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News Releases

  • Rising Cost of Oil… And Embargo

    WENONAH HAUTER During the last year, gasoline prices have gone up from about 90 cents a gallon to $1.36, while crude oil has gone from $12 to $30 a barrel. Hauter, director of Public Citizen’s Critical Mass Energy Project, said today: “Throughout the history of the oil industry, it has been plagued with sharp peaks and valleys in oil pricing. The recent rise in oil prices is completely predictable. Most of the time, oil interests are able to collude and keep prices high. But, occasionally, like last year, their cooperative — some would say non-competitive — efforts fail and prices…

  • Still “Missing”: Truth About Chile

    A front page New York Times story reported Sunday on passages of State Department documents which show that the U.S. government knew far more than it acknowledged about the murder of two U.S. citizens in Chile. Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi, who supported the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende, were detained and murdered in September 1973 in the days following Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s bloody military coup backed by the U.S. government. Their execution was the subject of the film “Missing.” The following people are available for interviews: PETER KORNBLUH National Security Archive senior analyst Kornbluh, who has led the…

  • Pharmaceutical Drugs: Mergers and Medicare

    Pfizer Inc. announced today that it plans to buy Warner-Lambert Co. for $90 billion in stock in a deal that creates the world’s second largest pharmaceutical company. Meanwhile President Clinton and others are putting out proposals on Medicare. The following analysts are available for interviews on these and other subjects related to the pharmaceutical industry: SIDNEY WOLFE, M.D. Director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, Dr. Wolfe said today: “This would be the 29th significant merger in the pharmaceutical industry in the last decade. There is no evidence that the economies of scale have resulted in price savings to consumers…

  • Major Foreign Policy Issues: Austrian Neo-Nazis, Sanctions on Iraq, NATO and War Crimes, Israeli Nukes

    MARTIN A. LEE The author of “The Beast Reawakens,” a recent book about neofascism and right-wing extremism in Europe and the U.S., Lee said today: “The inclusion of Jorg Haider’s Freedom Party, a movement with openly fascist roots, in the national governing coalition in Austria is one of the most dangerous developments in contemporary European politics. Holocaust-deniers and neofascist ideologues are influential figures within the Freedom Party, and its dramatic rise to power has coincided with a sharp increase in racist violence in Austria, where shocking levels of anti-Semitism persist. There is reason to be concerned about a spillover effect…

  • New Hampshire: Battle of the Big Bucks

    On the eve of the New Hampshire primary, some analysts argue that money has largely determined the front runners. GEORGE W. BUSH Raised in this race: $57,120,597. Top career patrons: Enron Corporation (natural gas), $555,275; Sanchez family (banking, oil and gas), $322,400; Vinson & Elkins (law firm), $316,950; Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst (a leverage buyout firm; its founder bought the Texas Rangers from Bush and his partners in 1998), $305,150; Bass family (financed Harken Energy’s drilling in Bahrain in 1990 when Bush was a Harken director), $273,927; The Sterling Group (merchant bank), $259,000; MBNA Corporation, $244,416; Pilgrim’s Pride (poultry),…

  • State of the Issues

    The following analysts are available to comment on President Clinton’s policies and his State of the Union address: KAREN DOLAN Coordinator of the Progressive Challenge project, Dolan said: “The economic boom has bypassed millions of Americans; there’s been a widening of the gap between rich and poor. We need more progressive taxation… Clinton has missed an incredible historic opportunity to reduce the military budget and shift spending to pressing human needs.” More Information EARL OFARI HUTCHINSON Author of “The Crisis in Black and Black,” Hutchinson said: “The government has not lived up to its promises in ’empowerment zones.’ You see…

  • Albright and Congo: Analysts

    As part of what the Clinton administration calls the “month of Africa,” Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will be presiding over a UN Security Council meeting today about the civil war in Congo (formerly Zaire). The following analysts are available for interviews: ADAM HOCHSCHILD Author of the widely acclaimed “King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa,” Hochschild said today: “The unlucky Congo has known virtually nothing but plunder for the last several hundred years. First by the slave-traders; then by the rapacious King Leopold II of Belgium, who slashed the population of his privately-owned…

  • Iowa Caucuses: What’s Democracy Got to Do With It?

    BETTY AHRENS Program director for the Iowa Citizen Action Network, Ahrens said: “There’s really a wealth primary, we’ve already determined who the favorites are — largely based on how much money they’ve raised. The caucuses enable participants to introduce resolutions to the party platforms; they are debated and voted on. We have developed a resolution which calls for comprehensive campaign finance reform that 700 people have committed to introducing in their caucus on Monday night. This will send a strong message to elected officials and the political parties that Iowans are fed up with the current system and want comprehensive…

  • The Real Martin Luther King

    While Martin Luther King Jr. will be widely commemorated next Monday for his work in the civil rights movement, the following analysts are available to discuss King’s work — including aspects that are often overlooked. In his “Beyond Vietnam” speech delivered a year to the day before he was killed, King called the United States “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today,” saying it was “on the wrong side of a world revolution.” In his “Where Do We Go From Here?” speech he criticized the nature of capitalism, arguing that “we must come to see that an edifice…

  • Perspectives on Africa and AIDS

    Initiating what the Clinton administration calls “the month of Africa,” Vice President Al Gore spoke about AIDS in Africa at the UN Security Council on Monday. The following analysts are available for interviews on U.S. policy toward Africa and on AIDS drugs: DEBORAH TOLER A policy analyst with the Institute for Public Accuracy, Toler is working on a book on myths and realities about the causes of poverty and hunger in Africa. She said: “As horrendous as the AIDS epidemic is in Africa, the neo-liberal economic policies of the IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organization are resulting in the…

  • Former National Security Officials in NYT ad: “War is a Racket”

    The immediate cause of this disastrous war in Ukraine is Russia’s invasion. Yet the plans and actions to expand NATO to Russia’s borders served to provoke Russian fears. And Russian leaders made this point for 30 years. A failure of diplomacy led to war. Now diplomacy is urgently needed to end the Russia-Ukraine War before…

  • Venezuelans Fleeing Sanctions Turned Away at the U.S. Border

    Many Venezuelans have made the very dangerous trek through the Darien Gap toward Central America, Mexico, and ultimately the United States. They did this only to find that, while the United States has been using the increased migration of Venezuelans in a cynical, propagandistic way to claim they’re fleeing a dictatorship, the U.S. is not…

  • Changes to Texas End-of-Life Procedures

    The Texas House has approved a bill to amend the Texas Advance Directives Act (TADA), a change that would change the procedure for Texas patients who are on life-sustaining treatments with no hope of recovery.

  • “Preying on the Dying”

    In the last two decades, a growing number of private equity firms have exploited gaping holes in oversight and regulation of the hospice care industry.

  • Attacks on Gaza “Cynical Move” by Netanyahu; Part of “Ongoing” Nakba

    In just under one week, Palestinians will mark 75 years since the Nakba — the catastrophe, in Arabic. The recent attacks we are witnessing are a cruel reminder that the Nakba is not just a historical event, but an ongoing structure of violence and ethnic cleansing. American Jews are waking up, and we must join…

  • British Monarch’s Anti-Catholic Pledge

    The coronation of King Charles and the words of the oath he swore — solemnly, formally, and as King — raises anew the issue of state-sponsored anti-Catholicism in the UK and Northern Ireland. The Guardian in a 2001 editorial highlighted this issue, describing ‘the basis for the modern-day monarchy — an act of parliament which explicitly discriminates against…

  • Mass Shooters are Disproportionately Military Vets

    Many non-veteran mass shooters dress, speak, and act — in the commission of their crime — as if they are participating in a military. There is a structural problem in training so many people to kill — including the recent killer on a New York subway — and a cultural problem in glorifying it. I’m…

  • How Shadow War Over Ukraine Nearly Triggered Nuclear Holocaust

    The sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline, Russia’s nearly shooting down a British spy plane, the secret and growing involvement of US and NATO troops on the battlefield — these are all clear warnings that very bad things can happen very quickly. The only realistic solution is to replace the intelligence agents with intelligent diplomats…

  • John Roberts Has “Failed to Protect the Integrity of the Supreme Court”

    Tuesday, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the need for clear and enforceable ethical rules for the U.S. Supreme Court. This hearing was spurred by in-depth news stories revealing numerous failures by members of the Supreme Court to comply with even minimal rules for disclosure and other ethics standards.

  • Silent Spring

    Spring is a time of new relationships and new growth, writes Miles Richardson, a U.K.-based professor of nature connectedness. But over two-thirds of wildlife populations have been lost since 1970. Each year, spring grows quieter. 

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