News Release Archive - 2000

Big Oil Greasing Politics?

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WENONAH HAUTER
Director of Public Citizen’s Critical Mass Energy Project, Hauter said today: “High prices at the gas pump have translated into windfalls for oil companies, which saw first-quarter profits in 2000 rise nearly 500 percent over the same period in 1999. Oil companies are ripping off the public and picking consumers’ pocketbooks clean… After the Gulf War, Dick Cheney turned around and joined the major energy service provider Halliburton Co., the company that got the contract to clean up the mess in Kuwait after the war. No doubt the oil industry, which has already given George W. Bush $1.5 million, has given its seal of approval to Cheney.”
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RANIA MASRI
Coordinator for the Iraq Action Coalition, Masri said today: “During the buildup to the Gulf War, Cheney convinced the Saudis to allow in half a million U.S. troops by showing them satellite pictures that allegedly showed Iraqi troops massing at the Saudi border. Florida’s St. Petersburg Times later reported that Soviet commercial satellite photos showed there was no such Iraqi buildup. This indicates that Cheney lied in order to have Saudi Arabia as a base from which to attack Iraq…. Cheney also stated that every Iraqi target was ‘perfectly legitimate,’ adding, ‘If I had to do it over again, I would do exactly the same thing.’ So, he would bomb the Ameriyah shelter in Baghdad again, the waste-water treatment facilities, electrical power stations, and other necessities in civil infrastructure?”
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REAR ADMIRAL EUGENE CARROLL, USN (ret.)
Director of the Center for Defense Information, Carroll said today: “As Secretary of Defense, Cheney actually brought a certain amount of rigor and oversight to the military; he wasn’t just going to give them whatever they wanted and then some, as previous Secretaries of Defense had done. But Cheney’s ties to the oil industry make me concerned that he’ll put the well-being of that industry ahead of the long-term security interests of this country. We ought to be investing billions being dumped into the military systems into scientific research for alternative and renewable energy.”
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PRATAP CHATTERJEE
An investigative journalist who covers the oil industry, Chatterjee said today: “George W. Bush has made millions running shady oil businesses into the ground in Texas and has allowed big business to keep Texas the most polluted state in the country… As Secretary of Defense under President Bush, Dick Cheney privatized the U.S. military’s logistical support facilities to companies like Brown & Root, allowing them to profit handsomely off hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts for support operations from Kuwait to Somalia. Today as he walks away from his job as chief executive of Halliburton, the parent company of Brown & Root, he has personally pocketed $5.1 million… He also walks away from creating the world’s largest oil services company that has built polluting facilities from Nigeria to Siberia… Ken Lay, the chief executive of Enron Corporation, is the biggest funder of George W. Bush over his political career… Al Gore is a major shareholder in the Occidental oil corporation, which is stealing land from indigenous communities in Colombia and desecrating Native American burial sites in California.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Internet: Major Issues

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Privatization, Open Access, Privacy, Copyright

RONDA HAUBEN
Co-author of Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet, Hauben said today: “While the Internet’s infrastructure grew up under public administration and funding, the U.S. government has set out to give away vital Internet functions to a private corporation called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Congress requested that the General Accounting Office do an investigation of the creation and development of ICANN and its contracts with the Commerce Department. The GAO report (which was ‘corrected’ by the Commerce Department before being issued on July 7) acknowledges it would be illegal and unconstitutional to transfer public property to ICANN. However, it accepts the statement of the Commerce Department about whether this has actually happened rather than doing an independent assessment. There is no consideration of the public interest in the creation of ICANN or the GAO report.”
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ANDREA BUFFA
Executive director of Media Alliance, which is working to ensure open access in San Francisco, Buffa said today: “People like the Internet because it is open, but companies like AT&T and AOL/Time Warner are attempting to become the gatekeepers as broadband cable — which provides faster service — may become the way most people access the Internet. These companies are positioning themselves to use their status as the cable provider in cities across the country to favor the content that they have a financial interest in — and undermine the content that they don’t. If they are successful, they will in effect become private regulators of what was to be an open and diverse medium. What’s needed is open access so that all content providers have a level playing field.”
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FRANK BEACHAM
A writer specializing in technology criticism, Beacham said today: “A significant threat Internet users face is the assault on personal privacy by information-ravenous corporations and institutions that find it highly profitable to build and sell dossiers on the lives of unsuspecting users. The government, rather than take the lead in protecting personal privacy, is now a threat itself. The FBI’s recently-revealed Carnivore system has the unprecedented power to rapidly surf the Internet and analyze millions of communications by citizens.”
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DEAN BAKER
Co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Baker said today: “Copyrights are an anachronism restraining the development of technology in the Internet age. This form of protectionism is far more costly than the tariff and quota barriers that have become an obsession for proponents of ‘free trade.’ We should be developing creative alternative methods for funding the production of artistic work, as Stephen King is attempting to do with his latest novel. An even better method would be an individual tax credit system, where people would get a 100 percent credit for a small contribution for supporting artistic work. This work could then be freely reproduced, taking full advantage of the technological possibilities of the digital age.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Camp David: Deadline?

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FRANCIS BOYLE
Boyle, a professor at the University of Illinois College of Law in Champaign, served as legal advisor to the Palestinian delegation to the Middle East peace negotiations from 1991 to 1993. He said today: “The Palestinians have a very strong case they should take to the UN and the World Court. Everything that they are asking for — and then some — is contained in UN Resolution 181 and Resolution 194, both of which Israel accepted as a condition for its joining the UN. If Israel continues to refuse to let the refugees go home, or to share Jerusalem, Israel jeopardizes its position in the international community and its UN membership.”

Director of the Middle East Children’s Alliance, Lubin (who has just returned from the Mideast) said today: “If over 100,000 people from Russia could immigrate to Israel last year, then the time has come for the Palestinian children from the refugee camps to be allowed back to their rightful homes. Even if the Palestinians get 90 percent of the West Bank, we should bear in mind that that’s just 22 percent of historic Palestine.”
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ALI ABUNIMAH
Vice president of the Arab American Action Network, Abunimah just returned from the Mideast. He said today: “Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s definition of a ‘successful’ summit appears to be one where the Palestinian side gives up on all the fundamental issues — ending the illegal Israeli occupation of east Jerusalem, allowing refugees to return to their homes and recover their property, removing the Israeli settlements from the occupied territories, and real political independence and freedom for the Palestinian people…. Palestinians living in the occupied territories have seen increased poverty and joblessness, widespread abuses of human rights, and ever more Israeli confiscation of Palestinian land for the exclusive use of Jewish settlers. Palestinian refugees, especially those in Lebanon, are increasingly fearful that the United States and Israel will try to impose a solution which ignores the refugees’ fundamental right to return to the homes and lands from which they were expelled, or creates a ‘state’ over which Israel retains control and authority.”
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ROGER NORMAND
Policy director with the Center for Economic and Social Rights, Normand said today: “Arafat clearly cannot go back to his own people without Palestinian sovereignty in Jerusalem. Arafat is reluctant to go down in history as the first Arab leader to legitimize Israeli occupation…especially so soon after Hezbollah’s victory in south Lebanon…. The United States is brokering a deal to abandon the rights of Palestinian refugees soon after going to war supposedly to protect the rights of Kosovo’s refugees. The right of over 4 million Palestinian refugees to return to their homes is affirmed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yet their inalienable rights are on sale at Camp David, for a bribe of $20 billion.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Police Brutality; Welfare “Reform”

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JILL NELSON
Editor of the recently released book Police Brutality: An Anthology, Nelson said today: “On the day President Clinton addressed the NAACP, the mayor of Philadelphia was not present because a dozen or more of his officers were caught on video beating and kicking a suspect. Clearly there is a problem when it comes to policing citizens of color and respecting our constitutional rights… In the last decade we have seen millions of dollars go into beefing up police forces nationally and at this moment we have this much-lauded drop in street crime. It is time we look at re-imagining and retraining the police as to what their role is in a democratic society. We need to take a hard look at the use of deadly force; we need to have diversity not just be a sidebar, but who America really is.”

ROBERTO RODRIGUEZ
Syndicated columnist and author of Justice: A Question of Race, Rodriguez said today: “We focus on police brutality when we have these big video cases. Do we just react to each one and say that it’s bad or do we take it to another level? Police brutality affects whoever is dehumanized, usually people of color, but at times, political protesters of all colors. At best an officer is fired, but what we really need is a national truth commission. Instead, we have politicians addressing the NAACP or the National Council of La Raza pretending to speak like the people they are talking to. When I grew up, politicians would come wearing a big sombrero and eat a taco and somehow that was supposed to make us want to vote for them. It’s like putting on black face or brown face. Both Gore and Bush are guilty of this kind of thing. It’s not a coincidence that many people are alienated from politics.”
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VAN JONES
National executive director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and executive director of Bay Area Police Watch, Jones said today: “Clinton has been all rhetoric and little action in getting rid of the problem of police brutality. There have been conferences, there has been a meaningless executive order against ‘Driving While Black,’ but there has been little done with any real teeth. The Justice Department conducted an investigation into corruption in the Philadelphia police department, but obviously there’s been little progress made.”

GWENDOLYN MINK
Professor of politics at the University of California at Santa Cruz and author of Welfare’s End, Mink said today: “With the notable exception of affirmative action, the Clinton-Gore administration hasn’t tackled the most resilient and pernicious manifestations of racism and inequality. And even on affirmative action, where Clinton and Gore have held the line against GOP assaults, they’ve also moved the line: their ‘mend-it-don’t-end-it’ approach is a concession to conservative critics. This same sort of New Democrat concordance with conservatives keeps capital punishment alive and brought us welfare ‘reform.’ No surprise, then, that Gore never mentioned welfare, let alone welfare justice, in laying out his civil rights agenda to the NAACP.”

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

Mideast Talks at Camp David

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LAMIS ANDONI
An independent analyst and journalist who has covered the Mideast for nearly two decades, Andoni said today: “U.S. officials are apparently presenting a package to the Israelis and Palestinians, hoping that will become the basis for negotiations instead of international law. U.S. officials have been making references to achieving an agreement that will address the Israeli desire to end all Palestinian claims. Arafat is certainly the weak party, but he cannot accept something that prevents Palestinians from acquiring their rights in the future, especially since Palestinians are very disillusioned with the Oslo Accords.”
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SUSAN AKRAM
Associate professor at Boston University School of Law teaching immigration and refugee law, Akram has just returned from a year-long Fulbright fellowship in Jerusalem researching durable solutions for Palestinian refugees. She said today: “Refugee issues are the lynchpin to a lasting peace in the Middle East. The world community has ignored implementing the rights of Palestinian refugees for over 50 years, the longest and largest refugee population. There is neither a moral nor a legal justification for failing to apply the same standards that are applied to all other refugees in the world to the Palestinians. The most important are those articulated in UN Resolution 194: rights of return, restitution and compensation. Israel is attempting to force an agreement that will extinguish individual Palestinian refugee claims to those rights.”
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SAM HUSSEINI
Communications director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, Husseini said today: “The administration waged war last year against Yugoslavia proclaiming that ethnic cleansing must be stopped; now it is putting its political weight behind solidifying the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.”

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN
Author of Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict and The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, Finkelstein said today: “The figure that Israel will withdraw from 90 percent of the West Bank is deceptive. Expanded ‘Jerusalem,’ plans for long-term leases in the Jordan Valley, the dubious promise of future redeployments as well as bypass roads make it more like 60 percent. More importantly, it is not contiguous and thus resembles Bantustans more than a sovereign state… Israel will have the last word on external security (including immigration and emigration), trade and crucial water rights.”
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PHYLLIS BENNIS
Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and author of Calling the Shots: How Washington Dominates Today’s UN, Bennis said today: “The key challenges will be Jerusalem and refugees. However Barak and Clinton may try to finesse the language, Palestinians know full well that Abu Dis is not Jerusalem. It would be the equivalent of expanding the city limits of New York to include Newark, New Jersey, and then announcing Newark could be called ‘New York.’ A limited agreement to allow some handpicked Palestinians back home, based on ’empathy’ rather than international law, stands in direct violation of the U.S.-backed UN Resolution 194 defining the right of return and compensation for all refugees from 1948.”

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

Global Conference Getting Underway: AIDS and Drugs

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The 13th International Conference on AIDS will be held in Durban, South Africa from July 9 to 14. The following analysts are available for interviews:

ROBERT WEISSMAN
Co-director of Essential Action, Weissman said today: “While Africa is experiencing an epidemic that ranks among the worst in world history, the multinational drug companies — which produce the drugs that can treat and extend the lives of those with HIV/AIDS — are focusing not on the humanitarian tragedy but on their bottom lines. There’s plenty of blame to go around for the HIV/AIDS epidemic, but certainly high up on the list are the drug company executives who prioritize protecting their intellectual property and guarding their profits over saving people’s lives.”
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JOELLE TANGUY
Executive director of Doctors Without Borders, USA, Tanguy said today: “For the first time, the International AIDS Conference will be held on the African continent and in a country where a significant proportion of the population has HIV/AIDS. People with HIV/AIDS in South Africa — and in all developing countries — are facing a severe crisis of access to the life-saving medications.” She added: “The antiretroviral drugs that have transformed HIV/AIDS from a death sentence to a chronic disease in developed countries are largely unavailable in developing countries, priced beyond the means of most people.”
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PETER LURIE, M.D.
Deputy director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, Lurie has until now attended every International AIDS Conference since 1992. He said today: “The greatest tragedy of the AIDS epidemic today is how much could have been done to reduce its toll and how little was done. Short courses of antiretroviral drugs that cost as little as four dollars per mother can reduce mother-to-infant HIV transmission by a third or more. Yet large parts of sub-Saharan Africa do not enjoy a stable supply of pharmaceuticals. We should be treating sexually transmitted diseases which, left untreated, increase HIV transmission rates. Allowing African countries to make or purchase their own pharmaceutical drugs through compulsory licensing and parallel import proposals can save many lives, but have been opposed by the big drug companies…. In exchange for loans from the World Bank and the IMF, these institutions have imposed structural adjustment policies on developing countries. These export-oriented economic models undermine the public sector and health services in ways that are detrimental to controlling HIV/AIDS. Debt relief is therefore a necessary component of any strategy addressing HIV/AIDS.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020 or (202) 332-5055; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Interviews Available: Israeli-Palestinian Summit, Clashes in Northern Ireland

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SIMONA SHARONI
Co-chair of the Consortium on Peace Research, Education and Development, Sharoni — a long-time professor of conflict resolution and peace studies — has traveled with students to Northern Ireland and the Mideast several times. Some of her students are currently international observers in Northern Ireland. She said today: “There are a few striking similarities between the situation in Israel/Palestine and the North of Ireland, and the prospects for long-lasting peace in both regions. In both cases, albeit for different reasons, the United States has positioned itself as a key player. Yet, the Clinton administration and the State Department have ignored the deeply ingrained structures of inequality and injustice that still characterize these conflicts…. Right-wing groups in Israel, as with elements in the Unionist-Loyalist community in the North of Ireland, refuse to relinquish control and share power. Violence in the North of Ireland is going to erupt again and the Israeli-Palestinian summit next week may end in failure without a framework, process, and structures designed to achieve justice and equality.”
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YVONNE HADDAD
Professor at the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University and author of several books on the Mideast and Islam, Haddad said today: “What the Palestinians need is independence, not autonomy. Their leaders should not be strong-armed into accepting mini-reservations. Right now, Israel controls who can come in and go out of ‘Palestinian-controlled’ areas; if a Palestinian wants to go from Gaza to the West Bank, he or she has to get Israeli permission. Israel controls the Palestinian economy, the imports and exports. There has to be a real Arab Jerusalem. Any agreement should provide for re-settlement of Palestinian refugees and compensation to them; otherwise there will not be any peace, because the current situation is based on injustice and the next generation will pick up the fight.”
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SEAN CAHILL
A member of Peace Watch Ireland and the Irish Parades Emergency Committee, Cahill said today: “The Patton Commission mandates dramatic changes in policing practices and the Good Friday Agreement calls for an end to sectarian harassment. But sieges of Catholic communities across Northern Ireland with these marches are clear examples of sectarian harassment. We hope that the Northern Ireland Office and the security forces will ensure the safety of these besieged Catholic communities. But a significant number of police are members of the Orange Order, a supremacist organization that organizes these frequently violent marches…. Last weekend, the head of the Garvaghy Road Residence Coalition was arrested because he was looking into the arrests of several teenagers.”

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

Interviews Available: Nazi Link to German Scandal, Elian and the Cuba Embargo, Sunday’s Mexican Election

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MARTIN A. LEE
Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl is scheduled to testify before a parliamentary inquiry on Thursday. In the Los Angeles Times on June 25, free-lance investigative journalist Martin A. Lee exposed the Nazi link to the current slush fund and influence-peddling scandal in Germany involving Kohl. Lee traces the roots of the corruption scandal to Kohl’s close relationship with Fritz Ries, an influential German industrialist who made a fortune during the Third Reich from expropriating “Aryanized” Jewish property and from slave labor in factories near Auschwitz. After the war, Ries became Kohl’s principal patron within the West German business community. Ries also retained as his chief of staff and legal advisor Eberhard Taubert, a veteran of Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry. Taubert was subsequently recruited by the CIA to serve as an espionage asset in the shadow war against the Soviet Union. “Intent on turning West Germany into a strong, prosperous bulwark against Soviet-bloc communism, U.S. policymakers sanctioned the lenient treatment given to dubious characters like Ries and Taubert,” Lee explains. “In the interest of fighting communism, the U.S. turned a blind eye to political corruption in West Germany for years. Undoubtedly, this encouraged Kohl to do whatever he thought was necessary to maintain his political party’s grip on power, even if it meant breaking the law.”

LARRY BIRNS
Director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Birns said today: “The Elian Gonzalez case exposed Miami’s right-wing anti-Castro lobby as an extremist group that does not accept basic tenets of this country’s political culture. Their fanatic antics before a national TV audience opened the way for the anti-embargo forces to kick in. Since this group included such paladins of respectability as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and some members of the Reagan administration’s national security team, all of a sudden they provided credibility to the notion that the embargo had outlived its usefulness…. In Mexico, the long-ruling PRI party is facing its strongest challenge ever in the election this Sunday. With the election being so close, it will take only a small amount of fraud to ensure that the PRI wins by a squeaker, as was the case in 1994. Lurking in the background is the growing strength of the military. The role of Mexico’s increasingly modernized military is expanding, and with that development there is a direct correlation to its growing predilection to use violence against political dissidents, threatening the country’s still frail democratic values. Washington is implicitly condoning this use of repression by extending millions of dollars of military aid to Mexico, without adequate human rights safeguards.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Interviews Available: Genome and Philip Morris / Nabisco

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JONATHAN KING
Professor of molecular biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, King is on the board of the Council for Responsible Genetics. He said today: “The determination of human gene sequences represents the outcome of 50 years of public investment in basic biomedical research. The publicly released gene sequence data provide important inputs into understanding the biological basis of human health and disease…. Our genes were inherited from our parents through their parents and previous generations; their sequences are not inventions of corporate or any other scientists. The patenting of human genes by Celera, Human Genome Sciences and other companies and institutions represents an egregious expropriation of our human heritage. The requirement to pay license fees to access our own gene sequences is a barrier that can only retard biomedical progress. Congress needs to instruct the Patent Office to cease granting patents on human gene sequences and to exclude living creatures, their genes or components from the patent system.”
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JAMES LOVE
Director of the Consumer Project on Technology, Love said today: “The mapping of the human genome is a great opportunity for science, but also a very big challenge for public policy makers. Commercial interests are seeking to stake claims on very basic scientific results. There is a growing risk that scientific research and the development of new therapies will be confronted with endless lawsuits over intellectual property rights. The disputes over the licensing of BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene patents are examples of the types of issues that will be facing policy makers. How much power and discretion will we give to patent owners when it comes to controlling access to new health-care related inventions? How can we prevent the land rush for new gene patents from blocking academic research? This is the beginning of a very important debate.”
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SALLY HERRIN
Communications director of the Nebraska Farmers Union, Herrin said today: “The purchase of Nabisco by Philip Morris, owner of Kraft Foods and the largest U.S. food processor, is hardly good news. Spokesmen for Philip Morris concede that consumers will not benefit with lower costs. The food processing industry is already one of the most highly concentrated sectors of our economy. Further concentration of power into the hands of the nation’s largest food company is not good for family farmers or ranchers, the folks who produce the raw material food. Agricultural producers cannot control the price of what they produce, because unlike most industries, hundreds of thousands of sellers (individual farm and ranch families) must sell to only a handful of buyers — four or five large food processors.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Death Penalty

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Gary Graham is scheduled to be executed at 7 P.M. Eastern Time. The following analysts and critics of the death penalty are available for interviews:

WILLIAM HARRELL
Executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, Harrell said today: “We are outraged by the board’s failure to halt this execution. The judicial system has failed us, the Board of Pardons and Paroles has failed us and the governor has failed us. This is the greatest proof that the time for a moratorium on executions in Texas is now.” The president of the board of the ACLU of Texas, Greg Gladden is coordinating the legal observers outside death row at the Huntsville prison.
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ROBERT MEEROPOL
Robert Meeropol and his brother Michael Meeropol are the only people in the U.S. to have both their parents (Julius and Ethel Rosenberg) executed. Robert Meeropol is now the executive director of the Rosenberg Fund for Children. He said today: “The death penalty diminishes the humanity of all it touches. Rather than seeing Governor George W. Bush as a ‘compassionate conservative,’ we should see him as Governor Death. Bad as Graham’s execution is, the circumstances around it — testimony from one person at 30 feet, other witnesses not being able to testify in the case, notoriously ineffective counsel and the knowledge that that’s the norm rather than the exception for death row inmates in Texas — are even more horrifying. African Americans are on death row totally disproportionately to their numbers in the general population.”
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LANCE LINDSEY
Executive director of Death Penalty Focus, Lindsey said today: “If the state of Texas goes ahead with executing Gary Graham, it will be a huge stain. His case is so problematic, not just with reasonable doubt, but very real doubt. According to a recent poll, now 73 percent of the public in California want a moratorium on the death penalty. The death penalty is only about politics, and the worst sort of politics. It appeals to our worst instincts. It doesn’t make us safer, it’s not a deterrent.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167