Coming
in October
From AK Press
Today's
Stories
September
25, 2003
David
Krieger
The
Second Nuclear Age
September 24, 2003
Stan Goff
Generational
Casualties: the Toxic Legacy of the Iraq War
William
Blum
Grand Illusions About Wesley Clark
David
Vest
Politics
for Bookies
Jon Brown
Stealing Home: The Real Looting is About to Begin
Robert Fisk
Occupation and Censorship
Latino
Military Families
Bring Our Children Home Now!
Neve Gordon
Sharon's
Preemptive Zeal
Website
of the Day
Bands Against Bush
September
23, 2003
Bernardo
Issel
Dancing
with the Diva: Arianna and Streisand
Gary Leupp
To
Kill a Cat: the Unfortunate Incident at the Baghdad Zoo
Gregory
Wilpert
An
Interview with Hugo Chavez on the CIA in Venezuela
Steven
Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause--Part 2: Charity Ryerson, Young and
Radical
Stan Cox
The Cheney Tapes: Can You Handle the Truth?
Robert
Fisk
Another Bloody Day in the Death of Iraq
William S. Lind
Learning from Uncle Abe: Sacking the Incompetent
Elaine
Cassel
First They Come for the Lawyers, Then the Ministers
Yigal
Bronner
The
Truth About the Wall
Website
of the Day
The
Baghdad Death Count
Recent
Stories
September
20 / 22, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Silliest Show in Town
Alexander
Cockburn
Lighten
Up, America!
Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet
Anne Brodsky
Return
to Afghanistan
Saul Landau
Guillermo and Me
Phan Nguyen
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie
Gila Svirsky
Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open
Gary Leupp
On Apache Terrorism
Kurt Nimmo
Colin
Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja
Brian
Cloughley
Colin Powell's Shame
Carol Norris
The Moral Development of George W. Bush
Bill Glahn
The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda
Adam Engel
An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector
Dave Lindorff
Good Morning, Vietnam!
Mark Scaramella
Contracts and Politics in Iraq
John Ross
WTO
Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold
Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals
Toni Solo
The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane
Steven Sherman
Workers and Globalization
David
Vest
Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America
Ron Jacobs
Politics of the Hip-Hop Pimps
Poets
Basement
Krieger, Guthrie and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Ted Honderich:
Terrorism for Humanity?
September
19, 2003
Ilan Pappe
The
Hole in the Road Map
Bill Glahn
RIAA is Full of Bunk, So is the New York Times
Dave Lindorff
General Hysteria: the Clark Bandwagon
Robert Fisk
New Guard is Saddam's Old
Jeff Halper
Preparing
for a Struggle Against Israeli Apartheid
Brian J. Foley
Power to the Purse
Clare
Brandabur
Hitchens
Smears Edward Said
Website of the Day
Live from Palestine
September
18, 2003
Mona Baker
and Lawrence Davidson
In
Defense of the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions
Wayne
Madsen
Wesley
Clark for President? Another Neo-Con Con Job
Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Wesley Clark and Waco
Muqtedar Khan
The Pakistan Squeeze
Dominique
de Villepin
The
Reconstruction of Iraq: This Approach is Leading Nowhere
Angus Wright
Brazilian Land Reform Offers Hope
Elaine
Cassel
Payback is Hell
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Leavitt
for EPA Head? He's Much Worse Than You Thought
Website
of the Day
ALA Responds to Ashcroft's Smear
September 17, 2003
Timothy J. Freeman
The
Terrible Truth About Iraq
St. Clair / Cockburn
A
Vain, Pompous Brown-noser:
Meet the Real Wesley Clark
Terry Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Moore on Gen. Wesley Clark
Mitchel Cohen
Don't Be Fooled Again: Gen. Wesley Clark, War Criminal
Norman Madarasz
Targeting Arafat
Richard Forno
High Tech Heroin
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Website of the Day
The Ultimate Palestine Resource Site!
September 16, 2003
Rosemary and Walt Brasch
An
Ill Wind: Hurricane Isabel and the Lack of Homeland Security
Robert Fisk
Powell
in Baghdad
Kurt Nimmo
Imperial Sociopaths
M. Shahid Alam
The Dialectics
of Terror
Ron Jacobs
Exile at Gunpoint
Christopher Brauchli
Bush's War on Wages
Al Krebs
Stop Calling Them "Farm Subsidies"; It's Corporate
Welfare
Patrick Cockburn
The
Iraq Wreck
Website of the Day
From Occupied Palestine
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 15, 2003
Stan Goff
It Was
the Oil; It Is Like Vietnam
Robert Fisk
A Hail of Bullets, a Trail of Dead
Writers Bloc
We
Are Winning: a Report from Cancun
James T. Phillips
Does George Bush Cry?
Elaine Cassel
The Troublesome Bill of Rights
Cynthia McKinney
A Message to the People of New York City
Matthew Behrens
Sunday Morning Coming Down: Reflections on Johnny Cash
Uri Avnery
Assassinating
Arafat
Hammond Guthrie
Celling Out the Alarm
Website of the Day
Arnold and the Egg
September 13 / 14, 2003
Michael Neumann
Anti-Americanism:
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Jeffrey St. Clair
Anatomy of a Swindle
Gary Leupp
The Matrix of Ignorance
Ron Jacobs
Reagan's America
Brian Cloughley
Up to a Point, Lord Rumsfeld
William S. Lind
Making Mesopotamia a Terrorist Magnet
Werther
A Modest Proposal for the Pentagon
Dave Lindorff
Friendly Fire Will Doom the Occupation
Toni Solo
Fiction and Reality in Colombia: The Trial of the Bogota Three
Elaine Cassel
Juries and the Death Penalty
Mickey Z.
A Parable for Cancun
Jeffrey Sommers
Issam Nashashibi: a Life Dedicated to the Palestinian Cause
David Vest
Driving in No Direction (with a Glimpse of Johnny Cash)
Michael Yates
The Minstrel Show
Jesse Walker
Adios, Johnny Cash
Adam Engel
Something Killer
Poets' Basement
Cash, Albert, Curtis, Linhart
Website of the Weekend
Local Harvest
September 12, 2003
Writers Block
Todos
Somos Lee: Protest and Death in Cancun
Laura Carlsen
A Knife to the Heart: WTO Kills Farmers
Dave Lindorff
The Meaning of Sept. 11
Elaine Cassel
Bush at Quantico
Linda S. Heard
British
Entrance Exams
John Chuckman
The First Two Years of Insanity
Doug Giebel
Ending America as We Know It
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Blank Check Military
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Website of the Day
A Woman in Baghdad
September 11, 2003
Robert Fisk
A Grandiose
Folly
Roger Burbach
State Terrorism and 9/11: 1973 and 2001
Jonathan Franklin
The Pinochet Files
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Postcards to the President
Norman Solomon
The Political Capital of 9/11
Saul Landau
The Chilean Coup: the Other, Almost Forgotten 9/11
Stew Albert
What Goes Around
Website of the Day
The Sights and Sounds of a Coup
September 10, 2003
John Ross
Cancun
Reality Show: Will It Turn Into a Tropical Seattle?
Zoltan Grossman
The General Who Would be President: Was Wesley Clark Also Unprepared
for the Postwar Bloodbath?
Tim Llewellyn
At the Gates of Hell
Christopher Brauchli
Turn the Paige: the Bush Education Deception
Lee Sustar
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
Elaine Cassel
McCain-Feingold in Trouble: Scalia Hogs the Debate
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Hammond Guthrie
When All Was Said and Done
Website of the Day
Fact Checking Colin Powell
Hot Stories
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
September
25, 2003
ADM and the New York
Times
Covering
Up Corporate Crime
By AL KREBS
Readers of THE
AGRIBUSINESS EXAMINER are already quite familiar with the
fact that in the past eight years when it comes to reporting
the various price fixing and corporate crime stories involving
the Archer Daniels Midland Corp. the New York Times aphorism
"all the news that's fit to print" rings hollow.
As David Hoech, ADM Shareholders Watch
Committee co-founder, recalls when Kurt Eichenwald, the Times
correspondent who authored the paper's articles on the ADM lysine
price fixing scandal and would later write The Informant, a book
loosely based on the scandal, "told me that he controls
what is printed in the Times concerning Archer Daniels Midland,
I can now believe him."
In a series of 36 documented letters
--- all of which went unanswered ---- to the Times Managing Editor
William Keller, Hoech accused Eichenwald of "unethical conduct"
and the Times' "actions and inaction's" as just "another
example of a `Corporate Predator' that will do whatever it takes
to make a buck." (See Issue #111)
Two books have been written about the
ADM case, the other being the authoritative and well-documented
Rats in the Grain: The Dirty Tricks and Trials of Archer Daniels
Midland The Supermarket to the World by James B. Lieber (Four
Walls, Eight Windows Press, New York: 2000). Leiber's book not
only details the coverup that surrounded the ADM scandal and
the company's contempt for the public --- "the competitor
is our friend, the consumer is our enemy" being the popular
ADM corporate mantra --- but shows how the law was indeed prostituted
by ADM.
In his Letter #4 Hoech wrote Keller:
"I don't know if you are aware that Lieber had a book deal
with Simon & Schuster, and the book deal was canceled even
after he was complimented on the material submitted. Eichenwald
told me that he knew Lieber was going to lose his book deal after
Eichenwald spoke with Lieber's editor. I sure would like to know
what that conversation was all about. He had said before there
is only going to be one book on this story, and it looks like
he tried. Rats In The Grain contains facts that should have been
reported in the Times, and these same facts were also omitted
from Eichenwald's book."
In his widely read October 1, 2000 "Farm
and Food File" national syndicated column Alan Guebert also
voices his skepticism regarding some of the "facts' used
in Eichenwald's book. "The errors of fact are troublesome
because the author is peddling this book as the `true story'
of the ADM scandal. . . . . "What else in `The Informant'
is not accurate? . . .
"Even more troublesome than Eichenwald's
literary license," Guebert continues, "is his liberal
flair for the dramatic. From the book's opening scene to its
last, the author writes as if he has one eye on the facts ---
when two certainly would have served readers more fully --- and
the other on Hollywood. . . . "
The Times penchant for looking the other
way when it comes to the questionable activities of ADM was also
on exhibit recently in David Barboza's September 16 article dealing
with the fate of the bankrupt Farmland Industries. "(Facing
Huge Debt, Big Farm Co-op Is Closing." (See below)
In detailing the demise of Farmland Industries,
in addition to an overview concerning the plight of small agricultural
co-ops in the U.S., Barboza conveniently not only overlooks what
has been happening to other large co-ops --- Growmark and Minnesota
Corn Processors at the hands of ADM, but also takes no note of
the "unique" arrangement between Cenex Harvest States
Cooperatives, the nation's largest co-op, and Cargill, the world's
largest grain trader, and their 50-50 operation of the Tacoma
Export Marketing Co. a 3,000,000 bushel grain elevator in Tacoma,
Washington.
It was ADM which corralled the Illinois'
coop,Growmark, by placing its Chairman on the ADM board and then
taking quiet control of key Farm Service outlets that Growmark
and the Illinois Farm Bureau jointly operated as nonprofit services.
Farmers were forced to put up their river elevators as collateral
to secure ADM "loans" The same thing happened in Indiana
with Countrymark. When Countrymark's farmers learned that their
CEO was about to benefit from ADM's largess with a board seat
they threw him out, but not before ADM's deal for the elevators
was clinched. Now across much of Ohio, Indiana and Southern Michigan
one can see ADM/Countrymark on the elevators.
Relative to Farmland Industries, as Joy
Powell reported in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the September
2002 sale of MCP to ADM "has heightened concerns among antitrust
experts over market concentration in two key agricultural markets
--- ethanol and fructose." Both law professors and economists
contended that the Justice Department failed to disclose essential
facts about the merger of the nation's top ethanol producers.
"Even as good a reporter as Barboza
is," Nicholas E. Hollis of the Agribusiness Council observes,
" the all important joint venture between ADM and Farmland
made back in 2001, as Farmland was foundering, goes completely
unmentioned.
"Yet, as we have seen with the Supermarkup
to the World before --- when a predatory, profiteering outfit
with criminal history targets non-profit, farmer-owned coops
--- and like the wolf in Granny's clothes offers Little Red Riding
Hood a sweet loan deal (usually with the co-ops grain elevators
secured as collateral) --- it isn't long before the farmer coop
is swallowed. In most instances, the devouring takes almost no
time --- a blink of an eye --- since the predator has been on
the inside, weakening the struggling partner as part of a larger,
takeover strategy --- and there is little, if any, national press.
"But the ADM assault on MCP earlier
this year perhaps has changed all that, Hollis continues, "
and perhaps now, as the ADM-led attack on farmer owned cooperatives
is gaining altitude --- someone will call for an investigation
by DOJ --- and/or a congressional hearing into this particular
form of non competitive behavior pioneered by ADM. I'll bet you
that when the smoke clears on Farmland's bankruptcy --- ADM will
be in control of many new elevators, while everyone else watches
the Cargill/Smithfield bidding war for Farmland Foods, the real
`winner' on the Farmland debacle will remain in the shadows.
"In the wake of the collapse of
trade talks in Cancun," he concludes, "perhaps we should
start reflecting on the anti-farmer strategy we are countenancing
here, illustrated by this latest ADM raid on a heretofore successful
farmer coop."
Al Krebs
is the editor of the Agribusines
Examiner, one of our favorite newsletters, where this
commentary originally appeared. We encourage all of you to subscribe.
He can be reached at: avkrebs@earthlink.net
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 20 / 22, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Silliest Show in Town
Alexander
Cockburn
Lighten
Up, America!
Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet
Anne Brodsky
Return
to Afghanistan
Saul Landau
Guillermo and Me
Phan Nguyen
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie
Gila Svirsky
Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open
Gary Leupp
On Apache Terrorism
Kurt Nimmo
Colin
Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja
Brian
Cloughley
Colin Powell's Shame
Carol Norris
The Moral Development of George W. Bush
Bill Glahn
The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda
Adam Engel
An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector
Dave Lindorff
Good Morning, Vietnam!
Mark Scaramella
Contracts and Politics in Iraq
John Ross
WTO
Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold
Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals
Toni Solo
The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane
Steven Sherman
Workers and Globalization
David
Vest
Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America
Ron Jacobs
Politics of the Hip-Hop Pimps
Poets
Basement
Krieger, Guthrie and Albert
Website of the
Weekend
Ted Honderich:
Terrorism for Humanity?
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