Stories by Russell Mokhiber
"Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman recently let the American people down by kowtowing to a powerful and reckless industry -- the biotech giants -- that is playing genetic roulette with our future."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Many Americans think that a do-nothing Congress mired in gridlock prevents it from conducting the people's business. Think again.
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"Fearful of a public backlash that might drive the biotech industry into oblivion, Monsanto is reaching out to its critics."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"Watch out, because the newly minted millionaires of Silicon Valley are on track to become major political players. They have graduated from the adolescent view that they could ignore government to the more "mature" position that money and economic power translates easily into political power and influence on Capitol Hill."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"How has corporate America shafted us this month? Let us count the ways -- from profiting off the misery of our grandparents to invading our privacy to destroying our planet."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Channel One Network is the company that loans televisions to public schools, in exchange for access to schoolchildren for 12 minutes every day. The marketers use this opportunity to pump the children with commercials pushing such nutritious staples as Pepsi, Snickers, M&M's and Fruit Loops. When one Alabama citizen started a crusade against this commercialism in schools, it turned into a tortuous conflict between corporate interests and grassroots politics.
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"With the ascendancy of corporate power in America came the rise of its primary countervailing force -- citizen activism and a vibrant public-interest movement. But some of those once vibrant citizen institutions have now been corrupted by corporate funders."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs (least developed countries)?" So wrote Treasury Secretary-designee Lawrence Summers in a 1991 memorandum. Though he later apologized for it, the statement was an unsavory but accurate portrayal of the Treasury Department's economic theory.
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"It used to be that the United Nations was a thorn in the side of multinational corporations. No more."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"For the most part, the corporate press, caught up in their euphoria over this bubble economy, has ignored the reality on the ground: that today's massive inequality in wealth poses serious threats to our democracy and civic life."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"Want to kill somebody and get away with a slap on the wrist? Try being a employer who endangers his or her employees."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"There is a new breed of activist roaming the land. They believe that there is something fundamentally wrong with the large corporation itself, and are pushing people across the country to question corporate control over our lives."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"The United States has now announced $520 million in sanctions against Europe because millionaire Carl Lindner -- the CEO of Chiquita -- has poured money into the political system."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"Marriott hotels recently exacted an enormous tax and road improvement subsidy from taxpayers in exchange for a promise ... to do nothing."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
The vast majority of newspaper carriers are not covered by workers' comp laws, because the newspaper industry has successfully pressurred legislatures to deny them their rights. Earlier this year, this dirty little secret was exposed by Marc Linder, who sent an article about it to reporters and columnists around the country. But on this very hot labor issue dear to the hearts of newspaper industry, Linder was given the cold shoulder.
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye. Today we hear the case corporate perjury, corporate fraud and corporate obstruction of justice."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"HIV/AIDS has reached epidemic proportions in the Third World, and the U.S. government is making it worse. Working in concert with the pharmaceutical industry, our government refuses to let developing countries make HIV/AIDS drugs available at affordable prices."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: deleted
Citizens in developing countries -- from Jordan to Zambia, Indonesia to Venezuela -- have long protested against the policies of the IMF and World Bank. On April 16, for the first time, citizens in the United States came out in large numbers to join the calls for a rollback of IMF and World Bank powers. The exact impact of the demonstrations will only be apparent in the years to come, but it is already clear that the protests have had dramatic effect.
Posted on Apr 1, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"Last week, a Texas jury recommended that Kenneth Payne, 29, spend 16 years in jail. His crime? Stealing a Snickers bar. Compare Kenneth Payne's plight to those of a group of white-collar and corporate criminals who also were sentenced this month."
Posted on Apr 1, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Mokhiber and Weissman detail the various ways that the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are breaking the backs of small nations, plunging millions into poverty, fostering severe depressions and destroying the environment.
Posted on Apr 1, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"The Internet economy, with its fast companies, is poised to replace the old economy, with its a raging bull market. But is the booming market for real, or is it a naturally occurring Ponzi scheme, ready to crash and leave the last round of investors holding the bag?"
Posted on Apr 1, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"There may be no single institution with greater pernicious influence in the world than the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Now, for the first time, the Fund faces a real challenge to its existence, at least in its current form."
Posted on Apr 1, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"For years, the lead industry denied that lead in gasoline was making its way into human bloodstreams. If that's so, why did human blood lead levels drop off dramatically in North America after 1986 when lead was banned from gasoline?"
Posted on Apr 1, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"Gas prices are rising and the threat of global warming looms ever larger. Al Gore, what have you done to wean the United States from its oil dependency?"
Posted on Apr 1, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"Who Owns America?" a book written by 21 anti-corporate crusaders in 1936, will soon be re-released by ISI Books. Edited by Pulitizer Prize-winning columnist Herbert Agar and southern poet Allen Tate, "Who Owns America?" puts forth the type of scathing critique that you don't often find in today's political debates.
Posted on Apr 1, 2000, Source: AlterNet
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