-Caveat Lector-
Project Censored's list of
THE 10 MOST CENSORED STORIES OF 1998.
(The following stories, plus timely articles and reviews and
resource guide, are included in "Project Censored Yearbook:
Censored 1998: The News That Didn't Make the News," by Peter
Phillips and Project Censored, ISBN 1-888363-64-9, $16.95 (UK
11.99)(Cdn $23.95). Copies can be ordered at your local
bookstore or by contacting Project Censored at 707-664-2500
(16.95 + 3.00 S&H).
Some developments in the course of history have such potential to
impact nations and humans that it would be irresponsible to
ignore them. Yet few mainstream news organizations have
reported on the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), which
would set in place a vast series of protections for foreign
investment. According to reports in the alternative press, the
MAI would threaten national sovereignty by giving corporations
near equal rights to nations. This agreement has the potential
to place profits ahead of human rights and social justice, and
that is why our judges named this story the No.1 censored or
under reported story of 1998.
MAI, hatched in secret negotiations that began in 1995 among
the U.S. and 28 other nations, could thrust the world economy
closer to a system where international corporate capital would
hold free reign over the democratic values and socioeconomic
needs of people. The MAI will also have devastating effects on a
nation's legal, environmental and cultural sovereignty.
It will force countries to relax or nullify human,
environmental and labor protection to attract investment and
trade. Necessary measures such as food subsidies, control of land
speculation, agrarian reform and health and environmental
standards can be challenged as "illegal." This same illegality
is extended to community control of forests, local bans on use
of pesticides, clean air standards, limits on mineral, gas and
oil extraction, and bans on toxic dumping.
The apparent goal of the latest international trade
negotiations is to safeguard multinational corporate investments
by eliminating democratic regulatory control by nation states
and local governments, the authors report.
More radical than NAFTA or GATT, MAI would thrust the world
much closer to a transnational laissez-faire system where
international corporate capital would hold free reign over the
democratic wishes and socioeconomic needs of people.
Mostly ignored by mainstream press, coverage of this issue
was offered in the following sources: IN THESE TIMES, "Building
the Global Economy," Jan. 11, 1998, by Joel Bleifuss; DEMOCRATIC
LEFT, "MAI Ties," Spring 1998, by Bill Dixon; TRIBUNE DES DRIOTS
HUMAINS, "Human Rights or Corporate Rights?" April 1998, Volume
5, No.s 1-2, by Miloon Kothari and Tara Krause.
MOST CENSORED STORIES OF 1998
No. 1. SECRET INTERNATIONAL TRADE AGREEMENT UNDERMINES THE
SOVEREIGNTY OF NATIONS:
Some developments in the course of History have such
potential to impact nations and humans that it would be
irresponsible to ignore them. Yet few mainstream news
organizations have reported on the Multilateral Agreement on
Investment (MAI), which would set in place a vast series of
protections for foreign investment. According to reports in the
alternative press, the MAI would threaten national sovereignty by
giving corporations near equal rights to nations. This agreement
has the potential to place profits ahead of human rights and
social justice, and that is why our judges named this story the
No.1 censored or under reported story of 1998.
MAI would thrust the world economy much closer to a system
where international corporate capital would hold free reign over
the democratic values and socioeconomic needs of people. The MAI
will also have devastating effects on a nation's legal,
environmental and cultural sovereignty. It will force countries
to relax or nullify human, environmental and labor protection to
attract investment and trade. Necessary measures such as food
subsidies, control of land speculation, agrarian reform and
health and environmental standards can be challenged as
"illegal" under the MAI. This same illegality is extended to
community control of forests, local bans on use of pesticides,
clean air standards, limits on mineral, gas and oil extraction,
and bans on toxic dumping.
Sources: IN THESE TIMES, "Building the Global Economy,"
January 11, 1998, by Joel Bleifuss; DEMOCRATIC LEFT, "MAI Ties,"
Spring 1998, by Bill Dixon; TRIBUNE DES DRIOTS HUMAINS, "Human
Rights or Corporate Rights?" April 1998, Volume 5, No.s 1-2,
"Giving The World Away" by Elaine Weinreb, Vol 27, No 11
'ECONEWS' December 1997
No. 2. CHEMICAL CORPORATIONS PROFIT OFF BREAST CANCER:
In one of the more cynical examples of corporate
profit-making ingenuity, leaders in cancer treatment and
information are the same chemical companies that also produce
carcinogenic products.
Breast Cancer Awareness Month, initiated in 1985 by the
chemical conglomerate Imperial Chemical Industries, currently
called Zeneca Pharmaceuticals, reveals an uncomfortably close
connection between the chemical industry and the cancer research
establishment. As the controlling sponsor of Breast Cancer
Awareness Month (BCAM), Zeneca is able to approve--or veto-any
promotional or informational materials, posters, advertisements,
etc. that BCAM uses. The focus is strictly limited to information
regarding early detection and treatment, with an avoidance of the
topic of prevention. Critics have begun to question why. With
revenues of $14 billion, Zeneca is among the world's largest
manufacturers of pesticides, plastics, and pharmaceuticals.
Zeneca was instrumental in convincing the FDA to approve
tamoxifen as a prevention" measure to reduce the incidence of
breast cancer in healthy women at risk. However, the World Health
Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer
considers tamoxifen a "probable human carcinogen."
Sources: RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT AND HEALTH WEEKLY, "The Truth
About Breast Cancer," Dec. 4, 1997, by Peter Montague; THE GREEN
GUIDE, "Profiting Off Breast Cancer" Oct. 1998, by Allison Sloan
and Tracy Baxter.
No. 3 MONSANTO'S GENETICALLY MODIFIED SEEDS THREATEN WORLD
PRODUCTION:
Over the 12,000 years that humans have been farming, a rich
tradition of seed saving has developed. Men and women choose
seeds from the plants that are best adapted to their own locale
and trade them within the community, enhancing crop diversity
and success rates. All this may change in the next four to five
years.
Monsanto Corporation has been working to consolidate the
world seed market, and is now poised to introduce new
genetically engineered seeds that will produce only infertile
seeds at the end of the farming cycle. Farmers will no longer be
able to save seeds from year to year, and will be forced to
purchase new seeds from Monsanto each year.
For the first time in history, research is being done for
the benefit of corporations, sometimes in direct opposition to
farmers' interests. It is noteworthy that the USDA stands to
earn 5% royalties of net sales if this technology is
commercialized. Historically the USDA has received government
money for research aimed at benefitting farmers, but recently the
USDA has been turning more and more often to private companies
for funding.
Terminator plants, if introduced on a wide scale, will
effectively constrict worldwide crop diversity by preventing
farmers from engaging in the seed selection and cross breeding
that has, for thousands of years, given them the ability to
adapt crops to local conditions.
Sources: MOJO WIRE Title: "A Seedy Business"
http://www.motherjones.com/news-Wire/broydo.html Date: April 7,
1998, by Leora Broydo; THIRD WORLD RESURGENCE #92, "New Patent
Aims to Prevent Farmers From Saving Seed," by Chakravarthi
Raghavan EARTH ISLAND JOURNAL Title: "Terminator Seeds Threaten
an End to Farming," Fall 1998, by Hope Shand and Pat Mooney ;
THE ECOLOGIST, "Monsanto: A Checkered History" and "Revolving
Doors: Monsanto and the Regulators," Sept./Oct. 1998, Vol. 28,
No. 5, by Brian Tokar, The Pesticide Action Network
(www.panna.org/panna) newsletter Global Pesticide Campaigner Vol
8, No 2."'Terminator Technology' Prevents Farmers from Saving
Seeds," June 1998.
No. 4 RECYCLED RADIOACTIVE METALS MAY BE IN YOUR HOME:
Under special government permits, "decontaminated"
radioactive metal is being sold to manufacture everything from
knives and forks and belt buckles to zippers, eyeglasses, dental
fillings and IUDS. The Department of Energy (DOE), the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the radioactive metal processing
industry are pushing for new regulations that would relax current
standards and dispense with the need for special radioactive
recycling licensing.
By one estimate, the DOE disposed of 7,500 tons of these
troublesome metals in 1996 alone. The new standard being sought
would allow companies to recycle millions of tons of low-level
radioactive metal a year while raising the acceptable levels of
millirems (mrems), a unit of measure that estimates the damage
radiation does to human tissue.
By the NRC's own estimate, the proposed standards could
cause 100,000 cancer fatalities in the United States alone. While
the DOE waits for new standards to be released,"hot metal" is
being marketed to other countries. Three major U.S. oil
companies, Texaco, Mobil and Phillips, shipped 5.5 million
pounds of radioactive scrap metal to China in 1993. In June 1996,
Chinese officials stopped a U.S. shipment of 78 tons of
radioactive scrap metal that exceeded China's safety limit, some
of it by thirty-fold. As of January 1998, 178 buildings in
Taiwan containing 1,573 residential apartments had been
identified as radioactive. Radioactive recycled metal has shown
up in domestic markets as well.
Source: THE PROGRESSIVE, "Nuclear Spoons," October 1998, by
Anne-Marie Cusac
No. 5 U. S. WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION LINKED TO THE DEATHS OF A
HALF A MILLION CHILDREN:
For the past seven years, the United States has supported
sanctions against Iraq that have taken the lives of more Iraqi
citizens than did the war itself. The Iraqi people are being
punished for their leader's reticence to comply fully with
U.S.-supported UN demands "to search every structure in Iraq for
weapons of mass destruction." Ironically, 1994 U.S. Senate
findings uncovered evidence that U.S. firms supplied at least
some of the very biological material that the U.N. inspection
teams are now seeking.
Although the United States defames the Iraqi government for
damaging the environment and ignoring U.N. Security Council
resolutions, it has itself engaged in covert wars in defiance of
the World Court, and left behind a swath of ecological disasters
in its continuing geopolitical crusade. Blum considers the U.S.
demands both excessive and hypocritical. A 1994 U.S. Senate panel
report indicated that between 1985 and 1989, U.S. firms supplied
microorganisms needed for the production of Iraq's chemical and
biological warfare. The Senate panel wrote: "It was later
learned that these microorganisms exported by the United States
were identical to those the United Nations inspectors found and
removed from the Iraqi biological warfare program." Blum writes
that shipments included biological agents for anthrax, botulism,
and c-coli. The shipments were cleared even though it was known
at the time that Iraq had already been using chemical and
possibly biological warfare since the early 1980s.
The real significance of "Made in America" is not only that
the U.S. and its allies played a significant role in arming Iraq
with weapons of mass destruction, but that those companies and
politicians who were responsible for this lucrative but deadly
policy were never held accountable.
Sources: SAN FRANCISCO BAY GUARDIAN, "Made in America, Feb.
25, 1998, by Dennis Bernstein; I.F. MAGAZINE, "Punishing Saddam
or the Iraqis, March/April 1998, by Bill Blum; SPACE AND
SECURITY NEWS, "Our Continuing War Against Iraq," May 1998, by
the Most Rev. Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF (retired).
No. 6 UNITED STATES NUCLEAR PROGRAM SUBVERTS U.N.'S COMPREHENSIVE
TEST BAN TREATY:
When scientists in India conducted a deep underground
nuclear test on May 11, 1998, it was seen as a violation of the
United Nations' Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) even though
that country did not sign the document. But two months earlier,
when the United States carried out an underground test, it went
largely unnoticed by the American media.
Code-named "Stagecoach," the U.S. experiment called for the
detonation of a 227-pound nuclear bomb at the Department of
Energy's (DOE) Nevada Test Site which is co-managed by corporate
superpowers Bechtel, Lockheed Martin and Johnson Controls.
While perceived as a hostile act by many nations, US
officials claim that since it was a "subcritical" test -- that
means no nuclear chain reaction was maintained -- it was "fully
consistent with the spirit and letter of the CTBT." Some Foreign
leaders believe that "Stagecoach" was designed to test the
effectiveness of U.S. weapons in case they are ever needed again.
The European Parliament issued an official warning to the U.S.
declaring that further experiments might prompt other nations to
engage in full-scale testing. Some Chinese and Japanese
officials also criticized the United States, calling for America
to stop "skirting its responsibility for arms reduction."
Underground experiments aren't the U.S. Government's only
method of subverting the Treaty, says The Nation. In July 1993,
Clinton introduced the Stockpile Stewardship Program (SSP) which
allots $45 billion over the next 10 years to finance new
research facilities. While the CTBT prohibits the "qualitative
improvement of nuclear weapons," this program will fund the
building of nuclear accelerators, giant X-ray machines, and the
largest glass laser in the world. In defending the experiment to
the press, Russian officials pointed to the U.S. test as proof
that subcritical tests of nuclear weapons are permissible under
the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). There are no signs
that either country will change its policy on subcritical nuclear
testing. Nor does the DOE appear ready to end other activities
in the Stockpile Stewardship Program (SSP) that violate the
principals and goals of the CTBT.
Source: THE NATION, "Virtual Nukes-When is a Test Not a
Test?" June 15,1998, by Bill Mesler.
No. 7 GENE TRANSFERS LINKED TO DANGEROUS NEW DISEASES:
All the signs are pointing toward a major crisis in public
health as both emergent and recurring diseases reach new heights
of antibiotic resistance. At least 30 new diseases have emerged
over the past 20 years, and familiar infectious diseases such as
tuberculosis, cholera, and malaria are returning with vigor. By
1990 nearly every common bacterial species had developed some
degree of resistance to drug treatment, many to multiple
antibiotics. A major contributing factor, in addition to anti-
biotic overuse, just might be the transfer of genes between
unrelated species of animals and plants which takes place with
genetic engineering, according to Third World Resurgence. Worse
yet, regulators are considering a further relaxation of the
already lax safety rules regarding this unpredictable and
inherently hazardous field.
The technology of genetic engineering, also called
biotechnology, uses manipulation, replication, and transference
techniques to insert genes "horizontally" to connect species
which otherwise cannot interbreed. Normal genetic barriers and
defense mechanisms, which degrade or inactivate foreign genes
that they recognize as dangerous to the self, are in this way
broken down. Used to facilitate horizontal gene transfer, genetic
engineering can also result in antibiotic-resistant genes, which
can inadvertently spread and recombine to generate new drug and
antibiotic resistant pathogens. This, say the authors, has
occurred. Horizontal gene transfer and subsequent genetic
recombination may have been responsible for bacterial strains
which caused a 1992 cholera outbreak in India, and for a
streptococcus epidemic in Tayside in 1993. Antibiotic resistant
genes spread readily between human beings, as well as from
bacteria inhabiting the gut of farm animals to human beings.
Antibiotics can create the very conditions that facilitate the
spread of antibiotic resistance because they can increase the
frequency of horizontal gene transfer ten to 10,000-fold.
Biotechnology firms have billions of dollars invested in
these new technologies, and are concerned that their speculation
bubble may burst, due to public outrage, before they can recoup
their investments. Not surprisingly, then, there currently is no
independent investigation into the relationship between genetic
engineering and the emergent and recurrent diseases.
Sources: THIRD WORLD RESURGENCE, #92, "Sowing Diseases, New
and Old," by Mae-Wan Ho, and Terje Traavik; THE ECOLOGIST, "The
Biotechnology Bubble," May/June 1998, Vol. 28, No. 3, by Mae-Wan
Ho, Hartmut Meyer and Joe Cummins.
<cont'd>
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