News that Smokes
US - A March 20, 1990 memo unearthed during Minnesota's lawsuit against US tobacco companies revealed the existence of Philip Morris' "Top Secret Operation Rainmaker." In order to influence public debate, the memo explained, "we must be part of it. The only way to do this is to own a major media outlet. If we are not willing to take this step, then we are not serious about really wanting to change the atmosphere." Among the coveted news outlets were the Copley News Service, Knight Ridder, and the media empire of Mortimer Zuckerman (owner of United Press International, US News & World Report, the New York Daily News and the Atlantic Monthly).

US Hogging Japan's Roads
JAPAN - The deregulation of vehicle licensing requirements has opened Japan's streets to an invasion of noisy, polluting US motorcycles. Last year, 33,000 large motorcycles (400 ccs and up) were sold in Japan - a 133 percent jump. Look Japan reports that the dismantling of Japan's two-year-old Road Traffic Law came in response to "pressure from foreign motorcycle manufactures" and from the "American embassy [which lodged] a complaint on behalf of Harley Davidson."

The Bigger they Are, the Better they Fail
US - A Standish Group International, Inc. survey of expensive technology projects has found that the more costly the project is, the more likely it is to run over-budget and fail to perform. As Governing magazine reports, "The success rate for technology projects that cost more than $10 million is zero." Forty-one percent of high-tech projects costing $6 million or more were judged failures, 51 percent were "challenged" and only eight percent performed as expected. The highest success rate (55 percent) was for projects costing less than $750,000. Beyond that, the ratio between the bang and the buck generally bottoms out.

The Bubblegum Economy
JAPAN - Bank closures, bankruptcies and a raging recession in the aftermath of the bursting of Japan's bubble economy have been paralleled by a rapid expansion of US-based businesses taking advantage of the trouble. McDonald's has tripled the number of its outlets to more than 2,500, 7-11 has expanded to more than 7,000 stores (making it Japan's largest retailer) and the 40th Starbucks coffeehouse is set to open there in March. An AMC movie-multiplex has siphoned-off half the movie revenue in Fukuoka and AMC now plans to build a 16-screen, 3,500-seat AMC movie-multiplex alongside Disneyland Tokyo. Other US firms making big moves in Japan include Toys R Us, Eddie Bauer and The Gap.

Clinton Attacks WTO: Press Mum
SWITZERLAND - Last May, President Bill Clinton warned delegates to a World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Geneva that increased trade could prompt an economic, environmental and social "race to the bottom." Clinton lambasted the WTO's policy of secrecy and called for opening deliberations to public inspection and participation. Clinton's astounding reversal from his position as a champion of free-market economics went nearly unnoticed by a US press fixated on presidential sexual indiscretions leaked by Special Prosecutor Ken Starr's office. Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne Jr., lamented that there "was a time when the address would have been front-page news."

Chemicals R Us
US - According to World Wildlife Fund scientist Theo Colborn, citizens in industrialized societies now carry detectable levels of 500 industrial chemicals in their body tissue. These "endocrine-disrupting" pollutants are responsible for growing incidence of birth defects, genital deformities and reduced fertility. When the charges aired in a PBS Frontline documentary last June, one industry insider declared: "Everything is at stake for the industry on this one. It was a day of reckoning they didn't want to see."

Do People Die? People Do
NIGERIA - In an interview on Pacifica Radio's "Democracy Now!," Chevron Oil spokesman Sola Omole told host Amy Goodman about the oil company's previously undisclosed role in the killings of Jola Ogungbeje and Aroleka Irowaninu, two Nigerian activists. The activists were gunned down by security troops hired by Chevron to disperse demonstrators who had seized a Chevron drilling platform. Omole explained that Chevron had used Nigerian soldiers and hired security forces in the attack. "Chevron… took them in… by helicopter," Omole stated. The activists were killed by gunfire directed from the helicopter. Chevron spokesperson Mike Libbey insisted that Chevron was "required" to report the take-over of its drilling site and that Nigerian policy "directed" the company to provide the helicopter. "We had no choice but to comply," Libbey said. Goodman broadcast an interview with a subcontractor who claimed that Chevron had paid for both the aircraft and the armed attackers. Chevron refused to condemn the killings. "It is unfortunate that people died, perhaps unnecessarily [sic]," Libby said. "But that doesn't change the fact that, in order for Chevron to do business in 90 countries around the world, we must cooperate with governments of many kinds."

Murdoch Kow-Tows; Censors Fox
US - Billionaire media-baron Rupert Murdoch killed a TV documentary scheduled to air on Fox Television that was based on Strange Justice, a prize-winning exposé of the sexual harassment allegations raised during Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' confirmation hearings. The New York Times reported that the show was axed because Murdoch considers Justice Thomas a personal friend. Murdoch (who also owns HarperCollins) also squelched the reprint of a book by former British Governor of Hong Kong Chris Patten that assails China's human rights record. Criticism of China's leadership could endanger Star-TV, Murdoch's lucrative China-directed satellite-TV service. In 1994, Murdoch pulled BBC News broadcasts off Star-TV to prevent reports on the fate of Chinese dissidents from angering the Beijing leadership.

Siberian Crude: By the Glass
RUSSIA - The Ural Mountain village of Liantor became a petroleum boomtown with the commencement of a $9 billion gas pipeline project designed to move Siberia's natural gas to customers in Germany. Exxon and Texaco promised to sink $100 billion into oil exploration in the region - as soon as the Kremlin rewrites Russia's tax laws to the companies' liking. The residents of Liantor, however, are already sick of oil - literally. The local water is tainted with crude oil, its fish reek of oil, the tap water runs brown, many of the local rivers are coated with a sheen of petroleum, and local children are suffering from liver damage and other health problems.

Towering Ambition
CHINA - Hundreds of thousands of Shanghai residents have been routed to make room for a $38 billion urban make-over that will turn the city's Pudong district into one of the world's major financial centers. More than half of the 300 planned high-rise buildings have been erected, including the 88-story Jin Mao, China's first mega-skyscraper. At 1,377-feet, the $540 million Skidmore Owings and Merrill-designed tower is the world's third-tallest. It may also be the world's emptiest building: Only three companies have signed up to rent space in the Jin Mao (which means "Golden Prosperity"). With Asian economies slowing, there is a surfeit of space in Shanghai's burgeoning financial center. Shanghai's state-financed building spree remains immune to the "Asian flu," however, and within the next year the amount of (mostly empty) office space is expected to double to more than 21 million square feet. One Pudong official told the Chicago Tribune that erecting "such a tall building… will reflect that Shanghai has class… and that will help us attract more investment," but this theory is beginning to wilt. Shanghai's 95-story, 1,509-foot World Financial Center tower (which was supposed to be completed by 2001) has been delayed due to financial problems.

Human Guinea Pigs
UK - Pesticide companies have been testing toxic chemicals on human volunteers in England and Scotland. The Environmental Working Group [1718 Connecticut Ave., Washington, DC 20009, (202) 667-6982, www.ewg.org] has revealed that the California-based Amvac Chemical Corp. hired British volunteers to drink glasses of corn oil filled with the neurotoxic pesticide dichlorvos. In 1992, the French multinational Rhone-Poulenc hired unemployed Scottish workers to swallow orange juice laced with aldicarb insecticide. Science News explained that the foreign tests were launched so that pesticide manufacturers could argue that US pesticide levels based on animal studies "are set too high." In both cases, however, some of the human test subjects were sickened and suffered damage to their nervous systems. The US EPA declared that it was "deeply concerned" over the human tests, but the agency confirmed that it has accepted human test data since 1992 and was aware that more such tests are planned in the months ahead. Inside the US, reports CounterPunch [PO Box 18675, Washington, DC 20036], "some 40,000 human guinea pigs… flock to testing labs every year." Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Ciba-Geigy and Smith-Kline Beecham run many of the US' human testing programs, which pay subjects as little as $85 a day. CounterPunch reports that most of the test subjects "are unemployed black men willing to trade unknown risks for fast cash."

Oil Pipelines and Global Politics
TURKEY - If industrial growth continues during the 21st century, it will be fueled largely by oil and natural gas from the Caspian Sea. Last October, US Energy Secretary Bill Richardson flew to Paris to preside over the signing of an accord to build a 1,080-mile pipeline from the Caspian to the Mediterranean. Participants in the Main Export Pipeline (MEP) project would include Turkey, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakstan, Uzbekistan and Exxon, Amoco, Unocal and Pennzoil. The MEP would compete with two Russian oil routes, one of which transects the violence-torn Chechnya region. Increased movement of oil from the Black Sea would increase health and environmental dangers to people living along the narrow Bosporus waterway. The most environmentally secure route would also be the cheapest to build. Unfortunately, it would move the Caspian's oil through Iran and, as San Francisco Chronicle reporter Frank Viviano notes, the US "has all but ruled-out any Iranian role in the transport of Caspian oil."

"Frisco" Fracas: Bottle Battle
US - Sports stadiums were supposed to generate revenue as well as civic pride, but today, cash-strapped cities have been forced to finance ballparks by selling naming-rights to wealthy corporations. In San Francisco, residents are outraged by a city Planning Commission decision to approve construction of a 100 foot-long Coke bottle in the middle of a ballpark playground. The bottle was scaled back to 80 feet in a futile attempt to placate the public. San Francisco Chronicle columnist Ken Garcia may have had the final word on the bottle: "Hideous. Tacky. Exploitative. Appalling."

Genetic Engineering Insurance Risk
SWITZERLAND - The Swiss reinsurance company Rueck (a 130 year-old firm that insures other insurance companies) has decided that there is currently no way to offer insurance against the possible risks of genetic engineering. Sonntags Zeitung reports that Rueck fears lawsuits triggered by allergic reactions to transgenic food ingredients could "grow worldwide to an insurance-relevant size." The insurance risks posed by the use of transgenic animal organs could "cause the collapse of the whole health insurance system."

The Rise of Corporate Universities
US - Harvard, Yale and the 3,700 other universities and colleges in the US are facing competition from 1,600 corporate universities. Companies such as Motorola, Microsoft and Disney have created in-house universities to train their employees, and for-profit operations like the University of Phoenix now offer over-the-Internet college degrees. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that corporate competition is drawing students away from traditional centers of learning. As a result, private and public colleges are "adopting business models, entering partnerships with corporations and even contracting with corporations to train their employees." Turning education into the "marketing of educational products" troubles traditional academics, who point to the failure of TV-based "distance learning" to improve academic performance. Coopers & Lybrand, which has created an undergraduate software package that sells for $3 million per course, claims that 25 of their software courses could allow 6 million (more than half) of US college students to abandon the campus for a self-inflicted education at home in the glow of a computer screen. Coopers & Lybrand predict that "Knowledge-companies that operate very much like HMOs [could] contract with content providers (in this case, faculty members) [to] distribute the education they provide." With electronic universities, strikes and tenure battles would be history.

WTO Disses Turtles
SWITZERLAND - On October 13, the World Trade Organization (WTO) dismissed a US appeal of the it's April 1998 decision overruling US laws designed to protect endangered sea turtles from drowning in shrimp nets. Noting that as many as 150,000 sea turtles die in fishing nets each year, Earth Island's Sea Turtle Restoration Project denounced the WTO decision as "a dangerous precedent for the dismantling of other US environmental, human health, safety and labor laws that might conflict with trade." Matthew Stilwell, a managing attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law [B P 21 160A Route de Florissant, CH-1231 Conches, Geneva, Switzerland; 1367 Connecticut Ave., No. 300, Washington, DC 20036] warned that the ruling "adds to the chilling effect of trade policy on environmental law." CIEL maintains that the only way to resolve the conflict between trade and environmental goals is through "fundamental reform of the WTO rules and procedures."

Global Watchdogs to Follow Chipmakers
US - Within the next few years, 100 new semiconductor plants will be built in the world's newly industrialized counties at a cost of $1.5 to $4 billion each. A single electronic manufacturing plant can consume 6 million gallons of water per day while using thousands of chemicals - solvents, acids, heavy metals and plastics. As multinationals like IBM, AT&T, Intel, Fujitsu, Siemens and Samsung build these new plants, the impacts will fall disproportionately upon low income neighborhoods and communities of color. Arguing that "transnationalism is not the sole preserve of capital," the International Campaign for Responsible Technology [ICRT, 760 N. First St., San Jose, CA 95112, (408) 287-6707, fax: -6771] is organizing to fight computer-polluters worldwide. ICRT is already working with activists in Costa Rica, Malaysia, Scotland, Denmark, Africa, China, Japan, Spain, Chile and Vietnam. ICRT petitioned National Semiconductor officials to protect the women workers at its plant in Greenock, Scotland after a BBC Frontline investigation disclosed that these workers were "suffering from… breast, uterine and stomach cancer and leukemia."

Dow Worker Dosed, Dies
US - On October 12, an employee died at the Dow Chemical AgroSciences plant in Midland, Michigan shortly after he was exposed to the herbicide 2,4-dichlorophenol on his hands and feet. According to the US Chemical Safety Board, the worker "was undergoing decontamination when he suffered cardiac arrest." [The CSB's investigation of this case (99-001-R-MI) can be monitored at http://chemsafety.gov.]

Fouling the Waters
UK - The International Maritime Organization has been warned that anti-fouling paint applied to ships is entering the marine food chain and killing dolphins, sea lions and whales. According to World Wildlife Fund (WWF) researcher Sian Pullen "sea otters dying, dolphin and seals' livers are being poisoned" as a result of ingesting the tributltin (TBT) and other organotoxins in anti-fouling paints. TBT attacks the thymus gland, suppresses the immune system and interferes with sexual development. WWF has called for a global ban on the use of these coatings. The BBC reports that a range of "alternative biocide-free paints" may be available by 2001.

Chevron's Drills Could Dull The Point
US - Chevron hopes to drill an exploratory oil well off Cape Hatteras at "The Point," the most biodiverse ecosystem on North America's Atlantic Coast. Oil exploration would imperil more than 20 endangered species including whales, the world's last 50 pairs of Bermuda petrels and five of the world's seven species of sea turtles. In November, activists from EarthCulture [PO Box 4674, Greensboro, NC 27404, (336)685-7012] bicycled 200 miles to the capital to protest the drilling plan. "In the event of a major oil spill, pipeline rupture, tanker wreck or other accident, the local economies and wildlife of the Outer Banks would be completely wiped out," said EarthCulture's John Rash. "Oil and nature do not mix."

MTBE or Not MTBE?
US - The gasoline additive MTBE (methyl tertiary butyl ether) has contaminated Lake Tahoe and forced the closing of 12 of the 35 wells that Tahoe's 30,000 year-round residents relay on for safe drinking water. Last November, the South Tahoe Public Utility District filed a federal lawsuit against major oil companies and gas stations claiming that the oil industry - like the tobacco industry - covered up the health hazards of their product. MTBE contamination has forced the California cities of Santa Monica and Glennville to import water and other municipalities are considering lawsuits if state and federal authorities refuse to ban the additive. In an attempt to fend off a ban, major oil companies have replaced old gas storage tanks with double-lined versions. But Tahoe's experience shows that, even with the new tanks, MTBE leaks continue - from underground pipes and spills from pumps and supply trucks. Within in days of the Tahoe lawsuit, the University of California (UC) released a $500,000 five-volume study that concluded MTBE was never needed to improve the state's air quality. The study, funded by the State Legislature, found that as many as 1.2 percent of the state's drinking-water wells and 10 percent of its reservoirs now are contaminated with unsafe levels of MTBE. The UC study [tsrtp.ucdavis.edu/mtbereport] notes that water-soluble MTBE "is an animal carcinogen with the potential to cause cancer in humans" and placed the cost of treating MTBE-poisoned water at between $340 million and $1.48 billion. The San Francisco Chronicle, which exposed the failings of MTBE in a 1997 series, observed that "Oil companies seized on MTBE in part because it is a byproduct of the oil refining process." The MTBE scam simply allowed the oil industry to repackage a harmful waste product and sell it to the public as an expensive "clean air" cure. While environmentalists have called for an immediate ban on MTBE, the California Energy Commission has only called for a six-year phase-out, holding that the impact of a 90-cent-per-gallon hike in gas prices on the state's economy outweighs any threat to public health.

A Taste of Their Own Medicine
US - Last November's annual meeting of the Direct Marketing Association was disrupted when two EarthCulture activists dumped a load of junk-mail catalogs onto the floor of San Francisco's Moscone Convention Center and were hustled away by security guards. EarthCulture's Rick Spencer explained that "100 million trees are cut each year to make junk mail and half of it no one will ever read." The average US resident consumes 20 percent of the world's annual wood use, generates 740 pounds of paper waste each year and throws out "around 600 unrequested catalogs, credit card applications, sweepstake entry forms" totaling more than 4.5 million tons. EarthCulture [PO Box 4674, Greensboro, NC 27404, (336) 685-7012] is demanding that mass-mailers reduce the number and size of their catalogs and print on either 100 percent post-consumer recycled or tree-free paper.

End of the Roads?
US - The Southern Environmental Law Center [address, (404) 521-9900] and three other green groups have threatened to sue the Georgia Department of Transportation and the US Department of Transportation for "illegally approving $700 million in new road construction that will increase air pollution… in the Atlanta region." The suit argues that the 61 new road construction projects violate the 1990 Clean Air Act. Atlanta boast the longest average commute in the US (and perhaps the world) at 33.4 miles a day. Atlantans commute 100 million miles every work day, creating traffic jams that cost more than $1 billion in delays and wasted fuel. "Citizens of the Atlanta region can't keep holding their breath waiting for the clean air that comes with smart transportation planning," said SELC's Deep South Director Wesley Woolf. SELC predicts that the legal challenge "could have repercussions in many US cities where traffic-related pollution violates federal standards. The outcome could determine whether US cities can continue building roads that spread development further from urban centers."