Disinformation Book of Lists (21 page)

 

1

May 1964:
Mark Maples
, a fifteen-year-old Long Beach, California, resident, was killed when he tried to stand up on the Matterhorn Bobsleds. Maples (or his companion) foolishly unbuckled his seatbelt and attempted to stand up as their bobsled neared the peak of the mountain. Maples lost his balance and was thrown from the sled to the track below, fracturing his skull and ribs and causing internal injuries. He died three days later.

2

June 1966:
Thomas Guy Cleveland
, a nineteen-year-old Northridge, California, resident, was killed when he attempted to sneak into Disneyland along the Monorail track. Cleveland scaled the park's sixteen-foot high outer fence on a Grad Nite and climbed onto the Monorail track, intending to jump or climb down once inside the park. Cleveland ignored a security guard's shouted warnings of an approaching Monorail train and failed to leap clear of the track. He finally climbed down onto a fiberglass canopy beneath the track, but the clearance wasn't enough—the oncoming train struck and killed him, dragging his body 30 to 40 feet down the track.

3

August 1967:
Ricky Lee Yama
, a seventeen-year-old Hawthorne, California, resident, was killed when he disregarded safety instructions and exited his People Mover car as the ride was passing through a tunnel. Yama slipped as he was jumping from car to car and was crushed to death beneath the wheels of oncoming cars.

4

June 1973:
Bogden Delaurot
, an eighteen-year-old Brooklyn resident, drowned trying to swim across the Rivers of America. Delaurot and his ten-year-old brother managed to stay on Tom Sawyer Island past its dusk closing time by climbing the fence separating the island from the burning settlers' cabin. When they decided to leave the island a few hours later, they chose to swim across the river rather than call attention to their rule-breaking by appealing to cast members for help. Because the younger brother did not know how to swim, Delaurot tried to carry him on his back as he swam to shore. Bogden Delaurot went down about halfway across the river. The younger boy remained afloat by dogpaddling until a ride operator hauled him aboard a boat, but Bogden was nowhere to be found. His body was not located by searchers until the next morning.

5

June 7, 1980:
Gerardo Gonzales
, a recent San Diego high school graduate, was killed on the People Mover in an accident much like the one that had befallen Ricky Lee Yama thirteen years earlier. Gonzales, in the early morning hours of a Grad Nite celebration, was climbing from car to car as the People Mover entered the SuperSpeed Tunnel adjacent to the former America Sings building. Gonzales stumbled and fell onto the track, where an oncoming train of cars crushed him beneath its wheels and dragged his body a few hundred feet before being stopped by a ride operator.

6

June 4, 1983:
Philip Straughan
, an eighteen-year-old Albuquerque, New Mexico, resident, also drowned in the Rivers of America in yet another Grad Nite incident. Straughan and a friend—celebrating both their graduations and Straughan's eighteenth birthday—had been drinking quite heavily that evening. They sneaked into a “Cast Members Only” area along the river and untied an inflatable rubber maintenance motorboat, deciding to take it for a joyride around the river. Unable to adequately control the boat, they struck a rock near Tom Sawyer Island, and Straughan was thrown into the water. His friend traveled back to shore to seek help, but Straughan drowned long before his body was finally located an hour later.

7

January 3, 1984:
Dolly Regene Young
, a 48-year-old Fremont, California, resident, was killed on the Matterhorn in an incident remarkably similar to the first Disneyland guest death nearly 20 years earlier. About two-thirds of the way down the mountain, Young was thrown from her seat into the path of an oncoming bobsled, her head and chest becoming pinned beneath its wheels. An examination of Young's sled revealed that her seatbelt was not fastened at the time of the accident, but because she was riding alone in the rear car of a sled no one could determine whether or not she had deliberately unfastened her belt.

8

December 24, 1998:
In a tragic Christmas Eve accident, one Disneyland cast member and two guests were injured (one fatally) when a rope used to secure the sailing ship
Columbia
as it docked on the Rivers of America tore loose the metal cleat to which it was attached. The cleat sailed through air and struck the heads of two guests who were waiting to board the ship,
Luan Phi Dawson
, 33, of Duvall, Washington, and his wife, Lieu Thuy Vuong, 43. Dawson was declared brain-dead two days later and died when his life-support system was disconnected.

This accident resulted in the first guest death in Disneyland's history that was not attributable to any negligence on the part of the guest (it was the result of a combination of insufficiently rigorous ride maintenance and an insufficiently experienced supervisor assuming an attraction operator's role) and prompted a movement for greater government oversight of theme park operations and safety procedures.

9

September 5, 2003:
A 22-year-old man,
Marcelo Torres
of Gardena, California, died, and several other guests were injured, when a locomotive separated from its train along a tunnel section of Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. Torres bled to death after suffering blunt force trauma to the chest.

 

The complete list of substances added to cigarettes, as compiled by the Indiana Prevention Resource Center at Indiana University, contains 599 entries. Below are some of the more interesting ones….

1.
ambergris tincture

2.
ammonia

3.
amyl butyrate

4.
apple juice concentrate, extract, and skins

5.
benzoic acid

6.
1-butanol

7.
caffeine

8.
carbon dioxide

9.
carrot oil

10.
chocolate

11.
civet absolute

12.
coffee

13.
cognac white and green oil

14.
dimethyltetrahydrobenzofuranone

15.
ethyl alcohol

16.
fig juice concentrate

17.
guaiac wood oil

18.
hexyl phenylacetate

19.
honey

20.
hops oil

21.
maple syrup and concentrate

22.
2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol

23.
2-methylheptanoic acid

24.
beta-napthyl ethyl ether

25.
nutmeg powder and oil

26.
phosphoric acid

27.
rum

28.
skatole

29.
1,5,5,9-tetramethyl-13-oxatricy clo(8.3.0.0(4,9))tridecane

30.
urea

31.
vinegar

32.
yeast

 

According to government, media, and investor reports, the following companies do business with at least one of the countries deemed by the US to be an enemy state: Libya, Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Liberia, the Balkans, and Burma (Myanmar). It should be noted that in a lot of these cases, the transactions appear to be legal, either because a non-US subsidiary of the company is dealing with the rogue state or because the Treasury Department granted a special license. In other cases, though, the corporations have been fined for their activities.

1.
AAA Travel

2.
Alcolac International

3.
Amazon.com

4.
American Express Bank

5.
American Type Culture Collection

6.
Axel Electronics

7.
Baker Hughes

8.
Bank of America

9.
Bank of New York

10.
Bank One

11.
Barclays Bank

12.
Bechtel

13.
Canberra Industries

14.
Carl Zeiss, Inc.

15.
Caterpillar

16.
Cerberus

17.
Chevron Texaco

18.
Citibank, N.A.

19.
Conoco-Phillips

20.
Consarc

21.
Deutsche Bank

22.
Dow Agrosciences

23.
Dupont

24.
Eastman Kodak

25.
Electronic Associates

26.
ESPN

(Entertainment & Sports Network)

27.
Exxon Mobile

28.
EZ Logic Data Systems

29.
Finnigan MAT (US)

30.
Four Seasons Hotels

31.
General Electric

32.
Halliburton

33.
Hewlett-Packard

34.
Honeywell

35.
Hyundai Group

36.
International Computer Systems

37.
JP Morgan Chase

38.
Leybold Vacuum Systems

39.
New York Yankees

40.
Pepsi Cola Co.

41.
PetroCanada

42.
PetroChina

43.
Playboy Enterprises

44.
Rockwell

45.
Samsung

46.
Semetex

47.
Siemens

48.
Spectra Physics

49.
Sperry Corp.

50.
Standard Chartered Bank

51.
Tektronix

52.
TI Coating

53.
Unisys

54.
Wal-Mart

55.
Wells Fargo Bank

 

When the North American Free Trade Agreement was passed, we were assured that it would create at least 200,000 jobs in the US. Showing that politicians live in a Bizzaro world where everything is reversed, that's approximately the number of jobs the US
lost
due to NAFTA, either because companies move their facilities to Mexico or Canada, or because cheaper imports from those countries have forced the closing of US facilities.

Workers who lose their jobs because of NAFTA are eligible to receive special benefits. Toward the end of 2003, the famously non-partisan Congressional Research Service tallied the number of workers that US companies signed up for these benefits from the implementation of NAFTA (on the first day of 1994) to September 24, 2002.

The list below represents the 100 companies giving the boot to the most workers. The total comes to 201,414, and would be even higher if companies beyond the top 100 were included. In the ranked list below, the number of workers follows the name of each corporation.

1.
Vanity Fair or VF
16,095

2.
Levi Strauss and Co.
15,676

3.
Burlington House & Industries
total: 9,679

4.
Motorola, Inc.
7,347

5.
Tyco
5,751

6.
General Electric
total: 5,674

7.
Fruit of the Loom
Texas - 5,352

8.
Russell Corporation
3,630

9.
Lucent Technologies
3,416

10.
Honeywell, Inc.
2,754

11.
Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation
2,600

12.
Lexington Fabrics
2,461

13.
Anchor Glass Corporation
2,419

14.
Brown Group
2,400

15.
Louisiana Pacific
2,397

16.
Dana Corporation
2,306

17.
Emerson Electronic Connector Components
2,246

18.
Stroh Brewery Company
2,222

19.
Trinity Industries
2,203

20.
Sarah Lee
2,124

21.
Viasystems Technologies
2,100

22.
Eaton Corporation
2,052

23.
TRW/Auto Electronics Group of North America
2,050

24.
Thomas and Betts Corporation
1,987

25.
Nokia
1,980

26.
Oxford Industries
1,960

27.
Solectron Corporation
1,932

28.
United Technologies Corporation
1,899

29.
Allied Signal, Inc.
1,883

30.
Henry I. Siegel
1,857

31.
Autoliv ASP
1,720

32.
Haggar Clothing Co.
1,717

33.
Hewlett Packard
1,683

34.
Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company
1,671

35.
AMP, Inc.
1,654

36.
Thomaston Mills
1,649

37.
Kemet Electronics
1,631

38.
Freightliner, LLC
1,595

39.
Lockheed Martin
1,584

40.
Tultex Corporation
1,547

41.
Hasbro Manufacturing Services
1,531

42.
Exide Technologies
1,470

43.
PL Industries and Subsidiary
1,446

44.
FCI USA, Inc.
1,436

45.
Kimberly Clark Corporation
1,415

46.
Woodward Governor Company
1,390

47.
Ithaca Industries
1,359

48.
Regency Packing Company
1,334

49.
Al Tech Specialty Steel Corporation
1,330

50.
Master Lock
1,324

51.
Square D Corporation
Group Schneider - 1,322

52.
Newell Manufacturing
1,308

53.
Aalfs Manufacturing
1,276

54.
Mattel Operations
1,259

55.
Borg-Warner Automotive Diversified Trans
1,259

56.
Sola Optical USA, Inc.
1,252

57.
Federal Mogul Wiper Products
1,201

58.
Household Products
1,200

59.
Plaid Clothing Group
1,180

60.
L.G. Philips Display
1,163

61.
Magnetek
1,160

62.
John Deere Consumer
1,150

63.
Copper Range Co.
1,133

64.
Sunbeam
1,130

65.
Sony
1,126

66.
Scientific Atlanta
1,121

67.
Lear Corporation
1,120

68.
Champion Products
1,116

69.
KLH Industries
1,100

70.
SMTC Manufacturing Corporation of Wisconsin
1,085

71.
Zenith Electronics Corporation
1,057

72.
Crown Pacific Limited Partnership
1,050

73.
Flexel, Inc.
1,050

74.
Hamilton Beach/Proctor Silex, Inc.
1,046

75.
Johnson Controls, Inc.
1,036

76.
Gulford Mills
1,032

77.
United States Leather
1,011

78.
Monon Corporation
1,000

79.
Ametek total:
1,000

80.
Singer Furniture
1,000

81.
J.R. Simplot Company
995

82.
Flextronics International
991

83.
Greenwood Mills
991

84.
Georgia Pacific West
966

85.
Celestica Corporation
965

86.
Seton Company
960

87.
Kraft Foods North America
955

88.
Bassett Furniture Industries
954

89.
Grove US, LLC
950

90.
C-Cor.Net
930

91.
Jeanerette Mills
926

92.
Boise Cascade Corporation
918

93.
Strick Corporation
912

94.
Xerox
893

95.
A.O. Smith Electrical Products
878

96.
Smith Corona Corporation
874

97.
Siemens
874

98.
Mitsubishi Consumer Electronics America
870

99.
The Budd Company
868

100.
Cross Creek Apparel
863