ustxtxb_obs_1998_07_03_50_00017-00000_000.pdf

PROTECTING THE EARTH FROM THE SCUM OF CORPORATE AMERICA. MICHAEL MOORS. r\\ L3 group’s fears that the dump will endanger border residents. Asked why the state could not have put the dump in East Texas, Gonzales said the soil was too soft and porous. “So they admit they are worried that their canisters may leak,” said Diputado Alejandro Jimenez, president of the federal commission on ecology and the environment. “The fact that the Governor would not meet with us is going to work against him,” Jimenez predicted. In Washington, the Compact that would open the dump to other states has been sent to a congressional conference committee, where procompact legislators are expected to try to strip two amendments: one limiting the site to just Texas, Maine, and Vermont, and a second providing improved legal standing for local residents to sue on grounds of discrimination. ONE FOR THE SCUM. Filmmaker Michael Moore may have succeeded in embarrassing Nike C.E.O. Philip Knight into slightly improving working conditions in his overseas sweatshops, but he got slapped down by a federal judge for making fun of Columbia Pictures. That was the June 2 judgment of U.S. District Judge Audrey B. Collins, who ordered Miramax Pictures, distributors of Moore’s current film, The Big One, to stop using the film’s promotional posters which parody the advertising for the Columbia film, Men in Black. The Men in Black advertisements feature stars Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, dressed in black and carrying oversized weapons, while standing in front of a New York City skyline. The caption reads: “Protecting the earth from the scum of the universe.” Posters for The Big One feature Moore dressed in black and wearing dark sunglasses, carrying an oversized microphone while standing in front of the same New York skyline. The caption reads: “Protecting the earth from the scum of corporate America.” Judge Collins rejected the Miramax argument that their advertisements are parodies, protected by the First Amendment, saying instead that they probably infringe Columbia’s copyright. Moore had no public comment on the ruling. However, usually well-informed sources told the Observer he is delighted that anybody might mistake him for Tommy Lee Jones. He was only hoping for Roy Orbison. PREACHER SMITH goes to Washington. San Antonio’s eagle-eyed freedom-fighter, Maury Maverick, Jr., spotted Congressman Lamar Smith pontificating on the House floor and thereby confirmed that Smith can distort the Constitution with the best of them. Smith joined the high demagoguery supporting the Istook \(“Religious Freeon schoolchildren. Smith took up the cause, predictably, by blaming the Warren Supreme Court for changing the meaning of the separation of church and state, and then proclaimed, “The Constitution does not protect freedom from religion. It guards against having one religion imposed on us all…. This amendment requires that those who ex press their religious beliefs receive the same treatment as those who express nonreligious views.” Apparently Smith believes that if the government wishes to impose religion on its citizens, that’s perfectly okay as long as we get to choose from an exhaustive smorgasbord of available creeds. Coming soon to your school district thanks to Congressman Smith: accredited instruction in Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, etc., etc…. No atheists or secular humanists allowed. That’ll teach those millions of backsliding, atheist toddlers that Sunday School happens seven days a week. “Hijas del Quinto Sol,” a conference on Latina literature and identity, will take place in San Antonio July 23-25. Sponsored by the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center and St. Mary’s University, the third annual event will feature a keynote address by Cristina Garcia, as well as readings by Rosemary Catacalos, Cecile Piiieda, Sylvia Lopez-Medina, Graciela Limon, Emma Perez, and Achy Obejas. For more information, contact Bryce Mil-‘ PUSHERS AT LARGE. In March, Philip Morris C.E.O. Geoffrey Bible told a Minnesota court suing the tobacco companies that he does not “set money above public health. I place them all at the highest ranking.” Three years earlier, Bible wrote to Philip Morris stockholders, “Our one all-consuming ambition is to create wealth for the owners of Philip Morris.” That’s just one of the institutional hypocrisies of the tobacco companies documented in Global Aggression: The Case for World Standards and Bold U.S. Action Challenging Philip Morris and RJR Nabisco. The new report, published by the public interest group INFACT, Boston-based, covers the corruption and dishonesty of the tobacco corporations in the U.S., and their increasing expansion overseas in search of new markets and weaker government regulation for their poisonous products. The report is particularly strong on tobacco industry marketing to children; and the companies’ determination to evade or rewrite all laws regulating tobacco internationally, and then to corrupt or day-government efforts to intervene on behalf of iinblic health. INFACT calls for a boycott on these companies and their other brands \(Kraft, tional regulatory standards to end the “global tobacco epidemic.” “If current trends continue,” says Executive Director Kathryn Mulvey, “half a billion of the 5.5 billion people alive today will be wiped out by tobacco.” For a copy of the report, contact INFACT, 256 Hanover Street, Boston, apc.org ; www.infact.org . JULY 3, 1998 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 17