News Release Archive - 1999

Yesterday, for the first time, the American Medical Association voted to endorse unionization for doctors. Also, there is renewed discussion of a patients\’ bill of rights. The following analysts are available to discuss these and other health care policy issues:

DIANE LARDIE
National coordinator for the Universal Health Care Action Network, Lardie said: \”Ten years ago, patient protection wasn\’t even a part of our language. It\’s only in a for-profit market system that we have to legislate protections that used to be taken for granted… What unnerves me about some of these proposals for a patients\’ bill of rights is that they are lip service for folks who are already insured — the proposals end up providing very little for very few. Still there are important issues. Health plans must be held accountable for the decisions that they make. If we can sue doctors for medical decisions, we should be able to sue health plans. That option is important because it\’s a deterrent against poor care. There should also be a public accounting of health plans — a process that would tell people what percentage of the cost of a plan is really going to health care. To the extent that we\’re paying for high salaries for executives or slick magazines, we need to know. Some of these plans have a role for a consumer advocate or an ombudsman, and that\’s a positive step. On the other hand, body-part-by-body-part or procedure-by-procedure legislation is counterproductive. What we need is a quality health system built on trust.\”
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QUENTIN YOUNG, M.D.
National coordinator for Physicians for a National Health Program and past president of the American Public Health Association, Young said: \”The patients\’ bill of rights proposals represent a scream of outrage by a public that doesn\’t know what hit them. The system in place in 1980 favored the doctor too much, but the patient also benefitted in many ways. That system\’s flaws fueled the Clinton plan, which was a 1,300-page monstrosity. The Clintons disregarded single payer because it wasn\’t \’feasible\’ — but how feasible was their plan? Since then, there\’s been an enormous amount of venture capital coming into health care, which is about maximizing profit. Having a patients\’ bill of rights that will allow people to sue their HMO and other reforms is good but will not solve the real problem. This system needs more than just tweaking. It needs to have universal national health insurance… The AMA backing unionizing is legitimate, but it should be coupled with a general effort to act on behalf of patients. The AMA has vast resources, and unfortunately it has used them to back reactionary policies, like blocking Medicare and universal health insurance.\”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

In his speech today at the International Labor Organization Conference in Geneva, President Clinton said: “We must wipe from the Earth the most vicious forms of abusive child labor. Every single day, tens of millions of children work in conditions that shock the conscience… There are children handling dangerous chemicals; children forced to work when they should be in school…” The following analysts are available to discuss issues of child labor and human rights:

DIANE MULL
Executive director of the Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs, a group of employment training and service organizations located in 49 states and Puerto Rico, Mull said: “There are 300,000 to one million children working illegally in the U.S.; most of them are in agriculture. (Other major sectors are child prostitution, pornography, street-selling kids and sweatshops.) Under U.S. federal law, there are child labor exemptions that make it legal for a child as young as six to work as a hired worker in agriculture. They can work an unlimited number of hours before school, after school and during the school week. An August 1998 GAO report, ‘Child Labor in Agriculture,’ found that children in agriculture are working in more hazardous conditions with less protections than children in any other industry. Currently, it is not considered hazardous for a child to work in a field that has been treated with dangerous agricultural chemicals… Of all children working, 8 percent are in agriculture, but over 40 percent of fatalities are in that sector. Children are working under such conditions because their parents are themselves not able to earn a living wage in agriculture — since that industry enjoys exemptions under provisions for minimum wage, unemployment compensation, workers compensation, overtime and collective bargaining.”
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LORETTA ROSS
Director of the National Center for Human Rights Education, Ross said: “Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that everyone is entitled to a job that provides an adequate standard of living for themselves and their family, that no coercion is allowed and that no child labor should be used. But the economic managers of the U.S. economy are violating those policies. The two fastest growing labor forces in this country today are prison labor and welfare labor. A corporation can pay prisoners in Louisiana as little as four cents an hour to fill a job that used to cost $20 an hour. When the U.S. government chooses to intervene on labor issues, it leans towards policies protecting profits, not workers’ rights. If the U.S. was serious about protecting workers’ human rights, it would ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Rights of Women and the Covenant on Economic Human Rights.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

DAVID KOTZ
Co-author of Revolution From Above: The Demise of the Soviet System and professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Kotz said Monday: “The Russians’ preemptive move into Kosovo is a consequence of the two-track strategy that NATO followed regarding ending the war. The first track was their insistence on a NATO force in Kosovo. The second track was to bring the Russians on board and to get a UN resolution. This gave the Russians the opportunity to move into Kosovo when NATO refused to give the Russians a contingent not under NATO command. The very mild reaction of NATO is not just politeness — it is also a recognition that what the Russians did was within the bounds of the UN resolution, which gives Russia as much right as anyone to enter Kosovo for peacekeeping.”

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL
The editor of The Nation and co-author of Voices of Glasnost: Interviews with Gorbachev’s Reformers, vanden Heuvel said Monday: “The Russian troops in Pristina are the starkest reminders of how profound and dangerous the impact of the war has been on the deteriorating U.S.-Russian relationship. Today, the Clinton administration’s relations are almost entirely with a tiny and dying Yeltsin regime, which is fighting ferociously over succession, power and property. We still don’t know who made the decision to send in Russian troops. Was Yeltsin convinced of the wisdom of the action or was it in effect imposed on him by a humiliated and angry military? What is clear is that the Russian military has been angered and emboldened by the war and NATO’s attempt to cut it out of Kosovo. For the first time in years, the military leadership is speaking up and acting out. Are we seeing the beginnings of a coup against Yeltsin’s foreign policy?”
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FRED WEIR
Co-author of Revolution From Above: The Demise of the Soviet System and Moscow correspondent for Canadian Press (Canada’s national wire service), Weir said Monday: “The Russians felt they were used and pushed aside on Yugoslavia. Now they have put ‘facts on the ground’ which NATO will have to take into account.”

NICHOLAS KOZLOV
An associate professor of economics at Hofstra University who regularly writes on Russia, Kozlov said Monday: “The NATO powers might be playing the economic-aid card. NATO apparently felt it could proceed with the Yugoslavia operation because of Russia’s economic — and therefore military and political — weakness. There are already signs that Russia is going ahead with an increase in military expenditures, not just from the Duma, but also now directly from the government which up until now has been urging reductions.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

While many are claiming the peace agreement shows that Milosevic backed down, some analysts are suggesting that essentially the same agreement could have been achieved without bombing. They point to U.S. demands at Rambouillet in February that are absent from the current agreement. While some elements of the new accords remain unclear, apparent major differences between the Rambouillet text and the current agreement include:

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WHAT MILOSEVIC GAVE UP

Can keep only a few hundred, not a few thousand, troops in Kosovo

WHAT NATO GAVE UP

The international force can be deployed only in Kosovo, not throughout Yugoslavia

International force under UN — not NATO — auspices, with Russian component

UNHCR, not NATO, supervises return of refugees

No referendum on Kosovo independence

PHYLLIS BENNIS
Author of Calling the Shots: How Washington Dominates Today’s UN and a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, Bennis said: “This agreement might have been achievable months earlier, without the devastation of Yugoslavia and the escalation of the anti-Albanian ‘ethnic cleansing’ in Kosovo wrought by NATO’s bombing campaign.”
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MARJORIE COHN
Professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, Cohn said: “At Rambouillet, NATO presented Milosevic with an ultimatum impossible for him to accept. NATO has now diluted its demands but, to justify two months of bombing, claims Milosevic capitulated…”

STEPHEN ZUNES
An associate professor of politics and chair of the Peace and Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco, Zunes said: “Most crucially, the insistence at Rambouillet that NATO troops have ‘unimpeded access throughout the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia’ has been dropped, limiting their role only to Kosovo…”

SETH ACKERMAN
A media analyst with Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, Ackerman said: “Last week’s Serb agreement was falsely reported as a total NATO victory. Then, when military talks broke down, it was claimed that the Serbs were reneging. In fact, those military talks were largely a NATO ploy — unsuccessful — to totally bypass the UN.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

The White House Conference on Mental Health convened today in Washington. These policy analysts are available for interviews:

DR. PETER BREGGIN
Author of Back to Prozac and Talking Back to Ritalin: What Doctors Aren’t Telling You About Stimulants for Children, Breggin said: “Psychiatric drugs are far more dangerous than the public is led to believe. The White House conference is trying to sell the American public on psychiatric drugs and involuntary treatment…”
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SALLY ZINMAN
Director of the California Network of Mental Health Clients, Zinman took part in Monday’s White House Conference on Mental Health. She is among several invitees calling upon Tipper Gore and the administration to oppose the increased use of involuntary psychiatric treatment. Zinman said: “I hope to raise consciousness about the drive across the country to expand forced treatment. It’s a drive that is fueled by demonizing people with psychiatric disabilities as causing violence in the country. I want to raise awareness of the mental patients’ movement and its achievements in the last 25 years including the self-help peer support programs that exist across the country.”
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DAVID OAKS
Co-coordinator of the Support Coalition International, Oaks said: “We have several concerns about the approach that focuses on forced psychiatric drugging instead of on support services and alternatives people can voluntarily use. There are studies of MRI and CT scans that show the shape and size of the brain change as the result of the long-term use of the neuroleptic drugs. This makes it far more difficult for patients to come off these drugs and can result in patients being left with even worse emotional and mental problems. There are also two recent studies which show African Americans are especially hard hit by the drugs typically used in psychiatric procedures. They tend to be given the more powerful neuroleptic drugs more quickly, more frequently, and at higher dosages than whites. We are seeing an attitude that all behavioral problems have a biochemical cause and therefore a biochemical solution. This view is being pushed by the pharmaceutical industry. Already 39 states have laws on the books under which people can be ordered to take drugs on an out-patient basis, even in their own homes.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020, or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

GEORGE KENNEY
A former Yugoslavia desk officer at the U.S. State Department, Kenney said: “An unimpeachable press source who regularly travels with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told [me] that, swearing reporters to deep-background confidentiality at the Rambouillet talks, a senior State Department official had bragged that the United States ‘deliberately set the bar higher than the Serbs could accept.’ The Serbs needed, according to the official, a little bombing to see reason. That was clear in Appendix B of Rambouillet. This war was totally avoidable.”

GORDON CLARK
The executive director of Peace Action, one of 26 people arrested in front of the White House yesterday, Clark said: “We are not demanding President Clinton’s ‘cautious optimism,’ we are demanding an end to this immoral, illegal and insane bombing campaign. We will be joining with others tomorrow in protesting against this war.”

SR. ARDETH PLATTE
A Dominican nun and member of the Jonah House Community, Platte was also arrested yesterday. She said: “Citizens have to plead the cause for peace. Clinton bombs countries, defies the Constitution, defies international law and in the next breath tells children that they can’t use violence. Last year, I participated in a plowshare action, destroying weapons at a military show at Andrews Air Force base. There were children there ‘playing’ with the weapons. I sent pictures of it to Hillary and Bill Clinton — they should look at what they’re teaching before they go preaching.”
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JASMINKA UDOVICKI
Co-editor of Burn This House: The Making and Unmaking of Yugoslavia, Udovicki said: “Incineration of so much of civilian life in Yugoslavia, 300 schools included, was easy. Will the countries that devastated Yugoslavia finally see what the West has failed to see in the last decade: that the only path to stability in the Balkans is sustained and active support of democratic forces in Serbia? It is those forces Milosevic is now likely to try to quell with all his might.”

STEPHEN ZUNES
An associate professor of politics and chair of the Peace and Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco, Zunes said: “An imposed Western formula on Kosovo will result in an uneasy truce in a badly divided society which will not heal the wounds, encourage democracy or lead to real peace. While forcing an effective surrender through weeks of bombing can be successful, it will likely result in such bitterness that it will only pave the way for a dangerous political reaction, which may not be seen for some years to come, but will only add to the sense of historical wrong which manifests in violent and chauvinistic ideologies.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

WALTER ROCKLER
Rockler, a Washington lawyer and a former prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, said: \”For some to shout \’war criminal\’ at Milosevic only emphasizes that those who live in glass houses should be careful about throwing stones. The Nuremberg Court found that to initiate a war of aggression, as the U.S. has done against Yugoslavia, is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime.\”

GLEN RANGWALA
Today, the Movement for the Advancement of International Criminal Law hands a 40-page dossier to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in the Hague charging Prime Minister Tony Blair and other British officials with serious violations of international humanitarian law in Yugoslavia. Rangwala, an international lawyer at Trinity College, Cambridge University, is the main author of the dossier. Today, he said: \”Unlike almost every previous conflict, the current war in Yugoslavia is marked by the presence of judicial institutions which can prosecute criminals on every side. There is now overwhelming evidence that NATO is consciously violating cardinal principles of humanitarian law.\”

ANN FAGAN GINGER
Professor of Peace Law and Human Rights at San Francisco State University, Ginger said: \”Women and children are always the major victims in war. The U.S. has not ratified treaties protecting women and children. The bombing in Yugoslavia violates these treaties, the UN Charter and the most basic international law.\”

JOHN QUIGLEY
Professor of Law, Ohio State University, and editor of the forthcoming Genocide in Cambodia, Quigley said: \”The targeting of broadcast stations, electrical facilities and various factories, all of which have a primarily civilian purpose, is not legitimate.\”

ROBERT HAYDEN
Director of the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, Hayden said: \”When questioned about NATO liability for war crimes, NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said that \’NATO is the friend of the Tribunal… NATO countries are those that have provided the finances to set up the Tribunal, we are among the majority financiers.\’ Mr. Shea clearly knows that he who pays the piper calls the tune.\”

JOHN BURROUGHS
Executive director of the Lawyers\’ Committee on Nuclear Policy, Burroughs said: \”The law of armed conflict mandates that military action bear a proportionate relationship to the achievement of concrete military advantage. But the bombing of Yugoslavia is about punishing a society and a regime.\”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

MIKE MOORE
Editor of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Moore said: “What the Chinese are doing is developing a survivable second-strike force — that is the ability to respond if they are attacked. To do this, they need to miniaturize their nuclear warheads to fit them on mobile missiles. To do that, you need to do a lot of nuclear testing, which the U.S. and others have done, but the Chinese have not. So, instead, they may have stolen some of the data.”
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LISBETH GRONLUND
Senior staff scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists and research fellow at MIT’s security studies program, Gronlund said: “We need some perspective on this… China has less than two-dozen warheads that can reach the U.S., while the U.S. has thousands that can reach China… One of the things that the Chinese are concerned about is the credibility of their nuclear deterrent, particularly with all the talk in the U.S. of building national missile defense — which China sees as targeted at China.”

SAM DAY
Day was managing editor of The Progressive magazine when it was taken to court by the government for publishing an article, “The H-Bomb Secret,” which challenged nuclear weapons secrecy. Today he said: “The notion that the Chinese have stolen vital nuclear information is obviously not true and is part of an agenda on the part of people who seek to embarrass the administration and to invent new enemies to replace the Soviet Union.”

JAY TRUMAN
Director of Downwinders, Truman said: “I find it very hypocritical for us to — a year ago — complain about the Indians and Pakistanis developing nuclear weapons while we aided the Chinese in developing theirs. Meanwhile, we have insisted on developing deadlier nuclear weapons. Real leadership would be in stopping — not pushing — the arms race. This is reminiscent of when the U.S. helped the Soviets use nuclear explosions for so-called ‘peaceful’ purposes, but the real goal was to undermine efforts for a test ban.”
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STEVEN AFTERGOOD
Research analyst at the Federation of American Scientists, Aftergood said: “The tone of the discussion has far outpaced the available facts. The Cox Report claims that Chinese nuclear technology is ‘on a par’ with the United States. That is manifestly untrue.”
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ROBERT WEIL
Author of Red Cat, White Cat: China and the Contradictions of ‘Market Socialism’, Weil said: “China has consistently called for universal nuclear disarmament and a pledge of no-first-use of such weapons, positions that the U.S. rejects… It is the U.S., not China, that maintains the largest spy agencies in the world and is the one that is launching missiles at various countries — including being at least careless enough to hit the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167