Corporations

All the News That's Fit To Censor: International Edition

Submitted by Diane Farsetta on

"The Internet may be new, but not the issue of whether an American corporation should do business with bad people," writes Richard Cohen. He argues that the claims of Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Yahoo and other tech companies that they are assisting the Chinese government's attempts to censor information online because they must "comply with local laws" ring false. "The law in China is what the Chinese leaders say it is," Cohen counters.

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Main Source: 
The Mercury News (San Jose, California), January 25, 2006
Topics: 
Internet
Corporations
Democracy
International

A New Nuke Sell: Reprocessing

Submitted by Diane Farsetta on

As "part of an effort to jump-start the nuclear-power industry," the Bush administration is proposing "a $250 million initiative to reprocess spent nuclear fuel." The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership proposal would allow General Electric and other U.S. companies to sell developing countries "reactors and nuclear fuel on the condition that the U.S.

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Main Source: 
Wall Street Journal (sub req'd), January 26, 2006
Topics: 
Nuclear Power
Corporations
International
Public Relations

Reporter Says Scrushy Stacked the Media and Jury

Submitted by Diane Farsetta on

"Throughout the six-month trial that led to Richard Scrushy's acquittal in the $2.7 billion fraud at HealthSouth Corp., a small, influential newspaper consistently printed articles sympathetic to the ... fired CEO." The author of those stories, Audry Lewis, now says "she was secretly working on behalf of Scrushy, who she says paid her $11,000 through a public relations firm," The Lewis Group.

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Main Source: 
Associated Press, January 19, 2006
Topics: 
Corporations
Media
Public Relations

Environmental Defense or Nanotech Defense?

If you have concerns about the development of nanotechnology, you might want to keep an eye on the 'partnership' between the chemical industry giant DuPont and Environmental Defense (ED), the New York-based environmental group.

The project, according to a joint media release issued in October 2005 by ED's Fred Krupp and DuPont's Chad Halliday, is to "identify, manage and reduce potential health, safety and environmental risks of nano-scale materials across all lifecycle stages." Once developed, the framework will "then be pilot-tested on specific nano-scale materials or applications of commercial interest to DuPont."

To be fair, ED has flagged concerns about there being inadequate health and environmental assessments of nanotechnologies to date. However, ED hasn't mentioned publicly what they think about DuPont and other companies having products that are already on the market without such assessments.

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