Web resources

[Doug Millison]

Two on the Chemical Industry
Chemical Industry Archives -- EWG [.pdf]
http://www.chemicalindustryarchives.org/
Trade Secrets [.pdf, RealPlayer]
http://www.pbs.org/tradesecrets/

This week, PBS aired a disturbing two-hour special hosted by Bill
Moyers that explores the history of the chemical revolution of the
past 50 years and how companies have long sought to withhold
information from the public and their employees about the safety of
many substances. The program draws on a large collection of
previously secret industry documents unearthed during a ten-year
lawsuit by the family of a man who died from a rare brain cancer
after working at a vinyl-chloride plant. The family's lawyer
eventually charged all vinyl-chloride-producing companies with
conspiracy, and the discovery process brought to light hundreds of
thousands of pages of documents which reveal a closely planned and
well-executed campaign to limit regulation of toxic chemicals and the
liability of manufacturers and to withhold important health
information from all parties. A large selection of these internal
documents, over 37,000 pages, is now available for the first time at
the Chemical Industry Archives, created by the Environmental Working
Group. The site offers several essays on the archive and the
industry, including a selection of some egregious examples of
companies hiding or denying known health risks of their products. The
archive itself may be searched by keyword with several modifiers. The
documents are presented in .pdf format. This site is sure to become
an extremely important resource for health activists, journalists,
and the concerned public. The companion site to the PBS program
offers an overview of the film, interview transcripts, selected
documents in HTML and .pdf formats, chemical worker profiles and
videos, and a section on the 84 chemicals detected in Bill Moyers's
blood and urine. Visitors will also find features on industry
secrecy, regulation, money, and politics, as well as right-to-know
efforts and what people can do to help protect themselves. These are
enhanced by interactive features, documents, and links to related
resources. If you only have time to visit two sites this week, they
must be the Chemical Industry Archives and Trade Secrets. [MD]


3.  Three on Bay of Pigs/ Castro
Bay of Pigs Reports -- CIA
http://www.foia.ucia.gov/popdocs/bayofpigs.htm
Bay of Pigs: Forty Years After -- NSA [RealPlayer]
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/bayofpigs/
Castro Speech Database
http://www.lanic.utexas.edu/la/cb/cuba/castro.html

Next month is the 40th anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion, and
this was marked last week by an extraordinary conference last week in
Havana which involved former officials of the Kennedy Administration,
the CIA, members of Brigade 2506, and Cuban government and military
officials. The anniversary has also seen the release of numerous
documents related to the ill-fated expedition. Over 1,000 pages of
these have been placed online by the CIA. The primary offering
consists of two volumes: the first contains the CIA Inspector
General's (IG) report on the invasion, and the second consists of
commentary on the IG report written by the Directorate of Plans (DP),
now known as the Directorate of Operations (DO). As the site notes,
"these two volumes are a rare side-by-side compilation of high-level
government self-evaluation of its own performance in an historic and
controversial event." In addition, the site includes over 750 related
documents, many of them multi-page. All of these are offered as
digitized page images of varying quality. Although it has not been
updated since the second day of the conference, the National Security
Archive's site on the Havana conference is a very useful resource,
with reports on the proceedings, a chronology, numerous declassified
documents, several audio recordings, and biographies of the members
of the US delegation. Finally, for those interested in the political
history of Cuba before and after the Bay of Pigs, lanic has placed
online a database "containing the full text of English translations
of speeches, interviews, and press conferences by Fidel Castro, based
upon the public domain records of the Foreign Broadcast Information
Service (FBIS)." The database contains speeches from 1959 to 1996 and
may be searched by numerous modifiers or browsed by year. The
speeches are offered in plain text format only.