell directly employs an elite detachment of Nigerian police to protect its own interests. Numerous demonstrators have been beaten and executed because of Shell operations in Nigeria.

In Indonesia, a U.S. company, Freeport McMoram, has been accused of dumping more than 110,000 tons of mining waste into local rivers every day. When the Indonesian populace protested the devastation to its land, Indonesian troops, hired to protect Freeport McMoram, moved in and cracked down on the protesters. Human rights groups estimate that the army has killed nearly 2,000 people in the region in the two decades the company has been in residence.

In Burma, two oil companies, Unocal and Total, are combining to build a $1.2 billion, 40-mile long pipeline that will deliver natural gas to a power plant in Thailand. Officials from the government-in exile say the Burmese army has rounded up some 500,000 people to provide unpaid, forced labor on the pipeline.

In India, armies have recently become available to multinational corporations for a very cheap price. Enron, a gas producing multinational from Texas, reportedly paid soldiers about $3.50 per person, per day for a battalion to guard a power plant under construction. Since then, Amnesty International has recorded several incidents of violence towards protesters, says Chatterjee. The Cold War kept national armies throughout the Third World well supplied with weapons as the superpowers vied for control of almost every country on the planet. Now, with the Cold War over, a new market has been created for these specially trained armies, and for privatized security businesses such as DSL. They can now be hired to protect multinational corporations from the wrath of the local people trying to protect their own communities.

UPDATE BY AUTHOR PRATAP CHATTERJEE: “Multinational mineral extraction companies like British Petroleum and Shell finance some of the bloodiest conflict zones around the world today in countries from Algeria to Zaire. Although nonprofit organizations chronicle human rights and environmental abuses in these situations, and international organizations like the United Nations regularly attempt to negotiate peace between warring factions, none of these institutions point out that these operations are often financed by companies that sell products from gold rings to gasoline in every neighborhood. Nor is there any system in place to address the root causes of these day-to-day disasters.

“Many of the mercenaries mentioned in the story seem to have gone undercover. Alastair Morrison and Richard Bethell of Defense Systems Limited have apparently been laid off, while Tony Buckingham has resigned from the board of Diamond Works and Eeben Barlow of Executive Outcomes has mysteriously vanished. The conflicts, however, continue in every one of the countries described in the story, from Colombia to Sierra Leone, with assistance from well-financed mercenaries.

“Although the mainstream press, from The New York Times in this country to the Financial Times in Britain, often cover conflict and provide daily business coverage of multinational corporations, they only occasionally cover mer-cenaries. These reports typically refer to mercenaries as individual “soldiers-of-fortune” failing to point out that the companies in their business pages pay for daily murder and that these companies are often guilty of rampant environ-mental abuses that are the source of community protest and conflict.

“A Web version of winning stories (with clickable maps and links to both human rights groups, other media, and the mercenaries themselves) exists at the following URL: http://www.moles.org/ProjectUnderground/mil/milindex.html. To get regular updates on the subject of mercenaries and the mineral industries I recommend that readers subscribe to a twice-monthly electronic magazine named Drillbits & Tailings which I edit for Project Underground, a non-profit organization which supports communities affected by the mineral industries. The magazine is available electronically for free (financial support is encouraged) by e-mailing project_underground@moles.org. All back issues (57 by mid-December 1998) are archived and completely searchable on the World Wide Web at http://www.moles.org.”

The post 16. Mercenary Armies in Service to Global Corporations appeared first on Project Censored.