Culture and Life

by Rob Gowland

McEducation

More interesting tidbits from AgitProp News this week. The first 
draws attention to an article in The Atlantic Monthly dealing with 
the boom in industry-endowed chairs at universities.

In the US, "Kmart has endowed a chair in the management school at West 
Virginia University which requires its holder to spend up to thirty days a 
year training assistant store managers". (Gives a whole new meaning to the 
terms "professor" and  "university education", doesn't it?)

Meanwhile, with astonishing effrontery, Freeport McMoRan, the mob that own 
the environmentally destructive Freeport mine operation in West Papua, has 
created a chair in environmental studies at Tulane university.

Lest you think this corporate takeover is confined to the lesser known 
universities, consider the Haas School of Business at the prestigious 
Berkeley campus of the University of Southern California (USC). According 
to The Californian newspaper, the School's buildings are "plastered 
with corporate logos".
ŠLaura D'Andrea Tyson, formerly one of President Clinton's top economic 
advisers, is Dean of Haas. Actually, her official title is the 
BankAmerica Dean of Haas!

"One major contributor to the school is Don Fisher, the owner of The Gap, 
whose company also happens to be featured as a case study in an 
introductory business-administration course."

You can be sure that the anti-union, sweatshop-exploiting methods of The 
Gap will receive a positive spin in that course!

* * *

Chemical warfare in Seattle

During the popular actions in Seattle late last year against the agenda 
of the transnational corporations being pushed at the WTO ministerial 
meeting that was taking place there, the heavily armed and gas-mask-
equipped "law enforcement" forces filled the streets of Seattle's business 
district with choking clouds of irritant gases: OC, or "pepper spray", and 
no less than three varieties of "tear gas" — CN, CS, and CX.

"What we saw happening in Seattle was the largest single application of 
chemical weapons against civilians in the northern hemisphere", says Dr 
Kirk Murphy, an assistant clinical professor at the UCLA Medical School and 
a representative of the group Physicians for Social Responsibility.

Murphy told a recent Public Interest Environmental Law Conference in Oregon 
that doctors have seen "a range of symptoms arising from the Seattle 
experience, including a subset of symptoms that are atypical for the 
chemical agents that we've been able to confirm were used."

According to Murphy, on November 30, the first big day of protests against 
the WTO, the medical teams on the street treated thousands of people 
exhibiting the normal symptoms of exposure to OC and the three varieties of 
tear gas, including intense burning sensations of the skin and/or eyes 
(from OC), and eye, nasal and throat irritation, and sometimes respiratory 
and digestive system problems, from tear gas exposure.

But the following day, he says, — after the Seattle authorities had 
effectively imposed martial law — the symptomatic effects of the chemical 
weapons changed significantly.

"Starting on December 1st, we saw a set of symptoms that went beyond the 
usual `irritation' symptoms", Murphy said. "These came to be called the 
neurotoxic set of symptoms."

People who were gassed on December 1 suffered then — and continue to 
report now — a mysterious and troubling set of afflictions, Murphy said.

"We've collected several dozen reports of (women) who had an immediate on-
set of menstruation, and there's at least one report of a spontaneous 
abortion", Murphy said.

"One person who came in (to a street clinic) was technically delirious ... Šand had symptoms consistent with shock. So, we started asking questions 
that night about what additional agents could be responsible for what we 
were seeing."

Needless to say, the Seattle police and other "law-enforcement agencies" 
involved have denied allegations that "nerve gas" or other military-grade 
chemical agents were used against the WTO protestors and in Seattle. And of 
course they wouldn't lie to us, would they?

Murphy admits that so far there is "no molecular evidence" to support 
claims of nerve gas use. Murphy and his colleagues have instead raised the 
disturbing hypothesis that the atypical symptoms seen in Seattle are in 
fact the result of large scale use of tear gas and OC against women.

Whatever the specific agent that caused the symptoms, they were the result 
of a brutal chemical warfare attack on unarmed civilians. And more such 
attacks can be expected in the future as imperialism seeks to suppress a 
rising tide of popular resistance.

* * *

What if the Battle of Seattle had been in Havana?

The hypocrisy of US positions is not lost on Fidel Castro, who must 
confront "the land of the free's" double standards daily.

When the Cuban delegation to last November's abortive meeting of the WTO in 
Seattle arrived back in Cuba Fidel commented on what would have been the 
reaction if the police riot in Seattle had taken place in Cuba.

"Using armored vehicles, tear gas — which even made the delegations 
staying in hotels queasy — and, on top of that, pepper gas. Brutal 
methods, dragging people through the streets. Six hundred arrested.

"What would happen if such behaviour took place in Cuba? What would they 
say if they saw an army, the National Guard, occupying the city? Tons of 
masked men with horrifying outfits to scare people, thousands of police in 
all directions, men being dragged, horses and other animals to attack 
people?

"They would say that it was a flagrant and massive violation of human 
rights and that, therefore, they had to use the NATO formula to conduct a 
`humanitarian' intervention."