The JvL Bi-Weekly

James van Luik

Publisher & Editor  

Sunday, February 15^th, 2004

Volume 3, No. 3   

6 Articles

 

 

1. A Boom Year for Corporate Crime

2. US-Appointed Council Abolishes Rights of Iraqi Women

3. The New American Century

4. In a State That will Live in Infamy

5. Universities Allied for Access to Essential Medicines

6. Editorials Question Bush's Role in 'Cooking' Up a War

 

 

1. A BOOM YEAR FOR CORPORATE CRIME: THE 10 WORST CORPORATIONS OF 2003

BY

RUSSELL MOKHIBER & 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 those to whom 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 price tag 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-agency 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 US imperial adventures. It has also compiled a record of "repeated law-breaking," according to our colleague 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 US 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 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 US 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 US 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 a $100 million fine levied because analysts were recommending stocks that they trashed in private emails, 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 US 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.

  (Editor's Note: I think people should write to the authors of this paper and add their own "ten worst." I can think of another ten without any effort.)

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  2. US-APPOINTED COUNCIL ABOLISHES RIGHTS OF IRAQI WOMEN:

"MADRE" SUPPORTS INTERNATIONAL CAMPAIGN TO REPEAL RESOLUTION 137

  Madre, an international women's human rights organization, opposes the imposition of Islamic law on the people of Iraq by the US-appointed Interim Governing Council (IGC). Under IGC Resolution 137, issued on December 29^th, 2003, arbitrary interpretations of religious law threaten to replace one of the Middle East's most progressive civil codes. The Resolution gravely threatens women's rights, undermines prospects for democracy and foments a dangerous sectarianism in an already destabilized society.

  Resolution 137 could give self-appointed religious clerics the authority to inflict grave human rights violations on Iraqi women, including denial of the rights to education, employment, freedom of movement and travel, property inheritance and custody of their children. Forced early marriage, polygamy, compulsory religious dress, wife beating, female genital mutilation, execution by stoning as punishment for female adultery and public flogging of women for disobeying religious rules could all be sanctioned  if the Resolution is upheld.

  The Resolution would replace Iraq's 1959 personal status laws with religious law. These laws are the culmination of 50 years of struggle by the Iraqi women's movement and other progressives, and are not a product of Saddam Hussein's regime. While the 1959 laws were applied universally to all Iraqis, the new law would be administered by un-elected clerics from each of Iraq's multiple religious groups for members of their own communities. Tensions between Islamic groups with differing rules about personal status issues are sure to be exacerbated. The resulting civil strife will further endanger Iraqis and facilitate a "divide and rule" strategy for the new US-dominated government.

  Iraq, which was overwhelming secular until its social fabric was destroyed by the US-led economic siege of the 1990s, is being catapulted towards theocratic rule. The US bears direct responsibility for the ensuing human rights crisis. Under Paul Bremer's leadership, the US appointed reactionary clerics to the IGC, virtually guaranteeing this attack on Iraqi women and the threat to democratic secularism. Moreover, as an interim body directly installed by the US Occupation Authority, the IGC has no legitimate power to change Iraqi civil law. Under the 1907 Hague Conventions, the IGC is empowered only to address issues of public order and safety.

   AS MADRE Associate Director Yifat Susskind commented, "In less than 15 minutes of discussion, the IGC – none of whose members were elected by Iraqis – passed Resolution 137, effectively abolishing women's legal rights in 'liberated' Iraq. Under the direct authority of the Bush Administration, the IGC has privileged sectarianism over inclusiveness and violated core principles of democratic governance: transparency, accountability, the independence of the judiciary and the separation of the legislative and executive bodies. Iraqi women are organizing against this US-imposed cancellation of their human rights and MADRE is supporting their call."

  MADRE emphasizes that:

  1. Iraqi women and their families will only be able to exercise the full range of human rights when Iraq is free from war, economic exploitation and military occupation.

  2. An immediate end to the US military occupation of Iraq is necessary. A US-funded, UN-led peacekeeping force should assume authority during a speedy transition to Iraqi sovereignty.

  3. Nurturing democracy in Iraq requires defending the leadership of progressive forces inside Iraq, particularly the Iraqi women's movement. Genuine democracy will mean that the Iraqi people, not US-based corporations, control and benefit from Iraq's resources, reconstruction process and future economic policies.

  Resolution 137 also violates Iraq's international legal obligations under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (ratified by Iraq in 1986) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (ratified by Iraq in 1994).

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  3. THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY

BY

ARUNDHATI ROY

  In January 2003 thousands of us from across the world gathered in Porto Alegre in Brazil and declared—reiterated—that "Another World is Possible." A few thousand miles north, In Washington, George W. Bush and his aides were thinking the same thing.

  Our project was the World Social Forum. Theirs—to further what many call the Project for the New American Century.

  In the great cities of Europe and America, where a few years ago these things would only have been whispered, now people are openly talking about the good side of imperialism and the need for a strong empire to police an unruly world. The new missionaries want order at the cost of justice. Discipline at the cost of dignity. And ascendancy at any price. Occasionally some of us are invited to "debate" the issue on "neutral" platforms provided by the corporate media. Debating imperialism is a bit like debating the pros and cons of rape. What can we say? That we really miss it?

  In any case, New Imperialism is already upon us. It's a remodeled streamlined version of what we once knew. For the first time in history, a single empire with an arsenal of weapons that could obliterate the world in an afternoon has complete, unipolar, economic and military hegemony. It uses different weapons to break open different markets. There isn't a country on God's earth that is not caught in the cross-hairs of the American cruise missile and the IMF checkbook. Argentina is the model if you want to be the poster boy of neoliberal capitalism, Iraq if you're the black sheep. Poor countries that are geopolitically of strategic value to empire, or have a "market" of any size, or infrastructure that can be privatized, or, God forbid, natural resources of value—oil, gold, diamonds, cobalt, coal—must do as they're told or become military targets. Those with the greatest reserves of natural wealth are most at risk. Unless they surrender their resources willingly to the corporate machine, civil unrest will be fomented or war will be waged.

  In this new age of empire, when nothing is as it appears to be, executives of concerned companies are allowed to influence foreign policy decisions. The Center for Public Integrity in Washington found that at least nine out of the thirty members of the Bush administration's Defense Policy Board were connected to companies that were awarded military contracts for $76 billion between 2001 and 2002. George Schultz, former Secretary of State, was chairman of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. He is also on the board of directors of the Bechtel Group. When asked about a conflict of interest in the case of war in Iraq he said, "I don't know that Bechtel would particularly benefit from it. But if there's work to be done, Bechtel is the type of company that could do it. But nobody looks at it as something you benefit from." In April 2003, Bechtel signed a $680 million contract for reconstruction.

  This brutal blueprint has been used over and over again across Latin America, in Africa and in Central and Southeast Asia. It has cost millions of lives. It goes without saying that every war Empire wages becomes a Just War. This, in large part, is due to the role of the corporate media. It's important to understand that the corporate media don't just support the neoliberal project. They are the neoliberal project. This is not a moral position they have chosen to take; it's structural. It's intrinsic to the economics of how the mass media work.

  Most nations have adequately hideous family secrets. So it isn't often necessary for the media to lie. It's all in the editing—what's emphasized and what's ignored. Say, for example, India was chosen as the target for a righteous war. The fact that about 80,000 people have been killed in Kashmir since 1989, most of them Muslim, most of them by Indian security forces (making the average death toll about 6,000 a year); the fact that in February and March of 2002 more than 2,000 Muslims were murdered on the streets of Gujarat, that women were gang-raped and children were burned alive and 150,000 driven from their homes while the police and administration watched and sometimes actively participated; the fact that no one has been punished for these crimes and the government that oversaw them was re-elected…all of this would make perfect headlines in international newspapers in the run-up to war.

  Next thing we know, our cities will be leveled by cruise missiles, our villages fenced in with razor wire, US soldiers will patrol our streets, and Narendra Modi, Pravin Togadia or any of our popular bigots will, like Saddam Hussein be in US custody having their hair checked for lice and the fillings in their teeth examined on prime-time TV.

  But as long as our "markets" are open, as long as corporations like Enron, Bechtel, Halliburton and Arthur Andersen are given a fee hand to take over our infrastructure and take away our jobs, our "democratically elected" leaders can fearlessly blur the lines between democracy, majoritarianism and fascism.

  Our government's craven willingness to abandon India's proud tradition of being non-aligned, its rush to fight its way to the head of the queue of the Completely Aligned (the fashionable phrase is "natural ally"—India, Israel and the United States are "natural allies"), has given it the leg room to turn into a repressive regime without compromising its legitimacy.

  A government's victims are not only those it kills and imprisons. Those who are displaced and dispossessed and sentenced to a lifetime of starvation and deprivation must count among them too. Millions of people have been dispossessed by "development" projects. In the past fifty-five years, big dams alone have displaced between 33 million and 55 million in India. They have no recourse to justice. In the past two years there have been a series of incidents in which police have opened fire on peaceful protesters, most of them Adivasi and Dalit. When it comes to the poor, and in particular Dalit and Adivasi communities, they get killed for encroaching on forest land, and killed when they're trying to protect forest land from  encroachments—by dams, mines, steel plants and other "development" projects. In almost every instance in which the police opened fire, the government's strategy has been to say the firing was provoked by an act of violence. Those who have been fired upon are immediately called militant.

  Across the country, thousands of innocent people, including minors, have been arrested under the Prevention of Terrorism Act and are being held in jail indefinitely and without trial. In the era of the War against Terror, poverty is being slyly conflated with terrorism. In the era of corporate globalization, poverty is a crime. Protesting against further impoverishment is terrorism. And now our Supreme Court says that going on strike is a crime. Criticizing the court is a crime too, of course. They're sealing the exits.

  Like Old Imperialism, New Imperialism relies for its success on a network of agents—corrupt local elites who service Empire. We all know the sordid story of Enron in India. The then-Maharashtra government signed a power purchase agreement that gave Enron profits that amounted to 60 percent of India's entire rural development budget. A single American company was guaranteed a profit equivalent to funds for infrastructural development for about 500 million people!

  Unlike in the old days, the New Imperialist doesn’t need to trudge around the tropics risking malaria or diarrhea or early death. New Imperialism can be conducted on e-mail. The vulgar, hands-on racism of Old Imperialism is outdated. The cornerstone of New Imperialism is New Racism.

  The best allegory for New Racism is the tradition of "turkey pardoning" in the United States. Every year since 1947, the National Turkey Federation has presented the US President with a turkey for Thanksgiving. Every year, in a show of ceremonial magnanimity, the President spares that particular bird (and eats another one). After receiving the presidential pardon, the Chosen One is sent to Frying Pan Park in Virginia to live out its natural life. The rest of the 50 million turkeys raised for Thanksgiving are slaughtered and eaten on Thanksgiving Day. ConAgra Foods, the company that has won the Presidential Turkey contract, says it trains the lucky birds to be sociable, to interact with dignitaries, school children and the press. (Soon they'll even speak English!)

  That's how New Racism in the corporate era works. A few carefully bred turkeys—the local elites of various countries, a community of wealthy immigrants, investment bankers, the occasional Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice, some singers, some writers (like myself)—are given absolution and a pass to Frying Pan Park. The remaining millions lose their jobs, are evicted from their homes, have their water and electricity connections cut, and die of AIDS. Basically they're for the pot. But the Fortunate Fowls in Frying Pan Park are doing fine. Some of them even work for the IMF and the WTO—so who can accuse those organizations of being antiturkey? Some serve as board members on the Turkey Choosing Committee—so who can say that turkeys are against Thanksgiving? They participate in it! Who can say the poor are anti-corporate globalization? There's a stampede to get into Frying Pan Park. So what if most perish on the way?

  As part of the project of New Racism we also have New Genocide. New Genocide in this new era of economic interdependence can be facilitated by economic sanctions. New Genocide means creating conditions that lead to mass death without actually going out and killing people. Denis Halliday, who was the UN humanitarian coordinator in Iraq between 1997 and 1998 (after which he resigned in disgust), used the term genocide to describe the sanctions in Iraq. In Iraq the sanctions outdid Saddam Hussein's best efforts by claiming more than half a million children's lives.

  In the new era, apartheid as formal policy is antiquated and unnecessary. International instruments of trade and finance oversee a complex system of multilateral trade laws and financial agreements that keep the poor in their Bantustans anyway. Its whole purpose is to institutionalize inequity. Why else would it be that the US taxes a garment made by a Bangladeshi manufacturer twenty times more than a garment made in Britain? Why else would it be that countries that grow cocoa beans, like the Ivory Coast and Ghana, are taxed out of the market if they try to turn it into chocolate? Why else would it be that countries that grow 90 percent of the world's cocoa beans produce only 5 percent of the world's chocolate? Why else would it be that rich countries that spend over a billion dollars a day on subsidies to farmers demand that poor countries like India withdraw all agricultural subsidies, including subsidized electricity? Why else would it be that after having been plundered by colonizing regimes for more than half a century, former colonies are steeped in debt to those same regimes and repay them some $382 billion a year?

  For all these reasons, the derailing of trade agreements at Cancun was crucial for us. Though our governments try to take the credit, we know that it was the result of years of struggle by many millions of people in many, many countries. What Cancun taught us is that in order to inflict real damage and force radical change, it is vital for local resistance movements to make international alliances. From Cancun we learned the importance of globalizing resistance.

  No individual nation can stand up to the project of corporate globalization on its own. Time and again we have seen that when it comes to the neoliberal project, the heroes of our times are suddenly diminished. Extraordinary, charismatic men, giants in the opposition, when they seize power and become heads of state, are rendered powerless on the global stage. I'm thinking here of President Lula of Brazil. Lula was the hero for the World Social Forum last year. This year he's busy implementing IMF guidelines, reducing pension benefits and purging radicals from the Workers' Party. I'm thinking also of the former president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela. Within two years of taking office in 1994, his government genuflected with hardly a caveat to the Market God. It instituted a massive program of privatization and structural adjustment that has left millions of people homeless, jobless and without water and electricity.

  Why does this happen? There's little point in beating our breasts and feeling betrayed. Lula and Mandela are, by any reckoning, magnificent men. But the moment they cross the floor from the opposition into government they becomes hostage to a spectrum of threats—most malevolent among them the threat of capital flight, which can destroy any government overnight. To imagine that a leader's personal charisma and a c.v. of struggle will dent the corporate cartel is to have no understanding of how capitalism works or, for that matter, how power works. Radical change cannot be negotiated by governments; it can only be enforced by people.

  At the World Social Forum some of the best minds in the world come together to exchange ideas about what is happening around us. These conversations refine our vision of the kind of world we're fighting for. It is a vital process that must not be undermined. However, if all our energies are diverted into this process at the cost of real political action, then the WSF, which has played such a crucial role in the movement for global justice, runs the risk of becoming an asset to our enemies. What we need to discuss urgently is strategies of resistance. We need to aim at real targets, wage real battles and inflict real damage. Gandhi's salt march was not just political theater. When, in a simple act of defiance, thousands of Indians marched to the sea and made their own salt, they broke the salt tax laws. It was a direct strike at the economic underpinning of the British Empire. It was real. While our movement has won some important victories, we must not allow nonviolent resistance to atrophy into ineffectual, feel-good political theater. It is a very precious weapon that must be constantly honed and reimagined. It cannot be allowed to become a mere spectacle, a photo opportunity for the media.

  It was wonderful that on February 15 last year, in a spectacular display of public morality, 10 million people on five continents marched against the war on Iraq. It was wonderful, but it was not enough. February 15 was a weekend. Nobody had to so much as miss a day of work. Holiday protests don't stop wars. George Bush knows that. The confidence with which he disregarded overwhelming public opinion should be a lesson to us all. Bush believes that Iraq can be occupied and colonized as Afghanistan has been, as Tibet has been, as Chechnya is being, as East Timor once was and Palestine still  is. He thinks that all he has to do is hunker down and wait until a crisis-driven media, having picked this crisis to the bone, drops it and moves on. Soon the carcass will slip off the bestseller charts, and all of us outraged folks will lose interest. Or so he hopes.

  This movement of ours needs a major, global victory. It's not good enough to be right. Sometimes, if only in order to test our resolve, it's important to win something. In order to win something, we need to agree on something. That something does not need to be an overarching preordained ideology in which we force-fit our delightfully factious, argumentative selves. It does not need to be an unquestioning allegiance to one or another form of resistance to the exclusion of everything else.  It could be a minimum agenda.

  If all of us are indeed against imperialism and against the project of neoliberalism, then let's turn our gaze on Iraq. Iraq is the inevitable culmination of both. Plenty of antiwar activists have retreated in confusion since the capture of Saddam Hussein. Isn't the world better off without Saddam Hussein? they ask timidly.

  Let's look this thing in the eye once and for all. To applaud the "US Army's capture" of Saddam Hussein, and therefore in retrospect justify its invasion and occupation of Iraq, is like deifying Jack the Ripper for disemboweling the Boston Strangler. And that after a quarter-century partnership in which the ripping and strangling was a joint enterprise. It's an in-house quarrel. They're business partners who fell out over a dirty deal. Jack's the CEO.

  So if we are against imperialism, shall we agree that we are against the US occupation of Iraq and that we believe the United States must withdraw from Iraq and pay reparations to the Iraqi people for the damage that the war has inflicted?

  How do we begin to mount our resistance? Let's start with something really small. The issue is not about supporting the resistance in Iraq against the occupation or discussing who exactly constitutes the resistance. (Are they old killer Ba'athists, are they Islamic fundamentalists?)

  We have to become the global resistance to the occupation.

  Our resistance has to begin with a refusal to accept the legitimacy of the US occupation of Iraq. It means acting to make it materially impossible for Empire to achieve its aims. It means soldiers should refuse to fight, reservists should refuse to serve, workers should refuse to load ships and aircraft with weapons. It certainly means that in countries like India and Pakistan we must block the US government's plans to have Indian and Pakistani soldiers sent to Iraq to clean up after them.

  I suggest we choose by some means two of the major corporations that are profiting from the destruction of Iraq. We could then list every project they are involved in. We could locate their offices in every city and every country across the world. We could go after them. We could shut them down. It's a question of bringing our collective wisdom and experience of past struggles to bear on a single target. It's a question of the desire to win.

  The Project for the New American Century seeks to perpetuate inequity and establish American hegemony at any price, even if it's apocalyptic. The World Social Forum demands justice and survival.

  For these reasons, we must consider ourselves at war.

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4. IN A STATE THAT WILL LIVE IN INFAMY

BY

JAY BOOKMAN

  Georgia has ambitions of becoming the next big high-tech state, a new center of scientific achievement in fields ranging from cancer research to nanotechnology. Hundreds of millions of dollars have already been committed to that effort, which our business and political leaders say is essential to the state's future prosperity. And the most important factor in the success of that effort will be our ability to recruit science-oriented companies and personnel to the state.

  Meanwhile, Georgia is removing the word "evolution" from its middle school and high school curriculum guide because it is deemed to be "a buzzword that causes a lot of negative reaction," according to the state school superintendent.

  And it's not just the word that disappears: The proposed changes will also gut much of the instruction that would allow an understanding of evolution's underpinnings. Other changes are being made as well, including deletion of mention that the Earth has a long history, because such a statement conflicts with literal interpretations of the Bible claiming that the earth is young.

  Yeah, this move to high-tech is gonna work out just fine.

  As of last week, news of our backslide into the 19^th century had been published in newspapers all over the country, including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Kansas City Star and the San Jose Mercury News, which serves the center of the high-tech universe, Silicon Valley. Imagine the impact of that.

  It is not merely that scientists will now be reluctant to bring their families to a state where their children will be misinformed, although that will hurt immensely. It is not merely that company executives will now be leery of depending on a work force produced by such schools, although that, too, will be damaging. More fundamentally, they will be wary of an overall political climate so clearly hostile to science and to scientific methods and inquiry.

  Kathy Cox, the state school superintendent ultimately responsible for this fiasco, has tried to defend the changes as somehow consistent with science, since it opens up the curriculum to supposed challenges to Darwinian evolution. As she points out, science and scientific theories must always remain open to criticism, challenge and if necessary to revision.

  However, that struggle for truth can and must take place within science itself. Notions such as "intelligent design" and creationism have failed to make any headway within real science because they fail fundamental scientific standards of logic and consistency. As a result, those who believe in those theories have tried to move their struggle for acceptance out of science and into the political world, where thy can make more progress.

  Within science, Darwinian evolution is not controversial or considered under serious challenge, and hasn't been for a century. Evolution is real, it is observable and can be documented. In fact, adaptation through competition can be seen in other aspects of life as well, such as economics.

  In an increasingly global economy, Georgians will face more and more direct competition for jobs and profits, a competition in which once again the fit will thrive and those less adaptable will suffer. We already know that we will not be able to compete with places such as China for the low-wage, low-skill work that has long sustained Georgia, and will have to instead rely on superior education and knowledge-based skills to maintain our standard of living. That's why the move to high tech is considered so important.

  And yet last week, as Georgia was pretending that the world "evolution" was too controversial to mention, scientists in China were announcing that they had documented how the SARS virus had twice evolved – excuse me, had "changed biologically over time" – as it migrated from animals to human beings.

  You think about something like that and you realize: If they're right about the survival of the fittest, we're in a mess of trouble.

  (Editor's Note: It is extraordinary that something so highly technical and abstruse as Einstein's theory of relativity should become the target of political attacks. The attacks were often virulent. In Germany, the Nazis condemned the theory as being Jewish and Communistic, and said that it poisoned the well-springs of German science. And, of course, they forbad scientists to teach it. Only a few brave souls dared to defy the order, and even they resorted to stratagems such as presenting the ideas without mentioning Einstein or using the word "relativity.")

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5. UNIVERSITIES ALLIED FOR ACCESS TO ESSENTIAL MEDICINES

[AUTHORSHIP FOR THIS FACT SHEET UNKNOWN]

  Nearly one third of the world's population lacks access to drugs that the World Health Organization (WHO) calls "essential" because they are needed for some of the most common ailments that strike people across the globe. HIV/AIDS claimed nearly 8500 lives each day in the year 2002, in part because less than four percent of those in low and middle income countries who needed antiretroviral treatment received it. The high price of pharmaceuticals remains one of the most pressing barriers to improving access to biomedical innovations, and high prices are usually sustained when a pharmaceutical company is given exclusive rights over a product—that is, they patent the product, preventing it from being produced by others, and this monopoly allows for uncompetitive price-setting.

  In a mid-1990's assessment, the NIH found that 85% of the basic and clinical research used to develop the top five selling drugs on the market was produced through taxpayer funding, even though the profits were almost exclusively received by private companies. Most university labs do the research after receiving taxpayer funds distributed through NIH grants, but sell the products to pharmaceutical companies under "exclusive licenses" that give the companies total monopolies while giving back the universities only a small royalty. For years (before the 1980 Bayl-Dole Act), universities had plenty of research engagement from private industry  but did not give away taxpayer funded research in this  manner. The idea that reforms to this system will negatively impact on public-private partnerships or will harm innovation ignores this history and the available data.

  The profits going back to the universities are so small that only 4% of university research budgets are from such revenues and this percentage decreases when the costs of patenting and licensing activities are factored in (because hiring the patent attorneys to fill out the extensive paperwork is extraordinarily expensive). The revenue obtained  from developing countries is exponentially less; for 2002, all of Africa was projected to make up a mere 1.3% of the worldwide pharmaceutical market, and South-east Asia, China and the Indian subcontinent only 6.7%, of the world pharmaceutical market. This means that providing more competition and thereby lowering prices in these markets is extremely unlikely to negatively impact on R&D, because these market sectors reflect little of the drug industry's revenue. It also addresses the fallacy that more patent protection will be an incentive for the drug industry to market, in poor countries; the fact that people in these nations are extremely poor means that they do not offer a market, and drug industries enter markets when they are profitable. Having a monopoly on poor people offers little profit as shown by the fact that drug marketing increased by a factor of three even after Brazil banned patenting in the 1970s, but extensive patenting in some sub-Saharan African nations has not improved innovation or access. Stringent patenting and monopolization of the US market has so weakened the competition-based drive to produce quality research that 53% of the US drug market is now "me too" drugs that are simply reformulations of old medicines.

  In 2001, members of the Yale University community forced their institution and Bristol-Myers Squibb to stop enforcing the patent on the key AIDS drug d4T. This has resulted in as much as a 40% decrease in the price of the drug in South Africa. At the University of Minnesota, students are attempting a similar campaign for the AIDS drug abacavir, and Emory University students are working on greater access to the drug 3TC. But AIDS drugs are not the only problem; a systemic problem exists, which allows all sorts of biomedical innovation to be transferred via "exclusive licenses". We're calling on students to reform this process. A basic blueprint for reforms is being discussed now, but may include such measures as: not patenting in poor countries when the university has extensively developed  a technology (so that the know-how to produce generics is entirely in the public domain), transferring technology under "nonexclusive licenses" that would allow competition, and licensing to generic manufacturers (when a pharmaceutical company is needed to develop; the product extensively), or including  public access terms (like pricing products 10% above production costs) when exclusive licenses are granted. These strategies would not hurt university revenues, which are minor to begin with but are almost never made in poor countries, and they would be unlikely to affect pharmaceutical company partnerships with universities because such companies rely on the university research and also do not make significant profits from poor countries. It is notable that after the d4T revocation, Pfizer invested heavily in Yale by funding a new multi-million dollar clinical trials building; it is the quality of research that appears to drive industry partnerships, since monopolizing poor research is of little benefit.

  Of course, reform at universities is just a start to dealing with this complicated problem, and will not address the access issue entirely. But no one reform will solve the many systemic issues—ranging from research and development, funding allocations, to infrastructure building—that affect health in poor countries. Nevertheless, it is a logical fallacy to suggest that one blockage in the pipeline between basic research and clinical outcome necessarily means that another blockage doesn't exist, and so while many other problems do occur, our location in universities gives us a strategic position to remove a very big obstacle to effective access.

  (Editor's note. This article came with 16 reference citations which I will gladly furnish to any one interested in them.)

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  6. EDITORIALS QUESTION BUSH'S ROLE IN 'COOKING' UP A WAR

BY

GREG MITCHELL

  In the wake of the latest revelations from weapons inspector David Kay, many of the largest US newspapers are belatedly pressing the Bush administration for an explanation of how it could have gotten the question of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq so wrong in the march to war last year. A growing number are raising the possibility that Bush and his team may have "cooked" the intelligence to support their case for war.

  An E&P survey of the top 20 newspapers by circulation found that as of Wednesday, 13 had run editorials on Kay's resignation as chief US weapons inspector in Iraq last Friday, and his statement that no WMDs exist in Iraq, and likely did not exist in Iraq during the US run-up to war.

  Nearly all of those papers blamed intelligence failures for the miscalculation and called for a full probe. But eight of the 13 – most of which supported the war – also raised the issue of White House deceit and its possibly blind pursuit of intelligence that fit its plan for war.

  Among them was The Dallas Morning News, in Bush's home state, which had supported the war, but now declared: "We feel deceived – by the CIA, which overestimated the threat, and by the White House, which probably stretched the bad estimates to build a case for war." If Bush had found other strategic or humanitarian reasons for the war, "he should have argued the case on that basis," the editorial said.

  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution also stated that while intelligence was faulty, "the evidence also seems overwhelming that the Bush administration pushed existing evidence well beyond its breaking point, exaggerating threats and claiming specific knowledge of Iraqi WMDs where in reality no such knowledge existed." The paper also came down hard on the administration for linking Saddam Hussein directly to al Qaeda – which was in opposition to intelligence reports.

  The Los Angeles Times refused to place the blame mainly on the intelligence agencies, observing that "the administration was not a passive consumer of intelligence. The CIA's own Iraq analysts contended last June that the administration pressured them to create worst-case scenarios." While backing a full CIA probe, the L.A. Times added, "An investigation … will also have to take in to account the administration's agenda." Indeed, Vice President Dick Cheney continued to make "bogus claims" about WMDs in Iraq over the weekend despite Kay's finding, the editorial noted.

  The Detroit Free Press asked, "Was the administration misled, or did it twist what it was told to justify taking down Hussein? A full accounting is due."

  News Day of Melville, N.Y., said the latest revelation "raises troubling questions about the Bush administration's use of ambiguous or flawed intelligence findings to buttress its case" for the war. The Oregonian of Portland stated that, "it's fair to wonder … whether the White House processed the intelligence information professionally."

  The Boston Globe editorial said, in part: "President Bush should acknowledge two harsh truths: that the intelligence was completely wrong, and that administration hawks tried to politicize intelligence."

  Oddly, while fully condemning the intelligence scandal, two of the most liberal papers – The New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle – did not strongly raise the specter of White House deceit. The Times hinted at this, however, by suggesting that Cheney's continuing false arguments revealed the "rigid thinking" based on "preconceived notions" that "helped propel us into an invasion."

  The Philadelphia Inquirer simply declared that Kay's conclusion "destroys the remaining credibility of the administration's argument for an immediate, pre-emptive war."

Only two of the 13 papers that ran editorials expressed little concern that the Kay findings  undercut their support for the war: The New York Post and New York Daily News. The Post warned readers not to "be taken in by all the hot air following David Kay's statements."

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