1998 Top Stories Chosen by Project Censored
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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 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. The stories, plus timely articles and reviews about the media and a resource guide are included in the new Project Censored Yearbook: Censored 1999: The News That Didn't Make the News. 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. Prof. Peter Phillips, director of the program, said the annual project is conducted by more than 125 faculty, student researchers and interns, and community experts. The final 25 censored stories are ranked in order of significance by a panel of national judges including members of the media, authors and educators. Phillips said he hopes to see a network of alternative press sharing significant stories the public needs to know as control of mainstream media, and therefore, what most people know, falls into the control of an increasingly reduced number of corporate board rooms. |
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| The Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) plans to set in place protections for foreign investment by giving corporations near equal rights to nations, pressuring nations to to relax or nullify human, environmental and labor protection in order to attract investment and trade. 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. 1-2 |
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| Leaders in cancer treatment and information are the same chemical companies that also produce carcinogenic products. 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 |
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| Delta Land and Pine Company and the US Department of Agriculture have been awarded a patent on a technique that genetically disables seed, causing farmers to buy new seed each year instead of saving old ones. 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 |
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| 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. Source: THE PROGRESSIVE, "Nuclear Spoons," October 1998, by Anne-Marie Cusac |
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| Although the United States defames the Iraqi government for damaging the environment and ignoring UN 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. Since the end of the Gulf War, about 1.5 million Iraqis have died as a result of U.S./UN sanctions, about one-third of the children, says the Rev. Dr. Robert M. Bowman, an air force lieutenant colonel. 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 |
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| When scientists in India conducted a deep underground test on May 11, it was seen as a violation of the United Nation's Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. However, two months before, the United States carried out a test that went largely unnoticed by the American media. Underground experiments aren't the U.S. Government's only method of subverting the Treaty, says The Nation. On the same day as the U.S. test, Russia conducted a subcritical test at its site at Novaya Zemlya. In defending the experiment to the press, Russian officials pointed to the U.S. test. Source: THE NATION, "Virtual Nukes-When is a Test Not a Test?" June 15,1998, by Bill Mesler |
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| The world is heading for a major crisis in public health as both emergent and recurring diseases reach new heights of antibiotic resistance. A major contributing factor to the emergence of at least 30 new diseases over the past 20 years, 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. 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 |
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| Nationwide hospital mergers with Roman Catholic church medical facilities are threatening women's access to abortions, sterilization, birth control, in vitro fertilization, fetal tissue experimentation, and assisted suicide. In 1996, over 600 hospitals merged with Catholic institutions in 19 states. Source: Ms.,"Women's Health: A Casualty of Hospital Merger Mania?" July/August 1998, BY Christine Dinsmore |
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| In Jalisco, Mexico, more than a dozen young men were kidnaped and tortured. Salvador Jimenez Lopez, died, drowning in his own blood when his tongue was cut out. The group responsible for these and other atrocities are allegedly members of the Mexican Army Airborne Special Forces Groups (GAFE) -- a paramilitary unit trained by U.S. Army Special Forces. Sources: SLINGSHOT, "Mexico's Military: Made in the USA," Summer 1998, by Slingshot collective; DARK NIGHT FIELD NOTES/ZAPATISMO, "Bury My Heart At Acteal," by Darrin Wood |
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| On May 28,1998, Nigerian National soldiers were helicoptered by Chevron employees to the Chevron owned oil facility off the coast of Nigeria in order to attack student demonstrators who had occupied a barge anchored to the facility. After an onslaught of attacks, two students lay dead, and several others were wounded. Sources: ERA ENVIRONMENTAL TESTIMONIES, "Chevron in Nigeria," July 10, 1998, by Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria; PACIFICA RADIO, "Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship" Pacifica Radio/www.pacifica.org, September 1998, by Amy Goodman and Jeremy Scahill |
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| Private prisons are one of the fastest growing sectors of the prison industrial complex. Under contract by the government to run jails and prisons, and paid a fixed sum per prisoner, corporate firms operate as cheaply and efficiently as possible to insure a profit. This means lower wages for staff, no unions, and fewer services for prisoners. Substandard diets, extreme overcrowding, and abuses by poorly trained personnel have all been documented as practices of this private business approach to incarceration. Source: TURNING THE TIDE "The Prison Industry and The Global Complex" Summer 1998 |
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| The once hailed 'miracle' vaccine was contaminated by a virus called Simian Virus 40 (SV40) between the years of 1955 and 1963. The virus hid in the renal cells of the monkeys which were used to make the vaccine. SV40 has been linked to rare, incurable cancers such as ependymomas (brain tumors), mesotheliomas (pleural tumors, usually of the lung), and osteosarcomas (bone malignancies) Sources: CHICAGO LIFE, "Ticking Time Bomb", October 1997 by Vicky Angelos, and "The Forty Year Legacy of Tainted Polio Vaccine", May 14, 1998 by Harold Stearley
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| Throughout most of history, Tibetan women have enjoyed greater equality with men than have their Asian neighbors. Since China's invasion of Tibet in 1959, they have been at the forefront of the nonviolent struggle for independence -- nearly half of the protests staged over the last decade have been led by nuns. During that time, however, thousands of Tibetan women have been arrested, incarcerated, sexually abused, tortured, and publicly executed. Source: TOWARD FREEDOM, "China's War on Women", March/April 1998 by Natasha Ma |
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| America's justice system is being compromised by campaign contributions to judges from special interest groups and Corporate Political Action Committees (PACS) Source: THE NATION, "The Buying of the Bench", January 26, 1998 by Sheila Kaplan |
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| In the twenty-five years since the creation of the first Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams in Los Angeles, police forces across the United States have become increasingly militarized. Paramilitary police teams originally only operated in urban areas, but in recent years the number of special task forces throughout the country, including rural police departments, has dramatically increased. Source: COVERT ACTION QUARTERLY, "Operation Ghetto Storm: The Rise In Paramilitary Policing", Fall 1997 by Peter Cassidy |
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| 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. Sources: CAQ, "Mercenary Armies & Mineral Wealth, Fall 1997, No. 62 by Pratap Chatterjee, and MULTINATIONAL MONITOR, "Guarding the Multinationals", March 1998 by Pratap Chatterjee |
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| 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 Muslin behind barbed wire with comrades imprisoned behind him. 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 Belesn 92 at Trnopolje. The emaciated Muslim shown with his shirt off was in fact a very ill man selected to be featured in the photo. 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. Sources: CAQ "Misinformation: TV Coverage of a Bosnian Camp", Fall 1998, No. 65 by Thomas Deichmann, and CAQ "Seeing Yugoslavia Through A Dark Glass", Fall 1998, No. 65 by Diana Johnstone |
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| 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. New evidence shows that researchers were ordered to cover-up evidence of the dangers of fluoride and it's levels of toxicity to avoid lawsuit by exposed civilians. Source: WASTE NOT, "Fluoride, Teeth and the Atomic Bomb", September 1997 by Joel Griffiths and Chris Bryson |
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| 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. Source: MULTINATIONAL MONITOR, "Out of the Mouths of Babes", June 1998 by Charlie Gray |
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| According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), some 10 million people in the U.S. currently live on floodplains, and developers are rapidly building more homes in these areas. 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. Source: MOTHER JONES, "Rain Check", March/April 1998, vol. 23 issue 2 by Marc Herman |
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| 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 ten years, and be unable to keep up with demand thereafter. 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. Source: SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, "The End of Cheap Oil", March 1998 by Colin J. Campbell and Jean H. Laherrere |
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| The bedrock of higher education, the 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. Sources: ON CAMPUS, "The Vanishing Professor", September 1998 by Barbara McKenna |
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| A decades-old dispute with the Bureau of Land Management has led the Western Shoshone tribe to take the conflict to an international level. 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. Source: NEWS FROM INDIAN COUNTRY: THE NATION'S NATIVE JOURNAL, "BLM fines Western Shoshone $564,00 Despite OAS Request", May 1998, Vol. 12, No. 9 by Pat Calliotte |
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| 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 market place and discouraged expanded PET recycling programs nationwide. Source: EARTH ISLAND JOURNAL, "Coca Cola: Recycling Outlaw", Winter 1998 by Marti Matsch |
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| 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. KGO claimed to do an objective review of the case. The final broadcast presented a very one-sided story. Sources: REFUSE AND RESIST, "A Case Study in Irresponsible Journalism", by C. Clark Kissinger and Leonard Weinglass
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