Earth First! The Radical Environmental Journal was recognized by Project Censored for printing the tenth most censored story of 1997, as well as printing the runner-up fifteenth story. The number ten story, "Army Plan to Burn Surplus Nerve Gas Stockpile" by Mark Brown and Karyn Jones was printed in our March-April (Eostar) 1997 issue. To read a summary of the story, you can Click here, or click on the title above for the whole story. Project Censored's top ten results prompted Portland's Oregonian to publish a quality investigative piece in the Saturday issue (3/21/98) on the incinerator just days before the top ten was publically released, although it was presented as a done deal. Wonder how long they had that article shelved? At least till after the February 7 EQC final decision to accept the Army's application to build the chemical weapons incineration facility!
The runner-up fifteenth story, "US Paper Companies Conspire to Squash Zapatistas" by Viviana, formerly with the National Commission for Democracy in Mexico, was printed in the same issue: March-April,1997. This story exposes how International Paper and other large corporations, in cahoots with federal and state governments, plan to log, mine, drill for gas and oil and generally destroy the resource-rich mountain jungles of chiapas, and how this directly relates to the genocidal war against the Mayan indigenous people of Chiapas and the Zapatista uprising they began the day NAFTA was passed. Since then, the EF! Journal has printed another article about Chiapas in the Feb-March (Brigid) 1998 issue.
To read Project Censored's press release click here.
Some examples of the chemicals to be incinerated include nerve gas and mustard agent; bioaccumulative organochlorines such as dioxins, furans, chloromethane, vinyl chloride, and PCBs; metals such as lead, mercury, copper and nickel; and toxins such as arsenic. These represent only a fraction of the thousands of chemicals and metals that will potentially be emitted throughout the Columbia River watershed and from the toxic ash and effluents which pose a significant health threat via entrance to the aquifer.
Contrary to what incineration advocates claim, there is no urgent need to incinerate, since the stockpile at Umatilla has small potential for explosion or chain reaction as a result of decay. A 1994 General Accounting Office report estimates that the actual number of years for safe weapons storage is 120 years rather than the 17.7 years originally estimated by the National Research Council. Thus, the timeline for action could conceivably be lengthened until all the alternatives-such as chemical neutralization, molten metals, electro-chemical oxidation, and solvated electron technology (SET)-are considered. A delay is supported by a National Academy of Sciences report, entitled Review and Evaluation of Alternative Chemical Disposal Technologies, which states that there has been sufficient development to warrant re-evaluation of alternative technologies for chemical agent destruction.
Researchers for Project Censored, now in its 22nd year, contend the mainstream media in the U.S. has failed to report that America's share of the global arms market in the last 10 years has grown from 16 percent to 63 percent in spite of congressional resolutions prohibiting sales of military aid and training to governments that are undemocratic, abuse human rights or engage in aggression against neighboring states.
Worse, according to a story, "Guns 'R' Us," by Martha Honey and published in In These Times, the nation's arms sales policies are used to justify increased weapons spending and development to achieve superiority over forces U.S. arms merchants have equipped and trained.
Honey's story quotes Lawrence Kolb, a Brookings Institute fellow and former assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan who said: "It's a money game: an absurd spiral in which we export arms only to have to develop more sophisticated ones to counter those spread all over the world."
Prof. Peter Phillips, director of Project Censored, said the In These Times article is the kind of journalism Americans need from mainstream media but increasingly seldom get.
Phillips stated, "Investigative Journalists are writing and printing hundreds of important news stories annually that are ignored by a major media too interested in celebrity news, infomercials, and titillation".
The arms merchants story and other censored or underreported news stories are published in the newly released Project Censored yearbook, "Censored 1998: The News that Didn't Make the News." In addition to top stories missed by mainstream media in 1997, the yearbook contains timely articles and reviews on the media, the continuing conglomerization of news and information industries in the U.S., a review of the status of previously cited underreported stories, and resource guides to mainstream and alternative media.
Project Censored is based at Sonoma State University in Northern California. It identifies stories about significant issues that are not widely publicized by the national mainstream news media. The annual project is conducted by more than 125 faculty, student researchers and interns, and community experts. The final 25 censored stories are ranked in order of significance by a panel of national judges including members of the media, authors and educators.
For a preview, here are the top ten underreported stories of 1997:
1. Clinton Administration Promotes U.S. Arms Sales Worldwide. The U.S. is now the principal arms merchant for the world, despite congressional intent to prohibit such practices, and is creating a continuing arms race.
2. Personal Care and Cosmetic Products May Be Carcinogenic. Personal care products American consumers believe are safe are often contaminated with carcinogenics.
3. Big Business Seeks to Control and Influence U.S. Universities. Academia is being auctioned off to highest bidders as industry creates endowed professorships, funds think tanks and research centers, sponsors grants and contracts for research.
4. Exposing the Global Surveillance System. U.S., Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand continue to operate secret Cold War-era intelligence system to monitor telephone, e-mail and telex communications throughout the world.
5. U.S. Companies Are World Leaders in the Manufacture of Torture Devices for Internal Use and Export. Forty-two of 100 firms worldwide that produce and sell instruments of torture are based in the U.S.
6. Russian Plutonium Lost Over Chile and Bolivia. Four canisters of deadly plutonium aboard the ill-fated Russia Mars 96 space probe remain lost after the spacecraft plunged back to earth and crashed into Bolivia.
7. Norplant and Human Lab Experiments in Third World Lead to Forced Use in the United States. Low-income women in the U.S. and in Third World countries have been targets of U.S. policies to control birth rates, often injected with contraceptive implants that lead to painful and costly complications.
8. Little Known Federal Law Paves the Way for National ID Card. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Responsibility Act of 1996 contains the framework for establishing a national ID card for the American public.
9. Mattel Cuts U.S. Jobs to Open Sweat Shops in Other Countries. Thanks to NAFTA and GATT, the U.S. toy industry has cut a one-time American workforce of 56,000 in half and sent many of the jobs to countries where workers lack basic rights.
10. Army's Plan to Burn Nerve Gas and Toxins in Oregon Threatens Columbia River Basin. Despite evidence that incineration is the worst option for destroying the nation's obsolete chemical weapons stockpile, the Oregon Environmental Quality Commission has authorized the Army and Raytheon Corp. to build five incinerators at the Umatilla Army Depot.
Editors: Censored 1998: The News That Didn't Make the News will be released nationally in March. For review copies contact Seven Stories Press, 212-995-0908. For additional information contact Peter Phillips at Project Censored 707-664-2500 or e-mail phillipp@sonoma.edu