Report Card
REPORT CARD Menace Paled SOVIET GEOPOLITICAL MOMENTUM: Myth or Menace? by The Defense Monitor Center for Defense Information, 1500 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20005. 32 pp....
...And the companies that operate the U.S...
...Reaping and Sowing THE BHOPAL TRAGEDY ONE YEAR AFTER An APPEN Report Sahabat Alam Malaysia (Friends of the Earth Malaysia), 37, Lorong Birch, 10250 Penang, Malaysia...
...Life's Premium FROM CONTACT LENSES TO CORNFIELDS: THE PUBLIC IS NOT PROTECTED A Study of Nuclear Insurance in America by Keiki Kehoe, Kathleen Welch, and David Berick The Price-Anderson Campaign, P.O...
...By analyzing Soviet influence around the world from 1945 to 1986, The Defense Monitor finds the danger of Soviet expansionism to be vastly overstated by the Reagan Administration...
...If you have a friend—or a favorite right-wing relative— who can't see straight when you mention the Soviet Union, you might want to send along this report...
...With the Reagan Administration and much of the American public afflicted with the most lurid phobias about the Soviet Union, it is refreshing to see the illness properly diagnosed...
...Government's nuclear-waste, nuclear-weapons, and nuclear-research programs are similarly exempted from public liability...
...Interviews with some of the victims provide first-hand testimony of Bhopal's lingering damage...
...In the report's foreword, the authors stress the political lessons: Third World people must mobilize to prevent multinational companies from dumping hazardous industries and substances on their lands...
...After describing the scandal that is Price-Anderson, the report calls for revising the act to assure full compensation for public losses in the event of a nuclear accident and to require any company that causes a nuclear accident through reckless or negligent behavior to be financially accountable for damages...
...What's worse, the rights of citizens to sue companies that cause nuclear accidents are severely curtailed by a 1957 law, the Price-Anderson Act, which expires in August 1987...
...Companies that design, build, and supply safety components for nuclear plants are totally exempted from any liability for losses to the public, even if an accident is caused by criminal negligence...
...The record shows that the Soviets have not been very successful at increasing or even maintaining their influence in other countries," says Gene R. La Rocque, the director of the Center for Defense Information...
...This major crime against humanity seems to be slowly receding from the memories of people all over the Third World," notes the report by Sahabat Alam Malaysia, one of the most active grass-roots organizations in the Third World...
...Public Interest Research Group, and the Union of Concerned Scientists...
...The Soviets exercise significant influence in only 11 per cent of the world's nations, the report notes, down from 15 per cent in the late 1950s...
...The report is particularly useful in debunking Reagan Administration rhetoric on Nicaragua...
...235 pp...
...But such remedial actions have not been taken, and Bhopal fades into cob-webbed history...
...3.00...
...Memories are short, even of calamitous events...
...Most of the influence is in Russia's traditional sphere, Eastern Europe...
...Box 15391, Washington, DC 20003...
...22 pp...
...When poisonous gases erupted from Union Carbide's pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, on December 2, 1984, killing thousands and wounding many thousands more, it was not out of the question that Third World countries would scrutinize the practices of multinational corporations and diminish their presence...
...Soviet influence in Nicaragua is limited," it states, and "the Soviet presence, especially the military presence, in Nicaragua is very small...
...It's on virtually every insurance policy: No coverage will be granted for losses due to nuclear accident...
...This "nuclear-exclusion" clause is so common that it can be found even in the insurance policies for contact lenses, notes this report, a joint effort by the Environmental Policy Institute, the U.S...
...To retrieve the memories and act on the lessons of Bhobal, the authors of this report have brought together searing photos, ground-floor accounts of the horrific accident, and disturbing evidence not only of Union Carbide's culpability but also of the collaboration of medical authorities and the Indian government in preventing the victims from receiving adequate and prompt care...
Vol. 50 • December 1986 • No. 12
