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Today's
Stories
February
5, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Presenting President Edwards!
February
4, 2004
Brian
McKinlay
Bush's Australian Deputy: Howard's
Last Round Up?
Mark
Gaffney
Ariel Sharon's Favorite Senator: Ron Wyden and Israel
Judith
Brown
Palestine and the Media
Frederick
B. Hudson
Moseley-Braun and the Butcher: Campaign for Justice or Big Oil's
Junta?
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's Independent Commission: Exonerating
the Spooks
M.
Junaid Alam
Philly School Workers Fight for Fair Contract
Fran Shor
Whose Boob Tube?
Kevin
Cooper
This is Not My Execution and I Will Not Claim It
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February
3, 2004
Alan
Maass
The
Dems' New Mantra: What They Really Mean by "Electability"
Nick
Halfinger
How the Other Half Lives: Embedded
in Iraq
Rahul
Mahajan
Our True Intelligence Failure
Neve Gordon
The Only Democracy in the Middle East?
Laura
Carlsen
Mexico: Two Anniversaries; Two Futures
Jordan
Green
Democratic Patronage in Northern New
Mexico
Terry
Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Powell from the Boobs & Body Parts
Fairness Campaign
Hammond
Guthrie
Investigating the Meaningless
Website
of the Day
Waging Peace
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February
2, 2004
Gary
Leupp
The Buddhist Nun in Tom Ridge's Jail
Justin
E.H. Smith
The Manners of Their Deaths: Capital Punishment in a Smoke-Free
Environment
Tom
Wright
The Prosecution of Captain Yee
Winslow
Wheeler
Inside the Bush Defense Budget
Lee Ballinger
Janet Jackson's Naked Truth
Leonard
Pitts, Jr
For Blacks, the Game of Justice is
Rigged
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Hollow Candidate:
The Trouble with Howard Dean
Website
of the Day
Resistance:
In the Eye of the American Hegemon
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Jan. 31 / Feb 1, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
For Whom the Death Tolls: Deliberate
Undercounting of Coalition Fatalities
Bernard
Chazelle
Bush's Desolate Imperium
Jack
Heyman
Bushfires on the Docks
Christopher
Reed
Broken Ballots
Michael
Donnelly
An Urgent Plea to Progressives: Don't Give in to Fear
Rob Eshelman
The Subtle War
Lee
Sustar
Palestine and the Anti-War Movement
George
Bisharat
Right of Return
Ray
McGovern
Nothing to Preempt
Brian Cloughley
Enron's Beady-Eyed Sharks
Conn
Hallinan
Nepal, Bush & Real WMDs
Kurt Nimmo
The Murderous Lies of the Neo-Cons
Phillip
Cryan
Media at the Monterrey Summit
Christopher
Brauchli
A Speech for Those Who Don't Read
John
Holt
War in the Great White North
Mickey
Z.
Clueless in America: When Mikey Met Wesley
Mark
Scaramella
The High Cost of Throwing Away the Key
Tariq Ali
Farewell, Munif
Ben
Tripp
Waiter! The Reality Check, Please
Poets'
Basement
LaMorticella, Guthrie, Thomas and Albert
January 30, 2004
Saul
Landau
Cuba High on Neo-Con Hit List
Michael
Donnelly
Bush's Second Front: The War in
the Woods
Elaine
Cassel
Worse Than Jacko: Child Abuse at Gitmo
David Vest
More Halliburton News, Brought to You by Halliburton
Mike
Whitney
The Kay Report: Still Defending Aggression
David
Miller
The Hutton Whitewash
Sam
Husseini
How Many People Must Die Because of This "Mistake",
Senator Kerry?
January 29, 2004
Patricia
Nelson Limerick
John Ehrlichman, Environmentalist
Ron
Jacobs
Homeland Security and "Legalized"
Immigration
Rahul Mahajan
New Hampshire v. Iraq
Greg
Weiher
Bush Calls for Preemptive Strike on
Moon and Mars
Norman
Solomon
The State of the Media Union
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Does NH Mean Anything?
January
28, 2004
Kathy
Kelly
Bearing Witness Against Teachers of
Torture and Assassination
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January
27, 2004
Steve
Philion
Ritter Was Right: My Exchange with
CNN's Aaron Brown
Daniel
Ellsberg
Leak Against This War: Expose the
Lies from the Inside
C.G.
Estabrook
Can George Ever Really be Elected
President?
Josh
Frank
Hot Coals in Vermont: Dean's Smoke
Screens
Greg
Moses
Racism 101 All Over Again
Gilad
Atzmon
Blood, Soil and Art
Mike
Ferner
"We're All Lied To": an
Interview with Bruce Cockburn in Baghdad
Hammond
Guthrie
General Disorders of the Day
January
26, 2004
Sean
Donahue
The Toxic Career of Rand Beers: Kerry's
Drug War Zealot
Gary
Leupp
David Kay's Admission
January
24/5, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Iraq's Shia: "Our Day Has
Come"
Laura
Flanders
State of the Conservative Union
Simon Helweg-Larsen
Enter Berger: Signs of Hope in
Guatemala
Dave
Lindorff
Ground Control to Maj. George
Susan Davis
The Birdwatcher Menace
Alexander
Cockburn
The Fog of Cop Out: McNamara 10,
Morris 0
January
23, 2004
Yonathan
Shapira
An Israeli Pilot Speaks Out
Standard
Schaefer
Italian Philosopher Giorgio Agamben
Protests US Travel Policy
Josh
Frank
In Defense of Polluters: Howard Dean's
Vermont
William
A. Cook
Rule by the Corrupt and the Capricious
January
22, 2004
Sam
Smith
Howards End?
Patricia
Koyce Wanniski
Lost in Space
Alexander
Lukin
Putin and the Clans
Katherine
van Wormer
Dry Drunk Confirmed: O'Neill's
Revelations and Bush's Mind
Forrest
Hylton
The Prisoner, the President and the
Mafia
January 19, 2004
Justin E. H. Smith
Inside
America's Prisons: From Corrections to Retribution
Richard W. Behan
The GOP, Inc.
Ray McGovern
Bush's
State of the Union: Humility or More Hyperbole?
Werther
SOTUS:
the Stalin Moment of America's Nomenklatura
Phillip Cryan
Media Collusion in Colombia's War
Lee Sustar
A New Strategy to Reverse Labor's Decline?
Arthur Versluis
Great Lakes as Commodity: Privatizing Water
Uri Avnery
Anti-Semitism:
a Practical Manual
Steve Perry
Fresh Crack from Hawkeye State
January 17 / 18, 2004
Fadi Kiblawi and Will
Youmans
The
Use and Abuse of MLK Jr by Israel's Apologists
Joshua Muldavin
and Joseph Nevins
Blaming the Symptoms
Jeffrey St. Clair
Bad Days at Indian Point: Inside America's Most Dangerous Nuclear
Plant
Brian Cloughley
Iron Hammers in Iraq
Saul Landau
Fog of War: Vietnam and Iraq
M. Shahid Alam
Lerner, Said and the Palestinians
Richard Manning
Food Poisoning as Background Noise
Marjorie Cohn
The Guantanamo Concentration Camp
Mike Whitney
Scalia and Opus Dei: Radicals on the Court
Sadik Kassim
Meet Our New Saddam: Islam Karimov
Carol Norris
Arnold
and Bush's Numbers Don't Add Up
Joe Quandt
Suicide
Bombers: The Clash of Absurdities
David Krieger
Imagining MLK Jr at 75
Bruce Jackson
Making War, Making Movies
Ron Jacobs
Revolution in the Air: a review
Richard Edmondson
Rupert Murdoch and My Sister
Richard Forno
Apologizing for Preemption: Evil, Perle and Frum
Poets' Basement
Holt, Mickey Z, Albert & Guthrie
January 16, 2004
Kathy Kelly
A Visit
to Umm Qasr Prison
William S. Lind
More
Thoughts on 4th Generation Warfare
Gillian Russom
So.
Cal Grocery Strikers Speak Out: "We Need Action!"
Ari Shavit
Survival
of the Fittest? An Interview with Benny Morris
Adi Ophir
Genocide Hides Behind Expulsion: a Response to Benny Morris
Dave Lindorff
The General's Henchman: Michael Moore Smears Kucinich
Steve Perry
Iowa Death Trip 2
January 15, 2004
Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity
Memo
to the President: Your State of the Union Address
John Chuckman
Dry
Hole in the Oval Office: President from Podunk Drilling, Inc
Chris Floyd
Mind Over Matter
Gil-Scott Heron
Whitey on the Moon
Gary Leupp
The
Silk Road: Random Thoughts on the Bam Earthquake and Satan
January 14, 2004
Greg Moses
Happy
Birthday, Dr. King: To Write Off the South is to Surrender to
Bigots
Kurt Nimmo
Bush and the Supremes: Amputating the Bill of Rights
Dave Lindorff
Preview of Iowa? Pennsylvania Straw Poll Spells Trouble for Traditional
Dems (and Dean)
Jason Leopold
O'Neill Claims Backed by Rumsfeld / Wolfowitz War Letters to
Clinton
Alexander Cockburn
Bush,
Oil and Iraq: Some Truth at Last
January 13, 2004
William S. Lind
How 2004
Looks from Potsdam
M. Junaid Alam
Do Iraqis Have a Right to Resist?
Mickey Z
Snipers:
No Nuts in Iraq
Adolfo Gilly
Chonchocoro:
The Prisoner and the Presidents
Steve Perry
You Love God, Right?
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February
5, 2004
A Boom Year for Corporate
Crime
The
10 Worst Corporations of 2003
By RUSSELL MOKHIBER
and ROBERT WEISSMAN
2003 was not a year of garden variety corporate
wrongdoing. No, the sheer variety, reach and intricacy of corporate
schemes, scandal and crimes was spellbinding. Not an easy year
to pick the 10 worst companies, for sure.
But Multinational Monitor magazine cannot
be deterred by such complications. And so, here follows, in alphabetical
order, our list for Multinational Monitor of the 10 worst corporations
of 2003.
Bayer:
2003 may be remembered as the year of the headache at Bayer.
In May, the company agreed to plead guilty to a criminal count
and pay more than $250 million to resolve allegations that it
denied Medicaid discounts to which it was entitled. The company
was beleaguered with litigation related to its anti-cholesterol
drug Baycol. Bayer pulled the drug - which has been linked to
a sometimes fatal muscle disorder -- from the market, but is
facing thousands of suits from patients who allege they were
harmed by the drug. In June, the New York Times reported on internal
company memos which appear to show that the company continued
to promote the drug even as its own analysis had revealed the
dangers of the product. Bayer denies the allegations.
Boeing:
In one of the grandest schemes of corporate welfare in recent
memory, Boeing engineered a deal whereby the Pentagon would lease
tanker planes -- 767s that refuel fighter planes in the air --
from Boeing. The pricetag of $27.6 billion was billions more
than the cost of simply buying the planes. The deal may unravel,
though, because the company in November fired for wrongdoing
both the employee that negotiated the contract for Boeing (the
company's chief financial officer), and the employee that negotiated
the contract for the government. How could Boeing fire a Pentagon
employee? Simple. She was no longer a Pentagon employee. Boeing
had hired her shortly after the company clinched the deal.
Brighthouse:
A new-agey advertising/consulting/ strategic advice company,
Brighthouse's claim to infamy is its Neurostrategies Institute,
which undertakes research to see how the brain responds to advertising
campaigns. In a cutting-edge effort to extend and sharpen the
commercial reach in ways never previously before possible, the
institute is using MRIs to monitor activity in people's brains
triggered by advertisements.
Clear Channel: The
radio behemoth Clear Channel specializes in consuming or squashing
locally owned radio stations, imposing a homogenized music play
list on once interesting stations, and offering cultural support
for U.S. imperial adventures. It has also compiled a record of
"repeated law-breaking," according to our colleage
Jim Donahue, violating the law -- including prohibitions on deceptive
advertising and on broadcasting conversations without obtaining
permission of the second party to the conversation -- on 36 separate
occasions over the previous three years.
Diebold: A
North Canton, Ohio-based company that is one of the largest U.S.
voting machine manufacturers, and an aggressive peddler of its
electronic voting machines, Diebold has managed to demonstrate
that it fails any reasonable test of qualifications for involvement
with the voting process. Its CEO has worked as a major fundraiser
for President George Bush. Computer experts revealed serious
flaws in its voting technology, and activists showed how careless
it was with confidential information. And it threatened lawsuits
against activists who published on the Internet documents from
the company showing its failures.
Halliburton:
Now the owner of the company which initially drafted plans for
privatization of U.S. military functions -- plans drafted during
the Bush I administration when current Vice President and former
Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney was Secretary of Defense -- Halliburton
is pulling in billions in revenues for contract work -- providing
logistical support ranging from oil to food -- in Iraq. Tens
of millions, at least, appear to be overcharges. Some analysts
say the charges for oil provision amount to "highway robbery."
HealthSouth:
Fifteen of its top executives have pled guilty in connection
with a multi-billion dollar scheme to defraud investors, the
public and the U.S. government about the company's financial
condition. The founder and CEO of the company that runs a network
of outpatient surgery, diagnostic imagery and rehabilitative
healthcare centers, Richard Scrushy, is fighting the charges.
But thanks to the slick maneuvering of attorney Bob Bennett,
it appears the company itself will get off scot free -- no indictments,
no pleas, no fines, no probation.
Inamed:
The California-based company sought Food and Drug Administration
approval for silicone breast implants, even though it was not
able to present long-term safety data -- the very thing that
led the FDA to restrict sales of silicone implants a decade ago.
In light of what remains unknown and what is known about the
implants' effects -- including painful breast hardening which
can lead to deformity, and very high rupture rates -- the FDA
in January 2004 denied Inamed's application for marketing approval.
Merrill Lynch: This
company keeps messing up. Fresh off of a $100 million fine levied
because analysts were recommending stocks that they trashed in
private e-mails, the company saw three former execs indicted
for shady dealings with Enron. The company itself managed to
escape with something less than a slap on the wrist -- no prosecution
in exchange for "oversight."
Safeway: One
of the largest U.S. grocery chains, Safeway is leading the charge
to demand givebacks from striking and locked out grocery workers
in Southern California. Along with Albertsons and Ralphs (Kroger's),
Safeway's Vons and Pavilion stores are asking employees to start
paying for a major chunk of their health insurance. Under the
company's proposals, workers and their families will lose $4,000
to $6,000 a year in health insurance benefits.
Russell Mokhiber
is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate
Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington,
D.C.-based Multinational
Monitor, and co-director of Essential Action, a corporate
accountability group. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators:
The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe,
Maine: Common Courage Press; http://www.corporatepredators.org).
(c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
Weekend
Edition Features for February 1, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
For Whom the Death Tolls: Deliberate
Undercounting of Coalition Fatalities
Bernard
Chazelle
Bush's Desolate Imperium
Jack
Heyman
Bushfires on the Docks
Christopher
Reed
Broken Ballots
Michael
Donnelly
An Urgent Plea to Progressives: Don't Give in to Fear
Rob Eshelman
The Subtle War
Lee
Sustar
Palestine and the Anti-War Movement
George
Bisharat
Right of Return
Ray
McGovern
Nothing to Preempt
Brian Cloughley
Enron's Beady-Eyed Sharks
Conn
Hallinan
Nepal, Bush & Real WMDs
Kurt Nimmo
The Murderous Lies of the Neo-Cons
Phillip
Cryan
Media at the Monterrey Summit
Christopher
Brauchli
A Speech for Those Who Don't Read
John
Holt
War in the Great White North
Mickey
Z.
Clueless in America: When Mikey Met Wesley
Mark
Scaramella
The High Cost of Throwing Away the Key
Tariq Ali
Farewell, Munif
Ben
Tripp
Waiter! The Reality Check, Please
Poets'
Basement
LaMorticella, Guthrie, Thomas and Albert
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