News Release Archive - 2005

Big Economic Picture: · Budget · Transit Strike

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FRANCES FOX PIVEN
Author of the book The War at Home: The Domestic Costs of Bush’s Militarism, Piven is Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York. Her past books include The Breaking of the American Social Compact.

She said today: “Even as the lies and hype that justified the administration’s war policy dissipate, the Republican budget policy is being pushed forward. The core policy is clear: tax cuts for the rich, spending cuts for the poor, even poor children, and escalating spending on military, no matter how urgent our needs at home become. The greed and irresponsibility in command in Washington was obscured for awhile by the fear and excitement of war. But now that Americans are beginning to see past the fog of war, they are likely also to begin to see the recklessness of these domestic policies.”
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MAX SAWICKY
An economist with the Economic Policy Institute, Sawicky said today: “What’s in process now are pointless cuts in safety net programs of $40 billion and small, fake cuts in military. The military cuts of about $5 billion (out of a total military budget of $450 billion) will likely be restored in the Spring with the so-called ‘Supplemental Appropriations,’ which is the vehicle for Congress’ second annual ride on the budget merry-go-round. Any illusions of deficit reduction should be dispelled because with the other hand, the Congress plans to cut taxes by over $90 billion.”
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MANNY NESS
Ness is professor at Brooklyn College and editor of Working USA: The Journal of Labor and Society. He is working on an encyclopedia of strikes in America.
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RON DANIELS
Available for a limited number of interviews, Daniels is executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. He said today: “At a time when labor is on the decline, the transit workers union put their strike in a framework of social justice and civil rights for all working people. They tied their strike to the general assault on pension plans and healthcare, as well as to the security of the next generation of workers. The ultimate absurdity was [New York City mayor] Bloomberg — a billionaire — calling the transit workers ‘selfish’ and ‘thuggish.’ It’s racist. I doubt that he would have called a primarily white union thuggish, but the transit workers are largely African American, Caribbean, Asian and Latino.”
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ED OTT
Director of public policy with the Central Labor Council in New York City, Ott said today: “There has been a widespread sense that labor has been going backwards, that things were being given back which took a century to build. The transit workers tapped into that.”
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CHRIS KUTALIK
Editor of Labor Notes, Kutalik said today: “There has been an uptick in strikes the last several months after a prolonged concessionary period with large-scale givebacks by unions. Some of these seem to be desperation strikes. There has been a sustained attack on defined benefit pensions, and unions have let that happen. Unions getting things like pensions helps other workers; it holds the line in terms of wages and benefits — and other workers have an interest in keeping that up.”
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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

· Catholic Workers Back from Guantanamo · Bethlehem

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ANNA BROWN
FRIDA BERRIGAN
Berrigan and Brown are among the 25 activists, many with the Catholic Worker, who have just returned from a march to the U.S. military base at Guantanamo. While holding vigils, they fasted outside Guantanamo. The Associated Press recently reported that “32 prisoners [in Guantanamo] are on hunger strike to protest what they say is cruel and inhumane treatment. Twenty-five of those prisoners are being fed through tubes.”

Berrigan wrote in her piece “Why I Am Marching to Guantanamo”: “It is an act against biology. But refusing to eat is the prisoners’ only way of drawing attention to their predicament. They have no other tools except deepening their own suffering. … The Bush administration has denied every fundamental right afforded by international law or American law to allow the inmates to defend themselves. It has even denied charging them with any crime beyond looking the part of the villain in Bush’s war on terrorism.”

In addition to being available for interviews, Brown can arrange interviews with other marchers from around the U.S.; profiles of each of the 25 activists along with personal statements and other information is available at Witness Torture. (Recent news reports indicate that the Catholic Worker is among the groups being monitored by the FBI.)
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Sr. ANNE MONTGOMERY
ART LAFFIN
Also just back from the Guantanamo march, Sr. Anne has more than 40 years teaching experience. For the last 10 years, she has worked with the Christian Peacemaker Teams, which currently have four members held hostage in Iraq. She was with the CPT in Iraq most recently in April; she was also recently in Hebron with the group in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Laffin has been active in nonviolence work for peace, justice and human rights for over 25 years. He is a member of the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker in Washington, D.C., and is co-editor with Sr. Anne Montgomery of the book Swords Into Plowshares.
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SCOTT LANGLEY
Langley works in the Catholic Worker house in Raleigh, North Carolina, with his wife, Sheila Stumph; they have both returned from the march to Guantanamo. He is also North Carolina Death Penalty Coordinator for Amnesty International. He said today: “We live a few blocks from death row in North Carolina, one of the more active death rows. We work with the families visiting their loved ones on death row; we organize resistance around executions when they come up.” This year North Carolina executed the 1,000th person since the death penalty was reinstated. Langley is working on a photo documentary about the death penalty.
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LEILA SANSOUR
PATRICK ORR
Chief executive of the Open Bethlehem Project, Sansour said today: “The current situation here is grim. The walls and fences that encircle Bethlehem have turned this 4,000-year-old city into a prison for its 160,000 citizens.”

Patrick Orr is London representative for the group. He said today: “The Israeli Occupation is an ever-present fact in Bethlehem. Over the last few years, the city’s borders have been dramatically redrawn by the expansion of illegal settlements in a ring-like formation around the city, on land confiscated by force or acquired by coercion from Bethlehemites. Squatting above every hilltop, these settlements have no respect for the environment or the lives and heritage they erase.”
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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

· Domestic Spying · Torture

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MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD
RUTH CONNIFF
Editor of The Progressive, Rothschild writes the “McCarthyism Watch” web column. Conniff covers national politics for The Progressive; her most recent piece is “Bush as Nixon.”

Rothschild’s latest article, “Bush Takes the Crown,” quotes from one of the three articles of impeachment that came out of the House Judiciary Committee in 1974: “[The President] has repeatedly engaged in conduct violating the constitutional rights of citizens, impairing the due and proper administration of justice and the conduct of lawful inquiries, or contravening the laws governing agencies of the executive branch and the purpose of these agencies.” Commented Rothschild: “If you replace Nixon’s name with Bush’s, the article still stands.”

[In contrast to his current position, Bush stated in 2004 that “a wiretap requires a court order…” Rep. John Conyers has proposed measures to censure Bush and released a report: “The Constitution in Crisis: The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retributions and Cover-ups in the Iraq War.”] More Information
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STANLEY KUTLER
Available for a limited number of interviews, Kutler is professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin and author of the book “The Wars of Watergate.” He said today: “Bush is arguing that the only restraint on him is self-restraint; but that’s illegitimate. We are supposed to have checks and balances.” Kutler noted that in the past when overreaching constitutional powers, the executive branch had “seemed to stake its constitutional authority on a claim that the President had succeeded to the sovereign powers of George III.”
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MICHAEL RATNER
President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Ratner said today: “From its assertions that it could torture in the name of national security to its recent claim that it could engage in warrantless wiretapping of Americans, the Bush administration has moved us from a government responsible and accountable to the people to one that dictates to the people. Every American should be in a political rebellion against the criminals now running this country.”
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BRENDAN SMITH
JEREMY BRECHER
Smith and Brecher wrote the recent article “Ban Torture or Protect Torturers?” which includes an analysis of the McCain amendment on torture. Smith said today: “Congress is poised to pass legislation allowing evidence obtained by torture to be used against Guantanamo captives and denying them the right to habeas corpus — the right to make the government justify their captivity before a court.” Added Brecher: “This assault on the most venerable and universal of legal principles is attached to the same legislation as Sen. John McCain’s anti-torture measure.” Smith, a legal scholar, and Brecher, a historian, are co-editors, with Jill Cutler, of the new book In the Name of Democracy: American War Crimes in Iraq and Beyond.
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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

· Do They Know It’s Christmas Time: IMF Blocks the G8 Debt Deal · Bolivia Elections

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In its meeting starting Wednesday, the International Monetary Fund is reportedly planning to announce that it is partially canceling the debt reduction deal originally agreed by world leaders in the G8 meeting last summer. (Meanwhile U2 rocker Bono has been named a Time Magazine “Person of the Year.” He played a leading role in brokering the G8 deal.)

CAROLINE GREEN
Green is a press officer with Oxfam. She said today: “In July the G8 announced total cancellation of 18 countries’ debts to the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the African Development Fund. The IMF is now set to take up to six countries off this list and only approve countries that pass its own further, strict economic policy tests. This means millions of dollars that these countries could spend on schools and hospitals will now be delayed until they dance to the IMF tune. … It seems somewhat unbelievable that the IMF is now boldly undoing the debt deal announced by the G8 and agreed at its own annual meetings in September. That they are trying to get away with secretly slashing the deal despite the public agreement earlier this year is scandalous … Having fulfilled internationally agreed conditions for debt cancellation, [these] poor countries could now find that the goal posts have been shifted.”
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SAMEER DOSSANI
NJOKI NJEHU
SOREN AMBROSE
Dossani is the director of the 50 Years Is Enough Network. Njehu is the executive director of Solidarity Africa Network in Action in Nairobi, Kenya. Ambrose is policy analyst with Solidarity Africa Network.

Njehu said today: “After decades during which dozens of countries struggled under insurmountable debts contracted by dictators and corrupt officials for questionable purposes, the wealthiest countries have finally acknowledged that their debt system is unsustainable, and that 100 percent multilateral debt cancellation is absolutely necessary to reduce poverty. Now, all too typically, the IMF – largely controlled by the same G8 that came up with the plan — is trying to quietly reverse that landmark decision.”

Ambrose said today: “Four of the six countries (Ethiopia, Madagascar, Mauritania and Nicaragua) for which cancellation is in jeopardy either have no current IMF program or have one which will expire by the end of 2005. The main function of the debt system is to maintain control over countries’ economic policy, so it makes sense that the IMF would make sure that no country finds a way to escape IMF oversight.”

Dossani said today: “The IMF has taken an approved proposal which allowed for no delays or new conditions on the countries slated to have their debts canceled, and devised a new set of conditions and potential delays.”
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MARK WEISBROT
An economist and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Weisbrot said today: “Evo Morales’ election in Bolivia will be seen and analyzed here mostly in political terms. … But we would do well to step back from the politics for a moment and look at this election in economic terms. Bolivia has also been subject to IMF agreements almost continuously (except for eight months) since 1986. And it has done what the experts from Washington have wanted, including privatizing nearly everything that could be sold. … The country’s Social Security system was also privatized. But nearly 20 years of these structural reforms — or ‘neoliberalism’ as Morales and most Latin Americans call it — have brought little in the way of economic benefits to the average Bolivian. Amazingly, the country’s per capita income is actually lower today than it was 25 years ago. … Evo Morales is now the sixth candidate in the last seven years to win a presidential race while campaigning explicitly against ‘neoliberalism.’ The others were in Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Uruguay. And there will likely be more in the near future, as there are 10 more presidential elections scheduled in Latin America over the next year.”
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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

Bush’s Use of NSA Spying and the Law

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“Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 shall be the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance … may be conducted.”[FISA; 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2511(f)]

The following analysts are available for a limited number of interviews:

CHRISTOPHER H. PYLE
In 1970, Pyle disclosed the U.S. military’s surveillance of civilian politics and worked as a consultant to three Congressional committees, including the Church Committee — which wrote the FISA statute. He is co-author of the book The President, Congress, and the Constitution and author of the book Military Surveillance of Civilian Politics.

Pyle said today: “Bush is asserting an inherent war power to violate the Fourth Amendment. Senator [Frank] Church’s committee sought to end warrantless electronic surveillance. The method laid out in FISA is the only method. They made it very easy to get these wiretaps by creating a special court. Bush has violated that Act and the Act has a criminal statute associated with it. Anyone who violates that act is guilty of a felony punishment by up to five years imprisonment.” Pyle is currently a professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College.
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JAMES BAMFORD
Bamford is author of several books including The Puzzle Palace: Inside America’s Most Secret Intelligence Organization, Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency and most recently, A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America’s Intelligence Agencies.
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“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
Fourth Amendment of the Constitution

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

Major Civil Liberties Issues

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News reports are shedding light on government surveillance of political activists.

The following are available to comment on various civil liberties issues:

JONATHAN TURLEY
The New York Times today published a story headlined “Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts.”

Turley is a professor of Constitutional law at George Washington University; he has worked at the National Security Agency. He said today: “FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] was designed to circumvent the Fourth Amendment. As far as I know, it’s never turned down a surveillance request. For a president to circumvent FISA is substantially below the Constitutional standard.” Turley can also address the debate around the Patriot Act.
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FERNANDO GARCIA
Director of the Border Network for Human Rights based in El Paso, Texas, Garcia is currently in Washington, D.C. He can address concerns regarding civil and human rights in immigration policy.
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NANCY TALANIAN
Talanian is director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee. She said today: “For four years, a growing number of U.S. residents nationwide have criticized the Patriot Act provisions that increase the executive branch’s surveillance powers without sufficient oversight to protect U.S. residents’ civil liberties. We applaud the Senate’s consideration of the Act’s deficiencies, which have prompted 400 state and local governments and many organizations to pass resolutions.”
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KIT GAGE
Gage is director of the First Amendment Foundation.

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JOHN SUGG
Sugg has covered the controversies around Sami Al-Arian, who was recently acquitted on terrorism charges, for more than a decade. The Washington Post recently described the trial as “a crucial test of government power under the USA Patriot Act.” Sugg said today: “The recently completed six-month trial of Sami Al-Arian is a classic statement about the clash of civil liberties against a government intent on limiting such freedoms. … Despite this humiliating defeat for the government — which spent tens of millions of dollars over more than a decade pursuing Al-Arian — the Palestinian academic is still held in jail.” Sugg is senior editor of the Weekly Planet/Creative Loafing group of newspapers. He began covering Al-Arian while he was an editor of the group’s Tampa paper.
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MARIE ZWICKER
Zwicker is an organizer with the counter-recruiting group Truth Project in Lake Worth, Florida. An NBC report recently revealed that the group’s November 2004 meeting at a Quaker Meeting House was described as a “threat” in Pentagon intelligence documents. Zwicker said today: “We work to tell the truth about Pentagon policies; an organization that tells the truth is a threat to illegitimate power.”
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ELIZABETH WRIGLEY-FIELD
A student at New York University and member of the national coordinating committee of the Campus Antiwar Network, Wrigley-Field helped organize a protest at NYU in February that was mentioned in the Pentagon intelligence papers.
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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

WTO and Wal-Mart

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A controversial World Trade Organization services agreement that will be discussed at this week’s WTO ministerial meeting in Hong Kong poses a serious threat to state and local authority over land use policy, according to a briefing paper released by Public Citizen.

SARA JOHNSON
Johnson is state and local outreach coordinator for Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch division, which has just released the paper “Big Box Backlash: The Stealth Campaign at the World Trade Organization to Pre-empt Local Control Over Land Use.” Johnson said today: “Major big box retail corporations have been eyeing the WTO’s General Agreement on Trade in Services as a way of gutting local zoning and land use laws that have kept them out of communities in Europe and the United States. … Wal-Mart is just one of the firms that have been lobbying both the U.S. government and the WTO on this issue.”
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JEFF MILCHEN
Milchen directs ReclaimDemocracy.org, a non-profit organization focused on restoring citizen authority over corporations. He wrote the recent article “Beyond Wal-Mart.” Milchen said today: “Big box stores often ride roughshod over communities by running their own ballot initiatives when a town makes law that corporate executives dislike. Now they aim to pre-empt democracy entirely by using the WTO to override local decision-making authority. … We need to recognize that Wal-Mart is merely the corporation most efficient at exploiting structural problems — it’s the symptom, not the disease. We need root-level changes to halt the growth of parasitic corporations like Wal-Mart and instead encourage business models that advance democracy, strong communities and widely shared economic prosperity.”
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STACY MITCHELL
Mitchell is the author of the book The Home Town Advantage: How To Defend Your Main Street Against Chain Stores and Why It Matters and a researcher with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, which has helped dozens of cities and towns across the U.S. enact local ordinances limiting big box expansion. She said today: “As the tide of communities acting to curb big box sprawl swells, Wal-Mart and other mega-retailers are now looking to run an end-game around local authority by harnessing the power of the WTO.”
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JENNIFER ROCKNE
Rockne directs the American Independent Business Alliance, a national organization helping communities support independent businesses. She said today: “Communities nationwide are organizing successfully to resist the proliferation of chain stores and, instead, nurturing the development of healthy local economies with primarily community-based businesses.”
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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

Iraq: · Air War · Election · Oil · Lies

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DAHR JAMAIL
Jamail is an independent journalist who reported for eight months from inside Iraq after the invasion. His most recent piece is “An Increasingly Aerial Occupation.”
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VERA BEAUDIN SAEEDPOUR
Editor of Kurdish Life and founder of the Kurdish Library, Saeedpour is available to comment on the election and other developments in Iraq.

HARB MUKHTAR
Mukhtar is a translator in Baghdad.

CELESTE ZAPPALA
DANTE ZAPPALA
As Bush gave his address in Philadelphia on Monday, Celeste Zappala and her son Dante were at a protest nearby. Celeste Zappala’s eldest son, Sgt. Sherwood Baker, was the first Pennsylvania National Guardsman to die in combat since World War II. He was killed in action in Baghdad on April 26, 2004, while searching for weapons of mass destruction.
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JAMES PAUL
Bush today derided the notion that oil was a factor in U.S. plans regarding Iraq. Paul, executive director of the Global Policy Forum, has written several pieces about oil including “Oil in Iraq: The Heart of the Crisis.” His group co-published the recent study “Crude Designs: The Rip-Off of Iraq’s Oil Wealth.”
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JOHN BURROUGHS
Bush claimed today: “When a unanimous Security Council gave him [Saddam Hussein] one final chance to disclose and disarm, or face serious consequences, he refused to comply with that final opportunity. … The United States did not choose war — the choice was Saddam Hussein’s.”

Burroughs, executive director of the New York-based Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy, said today: “Iraq basically cooperated with UN inspectors in late 2002 and early 2003. As a result of inspections, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s head Mohamed ElBaradei, who just won the Nobel Peace Prize, stated unambiguously in early 2003 that there was no evidence of a reconstituted Iraqi nuclear weapons program, and that they needed only three more months to fully confirm the absence of a program.

“It was Bush who chose war, in clear violation of the UN Charter since the Security Council refused to approve a draft U.S. resolution in March 2003 that would have authorized the invasion. Saying something that is blatantly untrue over and over again, as Bush insists on doing, does not make it any less of a lie.” Burroughs is co-author of the piece “The UN Charter and the Iraq War,” which appears in the new book Neo-Conned! Again.
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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

· Vioxx · Medicare

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SIDNEY WOLFE, M.D.
The Associated Press reports that Monday’s mistrial “leaves Vioxx’s maker Merck & Co. with the prospect of facing a new jury that could hear allegations that the company withheld information from the New England Journal of Medicine about a 2000 Vioxx study so the drug would appear safer than it was.”

Wolfe is director and founder of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group and co-author of the newsletter “Worst Pills.” He said today: “Public Citizen warned consumers in 2001 not to take the Vioxx because of adverse effects and evidence of a higher risk of heart attack. The fact that Vioxx can cause heart damage was known for years, but the FDA continually ignored warnings about it — the FDA has sided time and again with the drug companies instead of the public.”

Wolfe added: “Vioxx was the ninth prescription drug to be taken off the market in seven years that Public Citizen warned Worst Pills subscribers not to use. … There are 100,000 deaths a year in the United States from adverse drug reactions, and nearly 1.5 million people are injured so seriously by adverse drug reactions that they require hospitalization.”
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JOHN GEYMAN
Geyman is professor emeritus of family medicine at the University of Washington. He is president of Physicians for a National Health Program and author of the just-released book Shredding the Social Contract: The Privatization of Medicare.

He said today: “As a result of the Medicare act of 2003, many seniors are now picking drug benefit plans. The choices are confusing and meager for Medicare recipients, while the plans create lucrative new markets for the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. The underlying issue — the uncontrolled escalation of drug prices — was completely avoided, even to the point of prohibiting the federal government from negotiating deep discounts of drug prices through its bargaining clout, as it already does for the Veterans Administration. The Medicare bill of 2003 required the prescription drug benefit to be provided by private drug plans, even though private plans have been conclusively demonstrated by experience over the last 20 years to be more expensive and less efficient than the traditional Medicare program.

“Attempts to privatize Medicare are as old as the program itself and they have continued. A three-year $30 million media campaign launched in 1995 by the Heritage Foundation helped to promote market-based solutions to the ‘Medicare problem.'”
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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

WTO Meets in Hong Kong

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The World Trade Organization’s Ministerial Conference will take place Dec. 13-18 in Hong Kong.

MARK WEISBROT
An economist and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Weisbrot said today: “According to a recent World Bank study [‘Agricultural Trade Reform and the Doha Development Agenda’], even a very successful Doha Round would lead to tiny gains for developing countries — less than three-tenths of 1 percent and possibly even much smaller. This is about 2 cents a day per person for developing countries. If this is the best the World Bank expects from the Doha Round, shouldn’t those interested in poverty alleviation be asking for a different agenda? … What makes this so damaging is that developing countries are being asked to make very costly concessions in exchange for these barely measurable gains.”
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DEBORAH JAMES
James is the global economy director for Global Exchange. She will be in Hong Kong during the WTO meeting. She said today: “After 10 years of experience with the WTO, civil society and governments around the world are increasingly rejecting corporate globalization in favor of more democratic systems of governance that protect jobs, promote economic development, and safeguard our environment.”
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LORI WALLACH
Wallach is the director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. She said today: “Efforts to extend the failed status quo trade and globalization model are facing growing opposition worldwide, as we saw with the recent breakdown of FTAA talks at the Summit of the Americas in Argentina. Countries are calling into question the conventional wisdom on the benefits of this particular model of trade — NAFTA in this hemisphere and the WTO globally.”

DAVID WASKOW
Waskow is the international program director of Friends of the Earth. He said today: “These negotiations may force open developing countries to agricultural products from rich countries, impoverishing small farmers and undercutting sustainable agricultural practices. That reality will be made worse as tariff reductions in sectors such as fish and forest products will fuel depletion of the natural resources that the poor in developing countries depend on for their livelihoods.”

COLIN RAJAH
Rajah is the international migrant rights program coordinator at the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. He said today: “Through its ‘Mode 4’ deal, the WTO is proposing to create a global guestworker program that will enable corporations to dictate the flow of temporary workers — whose rights and immigrant status would be tied to their employer, exposing them to significant abuse with no possibility of permanent residency. It’s important to understand that trade agreements struck by the WTO have caused communities to lose their livelihoods and forced people to migrate, while using immigrants as cheap, disposable labor for corporations.”

ANURADHA MITTAL
Mittal is founder and executive director of the Oakland Institute. She will be in Hong Kong during the WTO Ministerial Conference meeting and will host a daily live radio show to be broadcast by KPFK in Los Angeles and other radio stations. She said today: “Our broadcasts will include live panel discussions, interviews with politicians and analysts, speeches, reports from street protests, press conferences, and official events.”
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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