The Number 5 Censored news story for 2000 is an particularly pernicious form of corporate welfare through the United States Export-Import Bank, which has funded numerous nuclear energy building projects in the developing world. Ex-Im is a government program which extends artificially sweet loans — guaranteed by U.S. taxpayer money — to the governments of developing countries in order to allow big U.S. contractors to build there. In a typical boondoggle,

Westinghouse built the Bataan nuclear power facility in the Philippines in 1985 at a cost of $1.2 billion, 150 percent above their projections. However, the Bataan plant was never brought on line due to the fact it was near an active volcano. Despite the fact that the plant never generated a single kilowatt of energy, the Philippines still pays about $300,000 a day in interest on the Ex-Im loan that funded the project. Should the Philippines default, U.S. taxpayers will pick up the tab.

Similar projects have netted Westinghouse alone literally billions of dollars in plants that never even operate, scamming both the people of the developing world and U.S. taxpayers. Why is this allowed to go on? Well, it just so happens that the head of President Clinton’s Export council was the CEO of Westinghouse. And since Westinghouse also owns CBS and fellow Ex-Im beneficiary and nuclear contractor General Electric owns NBC, the debacle has not received coverage on network news. Meanwhile you and I and the taxpayers of the Philippines and many other countries continue to pay billions of dollars for nuclear power plants which never even produced electricity. People often think that conspiracy theorists are a bunch of paranoid loonies, and often they are. But it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see how the interlocking systems of economic and political power continue to allow elites to victimize you and I with the silent complicity of an elite newsmedia. Just goes to show you that what’s good for MNCs is not necessarily good for America.

Today I was delighted to find the www.ourbodiesourselves.org, the online home of the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, women’s liberation pioneers and the force behind the classic Our Bodies, Ourselves (including multiple new editions since the original publication in 1970).

On the occasion of volume 2 of David Levering Lewis’s biography of W.E.B. DuBois winning a Pulitzer Prize, David Greenberg has published a decent biographical essay on W.E.B. Du Bois [Slate.com]. Greenberg doesn’t quite seem to grasp the difference between forced segregation and the separatism that DuBois began to feel amenable to later in life, but it’s nice to see anything on DuBois published at all, really.

I laughed out loud at reading the latest riposte to David Horowitz’s BS, as David Mazel tests the free speech mettle of Right-wing campus newspapers (including the University of Alabama’s own Crimson White) by submitting an ad proclaiming in bold letters that 1) abortion is not murder and 2) God is an abortionist [Salon.com]. The results?

In an April 2 article in Salon, Horowitz wrote that his own ad had been accepted by 14 of 48 papers. His 29 percent acceptance rate is certainly nothing for the left to cheer about, but it sure beats my own paltry 9 percent.

Of course, I should be clear that I don’t think Right-wing campus newspapers should have to run left-wing outsider ads any more than neutral or Left-wing campus newspapers should have to run Horowitz’s crap. But I do love a good skewering of the Right’s hypocrisy from time to time. (Oh, damn, I’m criticizing David Horowitz, but I’m not running a David Horowitz banner ad on my page! I am such a PC thug that I am censoring his free speech!)

It behooves you to check out http://security.tao.ca if you are an activist or otherwise concerned about online privacy. Tons and tons and tons of great resources.