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Books You MUST Read |
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Books You MUST Read |
Note: The following are notes from the above book. I found the book seminal, eye-opening, life-changing. I recommend that you buy and read the entire book. Only by reading the entire book will you get the whole picture. The following quotes, I hope, will whet your appetite. --Colby Glass
"..this book is a damning indictment of the national news media for their consistent failure to inform the public of issues critical to its well-being.. a disturbing litany of crimes against society by political and corporate leaders" (10).
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"The media are more concerned with their next quarterly profit than with the unique opportunity given them by the First Amendment" (12). |
"America's mainstream mass media basically serve three segments of society today--the wealthy, politicians, and the sports-minded" (12).
"It is impossible to fully measure the impact the failure of the press has had on society. How many thousands, or perhaps millions, of lives would have been saved if the press had done its job instead of ignoring or covering up the problems. The lack of car safety features, the lax regulatory control of the airline industry, the link between tobacco and cancer, and the corporate greed of baby formula manufacturers that led to the deaths of thousands of Third World infants are just a few examples of where the media could have made a difference... Perhaps more than any other single story, the tobacco issue reveals the impact of a flawed press" (19).
"..the link between smoking and cancer was known at least as early as 1938. George Seldes, a muckraking journalist, was the first media watchdog to criticize the press for censoring the connection between tobacco and cancer. In 1938, he tried, without success, to get the press to report the results of a critical five-year study, involving nearly 7,000 persons... The study revealed that smoking decreased life expectancy" (20). The major media ignored the issue.
The issue was again addressed in an expose in 1979. The media ignored it.
In 1980 an independent journalist revealed that the tobacco companies were censoring the truth about the connection between cigarettes and cancer. The media ignored it.
In 1985 another expose revealed that the tobacco industry was actively encouraging children to smoke in Third World countries. The media ignored it.
In 1995 a new tobacco expose was killed by ABC.
"..it wasn't until the mid-1990s that the dangers of cigarette smoking were widely publicized in the mainstream media" (20).
"When omission proves to be an insufficient form of suppression, the media resort to outright lies. At one time or another over the course of forty years, the CIA involved itself with drug traffickers in Italy, France, Corsica, Indochina, Afghanistan, and Central and South America. Much of this activity was the object of extended congressional investigations and is a matter of public record. But the media seem not to have heard about it.
"In August 1996, when the San Jose Mercury News published an in-depth series about the CIA-contra crack shipments that were flooding East Los Angeles, the major media held true to form and suppressed the story. But after the series was circulated around the world on the Web, the story became too difficult to ignore, and the media began its assault. Articles in the Washington Post and The New York Times and reports on network television and PBS announced that there was "no evidence" of CIA involvement, that the Mercury News series was "bad journalism," and that the public's interest in this subject was the real problem, a matter of gullibility, hysteria, and conspiracy mania. In fact, the Mercury News series, drawing from a year-long investigation, cited specific agents and dealers. When placed on the Web, the series was copiously supplemented with pertinent documents and depositions that supported the charge. The mainstream media simply ignored that evidence and repeatedly lied by saying that it did not exist" (29).
| 1976 | TRILATERAL COMMISSION. Jimmy Carter's connection to the Trilateral Commission, "one of
Rockefeller's many policy-making organizations"... Recommendations of the
Trilateral Commission to governments include a campaign to eliminate the
pervasive suspicion of the public about political leaders' motives and
power, the reinvigoration of political parties by allowing corporations
to support them, "a check on press power to include tough libel laws against
journalists who insult decision makers," "reduced spending for education
[because] it leads to frustration, criticism, and disrespect" (34). NON-PRESCRIPTION DRUGS. "According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), up to 500,000 different non-prescription remedies generate at least $3.51 billion in sales every year, and, according to its investigating experts who amassed 14,000 volumes of evidence on thses over-the-counter (OTC) drugs, the people who purchase them are "the victims of a gigantic medical hoax." The conclusions of intensive independent studies first launched in 1972 by more than 100 leading medical researchers, physicians, and pharmacologists recruited by the FDA are that "at least half the drugs are worthless or of dubious value, and some may be harmful.." (43). U.S. INVOLVEMENT IN BIOLOGICAL WARFARE. Research on biological warfare (BW) was banned in 1969 "due to public pressure... Yet, in 1975, it was learned that a CIA project still maintained BW stocks at Fort Detrick, Maryland, with covert connections to "specific assassination plans"" (120). | ||||||||||
| 1977 | LOST WAR ON CANCER. Richard Nixon declared war on cancer with the National Cancer Act of
1971 with a budget of over $800 million dollars per year. Six years later,
having spent more than $4 billion, "the U.S. still [had] the highest record
for cancer occurrence--fifty percent above the world average--while the
chance for an American to survive cancer [had] not increased more than one
percent since the late 1940s." The American Cancer Institute, one of the
major recipients of government funding ignored the need to ban carcinogenic
chemicals and "refused to support such bills as the Toxic Substance Control
Act." Research in 1996 showed that "the incidence of cancer was still
rising, 25 years and $30 billion later. A third of Americans get cancer and
a fifth die of it" (49). COST OF DECOMISSIONING NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS. "The decommissioning of nuclear reactors, which have a life-time of 30 to 40 years, is a problem that has hardly been considered and has not be resolved." Closed plants will remain radioactive for 1.5 million years. There are no plans for what to do when plants are shut down, nor funds to set aside to handle the job. A 1995 report shows that plants, which are licensed for 40 years, often have to close after 15 years. It appears that "the public can look forward to another massive taxpayer bailout" (50). PUSHING BABY FORMULA IN THE THIRD WORLD. With birth rates going down in the United States, infant formula manufacturers began pushing their products in the Third World, telling new mothers that their own breast milk was "inappropriate," picturing the use of baby formula as modern and high status, a giving away free samples to mothers so that their own milk would dry up. Outrage over these practices caused many citizens' groups to push the World Health Assembly to draft the UN Code for Marketing Breastmilk Substitutes. Of the 119 nations represented, only the United States cast a vote against the code. UPDATE. "It is now estimated that "one million infant deaths per year can be prevented by using the world's most economical and effective health protection: breast milk." But Third World mothers are still not being told this and continue to be bombarded with promotions for formula" (52).
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| 1978 | DANGERS OF NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS. A study showed that "nuclear power
plants are inherently hazardous" and that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's
"inspection efforts are biased against enforcement, undermined by political
consideration, weak, and ineffective... Contrary to the common perception
that the nuclear industry is closely regulated, the UCS found: only one to
five percent of safety-related nuclear power plant activities are inspected;
NRC inspectors spend most of their time inspecting utility records, not the
power plants themselves.." (62). GOVERNMENT WAR ON SCIENTISTS WHO KNOW TOO MUCH. Dr. Thomas Mancuso was commissioned by the government in 1964 to do the first study of "how safe nuclear plants are for the people who work in them... [He] turned up alarming evidence that low levels of radiation, previously thought to be safe, can actually be quite deadly. Dr. Mancuso's contract with the government was promptly canceled and his funds cut off for the research. he was shoved into premature retirement and the government tried to take possession of his research findings... he was only one of several scientists the government tried to silence for challenging its view of nuclear safety" (65). AMERICA'S SECRET POLICE NETWORK. "..the LEIU (Law Enforcement Intelligence Unit) is a virtually unkown organization... [it] links the intelligence squads of almost every major police force in the United States and Canada... it is a private club, not answerable to votes, taxpayers, or elected officials... not subject to freedom-of-information laws; thus, their files are even more secret than those of the CIA or FBI. Ex-members of the LEIU admit to illegal wiretapping, breaking and entering, and spying on people to gather information for their files... the American Friends Service Committee released a 3 1/2-year study that revealed that police surveillance of groups and individuals for political purposes is continuing "on a vast scale" in the United States. The study charged that the prime offender was the "old-boy network" in the Law Enforcement Intelligence Unit" (68).
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| 1979 | PBS--THE OIL NETWORK. The dream of the Public Broadcasting System (PBS)
was educational and non-commercial television to expose the public to a wide
variety of opinion and culture without censorship. "Instead, public
television became the ward of the "establishment" --of corporations, mostly
oil companies, that serve as key underwriters. And censorship, while
publicly disclaimed by PBS executives, became a way of life in public
broadcasting" (87). SECRET LOBBY IN WASHINGTON. The most powerful lobby in Washington is the Business Roundtable. Its chairman is Thomas A. Murphy, chairman also of General Motors. "Although it doesn't divulge the names of its members, the Roundtable is known to include the chief executives of nearly 200 of the country's richest corporations. Assets of the Roundtable's member companies amount to $1.3 trillion, about half of the nation's total gross national product... through its extraordinary influence, [it] has affected every American. The Roundtable has successfully bottled up tax reforms, pushed legislation to subject all Federal Trade Commission rulings to a Congressional veto, helped to win tax policy rulings favorable to business, supported oil and gas price decontrol, pushed the Energy Mobilization Board to override environmental considerations, blocked the creation of a consumer protection office, and watered down attempts to strengthen antitrust legislation" (88).
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| 1980 | NSA: BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU. The National Security Agency (NSA) is
the biggest security agency in the nation; bigger than the CIA or FBI. It
receives an annual appropriation of more than $2 billion from the government,
has a staff of more than 22,000, and "everything it does is classified...
The NSA monitors all message traffic in the world... Every telephone call,
wireless and cable message to and from the U.S. is automatically recorded..
including private, personal, supposedly inviolable messages of ordinary
Americans... all this is 100 percent against the law and violates every
provision of the Bill of Rights. UPDATE. The NSA has expanded its operations,
now costing taxpayers more then $1 million an hour, $8 billion a year" (93). POISONED WATER. "Each year some 78 billion pounds of poisonous chemicals are dumped into 51,000 sites throughout this country where they enter the underground water supply. Many of these mixtures are lethal on contact, many are carcinogenic, and many can last in the environment for up to 100 years" (104).
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| 1981 | THE REAL STORY BEHIND THE ECONOMY. National economic problems was one of
the top 6 stories of 1981. The mass media told us that "factors such as the
over-regulation of business and the "declining moral fiber of the American
worker" caused the.. crisis... However, testifying before the California
Senate Committee on Industrial Relations, a UCLA professor, Maurice Zeitlin..
said we no longer have a competitive economy, and that monopoly, militarism,
and multinationalization are at the root of our economic crisis." He stated
that "the 200 largest non-financial corporations control at least 60 percent
of the net capital assets of all American companies... [and that] the 400
largest U.S. companies played the foreign-exchange markets and gambled
against the American dollar, fueling inflation and diverting capital from
productive and job-creating investments in the U.S." (108). TRAINING TERRORISTS IN FLORIDA. "Camp Libertad, located only five miles outside Miami, is one of the camps where exiled Cubans and Nicaraguans prepare for attacks on their homelands. The 600-acre camp is surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by men with AR-15s, the basic combat weapon of the American Army... Americans, mostly ex-Green Berets, participate in the training" (115). There is also the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia. "Critics charge that the foreign officers receive training in executions and torture. On September 20, 1996, the Pentagon released training manuals that contained references to executing guerrillas, beatings, drunkenness, and coercion as methods of obtaining information" (115).
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| 1982 | FRAUDULENT TESTING OF DANGEROUS CHEMICALS. "..a minor investigation..
into testing laboratories, standard-setting boards, and regulatory agencies
that oversee the science of testing for safety, revealed that much of the
research aimed at ensuring a safer world is either fraudulent or useless.
UPDATE. In 1983 three top executives of the largest testing lab in the
country, Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories--it conducts about one-third of
all the toxicity and cancer testing of chemicals in America--"were indicted
and convicted.. for claims that they had conducted safety tests on
pesticides when, in fact, they had not... In October 1991, Monsanto Company
was charged with using falsified lab data on animal studies that were used
to judge the health and environmental effects of polychlorinated biphenyls...
In September 1994, Thermal Science Inc., maker of a fire retardant, was
indicted for conspiring with a St. Louis testing lab, Industrial Testing
Laboratories, to fabricate tests and falsify test results... Craven Laboratories of Austin,
Texas, was accused of understating the residues of pesticides widely used
on fruits and vegetables... In February 1994, Dr. Don Allen Craven was
sentenced to five years in prison for faking dozens of tests meant to
detect pesticides in food" (124). AMERICAN TRADE WITH NAZIS DURING WWII. "In a shocking expose of American corporate greed, investigative author Charles Higham revealed... that such industrial and financial giants as DuPont, Rockefeller, Ford, Chase Manhattan Bank, ITT, General Motors, and Standard Oil collaborated with the Nazis either for monetary gain, or because they were Nazi sympathizers... Standard Oil.. supplied fuel for German U-boats through neutral Spain. It continued providing fuel until 1944 and in the process contributed to the deaths of numerous American[s]... ITT was the supplier of communications and other equipment for the buzz bombs that devastated London... Ford maintained a motor plant in Vichy France that turned out tanks and troop carriers for the Third Reich... Chase Manhattan Bank trafficked in the gold.. [from] dentures and wedding rings from death camps" (133).
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| 1983 | ISRAEL: MERCHANT OF DEATH. Israel is the majority supplier of arms,
assisting the U.S. in support of repressive regimes in Latin America,
human rights violations and right-wing death squads. "Israel, now the
fifth biggest exporter of arms in the world, is the largest supplier of
weapons to Latin America. It is also a major source of training in
intelligence and counterinsurgency techniques... Israel is the largest
recipient of U.S. foreign aid, receiving about one-third of all U.S.
foreign aid in the last ten years" (140).
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| 1984 | WORST RADIATION SPILL IN NORTH AMERICA IGNORED. "In 1976, a group of
doctors at the Centro Medico, in Juarez, Mexico, bought a radiation therapy
unit.. from an x-ray equipment company in Fort Worth, Texas. The unit was
left in an empty warehouse for seven years until late December 1983, when a
local worker removed a tungsten wheel from the unit to sell as scrap. The
wheel contained the unit's radioactive source: 6010 tiny pellets each
containing 70 microcuries of cobalt-60. The worker sold the unit to a nearby
junk dealer for ten dollars. At the junkyard, the wheel was picked up with
an electromagnet and accidentally scattered the pellets throughout the yard.
Unknowlingly, the yard's 60 employees and every piece of metal in the junkyard
was dusted with lethal doses of radiation. Later, when a pick-up truck
from the junkyard was parked in a city driveway, some 200 citizens in
Juarez also were contaminated with a lethal dose of cobalt-60. Most of the
contaminated scrap metal and pellets were trucked 220 miles south of Juarez
to a smelting plant. The metal was melted down, contaminating more than
5,000 tons of steel. An estimate 700 tons were contracted for use in
kitchen table legs and reinforcement beams, some of which were sent to the
U.S. Much of the remaining 4,300 tons of contaminated steel was used for
foundation supports in homes throughout Mexico" (159).
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| 1985 | FIERCEST AERIAL WAR IN AMERICA UNREPORTED. In 1985 the media focused on
Coca Cola's change of formula, ignoring the U.S. support of Jose Duarte,
President of El Salvador. In addition to death squad killings, Duarte
received from the U.S. the largest air force in Central America and proceeded
to drop over 3,000 tons of U.S.-made bombs on civilian populations...
Investigative journalist Alexander Cockburn asked, "How is it that over the
past two years the United States has been organizing, supplying, overseeing
and in many cases actually executing the heaviest bombing and most ferocious
aerial war ever seen in the Americas and not one coherent report of the
extent, viciousness, or consequences of this campaign has ever appeared
in any major U.S. newspaper or magazine?"" (170). THE REAGAN AUTOCRACY. "..the American Civil Liberties Union warned, "What we are witnessing is a systematic assault on the concept of government accountability and deterrence of illegal government conduct." Since Reagan's election in 1980, the Reagan Administration conducted a successful campaign to exalt the power of the presidency and to undermine the power of the law, the courts, Congress, and the people... [Reagan] signed Executive Order (EO) #12291.. Under this order, the White House can nullify acts of Congress that the President considers too costly... Reagan's EO #12498.. allows scientific research to be skewed "for conformity with administration policy." It also stops federal agencies from admitting they have been forbidden to collect data on a ranges of sensitive topics" (174-5). BIRTH DEFECT CRISIS. "Conservative statistics reveal that 12 out of every 100 babies born in the United States this year will have a serious, often incurable mental or physical health disorder.. we are experiencing an epidemic of birth defects... the number of disabled newborns has doubled since the late 1950s" (176). | ||||||||||
| 1986 | HARASSMENT OF REAGAN CRITICS. "Political opponents of the Reagan
Administration's Central American policies became the targets of mysterious
break-ins, IRS audits, FBI questioning, and physical surveillance...
documents [released in 1989] revealed [that] FBI director William Sessions
misled Congress about the scope and duration of the FBI's five-year
nationwide probe of groups critical of President Reagan's policies in
Central America" (186-7). OFFICIAL U.S. CENSORSHIP. "Under President Reagan's direction, the government has significantly reduced public information with little if any media attention. Since 1980, the American Library Association has documented administration efforts to eliminate, restrict, and privatize government documents" (187). See the ALA site at http://www.ala.org/washoff/lessaccess.html. NERVE GAS PRODUCTION IN RESIDENTIAL AREAS. "Although the military has been under orders from Congress since 1984 to dispose of nerve gases by 1994, they are currently being manufactured and tested in 46 U.S. communities, in 26 states across the country--usually without the knowledge of the residents... there has been a boom in nerve gas research in recent years. In fact, chemical warfare funding increased five times to $400 million in 1985" (192).
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| 1987 | U.S. INVOLVEMENT IN BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS. "..despite the international
agreement which banned development of germ-warfare agents, the Pentagon's
research budget for infectious diseases and toxins has increased ten-fold
since fiscal 1981" (120). MEDIA MONOPOLY AND SELF-CENSORSHIP. "..of 1700 daily papers, 98 percent are local monopolies.. A handful of firms have most of the magazine business, with Time, Inc. alone accounting for about 40 percent of that industry's revenues... The prevailing corporate concern with bottom line, coupled with traditional publishers' tendency to avoic controversy, fosters wide-spread self-censorship among writers, journalists, editors, and news directors" (202). UPDATE. "By 1996, the 26 corporations controlling the media in 1987 had shrunk to just ten... [creating] a news communications cartel within the United States" (203). UNITED STATES AND CONTRA-DRUG CONNECTION. "Testimony by convicted drug smugglers as well as private citizens... provided a startling picture of large-scale drug trafficking under the auspices of the U.S. government/contra supply network... [There was] a major "guns-for-drugs" operation.. between North, Central, and South America that helped finance the contra war.. U.S. government funds for the contras went to known narcotics dealers.. the CIA helped Miami-based drug traffickers smuggle their illicit cargo into the U.S. in exhange for their help in arming the contras. UPDATE. "Anyone who wants to understand how crack cocaine became the scourge of America's urban centers during the greatest crackdown on drugs in history, is urged to read the San Jose Mercury News series, available in libraries (starting on August 18, 1996) and on the Internet at www.sjmercury.com/drugs/" (204).
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| 1988 | E.P.A. DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGN. "Reports of improvement in
environmental pollution levels in 1988 were a deliberat attempt by the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to mislead and pacify the public...
The Reagan Administration, in an effort to reduce EPA appropriations
from Congress, encouraged EPA officials to soft-pedal pollution stories...
Equally disturbing, the news media have contributed to this disinformation
campaign by treating EPA press releases as reliable news reports" (219).
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| 1989 | OLIVER NORTH BANNED FROM COSTA RICA. "In July 1989, Oliver
North and other major [U.S.] "contragate" figures were barred from [ever
again setting foot in] Costa Rica. The order was issued by none other
than Oscar Arias Sanchez, president of Costa Rica and winner of the 1987
Nobel Peace Prize. President Arias was acting on recommendations from a
Costa Rican congressional commission investigating drug trafficking. The
commission concluded that the contra re-supply network in Costa Rica,
which North coordinated from the White House, doubled as a drug
smuggling operation" (240). TOXIC WASTE IN YOUR GASOLINE. "Next time you pull into a gas station, you could be filling your tank with a deadly mixture of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), toxic waste, solvents, and gasoline.. The General Accounting Office (GAO), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the FBI are investigating sophisticated "waste laundering" schemes in which toxic wastes and solvents are mixed with gasoline, diesel, and industrial fuel" (243). FOUL CHICKEN, SALMONELLA, AND A WEAK U.S.D.A.. "The number of cases of salmonella rose to 2.5 million a year, leading to an estimated 500,000 hospitalizations and 9,000 deaths. This national epidemic was caused by a massive leap in consumer demand for the "healthier food" of chicken and by a massive failure of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to adequately inspect processing plants... While the chicken industry grew.. the USDA cut its inspection staff... chicken "carcasses contaminated with feces, once routinely condemned or trimmed, are now simply rinsed with chlorinated water to remove the stains.. thousands of dirty chickens are bathed together in a chill tank, creating a mixture known as 'fecal soup' that spreads contamination from bird to bird"... consumers pay for the contaminated mixture every time they buy chicken since up to 15 percent of poultry weight consists of fecal soup" (244). UPDATE. Finally, in July 1996, "President Clinton announced the biggest changes in the rules governing meat and poultry safety in 90 years.." (245).
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| 1990 | S&L CRISIS SOLUTION WORSE THAN THE CRIME. A Wallstreet
Journal correspondent estimated that the cost to bail out the savings
and loan industry--the financial mess caused by the failure of more than
700 savings institutions--would be $1.4 trillion. "But the most "acceptable"
figure for the bailout appears to be $500 billion.. To put that $500 billion
in perspective, it helps to realize that the entire cost of World War II,
in current dollars and including service-connected veterans' benefits, was
about $460 billion--or $40 billion less than the estimated S&L bailout. The
cost of the Vietnam War, including benefits, was $172 billion; Korea was
$70 billion; World War I was $63 billion; the Civil War was $7 billion. The
combined 1988 profits of all the companies on the Fortune 500 list added up
to just $115 billion. And the combined 1987 budgets of all 50 states didn't
add up to $500 billion." (250). CIA LINKED TO S&L CRISIS. Where did the half-trillion dollars spent on the S&L crisis go? "..one investigative reporter, Pete Brewton, of The Houston Post, believes he has the answer.. [He] found evidence suggesting a possible link between the Central Intelligence Agency and organized crime in the failure of at least 22 thrifts, including 16 in Texas... Brewton found links between S&Ls, organized crime figures, and CIA operatives, including some involved in gun running, drug smuggling, money laundering, and covert aid to Nicaraguan contras. If S&L funds went to the contras or other covert operations, it would help explain where at least some of the money went" (251). SPACE SHUTTLE IS DESTROYING THE OZONE SHIELD. "Every time the space shuttle is launched, 250 tones of hydrochloric acid is released into the air. With each launch, .25 percent of the ozone is destroyed. So far, the space shuttle has destroyed 10 percent of the ozone... the history of ozone depletion correlates closely with the increase of chlorin discharged by solid fuel rockets since 1981... a single shuttle launch can destroy as much as 10 million tons of ozone. Theoretically, this means that some 300 shuttle flights could completely destroy the Earth's protective ozone shield" (252).
MEDIA BLACKOUT OF DRUG WAR FRAUD. "While the fire and brimstone of
the government's drug war rhetoric continues to saturate the mainstream
press, high-ranking drug war insiders continue to come forward in attempts
to expose the "war" for what it really is: a battle for the hearts, minds,
and tax dollars of the American public... According to Levine [retired
insider at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency], "The only thing we know with
certainty is that the drug war is not for real. The drug economy in the
United States is as much as $200 billion a year, and it is being used to
finance political operations, pay international debts--all sorts of things
" (253). (On the Web, see
GULF WAR CENSORED. "A secretive Bush Administration, aided and
abetted by a press more interested in cheerleading than in journalism,
persuaded the American people to support the Gulf War by media manipulation,
censorship, and intimidation. Some of the events covered up by the military
and/or media included: the extent of casualties from "friendly fire"; use
of napalm bombs on Iraqi ground troops; inaccuracy of U.S. bombs dropped
on Iraq and occupied Kuwait; the "fuel-air bomb" experiment; television
networks' refusal to run available footage of the mass destruction from the
"turkey shoot" on the road to Basra; the networks' refusal to broadcast
uncensored footage of civilian casualties; and U.S. battlefield
casualties disguised as training accidents" (263).
VOODOO ECONOMIC: THE UNTOLD STORY. A two-year study showed that
"the rules by which the economy operates have been rigged.. to favor the
priveleged, the powerful, and the influential. The result is that the
rich are richer than ever before; the middle class is being dismantled;
life for the working class is deteriating; and those at the bottom are
trapped. The authors found the rules that govern America's economy have:
created a tax system that is firmly weighted against the middle class;
enabled companies to cancel health-care and pension benefits for employees;
granted subsidies to businesses that create low-wage jobs that in turn
erode living standards; rewarded companies that transfer jobs abroad and
eliminate jobs in this country; placed home ownership out of the reach for
a growing number of Americans and made a college education impossible
without incurring a hefty debt" (264-5). UPDATE. "..two-thirds of the
federal deficit could be wiped out overnight simply by restoring corporate
taxes to their 1950s levels" (265).
HENRY B. GONZALES LEADS INVESTIGATION. "Henry B. Gonzales (D-Texas),
chair of the House Bank Committee, launched an intensive investigation
into the Iraq-gat scandal in 1990... Gonzales charged the Bush Administration
secretly sold nuclear, biological, chemical, and missile-related weapons
materials to Iraq; blocked investigations into the use of the materials;
suppressed warnings of the dangers of such sales; deliberately falsified
documents on such sales submitted to Congress; interfered illegally to
halt investigations into the criminal activities of the Banca Nazionale
del Lavoro branch in Atlanta which was secretly diverting American
agricultural loans to buy weapons for Iraq... His revelations were basically
ignored by the press... Finally, in September 1992, Senate Republicans
quietly killed legislation that was necessary to renew the Watergate
Law which had previously assured independent investigations of criminal
acts by top officials" (281). UPDATE. In 1994, "with heavy Democratic
support.. the 103rd Congress reinstated the independent counsel law"
(282).
UNITED STATES IS KILLING ITS YOUNG. "According to the United
Nations Children's Fund: 1) Nine out of ten young people murdered in
industrialized countries are slain in the United States; 2) The U.S.
homicide rate for young people ages 15 to 24 is five times greater than
that of Canada, its nearest competitor; 3) The U.S. poverty rate for
children is more than double that of any other major industrialized
nation; and 4) Since the 1970s, while other industrialized nations were
bringing children out of poverty, only the United States and Britain
slipped backward... "Unlike every other industrialized nation, the
United States has not signed or ratified the Convention on the Rights
of the Child, a set of principles adopted by the U.N. General Assembly
in 1989"" (290). UPDATE. "The number of children abused each year in the
United States.. has tripled since 1980. The number of children murdered..
has doubled over the past ten years. In the United States, 110 babies die
every day without reaching their first birthday. Only 18 percent of those
eligible for Head Start are enrolled. One million American girls get
pregnant each year--the highest rate in the industrialized world... Each
year ten thousand children in the United States die as a direct result
of living in poverty.. three children a day die of child abuse... 300,000
children in the United States are involved in prostitution... American
youngsters are 12 times more likely to die by gunfire and five times
more likely to be murdered than their counterparts in 25 other industrialized
nations" (291).
THE REAL WELFARE CHEATS: AMERICA'S CORPORATIONS. "In his 1992
presidential campaign, Bill Clinton called for welfare reform... he failed
to mention the largest recipients of taxpayer support--corporate welfare...
areas of government giveaways to corporations [include]: [a flood] of
government research and development money.. then [allows the] recipients
to keep the patents and profits on products developed with public funds;
"Bankruptcy Bailouts"... including EPA-required toxic site clean-up costs,
personal injury judgments, union contracts, and even retirement benefits;
[allowing] companies [to] mine valuable minerals and metals from federal
lands without paying a cent in royalties and buy federal lands for as
little as five dollars an acre; ..The 1992 Energy Policy Act guarantees
our government will continue to subsidize the nuclear power industry
[despite its] dismal record on safety and efficiency... Over the past 15
years, the Forest Service has lost between one and two billion dollars
annually in undervalued timber sales to the logging industry" (294).
CORPORATE WELFARE. "An investigative report.. estimated $150 billion,
in the form of direct federal subsidies and tax breaks, is given American
companies [every year]... [including] $200 million-a-year Market Promotion
Program, which gives companies like Gallo and Ocean Spray enormous sums to
market their products overseas.. Federal programs costing millions of dollars
that are designed to create jobs. [Instead of creating jobs], corporate
recipients like AT&T, General Electric, Raytheon, Digital, and Lockheed
Martin have.. aid off hundreds of thousands of workers.. Government
subsidies to the high-tech industry which resulted in tens of thousands
of jobs going overseas.. Poorly thought-out studies such as the Advanced
Technology Program, a $90 million Massachusetts project to create jobs
and stimulate the economy, which created a sum total of 150 jobs" (295).
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