kay, thanks for the ping.
I try and never watch cbsnbccnnabc, nor do I read timenewsweek etc. Keeps my blood pressure in check.
I hope the thread grows and lasts.
5.56mm
At least eight of the twenty-nine companies that were invited to go to Russia are
linked to Strauss and his firm. AT&T, Westinghouse, Dresser Industries (a Dallas-based oil equipment company) and
Enron (a Houston-based natural gas conglomerate)
are all Akin, Gump clients. Litton Industries and General Electric have representatives on the board of the U.S.-Russia Business Council. Rockwell International and
Bristol-Myers Squibb are former clients of Strauss.
OPIC is headed by Ruth Harkin, wife of Senator Tom Harkin and, prior to joining the Administration, a top corporate lawyer at Akin, Gump.
Enron, which closed a deal, backed by the U.S. Export-Import Bank, to develop European markets for Russian gas, has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the Administration's export policy. During the past two years, the Ex-Im Bank has supported Enron's agreements with Turkey, India, the Philippines and China - deals worth nearly $4 billion. Kenneth Brody, head of the Ex-Im Bank, is a close friend of Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, having worked with Rubin at Goldman, Sachs. Enron is listed on Rubin's 1993 financial disclosure statement as one of the forty-four companies with which Rubin had "significant contact" during his years at the investment firm.
(Brody, by the way, is said to be a leading candidate to take over at Commerce if Brown, under investigation for everything from slumlording to collecting $400,000 for his "share" in a company in which he had invested nothing, is forced to resign.)
For example, consider the story of how the Clinton administration has threatened to take South Africa to the World Trade Organization (WTO) because Nelson Mandela got a law passed that allowed South African companies to issue compulsory licenses for pharmaceuticals that combat AIDS.
The U.S. has demanded that AIDS sufferers in South African purchase didanosine (DDL), a drug used in triple therapies, from U.S.-based Bristol-Myers Squibb, at prices few there can afford.
This is to protect Bristol-Myers Squibb’s profit margins. Bristol-Myers Squibb has already been granted exclusive license to sell DDL despite the fact that it was the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that actually did the research, testing and patented the drug (Someshwar Singh, Third World Network Features, Penang, Malaysia, 11/99. Reprinted by World Press Review, 2/00).
Consider also that Al Gore has been the point man in the Clinton administration’s efforts on behalf of Bristol-Myers Squibb.