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January
18, 2002
Walt Brasch
Enron
at the White House
CounterPunch
Wire
Human
Rights Groups Says Guantanmo Prisoners Must Be Treated as POWs
January
17, 2002
Gideon
Levy
Bulldozing
Rafah
Uri Avnery
That
Weapons Shipment
January
16, 2002
John Chuckman
The
Angel and the Pretzel
Lawrence
McGuire
Subverting
the
Geneva Convention
Kathy
Kelly
An
Open Letter to
Richard Perle on Iraq
January
15, 2002
George
Monbiot
Greenpeace,
Lord Melchett
and the Business of Betrayal
Jack McCarthy
Follow
the Pretzel
William
Blum
Atta
and the Times:
Follow the Changing Story
Edward
Said
Emerging
Alternatives
in Palestine
January
14, 2002
David
Vest
Open
Bag. Eat Pretzels.
Patrick
Cockburn
Collapse
of Georgia
Ignored by the World
Mokhiber/Weissman
Enron's
Accountants:
When In Doubt, Shred It
January
13, 2002
C.G. Estabrook
Why
We Kill People
January
12, 2002
Cockburn/St.
Clair
Forbidden
Truths
January
11, 2002
Lee Balllinger/Dave
Marsh
Neil
Young's Duet with Ashcroft
January
10, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Bush,
Enron, UNOCAL
and the Taliban
St. Clair/Cockburn
Greenpeace
to Greenwash?
Hans von
Sponek
Iraq:
Is There an Alternative
to Military Action?
Jim Lobe
Israeli
Human Rights Group Assails Army
Marina Mayakova
Russia's
Top Military Astrologer Predicts More Attacks from OBL
January
9, 2002
David
Vest
The
Super-Burqa
and the Big Tent
ND Jayaprakash
Winnable
Nuclear War?
Rafiq
Kathwari
Kashmir
Will Make Ground Zero Look Like a Bonfire
January
8, 2002
Prudence
Crowther
Sting
Like a B-52
Nelson
Valdés
Al-Qaeda
at Guantanamo Bay
John Chuckman
Dark
Tales from the
Ministry of Truth
Richard
Corn-Revere
Do
We Fear Freedom?
Joan Hoff
The
Nixon You Haven't Heard
January
7, 2002
Lawrence
McGuire
Confusing
Economic Tales About Argentina
Wael Masri
They
Are Taking
Our Rights Away
Philip
Farruggio
Better
Medicine
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
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Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
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CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
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January
18, 2002
"They Stole
Our Future"
Employees Charge Enron
With Theft Before Senate
By Jordan Green
On Dec. 18, the Senate Commerce Committee heard
from former employees and shareholders of the collapsed energy
trading company Enron, who watched retirement plans tied up in
the company's stock vanish while executives cashed theirs out.
Mary Baines Pearson, a 70-year-old Enron
shareholder and widow of former Texas state representative G.P.
Pearson, told the committee, "I am just a pebble in the
stream, just a little bitty stockholder, but both my granddaughter
and I have lost money we had set aside for our future and do
not know how we will replace those losses."
Charles Prestwood, a 63-year-old retired
Enron employee from Conroe, Tex. said, "I can tell you,
without pulling punches, something stinks here. There are people
at Enron who made millions selling Enron stock, while we, the
rank and file, got burned."
Implicit in their testimony before the
Commerce Committee was a plea for Congress to take action to
force the company whose CEO Kenneth Lay has earned $300
million through stock options to make reparations to its
employees.
Said Robert Vigil, an electrical machinist
who worked for 23 years at the Pelton/Round Butte Hydroelectric
Project in Madras, Ore., "We are looking for solid, truthful
answers so that we may possibly recoup some of this money, maintain
our dignity and prevent further theft from occurring to others
who work their entire lives only to become victims of robbery."
Enron's case has moved more quickly than
many business and government observers anticipated. The company
was President Bush's largest campaign contributor and its proximity
to political power in Texas while Bush was governor afforded
it an advantage in influencing the revolutionary deregulation
of energy markets. The close relationship has continued. Last
April, CEO Lay was consulted by Vice President Dick Cheney's
secret energy task force.
Congressional initiatives have so far
focused on chiding employees' reliance on company stocks for
their retirement plans even though employees say they were
pressured into buying the stocks and were locked into the retirement
plans as it became apparent that the company was in trouble.
In contrast, there has been little attention paid to the company's
liability for its employees' financial devastation and the top
executives have so far ignored calls to testify before Congress.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Sen.
Jon Corzine (D-N.J.) introduced legislation on Dec. 18 that would
limit company stocks to 20% of employees' overall retirement
packages. If passed, this law could affect companies like Coca-Cola,
Texas Instruments and McDonalds whose retirement plans are comprised
of 60% company stock.
"We want to make sure that the life
savings of our nation's workers are protected even when
an employer's stocks collapses," said Sen. Boxer.
The slow crawl of justice may accelerate
this month as the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs conducts
new hearings on Enron on Jan. 24. Congress issued 51 subpoenas
last Friday relating to the company's conduct.
Perhaps sensing a process that has slipped
from its grasp, the Bush Administration has made a hasty attempt
to control the damage. On January 10, President Bush made a terse
statement before the press: "There needs to be a full review
of disclosure statements to make sure that the American stockholder
is protected."
The Justice Department announced that
it was forming a special task force of prosecutors to conduct
an inquiry into Enron's collapse. Attorney General John Ashcroft
recused himself because of possible conflicts of interest due
to campaign contributions he accepted from Enron during his failed
2000 Senate race.
Enron's lawyer Robert S. Bennett lauded
the Justice Department's decision to take the case. "I'm
pleased that there now appears to be some centralization and
coordination, because it is very difficult and expensive to deal
with half a dozen other entities," said Bennett. "This
is a company in bankruptcy, and it needs to be given a fair shot
to come out of bankruptcy and increase the value for shareholders.
If we get caught in a cumbersome scandal machine, that may not
happen."
Meanwhile, Enron is anxious to auction
off assets around the world including a mega-dam in India,
which has inspired massive protests by displaced farmers. Officials
at the company worry that employees will flee as corporate control
breaks down. Earlier this month, the London-based investment
bank UBS Warburg beat out BP and Citibank for control of Enron's
energy trading business, while Houston-based Dynegy has already
finalized an agreement to take over the prized Northern Natural
Gas Pipeline, which runs from Texas to the Canadian border.
Jordan Green
is Editorial and Research Associate at the Institute
for Southern Studies.
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